so that the Romans might not be able to pass them at any part.  When this message was received, a dissension arose among the Aetolians:  some insisted that they ought to obey the king’s orders, and go; others, that they ought to lie still at Heraclea, and wait the issue, whatever it might be; for if the king should be defeated by the consul, their forces would be fresh, and in readiness to carry succour to their own states in the neighbourhood; and if he were victorious, they could pursue the Romans, while scattered in their flight.  Each party not only adhered positively to its own plan, but even carried it into execution; two thousand lay still at Heraclea; and two thousand, divided into three parties, took possession of the summits called Callidromus, Rhoduntia, and Tichiuns.

17.  When the consul saw that the heights were possessed by the Aetolians, he sent against those posts two men of consular rank, who acted as lieutenant-generals, with two thousand chosen troops;—­Lucius Valerius Flaccus against Rhoduntia and Tichiuns, and Marcus Porcius Cato against Callidromus.  Then, before he led on his forces against the enemy, he called them to an assembly, and thus briefly addressed them:  “Soldiers, I see that the greater part of you who were present, of all ranks, are men who served in this same province, under the conduct and auspices of Titus Quinctius.  Now, in the Macedonian war, the pass at the river Aous was much more difficult than this before us.  For this is only a gate, a single passage, formed as it were by nature; every other in the whole tract, between the two seas, being impassable.  In the former case, there were stronger fortifications, and placed in more advantageous situations.  The enemy’s army was both more numerous, and composed of very superior men; for they were Macedonians, Thracians, and Illyrians,—­all nations of the fiercest spirit; your present opponents are Syrians, and Asiatic Greeks, the most unsteady of men, and born for slavery.  The commander, there, was a king of extraordinary warlike abilities, improved by practice from his early youth, in wars against his neighbours, the Thracians and Illyrians, and all the adjoining nations.  But this man is one who (to say nothing of his former life) after coming over from Asia into Europe to make war on the Roman people, has, during the whole length of the winter, accomplished no more memorable exploit, than the taking a wife, for passion’s sake, out of a private house, and a family obscure even among its neighbours; and now as a newly married man, surfeited as it were with nuptial feasts, comes out to fight.  His chief reliance and strength was in the Aetolians,—­a nation of all others the most faithless and ungrateful, as you have formerly experienced, and as Antiochus now experiences; for they neither joined him with numbers, nor could they be kept in the camp; and, besides, they are now in a state of dissension among themselves.  Although they requested permission to defend Hypata