help their old
friends, the Athenians, against Philip, the common enemy, or whether
they should leave it to the Romans to help them. And these haughty
republicans, who wished all their allies to forget the use of arms, who
valued their friends not for their strength but for their obedience,
sent them word that the senate did not wish them to help the Athenians,
and that the Roman people would take care of their own allies. The
Alexandrians looked upon the proud but unlettered Romans only as
friends, as allies, who asked for no pay, who took no reward, who fought
only for ambition and for the glory of their country.

Soon after this, the battle of Cynocephake in Thessaly was fought
between Philip and the Romans, in which the Romans lost only seven
hundred men, while as many as eight thousand Macedonians were left dead
upon the field. This battle, though only between Rome and Macedonia,
must not be passed unnoticed in the history of Egypt, where the troops
were armed and disciplined like Macedonians; as it was the first time
that the world had seen the Macedonian phalanx routed and in flight
before any troops not so armed.

The phalanx was a body of spearsmen, in such close array that each man
filled a space of only one square yard. The spear was seven yards long,
and, when held in both hands, its point was five yards in front of the
soldier's breast. There were sixteen ranks of these men, and, when the
first five ranks lowered their spears, the point of the fifth spear was
one yard in front of the foremost rank. The Romans, on the other hand,
fought in open ranks, with one yard between each, or each man filled
a space of four square yards, and in a charge would have to meet ten
Macedonian spears. But then the Roman soldiers went into battle with
much higher feelings than those of the Greeks. In Rome, arms were
trusted only to the citizens, to those who had a country to love, a
home to guard, and who had some share in making the laws which they were
called upon to obey. But the Greek armies of Macedonia, Egypt, and Syria
were made up either of natives who bowed their necks in slavery, or of
mercenaries who made war their trade and rioted in its lawlessness; both
of whom felt that they had little to gain from victory, and nothing to
lose by a change of masters. Moreover, the warlike skill of the Romans
was far greater than any that had yet been brought against the Greeks.
It had lately been improved in their wars with Ha