were not a match for him; and in a
short time," he said, "he would be in possession of undoubted victory;
for that he would engage with him with a result no better than
their expectations." The allies listened to the king with great
satisfaction. He then gave up to the Achaeans Heraera and Triphylia.
Aliphera he restored to the Megalopolitans, they having brought
satisfactory proof that it belonged to their territories. Then having
received some ships from the Achaeans, three quadriremes and three
biremes, he sailed to Anticyra, whence with seven quinqueremes and
more than twenty barks, which he had sent to the bay of Corinth to
join the Carthaginian fleet, he proceeded to Erythrae, a town of
the Aetolians near Eupalium, where he made a descent. He was not
unobserved by the Aetolians; for all who were either in the fields
or in the neighbouring forts of Potidania and Apollonia, fled to the
woods and mountains. The cattle which they could not drive off in
their haste they seized and put on board. He sent Nicias, praetor of
the Achaeans, to Aegium with these and the other booty; and then going
to Corinth, ordered his army to march by land through Boeotia, while
he himself, sailing from Cenchreae along the coast of Attica, round
the promontory of Sunium, reached Chalcis, having passed almost
through the midst of the enemy's fleet. After commending in the
highest terms their fidelity and bravery, as neither fear nor hope
had influenced their minds, and after exhorting them to show the same
fidelity in maintaining the alliance, he sailed to Oreum; and having
placed such of the chief inhabitants as chose to fly, rather than
surrender to the Romans, in the command of the city and the direction
of affairs, he sailed over from Euboea to Demetrias, from which place
he at first set out to succour his allies. After this, having laid the
keels of one hundred ships of war at Cassandrea, and collected a large
number of ship carpenters for the completion of that business, and
as both the departure of Attalus and the seasonable assistance he had
brought to his allies had tranquillized affairs in Greece, he retired
into his own dominions, in order to make war upon the Dardanians.

9. Just at the close of the summer during which these operations were
carried on in Greece, when Quintus Fabius, son of Maximus, ambassador
from Marcus Livius the consul, brought a message to Rome to the
senate, to the effect, that the consul considered that L