inflamed these to a degree which might rather be called madness than courage.  Opposite to Sicyon is the promontory of Juno Acraea, as she is called, stretching out into the main, the passage to Corinth being about seven miles.  To this place Philocles, one of the king’s generals, led, through Boeotia, fifteen hundred soldiers; and there were barks from Corinth ready to take these troops on board, and carry them over to Lechaeum.  Attalus, on this, advised to burn the works, and raise the siege immediately; Quinctius was for persisting more obstinately in the attempt.  However, when he saw the king’s troops posted at the gates, and that the sallies of the besieged could not easily be withstood, he came over to the opinion of Attalus.  Thus, their design proving fruitless, they dismissed the Achaeans, and returned to their ships.  Attalus steered to Piraeus, the Romans to Corcyra.

24.  While the naval forces were thus employed, the consul, having encamped before Elatia, in Phocis, first endeavoured, by conferring with the principal inhabitants, to bring them over, and by their means to effect his purpose; but on their answering that they had nothing in their power, because the king’s troops were more numerous and stronger than the townsmen, he assaulted the city on all sides at once with arms and engines.  A battering-ram having been brought up, shattered a part of the wall that reached from one tower to another, and this falling with a prodigious noise and crash, left much of the town exposed.  On this a Roman cohort made an assault through the breach, while at the same time the townsmen, quitting their several posts, ran together from all parts to the place, which was endangered by the attack of the enemy.  At the same time others of the Romans climbed over the ruins of the wall, and brought up scaling-ladders to the parts that were standing.  As the conflict attracted the eyes and attention of the enemy to one particular spot, the walls were scaled in several places, by which means the soldiers easily entered the town.  The noise and tumult which ensued so terrified the enemy, that quitting the place, which they had crowded together to defend, they all fled in panic to the citadel, accompanied by the unarmed multitude.  The consul having thus become master of the town, gave it up to be plundered, and then sent messengers into the citadel, offering the king’s troops their lives, on condition of their laying down their arms, and departing.  To the Elatians he offered their liberty; which terms being agreed to, in a few days after he got possession of the citadel.

25.  In consequence of Philocles, the king’s general, coming into Achaia, not only Corinth was delivered from the siege, but the city of Argos was betrayed into his hands by some of the principal inhabitants, after they had first sounded the minds of the populace.  They had a custom, that, on the first day of assembly, their praetors, for the omen’s sake, should pronounce the names, Jupiter, Apollo, and Hercules;