22.  This was an important victory, and caused great joy at Rome.  On receipt of the praetor’s letter, a supplication for three days was decreed.  In that battle, there fell of the Romans and allies two thousand, most of them in the right brigade, against which, in the first onset, the most violent efforts of the enemy had been directed.  Although the praetor had brought the war almost to a conclusion, yet the consul, Cneius Aurelius, having finished the business which was necessary to be done at Rome, set out for Gaul, and received the victorious army from the praetor.  The other consul, arriving in his province towards the end of autumn, passed the winter in the neighbourhood of Apollonia.  Caius Claudius, and the Roman triremes which had been sent to Athens from the fleet that was laid up at Corcyra, as was mentioned above, arriving at Piraeeus, greatly revived the hopes of their allies, who were beginning to give way to despair.  For not only did those inroads by land cease, which used to be made from Corinth through Megara, but the ships of the pirates from Chalcis, who had been accustomed to infest both the Athenian sea and coast, were afraid not only to venture round the promontory of Sunium, but even to trust themselves out of the straits of the Euripus.  In addition to these came three quadriremes from Rhodes, the Athenians having three open ships, which they had equipped for the protection of their lands on the coast.  While Claudius thought, that if he were able with his fleet to give security to the Athenians it was as much as could be expected at present, a fortunate opportunity was thrown in his way of accomplishing a much more important enterprise.

23.  Some exiles driven from Chalcis, by ill treatment received from the king’s party, brought intelligence, that the place might be taken without even a contest; for that both the Macedonians, being under no immediate apprehension from an enemy, were straying idly about the country; and that the townsmen, depending on the Macedonian garrison, neglected the guard of the city.  Claudius, on this authority, set out and though he arrived at Sunium early enough to have sailed forward to the entrance of the strait of Euboea, yet fearing that, on doubling the promontory, he might be descried by the enemy, he lay by with the fleet until night.  As soon as it grew dark he began to move, and, favoured by a calm, arrived at Chalcis a little before day; and then, approaching the city, on a side where it was thinly inhabited, with a small party of soldiers, and by means of scaling ladders, he got possession of the nearest tower, and the wall on each side; the guards being asleep in some places, and in others no one being on the watch.  Thence they advanced to the more populous parts of the town, and having slain the sentinels, and broke open a gate, they gave an entrance to the main body of the troops.  These immediately spread themselves throughout the whole city, and increased the tumult by setting fire to