As soon as the new general arrived in the camp at Heracleum, he gave orders for the ill-guarded pass at Pythium to be surprised by Publius Nasica, while skirmishes between the outposts in the channel of the river Elpius occupied the attention of the Macedonians; the enemy was thus turned, and was obliged to retreat to Pydna.  There on the Roman 4th of September, 586, or on the 22nd of June of the Julian calendar —­an eclipse of the moon, which a scientific Roman officer announced beforehand to the army that it might not be regarded as a bad omen, affords in this case the means of determining the date—­the outposts accidentally fell into conflict as they were watering their horses after midday; and both sides determined at once to give the battle, which it was originally intended to postpone till the following day.  Passing through the ranks in person, without helmet or shield, the grey-headed Roman general arranged his men.  Scarce were they in position, when the formidable phalanx assailed them; the general himself, who had witnessed many a hard fight, afterwards acknowledged that he had trembled.  The Roman vanguard dispersed; a Paelignian cohort was overthrown and almost annihilated; the legions themselves hurriedly retreated till they reached a hill close upon the Roman camp.  Here the fortune of the day changed.  The uneven ground and the hurried pursuit had disordered the ranks of the phalanx; the Romans in single cohorts entered at every gap, and attacked it on the flanks and in rear; the Macedonian cavalry which alone could have rendered aid looked calmly on, and soon fled in a body, the king among the foremost; and thus the fate of Macedonia was decided in less than an hour.  The 3000 select phalangites allowed themselves to be cut down to the last man; it was as if the phalanx, which fought its last great battle at Pydna, had itself wished to perish there.  The overthrow was fearful; 20,000 Macedonians lay on the field of battle, 11,000 were prisoners.  The war was at an end, on the fifteenth day after Paullus had assumed the command; all Macedonia submitted in two days.  The king fled with his gold—­he still had more than 6000 talents (1,460,000 pounds) in his chest—­to Samothrace, accompanied by a few faithful attendants.  But he himself put to death one of these, Evander of Crete, who was to be called to account as instigator of the attempted assassination of Eumenes; and then the king’s pages and his last comrades also deserted him.  For a moment he hoped that the right of asylum would protect him; but he himself perceived that he was clinging to a straw.  An attempt to take flight to Cotys failed.  So he wrote to the consul; but the letter was not received, because he had designated himself in it as king.  He recognized his fate, and surrendered to the Romans at discretion with his children and his treasures, pusillanimous and weeping so as to disgust even his conquerors.  With a grave satisfaction, and with thoughts turning rather on the mutability of fortune than on his own present success, the consul received the most illustrious captive whom Roman general had ever brought home.  Perseus died a few years after, as a state prisoner, at Alba on the Fucine lake;(5) his son in after years earned a living in the same Italian country town as a clerk.