implements. The hollowed mountains took up and gave back their din with
most frightful effect, so that the barbarians, hearing them suddenly in
the night and the wilderness, were terribly alarmed, thinking they had
encountered some supernatural phenomenon. Directly the Romans from the
heights smote them at all points with stones, arrows, and javelins,
inevitably wounding some by reason of their numbers, and reduced them to
every extremity of evil. They were not drawn up in line of battle, but
for marching, and both men and women were moving about in the same place
with horses and camels and all sorts of implements; some were borne on
coursers, others on chariots, covered wagons, and carts
indiscriminately; and some getting wounded already and others expecting
to be wounded caused confusion, in consequence of which they were more
easily slain, since they kept becoming entangled one with another. This
was what they endured while they were still being struck from afar off.
But when the Romans after exhausting their long-distance ammunition
charged down upon them, the edges of the force were slaughtered, one
blow sufficing for their death, since the majority were unarmed, and the
center was crushed together, as all by reason of the encompassing fear
fell toward it. So they perished, pushed about and trampled down by one
another without being able to defend themselves or venture any movement
against the enemy. For whereas they were strongest in cavalry and
bowmen, they were unable to see before them in the darkness and unable
to make any manoeuvre in the defile.

When the moon rose, some rejoiced, with the idea that in the light they
could certainly ward off some one. And they would have been benefited a
little, if the Romans had not had the moon behind them, and so produced
much illusion both in sight and in action, while assailing them now on
this side and now on that. For the attackers, being many in number and
all in one body, casting the deepest imaginable shadow, baffled their