[Footnote 1:  1937l. 10s.]

BOOK XXXIII.

Titus Quinctius Flamininus, proconsul, gains a decisive victory over Philip at Cynoscephalae.  Caius Sempronius Tuditanus, praetor, cut off by the Celtiberians.  Death of Attalus, at Pergamus.  Peace granted to Philip, and liberty to Greece.  Lucius Furius Purpureo and Marcus Claudius Marcellus, consuls, subdue the Boian and Insubrian Gauls.  Triumph of Marcellus.  Hannibal, alarmed at an embassy from Rome concerning him, flies to Antiochus, king of Syria, who was preparing to make war on the Romans.

1.  Such were the occurrences of the winter.  In the beginning of spring, Quinctius, having summoned Attalus to Elatia, and being anxious to bring under his authority the nation of the Boeotians, who had until then been wavering in their dispositions, marched through Phocis, and pitched his camp at the distance of five miles from Thebes, the capital of Boeotia.  Next day, attended by one company of soldiers, and by Attalus, together with the ambassadors, who had come to him in great numbers from all quarters, he proceeded towards the city, having ordered the spearmen of two legions, being two thousand men, to follow him at the distance of a mile.  About midway, Antiphilus, praetor of the Boeotians, met him:  the rest of the people stood on the walls, watching the arrival of the king and the Roman general.  Few arms and few soldiers appeared around them—­the hollow roads, and the valleys concealing from view the spearmen, who followed at a distance.  When Quinctius drew near the city, he slackened his pace, as if with intention to salute the multitude, who came out to meet him; but the real motive of his delaying was, that the spearmen might come up.  The townsmen pushed forward, in a crowd, before the lictors, not perceiving the band of soldiers who were following them close, until they arrived at the general’s quarters.  Then, supposing the city betrayed and taken, through the treachery of Antiphilus, their praetor, they were all struck with astonishment and dismay.  It was now evident that no room was left to the Boeotians for a free discussion of measures in the assembly, which was summoned for the following day.  However, they concealed their grief, which it would have been both vain and unsafe to have discovered.

2.  When the assembly met, Attalus first rose to speak, and he began his discourse with a recital of the kindnesses conferred by his ancestors and himself on the Greeks in general, and on the Boeotians in particular.  But, being now too old and infirm to bear the exertion of speaking in public, he lost his voice and fell; and for some time, while they were carrying him to his apartments, (for he was deprived of the use of one half of his limbs,) the proceedings of the assembly were for a short time suspended.  Then Aristaenus spoke on the part of the Achaeans, and was listened to with the greater attention, because