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For with two thousand six hundred men, whom for honor's sake he called Romans, combined with seven hundred Africans, who landed with him when he first entered Lusitania, together with four thousand targeteers, and seven hundred horse of the Lusitanians themselves, he made war against four Roman generals, who commanded a hundred and twenty thousand foot, six thousand horse, two thousand archers and slingers, and had cities innumerable in their power; whereas at the first he had not above twenty cities in all.
He drew together some small ships in a remote creek, on the coast of the territory of Argos, and embarked on board them a body of light-armed soldiers, mostly targeteers, furnished with slings, javelins, and other light kinds of weapons. He then coasted along the shore, until he came to a promontory near Nabis's post.
The targeteers had posted themselves in such order, as far as the breadth of the valley allowed, that they easily gave a passage to their flying friends, through openings in their ranks; then starting up themselves, hale, fresh, and in regular order, they briskly attacked the enemy, whose ranks were broken, who were scattered in confusion, and were, besides, exhausted with fatigue and wounds.
The same circumstance which obstructed the enemy's flight, delivered them up, as it were, bound for slaughter. And now when almost all the targeteers had been slain, the light-armed and the Carthaginians, who had come up to their assistance from the other camp, having been thrown into confusion, were put to the sword.
Immediately, the targeteers of the Achaeans assailed and plundered the camp, and the rest set out in pursuit of the enemy. The road was such, that a body of men, even when undisturbed by any fear of a foe, could not, without difficulty, make its way through it.
The Toronaeans inside at work with the party that had entered had by this time broken down the postern and opened the gates leading to the market-place by cutting through the bar, and first brought some men round and let them in by the postern, in order to strike a panic into the surprised townsmen by suddenly attacking them from behind and on both sides at once; after which they raised the fire-signal as had been agreed, and took in by the market gates the rest of the targeteers.
And he is lord of all the Pamphylians, and the Cilician warriors, and the Lycians, and the Carians, that joy in battle, and lord of the isles of the Cyclades, since his are the best of ships that sail over the deep, yea, all the sea, and land and the sounding rivers are ruled by Ptolemy. Many are his horsemen, and many his targeteers that go clanging in harness of shining bronze.
And when they could now be withstood in no part, the Volscian commander gives a signal, that an opening should be made for the targeteers, the enemy's new cohort; until carried away by their impetuosity they should be cut off from their own party.
But as if on purpose to punish him in his pride, before they parted from him, messengers came with news of the complete slaughter of one of the Spartan divisions by Iphicrates, a greater disaster than had befallen them for many years; and that the more grievous, because it was a choice regiment of full-armed Lacedaemonians overthrown by a parcel of mere mercenary targeteers.
They who had gone out to get forage or corn, were chased by the light troops of the Lusitanians, and the targeteers of Hither Spain, who were well acquainted with the country, and could readily swim across the river, because it is the custom of all those people not to join their armies without bladders.
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