VII.  Philip now sent an embassy to Rome; and Flamininus also sent thither to beg the Senate to allow him to retain his office of consul, in case they should continue the war, or if they decided otherwise, to permit him to have the honour of concluding a peace with Philip; for his ambitious spirit could not endure to be superseded by another commander.  His friends succeeded in obtaining the rejection of Philip’s demands, and his own continuance in office.  As soon as he received this intelligence, he started, full of hope, to attack Philip in Thessaly, with an army of more than twenty-six thousand men, of which the AEtolians supplied six thousand infantry and four hundred cavalry.  The army of Philip was of nearly equal numbers, and they began to march towards one another until they both drew near the city of Skotussa, where they determined to fight a decisive battle.  When the two armies found themselves so near each other they felt no fear, as one might have expected, but each was confident of victory.  The Romans were eager for the honour of overcoming the Macedonians, who had gained such glory under Alexander the Great; while the Macedonians, admitting the Romans to be very different soldiers to the Persians, swelled with pride at the thought that if they could conquer them, they would prove their king Philip to be even more invincible than Alexander himself.  Titus also encouraged his soldiers to quit them like men, pointing out that they were about to fight in Greece, a noble theatre in which to display deeds of daring, and against worthy antagonists; while Philip, either by chance, or not noticing what he was doing in his haste, mounted upon a large sepulchre outside his camp, and from it began to make the usual speech to his men to encourage them for the coming struggle, but at length observing the evil omen was much disheartened by it, broke off in confusion, and would not fight that day.

VIII.  On the following morning about dawn, as the night had been warm and damp, the whole plain was covered with fog, and a thick mist poured down from the neighbouring hills; which rendered it impossible to distinguish any object.  The parties which were sent out by each army to reconnoitre fell in with one another and fought near the place called Kynoskephalae, that is, Dogs’ Heads, which is so named because a number of small hills near together have something of this appearance.  In the combat, as usually happens in such rough ground, each side alternately had the advantage, and as each gave way they were reinforced from the respective camps.  Now the fog lifted, and the two commanders resolved upon a general engagement.  Philip’s right wing, on which the phalanx charged down-hill with all its weight, was victorious, the Romans being unable to stand before that hedge of spears, or break through that closely-locked array of shields.  But on the left the Macedonians were unable to maintain their line, because of the inequalities of the ground, and