ns broke down, when he was asked to
give up ancient possessions of Macedonia and particularly Thessaly.
For forty days the two armies lay in the narrow pass of the Aous;
Philip would not retire, and Flamininus could not make up his mind
whether he should order an assault, or leave the king alone and
reattempt the expedition of the previous year. At length the Roman
general was helped out of his perplexity by the treachery of some
men of rank among the Epirots--who were otherwise well disposed to
Macedonia--and especially of Charops. They conducted a Roman corps of
4000 infantry and 300 cavalry by mountain paths to the heights above
the Macedonian camp; and, when the consul attacked the enemy's army
in front, the advance of that Roman division, unexpectedly descending
from the mountains commanding the position, decided the battle.
Philip lost his camp and entrenchments and nearly 2000 men, and
hastily retreated to the pass of Tempe, the gate of Macedonia proper.
He gave up everything which he had held except the fortresses; the
Thessalian towns, which he could not defend, he himself destroyed;
Pherae alone closed its gates against him and thereby escaped
destruction. The Epirots, induced partly by these successes of the
Roman arms, partly by the judicious moderation of Flamininus, were the
first to secede from the Macedonian alliance. On the first accounts
of the Roman victory the Athamanes and Aetolians immediately invaded
Thessaly, and the Romans soon followed; the open country was easily
overrun, but the strong towns, which were friendly to Macedonia and
received support from Philip, fell only after a brave resistance or
withstood even the superior foe--especially Atrax on the left bank
of the Peneius, where the phalanx stood in the breach as a substitute
for the wall. Except these Thessalian fortresses and the territory
of the faithful Acarnanians, all northern Greece was thus in the hands
of the coalition.

The Achaeans Enter into Alliance with Rome

The south, on the other hand, was still in the main retained under
the power of Macedonia by the fortresses of Chalcis and Corinth, which
maintained communication with each other through the territory of the
Boeotians who were friendly to the Macedonians, and by the Achaean
neutrality; and as it was too late to advance into Macedonia this
year, Flamininus resolved to direct his land army and fleet in the
first place against Corinth and the Achaeans. The fleet, w