16.
Philip displayed a spirit that more befitted a king.1 Though he had not withstood Attalus and the Rhodians, he was unterrified even by the threatening war with Rome.
[2]
Sending Philocles, one of his prefects, with two thousand infantry and two hundred horse to harry the Athenian country, and entrusting a fleet to Heraclides, that
[3]
he might proceed to Maronea, he himself set out by land to that place with two thousand light-armed infantry [p. 51]and two hundred cavalry.
[4]
And Maronea, indeed, -2 he took at the first assault; Aenus then, after great labour in besieging it, he finally captured through the treachery of Callimedes, the prefect of Ptolemy. Next he occupied other fortresses, Cypsela, Doriscus, and Serrheum. Proceeding thence toward the Chersonesus, he received in voluntary submission Elaeus and Alopeconnesus.
[5]
Callipolis too and Madytus were surrendered, and some unimportant strongholds. The people of Abydus,3 not even admitting his ambassadors, closed their gates against the king.
[6]
This siege delayed Philip a long time, and the people could have been quickly relieved of the siege if Attalus and the Rhodians had not delayed.
[7]
Attalus sent only three hundred soldiers for the garrison, the Rhodians one quadrireme from the fleet, although it was lying off Tenedos.
[8]
Later, the city being by that time scarce able to resist the siege, when Attalus in person arrived there, he gave only the hope of aid from near by, but did not help the allies by either land or sea.
1 At this point Livy begins the narrative of Philip's campaign of 200 B.C. against the possessions of Ptolemy in Thrace (sects. 3-4) and the Thracian Chersonesus, to the north-west of the Hellespont (sects. 5 ff.). These events precede the arrival of the Romans in Greece (xiv. 2 above).
2 B.C. 200
3 See xiv. 4 above and the note.
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