the buildings round the forum, by which means both the granaries belonging to the king, and his armoury, with a vast store of machines and engines, were reduced to ashes.  Then commenced a general slaughter of those who fled, as well as of those who made resistance; and after having either put to the sword or driven out every one who was of an age fit to bear arms, (Sopater also, the Acarnanian, who commanded the garrison, being slain,) they first collected all the spoils in the forum, and then carried it on board the ships.  The prison, too, was forced open by the Rhodians, and those prisoners whom Philip had shut up there, as in the safest custody, were set at liberty.  They next pulled down and mutilated the statues of the king; and then, on a signal being given for a retreat, re-embarked and returned to Piraeeus, from whence they had set out.  If there had been so large a force of Roman soldiers that Chalcis might have been retained and the protection of Athens not neglected, Chalcis and Euripus might have been taken from the king;—­a most important advantage at the commencement of the war.  For as the pass of Thermopylae is the principal barrier of Greece by land, so is the strait of the Euripus by sea.

24.  Philip was then at Demetrias, and as soon as the news arrived there of the calamity which had befallen the city of his allies, although it was too late to carry assistance to those who were already ruined, yet anxious to accomplish what was next to assistance, revenge, he set out instantly with five thousand foot lightly equipped, and three hundred horse.  With a speed almost equal to that of racing, he hastened to Chalcis, not doubting but that he should be able to surprise the Romans.  Being disappointed in this expectation, and having arrived, with no other result than a melancholy view of the smoking ruins of that friendly city, (so few being left, that they were scarcely sufficient to bury those who had fallen in the conflict,) with the same rapid haste which he had used in coming, he crossed the Euripus by the bridge, and led his troops through Boeotia to Athens, in hopes that a similar issue would correspond to a similar attempt.  And it would have corresponded, had not a scout, (one of those whom the Greeks call day-runners,[1] because they run through a journey of great length in one day,) descrying from his post of observation the king’s army in its march, set out at midnight and arrived before them at Athens.  The same sleep, and the same negligence, prevailed there which had proved the ruin of Chalcis a few days before.  Roused, however, by the alarming intelligence, the praetor of the Athenians, and Dioxippus, commander of a cohort of mercenary auxiliaries, called the soldiers together in the forum, and ordered the trumpets to sound an alarm from the citadel, that all might be informed of the approach of the enemy.  On which the people ran from all quarters to the gates, and afterwards to the walls.  In a few hours after,