<head>Siege of Abydus</head>Philip, however, now began the siege of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Abydus&groupId=268&placeId=523">Abydus</a> by sea and land, planting piles at the entrance to the harbour and making an entrenchment all round the town.
The siege was not so remarkable for the greatness of the preparations and the variety of the devices of the preparations and the variety of the devices employed in the works — those artifices and contrivances by which besieged and besiegers usually try to defeat each other's aims — as for the bravery and exceptional spirit displayed by the besieged, which rendered it especially worthy of being remembered and described to posterity.
For at first the inhabitants of the town with the utmost self-confident valiantly withstood all Philip's elaborate forces, smashing by catapults some of the machines he brought to bear by sea and destroying others by fire, so that the enemy with difficulty withdrew their ships from the danger zone.
As for the besiegers' works on land, up to a certain point the Abydenes offered a gallant resistance there, not without hope of getting the better of their adversaries;
but when the outer wall was undermined and fell, and when the Macedonian mines approached the wall they had built from inside to replace the fallen one,
they at last sent Iphiades and Pantagnotus as commissioners, inviting Philip to take possession of the town, if he should allow the soldiers sent by Attalus and the Rhodians to depart under flag of truce, and all free inhabitants to escape with the clothes on their backs to whatever place they severally chose.
But when Philip ordered them either to surrender at discretion or to fight bravely the commissioners returned,
Walbank Commentary