e,
which it was originally intended to postpone till the following day.
Passing through the ranks in person, without helmet or shield, the
grey-headed Roman general arranged his men. Scarce were they in
position, when the formidable phalanx assailed them; the general
himself, who had witnessed many a hard fight, afterwards acknowledged
that he had trembled. The Roman vanguard dispersed; a Paelignian
cohort was overthrown and almost annihilated; the legions themselves
hurriedly retreated till they reached a hill close upon the Roman
camp. Here the fortune of the day changed. The uneven ground and the
hurried pursuit had disordered the ranks of the phalanx; the Romans in
single cohorts entered at every gap, and attacked it on the flanks and
in rear; the Macedonian cavalry which alone could have rendered aid
looked calmly on, and soon fled in a body, the king among the
foremost; and thus the fate of Macedonia was decided in less than an
hour. The 3000 select phalangites allowed themselves to be cut down
to the last man; it was as if the phalanx, which fought its last great
battle at Pydna, had itself wished to perish there. The overthrow was
fearful; 20,000 Macedonians lay on the field of battle, 11,000 were
prisoners. The war was at an end, on the fifteenth day after Paullus
had assumed the command; all Macedonia submitted in two days. The
king fled with his gold--he still had more than 6000 talents
(1,460,000 pounds) in his chest--to Samothrace, accompanied by a few
faithful attendants. But he himself put to death one of these,
Evander of Crete, who was to be called to account as instigator of the
attempted assassination of Eumenes; and then the king's pages and his
last comrades also deserted him. For a moment he hoped that the right
of asylum would protect him; but he himself perceived that he was
clinging to a straw. An attempt to take flight to Cotys failed. So
he wrote to the consul; but the letter was not received, because he
had designated himself in it as king. He recognized his fate, and
surrendered to the Romans at discretion with his children and his
treasures, pusillanimous and weeping so as to disgust even his
conquerors. With a grave satisfaction, and with thoughts turning
rather on the mutability of fortune than on his own present success,
the consul received the most illustrious captive whom Roman general
had ever brought home. Perseus died a few years after, as a state
prisoner, at Alba on