1. Carrying word of the victory, Quintus Fabius, Lucius Lentulus, and Quintus Metellus hurried to Rome with as much speed as they could muster. They found, however, that their joyous news had been anticipated. Three days after the battle with the king, games were taking place in the Circus when suddenly whispering spread through every section of spectators that there had been fighting in Macedonia and that the king had been defeated; the hum of talk grew louder; finally shouting and clapping arose, as if there had been a definite announcement of victory. The magistrates were amazed and sought the sources of the spontaneous joy; but when none materialized, the happiness at the apparent certainty evaporated, though the favourable omen remained in people’s minds. After this was confirmed by genuine reports when Fabius, Lentulus, and Metellus arrived, people rejoiced not just in the actual victory, but also in its presentiment in their minds.*
A different version told about the Circus crowd’s happiness has an equal appearance of truth.* On the sixteenth of September, which was the second day of the Roman games, just as the consul Gaius Licinius was ascending the platform to start the chariot race, a courier claiming to have come from Macedonia is said to have handed him a document wreathed in laurel. The consul started the race and mounted a chariot. As he rode back through the Circus towards the stands, he waved the laurelled message at the crowd. Once they had seen it, the people forgot all about the entertainment and ran down into the middle of the Circus.
The consul summoned the Senate there* and, once the document had been read out, with the Senate’s permission, Licinius announced to the people in front of the stands that his colleague Lucius Aemilius had fought a pitched battle with King Perseus; the Macedonian army had been slaughtered and put to flight; the king had fled with a few men; and all the Macedonian cities had come under the control of the Roman people. At the sound of this announcement, shouting and deafening applause broke out. The games were abandoned, and most men brought the happy news home to their wives and children. That was twelve days after the battle in Macedonia.
2. The next day the Senate convened in the Curia. Public prayers were voted, and there was a senatorial decree that the consul should discharge the men who had taken the oath of loyalty,* except for the soldiers and sailors; discussion concerning the dismissal of these forces should be taken up after the arrival of Lucius Aemilius Paullus’ envoys, the ones who had sent the courier on ahead.
On the twenty-fifth of September the envoys entered the city about the second hour of the day. They made their way to the Forum, followed by a huge crowd of those who met them all along the way and accompanied them. The Senate happened to be in the Curia; the consul brought the envoys in. They were detained there only as long as it took to recount the extent of the king’s forces, both infantry and cavalry; how many thousands of these had been killed or captured; how few Romans had died amongst such slaughter of the enemy; how few Macedonians had fled with the king; that he was believed to be making his way to Samothrace; that the fleet was ready for pursuit and that he could not escape by land or by sea. Shortly afterwards the envoys were taken to a public meeting where they recounted the same information.
Rejoicing began anew when the consul proclaimed that all sacred buildings would be open, and each person left the meeting to thank the gods for himself. Throughout the city the temples of the immortal gods were filled with a great throng of men and women alike. The Senate was called back into the Curia and decreed public prayers at all the sacred couches for five days in observance of the consul Lucius Aemilius’ outstanding accomplishments. The Senate also ordered sacrifices with full-grown victims. It was agreed that the ships anchored in the Tiber, ready and prepared to be sent to Macedonia should the situation seem to demand it, were to be towed to shore and placed in the dockyards; the crews were to be discharged with a year’s pay, together with all those who had sworn the oath of loyalty before the consul; as for the troops at Corcyra, Brundisium, the Adriatic, and in the territory of Larinum—for the army had been stationed in all these locations so that Gaius Licinius would be able to bring help to his colleague should the situation demand it—all these troops were to be discharged. At a general meeting, a public offering of prayers for the people was announced, beginning on the eleventh of October and lasting for the four subsequent days.
3. Two envoys from Illyricum, Gaius Licinius Nerva and Publius Decius, announced that the Illyrian army had been defeated, that King Gentius had been taken captive, and that Illyricum was under the control of the Roman people.* The Senate voted three days of public prayer for these deeds, accomplished under the leadership and auspices of the praetor Lucius Anicius. The consul announced that these would be on the tenth, eleventh, and twelfth of November.
Some sources report* that the Rhodian envoys had not yet been sent away and that after the announcement of the victory they were summoned before the Senate in derision, so to speak, for their stupid arrogance. In the meeting their leader, Agepolis, spoke as follows. They were sent by the Rhodians as ambassadors to make peace between the Romans and Perseus because this war was burdensome and grievous for all the Greeks, and expensive and disadvantageous for the Romans themselves. The good fortune of the Roman people had served the ambassadors well, since in ending the war by other means it had afforded them the opportunity of congratulating the Romans on an outstanding victory. That was what the Rhodian had to say.
The Senate’s reply was as follows. The Rhodians had sent this embassy, not out of concern for what was advantageous for the Greeks or costly for the Roman people, but on behalf of Perseus. For if their feigned concern had been real, then the ambassadors should have been sent when Perseus had led his army into Thessaly and for two years was besieging some Greek cities while terrorizing others with the threat of armed force; but at that time there had been not a word about peace from the Rhodians. After they had heard that the Romans had surmounted the passes and crossed into Macedonia and that Perseus was pinned down and trapped, then the Rhodians had sent their embassy, with no other object than to rescue Perseus from imminent peril. The ambassadors were sent away with this as their answer.
4. In this same period also Marcus Marcellus returned from his province of Spain, where he had taken the famous city of Marcolica, and he deposited in the treasury ten pounds of gold and silver to the sum of a million sesterces.
After Paullus Aemilius, as was noted above,* encamped at Sirae in Odomantian territory, a letter from Perseus* was delivered by three messengers, men of humble status. When he looked at it, Paullus is said himself to have wept over the human condition: just a little while earlier Perseus, not satisfied with his kingdom of Macedonia, had attacked the Dardani and the Illyrians; he had called on the aid of the Bastarnae; and now, having lost his army, bereft of his kingdom, driven to a tiny island, a suppliant at an altar, he was protected not by his own resources, but by respect for religion. But after Paullus read the salutation, ‘Greetings, from King Perseus to Paullus the consul’, the stupidity of the king, who was blind to his own condition, banished all compassion. And so, even though the entreaty in the rest of the missive was in no way regal, the embassy was still sent away without a word or any written communication. Perseus understood that a defeated man must forget his title; and so a fresh letter was sent under the heading of his personal name, and it succeeded in achieving his request that some men be sent to him with whom he could discuss his circumstances and the state of his affairs. Three envoys were dispatched: Publius Lentulus, Aulus Postumius Albinus, and Aulus Antonius. The embassy accomplished nothing: Perseus clung tenaciously to his royal title, and Paullus insisted that Perseus was to entrust himself and everything under his control to the fidelity and clemency of the Roman people.
5. In the meantime Gnaeus Octavius’ fleet sailed to Samothrace. His arrival inspired fear, and alternating between threats and promises, he too attempted to induce Perseus to hand himself over. Something, whether born of chance or design, came to his assistance in the endeavour. When Lucius Atilius, a distinguished young man, observed that the people of Samothrace were assembled in a public meeting, he asked their magistrates to allow him to address a few words to the people. Permission was granted, and he said, ‘My Samothracian hosts, are we right or wrong in believing that this island is sacred and that all of it is holy ground, not to be violated?’ When everyone acknowledged the reputed sacredness, he said, ‘Why then, has a murderer polluted it? Why has a murderer profaned it with the blood of King Eumenes? And when the opening formula of all sacred rituals excludes from them those whose hands are not pure, why will you allow your shrines to be contaminated by the presence of a brigand stained with blood?’
The story that Evander had nearly assassinated Eumenes at Delphi was well known in all the Greek cities. Thus, aside from the fact that the Samothracians saw that they themselves, the entire island, and the shrine were in the hands of the Romans, they also thought that being reproached for these matters was not unjust. They sent Theondas, who was their chief magistrate—their term is ‘king’—to Perseus to report that Evander the Cretan was charged with murder; further, that they had judicial proceedings, instituted in traditional fashion, for those who were said to have brought polluted hands within the sacred boundaries of the shrine; if Evander believed that he was being charged with a capital offence of which he was innocent, he should come to argue his case; if he did not dare to entrust himself to the court, he should free the temple of pollution and give thought to his situation. Perseus called Evander aside and advised him by no means to submit to a trial: both the charge and his unpopularity put him at a disadvantage. (As for Perseus, he had succumbed to the fear that if Evander were found guilty, he would expose Perseus as the mastermind behind the unspeakable crime.) What then, asked Perseus, remained for Evander but to die bravely?
Evander did not resist openly, but after saying that he preferred death by poison to death by the sword, he secretly prepared to flee. When this was reported to the king, he feared that he might divert the Samothracians’ anger onto himself if he appeared to have rescued the defendant from punishment; Perseus ordered Evander to be killed. The murder was rashly carried out. Not a moment later it occurred to Perseus that he had undoubtedly taken upon himself the stain that had been on Evander: Eumenes had been wounded by Evander at Delphi; Evander himself had been killed by Perseus at Samothrace; in sum, the two most sacred shrines in the world had been desecrated with human blood by his sole agency. Perseus forestalled an accusation in this matter by bribing Theondas with cash to report to his people that Evander had taken his own life.
6. But by committing such a crime against his one remaining friend, who had been tested by countless misfortunes and then betrayed by Perseus because he had not betrayed Perseus, the king alienated everyone else. One by one they deserted to the Romans. Left almost entirely alone, Perseus was forced to devise a plan for his escape. In the end he asked a Cretan, Oroandes, who knew the shores of Thrace because he had traded in the area, to take him aboard and transport him to Cotys. Demetrium is a port on a certain headland of Samothrace. Oroandes’ galley was moored there. At sunset Perseus’ necessities were carried down to it; as much money as could be secretly carried down was brought as well. In the middle of the night the king himself and three men who knew about the escape went out by the back door of the house and into the garden next to his bedchamber; from there, they cleared the wall with difficulty and went down to the sea. Oroandes had waited only until the money was carried aboard before slipping from his anchorage in the twilight and heading out to sea en route for Crete. After the discovery that the ship was not in the port, Perseus wandered for some time along the shore. Finally, fearing the break of day, which was already approaching, and not daring to return to his lodgings, he concealed himself in a hidden nook on a side of the temple.
Among the Macedonians, the sons of the leading men who were chosen to serve the king were called the ‘Royal Pages’. This troop had followed the king in his flight and did not desert him even at that stage. But then, by order of Gnaeus Octavius, a herald made the proclamation that if the Royal Pages and other Macedonians on Samothrace came over to the Romans, they would retain their personal safety and liberty as well as all their possessions, both what they had with them and what they had left behind in Macedonia. This announcement led everyone to desert, and they gave their names to the military tribune Gaius Postumius. A man of Thessalonica, Ion, surrendered to Octavius the king’s younger sons also. No one remained with Perseus except for Philip, his oldest son. Then Perseus surrendered himself and his son to Octavius. He blamed fortune and the gods whose shrine he was in because they had offered no aid to him as a suppliant.
Perseus was directed to be placed aboard the praetor’s ship; his remaining money was brought there too. The navy immediately returned to Amphipolis. From there Octavius sent the king to the consul’s camp, with a message dispatched in advance so Paullus would know that Perseus was in custody and being brought to him.
7. Paullus considered this a second victory, as indeed it was, and slaughtered sacrificial animals at the news. He also summoned his council and read out the praetor’s message, before sending Quintus Aelius Tubero* to meet the king; everyone else he asked to remain in constant attendance at his headquarters. No other spectacle, on no other occasion, drew such a crowd. In their fathers’ time, King Syphax* had been taken prisoner and brought into the Roman camp. Aside from the fact that neither his reputation nor that of his family was worthy of comparison, at the time he had been an accessory in the Punic war, just as Gentius was in the Macedonian one. It was Perseus who was the centrepiece of the war; nor did just his reputation and that of his father and grandfather, his relatives by blood and birth, distinguish him; but the aura of Philip and Alexander the Great, who had made Macedonia the foremost empire in the world, shone about him.
Perseus entered the camp wrapped in a dark cloak. Except for his son Philip, he had no other attendant from among his associates: such a companion in Perseus’ downfall would have rendered him more pathetic. The crowd of those rushing to the spectacle prevented him from proceeding until the consul sent lictors to clear a path for him to Paullus’ headquarters. The consul rose, ordered the others to stay in their seats, advanced slightly forwards, and stretched out his right hand to the king as Perseus entered. When Perseus fell at his feet, Paullus raised him up and did not allow him to grasp Paullus’ knees. The consul brought Perseus into the tent and directed him to sit opposite the men who had been summoned to the council.
8. Paullus asked first what wrong had driven Perseus to undertake a war against the Roman people with such aggression as to bring himself and his kingdom to the brink of destruction. Everyone awaited his response as Perseus silently wept for a long time, staring at the ground. The consul spoke again: ‘If you had inherited your kingdom as a young man, I would indeed be less amazed that you did not know how valuable a friend and how dangerous an enemy the Roman people are; but as it is, since you had taken part in the war that your father fought against us, and you remembered the subsequent peace, which we observed with the greatest fidelity towards him, what was your reason for preferring war over peace, with men whose forcefulness in war and fidelity in peace were thoroughly familiar to you?’
When Perseus responded to neither questioning nor censure, Paullus said, ‘Well, however matters turned out in this fashion, whether by human weakness or chance or necessity, take heart. The downfall of many a king and many peoples has made the mercy of the Roman people well known; it offers you not just hope, but nearly certain confidence for your safety.’
That was what he said in Greek* to Perseus. Then he said in Latin to his own men, ‘You are witnessing a signal example of the mutability of human affairs. I address this to you in particular, young men. Perseus’ case shows that one in favourable circumstances should not formulate arrogant and aggressive designs against anyone, nor trust in current good fortune, since it is uncertain what the day’s end will bring. He alone will be a real man whose spirits are neither carried away by the winds of success nor broken by adversity.’
Paullus dismissed the council and entrusted Quintus Aelius with looking after the king. That same day Perseus was invited to dine with the consul, and he was treated with every other mark of respect possible for one caught in such a situation. The army was then sent into winter quarters.* 9. Amphipolis took in the majority of the forces while nearby cities accepted the rest.
This was the end of the war between the Romans and Perseus, after four years of uninterrupted conflict. It was also the end of a kingdom famous throughout most of Europe and all of Asia. The Macedonians counted Perseus as their twentieth king starting from Caranus, who was the first to rule. Perseus inherited the kingdom in the consulship of Quintus Fulvius and Lucius Manlius; he was recognized as king by the Senate in the consulship of Marcus Junius and Aulus Manlius;* he reigned for eleven years. The Macedonians were almost entirely unknown until Philip, son of Amyntas; from that time and through his agency, they started to expand, but remained within the confines of Europe, taking over all of Greece and part of Thrace and Illyricum. Next, the Macedonians overflowed into Asia, and in the thirteen years of Alexander’s reign, they first subdued everything that had constituted the Persian empire and its nearly limitless expanse; from there they traversed Arabia and India, where the Red Sea encircles the farthest limits of land. That was the acme of the Macedonians’ rule and reputation in the world. Then, with the death of Alexander, Macedonia was broken into multiple kingdoms as each man fought for his share of its wealth. Even with its power crippled, it lasted 150 years from the highest peak of its fortunes to its ultimate demise.*
10. After word of the Roman victory reached Asia, Antenor,* who was stationed with a fleet of galleys at Phanae, sailed from there to Cassandrea. When Gaius Popillius,* who was at Delos with a force protecting ships en route to Macedonia, heard that a decisive battle had been fought in Macedonia and that the enemy galleys had abandoned their position, he sent Attalus’ fleet home and continued his voyage to Egypt to carry out the ambassadorial mission he had undertaken: to be able to intercept Antiochus before he reached the walls of Alexandria.
The Roman envoys were sailing along the coast of Asia and reached Loryma, which is a harbour a little more than twenty miles from Rhodes, situated directly opposite the city of Rhodes itself. The leaders of the Rhodians came out to meet the Romans and begged them to anchor at Rhodes, for the story of the victory had already been reported to them too. They said that it was important for the reputation and safety of their city that the Roman envoys learn everything that had happened and was happening in Rhodes and bring back to Rome reports of what they themselves ascertained, not the gossip that was circulating. Although the Romans refused for a long time, the Rhodians prevailed on them to submit to a brief delay in their trip for the well-being of an allied city. When the Romans arrived in Rhodes, again the same leaders of the city by begging constrained them to attend a public meeting.
The arrival of the envoys increased rather than diminished the fear in the city. For Popillius reviewed their communal and individual hostile words and deeds during the war. A man of harsh temperament, he intensified the enormity of what he said with his fierce expression and accusatorial tone. The result was that since Popillius had no basis for a personal grudge against their city, the Rhodians inferred from the harshness of that one Roman senator what was likely to be the disposition of the entire Senate towards them. The speech of Gaius Decimius was more moderate: he said that in the case of most of what Gaius Popillius had noted, the blame rested not with the people but with a few populist troublemakers; that these men, who put their tongues up for sale, had secured the passing of decrees full of flattery of Perseus, and they had sent embassies that always induced as much regret as shame among the Rhodians; all these matters, however, would redound on the wrongdoers’ own heads, if the people agreed. Decimius was listened to with general assent, as much because he was relieving the general population of guilt as because he had directed the blame onto the parties responsible.
And so when the leaders of the Rhodians responded to the Romans, the speech of those who tried in any way possible to refute Popillius’ accusations was by no means as pleasing as that of those who agreed with Decimius about making the guilty parties atone for their wrongdoing. There was therefore an immediate decree: a capital sentence* for those convicted of having done or said anything on behalf of Perseus and against the Romans. Some of these people had left the city upon the Romans’ arrival; others committed suicide.
The envoys spent no more than five days in Rhodes before departing for Alexandria. But the Rhodians were no less vigorous on that account in administering justice as set out by the decree made while the Romans were still there. Decimius’ mildness had as much to do with their persistence in carrying it out as did Popillius’ severity.
11. Meanwhile, Antiochus had besieged the walls of Alexandria in vain, and then had abandoned the city and taken over the rest of Egypt.* He left the older Ptolemy at Memphis. Ostensibly, Antiochus was attempting to win the kingdom for Ptolemy with his own resources. In fact, Antiochus withdrew his army into Syria with the aim of attacking the victor in short order. Ptolemy was not unaware of Antiochus’ intention. As long as he had his younger brother terrified by the threat of a siege, he estimated that he could return to Alexandria, provided that his sister lent her support and his brother’s friends offered no opposition. Ptolemy did not stop sending, primarily to his sister and secondly to his brother and his brother’s friends, until he secured peace with them. The fact that Antiochus had retained a garrison at Pelusium while handing over the rest of Egypt to Ptolemy had made Ptolemy suspicious of him. Antiochus manifestly controlled the gateway to Egypt and could march his army back in whenever he wanted. It was also clear that the outcome of an internecine struggle between the brothers would be a victor exhausted by the combat and no match for Antiochus.
The younger Ptolemy and his advisers accepted and concurred with these prudent observations from the older Ptolemy; their sister contributed the most to his case, not just with her advice, but with entreaties too. Consequently, since all the parties were in agreement, a peace was concluded, and the older Ptolemy was accepted back into Alexandria. Not even the general population was opposed; it had been weakened by the shortage of all supplies during the war—not just in the siege, but also after it had been abandoned, since nothing was brought in from the Egyptian countryside.
If Antiochus had brought his army into Egypt to reinstate Ptolemy—which was the specious pretext he used when exchanging embassies and communications with all the Greek and Asian cities—in all consistency he would have been delighted at these developments; but he was so resentful that he prepared a campaign against both brothers that was far more vicious and aggressive than what had previously been intended for just the one. He immediately sent his fleet to Cyprus. At the beginning of spring he himself entered Coele Syria with his army, en route for Egypt. Near Rhinocolura, envoys from Ptolemy brought his thanks to Antiochus for restoring him to his ancestral kingdom. The envoys asked too that Antiochus safeguard his act of generosity and state what he wanted to happen rather than transforming himself from friend to enemy and launching an invasion. Antiochus answered that he would not recall the fleet nor withdraw his troops unless all of Cyprus and Pelusium and the territory surrounding the Pelusian mouth of the Nile were surrendered to him; he established a deadline for receiving an answer about compliance with his demands.
12. After the date granted for the truce passed, Antiochus’ commanders sailed from the mouth of the Nile at Pelusium, while he himself marched through the Arabian desert and was received even by the inhabitants of Memphis, as well as by the rest of the Egyptians (some willingly and some out of intimidation). Antiochus made his way to Alexandria by easy stages. He crossed the river at Eleusis, a place four miles outside Alexandria. The Roman envoys intercepted him there. As they approached, Antiochus greeted them, and then he held out his right hand to Popillius. Popillius gave him the tablet containing the Senate’s decree and ordered him first of all to read it. Antiochus read it through and said that he would summon his friends and consider with them his course of action. Popillius, in keeping with his harsh temperament, drew a circle around Antiochus with a rod he was holding and said, ‘Before you step out of this circle, give me an answer to take back to the Senate.’ Stunned at so aggressive a command Antiochus hesitated for a moment before saying, ‘I will do as the Senate decrees.’* At that point Popillius offered his right hand to the king as if to an ally and a friend.
So Antiochus evacuated Egypt by the day prescribed and the harmony between the brothers Ptolemy, who had only just concluded a peace, was strengthened under the authority of the Roman envoys. Afterwards they sailed for Cyprus. From there they sent Antiochus’ navy home, which had already defeated the Egyptian fleet in battle. This embassy was famous throughout the world because Egypt, which was already in Antiochus’ grasp, had been emphatically taken away from him and their ancestral kingdom had been restored to the Ptolemaic family.
Of the two consuls that year, the magistracy of one, with its distinguished victory, was as famous as the other’s was obscure, since he had no opportunity to accomplish anything. When Licinius initially set a date for his legions to assemble, he entered the shrine without having taken the auspices.* When the matter was referred to the augurs, they decreed that the date had been set by a faulty religious procedure. The consul went to Gaul and established camp around Campi Macri near Mounts Sicimina and Papinus. He spent the winter in the same area with the Latin and Italian allies; the Roman legions had remained at Rome because the date for the army to assemble had been set by a faulty religious procedure.
The praetors, too, went to their provinces, except for Gaius Papirius Carbo, who had been allotted Sardinia. The fathers decided that he should oversee the law between Romans and foreigners at Rome, for he had been allotted this responsibility too.
13. Popillius and the embassy that had been sent to Antiochus returned to Rome. He reported that the disputes between the kings had been resolved and that Antiochus’ army had been withdrawn from Egypt to Syria.
Ambassadors from the kings themselves came next. Antiochus’ ambassadors said that for the king a peace that had pleased the Senate seemed more desirable than any victory and that he had obeyed the commands of the Roman envoys just as he would an order from the gods. Then the ambassadors offered their congratulations on the Romans’ victory; the king would have lent his assistance to it if any had been enjoined. The ambassadors from Ptolemy offered thanks in the name of the king and Cleopatra together, saying that they owed more to the Senate and Roman people than to their own parents, more even than to the immortal gods; through the Senate and Roman people they had been liberated from the most grievous of sieges and they had been restored to their ancestral kingdom when it was nearly lost to them.
The Senate replied that Antiochus had acted well and properly in obeying the envoys and that this was pleasing to the Senate and Roman people. The response to the rulers of Egypt, Ptolemy and Cleopatra, was that if anything good or beneficial had befallen them because of the Senate, then the Senate rejoiced greatly, and it would see to it that they always considered that the greatest bulwark of their kingdom lay in the fidelity of the Roman people. The praetor Gaius Papirius was assigned to ensure that the customary gifts were sent to the ambassadors. Then letters arrived from Macedonia that doubled the joy over the victory: King Perseus was under the consul’s control.
The embassies were sent home. There was then a dispute between representatives from Pisa and Luna.* The Pisani were complaining that they were being driven off their land by Roman colonists; the Lunenses were asserting that the land under dispute had been assigned to them by a three-man land commission. The Senate sent out a team of five men to investigate and establish the boundaries: Quintus Fabius Buteo, Publius Cornelius Blasio, Tiberius Sempronius Musca, Lucius Naevius Balbus, and Gaius Appuleius Saturninus.
A joint delegation from the brothers Eumenes, Attalus, and Athenaeus came to offer congratulations on the victory. And when Masgaba, a son of King Masinissa, disembarked at Puteoli, the quaestor Lucius Manlius, who had been sent to meet him, was on hand with a supply of ready cash to escort Masgaba to Rome at public expense. The Carthaginian was granted an audience with the Senate immediately upon his arrival. There the young man spoke in such a way that his style of expression rendered all the more pleasing the substance of what he had to say, which was already pleasing in itself. He enumerated how many infantrymen and cavalry, how many elephants, and how much grain his father had sent to Macedonia in the four-year period. He said that two matters had caused Masinissa shame: one was that the Senate had requested through envoys and not simply ordered supplies that were essential for the war; the other was that the Senate had sent him money for the grain. Masgaba said that Masinissa remembered that he held a kingdom that had been created, increased, and expanded by the Roman people; he was content to be entitled to use the kingdom, and he knew that the true legal ownership and right to it belonged to the people who conferred it on him;* thus with perfect justice the Romans could take, not request, things from him; nor, since they were the givers, should they buy from him fruits produced by the land there that were of use to them. Whatever the Roman people did not need was and would be enough for Masinissa. Masgaba said that after he had left with these instructions from his father, horsemen had followed after him to report the defeat of Macedonia, and they had directed him to offer congratulations to the Senate, and to communicate that this was a matter of such great joy to his father that he wished to come to Rome to sacrifice to Jupiter Optimus Maximus on the Capitol and to offer thanks. Masgaba was to seek permission from the Senate for Masinissa to be allowed to do this, unless it was a nuisance in some way.
14. The reply given to the prince was that his father Masinissa acted as became a good and generous man, thereby adding value and honour to the services owed by him. On the one hand, he had aided the Roman people in the Punic war with good and faithful service; on the other, he had acquired his kingdom with the support of the Roman people; although these matters balanced each other out, subsequently Masinissa had performed his duty in one war after another against three kings. Truly, it was not surprising that such a king took pleasure in the victory of the Roman people, a king who had completely fused his fortune and that of his kingdom with Roman concerns. Let him give thanks to the gods for the victory at his own altars; his son could do this for him at Rome; Masgaba had also offered sufficient thanks in his own name and that of his father. The Senate judged that it was not in the interests of the commonwealth of the Roman people for Masinissa himself to leave his kingdom and go out of Africa, quite apart from the fact that it was of no advantage to him.
When Masgaba asked that Hanno, the son of Hamilcar, a hostage, in place of <…>.* By decree of the Senate, a quaestor was directed to spend one hundred pounds of silver on gifts for Masgaba, to accompany him to Puteoli, to cover all his expenses as long as he was in Italy, and to hire two ships to convey him and his companions to Africa; further, garments were given to all his attendants, free and slave alike.
Along similar lines, shortly afterwards a letter from Misacenes, another son of Masinissa, was delivered: after Perseus was defeated, Misacenes had been sent by Lucius Paullus to Africa with his cavalry; during the voyage the fleet had been broken apart in the Adriatic, and he had been transported to Brundisium sick and with three ships. The quaestor Lucius Stertinius was dispatched to him at Brundisium with gifts equal to those that had been conferred on his brother at Rome; Stertinius was ordered to see to his accommodation <…>
[The loss of a page here leaves this episode incomplete. According to Valerius Maximus, the praetor arranged for Misacenes’ care, lodging, expenses in Brundisium, and transport home, as well as conveying the Senate’s gifts to him (5.1.1d). All this could probably be inferred. The more serious consequence of the lost text is that when the manuscript resumes, Livy is describing the activities of the censors elected for 169. They are involved in the technical and complex business of assigning former slaves to voting districts. Because the beginning of Livy’s account of the censorship is lost and the first sentence is incomplete, the situation, its history, and its resolution are not entirely clear.]
15. <…> Freedmen had been enrolled in the four urban tribes,* with two exceptions: those men who had a son over five years of age were to be counted where they had been in the previous census; and those men who had rural land or lands worth more than 30,000 sesterces were given the right to be registered in the rural tribes, as had previously been the case for them. Once this arrangement had been made, Claudius said that, without the permission of the people, a censor could not withhold the franchise from any man, still less an entire class of people; and that even if a censor could remove a man from a voting district, which amounted to ordering him to change his voting district, a censor could not then remove him from all thirty-five voting districts, which was in effect to strip away his citizenship and personal freedom: that is, to determine not where a man was registered, but to exclude him from registration altogether. The two censors entered into a dispute over these matters. It finally came down to their choosing one of the four urban tribes, by lot, openly, in the Hall of Liberty; the censors were to assign to that tribe all those who had been slaves. The Esquilina was chosen by lot.* Tiberius Gracchus announced the decision that all freedmen would be registered in it. Because of this affair, the censors were held in great esteem by the Senate, and official thanks were voted to Sempronius, for having persisted in a noble undertaking, and to Claudius, for having not obstructed it.
The censors removed more men from the Senate and ordered more men of equestrian status to sell their horses than the previous censors had.* All these men were then removed from their tribe and their order and made aerarii; nor was anyone demoted by one censor only to have his public disgrace erased by the other. The censors requested that their term of office be extended for eighteen months so that they could, following established custom, enforce the completion of repairs to public buildings and certify the quality of work that had been contracted out. The tribune Gnaeus Tremellius interposed his veto because he had not been selected for the Senate.
That same year—five years after he swore an oath to do so—Gaius Cicereius dedicated the temple of Moneta on the Alban Mount. Lucius Postumius Albinus was inaugurated as flamen Martialis that year.
16. The consuls, Quintus Aelius and Marcus Junius, referred the assignment of provinces to the Senate. The fathers decided that Spain should again constitute two provinces; it had been just one during the Macedonian war. The same men, Lucius Paullus and Lucius Anicius, were to remain in charge of Macedonia and Illyricum until, in accordance with the advice of the commissioners, they had settled those states, which had been thrown into confusion by the war and needed to be organized into a new political order in the place of monarchy. Pisa and Gaul were assigned to the consuls, with two legions each of 5,200 infantry and 400 cavalry. The lot for the praetors fell out as follows: Quintus Cassius drew urban jurisdiction, and Manius Juventius Thalna jurisdiction involving foreigners; Tiberius Claudius Nero drew Sicily; Gnaeus Fulvius drew Nearer Spain, and Gaius Licinius Nerva Farther Spain. Sardinia had fallen to Aulus Manlius Torquatus, but he was unable to go to his province because a senatorial decree kept him back to preside over investigations into capital crimes.
Then the Senate was consulted about the prodigies that had been announced. The temple of the Penates on the Velia had been struck by lightning, as were two city gates and part of the wall at Minervium. At Anagnia there had been a shower of dirt, and at Lanuvium a comet had been spotted in the heavens; and in publicly held land at Calatia a Roman citizen, Marcus Valerius, announced that blood had oozed from his hearth for three days and two nights. Because of this last one in particular the decemvirs were directed to consult the books: they decreed a one-day supplication for the people, and they sacrificed fifty goats in the Forum. There was a supplication at all the sacred couches on another day for the other prodigies, and there was a sacrifice with full-sized victims, and the city underwent a lustrum. In other matters concerning the honour of the immortal gods, the Senate decreed that, since public enemies had been defeated, and Kings Perseus and Gentius, along with Macedonia and Illyricum, were under Roman control, at all the sacred couches there should be offerings equivalent to the ones that had been given in the consulship of Appius Claudius and Marcus Sempronius for the defeat of King Antiochus; the praetors Quintus Cassius and Manius Juventius were to take responsibility for making such offerings.
17. The fathers then chose the commissioners on whose advice Lucius Paullus and Lucius Anicius would settle the affairs of Macedonia and Illyricum: there were ten commissioners for Macedonia and five for Illyricum. The most distinguished men were named for Macedonia: Aulus Postumius Luscus and Gaius Claudius, who were both former censors, <Quintus Fabius Labeo, …>, and Gaius Licinius Crassus, Paullus’ colleague in the consulship; his command had been extended, and he had kept Gaul as his province. Added to these former consuls were Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, Servius Cornelius Sulla, Lucius Junius, Titus Numisius Tarquiniensis, and Aulus Terentius Varro. The men named for Illyricum were the former consul Publius Aelius Ligus, Gaius Cicereius and Gnaeus Baebius Tamphilus (Tamphilus had been a praetor the previous year and Cicereius many years earlier), Publius Terentius Tuscivicanus, and Publius Manilius. The consuls were then advised by the fathers at the very first opportunity either to decide between themselves on their provinces or to draw lots, for one of them needed to take the place in Gaul of Gaius Licinius, who had been named a commissioner. They drew lots. Marcus Junius obtained Pisa. Before he could go to the province, it was agreed that he would present to the Senate the embassies converging on Rome from all over to offer congratulations. Quintus Aelius obtained Gaul.
In addition, though it was possible to expect, given the character of the men being sent, that when the generals acted on the commissioners’ advice, they would issue no decree unworthy of either the mercy or the deliberateness of the Roman people, the Senate discussed the principal matters of policy. The intended outcome was for the commissioners to be able to convey from Rome to the generals the outline of a comprehensive plan.
18. First of all, it was agreed that all the Macedonians and Illyrians should be free. In this way it would be evident to all peoples that the military might of the Roman people did not bring servitude to the free, but rather freedom to the enslaved, and it would be clear to those peoples who were free that their freedom would be preserved for them for ever under the protection of the Roman people; meanwhile, those who were living under kings would have faith that, for the time being, their rulers would comport themselves with greater moderation and justice out of regard for the Roman people, and if there were ever a war between their kings and the Roman people, the outcome would bring victory to the Romans and freedom to the subject peoples.
Further, it was agreed to abolish the leasing of the Macedonian mines, which were a vast source of revenue, as well as of the rural estates.* The leasing could not be managed without someone collecting the revenue, and where there was a revenue-collector,* either the official legal system was bypassed or the allies lost their freedom. It was agreed that the Macedonians themselves could not serve this function either: for where there was a profit for middlemen, there would always be a basis for disputes and conflict.
Finally, for fear that, if there were a federal council of the people,* an unscrupulous flatterer of the masses could draw their freedom, which was being granted to promote healthful governance, in the direction of pernicious lawlessness, it was agreed to divide Macedonia into four districts so that each could have its own council. And it was agreed to levy tribute for the Roman people that was half as much as the Macedonians had been accustomed to pay their kings. Provisions similar to these were drawn up for Illyricum. The remaining decisions were left to the generals and commissioners: in those matters, the present treatment of affairs would suggest more specific measures to them.
19. Among the many embassies from kings, states, and peoples, King Eumenes’ brother Attalus in particular attracted everyone’s notice and attention. Those who had fought with Attalus in the war received him much more warmly than if King Eumenes himself had come. On the surface, two honourable motives had brought Attalus: one was to offer congratulations befitting a victory to which he himself had contributed; the other was to express concern about a Galatian uprising and a defeat inflicted on Pergamum that had put the kingdom in jeopardy.
At the same time, Attalus had underlying expectations of honours and rewards from the Senate. It was unlikely that these could come his way without damage to bonds within his family. Further, certain Romans acted as evil influences and fostered Attalus’ greed with hope. They said that at Rome Attalus was regarded as a friend on whom the Romans could rely, while Eumenes was seen as an ally whom neither the Romans nor Perseus could trust; for this reason it was practically impossible to determine which was easier to obtain from the Senate: what Attalus sought for himself, or what he sought to the detriment of Eumenes. Such was the degree, they said, to which the senators one and all wanted both to give him everything and deny his brother absolutely anything.
As this episode proved, Attalus was one of those men who want as much as hope could have promised, except that a wise warning from a single friend reined in, as it were, his spirits when they were exulting in good fortune. With Attalus was a doctor, Stratius. He had been sent to Rome by Eumenes who was worried about this very situation. Stratius was to spy on Attalus’ behaviour and to give him faithful counsel if Attalus seemed to be deviating in his allegiance.
When Stratius arrived, Attalus’ ears were already buzzing and his thinking was already agitated. Stratius approached him with timely words and reversed a condition close to collapse. He said that different kingdoms had grown by different means. Their kingdom was young and not based on age-old resources; it depended on fraternal harmony; although one brother bore the title of king and wore the crown on his head, all the brothers governed the kingdom. In truth, who did not consider Attalus, who was second in age, a king? And not just because one could see how great his current resources were, but also because it was patently obvious that he would rule any day now; such were the frailty and advanced age of Eumenes, who had no line of offspring. (In point of fact Eumenes had not yet acknowledged the son who subsequently ruled.*) What benefit was there in forcing a condition that would soon come his way of its own accord?
Further, Stratius continued, the Galatian uprising had brought new upheaval to the kingdom, and, even with unanimity and harmony among the kings, it could scarcely be fended off; if in fact an internal conflict were added to the external war, the Galatian attack could not be withstood. Stratius said that Attalus would, in order to prevent Eumenes ruling to his deathbed, achieve nothing except robbing himself of his own imminent expectation of sovereignty. If both actions—preserving the kingdom for his brother and taking it away from him—could bring renown, still the praise for having saved the kingdom would be greater since it was linked to respect for family. But since in fact the alternative was despicable and practically parricide, was there any uncertainty left to be considered? Whether he should aspire to part of the kingdom or take it all? If just a part, then both sections would be weakened and their military strength crippled, and both would immediately be vulnerable to all kinds of attack and abuse. If Attalus sought the whole kingdom, would he then command his older brother to become a private citizen or finally, an exile, to die of old age and physical frailty? Even if no mention was made of the fate of impious brothers, as handed down by myth,* the fall of Perseus seemed a remarkable example: just as if the gods had manifested themselves to demand punishment, he had knelt in the shrine of Samothrace and set at the feet of his victorious enemy the crown that he had stolen through fratricide. Stratius ended by saying that even the men who were goading Attalus on—and they were doing so as enemies of Eumenes rather than friends of his—even these would praise his piety and constancy if he remained loyal to his brother to the end.
20. These factors prevailed in Attalus’ thinking. And so, when he was given an audience in the Senate, he offered congratulations on the victory, he recounted his services and those of his brother (if there were any*), in the war, and he described the Galatian uprising that had recently taken place and caused enormous turmoil; and he asked the Senate to send to the Galatians representatives whose authority could dissuade them from fighting. When Attalus had treated the business entrusted to him for the good of the kingdom, he asked for Aenus and Maronea for himself. Having thus disappointed the hopes of those who had believed that he would denounce his brother and seek a division of the kingdom, he walked out of the Curia. Rarely at any time has any king or private citizen been listened to with so much goodwill and approval from everybody: Attalus was lavished with every honour and gift then and there and escorted on his way when he left.*
Amongst the many embassies from Greece and Asia, the representatives from Rhodes in particular caught the city’s attention. For initially they appeared in white clothing, both because it was appropriate for men offering congratulations, and because if they had worn dark clothing, they might have created the appearance of mourning Perseus’ fall. Then, as they were standing in the Comitium, the consul Marcus Junius asked the fathers whether or not they would provide the Rhodian representatives with room and board and an opportunity to address the Senate. The senators judged that no law of hospitality had to be observed towards the Rhodians. The consul exited the Curia, and when the Rhodians said that they had come to offer congratulations on the victory and to exonerate their city of the accusations made against it and asked that they be granted a meeting with the Senate, the consul declared that the Romans were accustomed both generally to treat their friends and allies with kindness and hospitality, and in particular to grant audiences with the Senate; in this war the Rhodians had not earned the right to be considered friends and allies.
Upon hearing this, the Rhodians all prostrated themselves. They called upon the consul and the others present not to deem it fair for new and false accusations to overshadow the Rhodians’ long record of service, to which they themselves could attest. They then donned dark clothing and went around to the homes of the leading men, begging and crying, calling on them to investigate the case before issuing a condemnation.
21. Manius Juventius Thalna was the praetor responsible for overseeing the law between citizens and foreigners. He was inciting the people against the Rhodians, and he had promulgated a motion that war be declared on the Rhodians and that the people choose for the war one magistrate from those elected for the year and dispatch him with the fleet. (He was hoping that he would be the one.) The tribunes of the plebs Marcus Antonius and Marcus Pomponius opposed his proposal.
But both the praetor and the tribunes had set a new and bad precedent when they embarked on this matter. The praetor was at fault because he did not consult the Senate or inform the consuls before bringing on his own initiative a motion as to whether the people wished and commanded war to be declared on Rhodes; always in the past the Senate was consulted beforehand about a war and then, with authorization from the fathers, a motion was brought to the people. The tribunes of the plebs were at fault because the practice was for no one to veto a law before private citizens had the opportunity to speak for or against it; this way it had frequently happened that men who did not state in advance that they would exercise their veto did so, because they discovered flaws in the law from those who spoke against it; and men who had come to intercede refrained from doing so because they were won over by weighty testimony from those who spoke for the law. Then the praetor and the tribunes entered into a rivalry of over-hasty actions. The tribunes, by interposing their veto ahead of time, matched the praetor’s hastiness <…> the arrival of the general <…>
[This sentence is incomplete because the next page is missing. Livy must have moved from narrating the dispute between the praetor and the tribunes to introducing the debate over the Rhodians’ fate. According to Polybius, one of the tribunes forcibly removed the praetor from the speaker’s platform (30.4). The manuscript resumes with Astymedes’ speech in defence of his city-state.]
22. ‘… is. Whether or not we were at fault has yet to be determined; but we are already suffering all manner of punishments and disgrace. On the occasions when the Carthaginians had been vanquished and after Philip and Antiochus had been defeated, we came to Rome, and we went from our state accommodation to the Curia to congratulate you, conscript fathers, and from the Curia to the Capitol, bearing gifts for your gods. This time we come from a squalid inn, where we were barely admitted, even for cash, and we have been ordered to remain outside the city walls, practically as if we were enemies; in this filthy condition we enter the Roman Curia, we, the Rhodians, to whom you recently gave Lycia and Caria as provinces, and to whom you gave the most distinguished prizes and honours. Meanwhile, so we hear, you order the Macedonians and Illyrians to be free on the grounds that they were enslaved before they fought against you. We do not envy the good fortune of anyone; rather, we recognize the clemency of the Roman people. But are you about to transform the Rhodians, who did nothing more than remain neutral in this war, from friends to enemies?
‘Certainly you are the very same Romans who affirm that your wars are successful because they are just; and you pride yourselves not so much on their outcome, because you are victorious, as on their origins, since you never enter into them without reason. The siege of Messana in Sicily rendered the Carthaginians your foes;* the siege of Athens, the attempt to enslave Greece, and money and soldiers sent to Hannibal made Philip your enemy.* Further, in the case of Antiochus, he was summoned by your enemies the Aetolians, and he crossed with his fleet from Asia to Greece; when he had taken possession of Demetrias, Chalcis, and the pass at Thermopylae, he attempted to dislodge you from control of your empire.* When your allies were besieged by Perseus, or when princes and leaders of states or peoples were killed, you had a justification for the war. If we are about to perish, what, I ask, will be the ostensible motive for our destruction?
‘I am not yet distinguishing the situation of our city from that of our fellow citizens Polyaratus and Dinon, or from that of those men whom we brought to surrender to you. Suppose all of us Rhodians are equally guilty, what is our offence in this war? That we favoured Perseus’ side, and we stood by the king and against you on this occasion, just as in the wars against Antiochus and Philip we stood with you and against the kings? Ask Gaius Livius and Lucius Aemilius Regillus, who commanded your fleets in Asia, just how we are accustomed to help our allies and how vigorously we go to war. Your ships never fought without us. We fought with our own navy once at Samos and again off Pamphylia against Hannibal when he was the commander. That victory is so much the more glorious for us because although at Samos we had lost the better part of our navy and the flower of our youth in a defeat, we were not frightened even by so great a disaster, but we dared to face the royal fleet again as it approached from Syria.* I have mentioned these events not to boast—for we are hardly in the position for that—but to remind you just how the Rhodians are accustomed to help their allies.
23. ‘After Philip and Antiochus were defeated, we received very generous rewards from you. If the good fortune which now is yours—by the kindness of the gods and your courage—had been Perseus’, and if we had gone to Macedonia to seek rewards before the victorious king, what, I ask, would we say? That he received help from us in the form of money or grain? In the form of land or naval forces? What garrison had we held? Where had we fought, either under his generals or by ourselves? If he should ask where our army or where our navy had been within his strongholds, what would we say?
‘Perhaps we would be defending ourselves before him as the victor, just as we are now in front of you. For by sending representatives about peace to you and Perseus, we had gained favour from neither of you and indeed had incurred blame and the danger of harm from one of you. Admittedly, Perseus might rightly object, as you, conscript fathers, cannot, that at the beginning of the war we had sent envoys to you to promise you what was needed for the war—that we would be prepared for anything, with ships and weapons and our young men, just as in previous wars. It is your fault that we did not provide them: for whatever reason at the time, you scorned our help. Thus we neither did anything of a hostile nature, nor did we fall short in any duty of good allies; instead, we were prevented by you from fulfilling the promise.
‘You may say, “What then? Was nothing said or done in your city, O Rhodians, that you would regret and that might justifiably offend the Roman people?” On this point I am not now about to defend what happened—I am not so insane as that—but I will separate the accusation against the community from the culpability of private individuals. Every city contains wicked citizens from time to time and an ignorant populace all the time. I have heard that even among you there have been those who operated by flattering the populace, and that the plebeians occasionally seceded from you, and that the Republic was not under your control.* If this could happen in this city, which is so well ordered, can anyone wonder that there were those among us who sought the king’s friendship and misled our populace with their advice? But these men did not prevail beyond making us lapse in our duty.
‘I will not pass over what is the most serious accusation against our city in this war: we sent representatives about peace simultaneously to you and to Perseus. This ill-fated plan was rendered utterly foolish by a madman of a spokesman, as we subsequently heard. It is generally understood that he talked in the same manner as did Gaius Popillius, the Roman envoy, whom you sent to dissuade the kings Antiochus and Ptolemy from going to war. But even so, whether this behaviour should be termed arrogance or stupidity, it was the same for both you and Perseus.
‘The ways of cities are just like the ways of individuals: that is, some peoples are irascible, some daring, some timid, and others are more susceptible to wine or sex. The Athenian people have a reputation for being swift and bold beyond their strength in their enterprises; the reputation of the Lacedaemonians is to delay and to embark reluctantly on matters where they have total confidence.* Further, I would not deny that the entire region of Asia produces greater weakness of character, and that our manner of speaking is inflated* because we imagine that we are better than neighbouring communities, and this supposed superiority is based not on our resources but on honours and indications of esteem from you.
‘Truly, that embassy was castigated sufficiently on the occasion when it was dismissed with such a stern response from you. If the shame did not register enough at the time, then certainly our pathetic, suppliant embassy should be penitence great enough for an embassy even more presumptuous than the previous one was. Irascible men hate arrogance, especially of a verbal sort; wise men laugh at it, especially if it is directed by the weaker against the stronger. No one ever deemed it worthy of capital punishment. Now there was real danger—that the Rhodians had contempt for the Romans! Some men curse even the gods in very abusive language, but we do not hear of anyone struck by lightning for that reason.
24. ‘What then remains for us to justify, if we did not commit any hostile act, and if excessively puffed-up speech deserved to offend your ears, but not to destroy our city? I hear as you talk amongst yourselves, conscript fathers, that you are, so to speak, calculating the damages for our unexpressed inclination (that we favoured the king and wanted him to win). Consequently, some of you think we should be punished by force. Others of you believe that that was indeed what we wanted, but that it is not a reason to punish us by force; no city’s customs or statutes provide that someone suffers capital punishment for wishing his enemy to die but doing nothing to bring it about.
‘We are indeed grateful to those who excuse us from punishment but not responsibility. We set the following terms for ourselves: if all of us wanted what we are accused of—and we are not distinguishing wish from action—let us all be punished; if some of our leaders sided with the king and others with you, I do not seek that the king’s partisans escape unscathed because we sided with you; I beg instead that we do not die because of them. The city of Rhodes regards them no more favourably than you do; and most of them have either fled or committed suicide because they knew this; others have been condemned by us and will be placed under your power, conscript fathers.
‘As for the rest of us Rhodians, for this war we deserve no thanks, but equally no retribution. Let our accumulated previous good deeds compensate for the current lapse of duty. Through the years, you have waged war with three kings; do not let the fact that we fell short in this one war count more against us than the fact that we fought for you in two of them. Treat Philip, Antiochus, and Perseus as three votes: two acquit us; is the remaining one, being open to question, to count more? If those monarchs were to pass judgement on us, we would be condemned. But you, conscript fathers, are judging whether or not Rhodes should be completely obliterated from the face of the earth; it is not war you are deliberating about, conscript fathers, since although you can attack us, you cannot fight us, given that no Rhodian would take up arms against you.
‘If you persevere in your wrath, we will ask you for time to take this mournful delegation home. All free citizens, as many Rhodian men and women as there are, will take ship with all our money, and leaving behind our household gods, public and private alike, we will come to Rome; we will heap up all our gold and silver, whether public or privately owned, in the Comitium and in the entryway to your Curia; and we will entrust our bodies and those of our wives and children to your power, prepared to suffer here whatever will have to be suffered; let our city be destroyed and burnt down far from our eyes. You Romans have the power to judge that the Rhodians are your enemies. We too, however, have our own judgement on ourselves: that we will never consider ourselves your enemies, nor will we commit any hostile action, even if we are subject to every punishment.’
25. After a speech along these lines they all prostrated themselves again, and they waved olive branches in supplication and sought forgiveness; finally they were made to stand, and they went out of the Curia.
The senators were then asked for their opinion. The men most opposed to the Rhodians were the consuls, praetors, and lieutenants who had conducted the war in Macedonia. Marcus Porcius Cato gave the greatest support to the Rhodians’ case; although a man of harsh temperament,* on that occasion he conducted himself as a moderate and merciful senator. I will not include a reproduction of that master of words by recording what he said; his speech survives as written, included in the fifth book of his Origines.* The answer given to the Rhodians was such as neither to turn them into enemies nor to perpetuate their status as allies.
Philocrates and Astymedes were the leaders of the delegation. It was decided that part of the delegation should deliver a report to Rhodes with Philocrates while part should remain at Rome with Astymedes to ascertain what was happening and to keep their people informed. For the moment the Romans ordered the Rhodian people to withdraw their governors from Lycia and Caria by a fixed deadline. Though by itself this announcement would have been grim, it delighted the Rhodians since it reduced their fear of a greater evil: they had feared war. Accordingly, they immediately voted a crown of 20,000 gold pieces. They sent Theaedetus, the commander of the fleet, on this embassy; they wished an alliance with the Romans to be requested in such a way that there would be no decree of the people concerning it and nothing committed to writing, because unless they succeeded the rejection would compound their disgrace. The commander of the fleet alone was constitutionally empowered to act on this matter without the passage of any motion. The Rhodians had been in a position of friendship for so many years, but they had never bound themselves to the Romans by a treaty of alliance.* The only reason for this was to leave open the kings’ hope of Rhodian aid should they need it, and the Rhodians’ own accrual of benefits from the kings’ good graces and wealth. But at this time an alliance seemed especially worth seeking, not because it would make the Rhodians safer from others—for they did not fear anyone besides the Romans—but because it would make the Romans themselves less suspicious of the Rhodians.
In the same period* the Caunii revolted from the Rhodians, and the Mylassenses occupied the cities of the Euromenses. The Rhodians’ spirits had not been so devastated that they did not recognize that they would be limited to the shores of their small island and its unproductive land (which could not by any means feed the population of such a big city) if the Romans took away Lycia and Caria, and if the remaining places either revolted and gained their freedom or were taken over by their neighbours. The Rhodians therefore quickly dispatched their soldiery, who forced the Caunii to submit to Rhodian rule, although the former had taken in the Cibyratae as allies. In a battle around Orthosia the Rhodians defeated the Mylassenses and the Alabandenses, who had also come to acquire the province of the Euromenses and combined forces with the Mylassenses.
26. While those events were transpiring there and the others in Macedonia and Rome, in Illyricum Lucius Anicius had captured King Gentius, as was said before. He established a garrison at Scodra, which had been the royal seat, and put Gabinius in charge of it, and he left Gaius Licinius in charge of the strategic cities of Rhizon and Olcinium. Once these men were installed in Illyricum, Anicius went to Epirus with the rest of the army. Phanote was the first place there to put itself in his hands, and the entire populace raced out to meet him waving banners of surrender.
He established a garrison there and crossed into Molossis. After recovering all the towns except for Passaron, Tecmon, Phylace, and Horreum, he marched first to Passaron. The city’s leaders were Antinous and Theodotus, and they were known both for their goodwill towards Perseus and for their hatred of the Romans; they were also responsible for making the entire people defect from the Romans. Aware that the wrongdoing was theirs and bereft of any hope for a pardon, they locked the gates of the city so that they and their fatherland would be destroyed together. They exhorted the populace to prefer death to slavery. No one dared to speak against these exceptionally powerful men. Finally, when his considerable fear of the Romans surpassed his dread of his own leaders, a certain Theodotus, himself a well-born young man, said, ‘What madness drives you, you who make a city the accessory to the wrongdoing of two men? Of course I have often heard talk of men who sought to die for their fatherland; but these men are the first ever known who think it right that their fatherland die for them. Why do we not instead open the gates and accept the rule that the entire world has accepted?’ Since the populace sided with him when he expressed this view, Antinous and Theodotus rushed against the first enemy outpost and, there exposing themselves, were wounded and died. The city surrendered to the Romans. Tecmon was barricaded out of a similar stubbornness on the part of its leader, Cephalus; he was killed, and Anicius accepted the town’s surrender. Neither Phylace nor Horreum withstood an assault.
After pacifying Epirus, Anicius distributed his forces into winter quarters in strategically located cities. He then returned to Illyricum. At Scodra, where the five commissioners had come from Rome, Anicius convened a meeting of leaders whom he had summoned from throughout the province. At the congress he announced from his tribunal that, in accordance with the opinion of his advisers, the Senate and the Roman people ordered that the Illyrians should be free;* and that he himself would withdraw the garrisons from all towns, citadels, and forts; the people of Issa, the Taulantii, the Pirustae of the Dassaretii, and the people of Rhizon and Olcinium would be not just free, but exempt from tribute, since they had defected to the Romans while Gentius was still in power. Anicius said that he was granting the Daorsi exemption from taxes too because they had abandoned Caravantius and joined the Romans with their weapons. The taxes placed on the people of Scodra, the Dassarenses, the Selepitani, and the rest of the Illyrians would be half what they had paid the king.
Anicius then divided Illyricum into three parts: one from everything that is above Dyrrachium, the second comprising all the Labeatae, and the third being the inhabitants of Acruvium, Rhizon, Olcinium, and their neighbours. Once this charter for Illyricum had been made public, Anicius returned to winter quarters at Passaron in Epirus.
27. While these events were transpiring in Illyricum and before the arrival of the ten commissioners, Paullus sent his son Quintus Maximus, who had already come back from Rome, to loot Aeginium and Agassae. Agassae was a target because the people had defected back to Perseus after they had surrendered the city to the consul Marcius and, in addition, sought a Roman alliance. The Aeginienses’ crime was recent: giving no credence to the story of the Romans’ victory, they had savagely attacked some soldiers who came to their city. Paullus also sent Lucius Postumius to loot the city of the Aenii because they had persisted in a state of war more obstinately than the neighbouring communities.
The season of the year was nearly autumn, and Paullus decided to use the early part of it to travel around Greece and to visit places where rumour enhances reputation and what the eyes discern falls short of what the ears have heard. He left Gaius Sulpicius Galus in charge of the camp and set out with a small troop. His son Scipio and Athenaeus, the brother of King Eumenes, escorted him as he journeyed through Thessaly to Delphi, the famous oracle. There, after he had sacrificed to Apollo, he gave instructions that the unfinished column bases in the forecourt, on which statues of King Perseus were to have been put, should be used for victory statues of himself instead.*
He went to the shrine of Jupiter Trophonius at Lebadia too; there, when he had seen the mouth of the pit through which those consulting the oracle descend to ask questions of the gods, he sacrificed to Jupiter and to Hercynna, whose shrine is there.* He went down to Chalcis, to the sight of the Euripus and the island of Euboea,* which is linked to the mainland by a bridge. From Chalcis he crossed to Aulis, three miles away, the harbour that is famous as the erstwhile mooring of Agamemnon’s fleet of a thousand ships, and the temple of Diana, where that king of kings achieved passage to Troy for his ships by bringing his daughter to the altar as an offering.*
From there, Paullus went on to Oropus in Attica, where the ancient prophet is worshipped as a god* and his old shrine is pleasantly encircled by springs and streams. Next was Athens, which of course is filled with age-old fame and still has much to see: the acropolis, the harbour, the walls linking Piraeus to the city,* the shipyards, the statues of great generals, the images of gods and men that are noteworthy for every kind of medium and artistic technique.
28. After sacrificing in the city to Minerva, protectress of the acropolis, Paullus departed and reached Corinth on the next day. At that time, before its destruction,* it was a splendid city. Also the citadel and the Isthmus constituted sights in themselves; the citadel is within the walls, way up high on a massive elevation and teeming with springs; with its narrow passage the Isthmus separates two neighbouring seas, to the east and to the west. From Corinth, Paullus went to the famous cities of Sicyon and Argos, and then Epidaurus, which was not, of course, their equal in wealth, but is well known for the famous temple of Aesculapius. This is about five miles from the city; at that time it was rich in gifts that the sick had dedicated to the god as recompense for beneficial treatments; but now it is rich in traces of the gifts, which have been forcibly removed. Next Paullus went to Lacedaemon, memorable not for the magnificence of its structures but for its educational system and its institutions.* From there, Paullus travelled by way of Megalopolis up to Olympia. There, after he saw other sights worth seeing, gazing at the statue of Jupiter, he was moved as if the god were present.* And so he ordered a greater sacrifice than usual to be prepared, just as if he were about to offer sacrifice on the Capitol.
In order not to trouble the allies with fear of anything, Paullus travelled through Greece in such a way as to avoid enquiring into what anyone might have experienced in the war with Perseus, whether personally or in an official capacity. Then he returned to Demetrias. Along the way a troop of Aetolians in mourning approached him. He was taken aback and asked what was going on. He was told that Lyciscus and Tisippus had had 550 leading citizens killed; the Aetolian senate had been surrounded by Roman soldiers who were sent by the garrison’s commander, Aulus Baebius; other men were driven into exile; and the property of those who had been killed and of the exiles had been appropriated. Paullus directed the men who were being accused to assemble at Amphipolis. He himself met Gnaeus Octavius at Demetrias. After word arrived that the ten commissioners had crossed the sea already, Paullus set everything else aside and went to them at Apollonia.
When Perseus took advantage of overly lax custody and went from Amphipolis to meet Paullus there (a day’s journey), Paullus spoke with him in a friendly fashion. But once Paullus reached the camp at Amphipolis, it is reported that he gave Gaius Sulpicius a severe lecture, first because he had allowed Perseus to roam so far away from him throughout the province, and second because he had indulged the soldiers to such a degree that he allowed them to strip tiles from the city walls to cover their quarters for the winter; Paullus ordered the tiles to be returned and the exposed areas to be repaired.* And he handed Perseus and his older son Philip over to Aulus Postumius and sent them into custody. Perseus’ daughter and younger son were summoned from Samothrace to Amphipolis, where Paullus maintained them with all generosity and care.
29. The day arrived that Paullus had set for ten leaders from every community to be present in Amphipolis and for all documents, wherever they had been deposited, and royal treasure to be gathered together. Paullus sat at a tribunal with the ten commissioners, surrounded by the entire throng of Macedonians. Although they were accustomed to monarchic power, nevertheless they were unnerved by this new form of it, made manifest by the tribunal, the clearing of a path for Paullus, the herald, Paullus’ approach, the summons: all these, which could terrify even allies, let alone defeated enemies, were unfamiliar to their eyes and ears.
When the herald had established silence, Paullus announced in Latin what he and the Senate had decided, in accordance with the opinion of his advisers. Gnaeus Octavius, the praetor—for he was there too—translated Paullus’ words into Greek and repeated them.* First of all, Paullus and the Senate ordered that the Macedonians should be free, keeping the same cities and fields, following their own laws, and electing annual magistrates; they were to pay the Roman people half the tribute they had paid the kings.
Next, Macedonia was to be divided into four regions. One of them, the first section, would be the land between the Strymon and Nessus rivers; this part would be supplemented by what Perseus had held across the Nessus to the east: the villages, forts, and towns, except for Aenus, Maronea, and Abdera; and in addition, territory on the near side of the Strymon, lying to the west: namely all of Bisaltia, along with what they call Heraclea Sintice. The second region would be the land enclosed by the Strymon to the east, except for Heraclea Sintice and the Bisaltae, and ending on the west at the Axius river; the Paeones who live near the Axius river in the region to its east were included too. The third region was to consist of what the Axius encircles on the east and the Peneus on the west; the northern border was constituted by Mount Bermium; added to this part was the section of Paeonia where it extends to the west along the Axius river; Edessa and Beroea also were assigned to this same part. The fourth region was to be across the spine of Mount Bermium, bordered on one side by Illyricum and by Epirus on another. Paullus established the regions’ capitals, where their assemblies would be: Amphipolis for the first region, Thessalonica for the second, Pella for the third, and Pelagonia* for the fourth. Paullus directed that in those locations the assemblies of each region would convene, the money would be collected, and the magistrates would be selected.
Then he announced that he and the Senate had agreed that there would be no marriage or trade in lands or buildings with anyone across the borders of one’s own region. Nor were the gold and silver mines to be worked, but copper and iron mines could be. The rent placed on those working the mines was half what they had paid to the king. Paullus also forbade the use of imported salt.
When the Dardani asked to have Paeonia back, on the grounds that it had been theirs and bordered their territory, Paullus announced that he was conferring freedom on everybody who had been under Perseus’ sway. But, after denying the Dardani Paeonia, he allowed them to import salt; he decreed that the third region would bring salt to Stobi in Paeonia, and he set the price. He forbade the Macedonians themselves to cut timber for a fleet or to allow others to cut it. He permitted the regions that lay next to barbarians—in other words, all but the third region—to have armed garrisons on their outer borders.
30. The announcement of these matters on the first day of the meeting produced mixed reactions. The unexpected granting of freedom raised the Macedonians’ spirits, as did the reduction in annual taxes; but with the regional division of commerce, Macedonia seemed mangled, like an animal whose mutually interdependent limbs have been wrenched apart. The Macedonians, too, did not realize how large Macedonia was, how easy it was to divide in such a way that each part was self-sustaining. The first region has the Bisaltae, the bravest of men, who live on the far side of the Nessus river and around the Strymon; and it has also many special types of crops, and mines, and the advantageous location of Amphipolis, which acts as a barrier and blocks all approaches to Macedonia from the east. The second region has the busiest cities, Thessalonica and Cassandrea, in addition to Pallene, which is fertile and productive land; the ports too—at Torone and Mount Athos, at Aenea and Acanthus, some strategically facing Thessaly and Euboea and others the Hellespont—offer maritime resources. The third region has the well-known cities of Edessa, Beroea, and Pella, and the warlike tribe of the Bottiaei, and many Gauls and Illyrians, who are dedicated farmers. The Eordaei, the Lyncestae, and the Pelagones inhabit the fourth region; Atintania is linked to these, as are Tymphaea and Elimiotis. This entire region is very cold, tough to cultivate, and harsh; the farmers have characters to match the land. Their barbarian neighbours also make them more aggressive, sometimes challenging them in war and sometimes sharing customs with them in peace. By thus dividing Macedonia and separating the assets of the parts, Paullus revealed how great it was as a whole.
31. After this charter for Macedonia had been announced and Paullus had promised that he would provide laws also, the Aetolians were called in.* During the inquiry, the point at issue was not so much whether one faction or the other had committed or received any injury; it was rather which faction had sided with the Romans and which with the king. Those who had committed the murders were absolved from guilt; equally, for those who had been driven out, their exile was considered justified, as were the deaths of the men who had been killed. Aulus Baebius alone was condemned, because he had supplied Roman soldiers to facilitate the slaughter.
Among all the states and peoples of Greece, this outcome in the case of the Aetolians inflated to an intolerable degree of arrogance the minds of those who had been on the Roman side, while those who had been brushed with any hint of a suspicion of favouring the king were left crushed at their feet. There were three kinds of leaders in the cities. Two types, by fawning on either the Romans’ might or the kings’ friendship, had oppressed their cities and amassed private fortunes for themselves. The middle group opposed both parties and guarded liberty and the laws; the more affection there was for these men among their own people, the less influence they had among outsiders.
At the time the partisans of the Romans had been elevated by the latter’s success and monopolized the magistracies and the embassies. When these men arrived from the Peloponnese, Boeotia, and other Greek leagues, they filled the ears of the ten commissioners. They said that not only were there those who out of vanity had openly boasted of themselves as being guest-friends and intimates of Perseus, but that far more had sided with the king secretly; that under the pretext of protecting freedom, these men had organized everything in their leagues to the detriment of the Romans; and that these peoples would not remain loyal unless the will of the opposition was broken and the authority of those who looked to nothing but Roman rule was nourished and strengthened.
Based on the names submitted by these men, Paullus wrote and summoned men from Aetolia, Acarnania, Epirus, and Boeotia to follow him to Rome to plead their case. Two of the ten commissioners, Gaius Claudius and Gnaeus Domitius, went to Achaea to summon men with their own edict. This was done for two reasons: one was that the commissioners believed that the Achaeans had more confidence and spirit to disobey, and perhaps even that Callicrates and the rest of the accusers and informers would be endangered;* the other reason they issued the summons in person was that in the king’s records the commissioners had found letters from the leaders of the other peoples; but in the case of Achaea the charge was unsubstantiated since none of their letters had been found.
After the Aetolians were dismissed, the people of Acarnania were called in. Nothing was changed in their case except that Leucas was removed from their league.
Then, by enquiring widely who either officially or privately had sided with the king, the commissioners extended their investigation into Asia too. And they sent Labeo to destroy Antissa on the island of Lesbos and to bring the inhabitants to Methymna, because when Antenor, the king’s admiral, was sailing around Lesbos with his galleys, they had aided him, sheltering him in their harbour and giving him provisions. Two important men were beheaded, Andronicus, son of Andronicus, an Aetolian, because he had followed his father and taken up arms against the Romans, and Neon the Theban, who had led his people to form the alliance with Perseus.
32. After the delay caused by these investigations into outside matters, a council of Macedonians was summoned for a second time. There was an announcement that, as far as the constitution of Macedonia was concerned, senators should be chosen. (The Macedonians call them ‘synhedri’.) The state was to be run in accordance with their advice. Next were read the names of the Macedonian leaders who, along with their children over fifteen, were chosen to proceed ahead to Italy. Although this initially looked barbaric, it soon became apparent to the Macedonian populace that it was done for the sake of their freedom. For the men named were the friends and courtiers of the king, generals in the army, commanders of fleets and garrisons, men accustomed to serve the king humbly and to give arrogant orders to everyone else; some were extremely wealthy while others did not have the same resources but were equally lavish in their spending; all of them ate and dressed on a royal scale; none of them had civic spirit or tolerated laws or equal access to freedom. Accordingly, all who had been in any royal office, even those who had served as envoys, were ordered to leave Macedonia and to go to Italy: anyone who disobeyed the order was threatened with death. Paullus conferred laws on Macedonia with so much care that he seemed to be conferring them not on defeated enemies but on well-deserving allies, and the laws were ones that stood the test of time, which alone has the force to emend laws.
After these weighty matters, Paullus put on an entertainment with great pomp at Amphipolis. There had been extensive preparations in advance: men had been sent to the communities of Asia and the kings to announce it; as Paullus himself was travelling around the cities of Greece, he had given formal notice of it to the leaders. A multitude of performers, practitioners of every kind of theatrical craft, athletes, and horses of the purest stock came together from all over the world, as did delegations with sacrificial animals. And whatever else usually happens at major games in Greece for the sake of gods and men was done in such a way that the crowd admired not just Paullus’ lavishness, but his expertise in putting on spectacles, which at that time the Romans did without any finesse. Further, feasts were prepared for the delegations with the same opulence and care. People kept on repeating Paullus’ own dictum that the man who knows how to organize a feast and put on games is the same man who knows how to win a battle.
33. After the entertainment concluded and bronze shields were hung on the ships, the remaining weapons, all kinds, were piled in a great heap. Paullus invoked Mars, Minerva, and Mother Lua, as well as the rest of the gods to whom it is right and lawful to dedicate enemy spoils, and he himself placed a torch under the pile and lit it; thereupon each of the military tribunes, who were standing around it, threw a torch into the fire.
In that gathering of Europe and Asia, with a mass of people drawn together from every region, partly to offer thanks and partly to see the show, and amidst so many naval and ground forces, there was such a remarkable abundance of supplies and grain was so cheap that the general gave gifts, mostly of that sort, to individuals, cities, and whole tribes, not just for the immediate occasion, but also for them to take home.
The spectacle that the crowd had come for was no more the drama or contests among men or chariot races than it was the spoils of Macedonia. Everything was put on display: sculptures and paintings and tapestries and vases, which were made in the palace with great care, from gold, silver, bronze, and ivory, not just to produce an impression as it was with the sorts of things crammed into the palace at Alexandria—but for permanent use. The items were loaded on the fleet and entrusted to Gnaeus Octavius to take back to Rome.
Paullus sent the delegations away in a gracious fashion. Then he crossed the Strymon and encamped a mile outside Amphipolis. He went on from there and reached Pella four days later. Once he had passed that city, he spent two days at the place they call Pelium. He sent Publius Nasica and his son Quintus Maximus with part of his forces to loot the Illyrians who had helped Perseus in the war; they were instructed to meet him at Oricum. Paullus himself set out for Epirus and reached Passaron fourteen days later.
34. Anicius’ camp was not very far away. Paullus sent him a letter alerting him not to disrupt what was going on: the Senate had granted to Paullus’ troops the booty from the cities of Epirus that had defected to Perseus. After Paullus sent centurions to each city to announce that they had come to remove the garrisons so that the Epirotae might be free just as the Macedonians were, he summoned ten leading citizens from each city. After he had announced to these men that their gold and silver should be brought out in public, he sent detachments of troops to all the cities. The groups going to the more distant ones left before those going to the closer ones so that they could reach all the cities on the same day. The tribunes and the centurions had received orders about what to do. Early in the morning all the gold and silver was collected; at the fourth hour an order was given to the soldiers to sack the cities. There was so much plunder* that 400 denarii were distributed to each cavalryman and 200 to each infantryman, and 150,000 people were seized. Then the walls of the pillaged cities were destroyed; there were about seventy of them. All the booty was sold, and then the proceeds were paid out to the soldiers.
Paullus travelled down to the sea at Oricum thinking, wrongly, that the feelings of the soldiers had been satisfied. They were outraged that they had no share of the royal plunder, as if they had not fought in Macedonia at all. When Paullus found at Oricum the forces that he had sent with Scipio Nasica and his son Maximus, he put his army on the ships and crossed to Italy. And a few days later, when Anicius had completed a meeting with the rest of the Epirotae and Acarnanians, he ordered the leaders whose cases he had reserved for senatorial investigation to follow him to Italy. After waiting for the ships used by the troops that had been in Macedonia, he himself crossed to Italy.
While these events were taking place in Macedonia and Epirus, the envoys who had been sent with Attalus to terminate the war between the Galatians and King Eumenes reached Asia. A truce had been made for the winter. The Galatians had gone back to their homes, and the king had retreated to winter quarters in Pergamum. He was gravely ill. The beginning of spring brought the Galatians out of their homes, and they had already reached Synnada by the time Eumenes had assembled his army at Sardis from all over. When the Romans spoke to the Galatians’ leader, Solouettius, at Synnada, Attalus came too, but it was agreed that he would not enter the Galatians’ camp, in order to avoid a quarrel and the flaring of tempers. After Publius Licinius, the former consul, spoke with the chieftain of the Galatians, he reported that his appeal had made Solouettius more hostile. Thus, it seemed an extraordinary paradox that while between the very wealthy kings, Antiochus and Ptolemy, mere words from Roman envoys had been so powerful that they effected an immediate peace, they had absolutely no effect on the Galatians.
35. The first to be taken off to Rome under guard were the captured kings Perseus and Gentius, with their children. The mass of other prisoners went next, and then a herd of Macedonians who had been given notice to go to Rome; Greek leaders were included too. For, if in their own states, they had received a summons, and further, anyone reputed to be at a royal court was sent for by letter. A few days later Paullus himself travelled up the Tiber to the city, in a royal ship of enormous size, powered by sixteen banks of rowers, and adorned with Macedonian spoils, not just splendid weaponry, but even royal tapestries. The riverbanks were packed with crowds that poured forth to meet him. Anicius and Octavius arrived with their fleets a few days later. The Senate voted a triumph for all three of them. The praetor Quintus Cassius was instructed to arrange with the tribunes of the plebs to bring before the plebs a motion, backed by the Senate, authorizing the three generals to retain their imperium on the day they entered the city in triumph.
Mediocrity is exempt from spite, which generally takes aim at the lofty. There was no debate about the triumph for either Anicius or Octavius, though they would have blushed to compare themselves to Paullus. He, however, was assailed by malicious carping behind his back. He had handled the soldiers with old-fashioned discipline; he had distributed booty to them more parsimoniously than they had expected from such enormous royal riches (though they would have left nothing for him to deposit in the public treasury if he had indulged their greed). All the soldiers who served in Macedonia were enraged at the commander and were not about to give any attention to attending the assembly when the law was to be presented.* But Servius Sulpicius Galba, who had been a military tribune of the second legion in Macedonia and was privately hostile to the general, kept on canvassing and causing unrest throughout the soldiers of his own legion until he had goaded them into turning out in large numbers for the vote. He told them to take revenge on their domineering and mean-spirited general by rejecting the motion that was being brought about his triumph. Galba told them that the urban plebs would follow the judgement of the soldiers. Paullus had not been able to give them money; the soldiers were able to give him honour. But he should not expect the fruits of gratitude where he had not earned them.
36. The men were thus in an excited condition when the tribune of the plebs Tiberius Sempronius brought the motion on the Capitoline. And when the time came for private citizens to speak about the law, no one at all came forward to urge passing it, as if there were little dispute about the matter. Suddenly, Servius Galba came forward and demanded of the tribunes that, since it was already the eighth hour of the day and he did not have enough time to show why they should not vote a triumph for Lucius Aemilius, they should postpone the matter until the following day and take it up in the morning: he needed an entire day to argue his case. When the tribunes directed him to talk that day if he wished to say anything, he dragged the matter out by talking into the night, recollecting and reminding them of the harsh exaction of their duties as soldiers. He said that more work and more danger had been imposed on them than the task had called for; conversely, when it came to rewards and recognitions, everything had been reduced; and if this sort of leader were successful, military service would be excessively harsh and burdensome while the troops were fighting, and it would lack remuneration and esteem once they had won. The Macedonian soldiers were better off than the Romans. If the Roman soldiers turned up in large numbers the following day to reject the law, men of influence would understand that not everything was up to the general, but some things lay in the hands of the soldiers.
Egged on by these words, the soldiers thronged the Capitoline the following day in such numbers that there was no space for anyone else to enter to cast a vote. When the first tribes called in voted against the proposal, the city’s leading men charged the Capitoline, shouting that it was a shameful deed to deprive of his triumph Lucius Paullus, the winner of so great a war, and that generals were being abandoned to be at the mercy of their soldiers’ unruly behaviour and greed. Even as it was, all too often the currying of favour led to mistaken decisions; what if the soldiers became the masters and were placed over the generals? The leading citizens then all heaped reproaches on Galba.
When the commotion finally subsided, Marcus Servilius, who had been a consul* and a master of the horse, asked the tribunes to repeat the process from the beginning and to give him an opportunity to address the people. The tribunes stepped aside to confer. They were won over by the influence of the leading citizens and began to repeat the process from the beginning. The tribunes announced that they would call the same tribes back in once Marcus Servilius and other private individuals who wished to speak had done so.
37. Then Servilius spoke: ‘Roman citizens, if it were impossible to calculate by any other means how outstanding a commander Lucius Aemilius is, this one point would be enough: although he had in his camp such seditious and unreliable soldiers and such a well-born, such a reckless enemy, one so adept at stirring up a crowd with words, he did not have any rebellion in the army. The very same strict authority that they now despise restrained them then. Thus, handled with old-fashioned discipline, they neither said nor did anything mutinous.
‘Truly, if by bringing charges in the matter of Lucius Paullus, Servius Galba wished to shed his apprenticeship and to put his eloquence on display,* he should not have obstructed Paullus’ triumph which, if nothing else, the Senate had judged to be deserved. Instead, on the day after Paullus’ triumph had been celebrated, when Galba could look upon him as a private citizen, he should have instituted criminal proceedings against him and called him to account in a court of law. Or a little later, when Galba himself had taken up his first magistracy, he could have brought his enemy to trial and charged Paullus before the people. In this way Lucius Paullus would have both a reward for good conduct, namely a triumph for a superbly run campaign, and punishment, if he had done anything unworthy of his glory, old or new. But of course, since Galba was not able to cite any crime or any impropriety, he wished to carp at Paullus’ laudable attributes. Yesterday he requested a whole day to bring his accusation against Lucius Paullus; he consumed four hours, as much of the day as remained, with talk. What defendant was ever so guilty that that much time could not suffice to reveal the shortcomings of his life? And within that time, what did Servius Galba bring up against Lucius Paullus that Paullus would want to deny if he were arguing in his own defence?
‘Let someone create for me, for just a moment, two assemblies, one of soldiers from the Macedonian campaign, and another, uncontaminated one, of the entire Roman people, with its judgement less impaired by partisanship and prejudice. First, let the defendant be tried before the civilian, togate assembly. What would you say, Servius Galba, before full Roman citizens? That entire speech of yours would have been truncated: “you manned your posts too strictly and intently; watches were inspected more harshly and rigorously than before; you did more labour than before, since the commander himself went around and supervised; on one and the same day you both marched and from marching went forth into battle; he did not allow you to rest even when you had won; he led you immediately in pursuit of the enemy;* although he could make you wealthy by sharing out the plunder, he intends to have the royal treasure carried in the triumph and deposited in the public treasury.”
‘Although these matters provide some sort of stimulus to prod the spirits of the soldiers, who think their unruly behaviour and greed were insufficiently pandered to, they would have carried no weight at all among the Roman people. Those who do not remember earlier events that they heard about from their parents—what defeats were suffered because of the personal ambition of commanders, what victories were achieved because of strict authority—can certainly recall what a difference there was between the master of the horse Marcus Minucius and the dictator Quintus Fabius Maximus in the most recent Punic war.* Thus it would have been apparent that the accuser had been in no position to open his mouth, and the defence of Paullus would have been superfluous.
‘Let us cross over to the other assembly. Now I imagine myself about to address you, not as Roman citizens, but as soldiers—if this appellation at least is able to rouse your sense of shame and to provoke some embarrassment for treating your commander with disrespect. 38. For my part, I have a different way of thinking when I imagine myself speaking before the army, than I did shortly before when my oration was directed at the urban plebs. Tell me, soldiers, what are you saying? Apart from Perseus, is there anyone in Rome who does not want there to be a triumph over Macedonia, and would you not tear such a man to bits with the very hands you used to defeat the Macedonians? A man who prevents you from entering the city in triumph would have prevented you from conquering if he could have.
‘You are in error, soldiers, if you think that the triumph is an honour solely for the commander and not also for the soldiers and for the entire Roman people. Nor is the reputation of Paullus alone at stake. Many men, moreover, who did not obtain a triumph from the Senate have held one on the Alban Mount. No one can deprive Lucius Paullus of the honour of having ended the Macedonian war any more than he could deprive Gaius Lutatius of having ended the First Punic War, or Publius Cornelius the Second Punic War, or those who triumphed after them; nor will a triumph make Lucius Paullus any greater or lesser a commander. Far more at risk here is the reputation of the soldiers, of the entire Roman people: chiefly that it not have a name for spitefulness and a churlish attitude towards any outstanding citizen, and thereby appear to imitate the Athenian people, who make accusations against their leading men out of spite.* Sufficient wrong was inflicted on Camillus by your forefathers; their outrageous treatment of him, however, took place before he rescued our city from the Gauls.* Sufficient wrong was recently inflicted on Publius Africanus by you yourselves: we should blush that the house and home of the conqueror of Africa were in Liternum, and that it is Liternum where his grave is to be seen.* Lucius Paullus should equal these men in his glory; your behaviour should not be equally insulting. First then let our notoriety be erased; it is shameful among other peoples, but ruinous for us. For in a city that is grudging and hostile to good men, who would want to resemble either Africanus or Paullus?
‘If no disgrace were involved and it were solely a question of glory, what triumph, I ask you, does not share its glory with the name of Rome? Are so many triumphs over the Gauls, so many triumphs over the Spanish, so many triumphs over the Carthaginians said to be for just the commanders themselves or for the Roman people? For just as the triumphs were conducted not simply over Pyrrhus and not simply over Hannibal, but over the Epirotae and the Carthaginians, so too, not Manius Curius and Publius Cornelius alone, but the Romans triumphed. Assuredly, the occasion belongs to the soldiers, who wear laurel themselves, and each man who has been decorated stands out with his awards; they call upon Triumphus by name, and they sing praises of themselves and their commander as they process through the city. If ever soldiers are not brought home from a province for a triumph, they complain; and yet even then, they believe that they triumph, though absent, because the victory was won by their hands. If anyone should ask you, soldiers, why you were brought back to Italy and not immediately discharged when your duty was done; if anyone should ask you why you have come to Rome in full numbers troop by troop, why you linger here and do not go your separate ways home, what answer could you give other than that you wish to be seen in a triumph? Certainly as the winners you ought to have wished to be on display.
39. ‘In the recent past, triumphs have been celebrated over Perseus’ father Philip and Antiochus; both kings still held their thrones when the triumphs over them occurred. Is there to be no triumph over Perseus, who has been taken captive and brought to the city with his children? But if, when Lucius Anicius and Gnaeus Octavius, decked out in gold and purple, are ascending the Capitol in a chariot, Lucius Paullus, just one private citizen in a crowd of togate citizens, should ask them from his inferior position, “Lucius Anicius, Gnaeus Octavius, do you think that you are more deserving of a triumph than I am?”, they would probably yield the chariot to him and themselves hand over their insignia in shame. And you, Roman citizens, do you prefer to have Gentius led in a triumphal procession rather than Perseus, and do you prefer the triumph to be for an accessory to the war rather than the war itself? The legions from Illyricum, in laurel, will enter the city, and so will the sailors; will the Macedonian legions watch other triumphs while their own has been voted down? Further, what will happen to such prime plunder and the spoils of such a profitable victory? Where on earth will so many thousands of weapons, stripped from the bodies of our enemies, be tucked away? Or will they be sent back to Macedonia? Where will they go, the sculptures of gold and marble and ivory, the paintings and the tapestries, so much engraved silver, so much gold, so vast a royal treasure? Or will they be carried off to the public treasury at night, as if they were stolen goods?
‘What then? Where will the greatest sight of all, a captive king of the highest birth and the most extensive wealth, be displayed to the people who are his conquerors? Most of us remember what crowds turned out when King Syphax, an accessory in the Second Punic War, was captured. Are King Perseus, the captive, and his sons Philip and Alexander, such great names, to be hidden from the city’s gaze? All eyes yearn to see Lucius Paullus, consul twice, conqueror of Greece, entering the city in a chariot. We made him consul for this very purpose, to end a war that to our deep shame had dragged on for four years. When Paullus drew the lot for the province and when he set out for it, we anticipated his victory and triumph in our minds, and we preordained them for him;* now that he has been victorious, are we going to deny him the triumph?
‘And are we not going to be cheating the gods of the honour, as well as Paullus? For a triumph is owed not simply to mortals, but to the gods too. Your ancestors began and ended every great enterprise with the gods. When a consul or a praetor sets forth for his province and a war, with his lictors dressed in military cloaks, he pronounces vows on the Capitol; once he has brought that war to a close, he returns as a victor to the Capitol in a triumphal procession, bringing well-deserved gifts from the Roman people to those same gods to whom he pronounced vows. By no means the smallest part of a triumph are the sacrificial victims that lead the way; they make it clear to the gods that the commander returns expressing his gratitude for the successful outcome of the public business. As for all those animals that the consul dedicated to be led in the triumph—are you going to sacrifice them at some other time under someone else’s direction? And what about the Senate’s feast, which takes place not in a private location nor on secular public land, but on the Capitol: whether this is prepared for human pleasure or to honour the gods, will you disrupt it on the authority of Servius Galba? Will the gates be closed against a triumph for Lucius Aemilius? Will Perseus, king of the Macedonians, and his children and the rest of the mass of prisoners, together with the spoils of Macedonia, be left in the Flaminian Circus? Will Lucius Paullus go to his house from the city gate a private citizen, as if he were returning from the countryside?
‘And you, centurion, soldier, heed what the Senate has decreed about your general Paullus, not the stories fabricated by Servius Galba; and heed my words, not his. He has learned nothing except how to talk, and to do so abusively and spitefully. I have challenged and fought an enemy twenty-three times; in all cases it was I who carried off the spoils from hand-to-hand combat; I have a body marked by honourable scars, all incurred with my face to the enemy.’ It is said that he then removed his garment, and he detailed in which war which wounds were received. As he was showing these, parts of the body that ought to be concealed were accidentally revealed, and his swollen testicles provoked laughter in those closest to him.* ‘This condition too, at which you laugh,’ he said, ‘I have from sitting on a horse day and night, and it causes me no more shame or regret than my scars do since it never prevented me from serving my country well at home or abroad. An old soldier, I have shown my old body, often injured by the sword, to young soldiers; let Galba lay bare his smooth and shining body.
‘Tribunes, if it seems right to you, summon the tribes to vote again; soldiers, to you I <…>’
[The rest of Servilius’ speech is missing because the next page is lost, but these words suggest that he was nearly finished. Presumably the missing text included the vote in favour of Paullus’ triumph, and the beginning of the actual procession. Exceptionally, Paullus’ triumph lasted three days. Accounts survive in many sources. Both Diodorus (31.8) and Plutarch (Aemilius Paullus 32–4) give lengthy, itemized (though not identical) descriptions. The text of Livy resumes with estimates of the campaign’s material gains. Regardless of the figures disputed here, the war against the Macedonians was so profitable that Roman citizens did not pay personal taxes again for over 120 years.]
40. <…> Valerius Antias reports that 120,000,000 sesterces was the total value of all the gold and silver that had been seized and was brought in; certainly a much higher total than this is reached from the number of wagons and from the weight of the silver and gold as he records them individually. Sources report that the same amount again was either spent in the previous war or lost in Perseus’ flight when he was headed for Samothrace. Thus it is all the more amazing that so much money had been amassed in the thirty years since Philip’s war with the Romans, partly from the income of the mines and partly from other taxes. Consequently, while Philip was very poor, Perseus was on the contrary extremely rich when he began to wage war against the Romans.
Finally Paullus himself came in a chariot, displaying the utmost grandeur not just in the dignity of his bearing but in his very age; behind the chariot and amongst the other noble youths were his two sons, Quintus Maximus and Publius Scipio; then came the cavalry, squadron by squadron, and the infantry, troop by troop, each in their own century. The infantry were given 100 denarii each; centurions received twice as much; and cavalry three times as much. People think that as much again would have been given to the infantry, and that others would have been rewarded proportionally, if they had voted the honour for Paullus in the first place or if they had shouted their approval eagerly when the amount was announced.*
As Perseus was led in chains through the city of his enemies before the victorious general’s chariot, he was not the only lesson in human misfortune during those days; Paullus the victor, gleaming in gold and purple, was one too. For when he had given away two of his sons in adoption, he had kept two at home as the sole heirs to his name, the ancestral religious rites, and his household; the younger of these two was scarcely twelve and died five days before the triumph, and the older, who was fourteen, died three days after it. They should have been wearing the toga praetexta and riding in the chariot with their father, fixing their minds on similar triumphs for themselves.
A few days later, the tribune of the plebs Marcus Antonius held a public meeting. When Paullus described his accomplishments according to the convention of other commanders, his speech was memorable and worthy of a leading citizen of Rome.
41. ‘Although I think you know both the good fortune with which I guided the state and the two thunderbolts that have struck my home during these days, Roman citizens, since both my triumph and the funerals of my sons have been on display before you, still I beg that you permit me a few words to compare my own condition with the public good fortune; I shall do so in the appropriate frame of mind.
‘After leaving Italy—I set sail from Brundisium at sunrise—I reached Corcyra with all my ships at the ninth hour of the day. On the fifth day after that I sacrificed to Apollo at Delphi on my own behalf and for your armies and navies. From Delphi I reached the camp on the fifth day. Once I had taken charge of the army, I changed certain matters that were significant impediments to victory. Since the enemy’s camp was impregnable and the king could not be compelled to fight, I advanced through his garrisons, traversing the pass at Petra, and defeated him in a battle near Pydna. I brought Macedonia under the control of the Roman people. And the war that for four years my three predecessors as consul conducted in such a way that they always passed it to their successor in a worse state, I ended in fifteen days. I met with the fruits, so to speak, of one success after another: all the Macedonian cities surrendered, the royal treasure passed into my hands, the king himself—as if the gods were turning him over—was captured with his children in the shrine of the Samothracians.
‘Fortune seemed already only too generous to me, and consequently not to be trusted. I began to fear the dangers of the sea in carrying off so much of the king’s fortune to Italy and transporting the victorious army. Once everything and everybody arrived in Italy with winds favourable to the fleet, there was nothing left for me to pray for. I wished that since Fortune customarily reverses its course from any pinnacle, the change would fall on my household rather than the state. And so, because my triumph, like a mockery of human experience, occurred between the two funerals of my sons, I hope that the public fortune is satisfied with such a marked tragedy for me. And although Perseus and I are now looked on as especially notable examples of the lot of mortals, he as a captive saw his children led as captives before him, and yet nonetheless has them safe, but I, who triumphed over him, went from the funeral of one son to my triumphal chariot and, returning from the Capitol, arrived as my other son was on the brink of death; nor from such a line of children does any single one remain to bear the name Lucius Aemilius Paullus. The Cornelian and Fabian families have two of my sons, given away in adoption as if from an enormous store of children; no Paullus remains in my house except for this old man. But your good luck and the public good fortune console my household for this calamity.’
42. These words, spoken with so much fortitude, overwhelmed the hearts of those listening more than if he had used his speech as a pathetic lament for his childlessness.
On the first of December Gnaeus Octavius held a naval triumph over King Perseus. It was a triumph without prisoners and without spoils. Octavius gave seventy-five denarii apiece to the sailors, double that to the pilots of the ships, and four times as much to the captains.
Afterwards there was a meeting of the Senate. The fathers judged that Quintus Cassius should take King Perseus with his son Alexander to Alba for safekeeping;* and that, depriving Perseus of nothing, Cassius should allow him to have companions, money, silver, and gear in general. Bithys, the son of the Thracian king Cotys, was sent to Carseoli for safekeeping with the hostages.* It was agreed that the rest of the captives who had been led in the triumph were to be put in prison.
A few days after this business was conducted, representatives came from King Cotys of Thrace; they brought money to redeem his son and the other hostages. When the representatives were brought before the Senate, in their speech they put forward this exact point as proof that Cotys had not helped Perseus in the war of his own free will, but because he was forced to give hostages; Cotys’ representatives asked that the fathers allow the hostages to be redeemed for whatever amount the fathers should decide on. By authority of the Senate, the answer was given that the Roman people were mindful of the friendship that had existed between them and Cotys, his ancestors, and the Thracian people; that surrendering hostages was the charge, not a defence against the charge, for the Thracian people had no need to fear Perseus even when he was inactive, and still less so when he was occupied by war with the Romans. Just the same, although Cotys had put Perseus’ goodwill above the friendship of the Roman people, they would give greater weight to what befitted the dignity of the Roman people than what could possibly be owed to Cotys, and his son and the hostages would be returned to him. The Roman people’s acts of generosity came at no charge; they preferred to leave repayment in the minds of the recipients than to demand it on the spot.
Three envoys—Titus Quinctius Flamininus, Gaius Licinius Nerva, and Marcus Caninius Rebilus—were chosen to escort the hostages back to Thrace; and gifts of 2,000 asses each were given to the Thracians. Bithys and the rest of the hostages were summoned from Carseoli and sent to his father with the envoys.
The royal ships that had been taken from the Macedonians were on a scale never seen before; they were hauled into the Campus Martius.
43. While the memory of the Macedonian triumph was still fresh in men’s minds, and practically right before their eyes, Lucius Anicius held his triumph over King Gentius and the Illyrians on the festival of Quirinus.* Everything about the triumph struck people as similar but not equal: the commander himself was of lower rank, both Anicius in comparison with the high birth of Aemilius, and the constitutional power of a praetor as compared with that of a consul; nor could Gentius be matched with Perseus, or the Illyrians with the Macedonians, or the spoils with the spoils, or the cash with the cash, or the donatives with the donatives. Even though the recent triumph thus outshone Anicius’, still it was apparent to the onlookers that it was by no means contemptible in and of itself. Anicius had defeated the Illyrians within a matter of days; they were ferocious on land and sea and had confidence in the terrain and their fortifications. Anicius had captured their king and his entire family. In the triumph he carried many military standards and other spoils, the contents of the royal household, twenty-seven pounds of gold, <…> of silver, 13,000 denarii, and 120,000 Illyrian silver pieces. King Gentius and his wife and children were led before Anicius’ chariot, as well as the king’s brother Caravantius, and some highborn Illyrians. From the plunder Anicius gave forty-five denarii to each soldier, twice that to each centurion, and three times as much to the cavalry; he gave the same amounts to the Latin and Italian allies as he gave to Roman citizens, and he gave the sailors as much as he gave the soldiers. A more jubilant army followed along in this triumph, and the leader himself was lauded with many songs.
According to Antias, 20,000,000 sesterces were realized from the booty, beyond the gold and silver that was deposited in the treasury. But since it was not clear from where this sum could be realized, I have put down the source rather than just the information itself. By order of the Senate, King Gentius, his wife, his children, and his brother were taken to Spoletium for custody, and the rest of the captives were thrown into jail at Rome. When the Spoletini refused custody, the royals were brought to Iguvium. The rest of the plunder from Illyricum was 220 galleys. These had been taken from King Gentius. By order of the Senate Quintus Cassius distributed them to the people of Corcyra, Apollonia, and Dyrrachium.
44. That year the consuls merely ravaged Ligurian land since the enemy never led its forces out. The consuls accomplished nothing worthy of record and returned to Rome to elect their successors. On the first day for elections they presided over the election of Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Gaius Sulpicius Galus as the consuls; then on the next day they presided over the election of Lucius Julius, Lucius Appuleius Saturninus, Aulus Licinius Nerva, Publius Rutilius Calvus, Publius Quinctilius Varus, and Marcus Fonteius as the praetors. The provinces designated for these praetors were the two in the city, the two Spains, Sicily, and Sardinia.
There was an intercalation that year: the first day of the intercalary period was inserted the day after the Terminalia. The augur Gaius Claudius died that year; the augurs selected Titus Quinctius Flamininus in his place. The flamen Quirinalis, Quintus Fabius Pictor, also died.
That year King Prusias came to Rome with his son Nicomedes. Prusias entered the city with a large retinue and made his way from the city gate to the Forum and the tribunal of the praetor Quintus Cassius. People rushed up from all over. Prusias said that he had come to pay his respects to the gods who watched over the city of Rome, to the Senate, and to the Roman people, and to offer his congratulations because they had defeated the kings Perseus and Gentius, and they had expanded their empire by bringing the Macedonians and the Illyrians under their dominion. When the praetor said that he could grant an audience with the Senate that very day if Prusias wished, the king asked for a period of two days to see the temples of the gods, the city, his friends, and his guest-friends. The quaestor Lucius Cornelius Scipio was assigned to escort him around; the same man had been sent to Capua to meet Prusias; a house was also rented to provide Prusias and his companions with warm hospitality.
On the third day Prusias came to the Senate. He offered congratulations on the victory; he summarized his own good deeds in the war; he requested permission to fulfil a vow of ten adult animals on the Capitol at Rome and one for Fortuna at Praeneste; these vows were for the Roman people’s victory. Prusias asked also that his alliance with them be renewed and that he be given the land that had been captured from King Antiochus, which the Roman people had not assigned to anyone and Galatians were occupying. Last, he entrusted his son Nicomedes to the Senate.
Prusias had the benefit of support from all the men who had been generals in the Macedonian war. Thus in regard to every other matter, what he was seeking was granted to him. As for the land, however, the response was that commissioners would be sent to look into the matter; if there had been any land belonging to the Roman people that was not already assigned to somebody, they would consider Prusias most worthy of this gift; but if it appeared that the land had not belonged to Antiochus, and therefore had not become the property of the Roman people, or if it appeared that the land was given to the Galatians, then Prusias must forgive them if the Roman people did not wish to give anything to him at the cost of wronging someone else; nor could a gift be pleasing even to the recipient when he knew that the donor could take it away whenever he wanted to. The senators accepted responsibility for Prusias’ son Nicomedes. They said that Ptolemy, king of Egypt, was proof of how much care the Roman people took in watching over the sons of allied kings.*
Prusias was dismissed with this answer. Gifts totalling <…> sesterces and silver dishes weighing fifty pounds were ordered to be given to him. The senators decreed also that gifts equal to the total given to Masgaba,* son of King Masinissa, should be given to Nicomedes, son of the king, The Senate further decreed that the animals and other items pertaining to sacrifice should be furnished for the king at public expense, just as for Roman magistrates, whether he wished to sacrifice at Rome or at Praeneste; additionally, that twenty warships from the fleet at Brundisium should be assigned to him for his use; until the king had travelled down to the fleet that had been given to him, Lucius Cornelius Scipio was to stay by his side and cover expenses for him and his companions until he had embarked.
They say that the king was overwhelmed with happiness at the Roman people’s benevolence towards him, that he would not allow the gifts to be acquired for himself, but directed his son to accept what the Roman people were giving him. That is what our authors say about Prusias.
Polybius records that this king did not deserve the dignity of such a title, that he wore the cap of freedom, that his head was shaved, that he was accustomed to approach envoys, and that he referred to himself as a freedman of the Roman people; this was the reason he wore the emblems of that social rank; further, in Rome, when he entered the Curia, he had prostrated himself and kissed the threshold, and that he had addressed the Senate as his saviours, and that he had said other things that did not so much honour his listeners as degrade him.* He stayed around Rome no more than thirty days before returning to his kingdom.
And the war going on in Asia between Eumenes and the Galatians …
[The last few words of Book 45 are not entirely legible. Further down on the page is the heading for Book 46.]