The king, however, was afraid of hazarding a general engagement so soon, and contented himself with sending forward a detachment of 400 Trallians-an Illyrian tribe, as we have explained above-and 300 Cretan infantry with an equal number of cavalry under Athenagoras, one of the nobles of his court, to challenge the enemies' cavalry. [2] The Romans, whose main line was about half a mile distant, sent forward their velites and about two squadrons of cavalry, so that the number of their mounted and unmounted men was equal to that of the enemy. [3] The king's troops expected the style of fighting to be that with which they were familiar; the cavalry would make alternate charges and retirements, at one moment using their missiles, then galloping to the rear; the swift-footed Illyrians would be employed in sudden onsets and rushes; the Cretans would discharge their arrows on the enemy as he dashed forward to attack. [4] But this order of combat was completely upset by the method of the Roman attack, which was as sustained as it was fierce. [5] They fought as steadily as though it had been a regular engagement; the velites after discharging their javelins came to close quarters with their swords; the cavalry, when once they had reached the enemy, halted their horses and fought, some on horseback whilst others dismounted and took their places amongst the infantry. [6] Under these conditions Philip's cavalry, unaccustomed to a stationary combat, were no match for the Roman horse, and his infantry, trained to skirmish in loose order and unprotected by armour, were at the mercy of the velites who with their swords and shields were equally prepared for defence and attack. [7] Incapable of sustaining the conflict and trusting solely to their mobility they fled hack to their camp.
Livy. History of Rome. English Translation by. Rev. Canon Roberts. New York, New York. E. P. Dutton and Co. 1912. 1. Livy. History of Rome. English Translation. Rev. Canon Roberts. New York, New York. E. P. Dutton and Co. 1912. 2.
The National Endowment for the Humanities provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.