as he did not halt in his precipitate flight until he came to Elatia.  There having collected the survivors of the battle and the retreat, he, with a very small body of half-armed men, betook himself to Chalcis.  The Roman cavalry did not overtake the king himself at Elatia; but they cut off a great part of his soldiers, who either halted through weariness, or wandered out of the way through mistake, as they fled without guides through unknown roads; so that, out of the whole army, not one escaped except five hundred, who kept close about the king; and even of the ten thousand men, whom, on the authority of Polybius, we have mentioned as brought over by the king from Asia, a very trifling number got off.  But what shall we say if we are to believe Valerius Antias, who records that there were in the king’s army sixty thousand men, of whom forty thousand fell, and above five thousand were taken, with two hundred and thirty military standards?  Of the Romans were slain in the action itself a hundred and fifty; and of the party that defended themselves against the assault of the Aetolians, not more than fifty.

20.  As the consul was leading his army through Phocis and Boeotia, the revolted states, conscious of their defection, and dreading lest they should be exposed as enemies to the ravages of the soldiers, presented themselves at the gates of their cities, with the badges of suppliants; but the army proceeded, during the whole time, just as if they were in the country of friends, without offering violence of any sort, until they reached the territory of Coronea.  Here a statue of king Antiochus, standing in the temple of Minerva Itonia, kindled their indignation, and permission was given to the soldiers to plunder the lands adjacent to the edifice.  But the reflection quickly occurred, that, as the statue had been erected by a general vote of all the Boeotian states, it was unreasonable to resent it on the single district of Coronea.  The soldiers were therefore immediately recalled, and the depredations stopped.  The Boeotians were only reprimanded for their ungrateful behaviour to the Romans in return for such great obligations, so recently conferred.  At the very time of the battle, ten ships belonging to the king, with their commander Isidorus, lay at anchor near Thronium, in the Malian bay.  To them Alexander of Acarnania, being grievously wounded, made his escape, and gave an account of the unfortunate issue of the battle; on which the fleet, alarmed at the immediate danger, sailed away in haste to Cenaeus in Euboea.  There Alexander died, and was buried.  Three other ships, which came from Asia to the same port, on hearing the disaster which had befallen the army, returned to Ephesus.  Isidorus sailed over from Cenaeus to Demetrias, supposing that the king might perhaps have directed his flight thither.  About this time Aulus Atilius, commander of the Roman fleet, intercepted a large convoy of provisions going to the king, just as they had passed the strait at the island of Andros:  some of the ships he sunk, and took many others.  Those who were in the rear turned their course to Asia.  Atilius, with the captured vessels in his train, sailed back to Piraeus, from whence he had set out, and distributed a vast quantity of corn among the Athenians and the other allies in that quarter.