Polybius, Histories

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Attalus Conciliates the Gauls

While he was here an eclipse of the moon occurred:

Mutiny of the Gauls.

and the Gauls who had all along been much discontented at the hardships of the march,—which was rendered the more painful for them by the fact of their being accompanied by their wives and children, who followed the host in waggons,— now regarded the eclipse as an evil augury, and refused to go on. But King Attalus, who got no effective service out of them, and saw that they straggled during the march and encamped by themselves, and wholly declined to obey orders and despised all authority, was in great doubt as to what to do. He was anxious less¹ they should desert to Achaeus, and join in an attack upon himself: and was at the same time uneasy at the scandal to which he would give rise, if he caused his soldiers to surround and kill all these men, who were believed to have crossed into Asia in reliance on his honour. He therefore seized the occasion of their refusal to proceed, to promise them that he would see that they were taken back to the place where they had crossed into Asia; would assign them suitable lands for a settlement; and would afterwards do them any service they asked for, if it was within his power and consistent with justice.

Accordingly Attalus led the Aegosagae back to the Helles pont; and after negotiations with the people of Lampsacus, Ilium, and Alexandria, conducted in a friendly spirit because they had preserved their loyalty to him, he returned with his army to Pergamum.