Titus Flamininus

Then he led them forward and entered the city along with the Thebans, who were not at all pleased thereat, but hesitated to oppose him, since a goodly number of soldiers were in his following. Titus, however, just as though the city were not in his power, came before their assembly and tried to persuade them to side with the Romans, and Attalus the king seconded him in his appeals and exhortations to the Thebans. But Attalus, as it would appear, in his eagerness to play the orator for Titus, went beyond his aged strength, and in the very midst of his speech, being seized with a vertigo or an apoplexy, suddenly fainted and fell, and shortly afterwards was conveyed by his fleet to Asia, where he died. The Boeotians allied themselves with the Romans.

Philip now sent an embassy to Rome, and Titus therefore dispatched thither his own representatives, who were to induce the senate to vote him an extension of command in case the war continued, or, if it did not, the power to make peace. For he was covetous of honour, and was greatly afraid that he would be robbed of his glory if another general were sent to carry on the war.

His friends managed matters so successfully for him that Philip failed to get what he wanted and the command in the war was continued to Titus. On receiving the decree of the senate, he was lifted up in his hopes and at once hastened into Thessaly to prosecute the war against Philip. He had over twenty-six thousand soldiers, of whom six thousand infantry and four hundred cavalry were furnished by the Aetolians.[*](Cf. Livy, xxxiii. 1 f.) Philip’s army also was of about the same size.[*](So Livy, xxxiii. 4.)

The two armies advanced against each other until they came into the neighbourhood of Scotussa, and there they proposed to decide the issue by battle.[*](On the same battlefield Pelopidas had been defeated and slain by Alexander of Pherae, in 364 B.C. Cf. the Pelopidas, xxxii. ) Their mutual proximity did not inspire them with fear, as might have been expected; on the contrary, they were filled with ardour and ambition. For the Romans hoped to conquer the Macedonians, whose reputation for prowess and strength Alexander had raised to a very high pitch among them; and the Macedonians, who considered the Romans superior to the Persians, hoped, in case they prevailed over them, to prove Philip a more brilliant commander than Alexander.

Accordingly, Titus exhorted his soldiers to show themselves brave men and full of spirit, assured that they were going to contend against the bravest of antagonists in that fairest of all theatres, Greece; and Philip, too, began a speech of exhortation to his soldiers, as is the custom before a battle. But, either by chance or from ignorance due to an inopportune haste, he had ascended for this purpose a lofty mound outside his camp, beneath which many men lay buried in a common grave, and a dreadful dejection fell upon his listeners in view of the omen, so that he was deeply troubled and refrained from battle that day.