nemy, having exhausted all the
adjacent country, must be reduced to the extremity of want; and that
the consul, after having routed the Macedonian cavalry and light
infantry, and nearly taken the king himself, ought to have led on his
troops directly to the enemy's camp, where, dismayed as they were,
they would have made no stand, and that he might have finished the war
in a moment's time. This, like most other matters, was easier to be
talked about than to be done. For, if the king had brought the whole
of his infantry into the engagement, then, indeed, during the tumult,
and while, vanquished and struck with dismay, they fled from the field
into their intrenchments, (and even continued their flight from thence
on seeing the victorious enemy mounting the ramparts,) the king might
have been deprived of his camp. But as some forces of infantry had
remained in the camp, fresh and free from fatigue, with outposts
before the gates, and guard properly disposed, what would he have done
but imitated the rashness of which the king had just now been guilty,
by pursuing the routed horse? On the other side, the king's first
plan of an attack on the foragers, while dispersed through the fields,
would not have been a subject of censure, could he have satisfied
himself with a moderate degree of success: and it is the less
surprising that he should have made a trial of fortune, as there was
a report, that Pleuratus and the Dardanians had set out from home with
very numerous forces, and had already passed into Macedonia; so that
if he should be surrounded on all sides by these forces, there was
reason to think that the Roman might put an end to the war without
stirring from his seat. Philip, however, considered, that after his
cavalry had been defeated in two engagements, he could with much less
safety continue in the same post; accordingly, wishing to remove from
thence, and, at the same time, to keep the enemy in ignorance of his
design, he sent a herald to the consul a little before sun-set, to
demand a truce for the purpose of burying the horsemen; and thus
imposing on him, he began his march in silence, about the second
watch, leaving a number of fires in all parts of his camp.

39. The consul was now taking refreshment, when he was told that the
herald had arrived, and on what business; he gave him no other answer,
than that he should be admitted to an audience early the next morning:
by which means Philip gained what he wanted--