Lucius Postumius Albinus and Marcus Popilius Laenas, when first of all they had laid before the Senate the matter of the provinces and the armies, were both assigned the Ligurians, on these terms: that both should enroll new legions with which to hold that province — two legions decreed to each — and ten thousand foot and six hundred horse apiece from the allies of the Latin name, and as a reinforcement for Spain three thousand Roman foot and two hundred horse. Beyond this, fifteen hundred Roman foot with a hundred horse were ordered to be enrolled, with whom the praetor to whose lot Sardinia had fallen should cross over to Corsica and wage war; meanwhile Marcus Atilius, the praetor of the year before, should hold the province of Sardinia. Then the praetors drew their provinces by lot: Aulus Atilius Serranus the urban jurisdiction, Gaius Cluvius Saxula the jurisdiction between citizens and foreigners, Numerius Fabius Buteo Hither Spain, Gaius Matienus Farther Spain, Marcus Furius Crassipes Sicily, Gaius Cicereius Sardinia. Before the magistrates set out for their provinces, it was the Senate’s pleasure that Lucius Postumius the consul should go into Campania to mark off the public land from the private, since it was well established that private persons held an enormous extent of it, having little by little pushed forward their bounds. This man, angry at the people of Praeneste because, when he had once gone there as a private citizen to perform a sacrifice in the temple of Fortuna, nothing had been done to honor him by the Praenestines, neither publicly nor privately, before he set out from Rome sent a letter to Praeneste ordering that the magistrates should come out to meet him, that a lodging should be provided for him at public expense, and that pack-animals should be ready when he departed from there. Before this consul no one had ever been a burden or an expense to the allies in any matter. It was for this reason that the magistrates were furnished with mules and tents and every other piece of military equipment, that they might lay no such demand upon the allies. They had their private connections of hospitality; these they cultivated kindly and courteously, and their houses at Rome stood open to those with whom it was their own custom to lodge. Envoys, who might be sent off somewhere on short notice, would requisition a single pack-animal from each town along the road they had to travel; in no other matter did the allies meet the expense of Roman magistrates. The consul’s anger, even if it was just, ought nevertheless not to have been exercised while he held office; and the Praenestines’ silence, too modest or too timid, made a precedent of the thing, as though approved, by which the magistrates day by day laid commands of this heavier kind.

At the beginning of this year the envoys who had been sent into Aetolia and Macedonia reported that they had been given no opportunity of meeting King Perseus — some pretending that he was away, others that he was ill, both falsely; yet it had readily been plain to them that war was being prepared, and that he would put off the resort to arms no longer. Likewise in Aetolia faction was swelling day by day, and the leaders of the discord could not be restrained by their own authority. Since the Macedonian war was in expectation, it was resolved that, before it should be undertaken, the prodigies be expiated and the peace of the gods sought with such prayers as had been set forth from the books of fate. At Lanuvium the appearance of a great fleet was said to have been seen in the sky; at Privernum dark wool sprang from the earth; in the territory of Veii, at Remens, there was a rain of stones; the whole Pomptine district was as if covered with clouds of locusts; in the Gallic country, where the plow was driven, fish came up from beneath the rising clods. On account of these prodigies the books of fate were inspected, and it was set forth by the decemvirs both to what gods and with what victims sacrifice should be made, and that a supplication should be held to expiate the prodigies, and that the other supplication, which had been vowed the year before for the people’s health, should likewise be performed and that there should be holy days. And so sacrifice was made as the decemvirs had set forth in writing.

In the same year the temple of Juno Lacinia was stripped of its roof. Quintus Fulvius Flaccus the censor was building a temple of Fortuna Equestris, which as praetor he had vowed in Spain during the Celtiberian war, with strenuous zeal, that there should be no temple at Rome larger or more magnificent. Thinking that he would add a great ornament to the temple if its tiles were of marble, he set out into the country of the Bruttii and stripped the temple of Juno Lacinia of half its roof, judging that this would suffice to cover what he was building. Ships were made ready to take up the tiles and carry them off, the allies being deterred by the censor’s authority from preventing the sacrilege. After the censor returned, the tiles were unloaded from the ships and were being carried to the temple. Although it was kept silent whence they came, it could not be concealed. An uproar therefore arose in the Senate house; from every quarter it was demanded that the consuls bring the matter before the Senate. But when the censor, summoned, came into the house, they tore at him to his face, one and all, far more savagely: that he had counted it too little to violate the most august temple of that region — which neither Pyrrhus nor Hannibal had violated — unless he had foully stripped it and all but pulled it down. The peak of the temple had been torn off, the roof laid bare and left open to rot in the rains. And a censor, created to govern morals, to whom by ancestral custom it had been handed down to exact the upkeep of roofs for the public rites and to let out their maintenance, was roaming through the cities of the allies pulling down temples and stripping the roofs of sacred buildings; and what, were he to do it to the private buildings of the allies, might seem an outrage, that he was doing by demolishing the temples of the immortal gods; and he was binding the Roman people in guilt by building temples out of the ruins of temples — as though the immortal gods were not the same everywhere, but some were to be worshiped and adorned with the spoils of others. Since, before the matter was even formally put, it was plain what the fathers felt, once the question was put they all went over into one opinion: that those tiles should be contracted to be carried back to the temple, and that expiatory offerings should be made to Juno. What pertained to religion was done with care; but the tiles were left lying in the precinct of the temple, because no craftsman could devise a way of replacing them — so the contractors reported.

Of the praetors who had gone out to their provinces, Numerius Fabius died at Massilia, on his way to Hither Spain. And so, when this had been reported by envoys from Massilia, the Senate decreed that Publius Furius and Gnaeus Servilius, whose successors had been appointed, should draw lots between themselves which of the two should hold Hither Spain with his command prorogued. The lot fell out conveniently, that the same Publius Furius, whose province it had been, remained.

In the same year, since a good deal of the Ligurian and Gallic land which had been taken in war lay vacant, a decree of the Senate was passed that this land should be distributed man by man. To carry it out, Aulus Atilius the urban praetor, in accordance with the Senate’s decree, appointed a board of ten: Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, Gaius Cassius, Titus Aebutius Carus, Gaius Tremellius, Publius Cornelius Cethegus, Quintus and Lucius Apuleius, Marcus Caecilius, Gaius Salonius, Gaius Munatius. They distributed ten iugera to each citizen, three to each of the allies of the Latin name.

During the same time in which these things were being done, envoys came to Rome from Aetolia about their dissensions and factions, and Thessalian envoys announcing what was being done in Macedonia.

Perseus, turning over in his mind the war he had been pondering already in his father’s lifetime, was winning over to himself not only all the peoples of Greece but their cities too by sending embassies, promising more than he made good. Yet the feelings of a great part of men were inclined to favor him, and somewhat more disposed toward him than toward Eumenes, although all the cities of Greece and most of their leading men were bound by the benefactions and gifts of Eumenes, and he so bore himself in his own kingdom that the cities under his sway would not have wished to exchange their lot for that of any free state. Against Perseus, on the other hand, the report ran that after his father’s death he had killed his wife with his own hand; that Apelles — once the agent of the treachery in the removal of his brother, and on that account sought out for punishment by Philip and living in exile — he had summoned after his father’s death with vast promises, as toward the reward of so great a deed accomplished, and had secretly killed him. Notorious besides for many murders at home and abroad, and recommended by no merit, he was nonetheless commonly preferred by the cities to a king so dutiful toward his kin, so just toward his citizens, so generous toward all men — whether they were preoccupied by the fame and majesty of the kings of Macedon, so as to scorn the upstart origin of a new kingdom, or were greedy for a change of things, or because they did not wish to lie exposed to the Romans. And it was not the Aetolians only who were in turmoil over the enormous weight of their debt, but the Thessalians too. By a kind of contagion the malady had spread, like a wasting sickness, into Perrhaebia as well. When it was reported that the Thessalians were in arms, the Senate sent Appius Claudius as legate to look into these matters and compose them. He, having rebuked the leaders of both parties, since the debt was weighed down by unjust interest, lightened it — the very men who had loaded it on largely conceding the point — and distributed the payment of the rightful loan over installments of ten years. By the same Appius, and in the same fashion, affairs in Perrhaebia were composed. The disputes of the Aetolians — conducted in the same period with hostile passions, the passions in which they had waged civil war among themselves — Marcellus heard at Delphi. When he saw that there had been contention on both sides through rashness and audacity, by his decree he was unwilling either to relieve or to burden either party; he asked of both in common that they refrain from war and end their discords with an oblivion of the past. The pledge of this reconciliation between them was confirmed by hostages given on either side. Corinth was agreed upon as the place where the hostages should be deposited.

From Delphi and the Aetolian council Marcellus crossed over into the Peloponnese, where he had proclaimed an assembly of the Achaeans. There, having praised the nation for steadfastly keeping the old decree about barring the kings of Macedon from approaching their borders, he made conspicuous the Romans’ hatred against Perseus; and that it might break out the sooner, King Eumenes came to Rome bringing with him a memorandum which he had drawn up, inquiring into everything that concerned the preparations for war. At the same time five legates were sent to the king to look into affairs in Macedonia. The same men were ordered to set out for Alexandria, to Ptolemy, for the renewal of friendship. These were the legates: Gaius Valerius, Gnaeus Lutatius Cerco, Quintus Baebius Sulca, Marcus Cornelius Mammula, Marcus Caecilius Denter. And about the same time envoys came from King Antiochus. Their chief, Apollonius, brought into the Senate, excused the king on many just grounds for paying the tribute later than the appointed day: he had brought it all, he said, that nothing might be charged to the king save out of regard for the time. He brought a gift besides, golden vessels of five hundred pounds’ weight. The king asked that the alliance and friendship which had existed with his father might be renewed with himself, and that the Roman people lay upon him whatever ought to be laid upon a good and faithful allied king; in no office anywhere would he be found wanting. Such had been the Senate’s services to him while he was at Rome, and such the courtesy of the young men, that he had been treated by all the orders as a king, not as a hostage. The legates were kindly answered, and Aulus Atilius the urban praetor was ordered to renew with Antiochus the alliance which had existed with his father. The urban quaestors received the tribute, the censors the golden vessels, and the business was given them of placing these in whatever temples seemed good. To the envoy a gift of a hundred thousand asses was sent, a house was given free for his lodging, and his expenses were decreed while he should be in Italy. The legates who had been in Syria had reported that he stood in the highest honor with the king and was most friendly to the Roman people.

In the provinces these things were done that year. Gaius Cicereius the praetor fought a pitched battle in Corsica; seven thousand Corsicans were killed, more than seventeen hundred taken. In that battle the praetor had vowed a temple to Juno Moneta. Peace was then granted to the Corsicans at their request, and two hundred thousand pounds of wax exacted. From subdued Corsica Cicereius crossed over into Sardinia. And among the Ligurians there was fighting in the territory of the Statellates, by the town of Carystus. A great army of the Ligurians had gathered there. At first, on the approach of Marcus Popilius the consul, they kept themselves within their walls; then, when they perceived that the Roman meant to assault the town, they came forward and drew up their line before the gates. Nor did the consul — who had sought this very thing by threatening the assault — make any delay to the contest. The fighting lasted more than three hours, in such a way that hope inclined to neither side. When the consul saw that the standards of the Ligurians were moved in no quarter, he ordered the cavalry to mount and charge the enemy from three sides at once with the greatest uproar they could raise. A large part of the cavalry pierced through the middle of the line and got behind those who were fighting. From this, terror was thrown into the Ligurians; they scattered and fled in all directions, very few back into the town, because there above all the cavalry had set itself across their path. And the battle, so stubborn, had carried off many of the Ligurians, and in the flight they were cut down everywhere. Ten thousand men are reported to have been killed, more than seven hundred taken, eighty-two military standards brought in. Nor was the victory a bloodless one: more than three thousand soldiers were lost, since, while neither side gave way, the foremost men fell on both.

After this battle the Ligurians, gathered into one out of their scattered flight, when they saw that they had lost far the greater part of their citizens than survived — for there were no more than ten thousand men — surrendered themselves, bargaining indeed for nothing; yet they had hoped that the consul would rage against them no more savagely than the commanders before him. But he took the arms from all, razed the town, and sold them and their goods; and he sent a letter to the Senate about what he had done. When Aulus Atilius the praetor had read this aloud in the Senate house — for the other consul, Postumius, was away, occupied in surveying the lands in Campania — the matter seemed to the Senate an atrocity: that the Statellates, who alone of the Ligurian nation had not borne arms against the Romans, and even then, assaulted rather than themselves bringing on war, had surrendered into the protection of the Roman people, had been mangled and destroyed by every example of the utmost cruelty; that so many thousands of innocent persons, imploring the good faith of the Roman people, had been sold off by a most ruinous precedent — so that no one might ever after dare to surrender himself — and, scattered abroad, were now slaves to men who had once been the lawful enemies of the Roman people and were scarcely yet at peace. For these reasons it was the Senate’s pleasure that Marcus Popilius the consul, the price being returned to the buyers, should restore the Ligurians themselves to liberty, and should see that their goods, whatever of them could be recovered, were returned, the arms likewise returned; and that this be done at the very earliest moment, and that the consul not leave his province before he had restored the surrendered Ligurians to their own homes: a glorious victory was won by conquering those who fight, not by raging against the stricken.

The consul, with the same ferocity of spirit he had shown against the Ligurians, used the like in disobeying the Senate. Sending the legions at once into winter quarters at Pisae, angry with the fathers and bitter against the praetor, he returned to Rome; and, the Senate having been summoned at once to the temple of Bellona, he inveighed at length against the praetor, who, when he ought to have referred to the Senate that honor be paid to the immortal gods for a campaign well waged, had instead carried a decree of the Senate against him, on the enemy’s behalf, by which he transferred the consul’s victory to the Ligurians and the praetor all but bade the consul be handed over to them; he therefore laid a fine upon him, and demanded of the fathers that they order the decree passed against him to be annulled, and that they decree — in his presence — the supplication which in his absence they ought to have decreed from the dispatch sent about the commonwealth’s affairs well managed, for the sake first of the honor of the gods, and then with some regard, too, for himself. Rebuked in terms no milder than when he was absent, by the speeches of several senators, he returned to his province, neither request granted.

The other consul, Postumius, having spent the summer in surveying the lands — his own province not so much as seen — returned to Rome for the elections. He created as consuls Gaius Popilius Laenas and Publius Aelius Ligus. The praetors next made were Gaius Licinius Crassus, Marcus Junius Pennus, Spurius Lucretius, Spurius Cluvius, Gnaeus Sicinius, Gaius Memmius for the second time.

That year the lustrum was completed; the censors were Quintus Fulvius Flaccus and Aulus Postumius Albinus; Postumius completed it. There were registered of Roman citizens two hundred and sixty-nine thousand and fifteen heads — a somewhat smaller number, because Lucius Postumius the consul had proclaimed before an assembly that those of the allies of the Latin name who, under the edict of Gaius Claudius the consul, ought to have returned to their own communities should none of them be registered at Rome, but all in their own communities. The censorship was harmonious and to the public good. All whom they removed from the Senate, and from whom they took their horses, they made aerarii and moved into another tribe; nor did either colleague approve a man the other had marked. Fulvius dedicated the temple of Fortuna Equestris, which as proconsul he had vowed while fighting in Spain against the legions of the Celtiberians, six years after he had vowed it, and held scenic games for four days and one day in the circus.

Lucius Cornelius Lentulus, a decemvir of sacred rites, died that year. In his place Aulus Postumius Albinus was substituted. Such great clouds of locusts were suddenly carried in from the sea into Apulia that with their swarms they covered the fields far and wide. To remove this plague upon the crops, Gnaeus Sicinius, praetor-designate, was sent into Apulia with military command, and used up a good deal of time in driving together a huge host of men to gather them up.

The beginning of the following year, in which Gaius Popilius and Publius Aelius were consuls, took over the contentions left from the year before. The fathers wished a report to be made about the Ligurians and the decree of the Senate renewed, and the consul Aelius was making the report; but Popilius pleaded with both his colleague and the Senate on his brother’s behalf, openly declaring that, if they decreed anything, he would interpose his veto. He deterred his colleague; the fathers, the more incensed at both consuls alike, persisted in their undertaking. And so, when the matter of the provinces was being dealt with and Macedonia was being sought, the war with Perseus now impending, they decreed the Ligurians to both consuls; Macedonia, they declared, they would not decree unless a report were made about Marcus Popilius. When the consuls then asked that they be allowed to enroll new armies or a reinforcement for the old, both were refused. To the praetors too, asking for a reinforcement for Spain, it was refused — to Marcus Junius for the hither province, to Spurius Lucretius for the farther. Gaius Licinius Crassus had drawn by lot the urban jurisdiction, Gnaeus Sicinius that among foreigners, Gaius Memmius Sicily, Spurius Cluvius Sardinia. The consuls, angered at the Senate for these things, gave notice that, the Latin Festival being proclaimed for the earliest possible day, they would depart for their province, and would transact no public business except what pertained to the administration of the provinces.

Valerius Antias writes that Attalus, the brother of King Eumenes, came to Rome as an envoy in this consulship, to lay charges concerning Perseus and to disclose his preparations for war. The greater number of the annals — and those to which it is better to have given credence — record that Eumenes himself came. So Eumenes, when he came to Rome, received with as much honor as the Roman people thought due not to his deserts only but to its own benefactions as well — the vast ones that had been heaped upon him — was brought into the Senate. He said that the cause of his coming to Rome, beyond the desire of seeing the gods and the men by whose benefaction he stood in a fortune higher than he would even have dared to wish for, was also that he might warn the Senate face to face to go to meet the designs of Perseus. Beginning then from the plans of Philip, he recalled the murder of his son Demetrius, who had opposed war with Rome; that the nation of the Bastarnae had been stirred from their seats, on whose aid relying he meant to cross into Italy; that, while he was turning these things over in his mind, he had been cut off by fate and had left the kingdom to the man whom he had perceived to be most hostile to the Romans. And so Perseus, with the war left him by his father as an inheritance and handed down together with the throne, was even now, first of all, nursing and fostering it by every device. He flourished, besides, in young men — that stock which a long peace had bred — flourished in the resources of his kingdom, flourished too in his own age. While that was vigorous in the strength and force of body, his spirit was seasoned by long practice and use of war: from boyhood, in his father’s tent, he had been habituated to the wars of Rome as well, not those of his neighbors only, and had been sent by his father on many and various expeditions. And ever since he himself had received the kingdom, much that Philip, for all his trying, had been unable to bring about by force or guile, he had secured by a wondrous success of his affairs. There had been added to his strength that authority which is won over a long time by many and great services; for among the cities of Greece and Asia all revered his majesty. Nor could Eumenes discern for what services, for what munificence so much was granted him, nor say for certain whether it came about by some good fortune of his, or — what he himself feared to say — whether hatred against the Romans was winning him favor. Among the kings themselves, too, his weight was vast: he had married the daughter of Seleucus, not seeking her but sought of her own side; he had given his own sister to Prusias, who prayed and entreated for her; both marriages had been celebrated with the congratulation and gifts of countless embassies, and escorted, as it were, under the auspices of the noblest peoples. The nation of the Boeotians, courted by Philip, could never be brought to write a treaty of friendship; now in three places the treaty with Perseus stood cut in letters — one at Thebes, another at Delos in its most august and most frequented temple, a third at Delphi. And in the Achaean council, had not the matter been broken up by a few men who held the Roman power over their heads, it had been brought almost to the point that he should be granted admission into Achaia. But, by Hercules, his own honors — whether his services to that nation were greater privately or publicly could scarcely be told — were partly deserted through neglect and carelessness, partly torn down in enmity. And who did not know that the Aetolians, in their own factions, had sought protection not from the Romans but from Perseus? Propped on these alliances and friendships, he had such resources for war at home that he had no need of those from abroad. He had laid up grain for ten years for thirty thousand foot and five thousand horse, so that he might keep clear of both his own and the enemy’s land for the sake of foraging. He had now so much money that, besides the Macedonian forces, he had pay laid up for ten thousand mercenary soldiers for as many years, over and above the yearly revenue he drew from the royal mines. Into his arsenals he had heaped arms enough for three armies as great. And for young men — should Macedonia now fail him — Thrace lay subject, like a perennial spring from which to draw. The remainder of his speech was exhortation. "I do not bring these things to you, conscript fathers," he said, "tossed about on uncertain rumors and believed too eagerly because I wished the charges against my enemy to be true, but ascertained and explored, no otherwise than if, sent as your scout, I were reporting what I had set before my own eyes; nor, leaving my kingdom — which you made ample and glorious — would I have crossed so great a sea only to forfeit my credit with you by bringing you empty tales. I saw the noblest cities of Asia and Greece laying bare their preferences more day by day, and soon, if it were permitted, going on to a point from which they would have no retreat for repentance; I saw Perseus not keeping himself within the kingdom of Macedonia, seizing some places by arms, embracing others — those that could not be subdued by force — with favor and goodwill; I saw how unequal the case was, that he was preparing war against you while you afforded him an untroubled peace — though to me, indeed, he seemed not to be preparing war but all but waging it. Abrupolis, your ally and friend, he drove from his kingdom; Arthetaurus the Illyrian, your ally and friend likewise, he killed, because he had learned that certain things had been written by him to you; the Thebans Eversa and Callicritus, the chief men of their state, because they had spoken too freely against him in the council of the Boeotians and had professed that they would report to you what was being done, he had had taken off; he carried aid to the Byzantines against the treaty; he made war upon Dolopia; he overran Thessaly and Doris with an army, to crush the better party in a civil war by aid to the worse; he confounded and threw into confusion everything in Thessaly and Perrhaebia by the hope of new account-books, that, with the debtor class bound to him, he might overwhelm the aristocracy. When he has done these things while you sit quiet and patient, and sees that Greece has been granted to him by you, he holds it for certain that no one will meet him in arms before he has crossed into Italy. How safe or how honorable this is for you, you yourselves shall judge; for my own part, at least, I have counted it a disgrace that Perseus should come to bring war into Italy before I, your ally, came to forewarn you, that you might be on your guard. Having discharged a duty laid on me by necessity, and in a manner freed and unburdened my good faith, what more can I do than pray the gods and goddesses that you take thought for yourselves and for your commonwealth, and for us, your allies and friends, who hang upon you?" This speech moved the conscript fathers. But for the present no one could learn anything except that the king had been in the Senate house: in such silence was the house closed; only when the war was at last finished did what the king had said, and what answers had been given, come to light.

A few days later audience of the Senate was given to the envoys of King Perseus. But, the fathers’ ears, and no less their minds, being already preoccupied by King Eumenes, every defense and every plea of the envoys was spurned; and the excessive ferocity of Harpalus, who was the chief of the embassy, exasperated their tempers. He said that the king did indeed wish and strive that credit be given to him as he cleared himself of having said or done anything hostile; but that, if he saw the cause of war being sought too stubbornly, he would defend himself with a brave spirit. Mars, he said, was common to both, and the outcome of war uncertain.

All the states of Greece and Asia were anxious to know what the envoys of Perseus, what Eumenes, had done in the Senate; and on account of his coming — which they reckoned would set something in motion — most states had sent envoys bearing some other matter for a show. There was an embassy of the Rhodians too, whose chief was bound to follow this misguided course, in no doubt that Eumenes had joined his city as well to the charges against Perseus. And so by every means, through patrons and connections, he sought a place in the Senate to dispute with the king. When this had not fallen out, with intemperate freedom he inveighed against the king — that he had stirred up the Lycian nation against the Rhodians, and was heavier upon Asia than Antiochus had been — making a speech popular indeed and welcome to the peoples (for to this point too the favor of Perseus had now reached), but hateful to the Senate and useless to himself and his state. To Eumenes, by contrast, the conspiracy against him won favor among the Romans. So all honors were paid him and the most ample gifts given, with a curule chair and an ivory scepter.

The embassies dismissed, when Harpalus, having returned into Macedonia with the greatest speed he could, had reported to the king that he had left the Romans not yet indeed preparing war, but so hostile that it readily appeared they would not put it off — the king too, besides that he believed it would be so, now even wished it, deeming himself to be in the flower of his strength. Most hostile of all was he to Eumenes; and, beginning the war from his blood, he suborned Euander the Cretan, leader of the auxiliaries, and three Macedonians accustomed to the service of such deeds, for the murder of the king, and gave them letters to Praxo, his hostess, foremost in authority and wealth among the Delphians. It was well established that Eumenes would go up to Delphi to sacrifice to Apollo. Going ahead with Euander, the assassins sought nothing else toward the accomplishment of their undertaking than the convenience of the place, going round about everything. As men go up to the temple from Cirrha, before one reaches the parts crowded with buildings, there was on the left, beside the path, a wall projecting a little from its foundation, where men passed one at a time; on the right the ground had been broken away by a landslip to a considerable depth. Behind the wall they hid themselves, steps having been built up against it, so that from it, as from a rampart, they might hurl weapons at one passing by. At first the throng of friends and attendants poured around him as he advanced from the sea; then little by little the narrows thinned the column. When they came to the place where it had to be traversed one by one, the first to enter the path was Pantaleon, a chief of Aetolia, with whom the king had begun a conversation. Then the assassins, springing up, rolled down two huge stones, with one of which the king’s head was struck, with the other his shoulder; and, stunned, he tumbled from the path down the slope into the depth, while many stones besides were heaped upon him as he lay already fallen. And the rest, indeed, even of his friends and attendants, when they saw him fall, scattered in flight; Pantaleon alone stayed steadfast and undaunted to protect the king. The brigands, though by a short circuit of the wall they could have run down to finish off the wounded man, fled, as though the thing were done, to the ridge of Parnassus, at such a pace that, when one of them, scarcely able to follow over pathless and steep ground, was delaying their flight, they killed their comrade, lest from his capture information should leak out. To the king’s body first his friends, then his attendants and servants ran together. Lifting him, stunned by the wound and feeling nothing, they perceived nevertheless that he lived, from the warmth and the breath remaining in his breast; but there was slight, and almost no, hope that he would survive. Some of the attendants, following the brigands’ tracks, when they had toiled in vain as far as the ridge of Parnassus, returned with the business unfinished. The Macedonians, who had attempted the crime as boldly as they had undertaken it without forethought, abandoned it, once begun, without forethought and in fear. The king, now master of himself again, his friends carried down the next day to a ship; thence to Corinth, and from Corinth, the ships hauled across the ridge of the Isthmus, they crossed over to Aegina. There his treatment was so secret, none being admitted, that report carried him dead into Asia. Attalus too believed it more quickly than was worthy of brotherly concord; for he spoke both with his brother’s wife and with the commander of the citadel as though already an undoubted heir of the kingdom. These things did not afterward escape Eumenes; and although he had resolved to dissemble, and to keep them quiet, and to bear them, yet at their first meeting he did not refrain from casting in his brother’s teeth the unripe haste of seeking his wife. To Rome, too, the report of the death of Eumenes was carried.

About the same time Gaius Valerius returned from Greece, who had been sent as legate to view the state of that region and to spy out the designs of King Perseus, and reported everything in agreement with the charges brought by Eumenes; and he had also brought with him Praxo from Delphi, whose house had been the refuge of the brigands, and Lucius Rammius of Brundisium, who was the informer of such a piece of intelligence. Rammius was the leading man of Brundisium, and used to receive in hospitality all the Roman generals and legates, and the notable men of foreign nations too, especially the king’s. From this an acquaintance had grown up between him and the absent Perseus; and, with letters holding out to him the hope of a closer friendship and of great fortune from it, he set out to the king, and was soon held to be a close intimate and was drawn more than he wished into secret conversations. For, with the promise of vast rewards, the king began to ask of him that, since all the Roman generals and legates were accustomed to use his hospitality, he should see to the administering of poison to those of them to whom the king should write: he knew, the king said, that the preparation of it carried much difficulty and danger; it was prepared with several accomplices; and besides the outcome was uncertain, whether what was given would be effective enough to accomplish the deed or safe enough to be concealed. He himself would give what could be detected by no sign, neither in the giving nor when given. Rammius, fearing lest, if he refused, he himself should be the first trial of the poison, promised that he would do it, and set out. But he would not return to Brundisium before he had met Gaius Valerius the legate, who was said to be about Chalcis. To him the information was first laid, and by his order Rammius came to Rome with him. Brought into the Senate house, he set forth what had been done. These things, added to what had been laid by Eumenes, made Perseus the sooner adjudged an enemy, since they saw that he was not only preparing a lawful war in a kingly spirit, but creeping on through every secret villainy of brigandage and poisoning. The conduct of the war was put off to the new consuls; for the present, however, it was resolved that Gnaeus Sicinius the praetor, whose jurisdiction was between citizens and foreigners, should enroll soldiers, who, led to Brundisium, should at the earliest moment be carried across to Apollonia in Epirus, to seize the maritime cities, where the consul to whom Macedonia should fall as his province might bring his fleet to land in safety and disembark his forces at convenience. Eumenes, detained for some while at Aegina in a perilous and difficult cure, when first he safely could, set out for Pergamum, and — besides his old hatred, with Perseus’s recent crime too goading him — was preparing war with the utmost vigor. Legates came to him from Rome to congratulate him on having escaped from so great a peril.

Since the Macedonian war had been deferred to the next year, the other praetors having already set out for their provinces, Marcus Junius and Spurius Lucretius, to whom the provinces of Spain had fallen, wearying the Senate by often asking the same thing, at last prevailed that a reinforcement be given them for their army: they were ordered to enroll three thousand foot and a hundred and fifty horse for the Roman legions, and to requisition from the allies five thousand foot and three hundred horse for the allied army. This force was carried over into the Spains with the new praetors.

In the same year, because through the survey of Postumius the consul a great part of the Campanian land, which private persons had held here and there without distinction, had been recovered into public ownership, Marcus Lucretius, tribune of the plebs, promulgated a bill that the censors should let out the Campanian land to be farmed — a thing which had not been done in all the years since the capture of Capua, so that the greed of private persons ranged over it unchecked. While the Senate was in expectation of the war, decreed though not yet declared, there came to Rome envoys of those kings who would follow the friendship — of the Roman people, and of Perseus — the envoys of Ariarathes, bringing with them the king’s young son. Their speech was that the king had sent his son to Rome to be brought up, that he might from boyhood be habituated to Roman manners and men; and they asked that they would have him be not only under the guardianship of private hosts, but also under the public care and, as it were, tutelage. This embassy was exceedingly welcome to the Senate; they decreed that Gnaeus Sicinius the praetor should hire a furnished house, where the king’s son and his companions might dwell. And to the envoys of the Thracians — the Maedi and the Astii — seeking alliance and friendship, both what they sought was granted and gifts to the sum of two thousand asses apiece were sent. They rejoiced that these peoples in particular had been taken into alliance, because Thrace lay at the back of Macedonia. But, that everything in Asia and the islands too might be explored, they sent Tiberius Claudius Nero and Marcus Decimius as legates. They ordered them to go to Crete and Rhodes, at once to renew friendship and at once to spy out whether the minds of the allies had been tampered with by King Perseus.

The state being in suspense in expectation of the new war, in a nocturnal storm the beaked column on the Capitol — set up in the Punic war by the consul whose colleague was Servius Fulvius — was shattered by lightning all the way down to its base. The thing was held in the place of a prodigy and referred to the Senate; the fathers ordered both that it be referred to the haruspices and that the decemvirs consult the books. The decemvirs reported that the town should be purified, a supplication and entreaty held, sacrifice made with full-grown victims both on the Capitol at Rome and in Campania at the promontory of Minerva; and that games be held to Jupiter Best and Greatest for ten days at the earliest possible day. All these things were done with care. The haruspices answered that the prodigy would turn out for good, and that an extension of the borders and the destruction of the enemy were portended, because those beaks which the storm had scattered had been spoils taken from the enemy. There were added things to heap up the religious scruples in men’s minds. It had been reported that at Saturnia it had rained blood in the town for three days; that at Calatia a three-footed ass had been born, and a bull with five cows killed by a single stroke of lightning; that at Auximum it had rained earth. For these prodigies too divine rites were performed, and a supplication of one day and holy days were held.

The consuls up to this time had not gone out to their province, because they would not comply with the Senate in making a report about Marcus Popilius, and the fathers had resolved to decree nothing else first. Popilius’s unpopularity was increased, too, by his own letter, in which he wrote that he had fought a second time, as proconsul, with the Statellate Ligurians, and had killed six thousand of them; through the injustice of which war the other Ligurian peoples as well went to arms. Then indeed not only Popilius in his absence — who had made war on men surrendered, against right and against divine law, and had incited the pacified to renew the war — but the consuls too, because they would not go out to their province, were upbraided in the Senate. Fired by this agreement of the fathers, Marcus Marcius Sermo and Quintus Marcius Scylla, tribunes of the plebs, gave notice that they would lay a fine upon the consuls unless they went out to their province, and read out in the Senate the bill which they had it in mind to promulgate about the surrendered Ligurians. It was provided that, whoever of the surrendered Statellates had not been restored to liberty before the next Kalends of Sextilis, the Senate, under oath, should decree who should investigate and punish the man through whose malicious fraud he had come into slavery. Then, by authority of the Senate, they promulgated that bill. Before the consuls set out, an audience of the Senate was given to Gaius Cicereius, the praetor of the year before, at the temple of Bellona. Having set forth the things he had done in Corsica, and having asked in vain for a triumph, he triumphed on the Alban Mount — which had now grown into a custom, that it be done without public authority. The Marcian bill about the Ligurians the plebs passed and ordered with great agreement. On the strength of that plebiscite Gaius Licinius the praetor consulted the Senate whom they wished to conduct the investigation under that bill. The fathers ordered that he himself conduct it. Then at last the consuls set out for their province and took over the army from Marcus Popilius. Nor, however, did Marcus Popilius dare to return to Rome, lest he plead his cause before an adverse Senate, a still more hostile people, and a praetor who had consulted the Senate about the investigation laid upon himself. Against this evasion of his the tribunes of the plebs met him with notice of another bill: that, if he had not entered the city of Rome before the Ides of November, Gaius Licinius should decide and pass judgment concerning him in his absence. Drawn back by this chain, when he had returned, he came into the Senate amid enormous unpopularity. There, when he had been torn at by the wranglings of many, a decree of the Senate was passed that, as for those of the Ligurians who had not been enemies since the consulship of Quintus Fulvius and Lucius Manlius, Gaius Licinius and Gnaeus Sicinius the praetors should see to restoring them to liberty, and that Gaius Popilius the consul should give them land across the Padus. By this decree of the Senate many thousands of men were restored to liberty, and, led across the Padus, land was assigned them. Marcus Popilius pleaded his cause twice before Gaius Licinius under the Marcian bill; the third time the praetor, won over by favor toward the absent consul and the prayers of the Popilian family, ordered the defendant to appear on the Ides of March, the day on which the new magistrates were to enter upon their office — so that he might not administer justice who would be a private citizen. Thus the bill about the Ligurians was eluded by a crafty trick.

At that time Carthaginian envoys were at Rome, and Gulussa, the son of Masinissa. Between them there were great contentions in the Senate. The Carthaginians complained that, besides the land about which envoys had earlier been sent from Rome to examine the matter on the spot, Masinissa had in the last two years seized by force and arms more than seventy towns and strongholds of Carthaginian territory: that was easy for him, to whom nothing was a scruple. The Carthaginians, bound by the treaty, kept silence; for they were forbidden to carry arms beyond their borders; and although they knew that, if they drove the Numidians out, they would be waging war within their own borders, they were deterred by that unambiguous clause of the treaty by which they were expressly forbidden to wage war with the allies of the Roman people. But now the Carthaginians could no longer endure his arrogance, cruelty, and greed. They had been sent to beg the Senate to suffer one of three things to be obtained from them: either that they should arbitrate, on equal terms between ally and people, what belonged to each; or that they should permit the Carthaginians to protect themselves against unjust arms by a righteous and lawful war; or, at the last, if favor weighed more with them than truth, that they should once for all determine what they wished to be given to Masinissa out of others’ property. More modestly, at any rate, would they give it, and would know what they had given; whereas he would set no limit save the caprice of his own lust. If they obtained none of these things, and if any fault of their own had been committed since the peace granted by Publius Scipio, let the Romans rather themselves punish them. They preferred a safe servitude under Roman masters to a liberty exposed to the injuries of Masinissa; in short, it was better for them to perish once for all than to draw their breath at the caprice of a most cruel executioner. Under these words they fell prostrate weeping, and, stretched upon the ground, stirred up no more pity for themselves than ill-will against the king. It was resolved to ask Gulussa what he answered to these things, or, if he preferred first, to disclose on what matter he had come to Rome. Gulussa said that it was not easy for him to treat of matters on which he had no instruction from his father, nor had it been easy for his father to instruct him, since the Carthaginians had disclosed neither on what matter they would treat, nor that they would come to Rome at all: in the temple of Aesculapius their leading men had held secret counsel for several nights, whence besides envoys were being sent to Rome with hidden instructions. That had been the reason for his father’s sending him to Rome — to entreat the Senate not to believe anything against him at the charges of their common enemies, who hated him for no other cause than his constant fidelity toward the Roman people. Both sides having been heard, the Senate, consulted about the demands of the Carthaginians, ordered the answer to be made thus: that it pleased them Gulussa should set out at once for Numidia and announce to his father that he should send envoys to the Senate as soon as possible about the things the Carthaginians complained of, and should give notice to the Carthaginians to come to plead the matter; that they had done, and would do, the other things they could for the honor of Masinissa, but would not grant favor at the cost of justice. They wished each man’s land to be held by whoever owned it, and had it in mind not to set new boundaries but to observe the old. They had granted the conquered Carthaginians their city and their lands, not that in peace they might wrongfully snatch away by injury what they had not taken by the law of war. So the prince and the Carthaginians were dismissed, the customary gifts given to both and the other courtesies of hospitality kindly maintained.

About the same time Gnaeus Servilius Caepio, Appius Claudius Centho, and Titus Annius Luscus, legates sent into Macedonia to demand restitution and to renounce friendship with the king, returned, and further inflamed a Senate already of itself hostile to Perseus by relating in order what they had seen and heard: they had seen war being prepared with the utmost vigor throughout all the cities of the Macedonians. When they had come to the king, for many days no opportunity of meeting him was granted; at last, when, despairing now of a conference, they had set out, then at length they were recalled from their journey and brought before him. The sum of their speech had been: that a treaty had been struck with Philip, and renewed with himself after his father’s death, in which he was expressly forbidden to carry arms beyond his borders, forbidden to provoke the allies of the Roman people by war. They had then set forth in order what they themselves had lately heard Eumenes report in the Senate, all of it true and ascertained. Moreover, at Samothrace, for many days, the king had held secret counsel with the embassies of the cities of Asia. For these injuries the Senate thought it fair that satisfaction be made, and that the things he held against the right of the treaty be restored to itself and its allies. The king, at first inflamed with anger, had spoken without restraint, charging the Romans with greed and arrogance and chafing that legate after legate came to spy out his words and deeds, and that they thought it fair he should say and do everything at their nod and command; at last, after much and long outcry, he had bidden them return the next day: he wished, he said, to give his answer in writing. Then this writing had been delivered to them: that the treaty struck with his father concerned him in nothing; he had renewed it, not because he approved it, but because, in the new possession of a kingdom, all things had to be endured. If they wished to make a new treaty with him, they ought first to agree upon the terms; if they could bring themselves to make a treaty on equal terms, he too would see what he ought to do, and they might trust that he would take counsel for his commonwealth. And so he had torn himself away, and they had all begun to be cleared from the palace. Then they had renounced friendship and alliance. At this word he, inflamed, had stood still and with a clear voice given them notice to depart within three days from the borders of his kingdom. So they had set out, and nothing hospitable or kindly had been done to them, either as they came or as they stayed. The Thessalian and Aetolian envoys were then heard.

It pleased the Senate, that they might know as soon as possible under what leaders the commonwealth would be served, that a letter be sent to the consuls, that whichever of them could should come to Rome to create the magistrates. The consuls had done nothing that year greatly worth the recording for the commonwealth. It had seemed more to the public good that the exasperated Ligurians be checked and quieted.

While the Macedonian war was awaited, the envoys of the Issaeans made Gentius too, king of the Illyrians, suspected, complaining at once that he had laid waste their borders, and announcing at once that the king of the Macedonians and the king of the Illyrians lived of one mind, were preparing war against the Romans by common counsel, and that Illyrian spies were at Rome under the appearance of envoys, sent on Perseus’s prompting to learn what was being done. The Illyrians were called into the Senate. When they said that they had been sent as envoys by the king to clear away the charges, should the Issaeans bring any against him, it was asked why then they had not approached the magistrate, so as to receive lodging and entertainment by custom, and so that it might at least be known that they had come, and on what matter they had come. When they hesitated in their answer, they were told to leave the Senate house; and it was resolved that no answer be given them as envoys, since they had not asked to approach the Senate; and they decreed that legates be sent to the king, to announce what the allies complained of: that the Senate judged he was not acting fairly, in not keeping his hand from injury against his own allies. Sent on this embassy were Aulus Terentius Varro, Gaius Plaetorius, and Gaius Cicereius.

From Asia the legates who had been sent round among the allied kings returned, and reported that they had met Eumenes in his own land, Antiochus in Syria, Ptolemy at Alexandria; that all had been solicited by embassies of Perseus, but remained signally faithful, and had promised that they would perform whatever the Roman people should command. They had approached the allied cities too: the rest they had found faithful enough; the Rhodians alone they had found wavering and imbued with the counsels of Perseus. Rhodian envoys had come to clear away the things they knew were commonly bandied about concerning their state; but it was resolved that audience should not be given them before the new consuls had entered upon their magistracy.

They resolved that the preparation for war should not be put off. To Gaius Licinius the praetor the business was given that, out of the old quinqueremes laid up in the docks at Rome, he should repair and make ready fifty ships of those that could be of use. If anything were lacking to fill out that number, he should write to his colleague Gaius Memmius in Sicily to repair and equip such ships as were in Sicily, that they might be sent to Brundisium at the earliest moment. Gaius Licinius the praetor was ordered to enroll, as marines of the freedman order, for twenty-five ships from among Roman citizens; for the other twenty-five Gnaeus Sicinius was to requisition an equal number from the allies; the same praetor was to exact eight thousand foot and four hundred horse from the allies of the Latin name. To receive this soldiery at Brundisium and send it into Macedonia, Aulus Atilius Serranus, who had been praetor the year before, was chosen. That Gnaeus Sicinius the praetor might have an army ready to cross, Gaius Licinius the praetor, by authority of the Senate, wrote to Gaius Popilius the consul to order both the second legion — the most veteran one, which was in Liguria — and four thousand foot of the allies of the Latin name, with two hundred horse, to be at Brundisium on the Ides of February. With this fleet and this army Gnaeus Sicinius was ordered to hold the province of Macedonia until a successor should come, his command prorogued for a year. All these things which the Senate had resolved were done with energy. Thirty-eight quinqueremes were drawn down out of the docks; to draw them down to Brundisium, Lucius Porcius Licinus was put in charge; twelve were sent from Sicily. To buy up grain for the fleet and the army three legates were sent into Apulia and Calabria: Sextus Digitius, Titus Juventius, Marcus Caecilius. Everything being made ready, Gnaeus Sicinius the praetor, in his general’s cloak, set out from the city and came to Brundisium.

Near the end of the year Gaius Popilius the consul returned to Rome, somewhat later than the Senate had resolved, which had judged it for the public good that the magistrates be created at the earliest moment, since so great a war was impending. And so the consul was heard with no favoring ears by the fathers, when he discoursed at the temple of Bellona about the things done in Liguria. There were frequent shouts of protest and questions, why he had not restored to liberty the Ligurians crushed by his brother’s crime. The consular elections were held on the day for which they had been proclaimed, the twelfth day before the Kalends of March. Created consuls were Publius Licinius Crassus and Gaius Cassius Longinus. The next day the praetors were made: Gaius Sulpicius Galba, Lucius Furius Philus, Lucius Canuleius Dives, Gaius Lucretius Gallus, Gaius Caninius Rebilus, Lucius Villius Annalis. To these praetors provinces were decreed, two for the administration of justice at Rome, and Spain and Sicily and Sardinia, so that one might have his lot free, for wherever the Senate should resolve. The consuls-designate were enjoined by the Senate that, on the day they entered upon their magistracy, having duly slain full-grown victims, they should pray that the war which the Roman people had it in mind to wage might turn out prosperously. On the same day the Senate decreed that Gaius Popilius the consul should vow that games be held to Jupiter Best and Greatest for ten days, and gifts given at all the couches of the gods, if the commonwealth should have remained for ten years in the same state. So, as they had resolved, on the Capitol the consul vowed that the games should be held and the gifts given, of as much money as the Senate should determine, with no fewer than a hundred and fifty present. Lepidus the pontifex maximus leading the words, that vow was undertaken.

That year the public priests died: Lucius Aemilius Papus, decemvir of sacred rites, and Quintus Fulvius Flaccus, pontifex, who the year before had been censor. He perished by a foul death. Of his two sons, who were then serving in Illyricum, it was reported that one had died, the other was sick with a grave and dangerous illness. Grief and fear together overwhelmed his mind; in the morning the slaves, entering his bedchamber, found him hanging by a noose. There was an opinion that after his censorship he had been less master of himself; it was commonly said that the anger of Juno Lacinia, for the stripping of her temple, had estranged his mind. In the place of Aemilius, Marcus Valerius Messala was chosen decemvir; in that of Fulvius, Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, a very young man, was chosen pontifex.

In the consulship of Publius Licinius and Gaius Cassius, not the city of Rome only, nor the land of Italy, but all the kings and states, those in Europe and those in Asia, had turned their minds to thought of the Macedonian and Roman war. Eumenes was goaded by an old hatred, and now too by a fresh anger, in that by the king’s crime he had been all but slaughtered like a victim at Delphi. Prusias, king of Bithynia, had resolved to keep clear of arms and quietly await the outcome: for he thought the Romans could not deem it fair that he bear arms against his wife’s brother, and that with Perseus, should he conquer, pardon would be obtainable through his sister. Ariarathes, king of the Cappadocians, besides that he had promised the Romans auxiliaries in his own name, had, ever since he was joined to Eumenes by marriage-kinship, associated himself in all counsels of war and peace. Antiochus was indeed hanging over the kingdom of Egypt, scorning the boyhood of its king and the sloth of his guardians, and reckoned that, by disputing over Coele Syria, he would have a cause of war and would wage it without any hindrance, the Romans being occupied in the Macedonian war; yet for that war he had promised everything earnestly, both through his own legates to the Senate, and in his own person to their legates. Ptolemy, on account of his age, was even then under another’s control; his guardians were both preparing war against Antiochus, to reclaim Coele Syria, and promising the Romans everything for the Macedonian war. Masinissa both aided the Romans with grain and was preparing to send auxiliaries, with elephants and his son Misagenes, to the war; but he had his counsels so disposed for every fortune: if victory should be on the Romans’ side, his own affairs too would remain in the same state, nor was anything further to be set in motion, for the Romans would not suffer violence to be done to the Carthaginians; but if the power of the Romans were broken, which then protected the Carthaginians, all Africa would be his. Gentius, king of the Illyrians, had done more to make himself suspect to the Romans than he had settled which side to favor, and seemed likely to attach himself to these or to those by impulse rather than by counsel. Cotys the Thracian, king of the Odrysae, was already of the Macedonian party. Such was the kings’ mind concerning the war; but among the free nations and peoples the commons everywhere, almost as is its wont, were of the worse part, inclined toward the king and the Macedonians; of the leading men one could discern divided zeals. Some were so poured out toward the Romans that by immoderate favor they spoiled their own credit; a few of these were caught by the justice of the Roman rule, the more part reckoning that, if they did especial service, they would be powerful in their own states. The other party was of royal flattery, men whom debt and despair of their own fortunes, should the same state of things remain, drove headlong to overturn everything; some others of a wind-blown disposition, because Perseus was more the man of the popular breeze. A third part, the best and likewise the most prudent, if absolutely the choice of a stronger master must be given, preferred to be under the Romans than under the king; but if free judgment of fortune were left, they wished neither party to be made more powerful by the crushing of the other, but rather, the strength of both parties unimpaired, that peace should endure on equal terms: thus, between the two, the condition of the cities would be best, the one always protecting the needy from the injury of the other. So minded, they watched in silence, and from safety, the contests of the partisans of either side.

The consuls, on the day they entered upon their magistracy, when, by decree of the Senate, they had sacrificed with full-grown victims at all the shrines where the lectisternium is wont to be for the greater part of the year, then, taking it as an omen that their prayers were accepted by the immortal gods, reported to the Senate that sacrifice had been duly made and the prayer concerning the war performed. The haruspices answered thus: if anything new were begun, it must be hastened; victory, triumph, and an extension of the borders were portended. The fathers ordered the consuls, for what should be auspicious and fortunate for the Roman people, to bring before the people in the centuriate comitia, at the earliest day, that — whereas Perseus, son of Philip, king of the Macedonians, against the treaty struck with his father Philip and renewed with himself after his death, had borne arms against the allies of the Roman people, had laid waste their lands and seized their cities, and whereas he had entered upon counsels of preparing war against the Roman people, and had got ready arms, soldiers, and a fleet to that end — war should be begun with him, unless he had made satisfaction in these matters. This proposal was brought before the people. A decree of the Senate was then made that the consuls should arrange between themselves, or settle by lot, the provinces of Italy and Macedonia; that he to whom Macedonia should fall should pursue with war King Perseus and those who had followed his party, unless they made satisfaction to the Roman people. It was resolved that four new legions be enrolled, two for each consul. This was given as a special mark to the province of Macedonia: that, whereas to the legions of the one consul were given, by the old institution, five thousand two hundred foot to each legion, for Macedonia six thousand foot were ordered to be enrolled, with three hundred horse equally to each legion. In the allied army too the number was increased for the one consul: sixteen thousand foot and eight hundred horse he was to carry over into Macedonia, besides those whom Gnaeus Sicinius had led, six hundred horse. For Italy twelve thousand allied foot and six hundred horse seemed enough. This too was given as a special mark to the lot of Macedonia: that the consul might enroll what veteran centurions and soldiers he wished, up to fifty years of age. In the matter of the military tribunes a novelty was introduced that year on account of the Macedonian war, in that the consuls, by decree of the Senate, brought before the people that the military tribunes should not that year be created by the votes, but that the judgment and discretion in making them should rest with the consuls and praetors. Among the praetors the commands were thus apportioned: it was resolved that the praetor whose lot it was to go where the Senate should determine should go to Brundisium to the fleet, and there review the marines, and, dismissing any who were too unfit, levy a reinforcement from the freedmen, and take care that two parts should be of Roman citizens, the third of allies. Provisions for the fleet and the legions, it was resolved, should be brought up from Sicily and Sardinia, and the business was given to the praetors who had drawn those provinces to demand a second tithe from the Sicilians and Sardinians — grain to be carried to the army in Macedonia. Sicily fell by lot to Gaius Caninius Rebilus, Sardinia to Lucius Furius Philus, Spain to Lucius Canuleius, the urban jurisdiction to Gaius Sulpicius Galba, that among foreigners to Lucius Villius Annalis; to Gaius Lucretius Gallus fell the lot, wherever the Senate should determine.

Between the consuls there was banter rather than a great contention about the province. Cassius said that he would choose Macedonia without lot, and that his colleague could not, with his oath unbroken, draw lots with him: for as praetor he had sworn before an assembly, that he might not go to his province, that he held sacrifices in a fixed place and on fixed days, which could not rightly be performed in his absence; and these could no more rightly be performed with the consul absent than with the praetor absent. If the Senate thought regard should be had — not to what Publius Licinius wished in his consulship rather than to what he had sworn in his praetorship — he would, nevertheless, abide by the Senate’s pleasure. The fathers, consulted, judging it arrogant that a province should be refused by themselves to a man to whom the Roman people had not refused the consulship, ordered the consuls to draw lots. To Publius Licinius fell Macedonia, to Gaius Cassius Italy. Then they drew lots for the legions; the first and third were to be carried over into Macedonia, the second and fourth to remain in Italy.

The consuls held the levy with far more intent care than at other times. Licinius enrolled veteran soldiers and centurions too; and many gave in their names of their own will, because they saw rich those who had served in the former Macedonian war or against Antiochus in Asia. When the military tribunes summoned the centurions — and the foremost man first — twenty-three centurions who had led the first centuries, being summoned, appealed to the tribunes of the plebs. Two of the college, Marcus Fulvius Nobilior and Marcus Claudius Marcellus, would have referred the matter to the consuls: the cognizance ought to be theirs, to whom the levy and the war had been entrusted; the rest said that they would take cognizance of the matter on which they had been appealed to, and, if any wrong were done, would bring aid to the citizens.

The matter was being conducted at the benches of the tribunes; thither came Marcus Popilius, a man of consular rank, advocate of the centurions, and the centurions, and the consul. When the consul then demanded that the matter be conducted before a public assembly, the people were called into assembly. On behalf of the centurions Marcus Popilius, who two years before had been consul, spoke thus: that military men had served their lawful campaigns, and had bodies worn out both by age and by continual toils; yet they refused nothing, that they might give their service to the commonwealth; they begged only this, that ranks lower than those they had held when they served be not assigned them. Publius Licinius the consul ordered the decrees of the Senate to be read out: first the one by which the Senate had ordered war against Perseus, then the one by which it had resolved that as many veteran centurions as possible be enrolled for that war, and that no one not above fifty years of age have exemption from military service. He then begged that, in a new war so near to Italy, against a most powerful king, they neither hinder the military tribunes holding the levy, nor prevent the consul from assigning to each the rank which was to the public good. If there were any doubt in the matter, let them refer it to the Senate.

After the consul had said what he wished, Spurius Ligustinus, of the number of those who had appealed to the tribunes, asked of the consul and the tribunes leave to speak a few words to the people. With the leave of all, he is reported to have spoken thus: "Spurius Ligustinus, of the tribe Crustumina, am I, sprung from the Sabines, Quirites. My father left me a iugerum of land and the little hut in which I was born and reared; and to this day I dwell there. As soon as I came of age, my father gave me to wife the daughter of his brother, who brought with her nothing but her free birth and her chastity, and, along with these, a fruitfulness such as would be enough even in a wealthy house. We have six sons, and two daughters, both already married. Four of the sons wear the gown of manhood, two the bordered toga. I was made a soldier in the consulship of Publius Sulpicius and Gaius Aurelius. In that army which was carried over into Macedonia I served two years as a common soldier against King Philip; in the third year, for my valor, Titus Quinctius Flamininus assigned me the tenth maniple of the hastati. Philip and the Macedonians overcome, when we had been brought back to Italy and discharged, at once I set out a volunteer soldier with Marcus Porcius the consul into Spain. Of all the commanders now living none — they know it who have tried both him and other leaders in long service — was a keener watcher and judge of valor. This general judged me worthy to be assigned the first century of the hastati. A third time I became a volunteer soldier, in that army which was sent against the Aetolians and King Antiochus. By Manius Acilius I was assigned the first century of the principes. King Antiochus driven out, the Aetolians subdued, we were brought back to Italy; and thereafter twice I served the campaigns that the legions earn in a single year. Then twice I soldiered in Spain, once when Quintus Fulvius Flaccus, again when Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus, was praetor. By Flaccus I was brought home, among the others whom for their valor he was bringing with him from the province to his triumph; at the request of Tiberius Gracchus I went into the province. Four times within a few years I led the first century; four-and-thirty times was I rewarded for valor by my commanders; six civic crowns I have received. I have completed twenty-two yearly campaigns in the army, and I am more than fifty years old. Yet even had I not served all my campaigns, and did my age not yet give me exemption, still, since I could give you four soldiers in my one place, Publius Licinius, it were fair that I be discharged. But I would have you take these things as said for my cause: for myself, so long as anyone who enrolls armies shall judge me a fit soldier, I will never excuse myself. In what rank the military tribunes judge me worthy, that lies in their own power; that no man in the army surpass me in valor I will take care, and that I have always done so my commanders and those who have served along with me are witnesses. And it is fair too, fellow soldiers, that you — though by your appeal you exercise a right — since as young men you never anywhere did anything against the authority of the magistrates and the Senate, now also be in the power of the Senate and the consuls, and reckon every post honorable in which you shall defend the commonwealth." When he had said this, Publius Licinius the consul, having praised him at length, led him from the assembly into the Senate. There too, by authority of the Senate, thanks were given him, and the military tribunes, for his valor, assigned him in the first legion the first century. The other centurions, their appeal withdrawn, answered obediently to the levy.

That the magistrates might set out the sooner for their provinces, the Latin Festival was held on the Kalends of June; and that solemnity finished, Gaius Lucretius the praetor, having sent ahead everything that was needed for the fleet, set out for Brundisium. Besides the armies which the consuls were getting ready, the business was given to Gaius Sulpicius Galba the praetor to enroll four city legions of the regular number of foot and horse, and to choose from the Senate four military tribunes to command them; and to requisition from the allies of the Latin name fifteen thousand foot and twelve hundred horse: this army to be ready for wherever the Senate should determine. To Publius Licinius the consul, at his request, there were added to the citizen and allied army auxiliaries — two thousand Ligurians, Cretan archers (the number uncertain, however many the Cretans on being asked had sent), and Numidian horsemen likewise, and elephants. For this matter legates were sent to Masinissa and the Carthaginians: Lucius Postumius Albinus, Quintus Terentius Culleo, Gaius Aburius. Into Crete too it was resolved that three legates should go: Aulus Postumius Albinus, Gaius Decimius, Aulus Licinius Nerva.

About the same time envoys came from King Perseus. It was resolved not to admit them into the town, since war had now been decreed by the Senate, and ordered by the people, against their king and the Macedonians. Brought into the Senate at the temple of Bellona, they spoke thus: that King Perseus wondered why armies had been carried over into Macedonia; if it could be obtained from the Senate that these be recalled, the king would make satisfaction, at the Senate’s arbitration, for whatever injuries they complained had been done to the allies. Spurius Carvilius, sent back from Greece for this very matter by Gnaeus Sicinius, was in the Senate. When he charged that Perrhaebia had been stormed by arms, several cities of Thessaly taken, and the other things the king was either doing or preparing, the envoys were bidden to answer to these. When they hesitated, saying that nothing further had been entrusted to them, they were ordered to report to the king that the consul Publius Licinius would shortly be in Macedonia with an army: to him, if it were in his mind to make satisfaction, let him send envoys; to Rome he need send no more — none of them would be permitted to go through Italy. So dismissed, the charge was given to Publius Licinius the consul that he should bid them quit Italy within eleven days, and should send Spurius Carvilius to guard them until they had embarked. These things were done at Rome before the consuls had set out for their province.

Already Gnaeus Sicinius, who, before he laid down his magistracy, had been sent ahead to Brundisium to the fleet and the army, having carried over into Epirus five thousand foot and three hundred horse, was encamped at Nymphaeum in the territory of Apollonia. From there he sent tribunes with two thousand soldiers to seize the strongholds of the Dassaretii and the Illyrians, the people themselves calling for garrisons, that they might be the safer from the onset of their neighbors the Macedonians.

A few days later Quintus Marcius, Aulus Atilius, Publius and Servius Cornelius Lentulus, and Lucius Decimius, legates sent into Greece, brought with them to Corcyra a thousand foot; there they divided among themselves both the regions they were to go round and the soldiers. Decimius was sent to Gentius, king of the Illyrians, with orders, if he perceived him to have any regard for the friendship, to try whether he might lure him even into a partnership in the war. The Lentuli were sent into Cephallania, to cross over into the Peloponnese and go round, before winter, the coast that faces west. To Marcius and Atilius were assigned Epirus, Aetolia, and Thessaly to go round; thence they were ordered to look upon Boeotia and Euboea, then to cross into the Peloponnese; there they appointed to meet with the Lentuli. Before they parted from Corcyra, a letter was brought from Perseus, in which he asked what cause the Romans had either for carrying their forces over into Greece or for seizing cities. It was resolved not to write back to him, but to tell his own messenger, who had brought the letter, that the Romans were doing it for the protection of the cities themselves. The Lentuli, going round the towns of the Peloponnese, while they exhorted all the cities without distinction to aid against Perseus with the same spirit, the same loyalty, with which they had aided the Romans first in the war of Philip, then in that of Antiochus, heard a murmuring in the assemblies, the Achaeans being indignant that they were held in the same place as the Messenians and Eleans — they who from the beginnings of the Macedonian war had rendered the Romans every service and had been the enemies of Philip the Macedonian, set level with those who had borne arms for Antiochus the enemy against the Roman people; while the Messenians and Eleans, lately incorporated into the Achaean council, complained that they were being handed over, as it were a prize of war, to the victorious Achaeans.

Marcius and Atilius, when they had landed at Gitana, a town of Epirus ten miles from the sea, a council of the Epirotes being held, were heard with great assent of all, and sent four hundred of their young men into the country of the Orestae, to be a garrison to the Macedonians freed by the Senate. Thence advancing into Aetolia, and tarrying there a few days while another was substituted in the place of the praetor who had died, and Lyciscus — whom they had ascertained well enough to favor the Roman cause — being made praetor, they crossed into Thessaly. Thither came Acarnanian envoys and Boeotian exiles. The Acarnanians were bidden to report that the opportunity had been offered them of amending the things they had committed against the Roman people — first in the war of Philip, then in that of Antiochus, deceived by the kings’ promises; if, having deserved ill, they had experienced the clemency of the Roman people, let them by deserving well make trial of its liberality. To the Boeotians it was cast up that they had joined an alliance with Perseus. When they laid the fault upon Ismenias, the leader of the other party, and said that certain cities had been led into the cause against their will, Marcius answered that this would be made to appear: for they would give the several cities the power of taking counsel each about itself. The Thessalians’ council was at Larisa; there both the Thessalians had kindly matter for giving thanks to the Romans for the gift of liberty, and the legates likewise, because the nation of the Thessalians had earnestly aided them, first in Philip’s war and afterward in that of Antiochus. By this mutual recalling of services the minds of the multitude were kindled to decree everything the Romans wished.

After this council, envoys came from King Perseus, relying chiefly on the private tie of hospitality, since his father’s connection with Marcius was a paternal one. Beginning from the mention of this bond, the envoys asked that he grant the king the opportunity of coming to a conference. Marcius said both that he had so received it from his own father, that there had been friendship and hospitality with Philip, and that, by no means unmindful of that tie, he had undertaken this embassy; a conference, if his health were tolerable enough, he would not have put off; now, as soon as he could, he would come to the river Peneus, where the crossing from Homolium to Dium lay, having sent ahead men to announce it to the king. And then indeed Perseus withdrew from Dium into the interior of his kingdom, a light breath of hope set before him, because Marcius had said that he had undertaken the embassy for his sake; after a few days they came to the appointed place. The king’s retinue was great, with a throng both of friends and of attendants crowding about him. With no smaller train the legates came, escorted by many from Larisa and by embassies of the cities which had gathered at Larisa and wished to report home for certain what they had heard. There was in them that care inborn in mortals, to see the noble king and the legates of the people foremost of all the earth meeting together. As they stood in sight of one another, the river dividing them, there was for a little while hesitation, through messages going to and fro, which of the two should cross. The one party thought something owed to the royal majesty, the other something to the name of the Roman people, especially since Perseus had sought the conference. Marcius even by a jest moved the hesitating. "Let the lesser," he said, "cross to the greater, and" — for this was Philip’s own surname — "the son to the father." This was easily made to persuade the king. Then another thing was in doubt, with how many he should cross. The king thought it fair to cross with his whole retinue; the legates bade him come either with three, or, if he would lead so great a train across, to give hostages that there would be no treachery in the conference. He gave as hostages Hippias and Pantauchus, the chief of his friends, whom he had also sent as envoys. Nor were the hostages demanded so much as a pledge of good faith, as that it might appear to the allies that the king by no means met the legates on terms of equal dignity. The greeting was not as of enemies, but hospitable and kindly, and, seats being set, they sat down.

When there had been silence for a little, "I suppose," said Marcius, "you expect us to answer the letter you sent to Corcyra, in which you ask why we, legates, have come with soldiers, and are sending garrisons into the several cities. To this question of yours I am afraid both to make no answer, lest it be arrogant, and to answer truly, lest it seem too harsh to you who hear. But since one who breaks a treaty must be chastised either with words or with arms, then, just as I would rather the war against you had been entrusted to another than to me, so the harshness of speech against a guest, however it be, I will undergo — even as physicians, for the sake of health, apply the more grievous remedies. Ever since you obtained the kingdom, the Senate judges that you have done one thing that ought to have been done — that you sent legates to Rome to renew the treaty — though it judges that you would have done better to leave it unrenewed than, when renewed, to violate it. Abrupolis, ally and friend of the Roman people, you drove from his kingdom; the slayers of Arthetaurus — so that it appeared, to say nothing further, that you rejoiced in the murder — you received, men who had killed the prince most faithful of all the Illyrians to the Roman name; through Thessaly and the Malian land you went with an army to Delphi against the treaty; to the Byzantines likewise, against the treaty, you sent aid; with the Boeotians, our allies, you struck a secret alliance for yourself, which was not lawful, sworn upon oath; the Theban envoys Eversa and Callicritus, as they were coming to us — who killed them, I would rather ask than charge. The civil war in Aetolia and the slaughter of its leading men — by whom can they be seen to have been done, except by your agents? The Dolopes were laid waste by you yourself. King Eumenes, as he was returning from Rome to his kingdom, was all but slaughtered like a victim at Delphi, in a consecrated place, before the altars — whom he accuses, I am loath to recount; the secret crimes which the Brundisian guest discloses, I hold for certain were all written to you from Rome and reported by your own envoys. In one way only could you have prevented these things from being said by me: by not asking on what account armies were being carried over into Macedonia, or why we were sending garrisons into the cities of the allies. To you, had you asked, we should have kept silence more arrogantly than we have answered truly. For my part, for the sake of our paternal hospitality, I favor your cause, and wish that you would furnish me some matter for pleading your case before the Senate."

To this the king: "A good cause, were it pleaded before fair judges, I shall plead before the same men who are at once accusers and judges. Of the things cast up to me, some are such that I know not but I ought to glory in them; some such as I shall not blush to confess; some such that, charged in a word, they may in a word be denied. What, indeed, if I were today a defendant under your laws — what could either the Brundisian informer or Eumenes cast up to me, that they should seem to accuse truly rather than to revile? Doubtless neither did Eumenes, though he is grievous to so many publicly and privately, have any enemy other than me; nor could I find any fitter for the service of crimes than Rammius, whom I had never seen before nor was ever going to see after. And of the Thebans, who, it is agreed, perished by shipwreck, and of the murder of Arthetaurus, I must render account; in which, however, nothing more is cast up than that his slayers lived in exile in my kingdom. The injustice of which condition I shall so far not refuse — if you too accept it — that whoever has betaken himself as an exile into Italy or to Rome, you confess yourselves to have been the authors of the crimes for which they were condemned. If you too, and all other nations, will refuse this, I also shall be among the rest. And, by Hercules, what does it avail that exile lie open to anyone, if there be nowhere a place for the exile? Yet I, as soon as I learned, on your warning, that those men were in Macedonia, had them sought out and ordered to depart from my kingdom, and forbade them my borders forever. These things, then, were cast up to me as to a defendant pleading his cause; those others as to a king, and they raise a dispute about the treaty I have with you. For if it is so written in the treaty that, even if anyone make war upon me, I may not protect myself and my kingdom, then I must confess that, in defending myself by arms against Abrupolis, ally of the Roman people, the treaty was violated. But if both this was lawful by the treaty, and it is so ordained by the law of nations that arms be repelled by arms, what, pray, did it become me to do, when Abrupolis had laid waste the borders of my kingdom as far as Amphipolis, had driven off many free persons, a great quantity of slaves, many thousands of cattle? Was I to keep still and suffer it, until he came in arms to Pella and into my own palace? But, you say, by a lawful war indeed I pursued him, but he ought not to have been conquered, nor to have suffered what befalls the conquered; when I, who was provoked by arms, have undergone that very hazard, how can he complain that it befell him, who was himself the cause of the war? I shall not in the same way defend, Romans, my having coerced the Dolopes by arms, because, even if not by their desert, yet by my own right I did it, since they were of my kingdom, of my jurisdiction, assigned to my father by your decree. Nor, were a reckoning to be rendered — not to you, nor to your confederates, but to those who do not approve cruel and unjust commands even over slaves — could I seem to have raged against them beyond what is fair and good; for they slew Euphranor, the prefect set over them by me, in such a way that his death was the lightest of his punishments. But when I had advanced from there to view Larisa and Antron and Pteleon, because they were near at hand, I went up to Delphi to sacrifice, that I might pay vows long owed. And to this, for the swelling of the charge, it is added that I went with an army: doubtless that I might do what I now complain you are doing — seize cities, set garrisons in their citadels. Call into council the cities of Greece through which I made my way; let any one man complain of an injury from my soldier: I will not refuse to be thought to have sought something else under the pretense of a sacrifice. To the Aetolians and Byzantines we sent garrisons, and with the Boeotians we made friendship. These things, whatever they are, have, through my envoys, not only been disclosed but even excused, often, in your Senate, where I had certain arbiters not so fair as you, Quintus Marcius, my paternal friend and guest. But Eumenes had not yet come to Rome as my accuser, who, by calumny, by distorting everything, makes all things suspected and hateful, and tries to persuade you that Greece cannot be in liberty and enjoy your gift so long as the kingdom of Macedonia is unharmed. This wheel will come round; there will soon be one to charge that Antiochus was moved beyond the ridges of Taurus in vain; that Eumenes is far heavier upon Asia than Antiochus was; that your allies cannot be at rest so long as the royal seat of Pergamum stands — that citadel set above the heads of the neighboring states. I, Quintus Marcius and Aulus Atilius, know that these things — whether cast up by you or cleared by me — are such as depend upon the ears, the minds, of the hearers; and that it matters not so much what I have done, or with what intent, as how you take it to have been done. I am conscious to myself of having knowingly done no wrong; and if I have erred through some slip of imprudence, I can be corrected and amended by this chastisement. I have at least committed nothing incurable, nothing that you should judge must be pursued by war and arms — or in vain has the fame of your clemency and gravity been spread abroad among the nations, if for such causes, which are scarcely worthy of complaint and remonstrance, you take up arms and bring wars upon allied kings."

As he said this, Marcius both heard him with assent and was the author of sending envoys to Rome. When they had resolved that everything should be tried to the utmost and no hope let slip, the remaining deliberation was in what way the road might be safe for the envoys. To this end, when a request for a truce seemed necessary, and Marcius desired it and had sought nothing else from the conference, he granted it reluctantly, and as a great favor to the petitioner. For the Romans had at present nothing well enough prepared for war — neither army nor general — whereas Perseus, had not the vain hope of peace blinded his counsels, had everything prepared and arranged, and could have begun the war at his own most favorable time, and one unfavorable to the enemy.

From this conference, the pledge of a truce interposed, the Roman legates made their way into Boeotia. There a movement had already begun, certain peoples withdrawing from the alliance of the common Boeotian council, ever since it had been reported that the legates had answered that it would appear which peoples it had displeased to have an alliance joined privately with the king. First, legates from Chaeronea, then from Thebes, met them on the very road, affirming that they had not been present at the council in which that alliance had been decreed; the legates, giving no answer for the present, bade them follow to Chalcis. At Thebes a great contention had arisen out of another quarrel. At the praetorian elections of the Boeotians the defeated party, pursuing the wrong, with a multitude gathered, made a decree at Thebes that the Boeotarchs should not be received in the cities. The exiles all withdrew to Thespiae; thence — for they had been received without hesitation — being recalled to Thebes, men’s minds now changed, they made a decree that the twelve men who, as private persons, had held a gathering and a council should be punished with exile. Then the new praetor — Ismenias was he, a man noble and powerful — by his decree condemned them, absent, to capital punishment. They had fled to Chalcis; thence, setting out to the Romans at Larisa, they had laid upon Ismenias the cause of the alliance with Perseus: out of the contention a quarrel had arisen. The envoys of both parties, however, came to the Romans — both the exiles and the accusers of Ismenias, and Ismenias himself.

When they came to Chalcis, the leading men of the other cities — which was most welcome to the Romans — each by his own city’s particular decree, spurning the royal alliance, joined themselves to the Romans; Ismenias thought it fair that the nation of the Boeotians be committed, as a whole, to the protection of the Romans. Out of this a contest arose, and, had he not fled for refuge to the tribunal of the legates, he had been not far from being killed by the exiles and their supporters. Thebes itself, too, which is the head of Boeotia, was in great commotion, some drawing the city toward the king, others toward the Romans. And a crowd of the Coronaeans and Haliartians had gathered there to defend the decree of the royal alliance. But by the steadfastness of the leading men, who taught, from the disasters of Philip and Antiochus, how great was the force and fortune of the Roman empire, the multitude was at last overcome, and decreed both that the royal alliance be done away with, and sent to Chalcis those who had been the authors of striking the friendship, to make satisfaction to the legates, and ordered that the state be commended to the legates’ good faith. Marcius and Atilius gladly heard the Thebans, and were the authors, both to them and severally to the several cities, of sending envoys to Rome to renew friendship. Before all, they ordered the exiles restored, and by their own decree condemned the authors of the royal alliance. So, the Boeotian council broken up — which was what they chiefly wished — they set out for the Peloponnese, Servius Cornelius being summoned to Chalcis. A council was furnished them at Argos; where they asked nothing else of the Achaean nation than that they give a thousand soldiers. This garrison was sent to guard Chalcis until the Roman army should cross over into Greece. Marcius and Atilius, having performed what was to be done in Greece, at the beginning of winter returned to Rome.

Thence, about the same time, a legation was sent into Asia and round the islands. There were three legates: Tiberius Claudius, Spurius Postumius, Marcus Junius. They, going about, exhorted the allies to undertake war against Perseus on the Romans’ behalf; and the more wealthy each city was, the more carefully they dealt with it, because the lesser would follow the authority of the greater. The Rhodians were held of the greatest moment toward everything, because they could not only favor but aid the war with their own strength, forty ships having been made ready on the prompting of Hegesilochus. He, when he was in the highest magistracy — they themselves call it the prytanis — had by many speeches driven the Rhodians, abandoning the hope of fostering kings, which they had so often found vain, to keep the Roman alliance, the one thing then stable upon earth, whether in strength or in good faith. War was imminent with Perseus; the Romans would require the same naval array which they had lately seen in Antiochus’s war, and before that in Philip’s. They would then be in a flurry, the fleet to be made ready of a sudden when it must be sent, unless they had begun to refit the ships, unless to equip them with marines. That, he said, must be done the more earnestly, so that by the proof of the thing they might refute the charges brought by Eumenes. Stirred by these words, they displayed to the Roman legates, as they arrived, a fleet of forty ships equipped and adorned, that it might appear the exhortation had not been waited for. And this legation was of great moment toward conciliating the minds of the cities of Asia. Decimius alone returned to Rome without any effect, and infamous besides on the suspicion of monies taken from the kings of the Illyrians.

Perseus, when he had withdrawn from the conference with the Romans into Macedonia, sent envoys to Rome about the conditions of peace begun with Marcius, and gave letters to be carried to Byzantium and to Rhodes. In the letters the purport was the same to all: that he had conferred with the Roman legates; what he had heard and what he had said, so arranged that he might seem to have had the upper hand in the dispute. With the Rhodians the envoys added that he was confident there would be peace, for it was on the prompting of Marcius and Atilius that envoys had been sent to Rome. If the Romans should persist in stirring war against the treaty, then the Rhodians must strive with all their favor, all their might, to reconcile peace; if by their pleading they accomplished nothing, then they must take care that the right and power over all things come not into the hands of one people. This concerned the others, and especially the Rhodians, inasmuch as they excelled the other cities in dignity and resources — which would be enslaved and subject, if there were no regard to any other than the Romans. Both the letters and the words of the envoys were heard more kindly than they had weight to change men’s minds; the authority of the better part had begun to be the stronger. The answer was given by decree: that the Rhodians wished for peace; if there were war, the king should hope or ask nothing of the Rhodians which would sunder from them and from the Romans an old friendship, won by many and great services in peace and war. On their return from Rhodes the envoys approached also the Boeotian cities, Thebes and Coronea and Haliartus, which were thought to have been brought against their will to abandon the royal alliance and join the Romans. The Thebans were in no way moved, although they were somewhat resentful at the Romans, both for the condemnation of their leading men and for the restoration of the exiles. The Coronaeans and Haliartians, out of a certain inborn favor toward kings, sent envoys into Macedonia, asking for a garrison by which they might protect themselves against the overbearing arrogance of the Thebans. To this embassy the king answered that he could not send a garrison, on account of the truce made with the Romans: he advised them, nevertheless, so to defend themselves from the injuries of the Thebans, as best they could, that they should not afford the Romans cause to rage against them.

Marcius and Atilius, when they had come to Rome, reported their embassy on the Capitol in such a way that they gloried in nothing more than in having deceived the king through the truce and the hope of peace. For he had been so furnished with the apparatus of war, themselves with nothing prepared, that all the favorable places could have been seized by him before the army crossed over into Greece; whereas, the space of the truce taken, he would come on no better prepared, while the Romans would begin the war the better furnished in all things. The council of the Boeotians too, they said, they had cunningly broken up, that they might no longer be joined to the Macedonians by any common consent. A great part of the Senate approved these things as done with the highest reason; but the elder men, and those mindful of the ancient custom, said that they recognized in that embassy no Roman arts: not by ambushes and night-battles, nor by feigned flight and unforeseen returns upon a careless enemy, nor so as to glory in cunning rather than in true valor, had their ancestors waged wars; they had been wont to declare wars before waging them, sometimes even to give notice, and to name the place where they would fight. With the same good faith the physician plotting against the life of King Pyrrhus had been disclosed to him; with the same the betrayer of the children had been handed over, bound, to the Faliscans. These were truly Roman things, not the wiles of the Carthaginians nor the craft of the Greeks, with whom it had been more glorious to deceive an enemy than to overcome him by force. Sometimes, for the present moment, more is gained by guile than by valor; but his spirit is at last conquered for good from whom the confession has been wrung that he has been overcome neither by art nor by chance, but in a just and righteous war, with strength matched hand to hand. So spoke the elders, to whom this new wisdom was less pleasing; yet that part of the Senate prevailed which held usefulness dearer than honor, so that the former embassy of Marcius was approved, and he was sent back again into Greece with quinqueremes and bidden to do the rest as should seem most to the public good. They sent Aulus Atilius too to seize Larisa in Thessaly, fearing lest, if the day of the truce ran out, Perseus, sending a garrison thither, should hold the head of Thessaly in his power. Atilius was ordered to summon two thousand foot from Gnaeus Sicinius for this business. And to Publius Lentulus, who had returned from Achaia, three hundred soldiers of the Italian stock were given, that at Thebes he might take care that Boeotia be in their power.

These things prepared, although the counsels were fixed for war, it was nevertheless resolved that audience of the Senate be granted to the envoys. Nearly the same things which had been said by the king in the conference were related by the envoys. The charge of the ambush laid against Eumenes was defended with the greatest care, and yet least plausibly — for the thing was manifest — the rest was deprecation. But they were not heard with such minds as could either be taught or bent. Notice was given them that they should at once depart from the walls of the city of Rome, and from Italy within thirty days. Then to Publius Licinius the consul, to whom Macedonia had fallen as his province, notice was given that he should name the earliest day for the army to assemble. Gaius Lucretius the praetor, whose province was the fleet, set out from the city with forty quinqueremes: for it was resolved that of the refitted ships others be kept back near the city for another use. The praetor sent ahead his brother Marcus Lucretius with one quinquereme, ordering him, the ships being received from the allies according to the treaty, to meet the fleet at Cephallania — from the Reginians one trireme, from the Locrians two, from the Uritae four. Sailing along the coast of Italy, having passed the farthest promontory of Calabria into the Ionian sea, he crossed to Dyrrhachium. There, having come upon ten lembi of the Dyrrhachians themselves, twelve of the Issaeans, and fifty-four of King Gentius, pretending that he believed they had been got ready for the use of the Romans, he carried them all off, and on the third day crossed to Corcyra, and thence straightway to Cephallania. Gaius Lucretius the praetor, having set out from Naples, the strait crossed, on the fifth day passed over to Cephallania. There the fleet halted, at once waiting until the land forces should cross over, and that the transports straggled out over the deep from his column might come up.

During these very days Publius Licinius the consul, his vows pronounced on the Capitol, set out from the city in his general’s cloak. This affair is always conducted with great dignity and majesty; but it especially turns men’s eyes and minds when they escort a consul going to meet an enemy noble either in valor or in fortune. For there draws men together not the duty of office only, but also the eagerness of the spectacle — to behold their leader, to whose command and counsel they have entrusted the protection of the supreme commonwealth. Then there steals upon the mind the thought of the hazards of war, how uncertain the issue of fortune, how common the Mars of battle; of adversities and successes — what disasters have often befallen through the ignorance and rashness of leaders, what good things, on the contrary, prudence and valor have brought. What mortal knows of which mind, of which fortune, is the consul whom they send to war? Are they soon to see him mount the Capitol in triumph with a victorious army, to the same gods from whom he sets out, or to afford the enemy that joy? But to King Perseus, against whom they were going, fame was lent both by the Macedonian race, renowned in war, and by his father Philip, who, among many things prosperously done, had been ennobled by war with Rome too; while of Perseus himself the name, ever since he received the kingdom, had never ceased to be celebrated in the expectation of war. With these thoughts the men of all orders escorted the consul as he set out. Two men of consular rank were sent as military tribunes with him, Gaius Claudius and Quintus Mucius, and three illustrious young men, Publius Lentulus and the two Manlii Acidini — the one the son of Marcus Manlius, the other of Lucius Manlius. With these the consul went to Brundisium to the army, and from there, carried across with all his forces, pitched his camp at Nymphaeum in the territory of Apollonia.

A few days before, Perseus, after the legates returning from Rome had cut off the hope of peace, held a council. There for some while there was contention with opposing opinions. There were those to whom it seemed that tribute should be paid, if it were imposed, or part of his land yielded, if they should fine him — in short, that whatever else must be endured for the sake of peace should not be refused, nor should he commit himself so far as to give himself and his kingdom to the hazard of so great a cast: if the undoubted possession of the kingdom remained, the day and the time could bring many things by which he might not only recover what he had lost, but be even of his own accord formidable to those whom he now feared. But by far the greater part was of the fiercer opinion. Whatever he yielded, they affirmed, he must straightway yield his kingdom along with it: for the Romans needed neither money nor land, but knew this — that all human things, and especially the greatest, both kingdoms and empires, are subject to many chances; they had broken the power of the Carthaginians, and set over their necks a most powerful neighboring king; Antiochus and his offspring they had thrust beyond the ridges of Taurus; the one kingdom of Macedonia remained, both near in region, and such that, if anywhere the fortune of the Roman people should totter, it might seem able to restore their ancient spirit to its kings. While things were yet entire, Perseus ought to settle in his own mind which he preferred: whether, stripped to the last by yielding point by point of his resources and driven from his kingdom, to seek of the Romans Samothrace or some other island, where, a private man surviving his own kingdom, he might grow old in contempt and want; or, armed, the avenger of his fortune and his dignity, either — as is worthy of a brave man — to endure whatever the hazard of war should bring, or, as victor, to free the world from the empire of Rome. It was no more wonderful that the Romans be driven from Greece than that Hannibal had been driven from Italy. Nor, by Hercules, did they see how it agreed that a man who had resisted with the utmost force a brother grasping by injustice at the kingdom should yield it, when well gotten, to foreigners. In short, the question of war and peace was so settled that all agreed there was nothing more shameful than to have yielded the kingdom without a struggle, nor anything more glorious than to have tried every fortune for one’s dignity and majesty.

At Pella, in the old palace of the Macedonians, this council was held. "Let us then wage war," he said, "with the good help of the gods, since so it seems good"; and, letters sent round to his prefects, he gathered all his forces to Citium — it is a town of Macedonia. He himself, a sacrifice of a hundred victims made royally to Minerva, whom they call Alcidemos, set out for Citium with a band of his courtiers and attendants. There all the forces of the Macedonians and of the foreign auxiliaries had now assembled. He pitched his camp before the city and drew up all his armed men on the plain. The total of all was forty-three thousand under arms, of which nearly half were phalangites; Hippias of Beroea commanded them. Then, picked out for strength and the vigor of their age from the whole number of the targeteers, were two thousand — this legion they themselves called the agema; it had as commanders Leonnatus and Thrasippus of Eulyestae. The rest of the targeteers, nearly three thousand men, had as leader Antiphilus of Edessa. The Paeonians, both from Paroria and from Parstrymonia — those places lie below Thrace — and the Agrianes, with Thracian dwellers mixed in among them, themselves too made up a number of nearly three thousand. Didas the Paeonian, who had killed the young Demetrius, had armed and gathered them. There were also two thousand armed Gauls, with Asclepiodotus of Heraclea, from the Sinti, as prefect. Three thousand free Thracians had their own leader. A number nearly equal of Cretans followed their own leaders, Susus of Phalasarna and Syllus of Cnosus. And Leonides the Lacedaemonian commanded five hundred from Greece, a mixed kind of men. He was reported to be of the royal stock, an exile condemned in a full council of the Achaeans, on letters to Perseus being intercepted. Of the Aetolians and Boeotians, who did not fill up more than the number of five hundred all told, Lyco the Achaean was prefect. From these mixed auxiliaries of so many peoples, so many nations, about twelve thousand armed men were made up. Of cavalry he had gathered from all Macedonia three thousand. There had come to the same place Cotys, son of Seuthes, king of the nation of the Odrysae, with a thousand picked horse and nearly an equal number of foot. So the total of the whole army was thirty-nine thousand foot, four thousand horse. It was well established that, since that army which great Alexander led over into Asia, the forces of no Macedonian king had ever been so great.

It was the twenty-sixth year that was passing since peace had been granted to Philip at his request; and through all that time Macedonia, at rest, had both brought forth a generation, a great part of which was ripe for service, and, in the light wars with the neighboring Thracians — which exercised rather than wearied them — had been kept under continual arms; and the war with Rome, long meditated first by Philip, then by Perseus too, had brought it about that all things were ready and prepared. The line was moved a little — not, however, in a regular maneuver, lest they should seem only to have stood under arms; and, just as they were, armed, he called them to an assembly. He himself stood upon the platform, having around him his two sons, of whom the elder, Philip, was by nature his brother, by adoption his son; the younger, whom they called Alexander, was his natural son. He exhorted the soldiers to war, and recounted the injuries of the Roman people against his father and himself: that the one, driven to renew the war by every indignity, had been overwhelmed by fate in the midst of his preparation for war; that to himself legates, and soldiers at the same time, had been sent to seize the cities of Greece. Then, by a deceitful conference, under the show of reconciling peace, the winter had been drawn out, that they might have time to prepare; the consul was now coming with two Roman legions, which had three hundred horse apiece, and with nearly an equal number of allied foot and horse; though there were added the auxiliaries of the kings, Eumenes and Masinissa, they would be no more than seven thousand foot, two thousand horse. Having heard the forces of the enemy, let them look upon their own army — how far they surpassed in number, how far in the kind of soldiers: themselves trained from boyhood in the arts of war, hardened by so many wars; recruits hastily enlisted for this war. The Romans had as auxiliaries Lydians and Phrygians and Numidians; themselves, Thracians and Gauls, the fiercest of nations. The Romans had such arms as each poor soldier had got for himself; the Macedonians, arms ready out of the royal store, made through so many years by his father’s care and expense. The enemy’s supply would be both far off and subject to all the chances of the sea; he had laid aside both money and grain, besides the revenues of the mines, for ten years. All that ought to be prepared by the indulgence of the gods, by royal care, the Macedonians had in full and heaped-up measure. They must have the spirit which their ancestors had, who, all Europe subdued, crossing over into Asia, opened by their arms a world unknown to fame, and ceased not to conquer until, shut in by the Red Sea, what they might conquer failed them. But now, by Hercules, fortune had appointed the contest not about the farthest shores of India, but about the possession of Macedonia itself. The Romans, when they waged war with his father, had held out the specious title of freeing Greece; now they openly sought Macedonia into slavery, that there might be no king neighbor to the Roman empire, that a nation noble in war might bear no arms. For these things must be handed over to the arrogant masters, together with the king and the kingdom, if they wished to desist from war and do what was commanded. When throughout the whole speech there had been sufficiently frequent shouting of assent, then indeed such a clamor arose — at once of men indignant and threatening, and partly of those bidding the king be of good cheer — that he made an end of speaking, only bidding them prepare for the march: for already, it was said, the Romans were moving their camp from Nymphaeum. The assembly dismissed, he betook himself to hearing the embassies of the cities of Macedonia. They had come to promise money, each according to its means, and grain for the war. Thanks were given to all, and to all it was remitted; the royal store, it was said, was enough for these things. Only wagons were demanded of them, to carry the engines and the vast store of missile weapons that had been got ready, and the other apparatus of war.

Setting out thence with his whole army, making for Eordaea, he pitched his camp by the lake they call Begorritis, and the next day advanced into Elimea to the river Haliacmon. Then, the mountains they call the Cambunian crossed by a narrow pass, he descended to Azorus, Pythoum, and Doliche; the inhabitants call them Tripolis. These three towns, hesitating a little, because they had given hostages to the Larisaeans, yet overcome by present fear, gave themselves up in surrender. Having addressed these kindly, in no doubt that the Perrhaebi too would do the same, he received the town at his first coming, those who dwelt there making no delay. Forced to assault Cyretiae, on the first day he was even repulsed from the gates by a sharp onset of armed men; the next day, attacking with all his forces, he received them all into surrender before night. Mylae, the next town, so fortified that the hope of an insuperable defense made the inhabitants the fiercer, was not content to shut its gates against the king, but pelted both him and the Macedonians with insolent abuse. This thing, while it made the enemy more hostile to the assault, kindled the townsmen themselves, through despair of pardon, the more fiercely to defend themselves. And so for three days, with vast spirit on both sides, the city was both assaulted and defended. The multitude of the Macedonians sufficed without difficulty to relieve the battle in turns; the townsmen, the same men guarding the walls day and night, were worn out not by wounds only, but by watches and continuous toil. On the fourth day, when both scaling-ladders were raised against the walls on every side, and the gate was assaulted with greater force, the townsmen, driven from the walls, ran together to defend the gate, and made a sudden sally against the enemy; which, since it was of rash anger rather than of true confidence in their strength, a few and weary, beaten back by fresh men, gave their backs, and, fleeing, admitted the enemy through the open gate. So the city was taken and plundered; even the free persons who survived the slaughter were sold. The town in great part demolished and burned, he set out and moved his camp to Phalanna, and thence the next day reached Gyrton. There, when he had learned that Titus Minucius Rufus and Hippias, praetor of the Thessalians, had entered with a garrison, he passed by without even attempting an assault, and received Elatia and Gonnus, the townsmen alarmed at his unlooked-for coming. Both towns are in the jaws by which one approaches Tempe, Gonnus the more so. Therefore he left it secured with a stronger garrison of horse and foot, and besides fortified with a triple ditch and rampart. He himself, advancing to Sycurium, resolved there to await the enemy’s coming, and at the same time bade the army forage at large in the enemy’s land lying below. For Sycurium is at the roots of Mount Ossa: where it slopes toward the south, it has below it the plains of Thessaly, at its back Macedonia and Magnesia. To these advantages there is added the greatest healthfulness, and an abundance, from many ever-flowing springs of water lying round about.

The Roman consul, during these same days, making for Thessaly with his army, had at first an easy march through Epirus; then, after he had crossed into Athamania, a region of rough and almost trackless soil, with great difficulty, by short marches, he hardly reached Gomphi. And if the king, against a leader bringing a recruit army with men and horses harassed, had stood in his way in battle array, in his own place and at his own time, not even the Romans deny that they would have fought with great disaster to themselves. After they had come to Gomphi without a contest, besides the joy of the dangerous pass surmounted there was added contempt too for the enemy, so ignorant of his own opportunities. The sacrifice duly performed, and grain given to the soldiers, having tarried a few days for the rest of the beasts and men, when he heard that the Macedonians were ranging scattered through Thessaly and laying waste the lands of the allies, he led his soldier, now sufficiently refreshed, to Larisa. From there, when he was about three miles off, he pitched his camp by the river Peneus at Tripolis — they call it Scaea. About the same time Eumenes came to Chalcis by sea with his brothers Attalus and Athenaeus, Philetaerus being left behind at Pergamum for the protection of the kingdom. From Chalcis he came to the consul with Attalus and four thousand foot, a thousand horse; two thousand foot were left at Chalcis, over whom Athenaeus was set. And other auxiliaries gathered there to the Romans from all the peoples of Greece everywhere, of which the most — they were so small — have been brought into oblivion. The Apolloniates sent three hundred horse, a hundred foot. Of the Aetolians, as much cavalry as had come from the whole nation amounted to the equivalent of one squadron; and of the Thessalians, whose whole cavalry had been hoped for, there were no more than three hundred horse in the Roman camp. The Achaeans gave of their young men, armed mostly in the Cretan fashion, up to fifteen hundred.

About the same time Gaius Lucretius the praetor too, who commanded the ships at Cephallania — his brother Marcus Lucretius being ordered to make for Chalcis with the fleet around Malea — himself went aboard a trireme, making for the Corinthian gulf to secure affairs beforehand in Boeotia. His voyage was the slower because of bodily weakness. Marcus Lucretius, arriving at Chalcis, when he heard that Haliartus was being assaulted by Publius Lentulus, sent a messenger, in the praetor’s name, to bid him withdraw from there. The legate, having attempted that business with the young men of the Boeotians, the part that stood with the Romans, withdrew from the walls. This siege raised gave place to another, a new one; for at once Marcus Lucretius, with the naval army, ten thousand armed men, and besides two thousand of the king’s troops who were under Athenaeus, beset Haliartus, and, as they were already preparing to assault, the praetor came up from Creusa. About the same time ships of the allies too gathered at Chalcis — two Punic quinqueremes, two triremes from Heraclea in Pontus, four from Chalcedon, as many from Samos, then five Rhodian quadriremes. These the praetor, because there was nowhere a war by sea, sent back to the allies. And Quintus Marcius came to Chalcis by sea, Alope having been taken, and Larisa which is called Cremaste assaulted.

While this was the state of affairs in Boeotia, Perseus, when he had his standing camp at Sycurium, as was said before, the grain being carried in from the fields round about on every side, sent to lay waste the territory of the Pheraeans, thinking that the Romans, drawn farther from their camp to aid the cities of the allies, might be caught. When he perceived that they were in no way moved by that alarm, he divided the booty — except the men; but cattle there were chiefly, of every kind — for his soldiers to feast upon.

About the same time both the consul and the king held a council, from where they should begin the war. The king’s men had grown in spirit, the laying waste of the Pheraean land having been allowed them by the enemy; therefore they thought they must go thence to the camp, and give no further room for delay. The Romans too thought that their own delay was disgraceful among the allies, who were chiefly indignant that aid had not been brought to the Pheraeans. While they were deliberating what to do — Eumenes and Attalus were present in the council — a panic-stricken messenger brings word that the enemy is at hand with a great column. The council broken up, the signal is straightway given to take up arms. Meanwhile it is resolved that a hundred horse and an equal number of javelin-foot of the king’s auxiliaries go out. Perseus, about the fourth hour of the day, when he was a little more than a mile from the Roman camp, ordered the standards of the foot to halt. He himself went ahead with the cavalry and the light-armed; and Cotys with him, and the leaders of the other auxiliaries, advanced. They were less than five hundred paces from the camp when the enemy’s horsemen came in sight; there were two squadrons, for the great part of Gauls — Cassignatus commanded them — and of light-armed about a hundred and fifty Mysians or Cretans. The king halted, uncertain how great the enemy’s force was. Then he sent from his column two troops of Thracians, two of Macedonians, with two cohorts of Cretans and of Thracians. The battle, since they were equal in number and no fresh auxiliaries came up on this side or that, ended with victory uncertain. About thirty of Eumenes’s men were killed, among whom Cassignatus the leader of the Gauls fell. And then indeed Perseus led his forces back to Sycurium; the next day, about the same hour, the king moved his forces to the same place, with wagons following with water; for the whole road of twelve miles was without water and full of dust, and it was plain that, if they had fought at the first sight, they would have fought spent with thirst. When the Romans kept still, their very outposts withdrawn within the rampart, the king’s men too returned to their camp. This they did for several days, hoping that the Roman horsemen would attack the rearmost column of those withdrawing; then, a contest arising, when they had lured them farther from their camp, they would easily, wherever they were, wheel their line about — they who were the stronger in cavalry and light-armed.

After the attempt did not succeed, the king moved his camp nearer the enemy and entrenched five miles off. Then, at first light, the foot drawn up in line in the place where he was wont, he led all the cavalry and light-armed to the enemy’s camp. The dust, seen both more abundant and nearer than usual, made a flurry in the Roman camp. And at first it was scarcely believed by him who announced it, because on the foregoing days in a row the enemy had never appeared before the fourth hour; then it was sunrise. After the doubt was taken away by the shouting and running of many from the gates, a vast tumult arises. The tribunes and prefects and centurions hurry to the headquarters, the soldier each to his own tents. Less than five hundred paces from the rampart Perseus had drawn up his men about a hillock which they call Callinicus. On the left wing King Cotys was set over all of his own nation; the light-armed, interposed, divided the ranks of the horse. On the right wing were the Macedonian horse, with Cretans interspersed among their troops; over this armament Midon of Beroea, over the cavalry and the chief part of it Meno of Antigonea, was set. Next to the wings had taken their stand the king’s horse and a mixed kind, picked auxiliaries of many nations; over these Patrocles of Antigonea and Didas, prefect of Paeonia, were placed. In the midst of all was the king, and around him what they call the agema, and the sacred squadrons of horse. Before himself he set the slingers and javelin-men, each band filling the number of four hundred; Ion of Thessalonica and Neoptolemus he set over them. So the king’s men had taken their stand. The consul, the line of foot drawn up within the rampart, himself too sent out all the cavalry with the light-armed; they were drawn up before the rampart. On the right wing was set Gaius Licinius Crassus, the consul’s brother, with all the Italian cavalry, the velites interspersed; on the left Marcus Valerius Laevinus had the cavalry of the allies from the Greek peoples, and the light-armed of the same nation; the middle of the line Quintus Mucius held with the picked extraordinary horse. Before their standards were drawn up two hundred Gallic horse, and of Eumenes’s auxiliaries three hundred of the nation of the Cyrtii. Four hundred Thessalian horse were placed a little above the left wing, at a small interval. King Eumenes and Attalus, with all their own band, stood at the rear, between the hindmost line and the rampart.

The lines arranged mostly in this manner, with nearly an equal number on each side of cavalry and light-armed, they clash, the battle begun by the slingers and javelin-men who had gone in front. First of all the Thracians, no otherwise than wild beasts long kept penned, so roused, with a vast shout charged the right wing, the Italian horsemen, that a nation fearless by its use of war and its nature was thrown into confusion. With their swords the foot make for the spears, now cutting the legs of the horses, now stabbing their flanks. Perseus, charging into the middle of the line, drove off the Greeks at the first onset; and when the enemy pressed hard upon them from behind, the cavalry of the Thessalians — which, parted by a short space from the left wing, had been in reserve outside the encounter, at first a spectator of the contest — was, when the affair inclined, of the greatest use. For, giving way little by little with their ranks unbroken, after they had joined themselves to Eumenes’s auxiliaries, both they gave their allies, scattered in flight, a safe retreat among their ranks, and, when the enemy pressed less closely packed, daring even to advance, they cut off many of the fugitives who met them. Nor did the king’s men, now themselves scattered everywhere in the pursuit, dare to come to grips with men marshaled and advancing at a steady step. The king, victor in the cavalry battle, when, had they but aided with a little weight, the war might have been finished, came up opportunely for his exhortation the phalanx — which Hippias and Leonnatus, of their own accord, lest they should fail the bold beginning, had hastily brought up, after they heard that the cavalry had fought prosperously. But while the king wavered between hope and fear at attempting so great a thing, the Cretan Euander — whom he had used as his agent at Delphi for the ambush of King Eumenes — after he saw the column of foot coming up under their standards, ran to the king and began to warn him not, elated by good fortune, rashly to give the sum of things to an unnecessary hazard: if, content with the success well gained, he kept quiet that day, he would have either the terms of an honorable peace, or very many partners in the war, who would follow his fortune, if he preferred to fight. To this counsel the king’s mind was the more inclined. And so, having praised Euander, he ordered the standards to be carried back, and the column of foot to return to camp, and the trumpet to sound the retreat for the horse.

There fell that day on the Romans’ side two hundred horse, no fewer than two thousand foot, and about six hundred were taken; but of the king’s men twenty horse, forty foot were killed. After the victors returned to camp, all indeed were glad, but before the rest the insolent joy of the Thracians stood out; for with singing they returned, carrying the heads of the enemy fixed upon their spears. Among the Romans there was not only sorrow at the affair ill conducted, but fear too, lest the enemy at once assault the camp. Eumenes advised that he should move the camp across the Peneus, so as to have the river for a defense, while the stricken soldiers gathered their spirits. The consul was vexed to be moved by the disgrace of confessing fear; yet, overcome by reason, the forces being led across in the silence of night, he entrenched a camp on the farther bank. The king, the next day, advancing to provoke the enemy to battle, after he perceived that their camp was placed in safety across the river, confessed indeed that he had erred in not pressing the conquered the day before, but that a much greater fault was that the night had been let slip; for, though he stirred none other of his own men, by sending in the light-armed against the enemy thrown into confusion in the crossing of the river, a great part of their forces could have been destroyed. To the Romans, at any rate, the present fear was taken away, their camp safe; but the loss, among other things, especially of repute, troubled them. And in the council before the consul each for himself laid the blame upon the Aetolians: from them the beginning of the flight and the panic had arisen; the rest of the allies of the Greek peoples had followed the panic of the Aetolians. Five leaders of the Aetolians, who were said to have been the first seen turning their backs, were sent to Rome. The Thessalians were praised before an assembly, and their leaders even rewarded for valor. To the king the spoils of the slain enemy were brought. Of these he gave to some distinguished arms, to others horses, to certain ones captives as a gift. There were more than fifteen hundred shields; of breastplates and cuirasses the sum amounted to more than a thousand; of helmets and swords and missiles of every kind a somewhat larger number. These things, ample and joyful of themselves, were multiplied by the words of the king, which he held before an assembly, the army being called together. "You have the issue of the war forejudged. Of the better part of the enemy, the Roman cavalry, by which they boasted themselves unconquered, you have routed. For their horsemen are the chief of their young men, the horsemen the seed-bed of their senate; from these, chosen, they create the fathers, the consuls; from these their commanders; their spoils we have just now divided among you. Nor have you a lesser victory over the legions of foot, which, withdrawn from you by night flight, in the panic of shipwrecked men swimming everywhere, filled the river. But it will be easier for us in pursuit to cross the Peneus than it was for them in their alarm; and, having crossed, we will at once assault the camp which today we should have taken, had they not fled; or, if they will decide it by line of battle, expect the same issue of a battle of foot as there was of horse in the contest." And those who had conquered, in high spirits, bearing on their shoulders the spoils of the slain enemy, heard the tale of their own deeds, anticipating from what had happened the hope of the future; and the foot, kindled by another’s glory, especially those who were of the Macedonian phalanx, longed for themselves too the occasion of doing the king good service and of winning like glory from the enemy. The assembly dismissed, the next day, setting out thence, he pitched his camp at Mopselus. This hillock rises before Tempe, midway between it and Larisa. The Romans, not withdrawing from the bank of the Peneus, moved their camp to a safer place. Thither came Misagenes the Numidian with a thousand horse, an equal number of foot, and besides two-and-twenty elephants.

During those days, as the king held a council on the sum of affairs, the fierceness having now settled after the thing well done, certain of his friends dared to give counsel that he should use his good fortune for the terms of an honorable peace, rather than, carried away by vain hope, give himself to an irrecoverable chance: to set a measure to prosperity, and not to trust too much to the serenity of present fortune, was the part of a prudent man, and of one deservedly fortunate. Let him send to the consul men to renew the treaty on the same terms on which his father Philip had received peace from Titus Quinctius the victor. The war could not be ended more magnificently than after so memorable a battle, nor could a firmer hope of perpetual peace be given than that which, the Romans being stricken by an adverse battle, would make them the softer to come to terms. But if the Romans then too, with their inborn obstinacy, should spurn fair terms, gods and men would be witnesses both of Perseus’s moderation and of their stubborn arrogance. The king’s mind was never averse from such counsels; and so the opinion was approved by the assent of the greater part. Legates sent to the consul were heard, a full council being called in. They sought peace, promising that Perseus would give the Romans as much tribute as Philip had agreed, and that he would himself yield the cities, lands, and places which Philip had yielded. So said the legates. When, these removed, they deliberated, Roman steadfastness prevailed in the council. Such then was the custom: in adversity to wear the countenance of prosperous fortune, in prosperity to moderate the spirit. It was resolved to answer that peace would be granted on this condition: that the king leave to the Senate free judgment of deciding about himself and about all Macedonia. When the legates reported this, those ignorant of the Roman custom thought the obstinacy a wonder, and most of them forbade further mention of peace: soon, unasked, the Romans would seek what they now disdained when offered. Perseus feared this very arrogance, since it sprang from confidence in their strength; and, increasing the sum of money, in case he could buy peace at a price, he did not cease to try the consul’s mind. After he changed nothing of what he had at first answered, despairing of peace, the king returned to Sycurium, whence he had set out, to try the chance of war afresh.

The fame of the cavalry battle, spread abroad through Greece, laid bare men’s inclinations. For not only those who were of the Macedonian party, but very many bound by enormous benefits of the Romans, and some who had experienced the violence and arrogance of Perseus, received that fame with joy, for no other cause than that perverse zeal which the crowd uses even in the contests of games, in favoring the worse and the weaker. At the same time in Boeotia Lucretius the praetor was assaulting Haliartus with the utmost force; and although the besieged had no foreign auxiliaries except the younger men of the Coronaeans, who had entered the walls at the first siege, nor any hopes, yet they resisted by spirit rather than by strength. For they both made frequent sallies against the works, and pressed to the ground the battering-ram, when it was brought up, loaded with a counterweight of lead; and, if anywhere they had been unable to turn aside the stroke, in place of the demolished wall they hastily built a new one with a makeshift work, of stones heaped up from the very ruin’s wreckage. When the assault by works went the slower, the praetor ordered scaling-ladders to be distributed among the maniples, that he might attack the walls with a ring of men on every side, thinking the multitude would suffice the more for it, because, on the part where a marsh girds the city, it neither needed to be assaulted nor could be. He himself, from that part where two towers and the wall between them had stood, brought up two thousand picked soldiers, so that, at the same time as he himself tried to climb over the ruins, by the rush of the townsmen made against him, the walls, emptied of defenders, might in some part be taken by ladders. The townsmen by no means slackly prepared to ward off his force. For, faggots of dry brushwood thrown over the place strewn with ruins, they threatened, standing with burning torches, to set fire to that barrier, that, cut off from the enemy by the conflagration, they might have time to throw up an inner wall. But chance hindered this their attempt: for so great a rain was suddenly poured forth that it both did not easily let the thing be kindled, and put out what was kindled. And so both a passage lay open through the smoking brushwood drawn apart, and, all having turned to the defense of one place, the walls too are taken by ladders in several parts at once. In the first tumult of the captured city the old men and the children, whom chance offered in the way, were cut down here and there; the armed fled into the citadel, and the next day, when no hope remained, surrender being made, they were sold under the crown. They were about two thousand five hundred. The ornaments of the city, statues and painted tablets, and whatever there was of precious booty, were carried to the ships; the city was demolished from its foundations. Thence the army was led to Thebes; which received without a contest, he handed the city over to the exiles and to those who were of the Roman party, and the families of men of the opposite faction and partisans of the king and of the Macedonians he sold under the crown. These things done in Boeotia, he returned to the sea and the ships.

While these things were being done in Boeotia, Perseus held his standing camp at Sycurium for several days. There, when he heard that the Romans were hastily carrying in from the fields around the grain that had been reaped, and then that each man before his own tent was cutting off the ears with sickles, the better to thresh the cleaner grain, and had made vast heaps of straw throughout the whole camp, thinking them apt for a conflagration, he ordered torches and pitch-pine and firebrands smeared with pitch and tow to be got ready; and so he set out at midnight, that, attacking at first light, he might catch them unawares. In vain. The first outposts, overwhelmed, by their tumult and panic roused the rest, and the signal was given to take up arms at once; and at the same time the soldier was drawn up on the rampart and at the gates. And Perseus at once both wheeled his line away from the assault of the camp and bade the baggage go first, then the standards of the foot be carried forward. He himself, with the cavalry and the light-armed, halted to bring up the rear, thinking — which is what happened — that the enemy would follow to harry the hindmost from behind. There was a brief contest, chiefly of the light-armed with the skirmishers; the horse and foot returned to camp without disorder.

The crops reaped round about, the Romans move their camp to Crannon, an untouched territory. There, while they kept a standing camp, secure both on account of the distance and the difficulty of the waterless road which is between Sycurium and Crannon, suddenly at first light the king’s cavalry, with the light-armed, seen on the overhanging hills, made a vast tumult. They had set out from Sycurium the day before at midday; the column of foot they had left toward dawn in the nearest plain. He stood a little while on the hills, thinking the Romans could be drawn out to a cavalry contest. When they made no movement, he sends a horseman to bid the foot carry their standards back to Sycurium, and himself soon followed. The Roman horsemen, following at a moderate interval, in case anywhere they could fall upon them scattered and dispersed, after they saw them go off in close order, keeping their standards and ranks, themselves too returned to camp.

Then, offended by the length of the march, the king moved his camp to Mopselus, and the Romans, the crops of Crannon reaped, cross into the territory of Phalanna. There, when the king had learned from a deserter that the Romans were reaping, scattered through the fields without any armed protection, he set out with a thousand horse, two thousand Thracians and Cretans, and, having gone with as much haste as he could in a hurried column, fell upon the Romans unawares. More than a thousand wagons, most of them laden, were taken, and about six hundred men. The booty, to be guarded and led to camp, he gave to three hundred Cretans; he himself, recalling the horse from the scattered slaughter, and the rest of the foot, leads to the nearest outpost, thinking it could be overwhelmed without a great struggle. Lucius Pompeius, military tribune, was in command, who, the soldiers being alarmed by the sudden coming of the enemy, withdrew them to a near hillock, meaning to defend himself by the strength of the place, since he was unequal in number and force. There, when he had drawn the soldiers into a ring, that with shields close-pressed they might protect themselves from the stroke of arrows and javelins, Perseus, the hillock surrounded with armed men, bade some attempt the ascent on every side and join battle hand to hand, others hurl their weapons from afar. A vast terror beset the Romans; for they could neither stand close-packed, on account of those who were striving up the hillock, nor, when by running forward they had broken their ranks, were they other than laid open to javelins and arrows. They were wounded chiefly by the cestrosphendone. This new kind of weapon was invented in that war. A bolt two palms long was fixed to a shaft half a cubit long and the thickness of a finger; round this were set three short fir feathers, as is wont with arrows; the sling had two thongs of unequal length in the middle. When the slinger whirled it, balanced, with great force by the strap, it flew off and darted out like a leaden bullet. When a part of the soldiers had been wounded both by this and by every other kind of weapon, and the weary could no longer easily bear their arms, the king pressed them to surrender, giving his word, sometimes promising rewards; nor was any man’s mind bent to surrender, when, beyond hope, to men now resolved to die, hope shone forth. For when certain of the foragers, fleeing back into camp, had reported to the consul that the outpost was beset, moved by the peril of so many citizens — for they were about eight hundred, and all Romans — he goes out from the camp with the cavalry and the light-armed (fresh auxiliaries had come up, Numidian foot and horse and elephants), and bids the military tribunes follow with the standards of the legions. He himself, the velites added to strengthen the light-armed auxiliaries, goes ahead to the hillock. The consul’s flanks are covered by Eumenes, Attalus, and Misagenes, the princeling of the Numidians.

When the foremost standards of their own men came in sight of the besieged, the Romans’ spirits were revived from the utmost despair; Perseus, who first of all ought, content with the chance success — some foragers taken and killed — not to have worn away time in the siege of the outpost, and, second, even after he had attempted that too, however it went, knowing that he had no strength with him, ought to have gone off while he might unharmed — Perseus himself, elated by success, both stayed for the enemy’s coming, and sent men to summon the phalanx in haste; which, both later than the case required and, hastily brought up and hurried in its course, would come up in disorder against men marshaled and prepared. The consul, arriving first, at once joined battle. At first the Macedonians resisted; then, when they were in no way equal, having lost three hundred foot and twenty-four of the foremost horsemen of the squadron they call the sacred — among whom Antimachus too, prefect of the squadron, fell — they try to depart. But the march was almost more tumultuous than the battle itself. The phalanx, summoned by a frightened messenger, when it was being led hastily, was first, in the narrows, held up, meeting the column of captives and the wagons laden with grain. There was a vast harassing on both sides, no one waiting until the column somehow disentangled itself, but the armed men flinging the baggage headlong down the steep — for in no other way could the road be opened — and the beasts, when they were goaded, raging in the crowd. Scarcely had they freed themselves from the disordered column of captives, when they meet the king’s column and the stricken horsemen. There indeed the shout of men bidding the standards be carried back made a confusion almost like that of a rout; so that, had the enemy dared to enter the narrows and pursue farther, a great disaster could have been received. The consul, the outpost recovered from the hillock, content with a moderate success, led his forces back to camp. There are those who say that on that day a great battle was fought: eight thousand of the enemy killed, among them Sopater and Antipater, the king’s leaders; about two thousand eight hundred taken alive, twenty-seven military standards captured. Nor was the victory bloodless: more than four thousand three hundred of the consul’s army fell, five standards of the left wing were lost.

This day both restored the Romans’ spirits and stunned Perseus, so that, having tarried a few days at Mopselus, chiefly for the burial of the lost soldiers, with a strong enough garrison left at Gonnus, he withdrew his forces into Macedonia. He left one Timotheus, of the king’s prefects, with a modest band at Phila, bidding him try the Magnetes from near at hand. When he came to Pella, the army dismissed into winter quarters, he himself set out with Cotys to Thessalonica. Thither word is brought that Autlebis, a princeling of the Thracians, and Corragus, Eumenes’s prefect, had made an inroad into the borders of Cotys and seized the region they call Marene. And so, thinking Cotys must be sent off to defend his own, he escorted him as he departed with great gifts. He counted out two hundred talents to the cavalry, half a year’s pay, though he had at first determined to give a year’s.

The consul, after he heard that Perseus had set out, moved his camp to Gonnus, in case he could get possession of the town. Situated before Tempe itself, in the jaws, it offers Macedonia a most secure barrier, and to the Macedonians a convenient descent into Thessaly. When, both by its position and by its strong garrison, the citadel was impregnable, he gave up the undertaking. Turning his march into Perrhaebia, Malloea taken and plundered at the first onset, Tripolis and the rest of Perrhaebia received, he returned to Larisa. Thence, Eumenes and Attalus sent home, he distributed winter quarters for Misagenes and the Numidians in the nearest cities of Thessaly, and divided a part of the army through all Thessaly in such a way that all might both have convenient winter quarters and be a garrison to the cities. He sent Quintus Mucius the legate with two thousand to hold Ambracia; he dismissed all the allies of the Greek cities except the Achaeans. Setting out with part of the army into Achaea Phthiotis, he demolished from its foundations Pteleum, deserted by the flight of the townsmen, and received Antrona by the will of the inhabitants. Then he moved the army to Larisa. The city was deserted; the whole multitude had withdrawn into the citadel; this he sets about assaulting. First of all the Macedonians, the royal garrison, had departed in fear; abandoned by these, the townsmen at once come into surrender. After that he was in doubt whether Demetrias should first be assaulted, or affairs in Boeotia be looked to. The Thebans, harassed by the Coronaeans, called him into Boeotia. And both at their prayers, and because the region was fitter for winter quarters than Magnesia, he led into Boeotia.