The armies having been drawn up in this fashion, both the kings rode along the line accompanied by their officers and friends, and addressed their soldiers.
As they relied chiefly on the phalanx, it was to these troops that they made the most earnest appeal,
Ptolemy being supported by <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Andromachus&groupId=330&placeId=640">Andromachus</a>, Sosibius and his sister Arsinoë and Antiochus by Theodotus and Nicarchus, these being the commanders of the phalanx on either side.
The substance of the addresses was on both sides very similar. For neither king could cite any glorious and generally recognized achievement of his own,
so that it was by reminding the troops of the glorious deeds of their ancestors that they attempted to inspire them with spirit and courage.
They laid the greatest stress, however, on the rewards which they might be expected to bestow in the future, and urged and exhorted both the leaders in particular and all those who were about to be engaged in general to bear themselves therefore like gallant men in the coming battle.
So with these or similar words spoken either by themselves or by their interpreters they rode along the line.
Walbank Commentary