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A Cretan Deserter Brings Intelligence to Perseus

The Romans offered a gallant resistance by aid of their strong targets or Ligurian
Struggle in the bed of the Enipeus. Livy, 44, 35.
shields. . . .

Perseus saw that Aemilius had not moved, and did not

The Romans force the heights by way of Gytheum.
reckon on what was taking place, when suddenly a Cretan, who had deserted from the Roman army on its march, came to him with the information that the Romans were getting on his rear. Though thrown into the utmost panic he did not strike his camp, but despatched ten thousand mercenaries and two thousand Macedonians under Milo, with orders to advance with speed and seize the heights. The Romans fell upon these as they were lying asleep.1 . . .

1 From Plutarch, who again contradicts this last statement, on the authority of Nasica, who said that there was a sharp engagement on the heights.

Histories. Polybius. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. translator. London, New York. Macmillan. 1889. Reprint Bloomington 1962.

Robert B. Strassler provided support for entering this text.

This text was converted to electronic form by professional data entry, Running heads in Walbank's reprint have been converted to chapter titles, and titles have been added, usually from the marginal notes, for chapters without them. Some pages have notes of the form "line X: A should read B," which I believe are Walbank's; they have "resp=fww". Summaries of missing sections are encoded as inline notes with "resp=ess." A very few unidentified quotations are marked in notes with "resp=aem" (the markup editor) Citations are marked using Perseus abbreviations. and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.

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  • Cross-references in notes from this page (1):
    • Livy, The History of Rome, Book 44, 35
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