§31.34.1Philippus aliquid et ad caritatem suorum et ut promptius pro eo periculum adirent ratus profecturum se, §31.34.2si equitum, qui ceciderant in expeditione, sepeliendorum curam habuisset, adferri eos in castra iussit, ut conspiceretur ab omnibus funeris honos.
Philip, thinking that it would be of some service both for the affection of his men and to make them meet danger more promptly on his behalf, if he took care to bury the cavalrymen who had fallen in the expedition, ordered them to be brought into the camp, so that the honor of a funeral might be seen by everyone.
§31.34.3nihil tam incertum nec tam inaestimabile est quam animi multitudinis.
Nothing is so uncertain or so unpredictable as the minds of the multitude.
quod promptiores ad subeundam omnem dimicationem videbatur facturum, §31.34.4id metum pigritiamque incussit; nam qui hastis sagittisque et rara lanceis facta vulnera vidissent, cum Graecis Illyriisque pugnare adsueti, postquam gladio Hispaniensi detruncata corpora, bracchiis cum humero abscisis, aut tota cervice desecta divisa a corpore capita patentiaque viscera et foeditatem aliam vulnerum viderunt, §31.34.5adversus quae tela quosque viros pugnandum foret, pavidi vulgo cernebant.
What was expected to make them readier to undergo any combat inflicted fear and hesitation instead; for those who had seen only wounds made by spears, arrows, and rarely by javelins, being accustomed to fight with Greeks and Illyrians, when they saw bodies mangled by the Spanish sword, arms cut off along with the shoulder, or heads severed from the body with the entire neck cut through, and exposed entrails, and other hideousness of wounds, they commonly perceived in terror against what weapons and what men they would have to fight.
ipsum quoque regem terror cepit nondum iusto proelio cum Romanis congressum.
Terror seized the king himself as well, who had not yet clashed with the Romans in a regular battle.
§31.34.6itaque revocato filio praesidioque, quod in faucibus Pelagoniae erat, ut iis copiis suas augeret, Pleurato Dardanisque iter in Macedoniam patefecit.
Therefore, having recalled his son and the garrison which was in the passes of Pelagonia, in order to augment his own forces with those troops, he opened the way into Macedonia to Pleuratus and the Dardanians.
§31.34.7ipse cum viginti milibus peditum, duobus milibus equitum ducibus transfugis ad hostem profectus paulo plus mille passus a castris Romanis tumulum propinquum Athaco fossa ac vallo communivit; §31.34.8ac subiecta cernens Romana castra, admiratus esse dicitur et universam speciem castrorum et discripta suis quaeque partibus cum tendentium ordine tum itinerum intervallis et negasse barbarorum ea castra ulli videri posse.
He himself, setting out toward the enemy with twenty thousand infantry and two thousand cavalry, using deserters as guides, fortified a nearby hill at Athacus, a little more than a mile from the Roman camp, with a ditch and a rampart; and seeing the Roman camp lying below, he is said to have admired both the general appearance of the camp and the arrangement of each part in its own quarters, both by the order of those pitching tents and the intervals between the streets, and to have declared that those quarters could not seem to anyone to be those of barbarians.
§31.34.9biduum consul et rex, alter alterius conatus expectantes, continuere suos intra vallum; tertio die Romanus omnis in aciem copias eduxit.
For two days, the consul and the king, each waiting for the other's attempts, kept their men within the rampart; on the third day, the Roman led out all his forces into battle array.