XIX.  When the battle began, Aemilius came up, and found the front ranks of the Macedonians had struck their spear-heads into the Roman shields, so that they could not reach them with their swords.  When also the other Macedonians took their shields off their shoulders and placed them in front, and then at the word of command all brought down their pikes, he, viewing the great strength of that serried mass of shields, and the menacing look of the spears that bristled before them, was amazed and terrified, having never seen a more imposing spectacle—­and often afterwards he used to speak of that sight, and of his own feelings at it.  At the time, however, he put on a cheerful and hopeful look, and rode along the ranks showing himself to the men without helmet or cuirass.  But the Macedonian king, according to Polybius, having joined battle, was seized with a fit of cowardice, and rode off to the city on the pretext that he was going to sacrifice to Herakles, a god unlikely to receive the base offerings of cowards or to fulfil their unreasonable prayers; for it is not reasonable that he who does not shoot should hit the mark, nor that he who does not stand fast at his post should win the day, or that the helpless man should succeed or the coward prosper.  But the god heard the prayers of Aemilius, for he prayed for victory whilst fighting, sword in hand, and invited the god into the battle to aid him.  Not but what one Poseidonius, who says that he took part in these transactions, and wrote a history of Perseus in many volumes, says that it was not from cowardice, or on the pretext of offering sacrifice that he left the field, but that on the day before the battle he was kicked on the leg by a horse; that in the battle, though in great pain, and entreated by his friends to desist, he ordered a horse to be brought, and without armour rode up to the phalanx.  Here as many missiles were flying about from both sides, an iron javelin struck him, not fairly with its point, but it ran obliquely down his left side, tearing his tunic, and causing a dark bruise on his flesh, the scar of which was long visible.  This is what Poseidonius urges in defence of Perseus.

XX.  Now as the Romans when they met the phalanx could make no impression upon it, Salovius, the leader of the Pelignians, seized the standard of his regiment and threw it among the enemy.  The Pelignians, as the loss of a standard is thought to be a crime and an impiety by all Italians, rushed to the place, and a fierce conflict began there with terrible slaughter.  The one party tried to dash aside the long spears with their swords, and to push them with their shields, and to seize them away with their very hands, while the Macedonians, wielding their spears with both hands, drove them through their opponents, armour and all:  for no shield or corslet could resist their thrust.  They then cast over their own heads the bodies of these Pelignians and Marrucini, who pressed madly like wild creatures up to the line of spears and certain