8.  Such, nearly, was the counsel given by Hannibal, which the hearers rather commended at the time, than actually executed.  For not one article of it was carried into effect, except the sending Polyxenidas to bring over the fleet and army from Asia.  Ambassadors were sent to Larissa, to the diet of the Thessalians.  The Aetolians and Amynander appointed a day for the assembling of their troops at Pherae, and the king with his forces came thither immediately.  While he waited there for Amynander and the Aetolians, he sent Philip, the Megalopolitan, with two thousand men, to collect the bones of the Macedonians round Cynoscephalae, where the final battle had been fought with king Philip; being advised to this, either in order to gain favour with the Macedonians and draw their displeasure on the king for having left his soldiers unburied, or having of himself, through the spirit of vain-glory incident to kings, conceived such a design,—­splendid indeed in appearance, but really insignificant.  There is a mount there formed of the bones which had been scattered about, and were then collected into one heap.  Although this step procured him no thanks from the Macedonians, yet it excited the heaviest displeasure of Philip; in consequence of which, he who had hitherto intended to regulate his counsels by the fortune of events, now sent instantly a message to the propraetor, Marcus Baebius, that “Antiochus had made an irruption into Thessaly; that, if he thought proper, he should move out of his winter quarters, and that he himself would advance to meet him, that they might consider together what was proper to be done.”

9.  While Antiochus lay encamped near Pherae, where the Aetolians and Amynander had joined him, ambassadors came to him from Larissa, desiring to know on account of what acts or words of theirs he had made war on the Thessalians; at the same time requesting him to withdraw his army; and that if there seemed to him any necessity for it he would discuss it with them by commissioners.  In the mean time, they sent five hundred soldiers, under the command of Hippolochus, to Pherae, as a reinforcement; but these, being debarred of access by the king’s troops, who blocked up all the roads, retired to Scotussa.  The king answered the Larissan ambassadors in mild terms, that “he came into their country, not with a design of making war, but of protecting and establishing the liberty of the Thessalians.”  He sent a person to make a similar declaration to the people of Pherae; who, without giving him any answer, sent to the king, in the capacity of ambassador, Pausanias, the first magistrate of their state.  He offered remonstrances of a similar kind with those which had been urged in behalf of the people of Chalcis, at the first conference, on the strait of the Euripus, as the cases were similar, and urged some with a greater degree of boldness; on which the king desired that they would consider seriously before they adopted a resolution, which, while they were overcautious