Aemilius Paulus

As the attack began, Aemilius came up and found that the Macedonian battalions had already planted the tips of their long spears in the shields of the Romans, who were thus prevented from reaching them with their swords.

And when he saw that the rest of the Macedonian troops also were drawing their targets from their shoulders round in front of them, and with long spears sat at one level were withstanding his shield-bearing troops, and saw too the strength of their interlocked shields and the fierceness of their onset, amazement and fear took possession of him, and he felt that he had never seen a sight more fearful; often in after times he used to speak of his emotions at that time and of what he saw.

But then, showing to his soldiers a glad and cheerful countenance, he rode past them without helmet or breastplate.

The king of the Macedonians, on the other hand, according to Polybius, as soon as the battle began, played the coward and rode back to the city, under pretence of sacrificing to Heracles, a god who does not accept cowardly sacrifices from cowards, nor accomplish their unnatural prayers.

For it is not in the nature of things that he who makes no shot should hit the mark exactly, or that he who does not hold his ground should win the day, or, in a word, that he who does nothing should be successful in what he does, or that a wicked man should be prosperous.

But the god listened to the prayers of Aemilius, who kept wielding his spear as he prayed for might and victory, and fought as he invited the god to fight with him.

However, a certain Poseidonius, who says he lived in those times and took part in those actions, and who has written a history of Perseus in several books, says it was not out of cowardice, nor with the excuse of the sacrifice, that the king went away, but because on the day before the battle a horse had kicked him on the leg.

He says further that in the battle, although he was in a wretched plight, and although his friends tried to deter him, the king ordered a pack-horse to be brought to him, mounted it, and joined his troops in the phalanx without a breastplate;

and that among the missiles of every sort which were flying on all sides, a javelin made entirely of iron smote him, not touching him with its point, indeed, but coursing along his left side with an oblique stroke, and the force of its passage was such that it tore his tunic and made a dark red bruise upon his flesh, the mark of which remained for a long time.

This, then, is what Poseidonius says in defence of Perseus.