History of Rome

​Then Carystus was attacked again, from where, before the troops were landed from the ships, the entire multitude deserted the city and fled into the citadel.

​From there they sent envoys to request protection from the Roman. To the townspeople, life and liberty were immediately granted; for the Macedonians, a price of three hundred nummi per head was determined, and that they should depart after surrendering their arms.

​Having been ransomed at this sum, they were transported unarmed into Boeotia. The naval forces, having captured two famous cities of Euboea within a few days, sailed around Sunium, the promontory of the Attic land, and headed for Cenchreae, the emporium of the Corinthians.

​Meanwhile, the consul had a siege at Atrax longer and more severe than everyone’s expectation, and the enemy resisted at that very point where he had least believed they would.

​For he had believed that all the labor would be in demolishing the wall; if he opened an approach into the city for the armed men, there would be from then on flight and slaughter of the enemy, such as is accustomed to happen in captured cities;

​but after a part of the wall was thrown down by battering rams and the armed men climbed over through the ruins themselves into the city, that was the beginning, as it were, of a new and fresh labor.

​For the Macedonians, who were in the garrison, both numerous and select, ​thinking it also an extraordinary glory if they should defend the city by arms and valor rather than by walls, having crowded together, with their battle line strengthened by several ranks inward, when they perceived that the Romans were climbing over the ruins, drove them out through a place obstructed and difficult for retreat.

​The consul took this hard, and, thinking that this disgrace pertained not merely to the delay of besieging one city but to the sum of the whole war, which usually depended on the turning points of small things, ​having cleared the place which was piled up with the debris of the half-ruined wall, advanced a tower of immense height carrying a great force of armed men on its multiple stories, ​and sent out cohorts in turn under their standards to break through by force, if they could, the wedge of the Macedonians—which they themselves call a phalanx.

​But in the narrowness of the place, since the gap in the demolished wall did not open widely, the kind of weapons and of fighting was more suited to the enemy.

​When the crowded Macedonians had thrust forward their spears of immense length, the Romans, having discharged their javelins in vain, as if against a testudo built of dense shields, when they drew their swords, ​could neither engage closer nor cut off the spears, and if they cut or broke any, the shaft of the spear, by its very sharp fragment among the points of the intact spears, filled up the gap like a rampart.

​In addition to this, the part of the wall that was still intact kept both sides safe, nor was it necessary to retreat or make an attack over a long distance, which is a thing that usually throws ranks into disorder.

​A fortuitous event also occurred to strengthen their courage; for when the tower was being driven along the ramp of insufficiently compacted soil, ​one wheel, sinking into a deeper rut, tilted the tower in such a way that it presented the appearance of falling to the enemy, and caused insane panic among the armed men standing on top.