Browner the vapor grew and browner; now it soared upward, black as a thunder-cloud, darkening the azure skies, a manifest smoke-signal. Jove! what a shout arose from the now triumphant cohorts!—what a thrilling shriek of the shrill trumpets, answered faintly and remotely, as if from the skies, by another Roman blast, but liker to the scream of the mountain-vulture than to the clangor of the pealing brass!—what a clang as of ten thousand stithies, when the Spanish blades smote home upon the Macedonian targes! Yet still the men fell fast on both sides, although the Romans won their way, in spite of artillery and pike and sling-shot, at the sword’s point; for the Greeks still fought stubbornly, and plied their dreadful engines with deliberate aim at point blank range, unconscious that they were surrounded. Then came the Latin cheers, and the clang of arms, out of the clouds, rolling down the mountain side, on their flank, in their rear; the rush of charging horse!—In an instant they broke, disbanded, scattered, deserted their defenses—all was over. In the first instance the panic and route of the Macedonians were absolute; and so utterly disheartened and terror-stricken were the men, that, had it been possible to pursue them effectually, the whole army must have laid down its arms or have been cut to pieces. The ground,[13] however, was for the most part impracticable to cavalry, and their heavy armature rendered the legions as inefficient in pursuit as formidable in close combat. About two thousand only of the Macedonians fell, more in the battle than in the route; but the whole of the formidable defenses, on which they had expended so much time and toil, were carried at a blow, all their superb artillery, their camp, their baggage, rich with the barbaric pomp of the Macedonian royalty, all their camp followers and slaves, remained the prizes of the victors. Philip, after he had fled five miles from the field, that is to say, so far as to the eastern extremity of the defile he had fruitlessly endeavored to defend, at length perceiving that he was unpursued, and suspecting the reason, halted on a steep knoll covering the entrance of the pass, and sending out parties along the ridges and through the ravines with which they were familiar, soon collected all his men about his standard save those whom he had left on the field of battle, never to rouse to the trumpet or rally to the banner any more. Thence he retreated rapidly down the valley of the Aöus, or Vioza, in a south-easterly direction to a place called the camps of Pyrrhus, supposed to be Ostanitza, near the junction of the Voidhomati and Vioza,[14] where he passed the night; and thence by a prodigious forced march of nearly fifty miles reached Mount Lingon on the following day, where he remained some time in doubt whither to turn his steps, and how to frame his further operations.