Chapter XIX: Section VI (1)

And Ariel led the maid, quick retracing their late course, blushing, with eyelids drooping, listening with face averted to the music of his passion, homeward to his mother; while the garlanded beast, now flying before their steps, now halting, showed mimic war, and caressed its mistress, from whose eyes it caught security and love.

* * * * *

THE ORPHAN’S HYMN.

BY E. ANNA LEWIS.

Here’s the tomb of my father—how mournful the thought!
That he went to the grave ere my infantile mind
One smile of parental affection had caught,
Or his lineaments dear in my heart were enshrined!
Yes, my sire! by thy dust I am kneeling in prayer,
Where in days of my childhood so oft I have wept,
Imploring thy spirit to soothe my despair,
And at evening and morning sweet vigils have kept.

Ere my young mind could grasp them, they told me thy woes;
Of the virtues that bind thee forever to me;
Of the love of thy friends, of the hate of thy foes;
That in features and mind I was like unto thee;
And with dawning of thought is thy memory wove,
The grief and the pining that prey on my breast;
The longing to soar to thy dwelling above,
And repose in thine arms in the Land of the Blest.

I have never seen parents their children caress,
Or soothe into quiet their heart-breathing
When the storm of misfortune around them did press,
But the tears of affection arose to mine eyes:
I have ne’er met a maid by the side of her sire,
Or beheld in the festal a father who kept
Watch over his daughter, and seemed to admire
His lovely and beautiful charge, but I’ve wept.

My mother lies by him—blessed saint of the skies!
Remembrance returns thee; how gentle and meek;
I behold thee when youth filled with radiance thine eyes,
And beauty and health were illuming thy cheek;
When thy delicate form was elastic as air,
When thy bosom was white as the Parian’s glow,
When thy beautiful ringlets of long, flowing hair,
In sable threads sprinkled thy forehead of snow.

How solemn, dear mother! it seems, that the clay,
Relentless and cold, now encumbers the breast,
Where, all helpless, so oft I in infancy lay,
And, soothed by thy lullaby, sobbed me to rest;
That on earth I shall never behold thee again,
Never more feel thy rosy lips pressing my brow,
Or thy fairy hand smoothing my pillow of pain—
Thy affection and love must forever forgo!

My sister sleeps next—lovely blossom of heaven!
Ah, why wast thou summoned so early away?
Why so soon was the bond of our sisterhood riven,
And I left alone on the cold earth to stay?
Why wast thou not spared to delight and to cheer
My desolate heart ’mid depression and gloom;
With thy love-breathing counsels to gladden my ear—
With thy songs and thy smiles to enliven my home?

Sleep on, ye beloved! it is better to rest
In the halls of the dead, than to linger in life,
Where the brain and the bosom with pains are oppressed
And the soul is beleaguered by sorrow and strife;
Sleep on! though no blossoms your homes are perfuming,
There are calmness and freedom from discord and care,
The lovely and beautiful daily are coming—
And in my pale vesture I soon shall be there.

* * * * *

RELIGION.

J. HUNT, JR.

Religion, pure and undefiled,
Before the Father’s sight in bliss—
Who will the same in Heaven reward,
Consists in holy deeds, like this:
To heed, when cold Affliction’s shaft
Is at the helpless Orphan hurled—
The Widow visit, _and_ to keep
Himself unspotted from the world.

* * * * *

TITUS QUINCTIUS FLAMININUS.[2]

Of all the truths at which we arrive through a calm and dispassionate study of history, none appears to me more certain than this, that, as regards the career and course of empires, the rise and fall of states, there neither is, nor has been, any such thing as Fortune; that from the beginning of time, to the events born of the present day, every minute particular, every seemingly unimportant incident—or, as men are fond to call it, accident—in the affairs of nations, is part and parcel of one grand, universal, all-pervading scheme of divine world-government, projected before the patriarch kings led forth their flocks to feed on pastures yet moist with the waters of the deluge, but not to be fulfilled until time itself shall have an end.

It can hardly, I think, fail to strike the least observant of readers, that unless the civilized world had been for a long period chained together under the stagnant, and in the main, peaceful despotism of the successors of the twelve Cæsars, it never would have been prepared to receive that tincture of letters, of humanity, and above all, of Christian faith, with which it became in the end so thoroughly imbued; that in every case, without one exception, it brought over to its own milder cultivation, milder religion, the fiercest and most barbarous of its heathen conquerors.

Not a province of the Western Roman empire but was overrun, devastated, conquered, permanently occupied by hordes of the wildest, crudest, most violent, most ignorant of mankind—Goths, Vandals, Huns, Vikings, and Norsemen, Jutes and Danes, tribes whose very names to this day stand as the types of unlettered force and unsparing outrage. Not a province of that empire, though of its present population not one hundredth part can trace an approximate descent from the original Roman colonists, so vast the influx of the Pagan invaders, but in the lapse of time conquered its conquerors by the arts of peace, and so became the germ of that Christian civilization, that Christian Liberty, which—though either, or both, may be temporarily obscured for the moment—we see, in the main, steadily and consistently pervading the Europe end America of the nineteenth century.

That this state of things could have existed, by any reasonable probability at this day, in the event of Darius or Xerxes having overrun and occupied Western Europe, with their oriental hordes—in the event of Carthage having subdued Rome, and filled Italy, Greece, Gaul, Spain, Britain, with her bloody fiend-worship, and her base Semitic trade-spirit—in the event of Mark Antony having won the day at Actium, and broken up the heritage of Rome, like that of Alexander, among a dozen jarring dynasties, instead of leaving it to be centralized into an almost universal empire—in the event of the Saracen having destroyed the paladins of Charles Martel at Tours—of the Turks having conquered the Mediterranean at Lepanto, or Continental Europe under the walls of Vienna—few will be found, I think, so hardy as to assert.

Strange, therefore, as it may appear at first sight, the first germs of existing institutions may be said to have been sown on the banks of the Ilissus, the Eurotas, and the Tiber; and the deity, whom the blind superstition of the early Romans venerated as the war-god Quirinus guarding the wave-rocked cradle of Rome’s twin founders, was, in truth, the Lord of Hosts, watching over the infancy of that peculiar and appointed people which should make smooth his way before him, and prepare the nations to receive the faith of civil and religious freedom.

For all this wonderful accomplishment of wonderful designs, however, we shall find that the instruments are purely human, although the ends may be divine—that, although the men are never wanting to do His work, when done it must be, it is for the most part, if not always, in blindness, in sin, in wrath, and in the madness of ambition, that they do that work, imagining themselves, vainly, busied about their own miserable ends; and for the doing it they are alone accountable. But not so of the nations, which, having no life hereafter, no individual identity in the world to come, meet their rewards or punishments here, where their virtues or their vices have required them, and thrive or perish as they work toward the completion of His infinite designs.

Nowhere, perhaps, in the whole course of history, is this supervision of the Most High, which even religious men are wont unthinkingly to call Fortune, more clearly visible, than in the events of the Second Punic War.

At home the republic, though undaunted and unequaled of all times in heroism, was weeping tears of blood at every pore, and resisting only with a persistency savoring almost of despair, abroad it was only by the exercise of sacrifices and self-denial almost superhuman, that she was enabled to maintain her foothold in her provinces of Sicily and Spain.

It seems to us, when we read how Capua, the noblest of her allied cities, opened her gates and made common cause with the enemy, how twelve of the thirty colonies of the Latin name refused their contingents of men and money; how all the north of Italy, then Cisalpine Gaul, from the Var to the Rubicon, was in tumultuous arms against her; how all the proud and magnificent cities of La Puglia and Calabria were leagued with the terrible invader; it seems, I say, as if one superadded call on her resources must have remained unanswered; one more war-trumpet blown by a new enemy must have sounded her death-note.

And there was one moment when it appeared that this contingency was close at hand. In the year of the city 540, while all the south of Italy was in arms with Hannibal from Capua down to the Gulf of Taranto, and all the north was in that tumultuous state of disorganization which with Celtic populations is ever the herald of coming insurrection, Sardinia suddenly broke out into armed and open rebellion. Sicily, also, in which Hiero, the fast and faithful friend of Rome, had lately died at a very advanced age, rejected the Roman alliance, and a war of extermination was raging in that beautiful island between the partisans of the two rival powers, and the forces which each could spare from the home conflict to aid its faction.

At this crisis, Philip of Macedon, the descendant of Alexander, and at that time the most powerful of European princes, entered into an alliance, offensive and defensive, with Hannibal, and would in the course of that very summer have crossed the Adriatic and invaded Italy with some five-and-twenty thousand men, sixteen thousand of whom were the hitherto unconquered phalanx, provided with that arm, in the greatest possible perfection, the want of which had robbed Hannibal of the fruits of all his great pitched battles—I mean an efficient artillery.

In this respect the Greeks were unsurpassed; the Greek engineers were the wonder of the world, as was subsequently shown at the siege of Syracuse; and how great soever the superiority of the Romans to the Carthagenians in this arm of service, it was as nothing to the skill of the Greek artillerists, and the excellence of the Greek machinery.

What this combination might—I should rather say might not—have effected, it were difficult to show; more difficult to show how Rome could have resisted it. For my part, having examined the question in all its lights, I am of opinion that, had this alliance gone into effect, and Philip acted with energy and steadiness of purpose equal to his bravery and ambition, Marcellus never would have taken Syracuse, nor Scipio conquered Spain; but that from both those countries triumphant reinforcements would have poured in to Hannibal, over the Alps, across the Straits of Messina, that an Italian Tama would have sealed the doom of Rome, and a Punic ploughshare razed the foundations of the capitol.

But such—it is well for humanity—was not to be the issue of the war. Philip’s ambassadors, returning with the treaty signed and ratified by Hannibal, were taken by the Roman squadron off the Calabrian coast, and sent to the city with their papers.

A year elapsed before the treaty could be renewed; and, meantime, the Romans, awakened to a perception of their danger, found means to enkindle the Ætolians and Illyrian pirates against Philip, and in the end to organize a Greek confederation against Macedon, which gave its active and ambitious sovereign plenty of work to do on his own side of the Adriatic. At a later period he found cause to repent that he had ever meditated intervention.

Such strokes of fortune, so historians call them, as that capture of the ambassadors of Philip, which, perhaps, saved Rome—as that strong gale which blew on Christmas Eve on Bantry Bay, dispersing Hoche’s armament to the four winds of heaven—such strokes, I say, of fortune, I hold to be the visible agencies and instruments of God’s providence, in the government of nations, to the welfare of the world.

From Rome that peril was averted. The arms of Macedon abstained, perforce, from the shores of devastated Italy. The arms of Syracuse, of Spain, were wrested from the hands which would have wielded them in the behalf of Carthage. The arms even of the unbridled Numidians were turned against the masters whom they had served so fatally for Rome. And out of the furnace of that scathing war, the giant form of the chosen republic emerged, without one hair singed, one thread of its vestments injured; and that, like the faithful sons of Israel, by the especial providence of the Almighty.

Years passed, and events hurried toward their consummation. Yet still, though from this date the tide of Hannibal’s affairs began to ebb, and that of Rome’s to flow with a healthier, prouder current, it was not until twelve more terrible campaigns had been fought out in vain, that the star of the great Carthaginian set in blood at Zama, and the name of Carthage herself, all but one brief spasmodic sound of fury and despair, went out and was forgotten from among the nations.

Then rousing herself, like a galled lioness, Rome went forth to avenge and conquer.

Hitherto she had fought at home for existence, henceforth she fought abroad for dominion; and abroad as at home, until her mission was accomplished and His work done fully to the end, she was invincible, as the fruit of her labors is eternal.

The war, which had been undertaken against Philip by the Romans shortly after his giving them the first offense, had languished from the beginning on both sides, and peace had been concluded between the contending parties some three years before the decisive victory of Zama.

So soon, however, as peace was concluded with Carthage, in the year of the city 552, B. C. 200, true to the latter part at least of her famous motto,

_Parcere devictis et debellare superbos_,[3]

Rome sought at once a cause of war, whereby to chastise Philip for the comfort given to her enemies in her worst time of need. Nor sought long in vain.

A deputation from the Athenians came seeking succor; the arms of Philip were too near their borders.

War was declared, the Consul Sulpicius landed at Dyrrachium with a regular army, and the campaign commenced by a series of operations in the valley of the river Erigon, in Dassaretia, the object of Philip being to prevent that of the consul to secure his junction with his Dardanian and Ætolian allies. Several sharp skirmishes occurred, in all of which the Macedonians were worsted with loss, and in one instance Philip narrowly escaped being taken prisoner; whereupon he retreated through the mountain-passes, throwing up strong field-works in every available position, but avoiding a general action.

His works all proved useless, being either forced or turned without difficulty by the active and movable legionary tactic of the Romans, against which it became at once evident that so ponderous and unwieldy a body as the phalanx could not manœuvre or fight, in broken ground, with a hope of success.

In the end Philip retired at his leisure into his hereditary kingdom, and the consul having stormed and garrisoned the small town of Pelium, on the Macedonian frontier, fell back to Apollonia on the Illyrian sea-coast, without accomplishing his object.

Still his campaign had not been useless, for he had snatched the prestige of invariable success from the phalanx, had established the incontestible superiority of the Roman soldiery of all arms to the Greek, and had defeated the Macedonians on every occasion, when they had ventured to await battle.

It is not a little remarkable, and proves clearly the singular adaptability of the Romans to all martial practices, that whereas, scarce twenty years before, we find their cavalry the worst in all respects but personal valor in the known world, and their light troops unable to compete even with the barbarian allies of Hannibal, we now observe them superior in both these arms, owing, as it is distinctly stated by all the writers, to the superior excellence of their weapons[4] and equipment, even to the far-famed targeteers and life-guards of Macedonia.

In the following year, Sulpicius was superseded by the new consul, Publius Villius Tappulus, who, taking command of Sulpicius’ legions at Apollonia, advanced up the open valley of the Aöus, now Vioza, with the intention of forcing the famous passes, variously known as the Aoi Stenæ, or Fauces Antigoncuses, and now as the defiles of the Viosa, rather than turning them by way of Dassaretia, as had been done previously by his predecessor. The judgment was sound, the execution naught. For, after marching to within five miles of the western extremity of the defiles, he fortified his camp in the plain, probably in the valley of the Dryno,[5] above its junction with the Vioza, reconnoitered the position of Philip, who was very strongly posted in an intrenched camp at the most difficult point of the pass, _à cheval_ on the river, and occupying both the mountain sides, and there lay perfectly inactive until he was himself relieved by Titus Quinctius Flamininus, his successor in the consular dignity.

This man, of the early Roman leaders, was in many respects one of the most remarkable; in one particular, with the single exception of Caius Julius Cæsar, the great Dictator, he stands alone, in honorable contrast to his merciless and cruel countrymen—though quick and vehement of temper, he was a just man, and both merciful and courteous to conquered enemies. The one blot on his character, to which I shall come hereafter, must be ascribed to the policy of his country, under direct orders from which he was unquestionably acting, not to his own wishes or disposition, to which nothing could be more abhorrent than the duty imposed upon him.

Plutarch informs[6] us that, in his time, “it was easy to judge of his personal appearance,” which, unfortunately, he has not described, “from his statue in brass at Rome, inscribed with Greek characters, which still stands opposite to the hippodrome, nigh to the great Apollo from Carthage.”

As, however, the whole tenor of Plutarch’s life is laudatory, and for that gossiping anecdote-monger singularly correct and clear, we may take it as a fact that the nobility of his person was not unequal to that of his character; which I consider the finest recorded of any Roman general or statesman.

“He is said,” continues the author,[7] I have already quoted, “to have been of a temperament impulsive and vehement both in his likings and dislikings, but with this distinction, that he was quick to wrath which quickly passed away, but prompt to kindness which endured to the end. He was very ambitious and very fond of glory, ever anxious to be the actor himself in the best and greatest deeds, and rejoicing in the acquaintance rather of those who needed benefits themselves, than of those who could confer them upon others, esteeming those as material for the promotion of his own virtue, these as rivals of his own glory.”

I will add that I can find him guilty of no act—almost alone of his countrymen—of political dishonesty, or of social turpitude. To his country he was a zealous, ardent, and profitable servant; to his friends and associates faithful and true; to his enemies just and clement; and to the provincials, subjected to his dominion, a governor so affable, beneficent and equitable, that when he left their shores they mourned as for a countryman, almost a father of the country.

As a general, he committed no military error; and although his command was limited to little more than two campaigns, they were campaigns of the most important—important not merely to his own country, but to the science of war, in general—since they established, beyond a peradventure, the superiority of the tactic and armature of the legion to those of the phalanx; in other words, of the line to the column tactic.

I give to him this credit, unhesitatingly; for, although Pyrrhus was at last beaten by the phalanx in Italy, it was rather by dint of numbers and aid of circumstances than by military skill; and further, it is evident that the great bulk of his armies consisted of targeteers, little different from the legionaries, and of Samnites, Tarentines, and other Italian soldiery precisely similar to them, in arms and array.

Again, although Sulpicius had demonstrated the superiority of the individual Roman, to the individual Greek, heavy footman; he had not—nor any one else hitherto—defeated a phalanx, unless with a phalanx.

When Greeks met Greeks then was the tug of war.

For the rest, the battles of Paullus Æmilius against Perseus, were but the battles of Flamininus against the father of Perseus, less ably fought, though on the same principles at last successful.

The fact remains, that from the battle of Cynoscephalæ, of which anon, to the end of ancient history, it was an admitted fact that, unless on a very narrow and perfectly level field, where both its flanks were securely covered, the phalanx could not receive battle from the legions with a chance of success; and that as to delivering battle on wide, open plains, where rapid manœuvring and counter-marching could be resorted to, such an idea was preposterous.

Flamininus was educated to arms from his very boyhood, and that in the terrible Italian campaigns of Hannibal; through which he served with such distinction that he had already attained the post of tribune of the soldiers, equal to the modern rank of lieutenant-colonel, under that daring and distinguished leader Marcus Marcellus, and was on the field when he was slain, rashly periling himself in an affair of outposts near Venusia, in the year of Rome 546, B. C. 208, and in the sixtieth year of his own age.

After the death of his great commander, Flamininus was appointed governor of Tarentum,[8] in the capacity of quæstor, on its recapture by Fabius Maximus; and there displayed no less ability in the administration of justice than he had previously evinced skill and courage in warfare. Seven years afterward—at the early age of thirty years—he was elected consul; and, although opposed by the veto[9] of the tribunes Fulvius and Manlius Carius on the ground that he lacked twelve years of the legitimate age, and that he had never filled the intermediate grades of ædile and prætor, he was confirmed by the senate, and received Macedonia as his province, by lot.

The fact is, that the wars of Hannibal had by this time taught the Romans that an overstrict adherence to prescriptive formulæ, in times of national peril, is disastrous; and that to meet the ablest adversaries the ablest men must be had, whether all the theoretic requisites to their election had been complied with or not.

Therefore Scipio, the elder Africanus, was sent to Spain with proconsular rank and a consular army, before he was of the just age to fill a prætorship.

Therefore Flamininus was elected consul at thirty, although the constitution expressly declared that no one should hold that dignity until he should have fully attained his forty-second year.

Such laws may be, perhaps, generally wise; but the breach of them is always so. Nor does history show any instances, worth remark, of youthful genius elevated by the popular call to early station, and subsequently found unworthy, from the days of Alexander, Scipio, and Flamininus, to those of Pitt and Napoleon.

Nor do I believe that the appointment of the consuls was really, though it was ostensibly, left to the chance of a lot, at least in times of actual war, and national emergency; since we invariably find the best man sent to the place where he was required, which could not always have occurred fortuitously. Doubtless those who superintended the balloting had some method of determining the result, as had the augurs and haruspices with regard to omens and sacrifices.

So Flamininus was not only elected consul at thirty, but obtained the seat of the great war for his province, and was empowered to pick nine thousand men, horse and foot, out of the Spanish and African veterans, inured to all that was known of warfare in those days by the campaigns of Hannibal and Scipio.

A grand occasion, indeed, and a superb command for an untried commander.

It appears that on his entering upon his office, Flamininus was detained some time at Rome, in order to superintend a fast and expiatory sacrifice on account of certain alleged prodigies of evil import; but it is certain that he had understood the consequences of the dilatory operations of his predecessors, and was resolute not to fall into the like error. He sailed from Brundusium for the island of Corcyra, now Corfu, which he occupied with eight thousand foot, and eight hundred horse, much earlier in the season than the preceding consuls had been wont to take the field: and, instantly passing over to the main, in a single line-of-battle ship, hurried onward by forced journeys to the camp, and superseded Villius, in the face of the enemy.

A few days afterward, his reinforcements coming up, he called a council of war to determine whether a direct attack, or a flank movement through Dassaretia, was to be preferred. The council, of course, determined any thing rather than direct action: but Flamininus, perceiving the facilities afforded by the geography of that broken, mountainous, forest-clad region, intersected by deep ravines and impracticable torrents, to the protracting of the war, resolved to take the bolder and more prudent course of trying conclusions, at once, with an enemy whose object it evidently was to act purely on the defensive, and to avoid delivering battle.

Yet, determined as he was, the difficulties of the ground were so great, and so skillfully had Philip availed himself of every defensible point, or coigne of vantage, that many days elapsed before he could decide on the mode of assault.

The river Aöus, now Vioza, an extremely large and powerful river, augmented at every half-mile by fierce mountain torrents, along the valley of which is the most direct pass into Macedonia proper, at this point breaks its way through a chain of exceedingly abrupt and precipitous, though not very lofty mountains, and forms a gorge of six miles in length, closely resembling that picturesque defile of the Delaware, with which many of my readers are doubtless familiar, known as the Water-Gap.

Forced into a space, two-thirds less than its ordinary breadth, the Aöus has here cut its way through the solid rock, between the mounts Asnaus and Aëropus, now Nemertzika and Trebusin, respectively to the left and right of the defile, which here runs nearly south-eastward. The right-hand mountain, Aëropus or Trebusin, is the loftier of the two, descending in a sheer wall of perpendicular and treeless rock to the brink of the only road, scarped out of the living limestone like a cornice above the torrent, which bathes the base of the opposite hill, leaving no level space between.

“The mountain on the opposite or left bank of the river,” says Colonel Leake, whose topography of the Grecian battles founded on minute personal inspection, is no less valuable than interesting, “is the northern extremity of the great ridge of Nemertzika, Asnaus, much lower than that summit, but nearly equal to Trebusin in height. At the top, it is a bare, perpendicular precipice, but the steep lower slope, unlike that of its opposite neighbor, is clothed with trees quite to the river. Through the opening between them is seen a magnificent variety of naked precipices and hanging woods, inclosing the broad and rapid stream of the insinuating river.”[10]

The road,[11] difficult in any event to an army, if defended, is impracticable.

In this prodigiously strong pass Philip had taken post, occupying the narrow road with the phalanx, and having his main body hutted comfortably among the loose crags of Aëropus, on a conspicuous summit of which was pitched his own royal pavilion, with the banner of Alexander waving over it. The slopes of the opposite hill, Asnaus, was held by Athenagoras his lieutenant, with the light troops, and all the flanking crags and salient angles of the precipitous hills were mounted with the tremendous military engines, which, though of common use in the defense and attack of fortresses, had never been brought into field service until now.

Immediately in front of this stern mountain gateway extended a small plain, midway between the Roman camp and the Macedonian lines, and here, after a fruitless parley and attempt at accommodation, from which both parties retired so much exasperated at their mutual pertinacity, that the river, which divided them, alone prevented their personal conflict, the light troops met in action from both armies.

It is scarce to be conceived how, with such obstacles against them, the Romans could have escaped destruction; but it is almost ever the case in mountain warfare that the attacking party is successful.

The gray mists of the early summer morning were still nestling among the crags, and brooding in the deep glades of the hanging woods, when the long, shrill blasts of the Roman trumpets announced the impetuous rush of the light troops; and on they went, headlong and invincible, carrying all before them, and driving in the Macedonian skirmishers like the foam of the Adriatic before the fury of the south-east wind.

There was no dust upsurging from the rocky road to shroud their advance, no smoke-clouds to veil them from the shot of the enemy’s artillery, with their bright armor flashing in the sunbeams, as they streamed down the gaps in the mountain summits, and their blood-red banners and tall plumes tossing in the light morning air, on they came, dazzling and unobscured, a fair mark for the deadly missiles, arrows shot off in volleys, vast javelins which no human arm could launch, and mighty stones hurled from the catapults, as if from modern ordnance, which tore their ranks asunder, and leveled whole files to the earth at a blow.

But their extraordinary discipline and admirable armature enabled them to endure the storm; and they made their way through all opposition, until they met the phalanx, bristling with its impenetrable pikes, its flanks impregnably protected by the rocks here, by the river there, and its narrow front offering no point assailable. Then they were checked; but, even then, not beaten back, so stubborn was their Roman hardihood, so firm their resolution to be slain, not conquered.

All day long did that deep glen quake and shudder to the dread sounds of the mortal conflict; the thundering crash of the huge stone-shot, shivering the trees and shivered on the crags; the hurtling of the terrible _falaricæ_; the clash and clang of steel blades and brazen bucklers; the whirlwind of the charging horse; the shouts and shrieks and death-groans; the thrilling trumpets of the legions; the solemn pæans of the phalanx.

Only when the sun set, and the full, round moon came soaring coldly up above the tree-tops, flooding the bloody stream of the Aöus, and the corpse-incumbered gorge, with silver radiance, did the weary and shattered hosts draw off to their respective camps, from a strife so justly balanced, that none could say which had come off the better, none judge on which side the more or the better men had fallen.

That night, Flamininus sat in his tent alone, anxious, uncertain how to proceed, so terrible had been the loss of life, and so small the advantage; when a shepherd was introduced, sent by Charops, the prince of the Ætolians, who should conduct a detachment, by a wild mountain foot-path, to a height in the enemy’s rear, domineering his whole position.

Four thousand chosen veterans of infantry and three hundred horse, under a tribune of the soldiers, were detailed, instantly, for the service, which would occupy three days.

They should march all night long, such were their orders, for the summer moon was at its full, and the nights light as day and far more pleasant, as being soft with fragrant dews and the cool mountain air. By day, they should halt in some deep, bosky dell or forest glade, to rest and refresh themselves securely. So far as the nature of the ground should admit, the cavalry would lead the way, then halt on the last level. The vantage ground once gained, they should kindle a fire on the summit, but abstain from all active demonstration, till they should perceive the action in the defile at its height. Such were their orders; and in high hope they parted, carrying with them as a guide the shepherd, in chains, as a precaution against treachery, but encouraged by great promises, if faithful.

On the two following days, Flamininus skirmished continually with his light troops against Philip’s outposts, relieving his men by divisions, more to divert the attention of the enemy from the stratagem which was in progress, than with any design to harass him; though in both points of view he succeeded admirably; for the superiority of the Roman light-infantry soldier to the Greek skirmisher was great indeed, and the Macedonians lost many and good men.

On the third[12] morning, secure that all had gone well so far, by the immovable attitude of the enemy, neither elevated by any unexpected success, nor shaken by any suspicion of his danger, the consul drew up his legionary cohorts, in solid column of maniples, along the rocky road, before the sun had yet risen, and while the mountain mists still covered the distant peaks with an impenetrable veil.

His light troops, advanced on both flanks, pressed forward along the difficult hill-sides, dashing the heavy dew in showers from the dripping underwood, and threatening the camps of Philip and Athenagoras both at once, with loud shouts and a storm of missiles.

Then were renewed the splendor, the obstinacy, and the carnage of the first encounter. Again the Roman voltigeurs drove in the enemy’s outposts; and beat back the targeteers, who sallied from their works eager for the fray, from post to post, till they came within the range of the artillery, when in their turn they began to suffer heavily.

But at this instant the sun arose; the mists melted gradually away from the bare peaks, which now stood forth glittering in the hazy sunshine. With indescribable anxiety the eyes of Flamininus were riveted upon the distant crag, indicated as the decisive point. There was a vapor floating round it dull and indistinct, and browner than the blue mist wreaths—but was it, could it be, the smoke-signal?

For a time all was an agony of doubt and suspense. His officers gathered about the consul; the legionaries, seeing their commanders’ eyes all turned in one direction, gazed that way also, anxious if ignorant.

Browner the vapor grew and browner; now it soared upward, black as a thunder-cloud, darkening the azure skies, a manifest smoke-signal.

Jove! what a shout arose from the now triumphant cohorts!—what a thrilling shriek of the shrill trumpets, answered faintly and remotely, as if from the skies, by another Roman blast, but liker to the scream of the mountain-vulture than to the clangor of the pealing brass!—what a clang as of ten thousand stithies, when the Spanish blades smote home upon the Macedonian targes!

Yet still the men fell fast on both sides, although the Romans won their way, in spite of artillery and pike and sling-shot, at the sword’s point; for the Greeks still fought stubbornly, and plied their dreadful engines with deliberate aim at point blank range, unconscious that they were surrounded.

Then came the Latin cheers, and the clang of arms, out of the clouds, rolling down the mountain side, on their flank, in their rear; the rush of charging horse!—In an instant they broke, disbanded, scattered, deserted their defenses—all was over.

In the first instance the panic and route of the Macedonians were absolute; and so utterly disheartened and terror-stricken were the men, that, had it been possible to pursue them effectually, the whole army must have laid down its arms or have been cut to pieces.

The ground,[13] however, was for the most part impracticable to cavalry, and their heavy armature rendered the legions as inefficient in pursuit as formidable in close combat. About two thousand only of the Macedonians fell, more in the battle than in the route; but the whole of the formidable defenses, on which they had expended so much time and toil, were carried at a blow, all their superb artillery, their camp, their baggage, rich with the barbaric pomp of the Macedonian royalty, all their camp followers and slaves, remained the prizes of the victors.

Philip, after he had fled five miles from the field, that is to say, so far as to the eastern extremity of the defile he had fruitlessly endeavored to defend, at length perceiving that he was unpursued, and suspecting the reason, halted on a steep knoll covering the entrance of the pass, and sending out parties along the ridges and through the ravines with which they were familiar, soon collected all his men about his standard save those whom he had left on the field of battle, never to rouse to the trumpet or rally to the banner any more.

Thence he retreated rapidly down the valley of the Aöus, or Vioza, in a south-easterly direction to a place called the camps of Pyrrhus, supposed to be Ostanitza, near the junction of the Voidhomati and Vioza,[14] where he passed the night; and thence by a prodigious forced march of nearly fifty miles reached Mount Lingon on the following day, where he remained some time in doubt whither to turn his steps, and how to frame his further operations.

Mount Lingon is the eastern and loftiest extremity of a great chain of hills; dividing Macedonia proper from Thessaly on the east and Epirus on the west. It forms a huge, triangular bastion, its northern base overlooking Macedonia, and its apex facing due southward, which is in fact the water-shed between the three great rivers, Aöus or Vioza flowing north-westward into the Adriatic, Penëus or Salamosia flowing eastward into the gulf of Saloniki, and Arecthus or Arta, which has a southerly course into the gulf of the same name, famous in after days for the naval catastrophe of Actium.[15] The flanks of this ridge are steep, difficult and heavily timbered, but its summits are green with rich, open downs, and watered by perennial springs and fountains, an admirable post of observation, and commanding the descent into all the great plains of Northern Greece. After mature deliberation, Philip retreated still south-eastward to Tricca, now Trikkala, on the Penëus; and, though with a sore heart, devastated his own country, wasting the fields and burning the cities. Such of the population as were capable of following his marches, with their cattle and movables, he swept along with him; all else was given up as plunder to his soldiers, so that no region could suffer aught more cruel from an invader than did Thessaly at the hands of its legitimate defender. Pheræ shut her gates against him, and since he could not spare the time to besiege it, for the Ætolians were coming up with him rapidly, having laid waste all the country around the Sperchias and Macra and made themselves masters of many strong towns, he made the best of his way back to the frontiers of Macedonia.

In the meantime, the consul, after his victory, followed so hard on the track of his defeated enemy, that on the fourth or fifth day, after reorganizing his forces and taking up the pursuit in earnest, he reached Mount Cercetium some fifty miles in advance of Philip’s deserted station on Lingon, where he had given rendezvous to Amynander and his Athamanians, whom he needed as guides for the interior of Thessaly. Thereafter, he stormed Phaloria, received Piera and Metropolis into surrender, and laid siege to Atrax, a strong place not far from Larissa, on the Penëus, about twenty miles above the celebrated pass of Tempe, in which Philip lay strongly intrenched watching his movements, and not more than forty from the shores of the Ægean. This small place, however, garrisoned by Macedonians, offered so stubborn a resistance that Flamininus was unable to take it, until the season was waxing so far advanced, that, finding the devastated plains of Thessaly utterly inadequate to the support of his army, and having no harbors on the coast of Acamania or Ætolia in his rear, capable of receiving transports sufficient to supply him, he judged it best to raise the siege, and fall back to winter-quarters in Phocis, on the shores of the gulf of Corinth, leaving the whole of Thessaly ruined, and its principal towns either destroyed by Philip, or occupied by his own garrisons.

During these proceedings of the consul by land, his brother, Lucius Quinctius, who commanded the fleet destined to co-operate in the war, acting in conjunction with Attalus and the Rhodian squadron, had made himself master of Eretria, Calchis and Carystus, the strongholds and principal towns of Eubœa, winning enormous booty, and stationed himself at Cenchreæ, at the head of the gulf of Eghina, whence he was preparing to lay siege to Corinth, the most opulent and splendid of all the Greek cities, now held by a strong Macedonian garrison, backed by a powerful faction within the walls, for Philip.

Marching down into Phocis without opposition, for except the garrisons of a few scattered towns there was no force, on this side Macedonia, adverse to the Romans, Flamininus took Phanotea by assault, admitted Ambrysus and Hyampolis to surrender, scaled the walls of Anticyra, entered the gates of Daulis pell-mell with the garrison which had sallied, and laid regular siege to Elatia, which was too strong to be taken by a _coup-de-main_. The capture and sacking of this town was the last military operation of the campaign.

A political event occurred, however, at the close of it, which was even of greater influence in the end, than all the victories of the year, the ratification namely of a treaty of alliance between the powerful Achæan confederacy and the Roman republic, by the consequences of which, joined to the events of the past campaign, all northern Greece from the Isthmus of Corinth to the line formed by the Aöus and Penëus rivers, and the ridges of Lingon and Cercetium, was united under the eagles of the republic against Philip. Within that region, however, the two splendid cities—Corinth, the siege of which by Attalus and Lucius Quinctius had proved unsuccessful, and Argos—still held out for the king, and it was evident that another campaign would be needed for the termination of the war.

Well satisfied with his success, as he had indeed cause to be, for few campaigns on record have more fully and masterly accomplished their end, Flamininus retired into winter-quarters in the island of Corfu, while Attalus and the proprætor Lucius laid up their fleets in the Piræus, and passed the season of inactivity within the walls of Athens.

During the winter, after the election of the new consuls, Caius Cornelius Cethegus, and Marcus Minutius Rufus, but before it was known whether the conduct of the war would be continued to Flamininus, or one of the consuls appointed his successor, a sedition broke out in the town of Opus, and the inhabitants admitted the Romans. The Macedonian garrison, however, still held out, and while Flamininus was preparing to reduce it, a herald arrived from the king, demanding an interview in order to treat of peace. To this the consul, naturally desirous to conclude the war himself, acceded, and a singular interview followed.

A place was appointed on the shore of the gulf of Tituni near Nicæa, and thither came the Roman general, Amynander king of the Athamanes, Dionysodorus envoy of Attalus, Agesimbrotus admiral of the Rhodian fleet, Phæneas prince of the Ætolians, and with them two Achæans, Aristænus and Xenophon. These overland. But Philip came across from Demetrias, now Volo, with one ship of war and five single-banked galleys, and casting anchor as close as might be to the shore, addressed the confederates from the prow of his ship.

Flamininus proposed that he should land, in order that they might converse more at their ease; and, on the king’s refusing, inquired who it was of the company whom he feared.

“I fear none but the immortal gods,” was the haughty reply; “but I distrust many whom I see around thee, and most of all the Ætolians.”

“That,” replied the Roman, “is a peril common to all who parley with an enemy, that they can place confidence in no one.”

“Nay, Titus Quinctius,” answered Philip, “but Philip and Phæneas are not equal inducements to treason; and it is one thing for the Ætolians to find another general, and for the Macedonians to find another king such as I am.”

To this argument there was no reply but silence.[16] Nor, when they came to speak of conditions, could any terms be effected among so many jarring interests; but it was agreed at length that ambassadors should be sent by all the contracting parties to the Senate. A truce was proclaimed for two months, Philip withdrawing, as a security for his good faith, the garrisons from all the towns of Locris and Phocis; while Flamininus, in order to give color to the proceedings, sent with the ambassadors Amynander king of the Athamanes, Quinctius Fabius, his wife’s nephew, Quinctius Fulvius, and Appius Claudius, all members of his military family.

After awhile the delegates returned. The Senate had given no decision. The province and war of Macedonia, when the consuls were about to cast lots, had been continued to Flamininus as imperator, the tribunes Oppius and Fulvius having strongly represented the impolicy of removing general after general, as fast as each got accustomed to the country and was ready to follow up a first success by a final victory. The argument prevailed, and the option of peace or war was left to the imperator. The Senate was not aweary of the strife, and Flamininus was athirst for glory, not for peace.

No further parley was granted to Philip; and these terms only dictated to him, that he must withdraw his forces from the whole of Greece into his own proper dominions, north of the river Aöus and the Cambunian mountains.

This was of course tantamount to a resumption of hostilities; and both parties, it appears, prepared with equal alacrity and confidence for the final conflict.

The first operation of Philip, who, on finding the necessity of drawing all his resources to a common centre, began to despair of maintaining Corinth, Argos, and his Achæan cities, was to deliver them over for safekeeping to Nabis, tyrant of Lacedæmon, on condition that in case of his being successful against the Romans they should be restored to himself, otherwise they should belong to Nabis.

No sooner was that done, however, than the treacherous tyrant, desirous only to retain his new power, made peace with the Ætolians, furnished the Romans with Cretan auxiliaries to act against Philip, and even entered into illusory negotiations for the delivery of Corinth and Argos, than which nothing was further from his mind, until at least he should have plundered them of all they contained most valuable, and this, with his wife’s aid, he lost no time in doing.

These circumstances, however, were but as mere preludes to the great strife which was about to be determined in the broken and uneven country of north-eastern Thessaly, not far from the ground on which Flamininus had closed his last campaign, to the southward of the Penëus, whither both parties were already collecting their powers and drawing to a head.

Almost before the opening of the spring both leaders were on the alert, and active in preparation; partly by stratagem and the insinuation of a menace, if not its reality, partly by persuasion, Flamininus had the address to bring over the Bœotians, as he had already brought over the Achæans, to the Roman alliance; and thenceforth, every thing in his rear being secure and friendly, he had nothing to do but to look forward and bend up all his energies and powers to the destruction of the enemy before him.

To this end he was well provided; for when his command was continued to him, five thousand infantry, three hundred horse, and three thousand mariners of the Latin allies, were voted him as a reinforcement to his late victorious army.

With these admirable troops, then, he broke up from Elatia, his last conquest, about the vernal equinox, and marching north-westerly by the great road through Thronium and Scarphea, on the gulf of Tituni, arrived at Thermopylæ, where by a preconcerted plan he met the Ætolians in council, and three days afterward, encamping at Xynias in Thessaly, received their contingent of six hundred foot and four hundred horse, under Phæneas their chief-magistrate. Moving forward at once with the celerity and decision which mark all his operations, his force was augmented by five hundred Cretans of Gortyna, under Cydas, and three hundred Illyrians of Apollonia, all light infantry skilled with the bow and sling; and a few days afterward he was joined by Amynander with twelve hundred Athamanians, completing the muster of the allies.

Philip meanwhile was laboring under the sore disadvantage which is sure to afflict, and in the end overthrow, all nations which engage in long careers of conquest. Incessant wars, since the days of Alexander, had worn out the manhood of Macedonia. His own wars had consumed the flower of the adults, and those who remained were the sons of mere youths or of octogenarians, begotten while the men of Macedonia were fattening foreign fields with priceless gore.

As in the last campaigns of Napoleon, Philip’s conscriptions of this year included all the youth of sixteen years, while they recalled to the standard all the discharged veterans who had yet power to trail a pike.

So certainly in all ages will the like causes produce the like effects.

Of this material, however, he had constructed a complete phalanx of sixteen thousand men, the flower of his kingdom, and the last bulwark of his throne. To these were added two thousand native targeteers, two thousand Thracians and Illyrians, about fifteen hundred mercenaries of all countries, and two thousand horse. With this power he lay at Dium, now Malathria, on the gulf of Saloniki awaiting the Romans, by no means despondent, but rather confident of success. For although the last campaign had gone against him, as a whole, still the repulse of the Romans from the walls of Atrax by hard fighting, seemed to counterbalance the forcing of the gorges of the Aöus, while it was undeniable that the phalanx had fully maintained its ancient renown, and was, for all that had yet been proved, invincible in a pitched battle.

No less secure of victory, flushed with past triumphs, and athirst for future glory, Quinctius pressed on, resolved on the first occasion to deliver battle, his forces being, as nearly as possible, equal to those of the king, though he had a superiority of about four hundred horse.

On hearing of the Roman advance, Philip broke up from Dium and marched upon Larissa, intending to deliver battle south of the Penëus, with a view probably to the subsequent defense of the defiles of Tempo, in case of disaster; while Flamininus having failed in an attempt to surprise the Phiotic city of Thebes, marched direct upon Pheræ, previously ordering his soldiers to cut and carry with them the palisades, of which at any moment to fortify the casual encampment of the night.

Both leaders, thus aware of the enemy’s proximity, yet unaware of his exact position, encamped and fortified their camps, the Roman at about six, the Macedonian at four miles’ distance from the town of Pheræ.