11.
With this accession of strength, the praetor's spirits rose to the point of attacking Cassandrea.
[2]
[p. 125]This was founded by King Cassander precisely in the1 narrows which connect the peninsula of Pallene with the rest of Macedonia and are bounded on the one side by the Gulf of Macedonia, and on the other by that of Torone.
[3]
For the peninsula on which this city is situated rises high and projects into the sea quite as far as Mount Athos, which is noted for its size; it forms, opposite to the district of Magnesia, two unequal promontories, the larger named Posideum and the smaller Canastraeum.2
[4]
The siege was begun in separate divisions. The Roman commander constructed works, including chevaux-de-frise, extending from the Macedonian to the Toronaic gulf, in the quarter called Clitae, in order to cut off the highway. On the other side is a narrow strait3 ; there Eumenes was attacking.
[5]
The Romans found that their greatest task was filling the moat which Perseus had lately built as a defence. When the praetor inquired why there were no mounds to be seen, where the earth dug from the moat would be, he was shown certain arches.4 These, he heard, were built up not to the same strength as the old wall, but only to the thickness of a single brick. He therefore adopted the plan of opening a path into the city by piercing the brickwork.
[6]
He further expected to effect surprise in this move if he attacked the walls elsewhere with scaling ladders and, by raising confusion, drew off the defenders of the city to the protection of this second spot.
[7]
[p. 127]
In the garrison of Cassandrea there were, besides5 a respectable contingent of young citizens, eight hundred Agrianes6 and two thousand Illyrian Penestae7 sent from their home by Pleuratus —both peoples being good fighters. They were defending the walls as the Romans struggled with the utmost energy to mount them, when the piercing of the brickwork of the arches in the twinkling of an eye, laid open the city.
[8]
If men had been there to dash in armed, they would have taken the town at once.
[9]
When the accomplishment of this breakthrough was reported to the Roman soldiers, they at once eagerly raised a shout of joy, expecting to burst into the city at several points.
1 B.C. 169
2 Livy's description is confusing; Posideum, the westward promontory, is no more than a spur on the side of the main peninsula, of which Canastraeum forms the tip, extending to the south-east; the slimness of this tip induced Livy or his source to call it the smaller.
3 Perhaps a moat open at one end to the sea.
4 These arches were probably intended as sally-ports, cf. XXXVI. xxiii. 3; it is not so clear what they had to do with the absence of soil from the moat-whether the bricks had been made from the soil, or whether the latter had been taken within the walls through the arches for disposal, before the brick curtains were built.
5 B.C. 169
6 Cf. XLII. li. 5 and the note.
7 These Illyrians were mentioned in XLIII. xxiii. 7; Pleuratus, who sent them, is possibly the exile mentioned in XLIII. xix. 13 as serving with Perseus.
Livy. Books XLIII-XLV With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1951: published without copyright notice.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.