fortunate enough to be constantly outstripped in blunders by her
antagonists. Perseus was content with entrenching himself in
Macedonia--which towards the south and west is a true mountain-
fortress--as in a beleaguered town.

Marcius Enters Macedonia through the Pass of Tempe
The Armies on the Elpius

The third commander-in-chief also, whom Rome sent to Macedonia in 585,
Quintus Marcius Philippus, that already-mentioned upright guest-friend
of the king, was not at all equal to his far from easy task. He was
ambitious and enterprising, but a bad officer. His hazardous venture
of crossing Olympus by the pass of Lapathus westward of Tempe, leaving
behind one division to face the garrison of the pass, and making his
way with his main force through impracticable denies to Heracleum, is
not excused by the fact of its success. Not only might a handful of
resolute men have blocked the route, in which case retreat was out of
the question; but even after the passage, when he stood with the
Macedonian main force in front and the strongly-fortified mountain-
fortresses of Tempe and Lapathus behind him, wedged into a narrow
plain on the shore and without supplies or the possibility of foraging
for them, his position was no less desperate than when, in his first
consulate, he had allowed himself to be similarly surrounded in the
Ligurian defiles which thenceforth bore his name. But as an accident
saved him then, so the incapacity of Perseus saved him now. As if he
could not comprehend the idea of defending himself against the Romans
otherwise than by blocking the passes, he strangely gave himself over
as lost as soon as he saw the Romans on the Macedonian side of them,
fled in all haste to Pydna, and ordered his ships to be burnt and
his treasures to be sunk. But even this voluntary retreat of the
Macedonian army did not rescue the consul from his painful position.
He advanced indeed without hindrance, but was obliged after four days'
march to turn back for want of provisions; and, when the king came to
his senses and returned in all haste to resume the position which he
had abandoned, the Roman army would have been in great danger, had not
the impregnable Tempe surrendered at the right moment and handed over
its rich stores to the enemy. The communication with the south was
by this means secured to the Roman army; but Perseus had strongly
barricaded himself in his former well-chosen position on the bank of
the little rive