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[1] Principio anni quo haec gesta sunt, Sex. Digitius praetor in Hispania citeriore cum ciuitatibus iis quae post profectionem M. Catonis permultae rebellauerant crebra magis quam digna dictu proelia fecit et adeo pleraque aduersa ut uix dimidium militum quam quod acceperat successori tradiderit. nec dubium est quin omnis Hispania sublatura animos fuerit, ni alter praetor P. Cornelius Cn. f. Scipio trans Hiberum multa secunda proelia fecisset, quo terrore non minus quinquaginta oppida ad eum defecerunt.
[1] At the beginning of the year in which these things were done, Sextus Digitius, praetor in Hither Spain, with those communities which, after the departure of Marcus Cato, very many had rebelled, fought battles more frequent than worthy to tell, and for the most part so adverse that he scarcely handed over to his successor half the soldiers he had received. Nor is there any doubt that all Spain would have lifted its spirits, had not the other praetor, Publius Cornelius Scipio, son of Gnaeus, beyond the Hiberus fought many successful battles, by the terror of which not less than fifty towns defected to him.
Scipio, as praetor, had done these things: the same man, as propraetor, attacked the Lusitanians—who, after devastating the Farther Province, were returning home with immense booty—on the very road, and from the third hour of the day to the eighth he fought with an uncertain outcome, inferior in the number of soldiers, superior in other respects; for he had engaged with a crowded battle-line of armed men against a long column hindered by a throng of cattle, and with fresh soldiery against men wearied by a long march. For the enemy had set out at the third watch; to this night-march three hours of daylight had been added, and, with no rest given, a battle had succeeded the toil of the way. And so, at the beginning of the fight there was still some vigor in bodies and minds, and at first they had thrown the Romans into disorder; then the fight was for a little while evened.
In this crisis the praetor vowed games to Jupiter, if he should rout and cut down the enemies. At length the Romans pressed their step more keenly and the Lusitanian gave way, then outright turned his back; and when the victors pressed upon the fugitives, about twelve thousand of the enemy were slain, five hundred forty captured, almost all cavalry, and one hundred thirty-four military standards were taken; of the Roman army seventy-three were lost. The fighting was not far from the city of Ilipa: thither P. Cornelius led back the army, victorious and opulent with booty.
[2] Nondum ab Roma profectus erat C. Flaminius praetor cum haec in Hispania gerebantur. itaque aduersae quam secundae res per ipsum amicosque eius magis sermonibus celebrabantur; et temptauerat, quoniam bellum ingens in prouincia exarsisset et exiguas reliquias exercitus ab Sex. Digitio atque eas ipsas plenas pauoris ac fugae accepturus esset, ut sibi unam ex urbanis legionibus decernerent, ad quam cum militem ab se ipso scriptum ex senatus consulto adiecisset, eligeret ex omni numero sex milia et ducentos pedites, equites trecentos: ea se legione—nam in Sex.
[2] Gaius Flaminius, praetor, had not yet set out from Rome when these things were being done in Spain. And so adverse rather than favorable affairs were more celebrated in talk by him and his friends; and he had attempted—since a vast war had flared up in the province and he was going to receive the scant remnants of the army from Sextus Digitius, and those very remnants full of fear and flight—that they should assign to him one of the urban legions, to which, when he had added soldiers enrolled by himself by decree of the senate, he might choose from the whole number 6,200 foot-soldiers and 300 horsemen: with that legion—for in Sex.
that in the army of Digitius there was not much hope—he would carry on the affair. The elders said that senate decrees ought not to be made on the basis of rumors rashly fabricated by private persons to ingratiate magistrates; unless either the praetors should write from the provinces or the legates should report back, nothing ought to be held ratified. If there were a tumult in Spain, they approved that tumultuary soldiers be enrolled outside Italy by the praetor. Such was the mind of the senate, that in Spain tumultuary soldiers be levied.
Valerius Antias also writes that C. Flaminius sailed to Sicily for the sake of a levy, and, while making for Spain from Sicily, having been driven by a storm to Africa, he put straggling soldiers from the army of P. Africanus under the military oath; to these levies from two provinces he added a third in Spain.
[3] Nec in Italia segnius Ligurum bellum crescebat. Pisas iam quadraginta milibus hominum, adfluente cotidie multitudine ad famam belli spemque praedae, circumsedebant. Minucius consul Arretium die quam edixerat ad conueniendum militibus uenit.
[3] Nor in Italy did the Ligurian war grow less vigorously. They were already besieging Pisae with forty thousand men, as a multitude flowed in daily at the report of war and the hope of booty. Minucius the consul came to Arretium on the day which he had proclaimed for the soldiers to assemble.
from there he led in a square column to Pisa, and when the enemies had moved their camp across the river not more than one thousand paces from the town, the consul entered the city, without doubt saved by his arrival. On the next day he too crossed the river and pitched camp about five hundred paces from the enemy. Thence, with light skirmishes, he was protecting the fields of the allies from depredations: he did not dare to go out into battle-line, with the soldiery new and gathered from many kinds of men, not yet sufficiently known among themselves so that some could trust others.
The Ligurians, relying on their multitude, even went out into the battle-line, ready to decide the issue; and, abounding in the number of soldiers, they were sending everywhere many bands to the farthest borders to plunder; and when a great mass of cattle and booty had been collected, an escort was prepared by means of which it was driven into their forts and villages.
[4] Cum bellum Ligustinum ad Pisas constitisset, consul alter, L. Cornelius Merula, per extremos Ligurum fines exercitum in agrum Boiorum induxit, ubi longe alia belli ratio quam cum Liguribus erat. consul in aciem exibat, hostes pugnam detractabant; praedatumque ubi nemo obuiam exiret discurrebant Romani, Boi diripi sua impune quam tuendo ea conserere certamen malebant. postquam omnia ferro ignique satis euastata erant, consul agro hostium excessit et ad Mutinam agmine incauto, ut inter pacatos, ducebat.
[4] When the Ligurian war had come to a standstill at Pisa, the other consul, L. Cornelius Merula, led the army through the farthest borders of the Ligurians into the territory of the Boii, where the method of war was far different than with the Ligurians. The consul went out in battle order; the enemy declined a fight; and for plundering, when no one came out to meet them, the Romans would scatter; the Boii preferred that their goods be plundered with impunity rather than by defending them to join battle. After all had been sufficiently laid waste with sword and fire, the consul withdrew from the enemy’s land and, as if among those at peace, was leading his column toward Mutina without caution.
When the Boi perceived that the enemy had gone out from their borders, they followed in a silent column, seeking a place for ambush. In the night, having passed by the Roman camp, they occupied the defile where the Romans had to cross. Since they had done this not very covertly, the consul, who was accustomed to move camp late at night, so that night might not augment terror in a tumultuary battle, waited for daylight; and, when he moved at first light, nevertheless he sent a troop of horsemen to reconnoiter.
after it was reported how great the forces were and in what place they were, he ordered the baggage of the whole column to be thrown into the middle, and the triarii to throw a rampart around it; with the rest of the army drawn up he approached the enemy. the Gauls did the same, after they saw that the ambushes were laid open and that there must be fighting in a straight and just battle, where true valor would prevail.
[5] Hora secunda ferme concursum est. sinistra sociorum [equitum] ala et extraordinarii prima in acie pugnabant; praeerant duo consulares legati, M. Marcellus et Ti. Sempronius prioris anni consul. nouus consul nunc ad prima signa erat, nunc legiones continebat in subsidiis, ne certaminis studio prius procurrerent quam datum signum esset.
[5] About the second hour they came to blows. The left wing of the allies’ [cavalry] and the extraordinarii were fighting in the front line; two legates of consular rank were in command, M. Marcellus and Ti. Sempronius, the consul of the previous year. The new consul now was at the foremost standards, now held the legions back in the reserves, lest in zeal for combat they should run forward before the signal was given.
He ordered Quintus and Publius Minucius, military tribunes, to lead their cavalry out of the line into an open place, whence, when he had given the signal, they should make an attack from the open. While he was doing these things, a messenger came from Tiberius Sempronius Longus that the extraordinarii were not withstanding the Gauls’ attack: and that very many had been cut down, and those who remained had, partly from toil, partly from fear, relaxed their ardor for the fight; he should send in one of the two legions, if it seemed good, before disgrace was incurred. The second legion was sent in, and the extraordinarii were brought back.
then the battle was renewed, when both fresh soldiery and a legion crowded in its ranks had come up; and the left wing was withdrawn from the fight, the right advanced into the first line. the sun, with immense ardor, was scorching the bodies of the Gauls, very little patient of the heat; yet in dense ranks, now some leaning upon others, now upon their shields, they sustained the onsets of the Romans. when the consul noticed this, for the disturbing of their ranks he orders C. Livius Salinator, who was in command of the allied cavalry, to let in the horses at the greatest possible speed, and that the legionary horsemen be in reserve.
This equestrian squall at first confounded and disturbed, then dissipated the battle-line of the Gauls, yet not so that they turned their backs. The leaders stood in the way, striking the backs of the wavering with spear-shafts and compelling them to return into the ranks; but the alarii, riding between, did not allow it. The consul adjured the soldiers to strive a little: victory was in their hands; so long as they saw them disordered and panic-stricken, they should press on; if the ranks were restored, they would fight them again in a fresh battle, with the outcome doubtful.
Fourteen thousand of the Boii were slain that day; 1,092 were taken alive, 721 cavalrymen, three of their leaders, 212 military standards, 63 wagons. Nor was the victory bloodless for the Romans: above five thousand soldiers, of themselves or of the allies, were lost, 23 centurions, four prefects of the allies, and M. Genucius and Q. and M. Marcius, military tribunes of the Second Legion.
[6] Eodem fere tempore duorum consulum litterae allatae sunt, L. Corneli de proelio ad Mutinam cum Bois facto et Q. Minuci a Pisis: comitia suae sortis esse, ceterum adeo suspensa omnia in Liguribus se habere ut abscedi inde sine pernicie sociorum et damno rei publicae non posset. si ita uideretur patribus, mitterent ad collegam ut is, qui profligatum bellum haberet, ad comitia Romam rediret; si id facere grauaretur, quod non suae sortis id negotium esset, se quidem facturum quodcumque senatus censuisset; sed etiam atque etiam uiderent ne magis e re publica esset interregnum iniri quam ab se in eo statu relinqui prouinciam. senatus C. Scribonio negotium dedit ut duos legatos ex ordine senatorio mitteret ad L. Cornelium consulem, qui litteras collegae ad senatum missas deferrent ad eum et nuntiarent senatum, ni is ad magistratus subrogandos Romam ueniret, potius quam Q. Minucium a bello integro auocaret interregnum iniri passurum.
[6] About the same time letters from the two consuls were brought: from L. Cornelius about the battle fought at Mutina with the Boii, and from Q. Minucius from Pisae—namely, that the elections were of his lot; but that all things in Liguria were held in such suspension that he could not depart thence without peril to the allies and damage to the republic. If it seemed good to the Fathers, let them send to his colleague that he, who had the war profligate (all but finished), should return to Rome for the elections; if he should be reluctant to do that, because that business was not of his lot, he for his part would do whatever the senate should decree; but they should consider again and again whether it was more to the advantage of the republic that an interregnum be entered upon than that the province be left by him in that condition. The senate assigned the business to C. Scribonius to send two legates from the senatorial order to L. Cornelius the consul, to deliver to him the letters sent by his colleague to the senate and to announce that the senate, unless he should come to Rome to subrogate magistrates, would allow an interregnum to be entered upon rather than call away Q. Minucius from a war still entire.
the legates sent reported that L. Cornelius would come to Rome to hold the elections for the replacement magistrates. Concerning the letter of L. Cornelius, which he had written after the battle with the Boii had been fought, there was a debate in the senate, because the legate M. Claudius had written privately to very many senators that thanks should be given to the Fortune of the Roman People and to the valor of the soldiers because the affair had been well conducted; by the consul’s agency both a number of soldiers had been lost, and the enemy’s army—an opportunity for whose destruction had been offered—had slipped away. More soldiers had perished for this reason: that those from the reserves, who should bring help to those laboring, had come up too slowly; the enemies had been let slip from the hands because to the legionary cavalry both the signal had been given too late and it had not been permitted to pursue the fleeing.
[7] De ea re nihil temere decerni placuit; ad frequentiores consultatio dilata est. instabat enim cura alia, quod ciuitas faenore laborabat et quod, cum multis faenebribus legibus constricta auaritia esset, uia fraudis inita erat ut in socios, qui non tenerentur iis legibus, nomina transcriberent; ita libero faenore obruebantur debitores. cuius coercendi cum ratio quaereretur, diem finiri placuit Feralia quae proxime fuissent, ut qui post eam diem socii ciuibus Romanis credidissent pecunias profiterentur, et ex ea die pecuniae creditae quibus debitor uellet legibus ius creditori diceretur.
[7] About that matter it pleased them that nothing be decreed rashly; the consultation was deferred to a fuller meeting. For another concern was pressing, because the State was laboring under usury, and because, although avarice had been constrained by many usury-laws, a path of fraud had been entered upon, namely that they transferred the accounts into the names of the allies, who were not bound by those laws; thus the debtors were overwhelmed by free (unrestricted) usury. And when a method of coercing this was being sought, it was resolved to fix the day at the Feralia which had most recently been, so that the allies who after that day had lent monies to Roman citizens should declare them, and from that day the right should be pronounced for the creditor, for monies loaned, under whatever laws the debtor should wish.
Then, after the magnitude of the indebtedness contracted through this fraud had been uncovered by the professions, Marcus Sempronius, tribune of the plebs, by the authority of the Fathers, put the question to the plebs, and the plebs enacted that for money loaned to the allies and to those of the Latin name the right should be the same as with Roman citizens.
Haec in Italia domi militiaeque acta. in Hispania nequaquam tantum belli fuit quantum auxerat fama. C. Flaminius in citeriore Hispania oppidum Illuciam in Oretanis cepit, deinde in hibernacula milites deduxit; et per hiemem proelia aliquot nulla memoria digna aduersus latronum magis quam hostium excursiones, uario tamen euentu nec sine militum iactura sunt facta.
These things in Italy were done at home and in the field. in Spain there was by no means so much war as report had magnified. C. Flaminius in Hither Spain took the town Illucia among the Oretani, then led the soldiers into winter quarters; and throughout the winter several battles, worthy of no remembrance, were fought against raids of brigands rather than of enemies, yet with varied outcome and not without loss of soldiers.
[8] Cum haec in Hispania gerebantur, comitiorum iam appetebat dies. itaque L. Cornelius consul relicto ad exercitum M. Claudio legato Romam uenit. is in senatu cum de rebus ab se gestis disseruisset quoque statu prouincia esset, questus est cum patribus conscriptis quod tanto bello una secunda pugna tam feliciter perfecto non esset habitus diis immortalibus honos; postulauit deinde, supplicationem simul triumphumque decernerent.
[8] While these things were being transacted in Spain, the day of the comitia was already approaching. And so Lucius Cornelius, the consul, leaving Marcus Claudius as legate with the army, came to Rome. He, in the senate, after he had discoursed about the matters accomplished by himself and in what condition the province was, complained to the Conscript Fathers that in so great a war, so happily brought to completion by a single favorable battle, no honor had been paid to the immortal gods; then he requested that they decree a supplication and likewise a triumph.
Before, however, the motion was made, Q. Metellus, who had been consul and dictator, said that at the same time letters had been brought—both from the consul L. Cornelius to the senate and from M. Marcellus to a large part of the senators—at odds with one another, and that for that reason the deliberation had been deferred, so that it might be argued with the authors of those letters present. Therefore he had expected that the consul, who knew that something had been written by his legate against him, when he himself had to come, would bring him down with him to Rome, since it was even more proper that the army be handed over to Ti. Sempronius, who held imperium, than to a legate: now it seemed that the man who, <if> he should say in person what he had written, could be accused face to face and, if he brought anything unfounded, could be refuted, had been removed on purpose, until the truth should be tested to a clear issue; and so he judged that nothing of the things which the consul was demanding should be decreed for the present. When he persisted none the less in proposing that supplications be decreed and that it be permitted him, as triumphator, to be carried in triumph into the city, the tribunes of the plebs M. and C. Titinius said that they would intercede if a senatorial decree were made about that matter.
[9] Censores erant priore anno creati Sex. Aelius Paetus et C. Cornelius Cethegus. Cornelius lustrum condidit.
[9] The censors had been elected in the previous year, Sex. Aelius Paetus and C. Cornelius Cethegus. Cornelius closed the lustrum.
the heads of citizens were registered as 143,704. there were vast waters that year, and the Tiber inundated the level places of the city; around the Flumentane Gate certain things even collapsed into ruins. and the Caelimontane Gate was struck by lightning, and the wall around was struck from the sky in many places; and at Aricia and at Lanuvium and on the Aventine it rained stones; and it was reported from Capua that a huge swarm of wasps had flown into the forum and settled in the temple of Mars: that they, collected with care, were burned with fire.
On account of these prodigies the decemvirs were ordered to consult the books, and a nine-day sacred rite was performed and a supplication was proclaimed, and the city was lustrated. In those same days Marcus Porcius Cato dedicated a small shrine of the Virgin Victory near the temple of Victory, two years after he had vowed it. In the same year the triumvirs led out a Latin colony to Castrum Frentinum—Aulus Manlius Volso, Lucius Apustius Fullo, Quintus Aelius Tubero—under whose law it was established.
three thousand infantry went, three hundred cavalry, a meager number in proportion to the abundance of the land. There could be given thirty iugera to the infantry, sixty to the cavalry: at Apustius’ urging a third part of the land was taken off, so that thereafter, if they wished, they might enroll new colonists; the infantry received twenty iugera, the cavalry forty.
[10] In exitu iam annus erat, et ambitio magis quam unquam alias exarserat consularibus comitiis. multi et potentes petebant patricii plebeique: P. Cornelius Cn. filius Scipio, qui ex Hispania prouincia nuper decesserat magnis rebus gestis, et L. Quinctius Flamininus, qui classi in Graecia praefuerat, et Cn. Manlius Uolso, hi patricii; plebei autem C. Laelius Cn. Domitius C. Liuius Salinator M'. Acilius. sed omnium oculi in Quinctium Corneliumque coniecti; nam et in unum locum petebant patricii ambo et rei militaris gloria recens utrumque commendabat.
[10] The year was now at its exit, and canvassing burned more than ever before at the consular elections. Many and powerful men were standing, patricians and plebeians: P. Cornelius, son of Cn., Scipio, who had lately departed from the province of Spain with great deeds achieved; and L. Quinctius Flamininus, who had been in command of the fleet in Greece; and Cn. Manlius Volso—these, patricians; but the plebeians were C. Laelius, Cn. Domitius, C. Livius Salinator, M’. Acilius. But the eyes of all were directed upon Quinctius and Cornelius; for both patricians were seeking for one place, and the fresh glory of military affairs commended each.
But, before all, the contest was being inflamed by the brothers of the candidates, two most illustrious imperators of their age. The gloria of Scipio was greater—and the greater it was, by so much the nearer to invidia; Quinctius’s was more recent, as he had triumphed in that year. There was added the fact that the one had been for now nearly the tenth year continually in the eyes of men—a thing which, by sheer satiety, makes great men less to be revered: he had been consul a second time after Hannibal was vanquished, and censor as well; in Quinctius everything on the side of favor was new and fresh—he had neither asked anything of the people after his triumph nor attained anything.
he said that he was canvassing on behalf of a brother-german, not a paternal cousin, on behalf of a legate and a participant in the administration of the war: that he had conducted the affair on land, his brother at sea. By these points he prevailed, that preference be given over the candidate whom his brother Africanus was sponsoring, whom the Cornelian gens—with a Cornelius as consul holding the elections—favored, and for whom there was so great a prejudgment of the senate: the man judged the best in the commonwealth to receive the Idaean Mother, coming from Pessinus, into the city.
L. Quinctius et Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus consules facti: adeo ne in plebeio quidem consule, cum pro C. Laelio niteretur, Africanus ualuit. postero die praetores creati L. Scribonius Libo M. Fuluius Centumalus A. Atilius Serranus M. Baebius Tamphilus L. Ualerius Tappo Q. Salonius Sarra. aedilitas insignis eo anno fuit M. Aemilii Lepidi et L. Aemilii Pauli: multos pecuarios damnarunt; ex ea pecunia clupea inaurata in fastigio Iouis aedis posuerunt, porticum unam extra portam Trigeminam, emporio ad Tiberim adiecto, alteram ab porta Fontinali ad Martis aram qua in Campum iter esset perduxerunt.
L. Quinctius and Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus were made consuls: so much so that not even in the case of a plebeian consul, though he was striving on behalf of C. Laelius, did Africanus prevail. On the following day the praetors were elected: L. Scribonius Libo, M. Fulvius Centumalus, A. Atilius Serranus, M. Baebius Tamphilus, L. Valerius Tappo, Q. Salonius Sarra. The aedileship was remarkable that year, that of M. Aemilius Lepidus and L. Aemilius Paulus: they condemned many cattle‑men; from that money they set up gilded shields on the pediment of the Temple of Jupiter; they carried one portico outside the Porta Trigemina, with the emporium by the Tiber added, and another they carried through from the Porta Fontinalis to the Altar of Mars, where the way into the Campus led.
[11] Diu nihil in Liguribus dignum memoria gestum erat: extremo eius anni bis in magnum periculum res adducta est; nam et castra consulis oppugnata aegre sunt defensa et non ita multo post per saltum angustum cum duceretur agmen Romanum, ipsas fauces exercitus Ligurum insedit. qua cum exitus non pateret, conuerso agmine redire institit consul. et ab tergo fauces saltus occupatae a parte hostium erant Caudinaeque cladis memoria non animis modo sed prope oculis obuersabatur.
[11] For a long time nothing had been done among the Ligurians worthy of memory: at the end of that year the situation was twice brought into great peril; for the consul’s camp, having been assaulted, was defended with difficulty, and not much later, when the Roman column was being led through a narrow pass, the army of the Ligurians occupied the very jaws of it. Since no exit lay open there, the consul, the column reversed, set himself to return. And the jaws of the pass at the rear too had been seized by a party of the enemy, and the memory of the Caudine disaster was presenting itself not only to their minds but almost to their eyes.
He had among the auxiliaries nearly 800 Numidian horsemen. Their prefect promised the consul that he would sally out with his men on whichever side he wished, only that he should say which side was more thickly set with villages: upon them he would make an assault and would do nothing before casting flame upon the roofs, so that that terror might compel the Ligurians to withdraw from the pass which they were besieging and to run about to bring aid to their own. The consul, highly commending him, loads him with the hope of rewards.
The Numidians mounted their horses and began to ride about before the enemy pickets, challenging no one. Nothing, at first aspect, was more contemptible: the horses and the men were rather small and slender; the horseman was ungirded and unarmed, except that he carried javelins with him; the horses were without bridles; their very running was misshapen, with stiff neck and head stretched out as they ran. Deliberately augmenting this contempt, they would slip down from their horses and, by way of mockery, make themselves a spectacle.
and so those who at first had been intent and prepared at their stations if they were provoked, now, unarmed and sitting, the greater part were looking on. The Numidians would ride up, then retreat, but gradually be carried nearer to the pass, as if their horses, powerless to be controlled, were sweeping them along against their will. Finally, with spurs driven in, they burst through the very middle of the enemy’s stations, and, borne out into a broader field, they set ablaze all the roofs (dwellings) near the road.
then they bring fire upon the nearest village, and with iron and flame they utterly devastate everything. the smoke was first seen; then the clamor of the panic‑stricken in the villages was heard; finally the elders and the boys, fleeing, made a tumult in the camp. and so, without counsel, without command, each man ran to protect his own; and in a moment of time the camp had been abandoned, and the consul, freed from the siege, reached the place to which he had intended.
[12] Sed neque Boi neque Hispani, cum quibus eo anno bellatum erat, tam inimice infesti erant Romanis quam Aetolorum gens. ii post deportatos ex Graecia exercitus primo in spe fuerant et Antiochum in uacuam Europae possessionem uenturum nec Philippum aut Nabim quieturos. ubi nihil usquam moueri uiderunt, agitandum aliquid miscendumque rati ne cunctando senescerent consilia, concilium Naupactum indixerunt.
[12] But neither the Boii nor the Spaniards, with whom war had been waged that year, were so inimically hostile to the Romans as the nation of the Aetolians. They, after the armies were carried back from Greece, were at first in hope that Antiochus would come into empty possession of Europe, and that neither Philip nor Nabis would keep quiet. When they saw that nothing was being stirred anywhere, thinking that something must be agitated and thrown into commotion, lest by delaying their counsels should grow old, they proclaimed an assembly at Naupactus.
there Thoas, their praetor, after lamenting the injuries of the Romans and the state of Aetolia—namely that, of all the nations and cities of Greece, they were the most dishonored after that victory of which they themselves had been the cause—judged that legates should be sent around to the kings, who should not only test their spirits but also move each by his own goads to war against the Romans. Damocritus was sent to Nabis, Nicander to Philip, Dicaearchus, the praetor’s brother, to Antiochus. to the Lacedaemonian tyrant Damocritus was to say that, the maritime cities having been taken away, his tyranny had been enervated: from there he had had soldiers, from there ships and naval allies; that, shut up almost within his own walls, he sees the Achaeans dominating in the Peloponnese; that he would never have an occasion for recovering what was his if he let pass that which was then at hand.
[and] that no Roman army was in Greece, nor would the Romans, [because of] Gytheum or other maritime Laconians, consider there a cause worthy why they should send legions again across into Greece. These things were being said to incite the tyrant’s spirit, so that, when Antiochus had crossed into Greece, with a consciousness of Roman friendship violated through the injuries to the allies he might join himself with Antiochus. And Nicander was urging on Philip with a not dissimilar oration; the material of the oration was even greater, in proportion as the king had been pulled down from a higher eminence than the tyrant, and as more things had been taken away.
in addition, the ancient fame of the kings of Macedonia and the world traversed by the victories of that nation were being recounted: and that he was bringing a counsel safe either in the undertaking or in the outcome; for he was neither advising that Philip move before Antiochus with his army should have crossed into Greece, and—he who without Antiochus had for so long sustained war against the Romans and the Aetolians—once Antiochus were joined to him, with the Aetolians as allies, who at that time had been more grievous foes than the Romans, by what forces at last could the Romans resist? he added about the leader Hannibal, an enemy born against the Romans, who had slain more both of their leaders and their soldiers than those who survived. these things Nicander to Philip; other things Dicaearchus to Antiochus; and first of all to say that the spoils from Philip were the Romans’, the victory the Aetolians’; and that none other than the Aetolians had given the Romans access into Greece and had supplied the same forces for conquering; then how great forces of foot and horse they would be going to provide to Antiochus for the war, which places for land forces, which harbors for maritime forces.
[13] Et reges tamen aut non moti aut tardius moti sunt. Nabis extemplo circa omnes maritimos uicos dimisit ad seditiones in iis miscendas et alios principum donis ad suam causam perduxit, alios pertinaciter in societate Romana manentes occidit. Achaeis omnium maritimorum Laconum tuendorum a T. Quinctio cura mandata erat.
[13] And yet the kings were either not moved or moved more slowly. Nabis forthwith sent around to all the maritime villages to foment seditions in them, and some of the principals he brought over to his cause with gifts, others, pertinaciously remaining in the Roman alliance, he put to death. To the Achaeans the care of protecting all the maritime Laconians had been entrusted by T. Quinctius.
Antiochus rex, ea hieme Raphiae in Phoenice Ptolomaeo regi Aegypti filia in matrimonium data, cum Antiochiam se recepisset, per Ciliciam Tauro monte superato extremo iam hiemis Ephesum peruenit. inde principio ueris, Antiocho filio misso in Syriam ad custodiam ultimarum partium regni, ne quid absente se ab tergo moueretur, ipse cum omnibus terrestribus copiis ad Pisidas, qui circa Sidam incolunt, oppugnandos est profectus. eo tempore legati Romani P. Sulpicius et P. Uillius, qui ad Antiochum, sicut ante dictum est, missi erant, iussi prius Eumenem adire Elaeam uenere; inde Pergamum—ibi regia Eumenis fuit—escenderunt.
King Antiochus, in that winter at Raphia in Phoenicia, after giving his daughter in marriage to Ptolemy, king of Egypt, when he had returned to Antioch, passed through Cilicia and, Mount Taurus having been crossed, at the very end of winter arrived at Ephesus. From there, at the beginning of spring, his son Antiochus having been sent into Syria for the guarding of the furthest parts of the kingdom, lest anything be stirred up behind his back in his absence, he himself with all the land forces set out to attack the Pisidians who dwell around Side. At that time the Roman envoys Publius Sulpicius and Publius Villius, who, as was said before, had been sent to Antiochus, ordered first to approach Eumenes, came to Elaea; thence they ascended to Pergamum—there was the royal residence of Eumenes.
Desirous of war against Antiochus was Eumenes, believing that, if there were peace, he would have a burdensome neighbor, a king so much more powerful; but that the same man, if war were stirred, would be no more a match for the Romans than Philip had been, and that he would either be utterly removed, or, if peace were given to the vanquished, many things taken from him would accrue to himself, so that thereafter he could easily protect himself from him without any Roman aid: even if anything adverse were going to befall, it was better for the Roman allies to undergo whatever fortune than for him alone either to endure the dominion of Antiochus or, refusing, to be compelled by force and arms. On account of these things, in proportion as he had weight by authority and by counsel, he incited the Romans to war.
[14] Sulpicius aeger Pergami substitit; Uillius cum Pisidiae bello occupatum esse regem audisset, Ephesum profectus, dum paucos ibi moratur dies, dedit operam ut cum Hannibale, qui tum ibi forte erat, saepe congrederetur, ut animum eius temptaret et, si qua posset, metum demeret periculi quicquam ei ab Romanis esse. iis conloquiis aliud quidem actum nihil est, secutum tamen sua sponte est, uelut consilio petitum esset, ut uilior ob ea regi Hannibal et suspectior ad omnia fieret.
[14] Sulpicius, ill, stayed at Pergamum; Villius, when he had heard that the king was occupied with a war in Pisidia, set out for Ephesus, and while he tarried there for a few days, he took pains to meet often with Hannibal, who then happened by chance to be there, in order to test his disposition and, if in any way he could, to remove his fear that there was any danger to him from the Romans. By those colloquies indeed nothing else was accomplished; yet it followed of its own accord, as though it had been aimed at by counsel, that on account of these things Hannibal became of less worth to the king and more suspect in everything.
Claudius, secutus Graecos Acilianos libros, P. Africanum in ea fuisse legatione tradit eumque Ephesi conlocutum cum Hannibale, et sermonem unum etiam refert: quaerenti Africano quem fuisse maximum imperatorem Hannibal crederet, respondisse Alexandrum Macedonum regem, quod parua manu innumerabiles exercitus fudisset quod<que> ultimas oras, quas uisere supra spem humanam esset, peragrasset. quaerenti deinde quem secundum poneret, Pyrrhum dixisse: castra metari primum docuisse, ad hoc neminem elegantius loca cepisse, praesidia disposuisse; artem etiam conciliandi sibi homines eam habuisse ut Italicae gentes regis externi quam populi Romani, tam diu principis in ea terra, imperium esse mallent. exsequenti quem tertium duceret, haud dubie semet ipsum dixisse.
Claudius, following the Greek books of Acilianus, relates that P. Africanus was on that embassy and that he conferred with Hannibal at Ephesus, and he even reports one conversation: when Africanus asked whom Hannibal believed to have been the greatest commander, he replied, “Alexander, king of the Macedonians,” because with a small force he had routed innumerable armies and had traversed the farthest shores, which to visit would be beyond human hope. Then, when he asked whom he would place second, he said, “Pyrrhus”: that he first taught how to lay out a camp, and besides that no one had taken positions more elegantly or disposed garrisons more aptly; he also had such an art of conciliating men to himself that the Italian peoples preferred the imperium of a foreign king to that of the Roman people, so long the leading power in that land. As he went on to ask whom he would reckon third, he said, without doubt, “himself.”
then a smile arose for Scipio, and he added, 'What, pray, would you say if you had conquered me?' 'Then indeed,' he says, 'I would place myself before Alexander and before Pyrrhus and before all the other commanders.' And the reply, entangled with Punic cunning, and an unanticipated kind of assentation, moved Scipio, because he had set him apart from the herd of generals as if inestimable.
[15] Uillius ab Epheso Apameam processit. eo et Antiochus audito legatorum Romanorum aduentu occurrit. Apameae congressis disceptatio eadem ferme fuit quae Romae inter Quinctium et legatos regis fuerat.
[15] Villius proceeded from Ephesus to Apamea. There too Antiochus, on hearing of the arrival of the Roman legates, came to meet him. When they met at Apamea, the disputation was almost the same as that which had been at Rome between Quinctius and the king’s envoys.
The reported death of Antiochus, the king’s son, whom I said a little before had been sent into Syria, broke off the conferences. There was great mourning in the royal palace and a great longing for that young man; for he had already given a specimen of himself such that, if a longer life had fallen to him, it would have appeared that there was in him the disposition of a great and just king. And the dearer and more acceptable he was to all, by so much the more suspect was his death: it was believed that his father, thinking him a formidable successor pressing upon his own old age, had removed him by poison through certain eunuchs, men acceptable to kings for the ministries of such crimes.
They were adding that reason also to the clandestine crime: that he had given Lysimachia to his son Seleucus; for Antiochus he had not had any similar seat to give, by which he might also send him far from himself under the pretext of honor. Nevertheless the appearance of great mourning held the royal palace for several days, and the Roman legate, lest he should obtrude himself inopportunely at an alien time, withdrew to Pergamum; the king returns to Ephesus, the war which he had begun being set aside. There, with the palace closed on account of mourning, he agitated secret counsels with a certain Minnio, who was chief of his friends.
Minnio, ignorant of all externals and estimating the king’s forces from the deeds accomplished in Syria or Asia, believed that Antiochus was superior not only in the cause, since the Romans were demanding nothing equitable, but that he would also prevail in war. As the king was shunning a disputation with the legates—either because he had already found it less prosperous, or because he was confounded by recent grief—Minnio, professing that he would speak what pertained to the case, persuaded him that the legates should be summoned from Pergamum.
[16] Iam conualuerat Sulpicius; itaque ambo Ephesum uenerunt. rex a Minnione excusatus et absente eo agi res coepta est. ibi praeparata oratione Minnio 'specioso titulo' inquit 'uti uos, Romani, Graecarum ciuitatium liberandarum uideo; sed facta uestra orationi non conueniunt, et aliud Antiocho iuris statuitis, alio ipsi utimini.
[16] Sulpicius had now convalesced; and so both came to Ephesus. The king having been excused by Minnio, and with him absent, the matter began to be conducted. There, with an oration prepared beforehand, Minnio said: 'I see you, Romans, make use of the “specious title” of liberating the Greek cities; but your deeds do not accord with your oration, and you establish one right for Antiochus, while you employ another for yourselves.'
for who, indeed, are more Greek—the Smyrnaeans and the Lampsacenes—than the Neapolitans and the Rheginians and the Tarentines, from whom you exact stipend, from whom you demand ships by treaty? why do you send a praetor to Syracuse and to the other Greek cities of Sicily every year with imperium and with rods and axes? you can assuredly say nothing else than that, once they were overpowered by arms, you imposed these laws upon them.
Receive from Antiochus the same case concerning Smyrna, Lampsacus, and the communities which are in Ionia or Aeolis. He reclaims, as to ancient right, those which were conquered in war by his ancestors and made tributary and tax-paying. Therefore I would wish that to these points an answer be returned to him, if the matter is adjudicated on equal terms and a cause for war is not being sought.' To these Sulpicius said, 'Antiochus acted modestly, who, if there were not other things to be said for his cause, preferred that anyone should say those points rather than himself.'
For what similarity does the case of those cities that you have compared possess? From the Rhegines and the Neapolitans and the Tarentines, ever since they came into our power, with one and perpetual tenor of law, always exercised, never intermitted, we exact what they owe by treaty. Can you at last say that, just as those peoples have not altered the treaty, neither by themselves nor through any other, so the cities of Asia, once they came into the power of the ancestors of Antiochus, have remained in the perpetual possession of your kingdom, and that not some of them were in the power of Philip, others in that of Ptolemy, and others for many years, with no one disputing, exercised liberty?
for if the fact that they once served, pressed by the iniquity of the times, will after so many centuries create a right of asserting them into servitude, what is lacking but that nothing has been accomplished by us in that we freed Greece from Philip, and that his descendants reclaim Corinth, Chalcis, Demetrias, and the whole nation of the Thessalians? but why am I pleading the cause of the cities, which it is more equitable that both we and the king himself learn from their own pleading?'
[17] Vocari deinde ciuitatium legationes iussit, praeparatas iam ante et instructas ab Eumene, qui quantumcumque uirium Antiocho decessisset, suo id accessurum regno ducebat. admissi plures, dum suas quisque nunc querellas, nunc postulationes inserit et aequa iniquis miscent, ex disceptatione altercationem fecerunt. itaque nec remissa ulla re nec impetrata, aeque ac uenerant omnium incerti legati Romam redierunt.
[17] Then he ordered the embassies of the cities to be summoned, already prepared beforehand and instructed by Eumenes, who reckoned that whatever share of strength had departed from Antiochus would accrue to his own kingdom. Many were admitted; while each man now inserts his complaints, now his demands, and mixes the just with the unjust, out of a disceptation they made an altercation. And so, with nothing remitted and nothing obtained, the envoys, as uncertain as when they had come, returned to Rome.
After dismissing them, the king held a council about the Roman war. There, one spoke more fiercely than another, since the harsher each man had spoken against the Romans, by so much the greater was his hope of favor; one inveighed against the arrogance of the demanders, as though, Nabis having been conquered, they were in like manner imposing laws upon Antiochus, the greatest of the kings of Asia: although to Nabis, nevertheless, his dominion in his own country and native Lacedaemon had been restored; while to Antiochus it seemed unworthy if Smyrna and Lampsacus should do what was commanded. Others said that for so great a king those cities were small and scarcely worth saying as causes of war, but that the beginning of unjust commanding is always made from small things—unless they believed that the Persians, when they asked for earth and water from the Lacedaemonians, were in need of a clod of earth and a draught of water. By a similar testing, the Romans were proceeding about two cities, and other cities, as soon as they saw two have cast off the yoke, would defect to the people-liberator.
[18] Alexander Acarnan in consilio erat: Philippi quondam amicus, nuper relicto eo secutus opulentiorem regiam Antiochi et, tamquam peritus Graeciae nec ignarus Romanorum, in eum gradum amicitiae regis ut consiliis quoque arcanis interesset acceptus erat. is tamquam non utrum bellandum esset necne consuleretur sed ubi et qua ratione bellum gereretur, uictoriam se haud dubiam proponere animo adfirmabat, si in Europam transisset rex et in aliqua Graeciae parte sedem bello cepisset: iam primum Aetolos, qui umbilicum Graeciae incolerent, in armis eum inuenturum, antesignanos ad asperrima quaeque belli paratos; in duobus uelut cornibus Graeciae Nabim a Peloponneso concitaturum omnia, repetentem Argiuorum urbem, repetentem maritimas ciuitates quibus eum depulsum Romani Lacedaemonis muris inclusissent, a Macedonia Philippum, ubi primum bellicum cani audisset, arma capturum; nosse se spiritus eius, nosse animum; scire ferarum modo quae claustris aut uinculis teneantur, ingentes iam diu iras eum in pectore uoluere. meminisse etiam se quotiens in bello precari omnes deos solitus sit ut Antiochum sibi darent adiutorem; cuius uoti si compos nunc fiat, nullam moram rebellandi facturum.
[18] Alexander the Acarnanian was in the council: once a friend of Philip, he had lately, with Philip left behind, followed the more opulent royal court of Antiochus and, as one skilled in matters Greek and not ignorant of the Romans, had been received into such a degree of the king’s friendship that he even participated in arcane counsels. He, as if he were being consulted not whether war should be waged or not, but where and by what method war should be conducted, affirmed that he set before his mind a victory not to be doubted, if the king should cross into Europe and seize a seat for the war in some part of Greece: first, that he would find the Aetolians, who inhabit the navel of Greece, in arms, the vanguard ready for each and every most arduous task of war; that, on the two, as it were, horns of Greece, Nabis from the Peloponnese would stir up everything, reclaiming the city of the Argives, reclaiming the maritime cities from which, driven out, the Romans had enclosed him within the walls of Lacedaemon, and that from Macedonia Philip, as soon as he should hear the war-trumpet sounded, would take up arms; that he knew his spirit, knew his mind; that he knew that, in the manner of wild beasts which are held by bars or chains, he had long been rolling vast angers in his breast. He also remembered how often in the war he had been accustomed to pray to all the gods that they might give Antiochus to him as a helper; if now he should obtain the fulfillment of that vow, he would make no delay in rebelling.
[19] Hannibal non adhibitus est in consilium, propter conloquia cum Uillio suspectus regi et in nullo postea honore habitus. primo eam contumeliam tacitus tulit; deinde melius esse ratus et percunctari causam repentinae alienationis et purgare se, tempore apto quaesita simpliciter iracundiae causa auditaque 'pater Hamilcar' inquit, 'Antioche, paruum admodum me, cum sacrificaret, altaribus admotum iureiurando adegit nunquam amicum fore populi Romani. sub hoc sacramento sex et triginta annos militaui, hoc me in pace patria mea expulit, hoc patria extorrem in tuam regiam adduxit: hoc duce, si tu spem meam destitueris, ubicumque uires, ubi arma esse sciam ueniam, toto orbe terrarum quaerens aliquos Romanis hostes.
[19] Hannibal was not admitted to the council, being suspected by the king on account of his conversations with Villius, and thereafter was held in no honor. At first he bore that affront in silence; then, thinking it better both to inquire into the cause of the sudden alienation and to clear himself, when a suitable time had been found and the cause of the anger had been plainly heard, he said: 'Antiochus, my father Hamilcar, when he was sacrificing, brought me, a very small boy, up to the altars and bound me by an oath never to be a friend of the Roman people. Under this oath I have served for thirty-six years; this drove me from my fatherland in time of peace; this, as an exile from my country, led me to your royal court. With this as my leader, if you should fail my hope, wherever I know strength to be, wherever I know arms to be, I will come, seeking through the whole orb of the earth some enemies of the Romans.'
accordingly, when you will be considering the Roman war, have Hannibal among your foremost friends; if any matter should compel you to peace, for that counsel seek another with whom you may deliberate.' not only did such an oration move the king, but it also reconciled him to Hannibal. from the council they thus departed, with the result that war should be prosecuted.
[20] Romae destinabant quidem sermonibus hostem Antiochum, sed nihildum ad id bellum praeter animos parabant. consulibus ambobus Italia prouincia decreta est, ita ut inter se compararent sortirenturue uter comitiis eius anni praeesset: ad utrum ea non pertineret cura, ut paratus esset si quo eum extra Italiam opus esset ducere legiones. huic consuli permissum ut duas legiones scriberet nouas et socium nominis Latini uiginti milia et equites octingentos.
[20] At Rome they were indeed designating Antiochus as the enemy in their discourses, but as yet they were preparing nothing for that war beyond their spirits. To both consuls Italy was decreed as their province, such that they should between themselves arrange or draw lots as to which should preside over the elections of that year; to the other, to whom that responsibility did not pertain, that he should be ready, if there were need, to lead the legions whithersoever outside Italy. To this consul it was permitted to enroll two new legions, and twenty thousand of the allies of the Latin name, and eight hundred cavalry.
For the other consul two legions were decreed, those which Lucius Cornelius, consul of the previous year, had had; and from the same army, of the allies and of the Latin name, fifteen thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry. For Quintus Minucius the imperium was prorogued with the army which he had among the Ligurians; added by way of supplement that four thousand Roman infantry should be enrolled, one hundred and fifty cavalry, and that upon the allies from the same source there be imposed five thousand infantry, two hundred and fifty cavalry. To Gnaeus Domitius there fell, outside Italy, as his province, whatever the senate had determined; to Lucius Quinctius, Gaul and the holding of the elections.
then the praetors cast lots for their provinces: M. Fulvius Centumalus the urban jurisdiction, L. Scribonius Libo the foreign jurisdiction, L. Valerius Tappo Sicily, Q. Salonius Sarra Sardinia, M. Baebius Tamphilus Hither Spain, A. Atilius Serranus Farther Spain. but for these two the provinces were exchanged, first by a decree of the senate, then also by a plebiscite: to Atilius the fleet and Macedonia were decreed, to Baebius Bruttium. for Flaminius and Fulvius in the Spains their imperium was prolonged.
Atilius was decreed two legions in Bruttium, the same which in the former year had been the urban legions, and that from the allies likewise fifteen thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry be levied. Baebius Tamphilus was ordered to make thirty quinquereme ships and to launch from the dockyards the old vessels, if any were useful, and to enroll naval allies; and the consuls were commanded to give him two thousand infantry of the allies and of the Latin name, and one thousand Roman infantry. These two praetors and two armies, terrestrial and naval, were said to be being prepared against Nabis, now openly assaulting the allies of the Roman People; however, the legates sent to Antiochus were being awaited, and before they returned the senate had forbidden the consul Cn. Domitius to depart from the city.
[21] Praetoribus Fuluio et Scribonio, quibus ut ius dicerent Romae prouincia erat, negotium datum ut praeter eam classem cui Baebius praefuturus erat centum quinqueremes pararent.
[21] To the praetors Fulvius and Scribonius, whose province was to pronounce the law at Rome, a commission was given to prepare, besides that fleet over which Baebius was to hold command, one hundred quinqueremes.
Priusquam consul praetoresque in prouincias proficiscerentur, supplicatio fuit prodigiorum causa. capram sex haedos uno fetu edidisse ex Piceno nuntiatum est et Arreti puerum natum unimanum, Amiterni terra pluuisse, Formiis portam murumque de caelo tacta et, quod maxime terrebat, consulis Cn. Domiti bouem locutum 'Roma, caue tibi'. ceterorum prodigiorum causa supplicatum est: bouem cum cura seruari alique haruspices iusserunt. Tiberis infestiore quam priore <anno> impetu inlatus urbi duos pontes, aedificia multa maxime circa Flumentanam portam euertit.
Before the consul and the praetors set out to their provinces, a supplication was held on account of prodigies. From Picenum it was reported that a she-goat had given birth to six kids in one litter, and at Arretium a boy was born one-handed; at Amiternum it rained earth; at Formiae a gate and a wall were struck from the sky; and, what most terrified, an ox belonging to the consul Gnaeus Domitius spoke: “Rome, beware for yourself.” On account of the other prodigies supplication was made; as for the ox, they ordered that it be kept with care, and that haruspices be consulted. The Tiber, borne against the city with a more hostile rush than in the previous
Priusquam L. Quinctius consul in prouinciam perueniret, Q. Minucius in agro Pisano cum Liguribus signis conlatis pugnauit: nouem milia hostium occidit, ceteros fusos fugatosque in castra compulit. ea usque in noctem magno certamine oppugnata defensaque sunt. nocte clam profecti Ligures, prima luce uacua castra Romanus inuasit; praedae minus inuentum est, quod subinde spolia agrorum capta domos mittebant.
Before L. Quinctius the consul could arrive in the province, Q. Minucius in the Pisan countryside engaged in pitched battle with the Ligurians: he killed nine thousand of the enemy and drove the rest, routed and put to flight, into their camp. That was assailed and defended with great struggle right up to nightfall. In the night the Ligurians set out secretly; at first light the Roman seized the empty camp; less booty was found, because they were continually sending the spoils seized from the fields to their homes.
[22] Sub idem tempus legati ab regibus Romam reuerterunt. qui cum nihil quod satis maturam causam belli haberet nisi aduersus Lacedaemonium tyrannum adtulissent, quem et Achaei legati nuntiabant contra foedus maritimam oram Laconum oppugnare, Atilius praetor cum classe missus in Graeciam est ad tuendos socios. consules, quando nihil ab Antiocho instaret, proficisci ambo in prouincias placuit.
[22] At about the same time the envoys from the kings returned to Rome. Since they had brought nothing that supplied a sufficiently mature cause of war except against the Lacedaemonian tyrant—whom the Achaean envoys likewise reported to be attacking the maritime coast of the Laconians contrary to the treaty—the praetor Atilius was sent with the fleet into Greece to protect the allies. As nothing was pressing from Antiochus, it was resolved that both consuls should set out to their provinces.
Domitius came from Ariminum by the nearest route; Quinctius came through the Ligurians into the Boii. The two columns of the consuls, in different directions, far and wide devastated the enemy’s territory. First a few of their horsemen with their prefects, then the entire senate, and finally those in whom there was some fortune or dignity—about 1,500—deserted to the consuls.
Et in utraque Hispania eo anno res prospere gestae; nam et C. Flaminius oppidum Licabrum munitum opulentumque uineis expugnauit et nobilem regulum Corribilonem uiuum cepit, et M. Fuluius proconsul cum duobus exercitibus hostium duo secunda proelia fecit, oppida duo Hispanorum, Uesceliam Helonemque, et castella multa expugnauit; alia uoluntate ad eum defecerunt. tum in Oretanos progressus et ibi duobus potitus oppidis, Noliba et Cusibi, ad Tagum amnem ire pergit. Toletum ibi parua urbs erat, sed loco munito.
And in both Spains that year affairs were conducted prosperously; for both C. Flaminius took by storm the town of Licabrum, fortified and opulent, by means of vineae (siege‑sheds), and captured alive the noble petty‑king Corribilo, and M. Fulvius the proconsul fought two successful battles against two armies of the enemy, took by storm two towns of the Spaniards, Vescelia and Helon, and many forts; others defected to him of their own will. Then, having advanced among the Oretani and there having gained possession of two towns, Noliba and Cusibi, he proceeds to go to the river Tagus. There Toledo was a small city, but in a fortified position.
[23] Ceterum eo tempore minus ea bella quae gerebantur curae patribus erant quam expectatio nondum coepti cum Antiocho belli. nam etsi per legatos identidem omnia explorabantur, tamen rumores temere sine ullis auctoribus orti multa falsa ueris miscebant; inter quae allatum erat, cum in Aetoliam uenisset Antiochus, extemplo classem eum in Siciliam missurum. itaque senatus, etsi praetorem Atilium cum classe miserat in Graeciam, tamen, quia non copiis modo sed etiam auctoritate opus erat ad tenendos sociorum animos, T. Quinctium et Cn. Octauium et Cn. Seruilium et P. Uillium legatos in Graeciam misit; et ut M. Baebius ex Bruttiis ad Tarentum et Brundisium promoueret legiones decreuit, inde, si res posceret, in Macedoniam traiceret; et ut M. Fuluius praetor classem nauium uiginti mitteret ad tuendam Siciliae oram; et ut cum imperio esset qui classem eam duceret—duxit L. Oppius Salinator, qui priore anno aedilis plebei fuerat—; et ut idem praetor L. Ualerio collegae scriberet periculum esse ne classis regis Antiochi ex Aetolia in Siciliam traiceret, itaque placere senatui ad eum exercitum quem haberet tumultuariorum militum ad duodecim milia et quadringentos equites scriberet, quibus oram maritimam prouinciae qua uergeret in Graeciam tueri posset.
[23] But at that time the wars which were being waged were less a care to the senators than the expectation of the not‑yet‑begun war with Antiochus. For although through legates again and again everything was being explored, nevertheless rumors, rashly arisen without any authorities, were mixing many false things with true; among which it had been reported that, when Antiochus had come into Aetolia, he would immediately send a fleet into Sicily. And so the senate, although it had sent the praetor Atilius with a fleet into Greece, nevertheless, because there was need not only of forces but also of authority for holding fast the minds of the allies, sent T. Quinctius and Cn. Octavius and Cn. Servilius and P. Villius as legates into Greece; and it decreed that M. Baebius should move the legions from Bruttium to Tarentum and Brundisium, and from there, if the situation demanded, should carry them over into Macedonia; and that M. Fulvius the praetor should send a fleet of twenty ships to guard the shore of Sicily; and that there should be one with imperium to lead that fleet—L. Oppius Salinator led it, who in the previous year had been plebeian aedile; and that the same praetor should write to his colleague L. Valerius that there was danger lest the fleet of King Antiochus should be transported from Aetolia into Sicily, and therefore it was the senate’s pleasure that to that army which he had he should enroll to the number of twelve thousand emergency troops and four hundred horsemen, with which he could guard the maritime shore of the province where it looks toward Greece.
the praetor held that levy not from Sicily itself only but also from the surrounding islands, and he strengthened with garrisons all the maritime towns that were turned toward Greece. The arrival of Attalus, brother of Eumenes, added nourishment to the rumors; he announced that King Antiochus had crossed the Hellespont with his army and that the Aetolians were preparing themselves so that at his coming they would be in arms. And thanks were given both to Eumenes in his absence and to Attalus present, and free quarters, a place, and a sumptuous public entertainment were decreed, and gifts were given: two horses, two sets of cavalry arms, and silver vessels of 100 pounds in weight and gold of 20 pounds in weight.
[24] Cum alii atque alii nuntii bellum instare adferrent, ad rem pertinere uisum est consules primo quoque tempore creari. itaque senatus consultum factum est, ut M. Fuluius praetor litteras extemplo ad consulem mitteret quibus certior fieret senatui placere prouincia exercituque tradito legatis Romam reuerti eum et ex itinere praemittere edictum quo comitia consulibus creandis ediceret. paruit iis litteris consul et praemisso edicto Romam uenit.
[24] As one report after another was bringing news that war was imminent, it seemed pertinent to the matter that the consuls be elected at the earliest possible time. And so a senatus consultum was passed, that M. Fulvius the praetor should immediately send letters to the consul to inform him that it was the senate’s pleasure that, the province and the army handed over to the legates, he return to Rome, and from the road send ahead an edict by which he should proclaim the comitia for creating (electing) consuls. The consul obeyed those letters, and, the edict sent on ahead, came to Rome.
Eo quoque anno magna ambitio fuit, quod patricii tres in unum locum petierunt, P. Cornelius Cn. f. Scipio, qui priore anno repulsam tulerat, et L. Cornelius Scipio et Cn. Manlius Uolso. P. Scipioni, ut dilatum uiro tali non negatum honorem appareret, consulatus datus est; additur ei de plebe collega M'. Acilius Glabrio. postero die praetores creati L. Aemilius Paulus M. Aemilius Lepidus M. Iunius Brutus A. Cornelius Mammula C. Liuius et L. Oppius, utrique eorum Salinator cognomen erat; Oppius is erat qui classem uiginti nauium in Siciliam duxerat.
In that year too there was great ambition, because three patricians sought one place: P. Cornelius Cn. f. Scipio, who in the previous year had suffered a repulse, and L. Cornelius Scipio and Cn. Manlius Uolso. To P. Scipio, in order that it might appear that to such a man the honor had been deferred, not denied, the consulship was given; there is added to him from the plebs as colleague M'. Acilius Glabrio. On the next day the praetors were elected: L. Aemilius Paulus, M. Aemilius Lepidus, M. Iunius Brutus, A. Cornelius Mammula, C. Liuius, and L. Oppius; both of them had the cognomen Salinator; this Oppius was the one who had led a fleet of twenty ships into Sicily.
[25] Et populus quidem Romanus ita se ad omnes conatus Antiochi praeparabat: Nabis iam non differebat bellum sed summa ui Gytheum oppugnabat et infestus Achaeis, quod miserant obsessis praesidium, agros eorum uastabat. Achaei non antea ausi capessere bellum quam ab Roma reuertissent legati, ut quid senatui placeret scirent, post reditum legatorum et Sicyonem concilium edixerunt et legatos ad T. Quinctium miserunt qui consilium ab eo peterent. in concilio omnium ad bellum extemplo capessendum inclinatae sententiae erant; litterae T. Quincti cunctationem iniecerunt, quibus auctor erat praetorem classemque Romanam expectandi.
[25] And indeed the Roman people were thus preparing themselves against all the attempts of Antiochus: Nabis was now no longer deferring the war but was assaulting Gytheum with the utmost force, and, hostile to the Achaeans because they had sent a garrison to the besieged, was ravaging their fields. The Achaeans had not before dared to take up war until the legates should have returned from Rome, so that they might know what pleased the senate; after the return of the legates they proclaimed a council at Sicyon and sent envoys to T. Quinctius to seek counsel from him. In the council the opinions of all were inclined to undertaking war immediately; the letters of T. Quinctius caused delay, in which he was an advocate of awaiting the praetor and the Roman fleet.
while some of the chiefs remained in their opinion, and others judged that the counsel of him whom they had themselves consulted ought to be used, the multitude was awaiting Philopoemen’s opinion. he at that time was praetor, and at that time he surpassed all both in prudence and in authority. he prefaced that it was well arranged among the Aetolians that the praetor, when he had consulted about war, should not himself give an opinion; he ordered them to determine as soon as possible what they wished: the praetor would execute their decrees with fidelity and care, and would strive that, so far as was placed in human counsel, they should repent neither of peace nor of war.
that oration had more momentum for inciting to war than if by openly persuading he had displayed a desire to conduct the affair. And so by enormous consensus war was decreed, and the time and method of administering it were left free to the praetor. Philopoemen, besides that this was pleasing to Quinctius, himself also estimated that the Roman fleet should be awaited, which could protect Gytheum from the sea; but fearing that the situation would not endure delay and that not Gytheum alone but also the garrison sent to guard the city would be lost, he brought down the ships of the Achaeans.
[26] Comparauerat et tyrannus modicam classem ad prohibenda si qua obsessis mari submitterentur praesidia, tres tectas naues et lembos pristesque, tradita uetere classe ex foedere Romanis. harum nouarum tum nauium agilitatem ut experiretur, simul ut omnia satis apta ad certamen essent, prouectos in altum cotidie remigem militemque simulacris naualis pugnae exercebat, in eo ratus uerti spem obsidionis si praesidia maritima interclusisset. praetor Achaeorum sicut terrestrium certaminum arte quemuis clarorum imperatorum uel usu uel ingenio aequabat, ita rudis in re nauali erat, Arcas, mediterraneus homo, externorum etiam omnium, nisi quod in Creta praefectus auxiliorum militauerat, ignarus.
[26] The tyrant too had assembled a modest fleet to prohibit any reliefs that might be sent by sea to the besieged—three decked ships and lembi and pristae—since the old fleet had been handed over to the Romans by treaty. To test the agility of these new ships, and at the same time to ensure that everything was sufficiently fitted for contest, he put out into the deep each day and drilled the rowers and soldiers with mock naval combats, thinking that the hope of the siege turned on this point, if he should cut off maritime succors. The praetor of the Achaeans, just as in the art of terrestrial combats he matched any of the famous commanders, either by experience or by natural talent, so was he untrained in naval matters—an Arcadian, an inland man—ignorant also of all things foreign, save that in Crete he had served as prefect of auxiliaries.
there was an old quadrireme, captured eighty years before, when it was conveying Nicaea, the wife of Craterus, from Naupactus to Corinth. Moved by this ship’s fame—for once it had been a noble vessel in the royal fleet—he ordered it to be brought down from Aegium, now very rotten and crumbling with age. With this flagship then leading the fleet, as Tiso of Patrae, the prefect of the fleet, was being conveyed in it, ships of the Laconians met them from Gytheum; and at the very first onset, when the old ship met a new and stout vessel, the old one—which of itself was taking in water through all its joints—was torn apart, and all who were on the ship were captured.
the rest of the fleet, the flagship lost, fled as far as each could by their oars. Philopoemen himself escaped in a light scout ship and did not make an end of flight until Patras was reached. That event in no way diminished the spirit of a military man, seasoned by many vicissitudes: on the contrary, if he had met a setback in naval matters, of which he was ignorant, he had thereby gained the more hope in those fields where by practice he was skilled, and he affirmed that he would make that a short-lived joy for the tyrant.
[27] Nabis cum prospera
[27] When Nabis, elated by a prosperous
He drew small vessels together into a hidden station of the Argive countryside; into them he put light troops, most of them buckler-men (caetrati), with slings and javelins and other light kind of armature. Thence, coasting along the shore, when he had come to a promontory near the enemy’s camp, he disembarked and by known paths in the night reached Pleias, and, the sentries being asleep—as with no near fear—he cast fire upon the huts from every side of the camp. Many were consumed by the blaze before they felt the arrival of the enemy, and those who did perceive it were able to bring no help.
everything was consumed by iron and flame; very few from so double a plague fled for refuge to Gytheum into the larger camp. With the enemies thus struck, Philopoemen straightway led out to ravage Tripolis of the Laconian countryside, which is nearest to the boundary of the Megalopolitans, and, with a great quantity of herds and men carried off from there, departed before the tyrant could send a garrison from Gytheum to the fields. Thence to Tegea, the army having been assembled and a council there proclaimed for both the Achaeans and the allies—in which also were leaders of the Epirotes and the Acarnanians—he resolved, since both the spirits of his own men had been sufficiently restored from the shame of the maritime ignominy and those of the enemy had been cowed, to march against Lacedaemon, thinking that by that one method the enemy could be drawn off from the siege of Gytheum.
and Nabis, after Gytheum had been recovered, set out from there with an unencumbered army; when he had led rapidly past Lacedaemon, he seized the camp which they call Pyrrhus’ Camp, a place which he did not doubt was being sought by the Achaeans. thence he met the enemy. they were occupying, in a long column, on account of the narrowness of the road, nearly five miles; the column was being compressed by the cavalry and by the greatest part of the auxiliaries, because Philopoemen supposed that the tyrant, with mercenary soldiers in whom he trusted most, would attack his men from the rear.
two unforeseen things at once struck him: one, that the place he was seeking had been pre‑occupied; the other, that he discerned the enemy had met the vanguard, where, since the march was through rugged places, he did not see that the standards could be carried without the protection of light‑armed troops.
[28] Erat autem Philopoemen praecipuae in ducendo agmine locisque capiendis sollertiae atque usus, nec belli tantum temporibus sed etiam in pace ad id maxime animum exercuerat. ubi iter quopiam faceret et ad difficilem transitu saltum uenisset, contemplatus ab omni parte loci naturam, cum solus iret secum ipse agitabat animo, cum comites haberet ab his quaerebat, si hostis eo loco apparuisset, quid si a fronte, quid si ab latere hoc aut illo, quid si ab tergo adoriretur capiendum consilii foret: posse instructos derecta acie, posse inconditum agmen et tantummodo aptum uiae occurrere. quem locum ipse capturus esset cogitando aut quaerendo exsequebatur, aut quot armatis aut quo genere armorum—plurimum enim interesse—usurus; quo impedimenta, quo sarcinas, quo turbam inermem reiceret; quanto ea aut quali praesidio custodiret; et utrum pergere qua coepisset ire uia an eam qua uenisset repetere melius esset; castris quoque quem locum caperet, quantum munimento amplecteretur loci, qua opportuna aquatio, qua pabuli lignorumque copia esset; qua postero die castra mouenti tutum maxime iter, quae forma agminis esset.
[28] Moreover, Philopoemen was of outstanding skill and experience in leading a column and in seizing positions, and he had exercised his mind to this above all not only in times of war but also in peace. Whenever he made a march and came to a pass difficult to cross, having contemplated from every side the nature of the place, when he went alone he revolved the matter with himself in mind; when he had companions, he asked of them what counsel should be taken if an enemy should appear in that place: what if he attacked from the front, what if from this or that flank, what if from the rear; whether it would be possible to confront him with troops drawn up in a straight line of battle, or with a disorderly column only suited to the road. He worked out by thinking or by examining which position he himself would be going to seize, and with how many armed men and of what kind of arms—for it makes a very great difference—he would make use; where he would send back the baggage-train, where the packs, where the unarmed crowd; with how great or what kind of garrison he would guard these; and whether it were better to proceed along the road he had begun to take, or to retrace the one by which he had come; also what place he should take for a camp, how much of the ground he should encompass by fortification, where there was a convenient watering, where an abundance of fodder and of firewood; what route would be safest for moving camp on the next day, what the form of the column should be.
With these cares and considerations he had so exercised his mind from his earliest age that no thought in such a matter was new to him. And then, first of all, he formed the marching column; next he sent to the foremost standards the Cretan auxiliaries and the horsemen whom they called Tarentines, each dragging along two horses, and, after ordering the cavalry to follow, he occupied a crag above a torrent whence they could draw water. There he surrounded with armed men all the baggage and the gathered throng of camp-servants, and he fortified a camp according to the nature of the place; to set up tents on rough and uneven ground was difficult.
the enemies were 500 paces away. from the same stream both sides, with an escort of light-armed troops, drew water; and before a contest—such as is wont in neighboring camps—could be joined, night intervened; on the next day it was apparent that there would have to be fighting around the stream on behalf of the water-carriers. during the night, in a valley turned away from the enemies’ sight, he concealed as great a multitude of caetrati (buckler-men) as the place could hide.
[29] Luce orta Cretensium leuis armatura et Tarentini equites super torrentem proelium commiserunt. Telemnastus Cretensis popularibus suis, equitibus Lycortas Megalopolitanus praeerat. Cretenses et hostium auxiliares equitumque idem genus, Tarentini, praesidio aquatoribus erant.
[29] At daybreak the Cretan light‑armed and the Tarentine cavalry joined battle across the torrent. Telemnastus the Cretan was in command of his compatriots; over the horsemen Lycortas of Megalopolis held command. The Cretans and the enemy’s auxiliaries, and the same kind of horsemen—the Tarentines—served as a protection for the water‑drawers.
For some time the battle was doubtful, since on either side it was the same kind of men and with equal arms. As the contest advanced, the tyrants’ auxiliaries prevailed by number, and because it had been thus precepted by Philopoemen to the prefects that, once a modest engagement had been delivered, they should incline to flight and draw the enemy to the place of ambush. Following the fugitives recklessly through the valley, most were both wounded and killed before they saw the hidden enemy.
the caetrati, drawn up, had sat, as far as the breadth of the valley allowed, so that they might easily receive their own men fleeing through the intervals of the ranks. Then they themselves, intact, fresh, in array, rise up and make an assault upon the enemy, disordered, scattered, and weary with toil and even with wounds. Nor was the victory doubtful.
At once the tyrant’s soldiery gave their backs, and, with a course not a little more impetuous than that with which they had followed, were driven, fleeing, to the camp; many were cut down and captured in that rout. And there would have been trembling in the camp as well, had not Philopoemen ordered the recall to be sounded, fearing rather the more broken places and the uneven ground wherever he had advanced rashly than the enemy. Then, inferring both from the fortune of the fight and from the leader’s temperament in what degree of panic he then was, he sends to him one of the auxiliaries in the guise of a deserter, to report as ascertained that the Achaeans had resolved on the next day to advance to the river Eurotas, which flows close to their very walls, to cut off the passage, lest either the tyrant should have a retreat to the city whenever he wished, or supplies be carried from the city into the camp; and at the same time that they would try whether the spirits of any could be solicited to a defection from the tyrant.
The deserter did not so much win credence for his words as, with him panic‑stricken, he furnished a plausible pretext for abandoning the camp. On the next day he ordered Pythagoras with the auxiliaries and the cavalry to do outpost duty before the rampart; he himself, as if into the battle line, having gone out with the strength of the army, ordered the standards to be borne swiftly toward the city.
[30] Philopoemen postquam citatum agmen per angustam et procliuem uiam duci raptim uidit, equitatum omnem et Cretensium auxiliares in stationem hostium quae pro castris erat emittit. illi ubi hostes adesse et a suis se desertos uiderunt, primo in castra recipere se conati sunt; deinde postquam instructa acies tota Achaeorum admouebatur, metu ne cum ipsis castris caperentur, sequi suorum agmen aliquantum praegressum insistunt. extemplo caetrati Achaeorum in castra impetum faciunt et diripiunt; ceteri ad persequendos hostes ire pergunt.
[30] After Philopoemen saw that the rapidly-moving column was being led hastily along a narrow and downhill road, he sent out all the cavalry and the Cretan auxiliaries against the enemy outpost which was in front of the camp. They, when they saw that the enemies were at hand and that they were deserted by their own men, at first tried to withdraw into the camp; then, after the whole battle-line of the Achaeans, drawn up, was being brought up, from fear lest they be captured together with the camp, they set themselves to follow the column of their men, which had gone somewhat ahead. At once the caetrati (buckler-men) of the Achaeans make an assault upon the camp and plunder it; the rest go on to pursue the enemies.
the way was such that a column could scarcely be got clear, untroubled by fear of the enemy. but when indeed fighting arose at the rear and a terrible shouting of those panicking behind was carried to the foremost standards, each man, throwing away his arms, scattered into the woods lying around the road; and in a moment of time the road was hedged in by a pile of weapons, especially spears, which for the most part, falling crosswise, impeded the march as if with a rampart set before it. Philopoemen, having ordered the auxiliaries to press and pursue them however they could—for in any case for the cavalry flight would not be easy—himself led the heavier column by a more open road to the river Eurotas.
there, the camp having been pitched under the setting of the sun, he was awaiting the light-armed troops, whom he had left to pursue the enemy. when they came at the first watch, announcing that the tyrant had penetrated to the city with a few, and that the rest of the multitude, unarmed, was wandering scattered through the whole woodland, he orders them to care for their bodies. he himself, from the remaining abundance of soldiers—chosen men who, because they had come earlier into camp, had been refreshed both by taking food and by a moderate rest—carrying nothing with them except swords, at once leads them out and arrayed them by the routes of the two gates which lead to Pharas and to Barbosthenem, where he believed the enemy would take themselves in retreat from their flight.
nor did his expectation deceive him. for the Lacedaemonians, so long as any light remained, were withdrawing themselves by devious footpaths in the middle of the woodland; at early evening, when they caught sight of lights in the enemy’s camp, they kept themselves in that region by hidden bypaths; when they had gone on beyond these, now thinking it safe, they descended into the open roads. there, intercepted by the enemy sitting in ambush, so many were cut down and captured everywhere that scarcely a fourth part of the whole army escaped.
Philopoemen, the tyrant shut up within the city, spent the following days, nearly thirty, in devastating the fields of the Laconians, and, with the tyrant’s forces debilitated and almost shattered, he returned home, the Achaeans equating him in the glory of his achievements with the Roman commander, and, so far as the war of the Laconians pertained, even preferring him.
[31] Dum inter Achaeos et tyrannum bellum erat, legati Romanorum circuire sociorum urbes solliciti ne Aetoli partis alicuius animos ad Antiochum auertissent. minimum operae in Achaeis adeundis consumpserunt, quos, quia Nabidi infesti erant, ad cetera quoque satis fidos censebant esse. Athenas primum, inde Chalcidem, inde in Thessaliam iere, adlocutique concilio frequenti Thessalos Demetriadem iter flexere.
[31] While there was war between the Achaeans and the tyrant, legates of the Romans made the circuit of the cities of the allies, anxious lest the Aetolians had diverted the minds of some faction toward Antiochus. They consumed the least effort in approaching the Achaeans, whom, because they were hostile to Nabis, they judged to be sufficiently faithful in other matters as well. To Athens first, then to Chalcis, then into Thessaly they went; and, having addressed the Thessalians in a crowded council, they turned their route to Demetrias.
There a council of the Magnetes was convoked. A more careful address had to be delivered there, because part of the leading men, alienated from the Romans, were wholly for Antiochus and the Aetolians; for when it had been reported that the hostage son was being returned to Philip and that the imposed tribute was being remitted, it had been reported among other empty tales that the Romans would also restore Demetrias to him. To prevent this, Eurylochus, chief of the Magnetes, and certain men of his faction wanted everything to be overturned by the arrival of the Aetolians and Antiochus.
It had to be argued against them in such a way that, by taking away their empty fear, a hope once cut off should not estrange Philip—who had more weight for all things than the Magnetes had. Only these points were recalled: that, while all Greece was indebted to the Romans for the benefit of liberty, yet that community especially—for there not only had there been a garrison of Macedonians there, but a royal palace erected, so that the lord must always be held as present before their eyes; but all this had been done in vain, if the Aetolians should bring Antiochus into Philip’s royal residence, and a new and unknown king must be held in place of an old and experienced one. They call the supreme magistrate the Magnetarch; at that time it was Eurylochus, and relying on that power he asserted that it ought not to be dissimulated by himself and the Magnetes what report had been spread abroad about Demetrias being returned to Philip: in order that this not occur, everything must be both attempted and dared by the Magnetes.
and in the contention of speaking, carried away too incautiously, he blurted out that even then Demetrias was free in appearance, but in reality everything was done at the nod of the Romans. At this utterance there was a murmur from the wavering multitude, partly assent, partly indignation that he had dared to say it; Quinctius indeed burned so with anger that, stretching his hands to heaven, he invoked the gods as witnesses of the ingratitude and perfidy of the Magnetes. All being terrified by this word, Zeno, one of the leading men—great in authority both on account of a life elegantly conducted and because he had always been without doubt of the Roman party—begged from Quinctius and the other legates, weeping, that they not assign the madness of one man to the city: let each run mad to his own peril.
that the Magnetes owe not only liberty but all things that are sacred and dear to human beings to T. Quinctius and to the Roman people; that no one could pray to the immortal gods for anything which the Magnetes did not have from them; and that they would more quickly, in frenzy, rage against their own bodies than violate Roman friendship.
[32] Huius orationem subsecutae multitudinis preces sunt; Eurylochus ex concilio itineribus occultis ad portam atque inde protinus in Aetoliam profugit. iam enim et id magis in dies Aetoli defectionem nudabant, eoque ipso forte tempore Thoas princeps gentis, quem miserant ad Antiochum, redierat inde Menippumque secum adduxerat regis legatum. qui, priusquam concilium iis daretur, impleuerant omnium aures terrestres naualesque copias commemorando: ingentem uim peditum equitumque uenire, ex India elephantos accitos, ante omnia, quo maxime credebant moueri multitudinis animos, tantum aduehi auri ut ipsos emere Romanos posset.
[32] The speech of this man was followed by the prayers of the multitude; Eurylochus, withdrawing from the council, by secret routes fled to the gate and thence straightaway into Aetolia. For already even more with each passing day the Aetolians were laying bare their defection, and at that very moment by chance Thoas, chieftain of the tribe, whom they had sent to Antiochus, had returned thence and had brought with him Menippus, the king’s legate. They, before an audience was granted them, had filled the ears of all by recounting the land and naval forces: that a vast strength of infantry and cavalry was coming, elephants summoned from India, and, above all—by which they believed the minds of the multitude were most moved—so much gold was being conveyed that he could buy the Romans themselves.
it was apparent what that oration would stir in the council; for both their arrival and all that they were doing were being reported to the Roman legates; and although hope had been almost cut off, nevertheless it did not seem out of place to Quinctius that some legates of the allies should be present at that council, to remind the Aetolians of the Roman alliance, men who would dare to send forth a free voice against the king’s legate. The Athenians seemed especially suitable for that business, both on account of the dignity of their city and their ancient alliance with the Aetolians. From them Quinctius asked that they send legates to the Panaetolicum council.
Thoas was the first in that council to report back the embassy. Menippus, admitted after him, says that it would have been the best for all who inhabit Greece and Asia if, with Philip’s affairs still intact, Antiochus could have intervened: each would have kept his own, nor would everything have come under the nod and dominion of the Romans. 'Even now,' he says, 'if only you consistently carry through to completion the counsels you have begun, with the gods aiding and the Aetolians as allies, Antiochus will be able, although the affairs of Greece are inclined, to restore them to their former dignity.'
And liberty, moreover, is situated in that which stands by its own forces, and does not depend on another’s arbitrament.' The Athenians, to whom first after the royal embassy the power was granted of saying what they wished, omitting all mention of the king, reminded the Aetolians of the Roman alliance and of T. Quinctius’s services to all Greece: that they should not rashly overturn it by an excessive speed of counsels; that counsels hot and audacious are, at first show, gladsome, in handling hard, in outcome sad. The Roman legates, and among them T. Quinctius, were not far from there; while all things were intact, they should rather debate by words about those matters that were in doubt than arm Asia and Europe for a deadly war.
[33] Multitudo auida nouandi res Antiochi tota erat, et ne admittendos quidem in concilium Romanos censebant; principum maxime seniores auctoritate obtinuerunt ut daretur iis concilium. hoc decretum Athenienses cum rettulissent, eundum in Aetoliam Quinctio uisum est: aut enim moturum aliquid aut omnes homines testes fore penes Aetolos culpam belli esse, Romanos iusta ac prope necessaria sumpturos arma. postquam uentum est eo, Quinctius in concilio orsus a principio societatis Aetolorum cum Romanis et quotiens ab iis fides mota foederis esset, pauca de iure ciuitatium de quibus ambigeretur disseruit: si quid tamen aequi se habere arbitrarentur, quanto esse satius Romam mittere legatos, seu disceptare seu rogare senatum mallent, quam populum Romanum cum Antiocho, lanistis Aetolis, non sine magno motu generis humani et pernicie Graeciae dimicare?
[33] The whole multitude, avid for changing affairs, was Antiochus’s, and they judged that the Romans should not even be admitted into the council; the chiefs, especially the elders, by their authority prevailed that an audience be granted to them. When the Athenians reported this decree, it seemed to Quinctius that he should go into Aetolia: for either he would effect something, or all men would be witnesses that with the Aetolians lay the blame of the war, the Romans about to take up arms that were just and almost necessary. After he had come there, Quinctius in the council began from the beginning of the alliance of the Aetolians with the Romans, and how often by them the faith of the treaty had been shaken; he discoursed a few things about the right of the states about which there was dispute: if, however, they thought they had anything equitable, how much more preferable it would be to send envoys to Rome—whether they preferred to debate or to petition the senate—than that the Roman people should fight with Antiochus, the Aetolians as gladiator-trainers, not without a great convulsion of the human race and the ruin of Greece?
and that none would feel the disaster of that war sooner than those who had set it in motion. These things the Roman vaticinated in vain. Then Thoas and the rest of the same faction, heard with the assent of all, prevailed that, not even with the council deferred and with the Romans absent, a decree should be passed, by which Antiochus should be summoned for the liberation of Greece and for disceptation between the Aetolians and the Romans.
To this so haughty decree Damocritus, their praetor, added a personal contumely; for when Quinctius demanded that very decree of him, not respecting the majesty of the man, he said that another matter which pressed more at the moment had to be given precedence for himself: that he would give the decree and an answer in Italy shortly, with the camp pitched on the bank of the Tiber. So great a frenzy at that time seized the nation of the Aetolians, so great their magistrates.
[34] Quinctius legatique Corinthum redierunt; inde ut quaeque de Antiocho
[34] Quinctius and the envoys returned to Corinth; from there they kept receiving, as each report about Antiochus
Aetolians took a plan, with respect to the matter and <tum> also to the hope, not only daring but even impudent: to seize Demetrias, Chalcis, and Lacedaemon. One apiece were sent as leaders to each: Thoas to Chalcis, Alexamenus to Lacedaemon, Diocles to Demetrias. Him the exile Eurylochus—about whose flight and the cause of the flight it was said earlier—assisted, since there was no other hope of a return to his fatherland.
Warned by Eurylochus’s letters, his kinsmen and friends, and those who were of the same faction, summoned his children and wife, in sordid clothing, holding the veils of suppliants, <into> a crowded assembly, adjuring individuals and all together not to allow an innocent, uncondemned man to grow old in exile. Both simple men were moved by pity, and the wicked and seditious were moved by the hope of mixing themselves into affairs with Aetolian tumult; and each man, for his own part, was bidding that he be recalled. With these things prepared, Diocles, with all the cavalry—and he was then prefect of cavalry—setting out under the appearance of bringing back the exiled guest, having traversed a vast march by day and night, when he was six miles from the city, at first light went ahead with three chosen squadrons, the rest of the multitude of horsemen having been ordered to follow.
after he was approaching the gate, he ordered all to dismount from their horses and to lead the horses by the reins, with the ranks loosened, in the manner of a march, so that it might seem more the escort of a prefect than a garrison. there one of the squadrons was left at the gate, lest the cavalry following behind could be shut out; through the middle of the city and across the forum, holding Eurylochus by the hand, while many met them and offered congratulations, he escorted him home. soon the city was full of horsemen and opportune places were being occupied; then men were sent into the houses to kill the chiefs of the opposing faction.
[35] Lacedaemone non urbi uis adferenda sed tyrannus dolo capiendus erat; quem spoliatum maritimis oppidis ab Romanis, tunc intra moenia etiam Lacedaemonis ab Achaeis compulsum qui occupasset occidere, eum totius gratiam rei apud Lacedaemonios laturum. causam mittendi ad eum habuerunt quod fatigabat precibus ut auxilia sibi, cum illis auctoribus rebellasset, mitterentur. mille pedites Alexameno dati sunt et triginta delecti ex iuuentute equites.
[35] At Lacedaemon, force was not to be brought against the city, but the tyrant was to be taken by stratagem; him, stripped of his maritime towns by the Romans, then even driven within the very walls of Lacedaemon by the Achaeans—whoever should seize and kill him would carry the entire gratitude of the affair among the Lacedaemonians. They had a pretext for sending to him, because he was wearing them out with entreaties that auxiliaries be sent to him, though he had rebelled with them as his instigators. One thousand infantry were assigned to Alexamenus, and thirty horsemen chosen from the youth.
to them it is announced by the praetor Damocritus in the secret council of the nation, of which mention was made before, that they should not believe themselves to have been sent to the Achaean war or to any matter which anyone might anticipate on his own opinion: whatever the situation might have admonished Alexamenus of, they should adopt a sudden plan, and, to that—however unlooked-for, rash, audacious—they should be ready obediently to carry it through, and take it as though they knew themselves sent from home to do that one thing. with these thus prepared, Alexamenus came to the tyrant, whom, on arriving, he straightway filled with hope: that Antiochus had already crossed into Europe, would soon be in Greece, would fill lands and seas with arms and men; that the Romans would not be believed to deal with the matter as with Philip; that it was impossible to reckon the number of infantry, cavalry, and ships; that the battle-line of elephants would by its very sight end the war. that the Aetolians with their whole army were ready to come to Lacedaemon whenever the situation demanded, but had wished to display to the arriving king masses of armed men.
Nabis too himself had to see to it that the forces he had he should not allow to languish under roofs in idleness, but should lead them out and compel them to run under arms, at once sharpening their spirits and exercising their bodies. By custom the labor would be lighter, and by the comity and benignity of the leader it could even be made not unpleasant. From then on they began frequently to be led out before the city into the plain by the Eurotas river.
The tyrant’s bodyguards were standing almost in the center of the battle line; the tyrant, with three of his foremost horsemen—among whom Alexamenus was for the most part—was riding before the standards, inspecting the far wings; on the right wing were the Aetolians, both those who previously had been the tyrant’s auxiliaries and those who had come, a thousand, with Alexamenus. Alexamenus had made it his custom now to ride around with the tyrant between a few ranks and to admonish him of what seemed to be to the advantage, now to ride up to his own men on the right wing, and soon from there, as though an order had been given which the situation demanded, to return to the tyrant. But on the day which he had set for consummating the deed, after riding for a little while with the tyrant, when he had withdrawn to his own men, then he said to the horsemen sent with him from home: “The thing must be done, young men, and the daring enterprise which, with me as leader, you were ordered to carry out briskly.”
prepare your spirits and your right hands; let no one, in what he sees me doing, hold back. whoever shall have delayed and will interpose his own counsel to mine, let him know that for him there is no return to his Penates.' a horror seized all, and they remembered with what mandates they had set out. the tyrant was coming from the left wing.
Alexamenus orders the cavalrymen to set their spears and to look at him; he too collects his spirit, confused by the thought of so great a deed. After he was drawing near, he makes a charge and, the horse having been transfixed, he unhorses the tyrant; as he lay, the cavalrymen stab him; with many blows dealt in vain upon the cuirass, at last the wounds reached the bare body, and before <a> help was brought from the center of the battle line he expired.
[36] Alexamenus cum omnibus Aetolis citato gradu ad regiam occupandam pergit. corporis custodes, cum in oculis res gereretur, pauor primo cepit; deinde, postquam abire Aetolorum agmen uidere, concurrunt ad relictum tyranni corpus, et spectatorum turba ex custodibus uitae mortisque ultoribus est facta. nec mouisset se quisquam si extemplo positis armis uocata in contionem multitudo fuisset et oratio habita tempori conueniens, frequentes inde retenti in armis Aetoli sine iniuria cuiusquam; sed, ut oportuit in consilio fraude coepto, omnia in maturandam perniciem eorum qui fecerant sunt acta.
[36] Alexamenus, with all the Aetolians, proceeds at a quick pace to seize the palace. The bodyguards, since the affair was being enacted before their eyes, were seized by panic at first; then, after they saw the Aetolian column depart, they run together to the tyrant’s body left behind, and the crowd of spectators, from guardians of life, was made avengers of death. Nor would anyone have stirred if at once, with arms laid down, the multitude had been called into an assembly and a speech delivered fitting to the moment; in that case the Aetolians, numerous, kept in arms, would from there have been without injury to anyone; but, as was to be expected in a plan begun by fraud, everything was done to hasten the ruin of those who had done it.
the leader, shut up in the royal palace, spent day and night in scrutinizing the tyrant’s treasures; the Aetolians, as though it were a captured city which they wished to seem to have freed, turned to plunder. at once the indignity of the affair, [and] at the same time contempt, moved the Lacedaemonians to come together. some were saying that the Aetolians must be driven out and that liberty, which, though it seemed to be restored, had been intercepted, must be recovered; others, so that there might be a head for the business to be done, that someone of royal stock should be assumed for show.
[37] Philopoemen audita caede tyranni profectus Lacedaemonem cum omnia turbata metu inuenisset, euocatis principibus et oratione habita, qualis habenda Alexameno fuerat, societati Achaeorum Lacedaemonios adiunxit, eo etiam facilius quod ad idem forte tempus A. Atilius cum quattuor et uiginti quinqueremibus ad Gytheum accessit. iisdem diebus circa Chalcidem Thoas per Euthymidam principem, pulsum opibus eorum qui Romanae societatis erant, post T. Quincti legatorumque aduentum, et Herodorum, Cianum mercatorem sed potentem Chalcide propter diuitias, praeparatis ad proditionem iis qui Euthymidae factionis erant, nequaquam eandem fortunam qua Demetrias per Eurylochum occupata erat habuit. Euthymidas ab Athenis—eum domicilio delegerat locum—Thebas primum, hinc Salganea processit, Herodorus ad Thronium.
[37] Philopoemen, upon hearing of the tyrant’s slaughter, set out for Lacedaemon; when he found everything thrown into confusion by fear, after summoning the leading men and delivering a speech—the sort that ought to have been delivered regarding Alexamenus—he joined the Lacedaemonians to the Achaean League, all the easier because at that very same time A. Atilius put in to Gytheum with 24 quinqueremes. In those same days, around Chalcis, Thoas—through Euthymidas, the leading man, who had been driven out by the resources of those who were of the Roman alliance after the arrival of T. Quinctius and the envoys—and Herodorus, a merchant of Cius but powerful at Chalcis on account of his riches, with those of Euthymidas’s faction prepared for treachery, by no means had the same fortune as that by which Demetrias had been seized through Eurylochus. Euthymidas from Athens—he had chosen that place as his domicile—proceeded first to Thebes, and from there to Salganea; Herodorus to Thronium.
thence, not far off in the Maliac Gulf, Thoas had 2,000 infantry and 200 cavalry, with about 30 light transports. Herodorus, ordered to carry these across with 600 infantry to the island Atalante, so that from there, when he should perceive that the foot forces were already approaching Aulis and the Euripus, he might ferry across to Chalcis; he himself was leading the rest of the forces to Chalcis, mostly by night marches, with all the speed he could.
[38] Micythio et Xenoclides, penes quos tum summa rerum pulso Euthymida Chalcide erat, seu ipsi per se suspicati seu indicata re, primo pauidi nihil usquam spei nisi in fuga ponebant; deinde postquam resedit terror et prodi et deseri non patriam modo sed etiam Romanorum societatem cernebant, consilio tali animum adiecerunt.
[38] Micythion and Xenoclides, in whose hands at that time the supreme direction of affairs at Chalcis was, Euthymidas having been expelled, whether they suspected it of themselves or the matter was indicated, at first, panic-stricken, placed nowhere any hope except in flight; then, after the terror subsided and they perceived that not only the fatherland but also the alliance of the Romans was being betrayed and deserted, they applied their mind to such a plan.
Sacrum anniuersarium eo forte tempore Eretriae Amarynthidis Dianae erat, quod non popularium modo sed Carystiorum etiam coetu celebratur. eo miserunt qui orarent Eretrienses Carystiosque ut et suarum fortunarum in eadem insula geniti misererentur et Romanam societatem respicerent: ne sinerent Aetolorum Chalcidem fieri; Euboeam habituros, si Chalcidem habuissent; graue fuisse Macedonas dominos, multo minus tolerabiles futuros Aetolos. Romanorum maxime respectus ciuitates mouit et uirtutem nuper in bello <et> in uictoria iustitiam benignitatemque expertas.
At that time by chance the annual sacred festival at Eretria of Diana of Amarynthus was being held, which is celebrated by an assembly not only of the townsfolk but even of the Carystians. Thither they sent men to beseech the Eretrians and the Carystians both to take pity on the fortunes of those born in the same island and to have regard for the Roman alliance: not to allow Chalcis to become the Aetolians’; that they would have Euboea, if they had Chalcis; that the Macedonians had been heavy masters, the Aetolians would be far less tolerable. What moved the cities most was respect for the Romans, who had lately in war they had experienced their valor, and in victory their justice and benignity.
Accordingly, both cities armed and sent whatever strength there was in the youth. When the townsmen had entrusted to them the walls of Chalcis to be guarded, they themselves, with all their forces having crossed the Euripus, pitched camp at Salganea. From there a herald first, then legates were sent to the Aetolians to inquire by what word or deed of their own allies and friends were coming against them to attack them.
Thoas, leader of the Aetolians, replied that he was coming not to attack but to liberate them from the Romans: that they were now bound with a chain more splendid but much heavier than when they had had a Macedonian garrison in the citadel. He for his part denied that the Chalcidians either served anyone or needed the garrison of anyone. Thus the envoys departed from the conference to their own men; and Thoas and the Aetolians, as men who had placed all their hope in taking them by surprise, being by no means a match for a set-piece war and for the assault of a city fortified by sea and by land, returned home.
Euthymidas, after he heard that the camp of his partisans was at Salganea and that the Aetolians had set out, himself returned from Thebes to Athens; and Herodorus, after for several days, intent, he had in vain expected a signal from Atalanta, having sent a scouting vessel to learn what the delay was, when he saw that the enterprise had been given up by the allies, made back for Thronium whence he had come.
[39] Quinctius quoque his auditis ab Corintho ueniens nauibus in Chalcidi
[39] Quinctius too, when he had heard these things, coming by ships from Corinth, met King Eumenes in the Chalcidi
Villius, in a quinquereme ship, was carried in to the mouth of the harbor. When the whole multitude of the Magnetes had poured themselves out there, Villius asked whether they would prefer that he had come to friends or to enemies. The Magnetarch Eurylochus replied that he had come to friends, but that he should refrain from the port and allow the Magnetes to be in concord and liberty, and not, under the appearance of a colloquy, agitate the multitude.
From there it was an altercation, not a discourse, as the Roman rebuked the Magnetes as ingrates and foretold imminent calamities, while the multitude was clamoring, accusing now the senate, now Quinctius. Thus, the undertaking having been frustrated, Uillius withdrew to Quinctius. But Quinctius, after a message had been sent to the praetor to lead the forces back home, himself returned by ships to Corinth.
[40] Abstulere me uelut de spatio Graeciae res immixtae Romanis, non quia ipsas operae pretium esset perscribere sed quia causae cum Antiocho fuerunt belli. consulibus designatis —inde namque deuerteram—L. Quinctius et Cn. Domitius consules in prouincias profecti sunt, Quinctius in Ligures, Domitius aduersus Boios. Boi quieuerunt, atque etiam senatus eorum cum liberis et praefecti cum equitatu—summa omnium mille et quingenti—consuli dediderunt sese.
[40] Matters mingled with Roman affairs have carried me away, as it were, from the racecourse of Greece, not because it was worth the effort to write them out fully themselves, but because they were the causes of the war with Antiochus. With the consuls designate —for from that point I had turned aside— L. Quinctius and Cn. Domitius, as consuls, set out into their provinces, Quinctius to the Ligurians, Domitius against the Boii. The Boii kept quiet, and even their senate with their children and the prefects with the cavalry —a total of all 1,500— surrendered themselves to the consul.
Eodem hoc anno Uibonem colonia deducta est ex senatus consulto plebique scito. tria milia et septingenti pedites ierunt, trecenti equites; triumuiri deduxerunt eos Q. Naeuius M. Minucius M. Furius Crassipes; quina dena iugera agri data in singulos pedites sunt, duplex equitibus. Bruttiorum proxime fuerat ager; Brutti ceperant de Graecis.
In this same year a colony was led to Vibo by decree of the senate and by plebiscite. three thousand seven hundred infantry went, three hundred cavalry; the triumvirs conducted them: Q. Naevius, M. Minucius, M. Furius Crassipes; fifteen iugera of land were given to each infantryman, double to the cavalry. The land had most recently belonged to the Bruttii; the Bruttii had taken it from the Greeks.
At Rome during the same time there were two very great terrors, the one long-lasting but slower: the earth shook for 48 days; for just as many days there were holidays in solicitude and fear; for a period of three days, on account of this matter, a supplication was held. The other was not an empty panic but the true calamity of many: when a fire arose from the Forum Boarium, buildings facing the Tiber burned day and night, and all the shops, together with wares of great price, were consumed in a conflagration.
[41] Iam fere in exitu annus erat, et in dies magis et fama de bello Antiochi et cura patribus crescebat; itaque de prouinciis designatorum magistratuum, quo intentiores essent omnes, agitari coeptum est. decreuere ut consulibus Italia et quo senatus censuisset—eam esse bellum aduersus Antiochum regem omnes sciebant—prouinciae essent; cuius ea sors esset, quattuor milia peditum ciuium Romanorum et trecenti equites, sex milia socium Latini nominis cum quadringentis equitibus sunt decreta. eorum dilectum habere L. Quinctius consul iussus, ne quid moraretur quo minus consul nouus quo senatus censuisset extemplo proficisci posset.
[41] Already the year was almost at its exit, and with each day both the report of the war of Antiochus and concern grew among the fathers; and so about the provinces of the magistrates-designate, in order that all might be the more intent, it began to be agitated. They decreed that Italy and whatever the senate should have resolved—everyone knew that this was the war against King Antiochus—should be the provinces for the consuls; to the one on whom that lot should fall, 4,000 infantry of Roman citizens and 300 horse, 6,000 of the allies of the Latin name with 400 horse, were decreed. L. Quinctius, the consul, was ordered to hold the levy of these, so that nothing might delay the new consul from being able to set out at once to wherever the senate had resolved.
Likewise concerning the provinces of the praetors it was decreed, that the first lot be the two jurisdictions, the urban and that between citizens and peregrines; the second, Bruttium; the third, that the fleet should sail whither the senate had decreed; the fourth, Sicily; the fifth, Sardinia; the sixth, Further Spain. Moreover it was ordered to L. Quinctius the consul to enroll two new legions of Roman citizens, and of the allies and the Latin name twenty thousand infantry and eight hundred cavalry. They assigned that army to the praetor to whom the province of Bruttium had fallen.
Aedes duae Iouis eo anno in Capitolio dedicatae sunt; uouerat L. Furius Purpurio praetor Gallico bello unam, alteram consul; dedicauit Q. Marcius Ralla duumuir. iudicia in faeneratores eo anno multa seuere sunt facta, accusantibus priuatos aedilibus curulibus M. Tuccio et P. Iunio Bruto. de multa damnatorum quadrigae inauratae in Capitolio positae et in cella Iouis supra fastigium aediculae [et] duodecim clupea inaurata; et iidem porticum extra portam Trigeminam inter lignarios fecerunt.
Two temples of Jupiter were dedicated on the Capitol that year; L. Furius Purpurio, praetor in the Gallic war, had vowed one, the other the consul; Q. Marcius Ralla, duumvir, dedicated them. Many judgments against moneylenders were rendered with severity that year, the curule aediles M. Tuccius and P. Junius Brutus acting as private accusers. From the fine of those condemned, gilded four‑horse chariots were set up on the Capitol, and in the cella of Jupiter, above the pediment of the aedicule, twelve gilded shields; and the same men built a portico outside the Porta Trigemina among the wood‑merchants.
[42] Intentis in apparatum noui belli Romanis ne ab Antiocho quidem cessabatur. tres eum ciuitates tenebant, Zmyrna et Alexandria Troas et Lampsacus, quas neque ui expugnare ad eam diem poterat neque condicionibus in amicitiam perlicere, neque ab tergo relinquere traiciens ipse in Europam uolebat. tenuit eum et de Hannibale deliberatio.
[42] With the Romans intent on the apparatus of a new war, there was no idleness even on the part of Antiochus. Three cities held him back, Zmyrna and Alexandria Troas and Lampsacus, which up to that day he could neither take by force nor allure into friendship by terms, nor did he wish, as he himself was crossing into Europe, to leave them at his back. His deliberation about Hannibal also detained him.
and at first the open ships which he had been about to send with him into Africa were delayed; then a consultation was set in motion as to whether he ought to be sent at all, chiefly by Thoas the Aetolian, who, with all Greece filled with tumult, was reporting that Demetrias was in their power; and with the same mendacities about the king—by multiplying in words his forces—by which he had raised the spirits of many in Greece, he was likewise inflating the king’s hope: that he was being summoned by the votes of all; that there would be a rush to the shores, from where they had looked out upon the royal fleet. This same man dared to unsettle the king’s judgment, now almost fixed, concerning Hannibal. For he thought that no part of the ships ought to be detached from the royal fleet, nor, if ships were to be sent, should anyone less than Hannibal be put in command of that fleet: that man was an exile and a Punic, to whom a thousand new plans each day either his fortune or his genius could furnish, and that the very glory of war, by which, as if with a dowry, Hannibal is courted, is excessive in a royal prefect.
the king ought to be in view, the king alone to seem the leader, the sole commander. If Hannibal should lose the fleet or the army, the same loss would result as if they were lost under another leader; if anything should turn out prosperously, the glory would be Hannibal’s, not Antiochus’s. But if fortune be granted to conquer the Romans in the war as a whole, what hope is there that Hannibal will live under a king, subject to a single man—he who scarcely endured even a fatherland? He did not so carry himself from youth, having in hope and spirit embraced the empire of the whole world, as to seem likely in old age to put up with a master.
[43] Nulla ingenia tam prona ad inuidiam sunt quam eorum qui genus ac fortunam suam animis non aequant, quia uirtutem et bonum alienum oderunt. extemplo consilium mittendi Hannibalis, quod unum in principio belli utiliter cogitatum erat, abiectum est. Demetriadis maxime defectione ab Romanis ad Aetolos elatus non ultra differre profectionem in Graeciam constituit.
[43] No dispositions are so prone to envy as those of men who do not equal their birth and fortune with their spirit, because they hate another’s virtue and good. At once the counsel of sending Hannibal, which alone at the beginning of the war had been usefully conceived, was cast aside. Exulting especially in the defection of Demetrias from the Romans to the Aetolians, he resolved not to defer any longer the departure into Greece.
before he loosed the ships, he went up from the sea to Ilium to sacrifice to Minerva. Thence, having returned to the fleet, he sets out with forty decked ships, sixty open; and two hundred transport-ships, with supplies of every kind and other war apparatus, were following. He first made the island of Imbros; thence he crossed to Sciathus; where, after collecting on the high sea the ships that had been scattered, he came to Pteleum, the first point of the mainland.
there Eurylochus, the Magnetarch, and the chiefs of the Magnetes met him from Demetrias; gladdened by their throng, on the next day he was borne with his ships into the harbor of the city, and he put his troops ashore not far from there. there were ten thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry, six elephants—scarcely forces sufficient for occupying Greece laid bare, much less for sustaining the Roman war.
Aetoli, postquam Demetriadem uenisse Antiochum allatum est, concilio indicto decretum quo accerserent eum fecerunt. iam profectus ab Demetriade rex, quia ita decreturos sciebat, Phalara in sinum Maliacum processerat. inde decreto accepto Lamiam uenit, exceptus ingenti fauore multitudinis cum plausibus clamoribusque et quibus aliis laetitia effusa uolgi significatur.
After it was reported that Antiochus had come to Demetrias, the Aetolians, a council having been proclaimed, passed a decree by which they would summon him. The king, already having set out from Demetrias—because he knew they would decree thus—had advanced to Phalara into the Malian Gulf. Thence, the decree having been received, he came to Lamia, welcomed with the immense favor of the multitude, with applauses and clamors and whatever other ways the poured‑out joy of the crowd is signified.
[44] In concilium ut uentum est, aegre a Phaenea praetore principibusque aliis introductus silentio facto dicere orsus rex. prima eius oratio fuit [primo] excusantis quod tanto minoribus spe atque opinione omnium copiis uenisset: id suae impensae erga eos uoluntatis maximum debere indicium esse, quod nec paratus satis ulla re et tempore ad nauigandum immaturo uocantibus legatis eorum haud grauate obsecutus esset credidissetque, cum se uidissent Aetoli, omnia uel in se uno posita praesidia existimaturos esse. ceterum eorum quoque se quorum expectatio destituta in praesentia uideatur spem abunde expleturum; nam simul primum anni tempus nauigabile praebuisset mare, omnem se Graeciam armis uiris equis, omnem oram maritimam classibus completurum, nec impensae nec labori nec periculo parsurum, donec depulso ceruicibus eorum imperio Romano liberam uere Graeciam atque in ea principes Aetolos fecisset.
[44] When they came into the council, the king, with difficulty introduced by Phaeneas the praetor and the other chiefs, when silence had been made, began to speak. His first speech was [at first] an excuse that he had come with forces so much less than the hope and expectation of all: that this ought to be the greatest indication of his devoted will toward them—that, though sufficiently prepared in no respect and with the time unripe for sailing, he had not grudgingly complied with the summons of their envoys, and had believed that, when the Aetolians saw him, they would think that all the means of protection, even if lodged in himself alone, were secured. Moreover, he would abundantly fulfill the hope even of those whose expectation might seem for the present to be disappointed; for as soon as the season of the year first offered a sea fit for sailing, he would fill all Greece with arms, men, and horses, and all the maritime coast with fleets, and would spare neither expense nor toil nor danger, until, with the Roman dominion driven from their necks, he had made Greece truly free and, in it, the Aetolians the chiefs.
[45] In hanc sententiam rex cum magno omnium adsensu locutus discessit. post discessum regis inter duos principes Aetolorum Phaeneam et Thoantem contentio fuit. Phaeneas reconciliatore pacis et disceptatore de iis quae in controuersia cum populo Romano essent utendum potius Antiocho censebat quam duce belli: aduentum eius et maiestatem ad uerecundiam faciendam Romanis uim maiorem habituram quam arma.
[45] To this opinion the king, with the great assent of all, spoke and departed. After the king’s departure there was a contention between the two chiefs of the Aetolians, Phaeneas and Thoas. Phaeneas judged that Antiochus ought rather to be employed as a reconciler of peace and an arbitrator concerning those matters which were in controversy with the Roman people than as a leader of war: his arrival and his majesty would have greater force for bringing the Romans to a sense of shame than arms.
Men, in order that it not be necessary to wage war, of their own will remit many things which cannot be compelled by war and arms. Thoas said that Phaeneas was not striving for peace, but wanted to break up the apparatus of war, so that by weariness the king’s impetus might slacken and the Romans might have time for making preparations; for it had been sufficiently learned that nothing equitable could be obtained from the Romans—so often legations sent to Rome, so often discepting with Quinctius himself—and that they would not have implored the aid of Antiochus except with every hope cut off. Therefore, since beyond everyone’s expectation the opportunity has been offered so swiftly, there must be no languishing, but rather the king should be entreated that, since—what is greatest—he himself has come as the vindicator of Greece, he also summon land and naval forces.
that an armed king would obtain something; unarmed he would have no weight among the Romans, not only on behalf of the Aetolians but not even for himself. This opinion prevailed, and they decreed that the king should be called imperator and chose thirty princes with whom, if he wished, he might consult about anything.
[46] Ita dimisso concilio multitudo omnis in suas ciuitates dilapsa est; rex postero die cum apocletis eorum unde bellum ordiretur consultabat. optimum uisum est Chalcidem, frustra ab Aetolis nuper temptatam, primum adgredi, et celeritate magis in eam rem quam magno conatu et apparatu opus esse. itaque cum mille peditibus rex qui Demetriade secuti erant profectus per Phocidem est, et alio itinere principes Aetoli iuniorum paucis euocatis ad Chaeroneam occurrerunt et decem constratis nauibus secuti sunt.
[46] Thus, the council having been dismissed, the whole multitude dispersed into their own cities; on the next day the king was consulting with their apocleti (deputies) about where he should begin the war. It seemed best to attack Chalcis first, lately attempted in vain by the Aetolians, and that in this matter there was need of speed rather than of great effort and apparatus. Accordingly, the king set out with a thousand foot-soldiers, who had followed from Demetrias, and marched through Phocis; and by another route the Aetolian leaders, having summoned a few of the younger men, met him at Chaeronea and followed with ten decked ships.
the king, having pitched camp at Salganeae, crossed the Euripus by ships himself with the chiefs of the Aetolians; and when he had disembarked not far from the harbor, the magistrates of the Chalcidians and the chiefs also came forth before the gate. a few on both sides met for a conference. the Aetolians strongly urged that, with the friendship of the Romans preserved, they should take on the king also as ally and friend; for he had crossed into Europe not for the bringing-in of war but for the cause of liberating Greece, and to liberate in deed, not in words and simulation, as the Romans had done.
nothing, moreover, is more useful for the cities of Greece than to embrace both friendships; thus, indeed, safe from the injury of either, they would always be by the protection and confidence of the other. for if they did not receive the king, they would see what must immediately be endured, since the aid of the Romans was far off, while the enemy Antiochus, whom they could not resist by their own forces, was before the gates. to these points Micythio, one of the leading men, said that he marveled whom it was that Antiochus had crossed into Europe to liberate, leaving his own kingdom; for he knew no city in Greece which either has a garrison or pays stipend to the Romans or, bound by an iniquitous treaty, suffers laws which it does not wish; and so the Chalcidians needed neither any vindicator of liberty, since they are free, nor a garrison, since by the benefaction of that same Roman people they have both peace and liberty.
that they do not spurn the friendship of the king nor that of the Aetolians themselves. This first they would do for friends, if they leave the island and go away; for they themselves are resolved not only not to receive them within the walls, but not even to make any alliance except by the authority of the Romans.
[47] Haec renuntiata regi ad naues ubi restiterat cum essent, in praesentia—neque enim iis uenerat copiis ut ui agere quicquam posset—reuerti Demetriadem placuit. ibi, quoniam primum uanum inceptum euasisset, consultare cum Aetolis rex quid deinde fieret. placuit
[47] When this was reported to the king, as they were at the ships where he had halted, it pleased him for the present—for he had not come with such forces that he could do anything by force—to return to Demetrias. There, since his first undertaking had proved vain, the king consulted with the Aetolians as to what should be done next. It was decided to try the Boeotians, the Achaeans, and Amynander, king of the Athamanians.
Boeotian nation they judged to be averse from the Romans ever since the death of Brachyllas and the things which had followed it; they believed that Philopoemen, leader of the Achaeans, through emulation of glory in the war of the Laconians, was hostile and hateful to Quinctius. Amynander had as wife Apama, the daughter of a certain Alexander of Megalopolis, who, claiming himself sprung from Alexander the Great, had imposed the names Philip and Alexander upon his two sons and Apama upon his daughter; her, made illustrious by royal nuptials, the elder of the brothers, Philip, had followed into Athamania. This man, vain by temperament, the Aetolians and Antiochus had impelled into hope of the kingdom of Macedonia, on the ground that he was truly of royal stock, if he had joined Amynander and the Athamanians to Antiochus; and that vanity of promises prevailed not only with Philip but even with Amynander.
[48] In Achaia legatis Antiochi Aetolorumque coram T. Quinctio Aegii datum est concilium. Antiochi legatus prior quam Aetoli est auditus. is, ut plerique quos opes regiae alunt, uaniloquus maria terrasque inani sonitu uerborum compleuit: equitum innumerabilem uim traici Hellesponto in Europam, partim loricatos, quos cataphractos uocant, partim sagittis ex equo utentes et, a quo nihil satis tecti sit, auerso refugientes equo certius figentes.
[48] In Achaia a council was given at Aegium to the envoys of Antiochus and of the Aetolians in the presence of T. Quinctius. The envoy of Antiochus was heard before that of the Aetolians. He, as most whom royal resources nourish, vainglorious, filled seas and lands with the empty sound of words: that an innumerable force of cavalry was being ferried across the Hellespont into Europe, partly armored (loricated), whom they call cataphracts, partly using arrows from horseback and—against which no one is sufficiently covered—turning their horses away in flight, planting their shafts more surely.
with these equestrian forces, although even the armies of all Europe, gathered into one, could be overwhelmed, he added manifold forces of infantry and, by the very names of nations scarcely heard even by report, sought to terrify, naming the Dahae, the Medes, the Elymaeans, and the Cadusians; and as for the naval forces, which no harbors in Greece could contain, the right wing the Sidonians and Tyrians held, the left the Aradians and the Sidetes from Pamphylia—nations which none had ever equaled either in naval art or in valor. As for money and other apparatus of war, to mention them was superfluous: they themselves knew that the kingdoms of Asia had always abounded in gold. Therefore the Romans would have their affair not with Philip nor with Hannibal—the one a chief of a single city, the other shut in by the boundaries of the kingdom of Macedonia only—but with the great king of all Asia and a part of Europe.
He nevertheless—although he comes from the farthest boundaries of the East to liberate Greece—asks nothing of the Achaeans whereby their faith toward the Romans, their earlier allies and friends, would be injured; for he does not ask that they take up arms with him against them, but that they join themselves to neither party. Let them opt for peace for both sides, which befits friends in the middle; let them not interpose themselves in the war. Much the same also did Archidamus, the legate of the Aetolians, request: that they provide quiet, which would be the easiest and safest, and, as spectators of the war, await the outcome of others’ fortunes without any peril to their own affairs.
Then the intemperance of his tongue advanced into maledictions, now against the Romans in general, now specifically against Quinctius himself, calling them ungrateful and reproaching them not only for the victory over Philip achieved by the valor of the Aetolians but also for their very safety, and that he himself and the army had been saved by his own efforts. For when had he ever discharged a general’s office? He had seen him in the battle line taking the auspices, sacrificing, and pronouncing vows in the manner of a petty sacrificial seer, while he himself was exposing his body in his stead to the enemy’s missiles.
[49] Ad ea Quinctius coram quibus magis quam apud quos uerba faceret dicere Archidamum rationem habuisse; Achaeos enim probe scire Aetolorum omnem ferociam in uerbis, non in factis esse, et in conciliis magis contionibusque quam in acie apparere; itaque parui Achaeorum existimationem, quibus notos esse se scirent, fecisse: legatis regis et per eos absenti regi eum se iactasse. quod si quis antea ignorasset quae res Antiochum et Aetolos coniunxisset, ex legatorum sermone potuisse apparere: mentiendo in uicem iactandoque uires quas non haberent, inflasse uana spe atque inflatos esse. 'dum hi ab se uictum Philippum, sua uirtute protectos Romanos et, quae modo audiebatis, narrant uos ceterasque ciuitates et gentes suam sectam esse secuturos, rex contra peditum equitumque nubes iactat et consternit maria classibus suis.
[49] To this Quinctius said that Archidamus had had regard to those before whom rather than with whom he was speaking; for the Achaeans knew well that all the ferocity of the Aetolians was in words, not in deeds, and appeared more in councils and public assemblies than in the battle-line; and so they had set at little account the esteem of the Achaeans, among whom they knew themselves to be known: he had bragged to the king’s legates and through them to the absent king. And if anyone had previously been ignorant what had joined Antiochus and the Aetolians, it could be seen from the discourse of the legates: by lying to each other in turn and vaunting forces which they did not possess, they had inflated with empty hope and been inflated. 'while these men tell that Philip was conquered by them, that the Romans were protected by their valor, and—what you were just now hearing—that you and the other cities and nations will follow their sect, the king, by contrast, flings about clouds of infantry and cavalry and covers the seas with his fleets.
the matter, however, is most similar to the dinner of my Chalcidian host, a good man and a shrewd convivial host, at whose house, graciously received at the solstitial season, when we wondered whence he had at that time of year such varied and abundant game, the man—not vainglorious as those fellows are—beaming, said that that variety and the semblance of wild-beast flesh had been made from a tame sow by condiments.' this, he said, could aptly be applied to the king’s forces which a little earlier were boasted of; for the various kinds of arms and the many names of unheard-of nations, the Dahae <and the Medes> and the Cadusii and the Elymaei, are all Syrians, much more a stock of slaves, because of their servile dispositions, than a race of soldiers. 'and would that I could set before your eyes, Achaeans, the scurrying of the great king from Demetrias now to Lamia into the council of the Aetolians, now to Chalcis: you would see in the king’s camp scarcely the likeness of two ill-filled little legions; you would see the king now almost begging grain from the Aetolians to be allotted to the soldier, now seeking borrowed moneys at interest for pay, now standing at the gates of Chalcis and soon, shut out from there, with nothing else looked at than Aulis and the Euripus, returning into Aetolia. both Antiochus put ill trust in the Aetolians and the Aetolians in royal vanity; so much the less ought you to be deceived, but rather to trust the tried and proven good faith of the Romans.
[50] Nec absurde aduersus utrosque respondisse uisus est, et facile erat orationem apud fauentes aequis auribus accipi. nulla enim nec disceptatio nec dubitatio fuit quin omnes eosdem genti Achaeorum hostes et amicos quos populus Romanus censuisset iudicarent bellumque et Antiocho et Aetolis nuntiari iuberent. auxilia etiam quo censuit Quinctius, quingentorum militum Chalcidem, quingentorum Piraeum extemplo miserunt.
[50] Nor did he seem to have replied absurdly against either party, and it was easy for the oration to be received with fair ears among the favoring. For there was neither dispute nor doubt that they should judge the same men enemies and friends to the nation of the Achaeans as the Roman people had resolved, and that they should order war to be announced both to Antiochus and to the Aetolians. Auxiliaries also, whither Quinctius had advised, they forthwith sent—five hundred soldiers to Chalcis, five hundred to the Piraeus.
For the situation at Athens was not far from sedition, as certain men, in hope of largesses, were drawing the multitude—venal at a price—toward Antiochus, until by those who were of the Roman party Quinctius was summoned; and, with a certain Leon as accuser, Apollodorus, the author of the defection, was condemned and cast into exile.
Antiochus cum ad Chalcidis praesidium et Achaeos et Eumenem regem misisse audisset, maturandum ratus ut et praeuenirent sui et uenientes, si possent, exciperent, Menippum cum tribus ferme milibus militum et cum omni classe Polyxenidan mittit, ipse paucos post dies sex milia suorum militum et ex ea copia quae Lamiae repente conligi potuit non ita multos Aetolos ducit. Achaei quingenti <et> ab Eumene rege modicum auxilium missum duce Xenoclide Chalcidensi nondum obsessis itineribus tuto transgressi Euripum Chalcidem peruenerunt. Romani milites, quingenti ferme et ipsi, cum iam Menippus castra ante Salganea ad Hermaeum, qua transitus ex Boeotia in Euboeam insulam est, haberet, uenerunt.
When Antiochus heard that both the Achaeans and King Eumenes had sent forces to the garrison of Chalcis, thinking that haste must be made so that his men might both preempt them and, if possible, intercept those coming, he sends Menippus with about three thousand soldiers, and Polyxenidas with the whole fleet; he himself, a few days later, leads six thousand of his own soldiers and, from that force which could be suddenly collected at Lamia, not very many Aetolians. Five hundred Achaeans and a moderate auxiliary force sent by King Eumenes, with Xenocles the Chalcidian as leader, the routes not yet blockaded, safely crossed the Euripus and arrived at Chalcis. Roman soldiers, about five hundred likewise, arrived when Menippus already had a camp before Salganeae at the Hermaeum, where the passage from Boeotia into the island of Euboea is.
[51] Templum est Apollinis Delium, imminens mari; quinque milia passuum ab Tanagra abest; minus quattuor milium inde in proxima Euboeae est mari traiectus. ubi et in fano lucoque ea religione et eo iure sancto quo sunt templa quae asyla Graeci appellant, et nondum aut indicto bello aut ita commisso ut strictos gladios aut sanguinem usquam factum audissent, cum per magnum otium milites alii ad spectaculum templi lucique uersi, alii in litore inermes uagarentur, magna pars per agros lignatum pabulatumque dilapsa esset, repente Menippus palatos passim adgressus ~eos cecidit, ad quinquaginta uiuos cepit; perpauci effugerunt, in quibus Micythio parua oneraria naue exceptus. ea res Quinctio Romanisque sicut iactura militum molesta, ita ad ius inferendi Antiocho belli adiecisse aliquantum uidebatur.
[51] There is at Delium a temple of Apollo, overhanging the sea; it is five thousand paces distant from Tanagra; from there the crossing over the sea to the nearest part of Euboea is less than four thousand. There, both in the shrine and in the grove, there is that sanctity and that sacred right with which are endowed the temples which the Greeks call asyla; and as yet neither had war been declared nor so engaged that they had heard anywhere of swords drawn or blood shed, when, in great leisure, some of the soldiers turned to the spectacle of the temple and grove, others were wandering unarmed on the shore, and a great part had slipped away through the fields to gather wood and forage. Suddenly Menippus, attacking them scattered everywhere, cut them down, and took about fifty alive; very few escaped, among whom was Micythio, taken aboard a small transport vessel. This affair, though irksome to Quinctius and the Romans as a loss of soldiers, nevertheless seemed to have added somewhat to the right of bringing war against Antiochus.
Antiochus, with his army brought up to Aulis, when he had again sent envoys, partly of his own and partly Aetolians, to Chalcis to press those same demands as recently, but with graver threats, with Micythion and Xenocleides striving against in vain, easily carried it that the gates be opened to him. Those who were of the Roman party, upon the king’s arrival, withdrew from the city. The soldiers of the Achaeans and of Eumenes were holding Salganea, and at the Euripus a few Roman soldiers were strengthening a fort for the sake of guarding the place.
Menippus took Salganea; the king himself set about assaulting the fortress of the Euripus. The Achaeans and the soldiers of Eumenes were the first to withdraw from the garrison, having bargained that it should be permitted to depart without fraud; the Romans were defending the Euripus more stubbornly. They too, however, when they were being besieged by land and sea and now saw siege machines and artillery being brought up, did not endure the siege.