that the natives of their own
accord helped set fire to the rest, and most of them slew one another.
Next Brutus came to Patara and invited the people to conclude friendship;
but they would not obey, for the slaves and the poorer portion of the
free population, who had received in advance for their services the
former freedom, the latter remission of debts, prevented any compact
being made. So at first he sent them the captive Xanthians, to whom many
of them were related by marriage, in the hope that through these he might
bring them to terms. When they yielded none the more, in spite of his
giving to each man gratuitously his own kin, he erected a kind of
salesroom in a safe spot under the very wall, where he led each one of
the prominent men past and auctioned him off, to see if by this means at
least he could gain the Patareans. They were as little inclined as ever
to make concessions, whereupon he sold a few and let the rest go. When
those within saw this, they no longer were stubborn, but forthwith
attached themselves to his cause, regarding him as an upright man; and
they were punished only in a pecuniary way. The people of Myra took the
same action when after capturing their general at the harbor he then
released him. Similarly in a short time he secured control of the rest.

[-35-] When both had effected this they came again into Asia; and all the
suspicious facts they had heard from slanderous talk which will arise
under such conditions they brought up in common, one case at a time,
and, after they were settled, hastened into Macedonia. They had been
anticipated by Gaius Norbanus and Decidius Saxa, who had crossed over
into Ionium before Staius reached there, had occupied the whole country
as far as Pangaeum, and had encamped near Philippi. This city is located
close beside Mount Pangaeum and close beside Symbolon. Symbolon is a
name they give the place for the reason that the mountain mentioned
corresponds (_symballei_) to another that rises in the interior; and it
is between Neapolis and Philippi. The former was near the sea, across
from Thasos, while the latter has been built within the mountains on the
plain. Saxa and Norbanus happened to have occupied the shortest path
across, therefore Brutus and Cassius did not even try to get through that
way, but went around by a longer path,--the so-called Crenides.[33]
Here, too, they encountered a guard, but overpowered it, got inside the
mountains, approached the c