purpose. At length, after they had desisted from this useless undertaking a little before night, they the next day reached Teos. Here the prætor, after mooring in the port at the back of the city, which the inhabitants call Geræsticum, sent out the soldiers to ravage the land about the city. 28. The Teians, as these ravages passed under their eyes, sent deputies to the Roman commander, carrying fillets, and other badges of suppliants. And when they were exculpating their state from every hostile act or word against the Romans, he strongly charged them with “having assisted the enemy’s fleet with provisions, and with having promised a quantity of wine to Polyxenidas.” He further told them, that “if they would furnish the same supplies to the Roman fleet, he would recall his troops from plundering; otherwise, he would treat them as enemies.” When the deputies carried back this distressing answer, the people were summoned to an assembly by the magistrates, to consult on what they should do. It happened that Polyxenidas, who had sailed with the king’s fleet from Colophon, after he heard that the Romans had left Samos and pursued the pirates to Myonnesus, and that they were laying waste the lands of the Teians, and that their fleet lay in the harbour of Geræsticus, cast anchor, in a retired harbour of an island called by the sailors Macris, opposite to Myonnesus. Then from his neighbouring position, exploring what his enemies were doing, at first he was in great hopes of vanquishing the Roman fleet here, in like manner as he had vanquished the Rhodian at Samos, by besetting the narrow entrance at the mouth of the port. Nor is the nature of the place unlike: by the promontories advancing towards each other, the harbour is enclosed in such a manner, that two ships can scarcely go out together. Polyxenidas intended to seize this narrow pass in the night; and, while ten ships stood at each of the promontories, to attack, from the right and left, both sides of the enemy’s fleet sailing out, having landed his armed men from the fleet, as he had done at Panormus, to overpower the Romans on land and sea at once. And this design would not have been formed by him in vain, had it not appeared to the Romans better for receiving the provisions, when the Teians had promised to execute their commands, that the fleet should pass into that harbour, which is before the city. It is said, also, that Eudamus, the Rhodian, had pointed out the fault of the outer harbour, when two ships broke their oars locked together in the narrow entrance. Among other motives, this too induced the prætor to remove his fleet, because there was danger from the land, as Antiochus kept his camp not far from it.