Plutarch also noted that Polybius wrote that Perseus cravenly left the battle immediately and went to the city under the pretext of offering sacrifices to Heracles, a god who did not accept sacrifices from cowards. The god, instead, listened to the prayers of the brave Aemilius who invited him to fight with him. Plutarch also noted that a man called Poseidonius, who wrote a history of Perseus and said that he participated in the battle, wrote that the king did not leave because cowardice or under the pretence of sacrifices, but because, the day before the battle, he was kicked in the leg by a horse. On the day of the battle, against advice to the contrary, he ordered a pack horse and joined the phalanx without a breastplate. A dart tore his tunic on his left side and bruised his skin. Livy, instead, wrote that Perseus was the first to flee the battle with his sacred cavalry squadron. He fled to Pella and was quickly followed by the Thracian cavalry. The Roman forces, which were busy routing the Macedonian phalanx, were “careless of pursuing the cavalry.”