ight depart from the city, each with
one suit of apparel. When Philip's answer afforded no hopes of
accommodation, unless they surrendered at discretion, this repudiation
of their embassy so exasperated them, at once through indignation and
despair, that, seized with the same kind of fury which had possessed
the Saguntines, they ordered all the matrons to be shut up in the
temple of Diana, and the free-born youths and virgins, and even the
infants with their nurses, in the place of exercise; the gold and
silver to be carried into the forum; their valuable garments to be put
on board the Rhodian ship, and another from Cyzicum, which lay in
the harbour; the priests and victims to be brought, and altars to be
erected in the midst. There they appointed a select number, who, as
soon as they should see the army of their friends cut off in defending
the breach, were instantly to slay their wives and children; to throw
into the sea the gold, silver, and apparel that was on board the
ships, and to set fire to the buildings, public and private: and to
the performance of this deed they were bound by an oath, the priests
repeating before them the verses of execration. Those who were of an
age capable of fighting then swore that they would not leave their
ranks alive unless victorious. These, regardful of the gods, (by whom
they had sworn,) maintained their ground with such obstinacy, that
although the night would soon have put a stop to the fight, yet the
king, terrified by their fury, first desisted from the fight. The
chief inhabitants, to whom the more shocking part of the plan had been
given in charge, seeing that few survived the battle, and that these
were exhausted by fatigue and wounds, sent the priests (having their
heads bound with the fillets of suppliants) at the dawn of the next
day to surrender the city to Philip.

18. Before the surrender, one of the Roman ambassadors, who had been
sent to Alexandria, Marcus Aemilius, being the youngest of them, on
the joint resolution of the three, on hearing of the present siege,
came to Philip, and complained of his having made war on Attalus and
the Rhodians; and particularly that he was then besieging Abydus; and
on Philip's saying that he had been forced into the war by Attalus and
the Rhodians commencing hostilities against him,--"Did the people of
Abydus, too," said he, "commence hostilities against you?" To him, who
was unaccustomed to hear truth, this language seemed too ar