hese circumstances soon overcame the enemy's left; the
elephants alone, stationed upon this wing, annihilated the broken
Macedonian ranks. While a fearful slaughter was taking place at this
point, a resolute Roman officer collected twenty companies, and with
these threw himself on the victorious Macedonian wing, which had
advanced so far in pursuit of the Roman left that the Roman right
came to be in its rear. Against an attack from behind the phalanx
was defenceless, and this movement ended the battle. From the
complete breaking up of the two phalanxes we may well believe that
the Macedonian loss amounted to 13,000, partly prisoners, partly
fallen--but chiefly the latter, because the Roman soldiers were not
acquainted with the Macedonian sign of surrender, the raising of the
-sarissae-. The loss of the victors was slight. Philip escaped to
Larissa, and, after burning all his papers that nobody might be
compromised, evacuated Thessaly and returned home.

Simultaneously with this great defeat, the Macedonians suffered other
discomfitures at all the points which they still occupied; in Caria
the Rhodian mercenaries defeated the Macedonian corps stationed there
and compelled it to shut itself up in Stratonicea; the Corinthian
garrison was defeated by Nicostratus and his Achaeans with severe
loss, and Leucas in Acarnania was taken by assault after a heroic
resistance. Philip was completely vanquished; his last allies, the
Acarnanians, yielded on the news of the battle of Cynoscephalae.

Preliminaries of Peace

It was completely in the power of the Romans to dictate peace; they
used their power without abusing it. The empire of Alexander might be
annihilated; at a conference of the allies this desire was expressly
put forward by the Aetolians. But what else would this mean, than to
demolish the rampart protecting Hellenic culture from the Thracians
and Celts? Already during the war just ended the flourishing
Lysimachia on the Thracian Chersonese had been totally destroyed by
the Thracians--a serious warning for the future. Flamininus, who had
clearly perceived the bitter animosities subsisting among the Greek
states, could never consent that the great Roman power should be the
executioner for the grudges of the Aetolian confederacy, even if his
Hellenic sympathies had not been as much won by the polished and
chivalrous king as his Roman national feeling was offended by the
boastings of the Aetolians, the "victo