journey silently and slowly, and going up to Joppa, he made as
if he was retiring from the place, and so drew Jonathan into the plain,
as valuing himself highly upon his horsemen, and having his hopes of
victory principally in them. However, Jonathan sallied out, and pursued
Apollonius to Ashdod; but as soon as Apollonius perceived that his enemy
was in the plain, he came back and gave him battle. But Apollonius had
laid a thousand horsemen in ambush in a valley, that they might be seen
by their enemies as behind them; which when Jonathan perceived, he
was under no consternation, but ordering his army to stand in a square
battle-array, he gave them a charge to fall on the enemy on both sides,
and set them to face those that attacked them both before and behind;
and while the fight lasted till the evening, he gave part of his forces
to his brother Simon, and ordered him to attack the enemies; but for
himself, he charged those that were with him to cover themselves with
their armor, and receive the darts of the horsemen, who did as they were
commanded; so that the enemy's horsemen, while they threw their darts
till they had no more left, did them no harm, for the darts that were
thrown did not enter into their bodies, being thrown upon the shields
that were united and conjoined together, the closeness of which easily
overcame the force of the darts, and they flew about without any effect.
But when the enemy grew remiss in throwing their darts from morning till
late at night, Simon perceived their weariness, and fell upon the body
of men before him; and because his soldiers showed great alacrity, he
put the enemy to flight. And when the horsemen saw that the footmen ran
away, neither did they stay themselves, but they being very weary, by
the duration of the fight till the evening, and their hope from the
footmen being quite gone, they basely ran away, and in great confusion
also, till they were separated one from another, and scattered over all
the plain. Upon which Jonathan pursued them as far as Ashdod, and slew
a great many of them, and compelled the rest, in despair of escaping, to
fly to the temple of Dagon, which was at Ashdod; but Jonathan took the
city on the first onset, and burnt it, and the villages about it; nor
did he abstain from the temple of Dagon itself, but burnt it also, and
destroyed those that had fled to it. Now the entire multitude of the
enemies that fell in the battle, and were consumed in the temple