Philopoemen

Soon, however, Antigonus the king marched with the Achaeans to give aid against Cleomenes, and finding that his enemy was occupying the heights and passes about Sellasia, he drew up his forces near by with the purpose of attacking him and forcing a passage.[*](Cf. the Cleomenes, xxvii. and xxviii. The battle of Sellasia was fought in 221 B.C.) Philopoemen was stationed among the Macedonian cavalry with his own fellow-citizens,[*](According to Polybius ii. 66. 7, a thousand Achaeans and as many Megalopolitans were stationed with the Macedonian cavalry.) and had as a support the Illyrians, a large body of good fighters, who closed up the line of battle.

They had been ordered to lie quietly in reserve until, from the other wing, a signal should be made by the king with a scarlet coat stretched upon a spear. But the Illyrians, at the command of their officers, tried to force back the Lacedaemonians, while the Achaeans, as they had been ordered to do, kept quietly waiting at their post. Therefore Eucleidas, the brother of Cleomenes, who noticed the gap thus made in the enemies’ line, quickly sent round the most agile of his light-armed troops, with orders to attack the Illyrians in the rear and rout them, now that they had lost touch with the cavalry.