not
endure to see the cities destroyed before his eyes and was greatly
irritated, no longer allowed his soldiers to be inactive, but leading
them to the Kephisus, he compelled them to divert the stream from its
course and to dig ditches, allowing no man any cessation and punishing
most severely all who gave in, his object being to tire his soldiers
with labour and to induce them to seek danger as a release from it.
And it happened as he wished. For on the third day of this labour, as
Sulla was passing by, they entreated him with loud shouts to lead them
against the enemy. He replied, that they said this not because they
wished to fight, but because they disliked labour; but if they really
were disposed to fight, he bade them move forthwith with their arms to
yonder place, pointing out to them what was formerly the Acropolis of
the Parapotamii,[228] but the city was then destroyed and there
remained only a rocky precipitous hill, separated from Mount Hedylium
by the space occupied by the river Assus, which falling into the
Kephisus at the base of the Hedylium and thus becoming a more rapid
stream, makes the Acropolis a safe place for encampment. Sulla also
wished to seize the height, as he saw the Chalkaspides[229] of the
enemy pressing on towards it, and as his soldiers exerted themselves
vigorously, he succeeded in occupying the place. Archelaus, being
repelled from this point, advanced towards Chaeroneia, upon which the
men of Chaeroneia who were in Sulla's army entreating him not to let
their city fall into the hands of the enemy, he sent Gabinius[230] a
tribune, with one legion, and permitted the men of Chaeroneia to go
also, who, though they had the best intention, could not reach the
place before Gabinius: so brave a man he was, and more active in
bringing aid than even those who prayed for it. Juba[231] says it was
not Gabinius who was sent, but Ericius. However this may be, our
city[232] had a narrow escape.

XVII. From Lebadeia[233] and the oracle of Trophonius favourable omens
and predictions of victory were sent to the Romans, about which the
people of the country have a good deal to say. But Sulla, in the tenth
book of his Memoirs, writes, that Quintus Titius, a man of some note
among those who had mercantile affairs in Greece, came to him
immediately after the victory in Chaeroneia, to report that Trophonius
foretold a second battle and victory there in a short time. After
Titius, a soldier in his army, n