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The Wound of Philopoemen
Cleomenes, king of the Lacedaemonians, surprised Megalopolis by
night, forced the guards, broke in, and seized the market-place.
Awhile after, king Antigonus coming down to succor the Achaeans,
they marched with their united forces against Cleomenes; who,
having seized the avenues, lay advantageously posted on the hills
of Sellasia. Antigonus drew up close by him, with a resolution to
force him in his strength. Philopoemen, with his citizens, was
that day placed among the horse, next to the Illyrian foot, a
numerous body of bold fighters, who completed the line of battle,
forming, together with the Achaeans, the reserve. Their orders
were to keep their ground, and not engage till they should see a
red coat lifted up on the point of a spear from the other wing,
where the king fought in person. The Achaeans obeyed their order
and stood fast; but the Illyrians were led on by their commanders
to the attack. Euclidas, the brother of Cleomenes; seeing the foot
thus severed from the horse, detached the best of his light-armed
men, commanding them to wheel about and charge the unprotected
Illyrians in the rear. This charge put things into confusion, and
Philopoemen, considering that those light-armed men could be
easily repelled, went first to the king's officers to make them
sensible of what the occasion required. But when they did not mind
what he said, slighting him as a hare-brained fellow (as indeed he
was not yet of any repute sufficient to give credit to a proposal
of such importance). he charged with his own citizens, and at the
first encounter disordered, and soon after put the troops to
flight with great slaughter. Then, to encourage the king's army
further, to bring them all upon the enemy while he was in
confusion, he quitted his horse, and fighting with extreme
difficulty in his heavy horseman's dress, in rough, uneven ground,
full of water-courses and hollows, had both his thighs struck
through with a thonged javelin. It was thrown with great force, so
that the head came out on the other side, and made a severe though
not a mortal wound. There he stood awhile, as if he had been
shackled, unable to move. The fastening which joined the thong to
the javelin made it difficult to get it drawn out, nor would
anybody about him venture to do it. But the fight being now at the
hottest, and likely to be quickly decided, he was transported with
the desire of partaking in it, and struggled and strained so
violently, setting one leg forward, the other back, that at last
he broke the shaft in two, and thus got the pieces pulled out.
Being in this manner set at liberty he caught up his sword, and
running through the midst of those who were fighting in the first
ranks, animated his men, and set them afire with emulation.
Antigonus, after the victory, asked the Macedonians, to try them,
how it happened that the cavalry had charged without orders before
the signal? and when they answered that they were forced to it
against their wills by a young man of Megalopolis, who had fallen
in before it was time, Antigonus replied, smiling, "That young man
acted like an experienced commander."
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