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[1] Dum in Asia bellum geritur, ne in Aetolia quidem res quietae fuerant, principio a gente Athamanum orto. Athamania ea tempestate pulso Amynandro sub praefectis Philippi regio tenebatur praesidio, qui superbo atque immodico imperio desiderium Amynandri fecerant. Exulanti tum Amynandro in Aetolia litteris suorum, indicantium statum Athamaniae, spes recuperandi regni facta est.
[1] While war was being waged in Asia, not even in Aetolia were affairs quiet, the initiative having arisen from the nation of the Athamanians. Athamania at that time, Amynander having been expelled, was held under a royal garrison by the prefects of Philip, who by their proud and immoderate rule had created a longing for Amynander. Then for Amynander, in exile in Aetolia, through letters from his own people pointing out the condition of Athamania, a hope of recovering the kingdom arose.
And, sent back by him, they announce to the chiefs at Argithea— for that was the head of Athamania—, that, if he had the minds of the commoners sufficiently ascertained, with aid obtained from the Aetolians he would come into Athamania. He did not distrust that he would easily convene with the select men—which is the council of the nation—and with Praetor Nicander. When he saw that they were ready for everything, from there he informs his own men on what day he would enter Athamania with the army.
At first there were four conspirators against the Macedonian garrison. These took on six assistants apiece to carry out the affair; then, trusting too little to their paucity (small number), which was more apt for concealing the business than for doing it, they added a number equal to the former. Thus, having become fifty-two, they divided themselves into four parts: one part made for Heraclea, another for Tetraphylia, where the guard of the royal money used to be, a third for Theudoria, a fourth for Argithea.
Thus it was agreed among all that at first, quietly, as if they had come to transact a private matter, they would present themselves in the forum; on a set day they would convoke the whole multitude to expel the garrisons of the Macedonians from the citadels. When that day arrived, and Amynander was on the borders with a thousand Aetolians, by prearrangement the Macedonian garrisons were expelled in four places at once, and letters were sent broadcast into the other cities, that they should vindicate themselves from the unrestrained domination of Philip and restore (themselves) into their ancestral and legitimate kingdom. On every side the Macedonians are expelled.
The town of Theium, with the letters from Xeno, prefect of the garrison, intercepted and the citadel seized by the royal troops, resisted the besiegers for a few days; then that too was handed over to Amynander, and all Athamania was in his power except the fortress Athenaeum, subject to the borders of Macedonia.
[2] Philippus audita defectione Athamaniae cum sex milibus armatorum profectus ingenti celeritate Gomphos peruenit. Ibi relicta maiore parte exercitus —neque enim ad tanta itinera sufficerent—cum duobus milibus Athenaeum, quod unum a praesidio suo retentum fuerat, peruenit. Inde proximis temptatis cum facile animaduertisset cetera hostilia esse, Gomphos regressus omnibus copiis simul in Athamaniam redit.
[2] Philip, having heard of the defection of Athamania, set out with six thousand armed men and, with great celerity, arrived at Gomphi. There, leaving behind the greater part of the army—for they were not equal to such long marches—with two thousand he reached Athenaeum, which alone had been retained by his garrison. Thence, the nearest places having been tried, when he had easily observed that the rest were hostile, having returned to Gomphi he re-entered Athamania with all his forces together.
From there he orders Xenon, sent ahead with one thousand foot-soldiers, to seize Aethopia, conveniently overhanging Argithea; when he saw that the place was held by his own men, he himself pitched camp around the temple of Jupiter Acraeus. There, detained for one day by a foul tempest, on the following day he intended to lead toward Argithea. As they were going, straightway the Athamanes appeared, running to and fro on the hillocks overhanging the road.
At the sight of whom the foremost standards halted, and in the whole column there was fear and trepidation, and each man for himself began to consider what would come to pass if the column were to be sent down into the valleys lying beneath the cliffs. This commotion forced the king—though he wished, if they would follow him, to escape the narrows in haste—to recall the van and to bring back the standards by the same road by which he had come. The Athamanians at first followed quietly at an interval; after the Aetolians joined themselves to them, they left these to press upon the column from the rear, while they themselves surrounded it from the flanks; some, going on ahead by known by-paths by a shorter route, seized the passes; and so great a tumult was cast among the Macedonians that, in a manner more of a disorderly flight than of an orderly march, with many arms and men left behind, they crossed the river.
The Macedonians, not trusting sufficiently in their position, withdrew from Aethopia onto a higher and more steep-broken hill on every side; to which, access having been found from several points, the Athamanes drove them out, and, when they were scattered and were making their way through pathless and unknown crags by a route that did not expedite flight, they partly captured them and partly killed them. Many, in terror, were hurled headlong down the precipices; very few, together with Xenon, made their escape to the king. Afterwards, under a truce, permission was granted for burying the slain.
[3] Amynander recuperato regno legatos et Romam ad senatum et ad Scipiones in Asiam, Ephesi post magnum cum Antiocho proelium morantes, misit. Pacem petebat excusabatque sese, quod per Aetolos recuperasset paternum regnum; Philippum incusabat. Aetoli ex Athamania in Amphilochos profecti sunt et maioris partis uoluntate in ius dicionemque totam redegerunt gentem.
[3] After recovering his kingdom, Amynander sent envoys both to Rome to the Senate and to the Scipios in Asia, staying at Ephesus after the great battle with Antiochus. He was seeking peace and excused himself, on the ground that he had recovered his paternal kingdom by means of the Aetolians; he laid blame on Philip. The Aetoli, setting out from Athamania to the Amphilochi, with the will of the greater part, reduced the whole nation under their jurisdiction and dominion.
Amphilochia having been recovered— for it had once been the Aetolians’—with the same hope they crossed over into Aperantia; this too, in great part, came into surrender without contest. The Dolopes had never been of the Aetolians; they were Philip’s. These at first rushed to arms; but after they learned that the Amphilochi were with the Aetolians, and of Philip’s flight from Athamania and the slaughter of his garrison, they too defect from Philip to the Aetolians.
With the circumjacent peoples, the Aetolians already believing themselves on every side to be safe from the Macedonians, a report is brought that Antiochus in Asia has been conquered by the Romans; and not much later envoys returned from Rome without hope of peace, announcing that the consul Fulvius had already crossed with his army. Frightened by these things, first having summoned embassies from Rhodes and Athens, so that, through the authority of those cities, their prayers, lately repudiated, might have an easier access to the senate, the chiefs of the nation sent to Rome to try their last hope, having premeditated nothing to avoid a war until the enemy was almost in sight. By now Marcus Fulvius, the army transported across, was consulting at Apollonia with the leaders of the Epirotes from where he should commence the war.
Epirots thought it best to attack Ambracia, which had then attached itself to the Aetolians: whether the Aetolians should come to defend it, the fields lying open around it would be for fighting; or if they should shrink from the contest, the assault would be by no means difficult; for there was both a supply near at hand of material for raising embankments (aggers) and for the other works, and the Arethon, a navigable river, flowed past the very walls, convenient for transporting things that are of use, and the summer was at hand, apt for conducting the affair. By these arguments they persuaded him to lead his march through Epirus.
[4] Consuli ad Ambraciam aduenienti magni operis oppugnatio uisa est. Ambracia tumulo aspero subiecta est; Perranthem incolae uocant. Vrbs, qua murus uergit in campos et flumen, occidentem, arx, quae imposita tumulo est, orientem spectat.
[4] To the consul arriving at Ambracia the assault appeared a work of great difficulty. Ambracia lies beneath a rugged hill; the inhabitants call it Perranthes. The city, where the wall slopes toward the plains and the river, faces the west; the citadel, which is set upon the hill, faces the east.
The river Aretho, flowing from Athamania, falls into a gulf of the sea called Ambracium from the name of the neighboring city. Besides that it is here defended by the river and there by mounds, it was also enclosed by a firm wall, stretching in circuit a little more than four miles. Fulvius set two camps on the plain, at a moderate interval distant from each other; one small fort he placed on an elevated spot opposite the citadel; he prepares to join all these with a rampart and a ditch, so that there might be no exit for those shut in from the city, nor any entrance from outside for introducing reinforcements.
At the report of the assault on Ambracia, the Aetoli, by the edict of the praetor Nicander, had already assembled at Stratus. Thence at first it had been their intention to come with all their forces to prevent the siege; then, after they saw the city already for the most part enclosed by works, that the camp of the Epirotes had been pitched across the river on level ground, it was decided to divide the forces. With a thousand light-armed, Eupolemus set out for Ambracia and, through fortifications not yet joined to one another, entered the city.
Nicander, with the rest of the force, had at first had the plan to assail by night the camp of the Epirotes, with no easy succor from the Romans, because a river intervened; then, judging the undertaking perilous—lest the Romans in any way perceive it and a return thence into safety not be possible—deterred from this counsel he turned his march to lay waste Acarnania.
[5] Consul iam munimentis,quibus saepienda urbs erat, iam operibus, quae admouere muris parabat, perfectis quinque simul locis moenia est adgressus. Tria paribus interuallis, faciliore aditu a campo, aduersus Pyrrheum, quod uocant, admouit, unum e regione Aesculapii, unum aduersus arcem. Arietibus muros quatiebat; asseribus falcatis detergebat pinnas.
[5] The Consul, the fortifications by which the city was to be fenced in now completed, and the works which he was preparing to bring up to the walls now finished, attacked the walls in five places at once. He brought up three, at equal intervals, where the approach from the plain was easier, against the Pyrrheum, as they call it, one over against Aesculapius, one against the citadel. He was shaking the walls with battering-rams; with hooked planks (falcate) he was sweeping off the battlements.
At first the townspeople, both at the sight and at the blows against the walls sent forth with a terrible sound, were seized by fear and trepidation; then, when they saw the walls standing beyond hope, their spirits gathered again, they were striking against the rams with derricks, hurling weights of lead or of stones or sturdy stakes; by casting iron anchors onto the inner part of the wall and dragging, they would snap the beam of the hooks; in addition, by sallies, nocturnal against the guards of the works and diurnal against the pickets, they of their own accord brought terror. While matters at Ambracia stood thus, already the Aetoli had returned from the ravaging of Acarnania to Stratus. From there Nicander the praetor, having conceived a hope of loosening the siege by a bold attempt, brings inside Ambracia a certain Nicodamus with five hundred Aetoli.
He appointed a fixed night and even an hour of the night, at which they should from the city assault the enemy’s works that were against the Pyrrheum, and he himself should create terror at the Roman camp, thinking that, with a two‑front tumult and the night augmenting the fear, a memorable deed could be done. And Nicodamus, in the dead of night, when he had eluded some guards and had broken through others with a steadfast assault, after the “arm” was overcome, penetrates into the city, and added somewhat of spirit for daring everything and of hope to the besieged; and, as soon as the appointed night came, according to the plan he suddenly attacked the works. That attempt was more serious in effort than in effect, because no force was applied from the outer side, whether the praetor of the Aetolians was deterred by fear, or because it rather seemed good to bring aid to the Amphilochi, lately recovered, whom Perseus, son of Philip, sent to recover Dolopia and the Amphilochi, was assaulting with utmost force.
[6] Tribus locis, sicut ante dictum est, ad Pyrrheum opera Romana erant, quae omnia simul, sed nec apparatu nec ui simili, Aetoli adgressi sunt: alii cum ardentibus facibus, alii stuppam picemque et malleolos ferentes, tota collucente flammis acie, aduenere. Multos primo impetu custodes oppresserunt; dein, postquam clamor tumultusque in castra est perlatus datumque a consule signum, arma capiunt et omnibus portis ad opem ferendam effunduntur. [uno in loco] ferro ignique gesta res; ab duobus irrito incepto, cum temptassent magis quam inissent certamen, Aetoli abscesserunt; atrox pugna in unum inclinauerat locum.
[6] In three places, as was said before, Roman siege-works were against Pyrrheum, and the Aetolians assailed them all at once, but neither with like equipment nor force: some with blazing torches, others bearing tow and pitch and fire-darts, they arrived, the whole line shining with flames. They overwhelmed many guards at the first onset; then, after the shouting and tumult had been carried to the camp and the signal had been given by the consul, they seize arms and pour out by all the gates to bring help. [in one place] the affair was carried on with iron and fire; at two, with the attempt abortive, since they had tried rather than entered upon combat, the Aetolians withdrew; the fierce fight had inclined toward one spot.
There, in different quarters, the two leaders Eupolemus and Nicodamus were exhorting the combatants and were fostering with a well-nigh certain hope that now Nicander, by prearrangement, would be at hand and would assail the enemy’s rear. This held up the spirits of the fighters for some time; but after they were receiving no concerted signal from their own side and saw the number of the enemy increasing, left in the lurch they pressed on more slackly; finally, with the enterprise abandoned and their retreat now scarcely safe, the fugitives were driven back into the city, a part of the works having been set on fire, and somewhat more having been slain than had fallen on their own side. And if the affair had been conducted by prearrangement, there was no doubt that the works could at any rate in one sector have been stormed, with great slaughter of the enemy.
The Ambraciots and the Aetolians who were inside withdrew not only from the attempt of that night, but for the remaining time as well were, as if betrayed by their own, more sluggish to face dangers. Now no one made sallies, as before, against the enemy stations, but, posted along the walls and towers, they fought from a place of safety.
[7] Perseus ubi adesse Aetolos audiuit, omissa obsidione urbis, quam oppugnabat, depopulatus tantum agros Amphilochia excessit atque in Macedoniam redit. Et Aetolos inde auocauit populatio maritumae orae. Pleuratus, Illyriorum rex, cum sexaginta lembis Corinthium sinum inuectus adiunctis Achaeorum quae Patris erant nauibus marituma Aetoliae uastabat.
[7] When Perseus heard that the Aetolians were at hand, abandoning the siege of the city which he was assaulting, after merely depopulating the fields, he withdrew from Amphilochia and returned into Macedonia. And the depredation of the maritime coast drew the Aetolians away from there. Pleuratus, king of the Illyrians, having entered the Corinthian Gulf with sixty lembi, and with the ships of the Achaeans which were at Patrae joined to him, was laying waste the seaboard of Aetolia.
Against them a thousand Aetolians were sent, who, wherever the fleet wheeled about through the sinuosities of the shores, were meeting it by shorter by-paths. And the Romans at Ambracia, by shaking the walls with battering-rams in several places, had in some measure laid the city bare, yet they could not penetrate into the city; for both with equal celerity a new wall was thrown up in place of the demolished one, and armed men standing upon the ruins were like a rampart. Therefore, since by open force the matter advanced too little for the consul, he set about driving a concealed tunnel, the place in front first covered with vineae (mantlets); and for some time, as they were at work day and night, not only those digging underground but even those carrying out the earth escaped the enemy’s notice.
A suddenly emerging mound of earth was an index of the work to the townspeople, and, fearful lest already, with the walls undermined, a way into the city had been made, they resolve to dig a trench inside the wall opposite that work which was covered with vineae. When they had reached in depth as far as the lowest level of the tunnel could be, having made silence, with the ear applied at several places they tried to catch the sound of the diggers. When they caught it, they open a straight way into the tunnel, and it was not a work of great effort; for in a moment they reached the void under the wall, which was being held up by struts set by the enemy.
There, once the works had come to grips and since a way lay open from the ditch into the gallery, at first with the very iron tools which they had used in the work, then quickly, armed men also going down, they waged an occult fight under the earth; then it became slower, as they partitioned off the gallery where they wished, now with cilicia (haircloths) stretched in front, now with doors hastily set up. A new device too, not a work of great labor, was devised against those who were in the gallery. They made a cask pierced at the bottom, where a small pipe could be inserted, and an iron pipe and an iron lid for the cask, and this too perforated in several places.
This cask, filled with fine down, they placed with its mouth turned toward the tunnel. Through the lid’s apertures very long spears, which they call sarissas, projected to drive the enemy back. A light spark of fire, inserted into the down, they kindled by blowing, a smith’s bellows set at the head of the tube.
[8] Cum in hoc statu ad Ambraciam res esset,legati ab Aetolis Phaeneas et Damoteles cum liberis mandatis decreto gentis ad consulem uenerunt. Nam praetor eorum, cum alia parte Ambraciam oppugnari cerneret, alia infestam oram nauibus hostium esse, alia Amphilochos Dolopiam<que> a Macedonibus uastari, nec Aetolos ad tria simul diuersa bella occursantis sufficere, conuocato concilio Aetoliae principes, quid agendum esset, consuluit. Omnium eo sententiae decurrererunt, ut pax, si posset, aequis, si minus, tolerandis condicionibus peteretur; Antiochi fiducia bellum susceptum; Antiocho terra marique superato et prope extra orbem terrae ultra iuga Tauri exacto quam spem esse sustinendi belli?
[8] While the situation at Ambracia was in this state, envoys from the Aetolians, Phaeneas and Damoteles, came to the consul with unrestricted mandates by a decree of the nation. For their praetor, since he saw Ambracia being assaulted in one quarter, in another the coast made unsafe by the enemy’s ships, in another the Amphilochi and Dolopia being ravaged by the Macedonians, and that the Aetolians did not suffice to meet three diverse wars at once, having convened the council of Aetolia, consulted the leading men as to what should be done. All opinions ran to this: that peace should be sought, if possible on equitable terms, if not, on terms to be endured; the war had been undertaken in reliance on Antiochus; with Antiochus defeated by land and sea and driven almost beyond the orb of the earth past the ridges of Taurus, what hope was there of sustaining the war?
Phaeneas and Damoteles should act in whatever they judged to be for the interest of the Aetolians, as in such a crisis, and in keeping with their own good faith; for what plan, or the choice of what thing, had fortune left to them? With these mandates the envoys were sent to beg the consul to spare the city, to have compassion on a nation once allied—unwilling to say by injuries, but certainly by miseries compelled to run mad; that the Aetolians had not deserved to receive more ill in the war of Antiochus than the good they had formerly done, when war was waged against Philip; and that neither then had gratitude been returned to them on a generous scale, nor now ought an immoderate penalty to be imposed. To this the consul replied that the Aetolians sought peace more often than ever truly.
Let them imitate Antiochus in seeking peace, whom they had dragged into war; he had withdrawn not from a few cities, over whose liberty the contest had been waged, but from all Asia on this side of Mount Taurus, an opulent kingdom. He would not listen to the Aetolians treating for peace unless unarmed; their arms and all their horses must first be handed over, then a thousand talents of silver must be given to the Roman people, of which sum one-half should be paid down at once, if they wished to have peace. In addition he would add into the treaty that they have the same friends and enemies as the Roman people.
[9] Aduersus quae legati, et quia grauia erant, et quia suorum animos indomitos ac mutabiles nouerant, nullo reddito responso domum regressi sunt, ut etiam atque etiam, quid agendum esset, re integra praetorem et principes consulerent. Clamore et iurgio excepti, quam diu rem traherent, qualemcumque pacem referre iussi, cum redirent Ambraciam, Acarnanum insidiis prope uiam positis, cum quibus bellum erat, circumuenti Thyrreum custodiendi deducuntur. Haec mora iniecta est paci, cum iam Atheniensium Rhodiorumque legati, qui ad deprecandum pro iis uenerant, apud consulem essent.
[9] In answer to these demands, the envoys—both because they were onerous, and because they knew their own people’s spirits to be untamed and changeable—returned home without giving any reply, so that, with the matter still untouched, they might consult again and again with the praetor and the leading men about what should be done. Received with shouting and wrangling—how long were they going to drag the matter out?—they were ordered to bring back peace on whatever terms; and when they were returning to Ambracia, ambushes having been set near the road by the Acarnanians, with whom there was war, they were surrounded and escorted to Thyrreum for custody. This delay was thrown in the way of peace, when already the envoys of the Athenians and of the Rhodians, who had come to intercede on their behalf, were with the consul.
Amynander too, king of the Athamanians, with a pledge of good faith received, had come into the Roman camp, more anxious on behalf of the city Ambracia—where he had spent the greater part of his time in exile—than for the Aetolians. Through these men the consul, made certain about the mishap of the legates, ordered that they be brought from Thyrreum; after whose arrival negotiations about peace were begun. Amynander, in what was especially his own task, acted vigorously, to compel the Ambraciots to surrender.
<ad> to that end, since by conferences of the chiefs as he advanced up to the wall he was making little progress, at last, with the consul’s permission, having entered the city, he prevailed—partly by counsel, partly by entreaties—that they should submit themselves to the Romans. And as for the Aetolians, Gaius Valerius, son of Laevinus—who had first concluded amity with that nation—the consul’s brother, born of the same mother, gave distinguished aid. The Ambraciots, having first stipulated that the Aetolian auxiliaries be sent out without deceit, opened the gates.
Then <To the Aetolians the conditions of peace were stated:> that they should pay 500 Euboean talents, of which 200 immediately, 300 over six years in equal installments; that they should return captives and deserters to the Romans; that they should make no city subject to the formula of their own law which, after the time when T. Quinctius had crossed into Greece, had either been taken by force by the Romans or had of its own will come into friendship; that the island of Cephallenia should be outside the terms of the treaty. Although these were somewhat less favorable than their hope, it was permitted to the Aetolians, who requested it, to refer the matter to their council. A small dispute detained them about the cities, which, since they had once been of their own right (sui iuris), they could hardly endure to be torn away as though from their own body; nevertheless, to a man, they all ordered that peace be accepted.
The Ambraciots gave the consul a golden crown of one hundred and fifty pounds in weight. Bronze and marble statues and painted panels, by which Ambracia—because the royal residence of Pyrrhus had been there—was more adorned than the other cities of that region, were all removed and carried off; nothing besides was touched or violated.
[10] Profectus ab Ambracia consul in mediterranea Aetoliae ad Argos Amphilochium—uiginti duo milia ab Ambracia abest—castra posuit. Eo tandem legati Aetoli mirante consule, quod morarentur, uenerunt. Inde, postquam approbasse pacem concilium Aetolorum accepit, iussis proficisci Romam ad senatum permissoque, ut et Rhodii et Athenienses deprecatores irent, dato, qui simul cum iis proficisceretur, C. Valerio fratre ipse in Cephallaniam traiecit.
[10] Setting out from Ambracia, the consul pitched camp in the interior of Aetolia at Argos Amphilochium—it lies twenty-two miles from Ambracia. Thither at last the Aetolian envoys came, the consul marveling that they were delaying. Then, after he learned that the council of the Aetolians had approved the peace, instructions were given that they should set out to Rome to the senate, and leave was granted that both the Rhodians and the Athenians should go as intercessors; and, with his brother Gaius Valerius assigned to depart along with them, he himself crossed over into Cephallenia.
They found the ears and minds of the leaders at Rome preoccupied by the accusations of Philip, who, through legates and through letters, complaining that the Dolopes, the Amphilochi, and Athamania had been snatched away from him, as well as his garrisons, and, finally, that even his son Perseus had been driven out from the Amphilochi, had turned the senate away from listening to their petitions. Nevertheless the Rhodians and the Athenians were heard in silence. The Athenian legate Leon, son of Hicesias, is said even to have moved them by his eloquence; availing himself of a vulgate similitude, by equating the multitude of the Aetolians to a sea calm which is stirred up by winds, he said that, when they remained in the faith of the Roman alliance, they had been quiet with the innate tranquillity of the people; but after Thoas and Dicaearchus from Asia began to blow, and Menestas and Damocritus from Europe, then that tempest arose which had carried them to Antiochus as if onto a rock.
[11] Diu iactati Aetoli tandem, ut condiciones pacis conuenirent, effecerunt. Fuerunt autem hae: 'imperium maiestatemque populi Romani gens Aetolorum conseruato sine dolo malo; ne quem exercitum, qui aduersus socios amicosque eorum ducetur, per fines suos transire sinito, neue ulla ope iuuato; hostis eosdem habeto quos populus Romanus, armaque in eos ferto, bellumque pariter gerito; perfugas fugitiuos captiuos reddito Romanis sociisque, praeterquam si qui capti, cum domos redissent, iterum capti sunt, aut si qui eo tempore ex iis capti sunt, qui tum hostes erant Romanis, cum intra praesidia Romana Aetoli essent; aliorum qui comparebunt intra dies centum Corcyraeorum magistratibus sine dolo malo tradantur; qui non comparebunt, quando quisque eorum primum inuentus erit, reddatur; obsides quadraginta arbitratu consulis Romanis dato ne minores duodecim annorum neu maiores quadraginta, obses ne esto praetor, praefectus equitum, scriba publicus, neu quis, qui ante obses fuit apud Romanos; Cephallania extra pacis leges esto.' De pecuniae summa, quam penderent, pensionibusque eius nihil ex eo, quod cum consule conuenerat, mutatum; pro argento si aurum dare mallent, darent, conuenit, dum pro argenteis decem aureus unus ualeret. 'Quae urbes, qui agri, qui homines Aetolorum iuris aliquando fuerunt, qui eorum T. Quinctio Cn. Domitio consulibus postue eos consules aut armis subacti aut uoluntate in dicionem populi Romani uenerunt, ne quem eorum Aetoli recepisse uelint; Oeniadae cum urbe agrisque Acarnanum sunto.' His legibus foedus ictum cum Aetolis est.
[11] Long tossed, the Aetolians at last brought it about that terms of peace should be agreed. They were these: 'let the nation of the Aetolians preserve the imperium and majesty of the Roman people without malice or deceit; do not allow any army that shall be led against their allies and friends to pass through your borders, nor assist with any help; hold as enemies the same as the Roman people, and bring arms against them, and wage war equally; return deserters, runaways, and captives to the Romans and their allies, except if any, having been captured, after they had returned home were captured again, or if any of them were captured at that time when they were enemies to the Romans, while the Aetolians were within the Roman garrisons; let the others who appear within one hundred days be handed over without deceit to the magistrates of the Corcyraeans; those who do not appear shall be returned whenever each of them is first found; give forty hostages at the discretion of the consul to the Romans, not younger than twelve years nor older than forty; let no hostage be a praetor, a prefect of cavalry, a public scribe, nor anyone who previously was a hostage among the Romans; let Cephallenia be outside the laws of the peace.' As to the sum of money they should pay, and its installments, nothing was changed from that which had been agreed with the consul; it was agreed that, if they preferred to give gold instead of silver, they might give it, provided that one piece of gold should be worth ten of silver. 'Whatever cities, lands, or persons were at any time under Aetolian right, which of them, under the consuls T. Quinctius and Cn. Domitius, or after those consuls, either by arms subdued or by their own will came into the dominion of the Roman people, let the Aetolians not wish to have received any of them back; let Oeniadae, with the city and lands, belong to the Acarnanians.' On these terms a treaty was struck with the Aetolians.
[12] Eadem non aestate solum, sed etiam iisdem prope diebus, quibus haec a M. Fuluio consule in Aetolia gesta sunt, consul alter Cn. Manlius in Gallograecia bellum gessit, quod nunc ordiri pergam. Vere primo Ephesum consul uenit, acceptisque copiis ab L. Scipione et exercitu lustrato contionem apud milites habuit, qua collaudata uirtute eorum, quod cum Antiocho uno proelio debellassent, adhortatus eos <ad> nouum cum Gallis suscipiendum bellum, qui et auxiliis iuuissent Antiochum, et adeo indomita haberent ingenia, ut nequiquam Antiochus emotus ultra iuga Tauri montis esset, nisi frangerentur opes Gallorum, de se quoque pauca, nec falsa nec immodica, adiecit. Laeti milites cum frequenti adsensu consulem audiuerunt, partem uirium Antiochi fuisse Gallos credentes; rege superato nullum momentum in solis per se Gallorum copiis fore.
[12] Not in the same summer only, but even in nearly the same days on which these things were done in Aetolia by the consul M. Fulvius, the other consul, Cn. Manlius, waged war in Gallo-Greece, which I will now proceed to begin. At the beginning of spring the consul came to Ephesus, and, after receiving the forces from L. Scipio and reviewing the army, he held an assembly among the soldiers, in which—after commending their virtus, because they had brought the war with Antiochus to an end in one battle—he exhorted them to undertake a new war with the Gauls, who had both aided Antiochus with auxiliaries and had tempers so indomitable that Antiochus had been moved beyond the ridges of Mount Taurus to no purpose, unless the resources of the Gauls were broken; he added also a few things about himself, neither false nor immoderate. The soldiers, glad, listened to the consul with frequent assent, believing that the Gauls had been part of Antiochus’s forces; with the king overcome, there would be no weight at all in the forces of the Gauls by themselves.
Eumenes, the consul believed, was away at an inopportune time — he was then at Rome — a man knowledgeable of the places and peoples, and one whose interest it was that the power of the Gauls be broken. Therefore he summons Attalus, his brother, from Pergamum, and, having urged him to take up the war with him, when he promised the assistance of himself and his men, he sends him home to make preparations. A few days later, after the consul had set out from Ephesus, Attalus met him at Magnesia with 1,000 infantry and 500 cavalry, Athenaius his brother having been ordered to follow with the rest of the forces, the guardianship of Pergamum having been entrusted to those whom he believed faithful to his brother and to the kingdom.
[13] Fanum ibi augustum Apollinis et oraculum; sortes uersibus haud inconditis dare uates dicuntur. Hinc alteris castris ad Harpasum flumen uentum est, quo legati ab Alabandis uenerunt, ut castellum, quod ab ipsis nuper descisset, aut auctoritate aut armis cogeret iura antiqua pati. Eodem et Athenaeus, Eumenis et Attali frater, cum Cretense Leuso et Corrago Macedone uenit; mille pedites mixtarum gentium et trecentos equites secum adduxerunt.
[13] There was there an august shrine of Apollo and an oracle; the seers are said to give lots in verses not uncomposed. Thence, in two marches, they came to the river Harpasus, to which envoys from Alabanda arrived, asking that he compel a stronghold which had lately seceded from them, either by authority or by arms, to submit to its ancient rights. To the same place came also Athenaeus, brother of Eumenes and Attalus, with Leus the Cretan and Corragus the Macedonian; they brought with them one thousand infantry of mixed nations and three hundred cavalry.
The city of Celaenae was once the capital of Phrygia; from there a migration was made not far from the old Celaenae, and to the new city the name Apamea was given from Apama, sister of King Seleucus. And the river Marsyas, rising not far from the springs of the Maeander, falls into the Maeander, and tradition thus holds that at Celaenae Marsyas contended with Apollo in the song of the pipes. The Maeander, sprung from the highest citadel of Celaenae, running down through the middle of the city, passes first through the Carians, then the Ionians, and is discharged into a bay of the sea which is between Priene and Miletus.
At Antioch, into the consul’s camp, Seleucus, son of Antiochus, came under the pact struck with Scipio to give grain to the army. A small disputation arose concerning Attalus’s auxiliaries, because Seleucus said that it had been stipulated with Antiochus that grain be given only to the Roman soldier. This too was resolved by the constancy of the consul, who, having sent a tribune, proclaimed that the Roman soldiers should not receive it before Attalus’s auxiliaries had received it.
With the forces of that region unimpaired, it had men fierce for waging war. Then too, the cavalry, a sally having been made, threw the Roman column into no moderate disorder at the first onset; then, when it appeared that they were not equal either in number or in valor, driven back into the city they sought pardon for their error, ready to surrender the city. Twenty-five talents of silver and ten thousand medimni of wheat were imposed; thus they were received in surrender.
[14] Tertio inde die ad Casum amnem peruen tum; inde profecti Erizam urbem primo impetu ceperunt. Ad Thabusion castellum imminens flumini Indo uentum est, cui fecerat nomen Indus ab elephanto deiectus. Haud procul a Cibyra aberant, nec legatio ulla a Moagete, tyranno ciuitatis eius, homine ad omnia infido atque importuno, ueniebat.
[14] On the third day from there they reached the river Casus; setting out thence, they took the city Eriza at the first assault. They came to Thabusion, a fortress overhanging the river Indus, to which an Indian, thrown from an elephant, had given its name. They were not far from Cibyra, and no legation came from Moagetes, the tyrant of that city, a man faithless in all things and importunate.
To test his disposition, the consul sent ahead Gaius Helvius with four thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry. To this column, now entering the territory, envoys met them, announcing that the tyrant was ready to do what was commanded; they begged that he enter the territory in a pacified manner and restrain the soldiers from the ravaging of the land, and they were bringing fifteen talents as a golden crown. Helvius, having promised that he would keep the fields intact from depredation, ordered the envoys to go to the consul.
When they reported the same things, the consul said: “We Romans have no sign at all of the tyrant’s good will toward us, and it is agreed among all that he himself is of such a sort that we should be thinking more about his punishment than about his friendship.” Disturbed by this utterance, the legates asked nothing else than that he accept the crown, and that he grant the tyrant permission to come to him and the opportunity to speak and to purge himself. With the consul’s permission, on the following day the tyrant came into the camp, clothed and attended scarcely up to the appearance of a moderately wealthy private man; and his oration was submissive and broken, diminishing his own resources and complaining of the destitution of the cities under his dominion. Under him, moreover, besides Cibyra, were Sylleum and the place which is called “at Limne.”
From these he was promising, almost as if in despair, that he would make up twenty-five talents, so as to despoil himself and his own. 'Indeed,' said the consul, 'this mockery can no longer be borne. It is too little that you did not blush when absent, when through legates you were frustrating us; present as well you persist in the same impudence.'
"Will 25 talents exhaust your tyranny? Then, unless you count out 500 talents within three days, expect ravaging in the fields and a siege in the city." Frightened by this denunciation, he nevertheless persisted in a stubborn pretense of poverty. And little by little, by an illiberal increment—now through cavillation, now through entreaties and feigned tears—he was brought up to 100 talents.
[15] A Cibyra per agros Sindensium exercitus ductus, transgressusque Caularem amnem posuit castra. Postero die [et] praeter Caralitin paludem agmen ductum; ad Madamprum manserunt. Inde progredientibus ab Lago, proxima urbe, metu incolae fugerunt; uacuum hominibus et refertum rerum omnium copia oppidum diripuerunt.
[15] From Cibyra the army was led through the fields of the Sindenses, and, having crossed the river Caularis, it pitched camp. On the next day [and] the column was led past the Caralitis marsh; they remained at Madamprum. Then, as they advanced, from Lago, the nearest city, the inhabitants fled in fear; they sacked a town empty of people and crammed with an abundance of all things.
Thence to the sources of the river Lysis; on the following day they advanced to the river Cobulatus. The Termessians at that time, the city having been captured, were assaulting the citadel of the Isiondensians. The enclosed, since there was no other hope of help, sent legates to the consul, begging for aid, saying that, with their wives and children shut in the citadel, they were awaiting death day by day, to be endured either by iron or by famine.
Since the consul was willing, an occasion for turning aside into Pamphylia was offered. Arriving, he freed the Isiondensians from the siege; to Termessus he granted peace upon receiving fifty talents of silver; likewise to the Aspendians and the other peoples of Pamphylia. Returning from Pamphylia, on the first day he came to the river Taurus, on the next he pitched camp at Xylina, which they call Coma.
Thence they came into the Sagalassene territory, rich and fertile in every kind of crops. The Pisidians cultivate it, by far the best in war of that region. While that fact gave them spirit, so too did the land’s fecundity, the multitude of men, and the position—the city being one of the few fortified.
Because no legation had been present at the frontier, the consul sent men to plunder the fields. Then at last their obstinacy was broken, as they saw their property being carried off and driven; with envoys sent, having bargained for fifty talents and twenty thousand medimni of wheat, twenty thousand of barley, they obtained peace. Advancing thence to the Rhotrine Springs, at the village which they call Acoris’s Kome, he pitched camp.
There Seleucus arrived from Apamea on the following day. Thence, after he had sent the sick and the useless impedimenta to Apamea, and had received guides of the routes from Seleucus, he set out and that day reached the Metropolitan plain; on the next day he advanced to Dynias in Phrygia. Thence he came to Synnada, with all the towns around deserted from fear.
The column, now heavy with their booty and dragging along, scarcely, with the whole day’s march accomplished, made five miles and arrived at Beudos, which they call “the Old.” From there to Anabura; and on the next day to the springs of the Alander; on the third he pitched camp at Abbasium. There he kept fixed quarters for several days, because they had come to the borders of the Tolostobogii.
[16] Galli, magna hominum uis, seu inopia agri seu praedae spe, nullam gentem, per quas ituri essent, parem armis rati, Brenno duce in Dardanos peruenerunt. Ibi seditio orta est; ad uiginti milia hominum cum Lonorio ac Lutario regulis secessione facta a Brenno in Thraeciam iter auertunt. Vbi cum resistentibus pugnando, pacem petentibus stipendium imponendo Byzantium cum peruenissent, aliquamdiu oram Propontidis, uectigalis habendo regionis eius urbes, obtinuerunt.
[16] The Gauls, a great force of men, whether from want of land or in hope of booty, thinking no nation through which they were about to pass equal in arms, with Brennus as leader came into the Dardanians. There a sedition arose; about twenty thousand men, with the petty-kings Lonorius and Lutarius, having made a secession from Brennus, turned their march into Thrace. There, by fighting those who resisted and by imposing tribute on those who sought peace, when they had reached Byzantium, they for some time held the shore of the Propontis, keeping the cities of that region tributary.
Then a desire seized them of crossing into Asia, as they were hearing from close at hand how great the fertility of that land was; and Lysimachia having been captured by fraud, and the whole Chersonese possessed by arms, they descended to the Hellespont. There indeed, as Asia, divided by a narrow strait, was seen by them, their spirits were all the more inflamed for crossing; and they kept sending messengers to Antipater, prefect of that coast, about the passage. When this matter was being drawn out more slowly than their hope, again another fresh sedition arose among the petty kings.
Lonorius, back to where he had come from, with the greater part of the men makes again for Byzantium; Lutarius, from the Macedonians—who had been sent by Antipater under the appearance of an embassy to reconnoiter—takes away two covered ships and three lembi (light skiffs). With these, ferrying one group after another by day and by night, within a few days he transports all his forces across. Not much later Lonorius, with Nicomedes, king of Bithynia, assisting, crossed over from Byzantium.
Then the Gauls come together again into one body and give auxiliaries to Nicomedes against Ziboetas, who was holding part of Bithynia, he waging war. And chiefly by their effort Ziboetas was defeated, and all Bithynia passed into the dominion of Nicomedes. Having set out from Bithynia, they advanced into Asia.
Not more than ten thousand out of twenty thousand men were armed. Nevertheless, they cast such terror into all the peoples who dwell on this side of the Taurus, that those whom they had approached and those whom they had not, the farthest equally with the nearest, obeyed their command. Finally, since there were three nations, Tolostobogii Trocmi Tectosages, they divided into three parts, according to the region in which Asia was tributary to each of their peoples.
The shore of the Hellespont was assigned to the Trocmi; the Tolostobogii drew by lot Aeolis and Ionia, and the Tectosages the inland parts of Asia. And they exacted tribute from all Asia on this side of the Taurus, but they took for themselves a seat around the river Halys. And so great was the terror of their name, their multitude also greatly increased by offspring, that even the kings of Syria in the end did not refuse to pay tribute.
Attalus, father of King Eumenes, was the first among those inhabiting Asia to refuse; and Fortune, beyond everyone’s expectation, attended the audacious enterprise, and, with standards joined, he was superior. Yet he did not so break their spirits that they gave up their imperium; the same resources remained down to the war of Antiochus with the Romans. Then also, when Antiochus was driven out, they had great hope, because, dwelling far from the sea, the Roman army would not reach them.
[17] Cum hoc hoste, tam terribili omnibus regionis eius, quia bellum gerendum erat, pro contione milites in hunc maxime modum adlocutus est consul: 'non me praeterit, milites, omnium quae Asiam colunt gentium Gallos fama belli praestare. Inter mitissimum genus hominum ferox natio peruagata bello prope orbem terrarum sedem cepit. Procera corpora, promissae et rutilatae comae, uasta scuta, praelongi gladii; ad hoc cantus ineuntium proelium et ululatus et tripudia, et quatientium scuta in patrium quendam modum horrendus armorum crepitus, omnia de industria composita ad terrorem.
[17] With this enemy, so terrible to all in that region, since war had to be waged, the consul addressed the soldiers before the contio in this chief manner: 'It does not escape me, soldiers, that among all the nations who inhabit Asia the Gauls excel in the fame of war. Among a most gentle race of men, a ferocious nation, having pervagated by war almost the orb of the lands, has taken its seat. Tall bodies, long and rutilated hair, vast shields, very-long swords; in addition to this, the chant of those entering battle and their ululations and war-dances, and, as they shake their shields in a certain native fashion, the dreadful clatter of arms—everything deliberately arranged for terror.'
Sed let these things, which are unusual and unaccustomed, be feared by Greeks and Phrygians and Carians; for Romans, accustomed to Gallic tumults, even their vanities are known. Once, at the first encounter at the Allia, our ancestors long ago fled from them; from that time, for now two hundred years, they cut down and drive them in rout, panic‑stricken after the fashion of cattle, and nearly more triumphs have been celebrated over the Gauls than over the whole orb of lands. Now by use this has been learned: if you withstand the first assault, which they pour out with a fervid temperament and blind wrath, their limbs stream away with sweat and weariness, their arms totter; soft bodies, and—once anger has subsided—soft spirits: the sun, dust, and thirst lay them low, even if you do not bring iron to bear.
Not only have we tested them with legions against their legions, but by man meeting man in combat T. Manlius and M. Valerius taught how far Roman virtue conquers Gallic frenzy. And long since M. Manlius alone thrust down the Gauls as they were climbing in a column onto the Capitol. And those ancestors of ours had to do with no doubtful Gauls, born in their own land; these are now degenerate, mixed, and truly Gallo-Greeks, as they are called; just as in crops and in herds it is not so much the seeds that avail to preserve the native character as the property of the soil and of the sky, under which they are nourished, alters it.
The Macedonians, who have Alexandria in Egypt, who have Seleucia and Babylonia, and who have other colonies scattered throughout the world, have degenerated into Syrians, Parthians, Egyptians; Massilia, situated among the Gauls, has drawn somewhat of spirit from its neighbors; among the Tarentines, what has remained from that hard and horrid Spartan discipline? <It is> nobler, whatever is begotten in its own seat; what is engrafted in a foreign soil, with its nature turning itself into that by which it is nourished, degenerates. Therefore you will hew down the Phrygians burdened with Gallic arms, just as you brought them down in the battle-line of Antiochus: the conquered, as victors, you will slay.
I fear more that there will be too little glory from it than that there will be too much war. King Attalus often routed and put them to flight. Do not suppose that only beasts, newly captured, at first preserve that sylvan ferocity and then, when for a long time they are nourished by human hands, grow mild; in the soothing of human ferocity the nature is not the same.
Do you believe these men to be the same as their fathers and grandfathers? Exiles through want of lands, having set out from home, they traversed the most rugged shore of Illyricum, and then, by fighting with the fiercest peoples, passed through Paeonia and Thrace, and seized these lands. A land which would fatten them with abundance of all things received them, hardened by so many evils and exasperated.
By the most fertile field, the gentlest sky, and the clement dispositions of the neighbors, all that ferocity with which they had come was tamed. For you, by Hercules, men of Mars, the pleasantness of Asia is to be guarded against and fled as soon as possible: so much can these foreign pleasures do to extinguish the vigor of spirits; so much does the contagion of the discipline and custom of the neighbors prevail. This, however, has turned out happily, that just as by no means do they possess force against you, so they hold among the Greeks a fame equal to that ancient one with which they came; and you, as victors, will have among your allies the same glory of war as if you had conquered Gauls preserving the ancient specimen of spirits.'
[18] Contione dimissa missisque ad Eposognatum legatis, qui unus ex regulis et in Eumenis manserat amicitia et negauerat Antiocho aduersus Romanos auxilia, castra mouit. Primo die ad Alandrum flumen, postero ad uicum quem uocant Tyscon uentum. Eo legati Oroandensium cum uenissent amicitiam petentes, ducenta talenta his sunt imperata, precantibusque, ut domum renuntiarent, potestas facta.
[18] The assembly having been dismissed, and legates sent to Eposognatus—who, one of the petty-kings, had remained in the friendship of Eumenes and had denied Antiochus auxiliaries against the Romans—the camp was moved. On the first day they came to the river Alander; on the next, to a village which they call Tyscon. When legates of the Oroandenses had come there seeking friendship, two hundred talents were imposed upon them, and, at their entreaty, leave was granted to report home.
From there the consul intended to lead the army to Pliten; then a camp was pitched at the Alyattos. To that place those who had been sent to Eposognatus returned, and the legates of the petty king, begging that he not bring war upon the Tectosages; that Eposognatus himself would go into that nation and persuade them to do what was commanded. Pardon having been granted to the petty king, the leading of the army thence through the land they call Axylon was begun.
It has its name from the fact: it bears not only nothing of wood, but not even thorns nor any other aliment for fire; they use cattle-dung in place of wood. At Cuballum, a castellum of Gallo-Graecia, while the Romans were holding camp, enemy horsemen appeared with great tumult, and, having suddenly ridden in, they not only threw the Roman outposts into confusion, but even killed some. When this tumult was reported into the camp, the Roman cavalry, pouring out suddenly from all the gates, routed and put to flight the Gauls and killed several of the fugitives.
Thence the consul, as one who perceived that now it had come to the enemy, after reconnaissance and with the column gathered with care, advanced. And with continuous marches, when he had come to the river Sangarius, he resolved to make a bridge, because there was nowhere a crossing by ford. The Sangarius, flowing from Mount Adoreus through Phrygia, is mingled, toward Bithynia, with the river Tymbris; thence, now greater with its waters doubled, it is borne through Bithynia and pours itself into the Propontis, yet not so noteworthy for its magnitude as because it provides to the dwellers along it an immense supply of fish.
With the bridge completed and the river crossed, as they were going along beside the bank, the Galli, priests of the Great Mother, from Pessinus met them with their insignia, prophesying with a fanatical chant that the goddess was giving to the Romans the way of war and victory and the dominion of that region. When the consul said that he accepted the omen, he pitched camp in that very place. On the following day he arrived at Gordium.
That is indeed not a great town, but—though inland—more than inland, a celebrated and frequented emporium. It has three seas at almost equal distance: toward the Hellespont, toward Sinope, and the shores of the other coast, where the maritime Cilicians dwell; moreover, it touches the borders of many and great nations, whose commerce mutual utility has especially concentrated into that place. That town, then deserted by the flight of its inhabitants, they found nonetheless filled with an abundance of all things.
There, while they had a stationary camp, envoys from Eposognatus came, announcing that, having set out to the petty-kings of the Gauls, he had obtained nothing of equity; that from the campestral villages and fields they were in great numbers migrating down, and, with wives and children, driving before them and carrying what they could bear and drive, they were making for Mount Olympus, so that from there they might protect themselves by their arms and by the situation of the places.
[19] Certiora postea Oroandensium legati attulerunt, Tolostobogiorum ciuitatem Olympum montem cepisse; diuersos Tectosagos alium montem, Magaba qui dicatur, petisse; Trocmos coniugibus ac liberis apud Tectosagos depositis armatorum agmine Tolostobogiis statuisse auxilium ferre. Erant autem tunc trium populorum reguli Ortiago et Combolomarus et Gaulotus. Iis haec maxime ratio belli sumendi fuerat, quod cum montes editissimos regionis eius tenerent, conuectis omnibus, quae ad usum quamuis longi temporis sufficerent, taedio se fatigaturos hostem censebant: nam neque ausuros per tam ardua atque iniqua loca subire eos, et, si conarentur, uel parua manu prohiberi aut deturbari posse, nec quietos in radicibus montium gelidorum sedentes frigus aut inopiam laturos.
[19] Later the envoys of the Oroandenses brought more certain news: that the commonwealth of the Tolistobogii had seized Mount Olympus; that different Tectosages had sought another mountain, which is called Magaba; that the Trocmi, having deposited their wives and children with the Tectosages, had determined to carry aid to the Tolistobogii with a column of armed men. Now at that time the petty-kings of the three peoples were Ortiago and Combolomarus and Gaulotus. For them this was chiefly the plan for undertaking war, that since they held the loftiest mountains of that region, with everything brought in which would suffice for use for however long a time, they thought they would wear out the enemy with weariness: for they would not dare to advance through such steep and uneven places, and, if they tried, they could be kept back or driven off by even a small band; nor, if the enemy sat idle at the roots of the icy mountains, would they endure cold or scarcity.
And since the very height of the terrain protected them, they also encircled with a ditch and other fortifications those crests which they had occupied. The care for the apparatus of missile weapons was minimal, because they believed that the very ruggedness of the places would provide stones in plenty.
[20] Consul quia non comminus pugnam sed procul locis oppugnandis futuram praeceperat animo, ingentem uim pilorum, uelitarium hastarum, sagittarum glandisque et modicorum, qui funda mitti possent, lapidum parauerat, instructusque missilium apparatu ad Olympum montem ducit et a quinque ferme milibus castra locat. Postero die cum quadringentis equitibus et Attalo progressum eum ad naturam montis situmque Gallicorum castrorum uisendum equites hostium, duplex numerus, effusi e castris, in fugam auerterunt; occisi quoque pauci fugientium, uulnerati plures. Tertio die cum omnibus ad loca exploranda profectus, quia nemo hostium extra munimenta processit, tuto circumuectus montem, animaduertit meridiana regione terrenos et placide accliues ad quendam finem colles esse, a septentrione arduas et rectas prope rupes, atque omnibus ferme aliis inuiis itinera tria esse, unum medio monte, qua terrena erant, duo difficilia ab hiberno solis ortu et ab aestiuo occasu.
[20] Because the consul had pre-conceived that the fight would not be hand-to-hand but from afar, with positions to be assaulted, he had prepared a vast supply of pila, light-infantry spears, arrows, lead bullets, and small stones that could be sent by sling, and, equipped with an apparatus of missile weapons, he leads to Mount Olympus and pitches camp at about five miles. On the next day, with 400 horse and with Attalus, as he advanced to view the nature of the mountain and the site of the Gauls’ camp, the enemy cavalry, twice the number, pouring out of the camp, turned him to flight; a few of the fugitives were also slain, more wounded. On the third day, having set out with all to explore the localities, since none of the enemy came forth beyond their defenses, safely riding around the mountain he noticed that on the southern side there were earthy hills gently sloping to a certain limit, on the north steep and almost sheer cliffs, and that, with nearly all other paths impassable, there were three routes: one through the middle of the mountain, where the ground was earthy, and two difficult ones from the winter rising of the sun and from the summer setting.
Having contemplated these things, that day he pitched camp right under the very foothills; on the next, sacrifice having been made, when he had obtained favorable omens with the first victims, he proceeds to lead the army, divided three ways, against the enemy. He himself, with the greatest part of the forces, ascended where the mountain offered the most level access; he orders his brother L. Manlius to climb from the winter sunrise, so far as the places allow and he can do so safely; if any dangerous and precipitous spots should occur, not to fight against the inequality of the terrain nor to bring force to what cannot be overcome, but to incline along the mountain obliquely toward himself and join his own column; he orders C. Helvius with a third part to go gradually around by the lowest parts of the mountain, then to raise the column from the summer setting. And the auxiliaries of Attalus he divided three ways in equal number; he ordered the young man himself to be with him.
[21] Galli [et] ab duobus lateribus satis fidentes inuia esse, ab ea parte, quae in meridiem uergeret, ut armis clauderent uiam, quattuor milia fere armatorum ad tumulum imminentem uiae minus mille passuum a castris occupandum mittunt, eo se rati ueluti castello iter impedituros. Quod ubi Romani uiderunt, expediunt sese ad pugnam. Ante signa modico interuallo uelites eunt et ab Attalo Cretenses sagittarii et funditores et Tralli <et> Thraeces; signa peditum ut per arduum, leni gradu ducuntur, ita prae se habentium scuta, ut missilia tantum uitarent, pede collato non uiderentur pugnaturi.
[21] The Gauls, confident enough that on the two flanks the ground was trackless, from the side that inclined toward the south, in order to close the road with arms, send about 4,000 armed men to seize a mound overhanging the road, less than 1,000 paces from the camp, thinking that there they would obstruct the route as with a little citadel. When the Romans saw this, they ready themselves for battle. Before the standards, at a moderate interval, go the velites, and, from Attalus, Cretan archers and slingers and Trallians and Thracians; the standards of the infantry, as over steep ground, are led at a gentle pace, the men holding their shields before them in such a way as only to avoid missiles, and not to seem about to fight foot to foot.
The battle was joined with missiles from an interval of ground, at first equal—the terrain aiding the Gauls, the Romans aided by the variety and abundance of their missiles; as the contest proceeded, there was no longer anything equal. Their shields, long indeed but too narrow for the amplitude of their bodies, and those very shields being flat, protected the Gauls poorly. Nor did they now have any other weapons except swords, of which, since the enemy did not join hand-to-hand, there was no use.
They were using stones, and not moderate ones, since they had not prepared them, but whatever had come to hand for each man, rashly and in panic; <and> being unaccustomed, aiding the cast neither by art nor by strength. Incautious, they were being pierced from every side by arrows, sling-bullets, and javelins, [and] they did not discern what they should do, their spirits blinded by anger and fear; and they were caught in a kind of fighting for which they are least apt. For just as at close quarters, where it is permitted to suffer and to inflict wounds in turn, anger inflames their spirits, so, when they are wounded from concealment and at a distance by light missiles, and have nowhere to rush in blind onset, like wild beasts transfixed they run headlong into their own men.
What laid bare their wounds was that they fight naked, and their bodies are well-fleshed and candid-white, as those which are never stripped save in battle; thus both more blood was poured out from much flesh, and the gashes stood open more foully, and the whiteness of the bodies was more stained with black blood. But they are not so moved by gaping wounds; sometimes, when the skin is merely incised, where the wound is broader than it is deep, they think they are fighting even more gloriously; the same men, when the barb of an arrow or of a hidden bullet burns inward with a slight wound in appearance, and, as they probe to pull it out, the missile does not follow, then, turned to frenzy and to shame that so small a destroying plague should slay them, they cast their bodies down upon the ground—just as then they were collapsing everywhere; others, rushing upon the enemy, were being pierced from every side, and when they had come to close quarters (comminus), they were butchered with swords by the velites. This soldier has a three-foot parma and in his right hand spears, which he uses at a distance (eminus); he is girt with a Spanish sword; but if there must be fighting with feet planted, the spears shifted into the left, he draws the sword.
Few of the Gauls now remained, who, after they saw themselves overcome by the light-armed troops and the standards of the legions pressing on, in a disordered rout make back to the camp, already full of panic and tumult, as where women and boys and another unwarlike crowd were mingled. The mounds, deserted by the enemy’s flight, received the Romans as victors.
[22] Sub idem tempus L. Manlius et C. Heluius, cum, quoad uiam colles obliqui dederunt, escendissent, postquam ad inuia uentum est, flexere iter in partem montis, quae una habebat iter, et sequi consulis agmen modico uterque interuallo uelut ex composito coeperunt, quod primo optimum factu fuisset, in id necessitate ipsa compulsi; subsidia enim in talibus iniquitatibus locorum maximo saepe usui fuerunt, ut primis forte deturbatis secundi et tegant pulsos et integri pugnam excipiant. Consul, postquam ad tumulos ab leui armatura captos prima signa legionum peruenerunt, respirare et conquiescere paulisper militem iubet; simul strata per tumulos corpora Gallorum ostentat, et, cum leuis armatura proelium tale ediderit, quid ab legionibus, quid ab iustis armis, quid ab animis fortissimorum militum expectari? Castra illis capienda esse, in quae compulsus ab leui armatura hostis trepidet.
[22] At about the same time L. Manlius and C. Helvius, when they had climbed as far as the sloping hills afforded a way, after they came to impassable ground, bent their route into the part of the mountain which alone had a path, and they began, as if by prearrangement, each to follow the consul’s column at a slight interval—driven into that course by necessity itself, which at the outset would have been the best to do; for reserves in such inequalities of terrain have often been of the greatest utility, so that, if the front line should perhaps be driven down, the second may both cover the routed and, being fresh, take up the fight. The consul, after the first standards of the legions reached the mounds seized by the light infantry, bids the soldier to draw breath and rest a little; at the same time he displays the bodies of Gauls strewn over the mounds, and says that, since the light infantry has delivered such a battle, what is to be expected from the legions, from regular arms, from the spirits of the bravest soldiers? Their task is to take the camp, into which the enemy, driven by the light infantry, is in a panic.
Nevertheless he orders the light armature to go in front, which, while the column was standing, had not idly consumed that very time in collecting missiles over the mounds, so that the throwing-weapons might suffice. They were now approaching the camp; and the Gauls, lest their muniments should protect them too little, armed had taken their stand in front of the rampart. Then, overwhelmed with every kind of missile—since the more numerous and the denser they were, by so much the less did any missile fall vainly between—they are driven within the rampart in a moment of time, with only firm stations left at the very entrances of the gates.
Into the multitude driven together in the camp an immense force of missile weapons was being hurled, and the clamor, commingled with the lamentations of women and boys, signified that many were being wounded. Against those who had closed the gates at their posts, the vanguard of the legions hurled their pila. These indeed were not being wounded, but, their shields pierced through, very many, locked together, were sticking to one another; nor did they sustain the onrush of the Romans any longer.
[23] Patentibus iam portis, priusquam irrumperent uictores, fuga e castris Gallorum in omnis partes facta est. Ruunt caeci per uias, per inuia; nulla praecipitia saxa, nullae rupes obstant; nihil praeter hostem metuunt; itaque plerique, praecipites per uastam altitudinem prolapsi, <contusi> aut debilitati exanimantur. Consul captis castris direptione praedaque abstinet militem; sequi pro se quemque et instare et perculsis pauorem addere iubet.
[23] With the gates now standing open, before the victors could burst in, a flight from the Gauls’ camp was made in all directions. They rush blind along roads and trackless places; no precipitous rocks, no cliffs stand in the way; they fear nothing except the enemy; and so many, having fallen headlong down the vast height, <bruised> or crippled, expire. The consul, the camp having been taken, restrains the soldiers from plundering and booty; he orders each man, on his own part, to pursue, to press on, and to add terror to the panic‑stricken.
Another column also arrived with Lucius Manlius; nor does he allow them to enter the camp; straightway he sends them to pursue the enemy, and he himself, a little later, after the custody of the captives had been handed over to the military tribunes, follows, thinking it a finished war, if in that panic as many as possible had been cut down or captured. When the consul had gone out, Gaius Helvius arrived with the third column, and he could not restrain his men from the plundering of the camp, and the booty, by a most inequitable lot, fell to those who had not taken part in the battle. The cavalry for a long time stood unaware both of the battle and of their side’s victory; then they too, so far as their horses could climb, having pursued the Gauls, scattered in flight, around the roots of the mountain, struck them down or took them prisoner.
It was not easy to ascertain the number of the slain, because the flight and the slaughter spread widely through all the windings of the mountains, and a great part slipped from inaccessible cliffs down into valleys of profound depth, part were killed in the woods and brambles. Claudius, who writes that there was fighting twice on Mount Olympus, is authority for forty thousand men having been cut down; Valerius Antias, who is wont to be rather immoderate in augmenting numbers, says not more than ten thousand. The number of captives undoubtedly reached forty thousand, because they had dragged along with them a crowd of every kind and age, after the fashion of people migrating rather than going to war.
After the enemy’s arms had been burned in a single heap, the consul ordered everyone to bring together the rest of the booty, and he either sold what of it was to be brought into the public treasury, or, with care that it should be as most equitable as possible, he divided it among the soldiers. All, too, were praised before the assembly, and each was rewarded according to his merit—Attalus before all, with the highest assent of the rest; for that young man had been singular both in valor and industry in all labors and dangers, and in modesty as well.
[24] Supererat bellum integrum cum Tectosagis. Ad eos profectus consul tertiis castris Ancyram, nobilem in illis locis urbem, peruenit, unde hostes paulo plus decem milia aberant. Vbi cum statiua essent, facinus memorabile a captiua factum est.
[24] An unbroken war remained with the Tectosages. Setting out to them, the consul, at his third camp, reached Ancyra, a noble city in those parts, from which the enemy were a little more than 10 miles away. While they were in fixed quarters there, a memorable deed was done by a captive woman.
The wife of Orgiagontes the princeling, of exceptional beauty, was kept under guard among several captives; over whose custody a centurion presided, a man of both lust and military avarice. He first assayed her spirit; and when he saw it abhorrent from a voluntary defilement, he used force upon the body, which fortune had made a slave. Then, to mitigate the indignity of the injury, he holds out to the woman a hope of return to her own people—and not even that, as a lover, gratuitous.
Having bargained for a fixed weight of gold, so that he might have none of his own privy, he permits her herself to send, whomever she wished, one from among the captives as a messenger to her people. He appointed a place near the river, to which two—no more—of the captive woman’s intimates should come with the gold on the following night to receive her. By chance the woman’s own slave was among the captives under the same guard.
The centurion, at first darkness, led this messenger out beyond the outposts. On the following night both the woman’s two close associates came to the appointed place, and the centurion came with the captive. When they displayed the gold which completed the sum of an Attic talent—for he had bargained for so much—the woman, in her own tongue, ordered them to draw the iron and kill the centurion as he was weighing the gold.
herself carrying the severed head of the slain man, wrapped in a garment, she came to her husband Orgiagontas, who had fled home from Olympus; before she embraced him, she cast the centurion’s head before his feet, and when he marveled whose man’s head that was and what deed—by no means womanly—this was, she confessed to her husband both the injury to her body and the vengeance for chastity violated by force; and by the other sanctity and gravity of her life, as it is handed down, she preserved to the end the honor of this matronal deed.
[25] Ancyram in statiua oratores Tectosagum ad consulem uenerunt petentes, ne ante [ab Ancyra] castra moueret, quam collocutus cum suis regibus esset: nullas condiciones pacis iis non bello fore potiores. Tempus in posterum diem constituitur locusque, qui medius maxime inter castra Gallorum et Ancyram est uisus. Quo cum consul ad tempus cum praesidio quingentorum equitum uenisset nec ullo Gallorum ibi uiso regressus in castra esset, oratores idem redeunt, excusantes religione obiecta uenire reges non posse; principes gentis, per quos aeque res transigi posset, uenturos.
[25] While in winter-quarters at Ancyra, ambassadors of the Tectosages came to the consul, requesting that he not move the camp before [from Ancyra] he had conferred with their kings: that for them no terms of peace would be preferable to war. A time was appointed for the next day, and a place which seemed most nearly midway between the Gauls’ camp and Ancyra. When the consul had come there at the time with an escort of five hundred horsemen, and, with no Gauls seen there, had returned to camp, the same envoys came back, pleading that, a religious scruple being put forward, the kings could not come; the chiefs of the tribe, through whom the matter could equally be transacted, would come.
The consul said that he too would send Attalus. To this colloquy they came from both sides. When Attalus had brought three hundred horsemen for the sake of protection, the conditions of peace were bandied about; since a conclusion to the matter could not be imposed with the leaders absent, it was agreed that the consul and the kings should meet in that place on the following day.
The Gauls’ deception aimed at this: first, to wear out time until they could carry their property, which they were unwilling to imperil, across the river Halys together with their wives and children; then, because they were laying ambushes for the consul himself, insufficiently cautious against the treachery of a conference. For that purpose they chose a thousand cavalry, of proven audacity, from the whole number; and the fraud would have succeeded, had not Fortune stood for the law of nations, the violation of which a plan had been entered upon. The Roman foragers and woodcutters were led into that quarter in which the conference was going to be, the tribunes deeming that would be safer, because the consul’s guard and the consul himself, to be held as a picket, would be set opposite to the enemy; nevertheless they placed another of their own posts, of six hundred cavalry, nearer to the camp.
The consul, Attalus affirming that the kings would come and that the matter could be transacted, set out from camp; when, with the same cavalry escort as before, he had advanced about 5 miles and was not far from the appointed place, he suddenly sees the Gauls coming with a hostile charge, their horses spurred up. He formed the column, and, having ordered the horsemen to ready their weapons and their spirits, at first he steadily received the beginning of the battle and did not give ground; then, when the multitude weighed too heavily, he began to withdraw gradually, with the squadrons’ ranks not at all thrown into confusion; finally, when now there was more danger in delay than protection in maintaining the ranks, they were all everywhere poured out into flight. Then indeed the Gauls pressed upon the scattered and were cutting them down; and a great part would have been overwhelmed, had not the picket of the foragers, 600 horsemen, met them.
They, hearing from afar the timid clamor of their own men, when they had made ready their weapons and horses, fresh took up a battle already prostrated. And so Fortune was at once turned, and terror was turned from the vanquished upon the victors. At the first onset the Gauls were routed, and from the fields the foragers ran together, and on every side the enemy met the Gauls, so that they had not even a safe or easy flight, because the Romans with fresh horses were pursuing the weary.
[26] Biduum natura montis per se ipsum exploranda, ne quid ignoti esset, absumpsit consul; tertio die, cum auspicio operam dedisset, deinde immolasset, in quattuor partes diuisas copias educit, duas, ut medio monte duceret, duas ab lateribus, ut aduersus cornua Gallorum erigeret. Hostium quod roboris erat, Tectosagi et Trocmi, mediam tenebant aciem, milia hominum quinquaginta; equitatum, quia equorum nullus erat inter inaequales rupes usus, ad pedes deductum, decem milia hominum, ab dextro locauerunt cornu; Ariarathis Cappadoces et Morzi auxiliares in laeuo quattuor ferme milium numerum explebant. Consul, sicut in Olympo monte, prima in acie locata leui armatura, telorum omnis generis ut aeque magna uis ad manum esset, curauit.
[26] The consul consumed two days in exploring the nature of the mountain personally, lest there be anything unknown; on the third day, after he had given attention to the auspices and then offered sacrifice, he leads out the forces divided into four parts: two, to conduct along the middle of the mountain, two from the flanks, to be raised against the wings of the Gauls. What was the strength of the enemy—the Tectosagi and the Trocmi—held the center line, fifty thousand men; the cavalry, because there was no use of horses among the uneven crags, brought down to fight on foot, ten thousand men, they stationed on the right wing; the auxiliaries of Ariarathes, the Cappadocians, and the Morzi on the left made up a number of about four thousand. The consul, as on Mount Olympus, with the light-armed set in the first line, took care that an equally great force of missiles of every kind should be at hand.
When they approached, all the same things on both sides, which had been in the prior battle, were there except the spirits—of the victors augmented by the favorable success, and of the enemies <broken>—because, although they themselves had not been defeated, they were accounting the slaughter of men of their own nation as their own. Therefore, the matter begun from equal beginnings had the same outcome. As if a cloud of light missiles, hurled, overwhelmed the battle-line of the Gauls.
Nor did anyone dare to run forward from his ranks, lest they lay bare the body on all sides to blows; and as they stood, the denser they were, by so much the more wounds they were receiving, as if aimed at a fixed target by the assailants. The consul, judging that, with them already thrown into disorder of themselves, if he should display the standards of the legions all would immediately turn to flight, after the velites and the other crowd of auxiliaries had been taken back between the ranks, advanced the battle line.
[27] Galli et memoria Tolostobogiorum cladis territi et inhaerentia corporibus gerentes tela fessique et stando et uulneribus ne primum quidem impetum et clamorem Romanorum tulerunt. Fuga ad castra inclinauit; sed pauci intra munimenta sese recepere; pars maior dextra laeuaque praelati, qua quemque impetus tulit, fugerunt. Victores usque ad castra secuti ceciderunt terga; deinde in castris cupiditate praedae haeserunt, nec sequebatur quisquam.
[27] The Gauls, terrified by the memory of the calamity of the Tolostobogii, bearing missiles clinging to their bodies and weary both from standing and from wounds, did not sustain even the first charge and shout of the Romans. Their flight inclined toward the camp; but few withdrew within the defenses; the greater part, borne off to right and left, fled wherever impulse carried each. The victors, having followed up to the camp, cut them down from behind; then, in the camp, they stuck fast through desire of booty, and no one continued the pursuit.
On the wings the Gauls stood longer, because approach to them was made later; but they did not endure even the first volley of missiles. The consul, because he could not draw away those who had entered the camp from pillage, sent at once those who had been on the wings to pursue the enemy. Having followed for some distance, they cut down not more than eight thousand men in flight—for there was no battle—; the rest crossed the river Halys.
A great part of the Romans stayed that night in the enemy’s camp; the consul led the rest back to their own camp. On the next day he reviewed the captives and the booty, which was as great as a nation most avid for rapine, when for many years it had held everything by arms on this side of Mount Taurus, could heap up. The Gauls, gathered into one place from a flight scattered everywhere— a large portion wounded or unarmed, stripped of everything—sent envoys about peace to the consul.
[28] Dum haec in Asia geruntur, in ceteris prouinciis tranquillae res fuerunt. Censores Romae T. Quinctius Flamininus et M. Claudius Marcellus senatum legerunt; princeps in senatu tertium lectus P. Scipio Africanus; quattuor soli praeteriti sunt, nemo curuli usus honore. Et in equitatu recensendo mitis admodum censura fuit.
[28] While these things were being done in Asia, in the other provinces affairs were tranquil. At Rome the censors Titus Quinctius Flamininus and Marcus Claudius Marcellus enrolled the senate; Publius Scipio Africanus was chosen as the first in the senate for the third time. Only four were passed over, and no one who had held a curule honor. And in reviewing the equestrian order the censorship was very mild.
They let by contract the substructure over the Aequimelium on the Capitol, and a road to be paved with flint from the Capena Gate to the Temple of Mars. The Campanians consulted the senate as to where they should be censused; it was decreed that they be censused at Rome. There were vast waters that year; the Tiber twelve times inundated the Campus Martius and the level parts of the city.
After the war in Asia with the Gauls had been brought to completion by the consul Gnaeus Manlius, the other consul, Marcus Fulvius, when the Aetolians had been thoroughly subdued and he had crossed over to Cephallenia, sent around to the cities of the island to inquire whether they preferred to surrender themselves to the Romans or to try the fortune of war. Fear prevailed with all, that they should not refuse surrender. Thereupon hostages were demanded according to their strength; the impoverished peoples * * but the Cranii and the Palenses and the Samaeans gave twenty each.
An unhoped-for peace had shone upon Cephallenia, when suddenly one city, for an unknown cause, the Samaeans, seceded. Because the city had been placed in an opportune position, they said they feared lest they be compelled by the Romans to migrate away. But whether they themselves fashioned that fear and, by empty dread, stirred up a quiet evil, or whether a matter tossed about in conversations among the Romans was carried through to them, nothing is ascertained, except this: though hostages had already been given, they suddenly closed the gates and were unwilling to desist from their undertaking even at the entreaties of their own— for the consul had sent beneath the walls to test the mercy of their parents and fellow-citizens.
Then, after no pacific reply was returned, the city began to be assaulted. He had all the apparatus of artillery and machines, transported from the assault on Ambracia, and the soldiers, energetically, completed the works that had to be done. Therefore, in two places the brought-up battering-rams were shaking the walls.
[29] Nec ab Samaeis quicquam, quo aut opera aut hostis arceri posset, praetermissum est. Duabus tamen maxime resistebant rebus, una, interiorem semper iuxta ualidum pro diruto nouum obstruentes murum, altera, eruptionibus subitis nunc in opera hostium, nunc in stationes; et plerumque his proeliis superiores erant. Vna ad coercendos inuenta, haud magna memoratu, res est.
[29] Nor did the Samaeans omit anything by which either the works or the enemy could be warded off. Yet they resisted especially by two measures: one, by always blocking up a new, strong inner wall close by in place of the demolished one; the other, by sudden sallies, now against the enemy’s works, now against their stations; and in these battles they were for the most part the superiors. A single device was found to coerce them—a matter hardly great to recount.
One hundred slingers were accited from Aegium, and from Patrae, and from Dyme. From boyhood they, by a certain custom of the nation, were exercised with globose stones—wherewith the shores, the sands being for the most part intermixed, are strewn—by assailing the open sea with the sling. Accordingly, they used that weapon to strike farther and more surely, and with a stronger blow, than a Balearic slinger.
And it is not of a simple thong, like the Balearic sling and that of other peoples, but a triple scutale, hardened with frequent sutures, lest the bullet (glans) roll about in the cast on a loose thong, but, once it has been poised and settled, it may be shot out as if sent from a string. Accustomed to transfix wreaths of small circumference at a great interval of distance, they would wound not only the heads of enemies, but whatever spot of the face they had designated. These slings restrained the Sameans, that they should not sally forth so frequently nor so audaciously, to such a degree that they begged the Achaeans from the walls to withdraw for a little while and quietly watch them fighting with the Roman outposts.
For four months, Same sustained the siege. As, being few, each day some of them fell or were wounded, and those who remained were wearied both in bodies and in spirits, the Romans by night, through the citadel which they call Cyneatis—for the city, sloping down into the sea, inclines toward the west—, having surmounted the wall, reached the forum. The Samaeans, after they perceived that a part of the city had been captured by the enemy, with their wives and children took refuge in the larger citadel.
[30] Consul compositis rebus Cephallaniae, praesidio Samae imposito, in Peloponnesum iam diu accersentibus Aegiensibus maxime ac Lacedaemoniis traiecit. Aegium a principio Achaici concilii semper conuentus gentis indicti sunt, seu dignitati urbis id seu loci opportunitati datum est. Hunc morem Philopoemen eo primum anno labefactare conatus legem parabat ferre, ut in omnibus ciuitatibus, quae Achaici concilii essent, in uicem conuentus agerentur.
[30] The consul, with the affairs of Cephallenia composed and a garrison placed at Same, crossed over into the Peloponnesus, having long been summoned, especially by the Aegians and the Lacedaemonians. At Aegium, from the beginning of the Achaean council, the conventions of the nation have always been proclaimed, whether this was granted to the dignity of the city or to the convenience of the place. Philopoemen, attempting in that year for the first time to shake this custom, was preparing to carry a law that in all the cities which were of the Achaean council the assemblies should be held in turn.
And upon the consul’s approach, as the demiurges of the cities— the highest magistracy— were summoning to Aegium, Philopoemen— he was praetor then— proclaimed an assembly at Argos. When it appeared that almost all would assemble there, the consul too, although he favored the cause of the Aegians, came to Argos; where, after there had been a debate and he saw the matter leaning that way, he gave up his undertaking. The Lacedaemonians then diverted him into their own contests.
That commonwealth was kept anxious especially by the exiles, a great part of whom were dwelling in the maritime forts of the Laconian coast, all of which had been taken from them. The Lacedaemonians, bearing this with difficulty, in order that they might have some free access to the sea, if at any time they should send legates to Rome or elsewhere, and at the same time that there might be an emporium and a receptacle for foreign merchandise for necessary uses, by night attacked a seaside village by the name Lan and seized it by surprise. The villagers and the exiles who were living there were at first terrified by the unexpected event; then, gathered toward daybreak, with a light skirmish they drove out the Lacedaemonians.
[31] Philopoemen praetor, iam inde ab initio exulum causae [et] amicus, et auctor semper Achaeis minuendi opes et auctoritatem Lacedaemoniorum, concilium querentibus dedit, decretumque referente eo factum est, cum in fidem Achaeorum tutelamque T. Quinctius et Romani Laconicae orae castella et uicos tradidissent, et, cum abstinere iis ex foedere Lacedaemonii deberent, Las uicus oppugnatus esset, caedesque ibi facta, qui eius rei auctores adfinesque essent, nisi dederentur Achaeis, uiolatum uideri foedus. Ad exposcendos eos legati extemplo Lacedaemonem missi sunt. Id imperium adeo superbum et indignum Lacedaemoniis uisum est, ut, si antiqua ciuitatis fortuna esset, haud dubie arma extemplo capturi fuerint.
[31] Philopoemen, the praetor, from the very beginning a friend to the cause of the exiles, and always an adviser to the Achaeans for diminishing the resources and authority of the Lacedaemonians, granted a council to the complainants; and, he being the reporter, a decree was passed: since T. Quinctius and the Romans had handed over the forts and villages of the Laconian coast into the faith and tutelage of the Achaeans, and since, though by the treaty the Lacedaemonians ought to abstain from them, the village of Las had been attacked and a slaughter committed there, unless those who were the authors and accessories of that affair were surrendered to the Achaeans, the treaty was seen to have been violated. To demand their surrender envoys were forthwith sent to Lacedaemon. That command seemed so haughty and unworthy to the Lacedaemonians that, if the ancient fortune of the state were in being, they would without doubt have immediately taken up arms.
Most of all, however, fear consternated them, that if once, by obeying the first commands, they had accepted the yoke, Philopoemen would do what he had long been contriving—to hand over Lacedaemon to the exiles. Therefore, raging with wrath, after thirty men of the faction with which Philopoemen and the exiles had some partnership in counsels were slain, they decreed that the alliance with the Achaeans must be renounced and that envoys be sent at once to Cephallenia, to deliver Lacedaemon to the consul Marcus Fulvius and to the Romans, and to beg him to come into the Peloponnesus to receive the city of Lacedaemon into the faith and dominion of the Roman people.
[32] Id ubi legati ad Achaeos rettulerunt, omnium ciuitatium, quae eius concilii erant, consensu bellum Lacedaemoniis indictum est. Ne extemplo gereretur, hiems impediit; incursionibus tamen paruis, latrocinii magis quam belli modo, non terra tantum sed etiam nauibus a mari fines eorum uastati. Hic tumultus consulem Peloponnesum adduxit, iussuque eius Elin concilio indicto Lacedaemonii ad disceptandum acciti.
[32] When the legates reported this to the Achaeans, by the consensus of all the cities that belonged to that council, war was declared upon the Lacedaemonians. That it not be waged at once, winter impeded; nevertheless, by small incursions—after the fashion more of brigandage than of war—their borders were ravaged not only by land but also by ships from the sea. This tumult brought the consul into the Peloponnesus, and, at his order, a council having been convened at Elis, the Lacedaemonians were summoned for adjudication.
There was there not only a great discussion but an altercation, to which the consul—although in other matters he had answered uncertainly enough, ambitiously favoring each side—by a single injunction, that they should abstain from war until they had sent envoys to Rome to the senate, put an end. From both sides an embassy was sent to Rome. The Lacedaemonian exiles also enjoined upon the Achaeans their own cause and the conduct of an embassy.
Diophanes and Lycortas, both Megalopolitans, were the leaders of the embassy of the Achaeans; and, disagreeing in public policy, they then too delivered speeches least concordant with one another. Diophanes was committing to the Senate the adjudication of all matters: he maintained that they would most excellently settle the controversies between the Achaeans and the Lacedaemonians; Lycortas, following the precepts of Philopoemen, demanded that it be permitted to the Achaeans to act in accordance with their treaty and their own laws, as they should decree, and that they guarantee to them an unimpaired liberty, of which they themselves had been the authors. The nation of the Achaeans was then of great authority with the Romans; nevertheless, it was not approved that anything be changed regarding the Lacedaemonians.
Moreover, the reply was so perplexing that the Achaeans took it as permission for themselves regarding Lacedaemon, while the Lacedaemonians interpreted that not everything had been conceded to them. With this power the Achaeans used their authority immoderately and haughtily. Philopoemen’s magistracy is continued.
[33] Qui ueris initio exercitu indicto castra in finibus Lacedaemoniorum posuit, legatos deinde misit ad deposcendos auctores defectionis, et ciuitatem in pace futuram, si id fecisset, pollicentis, et illos nihil indicta causa passuros. Silentium prae metu ceterorum fuit; quos nominatim depoposcerat, ipsi se ituros professi sunt, fide accepta a legatis uim abfuturam, donec causam dixissent. Ierunt etiam alii illustres uiri, et aduocati priuatis, et quia pertinere causam eorum ad rem publicam censebant.
[33] He, at the beginning of spring, a levy having been proclaimed, pitched camp in the borders of the Lacedaemonians; then he sent legates to demand the authors of the defection, promising that the city would be in peace if it did this, and that those men would suffer nothing with no cause declared. There was silence from the rest because of fear; those whom he had demanded by name themselves professed that they would go, having received a pledge from the legates that force would be absent until they had pleaded their cause. Other illustrious men also went, both as advocates for private persons, and because they judged that their cause pertained to the commonwealth.
Never at any other time had the Achaeans brought with them exiles of the Lacedaemonians into their territory, because nothing seemed equally likely to estrange the feelings of the city; then, the very vanguard of almost the whole army were exiles. These, as the Lacedaemonians were approaching, met them at the gate of the camp, having formed in column; and at first they set to provoking with quarrels, then, a wrangle having arisen and passions being inflamed, the fiercest of the exiles made an attack upon the Lacedaemonians. While the latter were calling the gods and the good faith of the envoys to witness, both the envoys and the praetor began to drive back the crowd and protect the Lacedaemonians, and to ward off those who were already putting chains on some.
Crowd swelled as the tumult was stirred up; and the Achaeans at first were running together to the spectacle; then, as the exiles shouted what they had suffered and begged for help, affirming at the same time that they would never have such an opportunity if they let it pass; that the treaty which had been consecrated on the Capitol, at Olympia, on the citadel at Athens, was made void through those men; that, before they were bound afresh by another treaty, the guilty must be punished—the multitude, inflamed by these words, at the shout of a single man who cried out that they should strike, hurled stones. And so seventeen, upon whom bonds had been thrown amid the tumult, were killed. Sixty-three, arrested on the next day—men from whom the praetor had warded off violence, not because he wished them safe, but because he did not wish them to perish with their case unpled—were exposed to the angry multitude; and when they had spoken a few words to turned-away ears, all were condemned and handed over to punishment.
[34] Hoc metu iniecto Lacedaemoniis imperatum primum, uti muros diruerent; deinde, ut omnes externi auxiliares, qui mercede apud tyrannos militassent, terra Laconica excederent; tum uti quae seruitia tyranni liberassent—ea magna multitudo erat—ante diem certam abirent; qui ibi mansissent, eos prendendi abducendi uendendi Achaeis ius esset; Lycurgi leges moresque abrogarent, Achaeorum adsuescerent legibus institutisque: ita unius eos corporis fore et de omnibus rebus facilius consensuros. Nihil oboedientius fecerunt, quam ut muros diruerent, nec aegrius passi sunt quam exules reduci. Decretum Tegeae in concilio communi Achaeorum de restituendis iis factum est; et mentione illata externos auxiliares dimissos ac Lacedaemoniis adscriptos—ita enim uocabant qui ab tyrannis liberati erant—urbe excessisse
[34] With this fear instilled in the Lacedaemonians, it was ordered first that they should tear down the walls; next, that all foreign auxiliaries who had served for pay with the tyrants should depart from Laconian land; then that the slaves whom the tyrants had manumitted—that was a great multitude—should depart before a fixed day; those who had remained there, the Achaeans should have the right to seize, lead away, and sell; that they should abrogate the laws and customs of Lycurgus and become accustomed to the laws and institutions of the Achaeans: thus they would be of one body and would more easily agree about all matters. Nothing did they do more obediently than to demolish the walls, nor did they endure anything more grievously than the restoration of the exiles. At Tegea, in the common council of the Achaeans, a decree was passed about restoring them; and when mention was brought in that the foreign auxiliaries, having been discharged and enrolled among the Lacedaemonians—thus indeed they called those who had been freed by the tyrants—had left the city and had dispersed into the fields, it was resolved that, before the army was dismissed, the praetor should go with light troops and seize that sort of men and sell them by the right of booty.
Many, once apprehended, were sold. The portico was rebuilt at Megalopolis from that money, with the permission of the Achaeans, which the Lacedaemonians had torn down. And the Belbinate land, which the tyrants of the Lacedaemonians had unjustly possessed, was restored to the same city by an old decree of the Achaeans, which had been enacted when Philip, son of Amyntas, was reigning.
[35] A concilio, ubi ad consulem inter Achaeos Lacedaemoniosque disceptatum est, M. Fuluius, quia iam in exitu annus erat, comitiorum causa profectus Romam creauit consules M. Valerium Messalam et C. Liuium Salinatorem, cum M. Aemilium Lepidum inimicum eo quoque anno petentem deiecisset. Praetores inde creati Q. Marcius Philippus M. Claudius Marcellus C. Stertinius C. Atinius P. Claudius Pulcher L. Manlius Acidinus. Comitiis perfectis consulem M. Fuluium in prouinciam et ad exercitum redire placuit, eique et collegae Cn. Manlio imperium in annum prorogatum est.
[35] From the council, where the dispute between the Achaeans and the Lacedaemonians was adjudicated before the consul, Marcus Fulvius, because the year was now at its end, set out for Rome for the sake of the elections and elected as consuls Marcus Valerius Messalla and Gaius Livius Salinator, after he had also that year defeated Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, his enemy, who was seeking the office. Then were elected as praetors Quintus Marcius Philippus, Marcus Claudius Marcellus, Gaius Stertinius, Gaius Atinius, Publius Claudius Pulcher, and Lucius Manlius Acidinus. With the elections completed, it was decided that the consul Marcus Fulvius should return to the province and to the army, and that for him and for his colleague Gnaeus Manlius the imperium be prolonged for one year.
In that year, in the temple of Hercules a statue of the god himself, by the response of the decemvirs, and gilded six-horse chariots on the Capitol, set up by P. Cornelius; it is inscribed that the consul gave them. And twelve gilded shields were placed by the curule aediles P. Claudius Pulcher and Ser. Sulpicius Galba, from the money with which they condemned the grain-dealers for having squeezed the grain-market; and the plebeian aedile Q. Fulvius Flaccus set up two gilded statues when one defendant had been convicted—for they had prosecuted them separately; his colleague A. Caecilius condemned no one.
The Roman Games were renewed three times, the Plebeian five times, in their entirety. Then M. Valerius Messala and C. Livius Salinator, when they entered the consulship on the Ides of March, consulted the senate about the commonwealth and about the provinces and the armies. Concerning Aetolia and Asia nothing was changed; for the consuls, to the one Pisa with the Ligurians was decreed as a province, to the other Gaul.
They were ordered to compare among themselves or to cast lots, and to enroll new armies, two legions apiece, and to require from the allies of the Latin name fifteen thousand infantry and one thousand two hundred cavalry. To Messala the Ligurians, to Salinator Gaul fell by lot. Then the praetors cast lots: to M. Claudius the urban jurisdiction, to P. Claudius the peregrine jurisdiction fell; Q. Marcius obtained Sicily, C. Stertinius Sardinia, L. Manlius Hither Spain, C. Atinius the Farther.
[36] De exercitibus ita placuit: ex Gallia legiones, quae sub C. Laelio fuerant, ad M. Tuccium propraetorem in Bruttios traduci, et, qui in Sicilia esset, dimitti exercitum, et classem, quae ibi esset, Romam reduceret M. Sempronius propraetor. Hispaniis singulae legiones, quae tum in iis prouinciis erant, decretae, et ut terna milia peditum, ducenos equites ambo praetores in supplementum sociis imperarent secumque transportarent. Priusquam in prouincias noui magistratus proficiscerentur, supplicatio triduum pro collegio decemuirorum imperata fuit in omnibus compitis, quod luce inter horam tertiam ferme et quartam tenebrae obortae fuerant.
[36] About the armies it was thus resolved: from Gaul the legions which had been under Gaius Laelius were to be transferred to Marcus Tuccius, propraetor, into Bruttium; and that the army which was in Sicily be dismissed, and that the fleet which was there Marcus Sempronius, propraetor, should bring back to Rome. For the Spains a single legion each, which at that time were in those provinces, was decreed, and that both praetors should levy upon the allies, as a supplement, 3,000 infantry and 200 cavalry, and transport them with themselves. Before the new magistrates set out into their provinces, a supplication for three days was ordered at all crossroads on behalf of the college of the decemvirs, because in full daylight, between about the third and the fourth hour, darkness had arisen.
And a nine-day sacrifice was proclaimed, because it had rained stones on the Aventine. The Campanians, when the censors—by a decree of the senate which had been made the previous year—had compelled them to be enrolled in the census at Rome—for previously it had been uncertain where they should be enrolled—, requested that it be permitted to them to take Roman citizen-women as wives; and, if any had taken them before, that they might keep them, and that those born before that day should be for them legitimate children and heirs. Both matters were granted.
Concerning the Formians and Fundani municipal citizens and the Arpinates, Gaius Valerius Tappo, tribune of the plebs, promulgated that to them the right of suffrage — for previously they had had citizenship without suffrage — should belong. To this bill four tribunes of the plebs, because it was being brought forward not by the authority of the senate, while they were interceding, having been instructed that it is the people’s right, not the senate’s, to impart the vote to whom it wishes, desisted from their undertaking. The bill was carried, that the Formians and Fundani should cast (their votes) in the Aemilian tribe, and the Arpinates in the Cornelian; and in these tribes then for the first time, by Valerius’s plebiscite, they were registered in the census.
M. Claudius Marcellus, censor, with T. Quinctius overcome by lot, established the lustrum. The heads of citizens counted were 258,318. With the lustrum completed, the consuls set out to their provinces.
[37] Hieme ea, qua haec Romae gesta sunt, ad Cn. Manlium consulem primum, dein pro consule, hibernantem in Asia, legationes undique ex omnibus ciuitatibus gentibusque, quae cis Taurum montem incolunt, conueniebant. Et ut clarior nobiliorque uictoria Romanis de rege Antiocho fuit quam de Gallis, ita laetior sociis erat de Gallis quam de Antiocho. Tolerabilior regia seruitus fuerat quam feritas immanium barbarorum incertusque in dies terror, quo uelut tempestas eos populantis inferret.
[37] In that winter in which these things were done at Rome, legations were assembling from every side, out of all the cities and nations that inhabit on this side of Mount Taurus, to Cn. Manlius, first as consul, then as proconsul, wintering in Asia. And as the victory of the Romans over King Antiochus was more illustrious and more noble than that over the Gauls, so to the allies the one over the Gauls was more gladsome than that over Antiochus. Royal servitude had been more tolerable than the savagery of monstrous barbarians, and the day-by-day uncertain terror, whereby, like a tempest, it would sweep in upon them men laying waste.
And so, since to those for whom, with Antiochus driven out, freedom had been given, and, with the Gauls subdued, peace had been granted, they had come not only to offer congratulations, but had also brought golden crowns, each according to their own resources. And delegates both from Antiochus and from the Gauls themselves came, that the terms of peace might be dictated; and Ariarathes, king of the Cappadocians, came to seek pardon and to atone the offense with money, because he had aided Antiochus with auxiliaries. Upon him six hundred talents of silver were imposed; to the Gauls it was answered that, when King Eumenes should have come, then he would give them the terms.
Delegations of the cities, with gracious replies, were dismissed, even happier than they had come. The envoys of Antiochus were ordered to convey the money into Pamphylia and the grain according to the pact of the treaty with L. Scipio; he would come there with his army. Then, at the beginning of spring, the army having been lustrated, he set out and on the 8th day came to Apamea.
There, after keeping stationary quarters for three days, on the third day he again, from the camp at Apamea, reached Pamphylia, whither he had ordered the royal men to convey the money and the grain. <two> thousand and five hundred talents of silver, once received, were transported to Apamea; the grain was distributed to the army. Thence he leads to Perga, which alone in those regions was held by a royal garrison.
As he was approaching, the prefect of the garrison met him, requesting a period of thirty days to consult King Antiochus about the surrender of the city. The time having been granted, by that date the garrison evacuated. From Perga, with his brother Lucius Manlius sent with four thousand soldiers to Oroanda to exact the remainder of the money from that which they had stipulated, he himself, because he had heard that King Eumenes and ten legates had come to Ephesus from Rome, after ordering Antiochus’s legates to follow, led the army back to Apamea.
[38] Ibi ex decem legatorum sententia foedus in haec uerba fere cum Antiocho conscriptum est: 'amicitia regi Antiocho cum populo Romano his legibus et condicionibus esto: ne quem exercitum, qui cum populo Romano sociisue bellum gesturus erit, rex per fines regni sui eorumue, qui sub dicione eius erunt, transire sinito, neu commeatu neu qua alia ope iuuato; idem Romani sociique Antiocho et iis, qui sub imperio eius erunt, praestent. Belli gerendi ius Antiocho ne esto cum iis, qui insulas colunt, neue in Europam transeundi. Excedito urbibus agris uicis castellis cis Taurum montem usque ad Halyn amnem, et a ualle Tauri usque ad iuga, qua in Lycaoniam uergit.
[38] There, in accordance with the opinion of the ten envoys, a treaty was drawn up with Antiochus in words to this effect: 'Let there be friendship between King Antiochus and the Roman People under these laws and conditions: let not the king permit any army which is going to wage war with the Roman People or their allies to pass through the borders of his kingdom or of those who shall be under his dominion, nor let him aid them with provisions nor with any other help; the Romans and their allies shall likewise observe the same toward Antiochus and those who shall be under his command. Let there be no right for Antiochus of waging war with those who inhabit the islands, nor of crossing into Europe. Let him withdraw from the cities, fields, villages, and forts on this side of Mount Taurus as far as the river Halys, and from the valley of Taurus up to the ridges where it inclines toward Lycaonia.'
Do not carry out any <except> arms from those towns, fields, and forts which he evacuates; if he has carried out any, let him duly restore each to where it ought. Do not receive a soldier nor anyone else from the kingdom of Eumenes. If any citizens of those cities which withdraw from the kingdom are with King Antiochus and within the borders of his kingdom, let them all return to Apamea before a fixed day; those who are from the kingdom of Antiochus and are among the Romans and their allies, let there be to them the right of departing and of remaining; slaves, whether runaways or captured in war, and if any free man shall have been captured or is a deserter, restore to the Romans and their allies.
Hand over all the elephants, and prepare no others. Hand over also the long ships and their tackle, and have not more than ten
Let there be no right for King Antiochus to hire soldiers for pay from those peoples who are under the dominion of the Roman people, nor even to receive volunteers. Whatever houses and buildings of the Rhodians or their allies are within the boundaries of the kingdom of Antiochus, by the same right by which they were before the war, by that right let them belong to the Rhodians or their allies; if any monies are owed, let there be the exaction of them; if anything has been taken away, let there likewise be the right of seeking it out, inquiring into it, and demanding it back. If any cities which ought to be handed over are held by those to whom Antiochus gave them, withdraw garrisons from them, and in any case see to it that they are duly handed over.
Give 12,000 Attic talents of good silver within 12 years, in equal installments—the talent is not to weigh less than 80 pounds by Roman weights—and 540,000 modii of wheat. To King Eumenes give 350 talents within a five-year period, and, for the grain which is settled by valuation, 127 talents. Give to the Romans 20 hostages, to be exchanged every three years, not younger than 18 years nor older than 45.
If any of the allies of the Roman People shall of their own accord bring war upon Antiochus, let there be a right to repel force with force, provided that he hold no city either by the right of war or receive any into friendship. Let controversies inter1 se be decided by law and judgment, or, if it shall please both, by war. Concerning Hannibal the Carthaginian and Thoas the Aetolian and Mnasilochus the Acarnanian and the Chalcidians Eubulides and Philo being surrendered, this too has been entered in this treaty; and that, if thereafter it should be pleasing that anything be added, diminished, or changed, that this be done with the treaty safe.
[39] Consul in hoc foedus iurauit; ab rege qui exigerent iusiurandum, profecti Q. Minucius Thermus et L. Manlius, qui tum forte ab Oroandis rediit. Et Q. Fabio Labeoni, qui classi praeerat, scripsit, ut Patara extemplo proficisceretur, quaeque ibi naues regiae essent, concideret cremaretque. Profectus ab Epheso quinquaginta tectas naues aut concidit aut incendit.
[39] The consul swore to this treaty; and from the king, to exact the oath, there set out Quintus Minucius Thermus and Lucius Manlius, who at that time by chance had returned from the Oroandes. And he wrote to Quintus Fabius Labeo, who was commanding the fleet, to set out at once to Patara, and to cut to pieces and burn whatever royal ships were there. Setting out from Ephesus, he either cut up or burned fifty decked ships.
He took Telmessus in the same expedition, the townsmen terrified by the sudden arrival of the fleet. From Lycia straightway, after ordering those who had been left there to follow from Ephesus, he crossed by the islands into Greece. At Athens, having tarried a few days, while the ships were coming to the Piraeus from Ephesus, from there he brought the whole fleet back to Italy.
Cn. Manlius, when among the other things that were to be received from Antiochus he had also received the elephants and had given them all as a gift to Eumenes, then heard the cases of the cities, many being disturbed amid the new changes. And King Ariarathes, with half of the imposed money remitted through the good offices of Eumenes—to whom in those days he had betrothed his daughter—was received into friendship. But, the cases of the cities having been examined, the ten legates established different terms for different cities.
Those which had been tributary to King Antiochus and had sided with the Roman People, they granted immunity; those which had been of Antiochus’s party or tributary to King Attalus, they ordered all to pay tribute to Eumenes. By name, moreover, they granted immunity to the Colophonians who dwell in Notium, and to the Cymaeans and the Mylasenes; to the Clazomenians, over and above immunity, they gave the island Drymussa as a gift; and to the Milesians they restored the field which they call sacred; and to the Ilians they added Rhoeteum and Gergithum, not so much on account of any recent merits as from a remembrance of origins. The same was also the reason for freeing Dardanus.
Chios also, and the Smyrnaeans and the Erythraeans, for the singular fidelity which they displayed in that war, they both endowed with land and held in every especial honor. To the Phocaeans both the land which they had possessed before the war was restored, and permission was given to use their ancient laws. For the Rhodians the grants that had been given by a prior decree were affirmed; Lycia and Caria were given as far as the river Maeander, Telmessus excepted.
To King Eumenes they added the Chersonese in Europe and Lysimachia, the castles, villages, and territory which Antiochus had held within those boundaries; in Asia, both Phrygias—one by the Hellespont, the other they call the Greater—and Mysia, which King Prusias had taken away, they restored to him; and Lycaonia and the Milyas and Lydia, and by name the cities Tralles and Ephesus and Telmessus. Since there was a dispute about Pamphylia between Eumenes and the envoys of Antiochus, because part of it is on this side and part beyond the Taurus, the entire <matter> is referred to the senate.
[40] His foederibus decretisque datis Manlius cum decem legatis omnique exercitu ad Hellespontum profectus, euocatis eo regulis Gallorum, leges, quibus pacem cum Eumene seruarent, dixit, denuntiauit, ut morem uagandi cum armis finirent agrorumque suorum terminis se continerent. Contractis deinde ex omni ora nauibus et Eumenis etiam classe per Athenaeum fratrem regis ab Elaea adducta copias omnes in Europam traiecit. Inde per Chersonesum modicis itineribus graue praeda omnis generis agmen trahens Lysimachiae statiua habuit, ut quam maxime recentibus et integris iumentis Thraeciam, per quam iter uulgo horrebant, ingrederetur.
[40] With these treaties and decrees given, Manlius, with ten legates and the whole army, set out for the Hellespont; having summoned thither the reguli (petty-kings) of the Gauls, he set forth the laws by which they should keep peace with Eumenes, and he warned them to put an end to the custom of roaming under arms and to confine themselves within the boundaries of their own fields. Then, after ships had been gathered from every shore, and Eumenes’ fleet also had been brought up from Elaea by Athenaeus, the king’s brother, he ferried all his forces across into Europe. Thence, through the Chersonese by moderate marches, dragging a column heavy with booty of every kind, he made a stationary camp at Lysimachia, in order that he might enter Thrace—with the beasts of burden as fresh and sound as possible—a region through which men commonly shuddered at the journey.
On that day he set out from Lysimachia and reached the river they call Melas; from there on the following day he arrived at Cypsela. From Cypsela there followed a road of about ten miles, woodland, narrow, and broken; on account of the difficulty of this march, the army was divided into two parts, and one was ordered to go ahead, the other, at a great interval, to drive the column together, and he placed the baggage in the middle; the wagons held the public money and other precious booty. Thus, as he went through the pass, not more than ten thousand Thracians, from four peoples—the Astii, Caeni, Maduateni, and Coreli—surrounded the road at the very narrows.
The opinion was that this had been done not without the fraud of Philip, king of the Macedonians; that he knew the Romans would return by no other route than through Thrace, and how great a sum of money they were carrying with them. In the first column was the commander, anxious because of the unfavorable character of the ground. The Thracians did not move at all until the armed men had passed; after they saw that the foremost had cleared the narrows, while the rearmost were not yet approaching, they fell upon the baggage and packs, and, the guards having been cut down, partly to plunder the things that were in the wagons, partly to drag off the beasts of burden under their loads.
Whence, after the clamor was carried first to those who, having already entered the pass, were following, then also to the first line, from both sides they run together into the midst, and an inordinate battle is engaged in several places at once. The booty itself, hampering the Thracians with burdens, presents many—unarmed, in order to have hands free for snatching—to slaughter; the iniquity of the ground betrayed the Romans, as the barbarians, on bypaths known to them, ran to meet them and sometimes, lying hidden through hollow valleys, sprang forth. Even the loads and the wagons themselves, as chance bore it, inconveniently thrown before this side or that of the fighters, were a hindrance.
Elsewhere the robber, elsewhere the avenger of the prey, falls. According as the ground is uneven or level for these or those, according as the spirit of the fighters is, according as the numbers—
for some had encountered more than they themselves were, others fewer—, the fortune of the fight is various; many fall on both sides. Now night 1 was approaching, when the Thracians withdraw from the battle, not in flight from wounds or death, but because they had enough booty.
[41] Romanorum primum agmen extra saltum circa templum Bendidium castra loco aperto posuit; pars altera ad custodiam impedimentorum medio in saltu, duplici circumdato uallo, mansit. Postero die prius explorato saltu, quam mouerent, primis se coniungunt. In eo proelio cum et impedimentorum et calonum pars et milites aliquot, cum passim toto prope saltu pugnaretur, cecidissent, plurimum Q. Minucii Thermi morte damni est acceptum, fortis ac strenui uiri.
[41] The vanguard of the Romans, outside the pass, pitched camp in open ground around the temple of the Bendidium; the other part, to guard the baggage, remained in the middle of the pass, with a double rampart drawn around it. On the next day, after the pass had been reconnoitred before they moved, they joined themselves to the foremost. In that battle—since part of the baggage and of the camp-servants, and several soldiers as well, had fallen, as fighting was going on everywhere in almost the whole pass—the greatest loss was the death of Q. Minucius Thermus, a brave and strenuous man.
On that day they came to the river Hebrus. From there they pass beyond the boundary of the Aenii, past the temple of Apollo, which the inhabitants call Zerynthium. Other narrows around Tempyra take over—this is the name of the place—, no less craggy than the former; but, because there is nothing wooded around, they afford not even hiding-places for ambush.
To this same hope of booty the Thrausi, a nation itself of the Thracians, gathered; but because the valleys, being bare, made it so that those besetting the narrows could be seen from afar, there was less terror and tumult among the Romans; indeed, although in disadvantageous ground, nevertheless it had to be fought in a regular battle, with the battle-line open, standards joined. Close-packed they advance, and with a shout, having made a charge, first they drove the enemy from their position, then turned them; then flight and slaughter began to occur, with the narrows themselves hindering them in their retreat. The victorious Romans pitched camp at the village of the Maronitae—they call it Salen.
On the next day an open route received them in the Priaticus plain, and they remained there for three days receiving grain, part from the fields of the Maronitae, they themselves contributing, part from their own ships, which were following with supplies of every kind. From the day’s quarters the road led to Apollonia. Thence, through the territory of the Abderitans, they arrived at Neapolis.
This whole march through the colonies of the Greeks was pacated; the remainder thence through the midst of the Thracians days and nights, although not infested, yet suspect, until they arrived in Macedonia. The same army had had milder Thracians when it was led by Scipio along the same road, for no other cause than that there had been less booty to be sought; although then too Claudius is authority that up to fifteen thousand Thracians encountered the column of Muttines the Numidian, going ahead to explore the places. That there were four hundred Numidian horsemen, and a few elephants; that the son of Muttines broke through the midst of the enemy with one hundred and fifty chosen horsemen; the same presently, when now Muttines, with the elephants placed in the middle and the horsemen disposed on the wings, had joined battle with the enemy, supplied terror from the rear, and from there, the enemy, thrown into confusion by a kind of equestrian tempest, did not approach the line of infantry.
[42] Exitu prope anni M. Valerius consul ex Liguribus ad magistratus subrogandos Romam uenit nulla memorabili in prouincia gesta re, ut ea probabilis morae causa esset, quod solito serius ad comitia uenisset. Comitia consulibus rogandis fuerunt a. D. XII. Kal.
[42] Near the end of the year, M. Valerius, the consul, came to Rome from the Ligurians to subrogate magistrates, nothing memorable having been done in the province, so that this was the plausible cause of the delay, that he had come to the comitia later than usual. The comitia for electing consuls were held a. D. 12. Kal.
With the elections completed, the consul reported to the senate which provinces should be for the praetors. They decreed two at Rome for the purpose of administering justice, two outside Italy, Sicily and Sardinia, two in Italy, Tarentum and Gaul; and immediately, before they entered upon office, they were ordered to draw lots. Ser.
Sulpicius drew the urban jurisdiction, Q. Terentius the peregrine; L. Terentius Sicily, Q. Fuluius Sardinia, Ap. Claudius Tarentum, M. Furius Gaul. In that year L. Minucius Myrtilus and L. Manlius, because they were said to have struck the Carthaginian envoys, by order of M. Claudius, the urban praetor, were handed over through the fetials to the envoys and carried off to Carthage. Among the Ligurians there was a report of a great war, growing more and more day by day.
Therefore, for the new consuls, on the day on which they reported about the provinces and about the Republic, the senate decreed the Ligurians as the province for both. To this senatorial decree the consul Lepidus interposed his veto, proclaiming it unworthy that both consuls be enclosed in the valleys of the Ligurians, while Marcus Fulvius and Gnaeus Manlius, already for two years, the one in Europe, the other in Asia, are reigning as if substituted in the place of Philip and Antiochus. If it is deemed good that armies be in those lands, the consuls rather than private men ought to command them.
That they were roaming with the terror of war through nations to which war had not been declared, selling peace for a price. If it were necessary to hold those provinces with armies, just as to Manius Acilius Lucius Scipio, consul, had succeeded, and to Lucius Scipio Marcus Fulvius and Gnaeus Manlius, consuls, had succeeded, so to Fulvius and Manlius Gaius Livius and Marcus Valerius, consuls, ought to have succeeded. Now certainly, with the Aetolian war completed, Asia recovered from Antiochus, the Gauls defeated, either the consuls ought to be sent to the consular armies, or the legions be brought back from there and at last be restored to the commonwealth.
[43] Inimicitiae inter M. Fuluium et M. Aemilium consulem erant, et super cetera Aemilius serius biennio se consulem factum M. Fuluii opera ducebat. Itaque ad inuidiam ei faciundam legatos Ambraciensis in senatum subornatos criminibus introduxit, qui sibi, cum in pace essent imperataque prioribus consulibus fecissent et eadem oboedienter praestare M. Fuluio parati essent, bellum illatum questi, agros primum depopulatos, terrorem direptionis et caedis urbi iniectum, ut eo metu claudere cogerentur portas; obsessos deinde et oppugnatos se, et omnia exempla belli edita in se caedibus incendiis ruinis direptione urbis, coniuges liberos in seruitium abstractos, bona adempta, et, quod se ante omnia moueat, templa tota urbe spoliata ornamentis; simulacra deum, deos immo ipsos, conuulsos ex sedibus suis ablatos esse; parietes postesque nudatos, quos adorent, ad quos precentur et supplicent, Ambraciensibus superesse—: haec querentis interrogando criminose ex composito consul ad plura uelut non sua sponte dicenda eliciebat. Motis patribus alter consul C. Flaminius M. Fuluii causam excepit, qui ueterem uiam et obsoletam ingressos Ambracienses dixit; sic M. Marcellum ab Syracusanis, sic Q. Fuluium a Campanis accusatos.
[43] Hostilities existed between M. Fulvius and M. Aemilius the consul, and, beyond other matters, Aemilius reckoned that, by the agency of M. Fulvius, he had been made consul two years later. And so, to create odium against him, he introduced into the senate the Ambraciot envoys, suborned with charges, who complained that, though they were at peace and had done what had been ordered by the prior consuls, and were prepared obediently to render the same to M. Fulvius, war had been brought upon them; that their fields were first devastated; that a terror of plunder and slaughter was cast upon the city, so that by that fear they were compelled to close the gates; then that they had been besieged and assaulted, and every practice of war had been exercised upon them—killings, burnings, ruins, the sack of the city; that wives and children had been dragged off into servitude, their goods taken away, and, what moved them before all else, that the temples throughout the city had been despoiled of their adornments; that the images of the gods—nay, the gods themselves—had been torn from their seats and carried off; that the walls and doorposts had been stripped bare, and that those before which they might adore, to which they might pray and supplicate, were all that remained to the Ambraciots—: as they made these complaints, by questioning them in an accusatory, preconcerted fashion, the consul was drawing out more to be said, as though not of their own prompting. With the Fathers stirred, the other consul, C. Flaminius, took up the cause of M. Fulvius, who said that the Ambraciots had entered upon an old and obsolete path; thus had M. Marcellus been accused by the Syracusans, thus Q. Fulvius by the Campanians.
Why not, by the same token, allow T. Quinctius to be accused by King Philip, M’. Acilius and L. Scipio by Antiochus, Cn. Manlius by the Gauls, and M. Fulvius himself by the Aetolians and the peoples of Cephallenia? “That Ambracia was besieged and taken, and that statues and ornaments were carried off from there, and that the other things were done which are wont to be done to captured cities”—do you suppose, Conscript Fathers, that either I on behalf of M. Fulvius, or M. Fulvius himself, will deny these things, he who, on account of these achievements, is going to demand from you a triumph, intending to carry before his chariot Ambracia taken, and the statues which they indict as having been carried off, and the other spoils of that city, and to fix them on his own doorposts? There is nothing by which they separate themselves from the Aetolians; the cause of the Ambraciots and of the Aetolians is the same.
Therefore let my colleague either exercise his enmities in another cause, or, if he prefers at any rate in this one, let him retain his Ambracians until the arrival of M. Fulvius; I, for my part, will not allow anything to be decreed either concerning the Ambracians or the Aetolians in the absence of M. Fulvius.'
[44] Cum Aemilius callidam malitiam inimici uelut notam omnibus insimularet et tempus eum morando extracturum diceret, ne consule inimico Romam ueniret, certamine consulum biduum absumptum est; nec praesente Flaminio decerni quicquam uidebatur posse. Captata occasio est, cum aeger forte Flaminius abesset, et referente Aemilio senatus consultum factum est, ut Ambraciensibus suae res omnes redderentur; in libertate essent ac legibus suis uterentur; portoria, quae uellent, terra marique caperent, dum eorum immunes Romani ac socii nominis Latini essent; signa aliaque ornamenta, quae quererentur ex aedibus sacris sublata esse, de iis, cum M. Fuluius Romam reuertisset, placere ad collegium pontificum referri, et quod ii censuissent, fieri. Neque his contentus consul fuit, sed postea per infrequentiam adiecit senatus consultum, Ambraciam ui captam esse non uideri.
[44] When Aemilius was charging the cunning malice of his enemy as if known to all, and was saying that by delaying he would spin out the time, so that he would not come to Rome while a hostile consul was in office, two days were consumed in a contest of the consuls; nor did it seem that anything could be decreed with Flaminius present. The opportunity was seized when Flaminius chanced to be absent, sick, and, with Aemilius reporting, a senatorial decree was passed: that to the Ambraciots all their property be returned; that they be in liberty and use their own laws; that they might take customs-dues, which they wished, by land and by sea, provided the Romans and the allies of the Latin name were exempt from them; that as to the statues and other ornaments which they alleged had been removed from sacred buildings, in regard to these, when M. Fulvius had returned to Rome, it was the pleasure that reference be made to the college of pontiffs, and that what they should decide be done. Nor was the consul content with these measures, but afterward, through a scanty attendance, he added a senatorial decree that Ambracia should not be deemed to have been taken by force.
Thereupon a supplication, by decree of the decemvirs, was held for three days for the health of the people, because a severe pestilence was ravaging the city and the fields. Then the Latin rites (Feriae Latinae) were held. Freed by these religious observances and, the levy having been completed—for each preferred to use new soldiers—they set out to their province, and they dismissed all the old troops.
After the departure of the consuls, Cn. Manlius, proconsul, came to Rome; when the senate had been granted to him by the praetor Ser. Sulpicius at the temple of Bellona, and he, after recounting the matters accomplished by himself, had demanded that on account of these honor be paid to the immortal gods and that it be permitted him, triumphing, to be carried into the city, the greater part of the ten legates who had been with him objected—before the others L. Furius Purpurio and L. Aemilius Paulus.
[45] Legatos sese Cn. Manlio datos pacis cum Antiocho faciendae causa foederisque legum, quae cum L. Scipione inchoatae fuissent, perficiendarum. Cn. Manlium summa ope tetendisse, ut eam pacem turbaret, et Antiochum, si sui potestatem fecisset, insidiis exciperet; sed illum cognita fraude consulis, cum saepe colloquiis petitis captatus esset, non congressum modo sed conspectum etiam eius uitasse. Cupientem transire Taurum aegre omnium legatorum precibus, ne carminibus Sibyllae praedictam superantibus terminos fatalis cladem experiri uellet, retentum admosse tamen exercitum et prope
[45] That they themselves had been assigned to Gnaeus Manlius as legates for the purpose of making peace with Antiochus and of completing the statutes of the treaty which had been begun with L. Scipio. That Gnaeus Manlius had strained with the utmost effort to disturb that peace, and to catch Antiochus in an ambush, if he had put himself in his power; but that he, once the consul’s fraud was learned, although he had often been waylaid by requested conferences, had avoided not only a meeting but even his sight. When he was eager to cross the Taurus, he was with difficulty held back by the entreaties of all the legates, lest, by surpassing the bounds foretold by the songs of the Sibyl, he should wish to experience a fated disaster; held back, nevertheless he brought up the army and almost on the very ridges at the parting of the waters he pitched camp, close
Since there he found no cause for war, the royal forces keeping quiet, he turned the army toward the Gallo‑Greeks; against which nation war had been brought neither by the authority of the senate nor by order of the people. Who had ever dared to do that on his own motion? The most recent wars had been with Antiochus, Philip, Hannibal, and the Carthaginians; about all these the senate had deliberated, the people had ordered, demands for restitution had first been made through envoys, and finally those who should declare war had been sent.
'What of those things, Cn. Manlius, was done, that we should reckon that a public war of the Roman People and not your private brigandage? But were you content with that very course—did you lead the army by a straight route to those whom you had selected for yourself as enemies? Or, through all the windings of the roads, halting at the crossways, so that wherever the column of Attalus, brother of Eumenes, had turned, there the mercenary consul would follow with the Roman army, did you traverse all the recesses and corners of Pisidia and Lycaonia and Phrygia, collecting tribute from tyrants and out-of-the-way castellans? For what have you to do with the Oroandians?
'What about the other equally innocuous peoples?' 'But the war itself, in whose name you seek a triumph—how did you wage it? Did you fight on level ground, at a time of your own choosing? Indeed you quite rightly demand it, in order that honor be paid to the immortal gods, first because they did not wish the army to pay penalties for the temerity of a commander who was bringing in war with no law of nations; next because they set upon us beasts, not enemies.'
[46] Nolite nomen tantum existimare mixtum esse Gallograecorum; multo ante et corpora et animi mixti ac uitiati sunt. An, si illi Galli essent, cum quibus milliens uario euentu in Italia pugnatum est, quantum in imperatore uestro fuit, nuntius illinc redisset? Bis cum iis pugnatum est, bis loco iniquo subiit, in ualle inferiore pedibus paene hostium aciem subiecit.
[46] Do not think that only the name of the Gallo-Greeks is mixed; long before this both their bodies and their minds were mixed and vitiated. Or, if they were those Gauls with whom a thousand times, with varied event, battle was fought in Italy, so far as it lay in your general, would a messenger have returned from there? Twice battle was joined with them, twice he went down into an unfavorable position, in a lower valley he almost set his battle line beneath the very feet of the enemy.
They were almost thunderstruck by the recent downfall of Hannibal, Philip, Antiochus. Such masses of bodies were thrown into rout by slings and arrows; the sword in the battle-line was not bloodied in the Gallic war; like swarms of birds, at the very first rattle of missiles they flew away. But, by Hercules, we the very same—Fortune giving a warning of what would have happened, if we had had an enemy—when, returning, we fell in with Thracian brigands, were cut down, routed, stripped of our baggage.
Q. Minucius Thermus, in whose case far more damage was done than if Cn. Manlius—by whose rashness that disaster had fallen—had perished, fell with many brave men; the army, carrying back the spoils of King Antiochus, was scattered in three parts—here the vanguard, elsewhere the rearguard, elsewhere the baggage—and for one night lay hidden among brambles in the lairs of wild beasts. For these things is a triumph being sought? If nothing of disaster and ignominy had been incurred in Thrace, over which enemies would you be seeking a triumph?
About those, as I suppose, whom the senate or the Roman people had assigned to you as enemies. Thus to this Lucius Scipio, thus to that Manius Acilius for King Antiochus, thus a little before to Titus Quinctius for King Philip, thus to Publius Africanus for Hannibal and the Carthaginians and Syphax, a triumph was granted. And even those minimal points, though the senate had already decreed war, were nonetheless inquired into—namely, to whom the announcement should be made: that it be announced to the kings themselves, or whether it were sufficient to announce it to some garrison.
Do you wish, then, that all these things be polluted and confounded, that the fetial laws be abolished, that there be no fetials? Let there be—if I may say it with the gods’ pardon—a loss of religion; let oblivion of the gods seize your hearts; does it not please you that the senate also be consulted about war? That it not be brought to the people, whether they wish and bid that war be waged with the Gauls?
[47] Talis oratio Furii et Aemilii fuit. Manlium in hunc maxime modum respondisse accepi: 'tribuni plebis antea solebant triumphum postulantibus aduersari, patres conscripti; quibus ego gratiam habeo, quod seu mihi seu magnitudini rerum gestarum hoc dederunt, ut non solum silentio comprobarent honorem meum, sed referre etiam, si opus esset, uiderentur parati esse; ex decem legatis, si diis placet, quod consilium dispensandae cohonestandaeque uictoriae imperatoribus maiores dederunt nostri, aduersarios habeo. L. Furius et L. Aemilius currum triumphalem me conscendere prohibent, coronam insignem capiti detrahunt, quos ego, si tribuni triumphare me prohiberent, testes citaturus fui rerum a me gestarum.
[47] Such was the oration of Furius and Aemilius. I have received that Manlius replied in this fashion especially: 'Previously the tribunes of the plebs were accustomed to oppose those asking for a triumph, Conscript Fathers; to whom I am grateful, for they have granted either to me or to the magnitude of the deeds performed this boon: that they not only should approve my honor by silence, but even should seem prepared, if there were need, to bring it forward; of the ten legates—if it please the gods—I have as adversaries those whom our ancestors gave to commanders as a council for the apportioning and dignifying of victory. L. Furius and L. Aemilius forbid me to mount the triumphal chariot, they tear the distinguished crown from my head—men whom, if the tribunes were forbidding me to triumph, I was going to call as witnesses of the deeds performed by me.'
I indeed envy no man’s honor, Conscript Fathers; you recently, by your authority, deterred the tribunes of the plebs—brave and strenuous men—who were hindering the triumph of Q. Fabius Labeo; he triumphed, of whom his enemies were boasting not that he had waged an unjust war, but that he had not seen an enemy at all; I, who have so often fought in pitched battle against one hundred thousand of the fiercest enemies, who captured or slew more than forty thousand men, who stormed two of their camps, who left everything on this side of the ridges of Taurus more pacified than the land of Italy is, am not only defrauded of a triumph, but plead my case before you, Conscript Fathers, with my own legates acting as my accusers. Their accusation, as you have noticed, Conscript Fathers, was twofold: for they said both that I ought not to have waged war with the Gauls, and that it was waged rashly and imprudently. “The Gauls were not enemies, but you violated them, though they were peaceful and obediently carrying out orders.” I am not going to demand of you, Conscript Fathers, that the things you commonly know about the immensity/inhumanity of the nation of the Gauls, about their most hostile hatred toward the Roman name, you should reckon those also of those Gauls who inhabit Asia; with the disgrace and odium of the whole nation set aside, judge them by themselves.
Would that King Eumenes, would that all the cities of Asia were present, and that you would hear them complaining rather than me accusing. Send, come now, envoys around all the cities of Asia and inquire from which heavier servitude they have been freed: when Antiochus was removed beyond the ridges of Taurus, or when the Gauls were subdued. Let them report how often their fields were devastated, how often their booty was driven off, when there was scarcely the means of ransoming captives, and they heard that human victims had been slaughtered and their own children immolated.
[48] Quo longius Antiochus emotus esset, hoc impotentius in Asia Galli dominarentur, et, quidquid est terrarum citra Tauri iuga, Gallorum imperio, non uestro adiecissetis. At enim sunt quidem ista uera;
[48] The farther Antiochus had been removed, the more uncontrollably in Asia the Gauls would lord it, and whatever land there is on this side of the ridges of Taurus, you would have added to the dominion of the Gauls, not your own. But indeed those things are true;
An, unless Antiochus had drawn off the garrisons which were quiet in their own citadels, would you not have thought Asia liberated? if the army of the Gauls were, poured out, roaming, would your gifts, which you bestowed, to King Eumenes be valid, would the liberty to the communities be valid? But why do I argue these things thus, as though I had not found but had made the Gauls enemies? You, L. Scipio, I appeal to, whose valor and good fortune I, succeeding to the turn of your command, have prayed from the immortal gods for myself in equal measure not in vain; you, P. Scipio, who possessed the right of a legate, the majesty of a colleague, both with your brother the consul and with the army—do you know that in Antiochus’s army there were legions of Gauls, you saw them in the battle-line, placed on each wing—for that seemed to be the strength—, you fought as with lawful enemies, you struck them down, you carried off their spoils.
And yet the senate had decreed and the people had ordered war with Antiochus, not with the Gauls. But at the same time, as I suppose, they had decreed and ordered it as well against those who had been within his garrisons; among whom, apart from Antiochus—with whom Scipio had struck peace, and with whom you had expressly mandated that a treaty be made by name—all were enemies who bore arms against us on behalf of Antiochus. In which matter, since the Gauls had been foremost before all, and certain petty-kings and tyrants, I nevertheless, making peace with the others also, who had been compelled, in proportion to the dignity of your imperium, to atone for their sins, tried the spirits of the Gauls, to see whether they could be mitigated from their inborn ferocity; and, after I perceived them to be untamed and implacable, then at last I judged that they must be coerced by force and arms.' 'Now, since the charge for having undertaken the war has been cleared, an account must be rendered of the war that was waged.
In this I would indeed have confidence in my cause, even if I were pleading not before the Roman but before the Carthaginian senate, where commanders are said to be raised onto the cross if, with a prosperous event, they managed the matter with a depraved counsel; but I am in that city which for this reason calls in the gods for all things to be begun and carried on, because it subjects to no calumny those things which the gods have approved, and has in its solemn words, when it decrees a supplication or a triumph, ‘that he has administered the commonwealth well and happily’; if I were unwilling, if I deemed it burdensome and proud to glory in virtue, <si> for my felicity and that of my army—because we have conquered so great a nation without any loss of soldiers—I should request that honor be paid to the immortal gods and that I myself, triumphing, should ascend to the Capitol, whence, vows having been duly proclaimed, I set out, would you deny this to me along with the immortal gods?
[49] Iniquo enim loco dimicaui. Dic igitur, quo aequiore potuerim dimicare. Cum hostes montem cepissent, loco se munito tenerent, nempe eundum ad hostes erat, si uincere uellem.
[49] For I fought in an unfavorable position. Tell me, then, on what more level ground I could have fought. Since the enemies had seized the mountain and were holding themselves in a fortified position, clearly I had to go to the enemy, if I wished to conquer.
Did not T. Quinctius in the same way cast down Philip, who was holding the ridges of the mountains above the river Aous? For my part, even now I do not discover what sort of enemy they either fashion for themselves or would wish to seem to you to have been. If he was degenerate and softened by the amenity of Asia, what danger was there even to those advancing in an unfavorable position?
If he is to be feared both for the ferocity of spirit and the strength of body, do you deny to this man a triumph for so great a victory? It is blind envy, Conscript Fathers, nor does it know anything else than to detract from virtues, to corrupt their honors and rewards. I beg you to pardon me thus, Conscript Fathers, if it was not a desire of glorying about myself, but the necessary defense against the charges, that made this oration longer.
An was I also, as we went through Thrace, able to make open passes out of those that were narrow, and level out of steep places and cultivated out of woodland, and to guarantee that nowhere the Thracian brigands might skulk in hiding-places known to them, that nothing of the baggage be snatched, that no beast of burden be dragged off from so great a column, that no one be wounded, that from a wound the brave and strenuous man Q. Minucius not die? On this mishap, which befell unhappily, that we should lose such a citizen, they fix; because, when the enemy attacked us in an unfair pass, on ground not our own, two battle-lines at once, of the van and of the rear of the column, surrounded the army of barbarians sticking fast to our baggage; because on that very day many thousands, and many more after a few days, they cut down and took captive; do they not believe that this, even if they themselves fall silent, you will learn, since the whole army is witness of my speech? Even if I had not drawn my sword in Asia, even if I had not seen the enemy, still, as [proconsul], by two battles in Thrace I had earned a triumph.
[50] Plus crimina eo die quam defensio ualuisset, ni altercationem in serum perduxissent. Dimittitur senatus in ea opinione, ut negaturus triumphum fuisse uideretur. Postero die et cognati amicique Cn. Manlii summis opibus adnisi sunt, et auctoritas seniorum ualuit, negantium exemplum proditum memoriae esse, ut imperator, qui deuictis perduellibus, confecta prouincia exercitum reportasset, sine curru et laurea priuatus inhonoratusque urbem iniret.
[50] The charges would have prevailed more that day than the defense, had they not prolonged the altercation into a late hour. The senate is dismissed with the impression that it was going to deny the triumph. On the following day both the kinsmen and friends of Cn. Manlius strove with the utmost resources, and the authority of the elders prevailed, denying that any precedent had been handed down to memory whereby a commander who, with the public enemies subdued and the province completed, had brought back his army, should enter the city without chariot and laurel, as a private man and unhonored.
Here modesty overcame malignity, and in full numbers they decreed a triumph. Then a greater contest—arisen with a greater and more illustrious man—suppressed every mention and all memory of this dispute. Against P. Scipio Africanus, as Valerius Antias is the authority, the two Q. Petillii named a day for trial.
This, according to each one’s disposition, they were interpreting. Some accused not the tribunes of the plebs, but the whole commonwealth, which could allow this: that the two greatest cities of the circle of lands had been found ungrateful toward their leading men at nearly the same time—Rome the more ungrateful, since, if indeed conquered Carthage had driven the conquered Hannibal into exile, Rome as victor expels Africanus the victor. Others said that no single citizen ought to stand out so far that he cannot be interrogated under the laws; nothing so belongs to the equalizing of liberty as that each most powerful man be able to plead his cause.
But what, moreover, can safely be entrusted to anyone—let alone the supreme conduct of the commonwealth—if an account is not to be rendered? Against one who cannot endure equitable right, the use of force is not unjust. These matters were agitated in conversations, until the day for the case to be pleaded came.
Neither anyone before, nor Scipio himself as consul or as censor, was conducted into the Forum with a greater throng of men of every kind than the defendant on that day. Ordered to state his case, without any mention of the charges, he began a speech so magnificent about the matters accomplished by himself that it was quite evident that no one had ever been lauded either better or more truly. For they were being said by <him> with the same spirit and talent with which they had been done, and the fastidiousness of the ears was absent, because they were being adduced with reference to peril, not for glory.
[51] Tribuni uetera luxuriae crimina Syracusanorum hibernorum et Locris Pleminianum tumultum cum ad fidem praesentium criminum retulissent, suspicionibus magis quam argumentis pecuniae captae reum accusarunt: filium captum sine pretio redditum, omnibusque aliis rebus Scipionem, tamquam in eius unius manu pax Romana bellumque esset, ab Antiocho cultum; dictatorem eum consuli, non legatum in prouincia fuisse; nec ad aliam rem eo profectum, quam ut, id quod Hispaniae Galliae Siciliae Africae iam pridem persuasum esset, hoc Graeciae Asiaeque et omnibus ad orientem uersis regibus gentibusque appareret, unum hominem caput columenque imperii Romani esse, sub umbra Scipionis ciuitatem dominam orbis terrarum latere, nutum eius pro decretis patrum, pro populi iussis esse. Infamia intactum inuidia, qua possunt, urgent. Orationibus in noctem perductis prodicta dies est.
[51] The tribunes, after they had cited the old charges of luxury from the Syracusan winter-quarters and the Pleminian tumult at Locri to bolster the credibility of the present accusations, charged the defendant with money taken on suspicions rather than on proofs: that his captured son had been returned without a price, and that in all other matters too Scipio had been courted by Antiochus, as though in the hand of that one man both Roman peace and war lay; that he had been in the province as a dictator to the consul, not as a legate; and that he had gone there for no other purpose than that what had long since been persuaded to Spain, Gaul, Sicily, and Africa might appear to Greece and Asia and to all kings and nations turned toward the east—namely, that a single man was the head and column of the Roman imperium, that beneath the shadow of Scipio the commonwealth, mistress of the whole world, lay hidden, and that his nod served in place of the decrees of the Fathers and the commands of the People. Untouched by infamy, they press him with envy, by whatever means they can. With the speeches carried into the night, a day was appointed.
When that day came, the tribunes took their seats on the Rostra at first light; the defendant, having been summoned, with a great column of friends and clients, went up to the Rostra through the midst of the assembly, and, silence having been made, said: 'On this day, tribunes of the plebs, and you, Quirites, I fought well and happily in Africa with standards joined with Hannibal and the Carthaginians. And so, since it is fair that today lawsuits and quarrels be set aside, I from here immediately will go up to the Capitol, to Jupiter Best and Greatest and to Juno and Minerva and the other gods who preside over the Capitol and the citadel, to salute them, and to give thanks to them because both on this very day and often at other times they have given me mind and capacity for carrying on the Republic excellently. You also, Quirites, those of you for whom it is convenient, go with me, and pray to the gods that you may have leaders like me—inasmuch as, if from the age of seventeen to old age you have always outstripped my years with your honors, I have outstripped your honors by the deeds I have done.' From the Rostra he ascended to the Capitol.
At once the whole assembly turned itself away and followed Scipio, to such a degree that at last the scribes and the ushers left the tribunes, nor was there anyone with them except a servile retinue and the herald who was summoning the defendant from the Rostra. Scipio made a circuit not only on the Capitol, but through the whole city to all the temples of the gods with the Roman people. That day was almost more celebrated by the favor of men and by a true estimation of his magnitude than the day on which, triumphant over King Syphax and the Carthaginians, he was borne into the city.
[52] Hic speciosus ultimus dies P. Scipioni illuxit. Post quem cum inuidiam et certamina cum tribunis prospiceret, die longiore prodicta in Literninum concessit certo consilio, ne ad causam dicendam adesset. Maior animus et natura erat ac maiori fortunae adsuetus, quam ut reus esse sciret et summittere se in humilitatem causam dicentium.
[52] Here the splendid last day dawned upon P. Scipio. After which, since he foresaw envy and contests with the tribunes, with a more distant day appointed he withdrew to Liternum, with the fixed plan not to be present to plead his case. His spirit and nature were greater, and accustomed to a greater fortune, than to know how to be a defendant and to submit himself to the humiliation of those pleading their cause.
When the day came and he began to be summoned while absent, L. Scipio pleaded illness as the cause why he was away. When the tribunes who had named the day would not accept that excuse, and charged that from the same arrogance he did not come to plead his case, with which he had left the court and the tribunes of the plebs and the assembly, and that, from those to whom he had taken away the right of pronouncing an opinion about him and their liberty, accompanied by these very men, dragging them as if captives, he had celebrated a triumph over the Roman people, and that on that day he had made a secession to the Capitol from the tribunes of the plebs:— ‘you have therefore the recompense of that temerity; the leader and author by whom you abandoned us—by him you yourselves have been abandoned; and so much of spirit decreases in us day by day, that the man against whom 17 years ago, though he had an army and a fleet, we dared to send the tribunes of the plebs and the aedile into Sicily to seize him and bring him back to Rome, to that man, now a private citizen, to be dragged out from his villa to plead his case, we do not dare to send [men]’—; the tribunes of the plebs, appealed to by L. Scipio, thus decreed: if excuse on account of illness were accepted, it pleased them that that plea be received and that the day be appointed by their colleagues. At that time the tribune of the plebs was Ti. Sempronius Gracchus, between whom and P. Scipio there existed enmities.
He, after he had forbidden that his name be inscribed to the decree of his colleagues, and when all were expecting a harsher opinion, thus decreed: since L. Scipio had pled that illness was the cause for his brother, that seemed sufficient to him; he would not allow P. Scipio to be accused before he had returned to Rome; then also, if he should appeal to him, he would be of assistance to him, that he not stand trial: P. Scipio had attained, by his achievements and by the honors of the Roman people, by the consensus of gods and men, to such a pinnacle that to stand as a defendant beneath the Rostra and to lend his ears to the insults of adolescents is more disgraceful to the Roman people than to himself.
[53] Adiecit decreto indignationem: 'sub pedibus uestris stabit, tribuni, domitor ille Africae Scipio? Ideo quattuor nobilissimos duces Poenorum in Hispania, quattuor exercitus fudit fugauitque; ideo Syphacem cepit, Hannibalem deuicit, Carthaginem uectigalem nobis fecit, Antiochum—recipit enim fratrem consortem huius gloriae L. Scipio—ultra iuga Tauri emouit, ut duobus Petilliis succumberet? Vos de P. Africano palmam peteretis?
[53] He added indignation to the decree: 'Will that tamer of Africa, Scipio, stand under your feet, tribunes? For this did he rout and put to flight in Spain four most noble leaders of the Punic people, four armies; for this did he capture Syphax, defeat Hannibal, make Carthage tributary to us, drive Antiochus— for L. Scipio admits his brother as partner in this glory— beyond the ridges of the Taurus, that he should succumb to two Petillii? Will you seek the palm from P. Africanus, palmam peteretis?'
‘Will men of renown, by no deserts of their own, by no honors of ours, ever arrive at a safe and, as it were, sacred citadel, where, if not venerable, at least their old age may sit down inviolate?’ Both the decree and the added oration moved not only the rest, but even the accusers themselves, and they said they would deliberate what pertained to their own right and duty. Then, with the assembly of the plebs dismissed, the senate began to be held. There immense thanks from the whole order, especially from the consulars and the elders, were rendered to Ti. Gracchus, because he had held the commonwealth preferable to private feuds; and the Petillii were harried with reproaches, because they had wished to shine by another’s ill‑will and to seek spoils from Africanus’s triumph.
Then there was silence about Africanus. He lived at Liternum without longing for the city; they report that, as he was dying, he ordered that he be buried in the countryside in that very place and that a monument be built there, lest a funeral be held for him in his ungrateful fatherland. A memorable man, yet more memorable in the arts of war than of peace.
<more notable> the first part of his life than the last was, because in youth wars were continually waged, whereas in old age even affairs faded, nor was material provided for his genius. What is the second in comparison to the first consulship, even if you add the censorship? What of the Asiatic legation, both useless because of adverse health and disfigured by the mischance of his son, and, after his return, by the necessity either of undergoing a trial or of deserting it together with his fatherland?
[54] Morte Africani creuere inimicorum animi, quorum princeps fuit M. Porcius Cato, qui uiuo quoque eo adlatrare magnitudinem eius solitus erat. Hoc auctore existimantur Petillii et uiuo Africano rem ingressi et mortuo rogationem promulgasse. Fuit autem rogatio talis: 'uelitis iubeatis, Quirites, quae pecunia capta ablata coacta ab rege Antiocho est quique sub imperio eius fuerunt, quod eius in publicum relatum non est, uti de ea re Ser.
[54] On the death of Africanus the spirits of his enemies increased, whose chief was Marcus Porcius Cato, who even while he was alive was accustomed to bark at his greatness. With him as author, the Petillii are thought both to have entered upon the matter while Africanus was alive, and, when he was dead, to have promulgated a bill. The bill, moreover, was as follows: 'Do you will and order, Quirites, that the money captured, carried off, or exacted from King Antiochus and those who were under his command, that which has not been paid into the public treasury, that concerning that matter Ser.
Sulpicius, the urban praetor, should bring before the senate, whom the senate wishes to conduct that inquiry, from among those who are praetors now.' Against this bill at first Q. and L. Mummius interposed a veto; they judged it equitable that the senate conduct an inquiry about money not reported into the public treasury, as had always been done before. The Petillii were accusing the nobility and the kingship of the Scipios in the senate. L. Furius Purpureo, a man of consular rank, who had been among the ten legates in Asia, thought the question ought to be put more broadly—not what moneys had been taken from Antiochus only, but what from other kings and peoples—assailing his enemy Cn. Manlius.
And L. Scipio, who seemed likely to speak more on his own behalf than against the law, came forward as the dissuader. He complained that that rogation had arisen upon the death of his brother P. Africanus, a man the bravest and most illustrious of all; for it had not been enough that P. Africanus was not praised from the Rostra after his death, unless he also were accused; and that whereas the Carthaginians were content with the exile of Hannibal, the Roman people were not sated even by the death of P. Scipio, unless both the very repute of the buried man were torn and his brother besides, an accession of envy, were sacrificed. M. Cato recommended the rogation—his speech On the Money of King Antiochus survives—and by his authority deterred the Mummii, tribunes, from opposing the rogation.
[55] Ser. Sulpicio deinde referente, quem rogatione Petillia quaerere uellent, Q. Terentium Culleonem patres iusserunt. Ad hunc praetorem, adeo amicum Corneliae familiae, ut, qui Romae mortuum elatumque P. Scipionem—est enim ea quoque fama—tradunt, pilleatum, sicut in triumpho ierat, in funere quoque ante lectum isse memoriae prodiderint, et ad Portam Capenam mulsum prosecutis funus dedisse, quod ab eo inter alios captiuos in Africa ex hostibus receptus esset, aut adeo inimicum eundem, ut propter insignem simultatem ab ea factione, quae aduersa Scipionibus erat, delectus sit potissimum ad quaestionem exercendam—; ceterum ad hunc nimis aequum aut iniquum praetorem reus extemplo factus L. Scipio.
[55] Then, with Ser. Sulpicius reporting, whom they wished to conduct the inquiry by the Petillian rogation, the fathers ordered Q. Terentius Culleo. To this praetor—so friendly to the Cornelian house that those who hand down the story say that, when P. Scipio had died at Rome and was carried out, he, wearing the pilleus, went before the bier at the funeral just as he had gone in his triumph, and that at the Porta Capena he gave mulsum to those who escorted the obsequies, because by him he had been recovered, among other captives, in Africa from the enemy—or else so hostile, the same man, that on account of notorious enmity he was chosen by that faction which was adverse to the Scipios above all to exercise the quaestio—; at any rate, before this praetor, whether too favorable or too unfavorable, L. Scipio at once became the defendant.
At the same time both the names of his legates, A. and L. Hostilius Cato, and of C. Furius Aculeo, quaestor, were brought forward and accepted, and, so that all might seem contaminated by a partnership in peculation, two scribes as well and the accensus. L. Hostilius, and the scribes and the accensus, before judgment was rendered concerning Scipio, were acquitted; Scipio and A. Hostilius, legate, and C. Furius were condemned: that a more commodious peace might be granted to Antiochus, that Scipio had received, by weight, six thousand of gold, four hundred and eighty of silver more than he had paid into the treasury; that A. Hostilius had received eighty, by weight, of gold, of silver four hundred and three; that Furius the quaestor had received one hundred and thirty, by weight, of gold, two hundred of silver. These totals of gold and silver thus reported I have found set down in Antias.
In the case of L. Scipio I, for my part, would rather have it be a copyist’s error than the author’s mendacity in the total of the gold and silver; for it is more like the truth that the weight of silver was greater than that of gold, and that the suit was assessed at 40 rather than 240 million sesterces—so much the more because they report that an account of so great a sum was even demanded from P. Scipio himself in the senate, and that, when he had ordered his brother Lucius to bring the book of that account, he himself, with the senate looking on, tore it up with his own hands in indignation, because, although he had paid into the treasury 200 million sesterces, an account of 40 million was being demanded from him. From that same confidence of spirit, when the quaestors did not dare to take money out of the treasury contrary to law, he demanded the keys and said that he would open the treasury—he who had brought it about that it be shut.
[56] Multa alia in Scipionis exitu maxime uitae dieque dicta, morte, funere, sepulcro, in diuersum trahunt, ut, cui famae, quibus scriptis adsentiar, non habeam. Non de accusatore conuenit: alii M. Naeuium, alii Petillios diem dixisse scribunt, non de tempore, quo dicta dies sit, non de anno, quo mortuus sit, non ubi mortuus aut elatus sit; alii Romae, alii Literni et mortuum et sepultum. Vtrobique monumenta ostenduntur et statuae; nam et Literni monumentum monumentoque statua superimposita fuit, quam tempestate deiectam nuper uidimus ipsi, et Romae extra portam Capenam in Scipionum monumento tres statuae sunt, quarum duae P. Et L. Scipionum dicuntur esse, tertia poetae Q. Ennii.
[56] Many other things about Scipio’s end—especially about his life and the day, his death, funeral, and tomb—are drawn in divergent directions, so that I do not have to which report, to which writings, I should assent. There is no agreement about the accuser: some write that M. Naevius, others that the Petillii “named the day”; nor about the time when the day was named; nor about the year in which he died; nor where he died or was borne out: some say at Rome, others that at Liternum he both died and was buried. In both places monuments and statues are shown; for at Liternum there was a monument with a statue set upon the monument, which we ourselves lately saw thrown down by a storm; and at Rome, outside the Capenan Gate, in the monument of the Scipios there are three statues, of which two are said to be of P. and L. Scipio, the third of the poet Q. Ennius.
Nor is there disagreement only among the writers of events, but the speeches too—if indeed those which are circulated are actually theirs—of P. Scipio and Ti. Gracchus are at variance with one another. The title of P. Scipio’s speech bears the name of M. Naevius, tribune of the plebs, but the speech itself is without the accuser’s name; at one time he calls him a scoundrel, at another a trifler. Not even Gracchus’s speech has any mention either of the Petillii as Africanus’s accusers or of a day named against Africanus. A wholly different tale must be woven to suit Gracchus’s speech, and those authors are to be followed who relate that, when L. Scipio had been both accused and condemned for money taken from the king, Africanus was a legate in Etruria; and that, after a report about his brother’s mischance had been brought, he, leaving the embassy, ran to Rome, and, when he had gone straight from the gate to the forum, because it had been ordered that his brother be led into bonds, he drove the bailiff away from his body, and, with the tribunes trying to restrain him, used force more piously than civilly.
For Tiberius Gracchus complains of this very point, that the tribunician power has been dissolved by a private citizen; and, finally, when he promises aid to Lucius Scipio, he adds that it is a precedent more tolerable that both the tribunician power and the commonwealth seem to have been conquered by a tribune of the plebs rather than by a private citizen. But he so burdens this one unbridled injury of his with popular ill-will that, by reproaching him for having so far degenerated from his former self, he pays back to him accumulated old praises of moderation and temperance in place of present reprehension; for he says that the people were once chastised by him, because they wished to make him perpetual consul and dictator; that he forbade statues of himself to be set up in the Comitium, on the Rostra, in the Curia, on the Capitol, in the cell of Jupiter; that he forbade it to be decreed that his image in triumphal attire should go forth from the temple of Jupiter Best and Greatest.
[57] Haec uel in laudatione posita ingentem magnitudinem animi moderantis ad ciuilem habitum honoribus significarent, quae exprobrando inimicus fatetur. Huic Graccho minorem ex duabus filiis—nam maior P. Cornelio Nasicae haud dubie a patre collocata erat—nuptam fuisse conuenit. Illud parum constat, utrum post mortem patris et desponsa sit et nupserit, an uerae illae opiniones sint, Gracchum, cum L. Scipio in uincula duceretur, nec quisquam collegarum auxilio esset, iurasse sibi inimicitias cum Scipionibus, quae fuissent, manere, nec se gratiae quaerendae causa quicquam facere, sed, in quem carcerem reges et imperatores hostium ducentem uidisset P. Africanum, in eum se fratrem eius duci non passurum.
[57] These very points, even if set in a laudation, would by their honors signify an enormous magnitude of a mind moderating itself to a civil habit; which an enemy, by reproaching, confesses. It is agreed that to this Gracchus the younger of the two daughters was married—for the elder had undoubtedly been bestowed by her father upon P. Cornelius Nasica. This is little settled: whether, after the death of her father, she was both betrothed and married, or whether those opinions are true, that Gracchus, when L. Scipio was being led in chains and none of his colleagues offered aid, swore that the enmities with the Scipios which had existed should remain, nor would he do anything for the sake of courting favor, but that into the prison into which he had seen P. Africanus leading kings and commanders of the enemy, into that he would not suffer that man’s brother to be led.
It is said that on that day the Senate, by chance dining on the Capitol, rose and requested that, amid the banquet, Africanus betroth his daughter to Gracchus. With the public solemnity of the sponsals thus duly performed, when he had returned home, Scipio told his wife Aemilia that he had betrothed his younger daughter. When she, indignantly in a womanly way, complained that nothing had been consulted with her about their common daughter, and added that, if he were giving her to Ti. Gracchus, the mother ought not to have been excluded from the counsel, Scipio, glad at so concordant a judgment, replied that she had been betrothed to that very man.
[58] Iudiciis a Q. Terentio praetore perfectis, Hostilius et Furius damnati praedes eodem die quaestoribus urbanis dederunt; Scipio cum contenderet omnem quam accepisset pecuniam in aerario esse, nec se quicquam publici habere, in uincula duci est coeptus. P. Scipio Nasica tribunos appellauit orationemque habuit plenam ueris decoribus non communiter modo Corneliae gentis, sed proprie familiae suae. Parentes suos et P. Africani ac L. Scipionis, qui in carcerem duceretur, fuisse Cn. Et P. Scipiones, clarissimos uiros.
[58] With the trials completed by the praetor Q. Terentius, Hostilius and Furius, having been condemned, gave sureties to the urban quaestors on the same day; Scipio, since he maintained that all the money he had received was in the treasury, and that he had nothing of the public funds, began to be led to prison. P. Scipio Nasica appealed to the tribunes and delivered a speech full of true honors, not only those common to the Cornelian gens, but proper to his own household. He said that the forefathers of himself and of P. Africanus and of L. Scipio, who was being led to prison, had been Cn. and P. Scipio, most illustrious men.
These men, since for several years in the land of Spain, against many Punic and Spanish commanders and armies, they had increased the fame of the Roman name not in war only, but because they had given those peoples a specimen of Roman temperance and good faith, in the end both met death for the Republic. Although it would have been enough for descendants to uphold their glory, P. Africanus so far overlaid his fathers’ praises that he made one believe he was sprung not from human blood but from divine stock. L. Scipio, the one under discussion—so that what he did in Spain and in Africa, when he was his brother’s legate, may be passed over—was held by the senate, as consul, to be worthy that the province of Asia and the war with King Antiochus be decreed to him outside the lot, and by his brother, to whom, after two consulships and the censorship and a triumph, he would go as legate into Asia.
There, lest the magnitude and splendor of the legate should obstruct the praises of the consul, it chanced so to fall out that, on the day when at Magnesia, with standards joined, L. Scipio defeated Antiochus, P. Scipio, ill, was away at Elaea at a distance of several days’ march. That army had not been smaller than Hannibal’s, with whom in Africa it had been fought; and Hannibal was there among many other royal commanders—the very man who had been the general-in‑chief of the Punic War. And indeed the war had been conducted in such a way that not even Fortune could anyone arraign; a charge is being sought in the peace: that it was sold.
[59] At hercule in Scipione leges ipsas pacis, ut nimium accommodatas Antiocho, suspectas esse; integrum enim ei regnum relictum; omnia possidere eum uictum, quae ante bellum eius fuerint; auri et argenti cum uim magnam habuisset, nihil in publicum relatum, omne in priuatum uersum; an praeter omnium oculos tantum auri argentique in triumpho L. Scipionis, quantum non decem aliis triumphis, si omne in unum conferatur, latum? Nam quid de finibus regni dicam? Asiam omnem et proxima Europae tenuisse Antiochum.
[59] But, by Hercules, in Scipio’s case the very terms of the peace, as too much accommodated to Antiochus, were viewed with suspicion: for an intact kingdom was left to him; though defeated, he possessed everything that had been his before the war; though he had had a great mass of gold and silver, nothing was brought into the public treasury, the whole was diverted to private profit; or was there not borne before the eyes of all in the triumph of L. Scipio so much gold and silver as, if all other ten triumphs were gathered into one, would not amount to it? For why should I speak of the boundaries of the kingdom? Antiochus had held all Asia and the parts of Europe nearest to it.
How great a region of the world that is, projecting from Mount Taurus all the way into the Aegean Sea, how many not cities only but nations it embraces, everyone knows. This region—of more than thirty days’ journey in length, and ten in breadth between the two seas, extending up to the ridges of Mount Taurus—was taken from Antiochus, driven out into the farthest corner of the world. What? If the peace had been gratuitous, could more have been taken from him?
With Philip defeated, Macedonia was left to him; to Nabis, Lacedaemon was left; nor was any charge sought against Quinctius—for he did not have an Africanus for a brother, whose glory, though it ought to have benefited L. Scipio, harmed him through envy. It was adjudged that so much gold and silver had been brought into the house of L. Scipio as could not be realized even by selling all his property. Where then is the royal gold, where are so many inheritances received?
In a household which expenses have not exhausted, there ought to have stood forth a cumulus of new fortune. But indeed, what cannot be recovered from the goods, the enemies will demand from the body and the back of L. Scipio through vexation and contumelies, so that a most illustrious man be shut up in prison among night-thieves and bandits and expire in the stocks and in darkness, then be cast forth naked before the prison. This will be a thing to blush for, not more for the Cornelian family than for the city of Rome.
[60] Aduersus ea Terentius praetor rogationem Petilliam et senatus consultum et iudicium de L. Scipione factum recitauit; se, ni referatur pecunia in publicum, quae iudicata sit, nihil habere quod faciat, nisi ut prendi damnatum et in uincula duci iubeat. Tribuni cum in consilium secessissent, paulo post C. Fannius ex sua collegarumque aliorum, praeter Gracchum, sententia pronuntiauit praetori non intercedere tribunos, quo minus sua potestate utatur. Ti. Gracchus ita decreuit, quo minus ex bonis L. Scipionis quod iudicatum sit redigatur, se non intercedere praetori; L. Scipionem, qui regem opulentissimum orbis terrarum deuicerit, imperium populi Romani propagauerit in ultimos terrarum fines, regem Eumenem, Rhodios, alias tot Asiae urbes deuinxerit populi Romani beneficiis, plurimos duces hostium in triumpho ductos carcere incluserit, non passurum inter hostes populi Romani in carcere et uinculis esse, mittique eum se iubere.
[60] In answer to this, Terentius the praetor read out the Petillian bill, the senatus consultum, and the judgment passed concerning L. Scipio; he said that, unless the money which had been adjudged were paid into the public treasury, he had nothing he could do except to order the condemned to be seized and led in chains. When the tribunes had withdrawn to take counsel, a little later C. Fannius, on his own opinion and that of his colleagues, except Gracchus, declared that the tribunes did not intercede with the praetor to prevent him from using his own power. Ti. Gracchus thus decreed: that, as to the recovery from the goods of L. Scipio of what had been adjudged, he did not intercede with the praetor; that L. Scipio—who had defeated the most opulent king of the whole world, had extended the imperium of the Roman people to the farthest bounds of the lands, had bound King Eumenes, the Rhodians, and so many other cities of Asia by the benefactions of the Roman people, had shut up in prison very many leaders of the enemy led in triumph—he would not suffer to be in prison and chains among the enemies of the Roman people, and that he ordered him to be released.
The decree was heard with such assent, men beheld Scipio dismissed with such joy, that it scarcely seemed as though the judgment had been rendered in the same city. Thereafter the praetor sent quaestors, and public possession was taken of the goods of Lucius Scipio. And in these not only did no trace at all of the royal money appear, but by no means was so much realized as the sum for which he had been condemned.
That money was collected for L. Scipio by relatives, friends, and clients, so that, if he accepted it, he would be somewhat wealthier than he had been before the calamity. He accepted nothing; the things which were necessary for upkeep were bought back for him by his nearest relatives; and the ill-will against the Scipios had turned upon the praetor and his council and the accusers.