followed by a second on the west side of the river, which gave him
possession of all Macedonia. Apocryphal as his story sounded, and
decidedly as it was established that the real Philip, the son of
Perseus, had died when eighteen years of age at Alba, and that this
man, so far from being a Macedonian prince, was Andriscus a fuller of
Adramytium, yet the Macedonians were too much accustomed to the rule
of a king not to be readily satisfied on the point of legitimacy and
to return with pleasure into the old track. Messengers arrived
from the Thessalians, announcing that the pretender had advanced
into their territory; the Roman commissioner Nasica, who, in the
expectation that a word of earnest remonstrance would put an end
to the foolish enterprise, had been sent by the senate to Macedonia
without soldiers, was obliged to call out the Achaean and Pergamene
troops and to protect Thessaly against the superior force by
means of the Achaeans, as far as was practicable, till (605?)
the praetor Juventius appeared with a legion. The latter attacked
the Macedonians with his small force; but he himself fell, his army
was almost wholly destroyed, and the greater part of Thessaly fell into
the power of the pseudo-Philip, who conducted his government there and
in Macedonia with cruelty and arrogance. At length a stronger Roman
army under Quintus Caecilius Metellus appeared on the scene of
conflict, and, supported by the Pergamene fleet, advanced into
Macedonia. In the first cavalry combat the Macedonians retained
the superiority; but soon dissensions and desertions occurred in the
Macedonian army, and the blunder of the pretender in dividing his
army and detaching half of it to Thessaly procured for the Romans an
easy and decisive victory (606). Philip fled to the chieftain Byzes
in Thrace, whither Metellus followed him and after a second victory
obtained his surrender.