o
occupy the hill, which for the moment was quite denuded of troops.
The right wing of the phalanx, led by the king in person, arrived
early enough to form without trouble in battle order on the height;
the left had not yet come up, when the light troops of the
Macedonians, put to flight by the legions, rushed up the hill. Philip
quickly pushed the crowd of fugitives past the phalanx into the middle
division, and, without waiting till Nicanor had arrived on the left
wing with the other half of the phalanx which followed more slowly,
he ordered the right phalanx to couch their spears and to charge
down the hill on the legions, and the rearranged light infantry
simultaneously to turn them and fall upon them in flank. The attack
of the phalanx, irresistible on so favourable ground, shattered the
Roman infantry, and the left wing of the Romans was completely beaten.
Nicanor on the other wing, when he saw the king give the attack,
ordered the other half of the phalanx to advance in all haste; by this
movement it was thrown into confusion, and while the first ranks were
already rapidly following the victorious right wing down the hill, and
were still more thrown into disorder by the inequality of the ground,
the last files were just gaining the height. The right wing of the
Romans under these circumstances soon overcame the enemy's left; the
elephants alone, stationed upon this wing, annihilated the broken
Macedonian ranks. While a fearful slaughter was taking place at this
point, a resolute Roman officer collected twenty companies, and with
these threw himself on the victorious Macedonian wing, which had
advanced so far in pursuit of the Roman left that the Roman right
came to be in its rear. Against an attack from behind the phalanx
was defenceless, and this movement ended the battle. From the
complete breaking up of the two phalanxes we may well believe that
the Macedonian loss amounted to 13,000, partly prisoners, partly
fallen--but chiefly the latter, because the Roman soldiers were not
acquainted with the Macedonian sign of surrender, the raising of the
-sarissae-. The loss of the victors was slight. Philip escaped to
Larissa, and, after burning all his papers that nobody might be
compromised, evacuated Thessaly and returned home.

Simultaneously with this great defeat, the Macedonians suffered other
discomfitures at all the points which they still occupied; in Caria
the Rhodian mercenaries defeated the Maced