hich result from the moon being at fixed periods
brought into the shadow of the earth and darkened, until it passes the
obscured tract and is again enlightened by the sun, yet being very
devout and learned in divination, he offered to her a sacrifice of
eleven calves. At daybreak he sacrificed twenty oxen to Herakles without
obtaining a favourable response; but with the one-and-twentieth
favourable signs appeared and portents of victory for them, provided
they did not attack. He then vowed a hecatomb and sacred games in
honour of the god, and ordered his officers to arrange the men in line
of battle. But he waited till the sun declined and drew towards the
west, that his troops might not fight with the morning sun in their
eyes. He passed away the day sitting in his tent, which was pitched
looking towards the flat country and the camp of the enemy.

XVIII. Some writers tell us, that about evening, by a device of
Aemilius, the battle was begun by the enemy, the Romans having driven a
horse without a bridle out of their camp and then tried to catch it,
from which pursuit the battle began; but others say that Roman soldiers
who were carrying fodder for the cattle were set upon by the Thracians
under Alexander, and that to repel them a vigorous sortie was made with
seven hundred Ligurians; that many on both sides came up to help their
comrades, and so the battle began. Aemilius, like a pilot, seeing by the
motion and disturbance of his camp that a storm was at hand, came out of
his tent, and going along the lines of the infantry spoke encouraging
words to them, while Nasica, riding up to the skirmishers, saw the whole
army of the enemy just on the point of attacking. First marched the
Thracians, whose aspect they saw was most terrible, as they were tall
men, dressed in dark tunics, with large oblong shields and greaves of
glittering white, brandishing aloft long heavy swords over their right
shoulders. Next to the Thracians were the mercenaries, variously armed,
and mixed with Paeonians. After these came a third corps, of
Macedonians, picked men of proved courage, and in the flower of their
age, glittering with gilded arms and new purple dresses. Behind them
again came the phalanxes from the camp with their brazen shields,
filling all the plain with the glittering of their armour, and making
the hills ring with their shouts. So swiftly and boldly did they advance
that those who were first slain fell two furlongs only from th