16. The assassins might, by making a short circuit of the wall, have run down and completed their business; yet they fled off towards the top of Parnassus with such precipitation, that as one of them, by being unable to keep up with the rest through the pathless and steep grounds, retarded their flight, they killed him lest he should be taken, and a discovery ensue. The friends, and then the guards and servants of the king, ran together and raised him up, while stunned by the wound, and quite insensible. However, they perceived, from the warmth of his body, and the breath remaining in his lungs, that he was still alive, but had little or no hopes that he would ever recover. Some of his guards having pursued the tracks of the assassins, when they had reached even as far as the summit of Parnassus, and had fatigued themselves in vain, returned without being able to overtake them. As the Macedonians set about the deed injudiciously so, after making the attempt with boldness, they abandoned it in a manner both foolish and cowardly. His friends on the next day bore to his ship the king, now in possession of his faculties, and then, having drawn their vessel, across the neck of the isthmus, they cross over to Ægina. Here his cure was conducted with such secrecy, his attendants admitting no one, that a report of his death was carried into Asia. Attalus also gave more ready credence to it than was worthy the harmony of brothers; for he talked, both to Eumenes’ consort, and to the governor of the citadel, as if he had actually succeeded to the crown. This, afterwards, came to the knowledge of the king; who, though he had determined to dissemble, and to pass it over in silence, yet could not refrain, at their first meeting, from rallying Attalus, on his premature haste to get his wife. The report of Eumenes’ death spread even to Rome.