and after supper the army had betaken itself to sleep and rest, suddenly the moon, which was full and high in the heavens, became obscured, changed colour, and became totally eclipsed.  The Romans, after their custom, called for her to shine again by clattering with brass vessels, and uplifting blazing faggots and torches.  The Macedonians did nothing of the sort, but dismay spread over their camp, and they muttered under their breath that this portended the eclipse of their king.  Now Aemilius was not unacquainted with the phenomena of eclipses, which result from the moon being at fixed periods brought into the shadow of the earth and darkened, until it passes the obscured tract and is again enlightened by the sun, yet being very devout and learned in divination, he offered to her a sacrifice of eleven calves.  At daybreak he sacrificed twenty oxen to Herakles without obtaining a favourable response; but with the one-and-twentieth favourable signs appeared and portents of victory for them, provided they did not attack.  He then vowed a hecatomb and sacred games in honour of the god, and ordered his officers to arrange the men in line of battle.  But he waited till the sun declined and drew towards the west, that his troops might not fight with the morning sun in their eyes.  He passed away the day sitting in his tent, which was pitched looking towards the flat country and the camp of the enemy.

XVIII.  Some writers tell us, that about evening, by a device of Aemilius, the battle was begun by the enemy, the Romans having driven a horse without a bridle out of their camp and then tried to catch it, from which pursuit the battle began; but others say that Roman soldiers who were carrying fodder for the cattle were set upon by the Thracians under Alexander, and that to repel them a vigorous sortie was made with seven hundred Ligurians; that many on both sides came up to help their comrades, and so the battle began.  Aemilius, like a pilot, seeing by the motion and disturbance of his camp that a storm was at hand, came out of his tent, and going along the lines of the infantry spoke encouraging words to them, while Nasica, riding up to the skirmishers, saw the whole army of the enemy just on the point of attacking.  First marched the Thracians, whose aspect they saw was most terrible, as they were tall men, dressed in dark tunics, with large oblong shields and greaves of glittering white, brandishing aloft long heavy swords over their right shoulders.  Next to the Thracians were the mercenaries, variously armed, and mixed with Paeonians.  After these came a third corps, of Macedonians, picked men of proved courage, and in the flower of their age, glittering with gilded arms and new purple dresses.  Behind them again came the phalanxes from the camp with their brazen shields, filling all the plain with the glittering of their armour, and making the hills ring with their shouts.  So swiftly and boldly did they advance that those who were first slain fell two furlongs only from the Roman camp.