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Those who had no arms tore down from the temple of the Olympian Jupiter the spoils of the Gauls and Illyrians, which had been presented to Hiero by the Roman people, and hung up there by him; at the same time offering up prayers to Jupiter, that he would willingly, and without feeling offence, lend those consecrated weapons to those who were arming themselves in defence of their country, of the temples of their gods, and their liberty.
These now suddenly joined the league against Macedonia, and immediately in conjunction with the Athamanes penetrated into Thessaly, while simultaneously the Dardani and Illyrians overran the northern provinces, and the Roman fleet under Lucius Apustius, departing from Corcyra, appeared in the eastern waters, where the ships of Attalus, the Rhodians, and the Istrians joined it.
After this, as a matter of course, Rome replied to their request for peace by the landing of the consul Marcus Fulvius Nobilior. He arrived among the legions in the spring of 565, and after fifteen days' siege gained possession of Ambracia by a capitulation honourable for the garrison; while simultaneously the Macedonians, Illyrians, Epirots, Acarnanians, and Achaeans fell upon the Aetolians.
In the spring of 335 B.C., he made a campaign against the barbarous peoples north of Macedonia, the Thracians, the Getae, and the Illyrians. A false report of his death led to an uprising of the Greeks. Quickly returning, he took vengeance on the Thebans by razing their city to the ground, sparing only the temples and Pindar's house, and by selling its thirty thousand inhabitants into slavery.
At daybreak Brasidas, perceiving that the Macedonians had gone on, and that the Illyrians and Arrhabaeus were on the point of attacking him, formed his heavy infantry into a square, with the light troops in the centre, and himself also prepared to retreat.
But the king, not daring to risk so hastily a general engagement, sent four hundred Trallians, who are a tribe of the Illyrians, as we have said in another place, and three hundred Cretans; adding to this body of infantry an equal number of horse, under the command of Athenagoras, one of his nobles honoured with the purple, to make an attack on the enemy's cavalry.
Such progress had thus been made already in this epoch, that the standard of the -denarius- exclusively prevailed in the whole western division of the Roman state; for Italy, Sicily of which it is as respects the beginning of the next period expressly attested, that no other silver money circulated there but the -denarius -Sardinia, Africa, used exclusively Roman silver money, and the provincial silver still current in Spain as well as the silver money of the Massiliots and Illyrians were at least struck after the standard of the -denarius-.
Accordingly, when they recognised the Roman standards and arms among the Aetolians, so unexpected an event occasioned the greatest terror; and at first the king had wished to withdraw his troops; but afterwards, an engagement having taken place between the Aetolians and Trallians, a tribe of Illyrians, when he saw his men hard pressed, the king himself with his cavalry charged a Roman cohort.
For the barbarians wasted and overran Macedonia whilst he was absent, and at that particular time a vast army of Illyrians had entered the country; to be freed from whose devastations, the Macedonians sent for Antigonus, and the letters had almost been brought to him before the battle was fought; upon the receipt of which he would at once have marched away home, and left the Achaeans to look to themselves.
Upon this the Corcyraeans commenced operations against them with a fleet of forty sail. They took with them the exiles, with a view to their restoration, and also secured the services of the Illyrians.
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