Macedonian Silver Shields

[Paullus Scipio]

There are so may assumptions, jumps to conclusions, and out-and-out misinterpretations in the last few posts, I hardly know where to begin !

For starters, let us put Polyaenus into context - he was a second century A.D. lawyer ( a doff of the hat to a colleague!) in Rome, of Macedonian descent. He wrote a book of stratagems for the amusement of Marcus Aurelius which included such thing as 'the stratagems of women' and 'stratagems to obtain money from relatives'. It was never intended to be a serious military manual. He gives us 22 stratagems for Philip, some of them pretty fanciful. Here is another translation of the two he gives about Chaeronea (sorry, Mike, I don't have the Greek either - I could never afford the luxury of owning the entire Loeb library! ).

[color=blue]"Engaging the Athenians at Chaeronea, Philip made a sham retreat: when Stratocles, the Athenian general, ordered his men to push forwards, crying out, “We will pursue them to the heart of Macedon.â€