as they had just been made free and independent by the Romans, who had delivered them from the tyranny of Philip and the Macedonians.  Antiochus crossed over into Greece, which at once became unsettled, and a prey to hopes and fears suggested by her political leaders.  Manius at once sent ambassadors to the various cities.  Titus Flamininus, as has been related in his Life, restrained the greater part of them from revolutionary proceedings, and kept them to their allegiance, but Cato won over Corinth, Patrae, and AEgium.  Most of his time was spent in Athens; and there is said to be still extant a speech which he made to the people there in Greek, in which he speaks with admiration of the virtue of the Athenians of old, and dwells upon his own pleasure in viewing so great and beautiful a city.  This, however, is a fabrication, for we know that he conversed with the Athenians through an interpreter, though he was able to speak their language, because he wished to keep to the ways of his fathers, and administer a rebuke to those who extravagantly admired the Greeks.  Thus he laughed at Postumius Albinus, who wrote a history in Greek and begged that his mistakes might be pardoned, saying that it would be right to pardon them if he wrote his history by a decree of the council of Amphiktyons.  He himself says that the Athenians were surprised it the shortness and pregnant nature of his talk; for what he said in a few words, his interpreter translated by a great many:  and in general he concludes that the Greeks talk from the lips, and the Romans from the heart.

XIII.  When Antiochus occupied the pass of Thermopylae with his army, and, after adding to the natural strength of the place by artificial defences, established himself there as if in an impregnable position, the Romans decided that to attack him in front was altogether impossible, but Cato, remembering how the Persians under Xerxes had turned the Greek forces by a circuitous march over the mountains, took a part of the force and set off by night.  When they had gone for some distance over the mountains, the prisoner who served as their guide lost his way, and wandered about in that precipitous and pathless wilderness so as to cause great discouragement to the soldiers.  Seeing this, Cato ordered every one to halt and await his orders, and himself, with one companion, one Lucius Manlius, an experienced mountaineer, laboriously and daringly plunged along through intense darkness, for there was no moon, while the trees and rocks added to their difficulties by preventing their seeing distinctly whither they were going, until they came to a path, which, as they thought, led directly down upon the camp of the enemy.  Hereupon they set up marks to guide them upon some conspicuous crags of Mount Kallidromus, and returning to the army, led it to these marks, and started along the paths which they had descried.  But before they had proceeded far the path ended in a precipice, at which they were