[Sidenote: B.C. 155. The Roman legate Publius Lentulus, and Athenaeus,
brother of Attalus, reach Rome and declare the truth.]
+1.+ Before spring this year the Senate, after hearing the report of
Publius Lentulus and his colleagues, who had just reached Rome from
Asia, in the business of king Prusias, called in Athenaeus also,
brother of king Attalus. The matter, however, did not need many words:
the Senate promptly appointed Gaius Claudius Cento, Lucius Hortensius,
and Gaius Arunculeius, to accompany Athenaeus home, with instructions
to prevent Prusias from waging war against Attalus.
[Sidenote: Another embassy in behalf of the Achaean detenus.]
[Sidenote: It fails by the action of the praetor, who, by putting the
question simply “yes” or “no” for release, forced the party who were
for postponing it to vote “no.”]
Also Xeno of Aegium and Telecles of Tegea arrived as ambassadors from
the Achaeans in behalf of the Achaean detenus. After the delivery of
their speech, on the question being put to the vote, the Senators only
refused the release of the accused persons by a very narrow majority.
The man who really prevented the release from being carried was Aulus
Postumius, who was praetor, and as such presided in the Senate on that
occasion. Three alternatives were proposed—one for an absolute release,
another for an absolute refusal, and a third for a postponement of the
release for the present. The largest numbers were for the first of
these three; but Postumius left out the third, and put the two first
to the vote together, release or no release; the result was that those
who were originally for the postponement transferred their votes to the
party that were against the release, and thus gave a majority against
release....
[Sidenote: The Achaeans are encouraged to try again.]
+3.+[210] When the ambassadors returned to Achaia with the news that
the restoration of all the detenus had been only lost in the Senate by
a narrow majority, the people becoming hopeful and elated sent Telecles
of Megalopolis and Anaxidamus on a fresh mission at once. That was the
state of things in the Peloponnese....
[Sidenote: Aristocrates proves a failure in the war with Crete.]
+4.+ Aristocrates, the general of the Rhodians, was in appearance a
man of mark and striking ability; and the Rhodians, judging from this,
believed that they had in him a thoroughly adequate leader and guide
in the war.[211] But they were disappointed in their expectations: for
when he came to the test of experience, like spurious coin when brought
to the furnace, he was shown to be a man of quite a different sort. And
this was proved by actual facts....
+5.+ [Demetrius] offered him five hundred talents if he would surrender
Cyprus to him, with other similar advantages and honours from himself
if he would do him this service....
Archias, therefore, wishing to betray Cyprus to Demetrius, and being
caught in the act and led off to stand his trial, hanged himself with
one of the ropes of the awnings in the court. For it is a true proverb
that led by their desires “the reckonings of the vain are vain.” This
man, for instance, imagining that he was going to get five hundred
talents, lost what he had already, and his life into the bargain....
[Sidenote: Honesty of the people of Priene (in Caria) in preserving the
money deposited by Orophernes.]
+6.+ About this time an unexpected misfortune befell the people of
Priene. They had received a deposit of four hundred talents from
Orophernes when he got possession of the kingdom; and subsequently
when Ariarathes recovered his dominion he demanded the money of them.
But they acted like honest men, in my opinion, in declaring that they
would deliver it to no one as long as Orophernes was alive, except to
the person who deposited it with them; while Ariarathes was thought by
many to be committing a breach of equity in demanding a deposit made by
another.
However, up to this point, one might perhaps pardon his making the
attempt, because he looked upon the money as belonging to his own
kingdom; but to push his anger and imperious determination as much
farther as he did seems utterly unjustifiable. At the period I
refer to, then, he sent troops to pillage the territory of Priene,
Attalus assisting and urging him on from the private grudge which he
entertained towards the Prienians. After losing many slaves and cattle,
some of them being slaughtered close to the city itself, the Prienians,
unable to defend themselves, first sent an embassy to the Rhodians, and
eventually appealed for protection to Rome....
But he would not listen to the proposal. So it came about that the
Prienians, who had great hopes from the possession of so large a sum
of money, found themselves entirely disappointed. For they repaid
Orophernes his deposit, and, thanks to this same deposit, were unjustly
exposed to severe damage at the hands of Ariarathes....
[Sidenote: B.C. 155. The Ligurians harass Marseilles and besiege
Antibes and Nice.]
+7.+ This year there came ambassadors also from the people of
Marseilles, who had long been suffering from the Ligurians, and at
that time were being closely invested by them, while their cities of
Antipolis and Nicaea were also subjected to a siege. They, therefore,
sent ambassadors to Rome to represent the state of things and beg for
help. On their being admitted, the Senate decided to send legates to
see personally what was going on, and to endeavour by persuasion to
correct the injurious proceedings of the barbarians....
_The peaceful mission failed, and the consul Opimius subdued the
Oxybii, a Ligurian tribe, in arms, B.C. 154. Livy_, Ep. 47.
[Sidenote: B.C. 154. Coss. Q. Opimius, L. Postumius Albinus. Ptolemy
Physcon charges his brother with inciting a plot against his life.]
[Sidenote: The Senate refuses to hear the ambassadors of Ptolemy
Philometor,]
[Sidenote: and send commissioners to restore Physcon to Cyprus.]
+8.+ At the same time as the Senate despatched Opimius to the war with
the Oxybii, Ptolemy the younger arrived at Rome; and being admitted
to the Senate brought an accusation against his brother, laying on
him the blame of the attack against his life. He showed the scars of
his wounds, and speaking with all the bitterness which they seemed
to suggest, moved his hearers to pity him; and when Neolaidas and
Andromachus also came on behalf of the elder Ptolemy, to answer the
charges brought by his brother, the Senate refused even to listen to
their pleas, having been entirely prepossessed by the accusations of
the younger. They commanded them to leave Rome at once; while they
assigned five commissioners to the younger, headed by Gnaeus Merula and
Lucius Thermus, with a quinquereme for each commissioner, and ordered
them to restore Ptolemy (Physcon) to Cyprus; and at the same time sent
a circular to their allies in Greece and Asia, granting permission to
them to assist in the restoration of Ptolemy....
[Sidenote: Prusias having refused obedience to the former commission
(see _supra_, ch. 1), a new commission is sent out with peremptory
orders.]
+9.+ When the commissioners under Hortensius and Arunculeius returned
from Pergamum, and reported Prusias’s disregard of the orders of the
Senate; and how by an act of treachery he had besieged them and Attalus
in Pergamum,[212] and had given rein to every kind of violence and
lawlessness: the Senate, enraged and offended at what had happened,
immediately appointed ten commissioners, headed by Lucius Anicius,
Gaius Fannius, and Quintus Fabius Maximus, and sent them out with
instructions to put an end to the war, and compel Prusias to indemnify
Attalus for the injuries received by him during the war....
[Sidenote: The Ligurians prevent the commissioners from landing, and
wound Flaminius who had already landed, and drive him to his ship.]
[Sidenote: War ordered with the Oxybii and Deciatae, B.C. 154.]
+10.+ On the complaint of the ambassadors of Marseilles as to their
injuries sustained at the hands of the Ligurians, the Senate at once
appointed a commission, consisting of Flaminius, Popilius Laenas, and
Lucius Pupius, who sailed with the envoys of Marseilles, and landed
in the territory of the Oxybii at the town of Aegitna. The Ligurians,
hearing that they were come to bid them raise the siege, descended upon
them as they lay at anchor, and prevented the rest from disembarking;
but finding Flaminius already disembarked and his baggage landed, they
began by ordering him to leave the country, and on his refusal they
began to plunder his baggage. His slaves and freedmen resisting this,
and trying to prevent them, they began to use violence and attacked
them with their weapons. When Flaminius came to the rescue of his men
they wounded him, and killed two of his servants, and chased the rest
down to their ship, so that Flaminius only escaped with his life by
cutting away the hawsers and anchors. He was conveyed to Marseilles and
his wound attended to with all possible care; but when the Senate was
informed of the transaction, it immediately ordered one of the consuls,
Quintus Opimius, to lead an army against the Oxybii and Deciatae.[213]
[Sidenote: Opimius orders his soldiers to join at Placentia, and
marches into Gaul,]
[Sidenote: takes Aegitna,]
[Sidenote: and defeats the Oxybii and Deciatae.]
[Sidenote: Opimius winters in Gaul, B.C. 154-153.]
+11.+ Having collected his army at Placentia, Quintus Opimius marched
over the Apennines and arrived in the territory of the Oxybii; and,
pitching his camp on the river Apro, awaited the enemy, being informed
that they were mustering their forces and were eager to give him
battle. Meanwhile, he advanced to Aegitna, where the ambassadors had
been outraged, took the city by assault, and sold its inhabitants as
slaves, sending the ringleaders in the outrage to Rome in chains.
Having done this, he went to meet the enemy. The Oxybii, convinced that
their violence to the ambassadors admitted of no terms being granted
them, with all the courage of desperation, and excited to the highest
pitch of furious enthusiasm, did not wait to be joined by the Deciatae,
but, having collected to the number of about four thousand, rushed
to the attack upon their enemy. Quintus was somewhat dismayed at the
boldness of their attack, and at the desperate fury of the barbarians;
but was encouraged by observing that the enemy were advancing in
complete disorder, for he was an experienced soldier and a man of
great natural sagacity. He therefore drew out his men, and, after a
suitable harangue, advanced at a slow pace towards the enemy. His
charge was delivered with great vigour: he quickly repulsed the enemy,
killed a great many of them, and forced the rest into headlong flight.
Meanwhile, the Deciatae had mustered their forces, and appeared on the
ground intending to fight side by side with the Oxybii; but finding
themselves too late for the battle, they received the fugitives in
their ranks, and after a short time charged the Romans with great fury
and enthusiasm; but being worsted in the engagement, they immediately
all surrendered themselves and their city at discretion to the Romans.
Having thus become masters of these tribes, Opimius delivered over
their territory on the spot to the people of Marseilles, and for the
future forced the Ligurians to give hostages at certain fixed intervals
to the Marsilians. He then deprived the tribes that had fought with
them of their arms, and divided his army among the cities there for the
winter, and himself took up his winter quarters in the country. Thus
the war had a conclusion as rapid as its commencement....
[Sidenote: The commissioners visit Attalus and Prusias early in B.C.
154.]
[Sidenote: Prusias will not yield till too late.]
[Sidenote: The Romans promote a combination against Prusias.]
+12.+ All the previous winter Attalus had been busy collecting a large
army, Ariarathes and Mithridates having sent him a force of cavalry
and infantry, in accordance with the terms of their alliance with him.
While he was still engaged in these preparations the ten commissioners
arrived from Rome: who, after meeting and conferring with him at Cadi
about the business, started to visit Prusias, to whom on meeting him
they explained the orders of the Senate in terms of serious warning.
Prusias at once yielded to some of the injunctions, but refused to
submit to the greater part. The Romans grew angry, renounced his
friendship and alliance, and one and all started to return to Attalus.
Thereupon Prusias repented; followed them a certain distance with
vehement entreaties; but, failing to gain any concession, left them in
a state of great doubt and embarrassment. The Romans, on their return
to Attalus, bade him station himself with his army on his own frontier,
and not to begin the war himself, but to provide for the security of
the towns and villages in his territory: while they divided themselves,
one party sailing home with all speed to announce to the Senate the
disobedience of Prusias; another departing for Ionia; and a third to
the Hellespont and the ports about Byzantium, all with one and the same
purpose namely, to detach the inhabitants from friendship and alliance
with Prusias, and to persuade them to adhere to Attalus and assist him
to the best of their power....
[Sidenote: Summer of B.C. 154. Attalus’s brother Athenaeus harasses the
coast of Prusias’s kingdom.]
+13.+ At the same time Athenaeus set sail with eighty decked ships,
of which five were quadriremes sent by the Rhodians for the Cretan
war, twenty from Cyzicus, twenty-seven Attalus’s own, and the rest
contributed by the other allies. Having sailed to the Hellespont, and
reached the cities subject to Prusias, he made frequent descents upon
the coast, and greatly harassed the country. But when the Senate heard
the report of the commissioners who had returned from Prusias, they
immediately despatched three new ones, Appius Claudius, Lucius Oppius,
and Aulus Postumius: who, on arriving in Asia, put an end to the war
by bringing the two kings to make peace, on condition of Prusias at
once handing over to Attalus twenty decked ships, and paying him five
hundred talents in twenty years, both retaining the territory which
they had at the commencement of the war. Farther, that Prusias should
make good the damage done to the inhabitants of Methymna, Aegae, Cymae,
Heracleia, by a payment of a hundred talents to those towns. The treaty
having been drawn out in writing on those terms, Attalus withdrew his
army and navy to his own country. Such are the particulars of the
events which took place in the quarrel between Attalus and Prusias....
[Sidenote: B. C. 153. Another fruitless embassy from Achaia.]
+14.+ An embassy again coming to Rome from Achaia in behalf of the
detenus, the Senate voted to make no change....
[Sidenote: Heracleides brings to Rome Laodice, daughter of Antiochus
Epiphanes, and his supposed son Alexander Balas.]
+15.+Heracleides came to Rome in the middle of summer, bringing Laodice
and Alexander, and stayed there a long time, employing all the arts of
cunning and corruption to win the support of the Senate....
[Sidenote: The quarrel of Rhodes and Crete.]
Astymedes of Rhodes being appointed ambassador and navarch at the same
time, came forward immediately and addressed the Senate on the war with
Crete. The Senate listened with attention, and immediately appointed
Quintus at the head of a commission to put an end to the war....
[Sidenote: The Achaeans decline to help either Rhodes or Crete,]
[Sidenote: although inclined to support Rhodes.]
+16.+ This year the Cretans sent Antiphatas, son of Telamnestus of
Gortyn, with envoys to the Achaeans asking for help, and the Rhodians
sent Theophanes with a similar mission. The Congress of the Achaeans
was that year at Corinth: and on each body of ambassadors pleading
their respective causes, the assembled people were more inclined
towards the Rhodians, from respect to the reputation of their state,
and the general character of their policy and statesmen. When
Antiphatas saw this, he wished to come forward to make another speech;
and, having obtained permission from the Strategus to do so, he spoke
in weightier and more exalted terms than might be expected from a
Cretan; for, in fact, the young man was in no way of the ordinary
Cretan type, but had shunned the characteristic principles of his
countrymen. Accordingly the Achaeans received his plain speaking with
favour; and still more for the sake of his father Telamnestus, who had
taken a spirited part with them at the head of five hundred Cretans
in their war against Nabis. However, none the less for that, after
listening to him they were still inclined to aid the Rhodians, until
Callicrates of Leontium stood up and said that they ought not to go to
war in favour of either, or to send aid to either of the two peoples
without the consent of the Romans. This argument decided them in favour
of non-intervention....
+17.+ Dispirited with the course things were taking, the Rhodians
entered upon some measures and designs which were strange and
unreasonable. In fact, they were much in the same state as men
suffering from chronic diseases. It frequently happens that such men,
when, in spite of following all the rules of medicine and obeying the
prescriptions of the doctors, they are unable to make any advance
towards improvement, give up all such efforts in despair, and either
listen wholly to priests and seers, or try every sort of charm or
amulet. So it was with the Rhodians. When their hopes were baffled
in every direction, they were reduced to listen to every kind of
suggestion, and to magnify and accept every kind of chance. Nor was
this unnatural. For when nothing dictated by reason proves successful,
and yet some action or another must necessarily be pushed on, there is
no alternative but to try something which does not depend on reason.
The Rhodians, having come to this dilemma, acted accordingly; and,
among other things that were in defiance of reason, reelected as their
archon a man of whom they disapproved....
[Sidenote: Demetrius, son of Ariarathes VI.]
[Sidenote: B.C. 152. Visit of the young Attalus, son of the late king
Eumenes.]
+18.+ Many different embassies having come to Rome, the Senate admitted
Attalus,[214] son of king of the young Eumenes I. For he had arrived
at Rome at this time, still quite a young boy, to be introduced to
the Senate, and to renew in his person the ancestral friendship and
connexion with the Romans. After a kindly reception by the Senate and
his father’s friends, and after receiving the answer which he desired,
and such honours as suited his time of life, he returned to his native
land, meeting with a warm and liberal reception in all the Greek cities
through which he passed on his return journey. Demetrius also came at
this time, and, after receiving a fairly good reception for a boy,
returned home.
[Sidenote: Laodice and Alexander Balas. See ch. 15.]
[Sidenote: The Senate’s decree in favour of Alexander and Laodice.]
Then Heracleides entered the Senate, bringing Laodice and Alexander
with him. The youthful Alexander first addressed the Senate, and begged
the Romans “to remember their friendship and alliance with his father
Antiochus, and if possible to assist him to recover his kingdom;
or if they could not do that, at least to give him leave to return
home, and not to hinder those who wished to assist him in recovering
his ancestral crown.” Heracleides then took up the word, and, after
delivering a lengthy encomium on Antiochus, came to the same point,
namely, that they ought in justice to grant the young prince and
Laodice leave to return and claim their own, as they were the true-born
children of Antiochus. Sober-minded people were not all attracted by
any of these arguments. They understood the meaning of this theatrical
exhibition, and made no secret of their distaste for Heracleides. But
the majority had fallen under the spell of Heracleides’s cunning, and
were induced to pass the following decree:
“Alexander and Laodice, children of a king, our friend and ally,
appeared before the Senate and stated their case; and the Senate gave
them authority to return to the kingdom of their forefathers; and help,
in accordance with their request, is hereby decreed to them.” Seizing
on this pretext, Heracleides immediately began hiring mercenaries, and
calling on some men of high position to assist him. He accordingly
went to Ephesus and devoted himself to the preparations for his
attempt.[215]...
[Sidenote: Demetrius’s intemperance.]
+19.+ Demetrius, who, when residing as a hostage at Rome, had fled and
become king in Syria, was a man so much addicted to drunkenness that he
spent the greater part of the day in drinking....
+20.+ When once the multitude feel the impulse to violent love or
hatred of any one, any pretext is good enough for indulging their
feelings....
However, I am afraid I may fall under the common dilemma, “Which is
the greater fool, the man who milks a he-goat, or the man who holds
a sieve to catch the milk?” For I seem to be doing something of this
sort in arguing and writing an essay on what every one acknowledges to
be false. It is, then, waste time to speak of such things, unless one
cares to write down dreams, or look at dreams with one’s eyes open....