Quinctius had been led to hope that Thebes in Phthiotis would be betrayed to him by Timon, the first man in the city, and accordingly he marched thither. [2] He rode up to the walls with a small body of cavalry and light infantry, but his expectations were so far frustrated by a sortie from the city that he would have been in imminent danger had not infantry and cavalry from the camp come to his assistance in time. [3] When he found that his hopes were illusory and that there was no prospect of their being realised he desisted from any further attempt for the time. [4] Definite information having reached him, however, that the king was now in Thessaly, though his exact whereabouts was unknown, he sent his men into the fields round to cut down and prepare stakes for a stockade. [5] Both the Macedonians and the Greeks made use of stockades, but they did not adapt their materials either for convenience in carrying or for defensive strength. [6] The trees they cut down were too large and too branching for the soldiery to carry together with their arms, and when they had put them in position and fenced their camp with them the demolition of their rampart was an easy matter. [7] The large trunks stood up apart from one another and the numerous stout branches afforded a good hold, so that two, or at the most three, men by pulling together would bring a tree down, making at once a gap as wide as a gate, and there was nothing at hand with which to block the opening. [8] On the other hand, the stakes which the Romans cut were light and generally forked with [9??] three, or at the most four, branches, so that, with his arms slung at his back, the Roman soldier could carry several of them together comfortably. [10] Then again they fix them so close together in the ground and interlace the branches in such a way that it is impossible to discover to which particular tree any of the outside branches belong, and these are made so sharp and so closely intertwined that there is no room [11??] left for inserting the hand, nothing can be got hold of to be dragged away, nor if there were would the enemy succeed in doing so because the branches are hooked together like the links of a chain. [12] If one happens to be pulled out, it leaves only a small opening and it is very easy to put another in its place.
