ilius, one of the best and bravest of
the Romans, was sent to subdue him, and the great battle was fought in
188, at Pydna, near Mount Olympus. The night before the battle there was
an eclipse of the moon, which greatly terrified the Macedonians; but the
Romans had among them an officer who knew enough of the movements of the
heavenly bodies to have told the soldiers of it beforehand, and its
cause. The Macedonians being thus discouraged, gave way, and fled as
soon as the battle seemed to be going against them; and Perseus himself
galloped from the field to Pella, where he was so beside himself with
despair that he stabbed two of his counsellors who tried to show him the
mistakes he had made. But as AEmilius advanced, he was forced to retreat
before him, even into the island of Samothrace, which was sacred soil,
whence he could not be taken by force. The Romans watched all round the
island, and he dreaded that the Samothracians should give him up to them;
so he bargained with a Cretan shipmaster to take him and all his treasure
on board his ship, and carry him off at night. The Cretan received half
the treasure, and Perseus crept out at a small window, crossed a garden,
and reached the wharf, where, to his horror, he found that the
treacherous captain had sailed off with the treasure, and left him
behind.

There was nothing for him to do but to yield to the Romans. He came into
the camp in mourning, and AEmilius gave him his hand and received him
kindly, but kept him a prisoner, and formed Macedon into a province under
Roman government. AEmilius himself went on a journey through the most
famous Greek cities, especially admiring Athens, and looking at the
places made famous by historians, poets, and philosophers. He took
Polybius, a learned Athenian philosopher, who wrote the history of this
war, to act as tutor to his two sons, though both were young men able to
fight in this campaign, and from that time forward the Romans were glad
to have Greek teachers for their sons, and Greek was spoken by them as
freely and easily as their own Latin; every well-educated man knew the
chief Greek poets by heart, and was of some school of philosophy, either
Stoic or Epicurean, but the best men were generally Stoics.

[Picture: Sappho] Perseus and his two young sons were taken to Rome,
there, according to the Roman fashion, to march in the triumph of the
conqueror, namely, the procession in which the general returned home with