History of Rome

​Flaccus had not been favored with the same fortune at Tichiuns and Rhoduntia, having attempted in vain to march up to those fortresses.

​The Macedonians and whoever else were in the royal camp at first, while nothing but a crowd and an army-column appeared in the distance, believed, on seeing the battle from afar, that the Aetolians were coming to their aid;

​but as soon as the standards and arms, recognized from close quarters, disclosed the error, so great a panic suddenly seized them all that they threw down their arms and fled.

​And their pursuit was impeded both by the fortifications and by the narrowness of the valley through which they had to be pursued, and most of all by the fact that the elephants were at the rear of the column, which the infantry could pass only with difficulty, and the cavalry in no way at all, since the horses were terrified and created a greater confusion among themselves than in the battle;

​the plundering of the camp also took up a considerable amount of time.

​Nevertheless, on that day they overtook the enemy at Scarphea. After many had been slain and captured on the road itself, and not only horses and men, but also the elephants which they had been unable to capture were killed, they returned to the camp;

​which, having been attacked on that day during the very time of the battle by the Aetolians, who held Heraclea with a garrison, had been without any effect of an undertaking that was not a little daring.

​The consul, having sent ahead the cavalry at the third watch of the following night to pursue the enemy, moved the standards of the legions at dawn.

​The king had gained a considerable distance ahead, as one who did not halt his headlong flight before reaching Elatia; where, as soon as he had collected the remnants of the battle and flight, he retreated to Chalcis with a very small band of half-armed soldiers.

​The Roman cavalry indeed did not overtake the king himself at Elatia; but they fell upon a great part of the column, who were scattered, either halting from fatigue or from wandering, as men fleeing through unknown paths without leaders;

​nor did anyone from the whole army escape, except for five hundred who were around the king; even from the ten thousand soldiers, ​whom we wrote, on the authority of Polybius, that the king had transported with him into Greece, only a tiny number survived. What if we should believe Valerius Antias, who writes that there were sixty thousand soldiers in the royal army, that forty thousand of them fell, and over five thousand were captured along with two hundred and thirty military standards? Of the Romans, one hundred and fifty were killed in the battle itself, and not more than fifty while defending themselves from the attack of the Aetolians.