The messengers of victory, Quintus Fabius and Lucius Lentulus and Quintus Metellus, when with all the haste that could be employed they had come quickly to Rome, found nonetheless that the joy of the matter had been forestalled. On the fourth day after the battle was fought with the king, when there were games in the circus, a murmur of the people suddenly ran through all the seats of the spectators that there had been a battle in Macedonia and the king utterly defeated; then the murmur grew; at last a shout and applause arose, as though a sure messenger of victory had been brought. The magistrates marveled and sought the author of the sudden joy; and since there was none, the gladness of a sure thing did indeed vanish, yet a happy omen settled in their minds. After this was confirmed by true messengers, at the arrival of Fabius and Lentulus and Metellus, they rejoiced both at the victory itself and at the presage of their own spirits. And another joy of the circus crowd, no less like the truth, is handed down. On the fifteenth day before the Kalends of October, on the second day of the Roman games, as Gaius Licinius the consul was mounting to start the four-horse chariots, a courier, who said that he came from Macedonia, is said to have handed him a laurelled letter. The chariots started, the consul mounted his car, and as he was being carried back through the circus to the public stands, he showed the laurelled tablets to the people. At the sight of them the people, suddenly forgetful of the spectacle, ran down into the middle. Thither the consul summoned the Senate, and, the tablets read out, by the authority of the fathers, before the public stands, he announced to the people that his colleague Lucius Aemilius had fought a pitched battle with King Perseus; the army of the Macedonians cut to pieces and routed; the king fled with a few; all the cities of Macedonia had come into the power of the Roman people. At hearing this, a shout arose with vast applause; the games left behind, a great part of the men carried the glad news home to their wives and children. It was the thirteenth day from that on which the battle was fought in Macedonia. On the next day the Senate was held in the Senate house, and supplications were decreed, and a decree of the Senate was made that the consul discharge those whom, besides the soldiers and the naval allies, he held under the oath of enlistment; about discharging the soldiers and naval allies, that it be referred when the legates from the consul Lucius Aemilius, by whom the courier had been sent ahead, should have come. On the sixth day before the Kalends of October, at about the second hour, the legates entered the city. Drawing with them a vast throng of those who met them and escorted them wherever they went, they made their way into the forum to the Senate house. The Senate happened to be in the Senate house; thither the consul brought the legates in. There they were kept only so long as to set forth how great the royal forces of foot and horse had been, how many thousands of these had been killed, how many taken; with how small a loss of soldiers so great a slaughter of the enemy had been made; how panic-stricken the king had fled; it was thought he would make for Samothrace; the fleet was ready to pursue him, and he could escape neither by land nor by sea. These same things, a little after, led out into the assembly, they set forth; and the gladness was renewed, when the consul had proclaimed that all the sacred temples be opened, and each man for himself went from the assembly to give thanks to the gods, and the temples of the immortal gods throughout the whole city were filled with a vast throng not of men only but of women too. The Senate, recalled into the Senate house, decreed supplications for the matter excellently conducted by the consul Lucius Aemilius, for five days, at all the couches of the gods, and ordered sacrifice to be made with full-grown victims. The ships which stood ready and equipped on the Tiber, to be sent into Macedonia if the matter should require, [it ordered] to be hauled up and set in the dockyards; the naval allies to be discharged with a year’s pay given, and with them all who had sworn to the consul’s words; and what soldiers there were at Corcyra, at Brundisium, by the upper sea, or in the Larinate country—in all these places an army had been disposed with which, if the matter should require, Gaius Licinius might bring aid to his colleague—all these soldiers it pleased them to discharge. A supplication was proclaimed to the people before the assembly, from the fifth day before the Ides of October, including that day, for five days.

From Illyricum two legates, Gaius Licinius Nerva and Publius Decius, announced that the army of the Illyrians had been cut to pieces, King Gentius captured, and that Illyricum too was in the power of the Roman people. For these things done under the leadership and the auspices of Lucius Anicius the praetor, the Senate decreed supplications for three days. The Latin festival too was proclaimed afresh by the consul, for the fourth and the third days before, and the day before, the Ides of November.

Some have handed down that the Rhodian envoys, not yet dismissed, after the victory was announced, were called into the Senate as though to mock their stupid arrogance; and that there Agepolis, their chief, spoke thus: that envoys had been sent by the Rhodians to make peace between the Romans and Perseus, because that war was grievous and inconvenient to all Greece, and costly and harmful to the Romans themselves; that the fortune of the Roman people had done well, since, the war being ended otherwise, it had given them the opportunity of congratulating the Romans on an outstanding victory. These things were said by the Rhodian; it was answered by the Senate that the Rhodians had sent that embassy not for the sake of the advantages of Greece, nor out of care for the expenses of the Roman people, but on Perseus’s behalf. For if that care which was pretended had been real, then the envoys ought to have been sent when Perseus, his army led into Thessaly, for two years was besieging some Greek cities and terrifying others by the threat of arms; then no mention of peace had been made by the Rhodians. After they had heard that the passes were overcome and the Romans crossed into Macedonia, and that Perseus was being held shut in, then the Rhodians had sent the embassy, for no other thing than to snatch Perseus from imminent peril. With this answer the envoys were dismissed.

In those same days Marcus Marcellus too, departing from the province of Spain, the noble city Marcolica taken, brought into the treasury ten pounds of gold and silver to the sum of a million sesterces.

Paulus Aemilius the consul, when he had his camp, as said above, at Siras in the Odomantian land, received a letter from King Perseus by three obscure legates; and he himself is said to have wept at the human lot—that one who a little before, not content with the kingdom of Macedonia, had assaulted the Dardani and the Illyrians and had stirred up the auxiliaries of the Bastarnae, now, his army lost, an exile from his kingdom, driven into a small island, a suppliant, was safe by the sanctity of a shrine and not by his own strength. But after he read “King Perseus to the consul Paulus, greeting,” the folly of one ignorant of his own fortune took away all pity. And so, although in the rest of the letter the entreaties were by no means kingly, yet that embassy was dismissed without an answer and without a letter. Perseus felt what name he, conquered, ought to forget; and so a second letter, sent with the title of a private name, both asked and obtained that some be sent to him with whom he could speak about the state and condition of his fortune. Three legates were sent: Publius Lentulus, Aulus Postumius Albinus, Aulus Antonius. Nothing was accomplished by that embassy, Perseus embracing the royal name with all his might, Paulus pressing that he commit himself and all that was his to the good faith and the clemency of the Roman people.

While these things are done, the fleet of Gnaeus Octavius put in at Samothrace. He too, present terror applied, when he was trying to entice the king to surrender, now by threats, now by hope, was aided in this by a thing brought about whether by chance or by design. Lucius Atilius, a distinguished young man, when he had noticed that the people of Samothrace were in assembly, asked of the magistrates that they grant him the power of addressing the people in a few words. Leave given: “Is it, Samothracian hosts, that we have heard truly or falsely that this island is sacred, and the whole soil august and inviolate?” When all assented to the sanctity believed of it, he said: “Why, then, does a murderer pollute it, and violate it with the blood of King Eumenes? And, since every preface of the sacred rites bars from the rites those whose hands are not pure, will you suffer your inner shrines to be contaminated by the bloody body of a brigand?” Famous among all the cities of Greece was the report of the murder of King Eumenes almost perpetrated by Euander at Delphi. And so, besides that they saw themselves and the whole island and the temple to be in the power of the Romans, thinking these things were reproached to them not undeservedly, they send Theondas—who was the supreme magistrate among them, whom they themselves call king—to Perseus, to announce that Euander the Cretan was accused of murder; that there were, moreover, among them judicial proceedings established by ancestral custom concerning those who were said to have brought unholy hands within the sacred bounds of the temple; if Euander was confident he was accused innocent of a capital matter, let him come to plead his cause; if he dared not commit himself to judgment, let him free the temple of its pollution and take thought for himself. Perseus, Euander called aside, by no means advised him to undergo the trial: he would be no match either in the case or in favor. There underlay also that fear, lest, condemned, he drag forth Perseus as the author of the abominable deed. What else remained than that he die bravely? Euander refused nothing openly; but when he had said that he preferred to die by poison rather than by the sword, he was secretly preparing flight. When this was reported to the king, fearing lest he turn the wrath of the Samothracians upon himself, as having withdrawn the defendant from his punishment, he ordered Euander to be killed. This murder rashly perpetrated, it at once came into his mind that without doubt the stain which had been Euander’s was now taken upon himself: by that man Eumenes had been wounded at Delphi, by himself Euander killed at Samothrace; thus the two most sacred temples on earth had been violated with human blood, he the one author of both. He turned aside the charge of this matter by bribing Theondas with money, to announce to the people that Euander had taken his own life. But by so great a crime committed against the only friend left to him—tried through so many chances and not a betrayer, because he had not betrayed—he alienated all minds from himself. Each man for himself crossed over to the Romans; and they forced him, almost left alone, to take the counsel of flight; and he calls upon Oroandes the Cretan, to whom the Thracian coast was known because he had traded in that region, to take him up into a galley and convey him to Cotys. Demetrium is a harbor on a certain promontory of Samothrace; there the galley lay. At sunset the things that were necessary for use are carried down, and the money too, as much as could secretly be carried down. The king himself at midnight, with three privy to the flight, through the back of the house into a garden near his bedroom, and thence, having with difficulty crossed the wall, came to the sea. Oroandes, having waited only until the money should be brought down, at the first darkness had loosed his ship and was making over the deep for Crete. When the ship was not found in the harbor, Perseus, having wandered some while on the shore, at last, fearing the now-approaching daylight, not daring to return to his lodging, hid himself in a dark corner at the side of the temple. “Royal pages” was what among the Macedonians the sons of the chiefs, chosen for the king’s service, were called. This cohort, having followed the fleeing king, did not even then withdraw, until by order of Gnaeus Octavius it was proclaimed by a herald that the royal pages and the other Macedonians who were at Samothrace, if they crossed over to the Romans, would keep their safety and liberty and all their goods, whether they had them with them or had left them in Macedonia. At this word a crossing-over of all was made, and they gave their names to Gaius Postumius the military tribune. The king’s small children too Ion of Thessalonica handed over to Octavius; nor was anyone left with the king except Philip, the eldest by birth of his sons. Then he gave up himself and his son to Octavius, accusing fortune and the gods, in whose temple he was, who aided the suppliant with no help. He was ordered to be put aboard the flagship; thither too the money that remained was carried; and at once the fleet made again for Amphipolis. Thence Octavius sent the king into the camp to the consul, a letter sent ahead that he should know he was in his power and was being brought.

Paulus, reckoning that victory, as indeed it was, a second one, slew victims at the news, and, a council called, when he had read out the praetor’s letter, sent Quintus Aelius Tubero to meet the king, and ordered the rest to remain in numbers at the headquarters. Never on any other occasion did so great a multitude run together to any spectacle. In the time of our fathers King Syphax had been led captive into the Roman camp. Besides that he was comparable neither by his own fame nor by that of his nation, he had then been but an accession to the Punic war, as Gentius to the Macedonian; Perseus was the head of the war, and not only the fame of his father and grandfather, whom he touched by blood and lineage, made him a spectacle, but there shone forth Philip and great Alexander, who had made the supreme empire of the Macedonians in the world. In a black cloak Perseus entered the camp with his son, with no other companion of his own who, by sharing his calamity, might make him more pitiable. He could not advance for the throng of those running to the spectacle, until lictors were sent by the consul, who, clearing the way, made a path to the headquarters. The consul rose, and bidding the others be seated, advancing a little, gave his right hand to the king as he entered, and lifted him up as he lowered himself to his feet, nor suffered him to touch his knees; and, brought into the tent, bade him sit opposite those called into council. The first question was, by what injury driven he had undertaken war against the Roman people with so hostile a spirit, that he should bring himself and his kingdom to the utmost crisis. When, while all awaited an answer, he long, gazing at the ground, wept in silence, the consul again: “If you had received the kingdom as a young man, I should indeed marvel less that you were ignorant how grave a thing the Roman people is as friend or as enemy; but now, since you had both taken part in your father’s war which he waged with us, and remembered the peace afterward, which we kept toward him with the utmost good faith, what was the counsel, that with those whose force in war and faith in peace you had tried, you should prefer to have war rather than peace?” When he answered, neither questioned further nor accused, the consul went on: “However these things have fallen out—whether by human error or by chance or by necessity—have good courage; the clemency of the Roman people, known by the misfortunes of many kings and peoples, gives you not only hope, but a well-nigh assured confidence of safety.” These things he said to Perseus in the Greek tongue; then in Latin to his own men: “You behold a notable example of the mutation of human affairs. To you especially I say this, young men. Therefore in prosperity it befits no one to plan anything proudly or violently against another, nor to trust to present fortune, since what the evening may bring is uncertain. He at last will be a man whose spirit neither prosperity will lift up with its breath nor adversity break.” The council dismissed, the care of guarding the king is entrusted to Quintus Aelius. That day both Perseus was invited to the consul, and every other honor was paid him that could be paid in such a fortune. The army then was dismissed into winter quarters. Amphipolis received the greatest part of the forces, the neighboring cities the rest.

This was the end of the war between the Romans and Perseus, after it had been waged four continuous years, and the same the end of a kingdom famous through most of Europe and all of Asia. They counted Perseus the twentieth from Caranus, who first reigned. Perseus received the kingdom in the consulship of Quintus Fulvius and Lucius Manlius, was named king by the Senate in the consulship of Marcus Junius and Aulus Manlius, and reigned eleven years.

The Macedonian nation was of quite obscure fame down to Philip son of Amyntas; then, and through him, when it had begun to grow, it nonetheless kept within the bounds of Europe, having embraced all Greece and part of Thrace and Illyricum. Then it overflowed into Asia, and in the thirteen years in which Alexander reigned it first made all that—over which the empire of the Persians had extended through an almost immeasurable space—of its own dominion; then it traversed the Arabs and India, where the Red Sea embraces the uttermost bounds of the lands. Then was the greatest kingdom and name of the Macedonians in the lands; thence, by the death of Alexander, torn apart into many kingdoms, while each snatched resources to himself, its strength mangled, it stood from the highest peak of fortune to its uttermost end a hundred and fifty years.

When the fame of the Roman victory had spread into Asia, Antenor, who was lying with the fleet of galleys at Phanae, crossed thence to Cassandria. Gaius Popilius, who was at Delos as a protection for the ships making for Macedonia, after he heard that the war in Macedonia was finished and the enemy’s galleys removed from their station, having himself too dismissed the Attic ships, proceeds to sail to Egypt to carry through the embassy he had undertaken, that he might meet Antiochus before he should approach the walls of Alexandria. When the legates were sailing past Asia and had come to Loryma—a harbor a little more than twenty miles from Rhodes, set opposite the city itself—the chief men of the Rhodians met them (for thither too the fame of victory had now been carried), begging that they be conveyed to Rhodes: it pertained to the reputation and safety of the state that they themselves should learn all that had been done and was being done at Rhodes, and should report it to Rome ascertained by themselves, not spread abroad by rumor. Long refusing, they prevailed on them to suffer a brief delay of their voyage for the safety of an allied city. After they had come to Rhodes, the same men by entreaties drew them also into the assembly. The arrival of the legates increased the state’s fear rather than lessened it; for Popilius recounted all that individuals and the whole people had said and done in a hostile spirit in that war, and, a man harsh of temper, heightened the atrocity of the things said with a grim countenance and an accusatory voice, so that, since there was no cause of private quarrel with the state, from the bitterness of one Roman senator they might conjecture what the disposition of the whole Senate toward them was. The speech of Gaius Decimius was more moderate, who said that in most of the things recalled by Popilius the fault lay not with the people but with a few inciters of the crowd: that these, having a venal tongue, had made decrees full of royal flattery and had sent those embassies of which the Rhodians were always no less ashamed than they repented; all of which, if the people had a sound mind, would turn upon the heads of the guilty. He was heard with great assent, not so much because he relieved the multitude of the blame as because he turned the fault upon its authors. And so, when their chief men answered the Romans, by no means so welcome was the speech of those who tried somehow to dilute what Popilius had alleged as of those who assented to Decimius in casting the authors forward for the expiation of the guilt. A decree therefore was at once made, that those who should be convicted of having said or done anything for Perseus against the Romans be condemned to death. Some had left the city at the Romans’ coming, others took their own lives. The legates, having stayed not more than five days at Rhodes, set out for Alexandria. Nor any the less did the Rhodians carry out the trials by the decree made in their presence; which perseverance in executing the matter the leniency of Decimius occasioned as much as the harshness of Popilius.

While these things were going on, Antiochus, having tried the walls of Alexandria in vain, had withdrawn; and, master of the rest of Egypt, leaving the elder Ptolemy at Memphis—for whom he pretended that he was seeking the kingdom by his own strength, that he might soon attack him as victor—he led his army into Syria. Not unaware of this intention of his, Ptolemy the younger, while he had his brother terrified by fear of the siege, thinking he could be received at Alexandria, both with his sister helping and the brother’s friends not opposing, did not cease to send, first to his sister, then to his brother and his friends, until he confirmed peace with them. Antiochus he had made suspect, because, the rest of Egypt handed over to him, a strong garrison had been left at Pelusium. It was plain that the bolts of Egypt were being held, so that when he wished he might again lead his army in; and that the end of the intestine war with his brother would be that the victor, wearied by the contest, would be by no means a match for Antiochus. These things, prudently observed by the elder, the younger brother and those with him received with assent; the sister helped most, not by counsel only but by entreaties. And so, all agreeing, peace made, the elder is received at Alexandria, not even the multitude opposing, which in the war—not only through the siege, but even after the withdrawal from the walls, because nothing was brought in from Egypt—had been worn down by the want of all things. While it would have been fitting that Antiochus rejoice at these things, if he had led his army into Egypt for the sake of restoring [Ptolemy]—which specious title he had used for receiving embassies and sending letters to all the cities of Asia and Greece—he was so offended that he prepared war much more sharply and hostilely against the two than before against the one. He at once sent a fleet to Cyprus; he himself, at the first of spring, making for Egypt with his army, advanced into Coele Syria. Around Rhinocolura, Ptolemy’s legates giving thanks that through him he had recovered his father’s kingdom, and asking that he guard his own gift and say rather what he wished done, than, made an enemy out of an ally, act by force and arms, he answered that he would neither recall his fleet nor lead back his army unless all Cyprus and Pelusium and the land which was around the Pelusiac mouth of the Nile were yielded to him; and he fixed a day within which he should receive an answer about the conditions being carried out. After the day given for the truce had passed, his forces sailing by the mouth of the Nile to Pelusium, and through the deserts of Arabia making toward Memphis, and the rest of the Egyptians, partly by goodwill, partly by fear, [submitting], he descended by moderate marches to Alexandria. Having crossed the river at Eleusis—a place four miles from Alexandria—the Roman legates met him. When he had greeted them as they came and was extending his right hand to Popilius, Popilius handed him the tablets that had the decree of the Senate written upon them, and bade him first of all read that. When he had read them through, and said that he would consider, his friends being called in, what he ought to do, Popilius, in keeping with the rest of his harshness of spirit, with the staff which he carried in his hand drew a circle around the king and said: “Before you step out of this circle, give back the answer which I am to report to the Senate.” Stunned by so violent a command, when he had hesitated a little, he said: “I will do what the Senate decrees.” Then at last Popilius extended his right hand to the king as to an ally and friend. Then, on the day fixed, when Antiochus had withdrawn from Egypt, the legates, the concord between the brothers strengthened too by their authority—between whom peace had scarcely yet been concluded—sail to Cyprus, and thence dismiss the fleet of Antiochus, which had already conquered the Egyptian ships in battle. That embassy was famous among the nations, because beyond doubt Egypt had been taken away from Antiochus who already held it, and the father’s kingdom restored to the line of Ptolemy.

As the consulship of one of that year’s consuls was famous for a signal victory, so the other’s was of obscure fame, because it had no matter for action. First, when he named the day for the legions to assemble, he entered the templum without taking the auspices. When this was referred to them, the augurs decreed that the day had been named with a flaw. Having set out into Gaul, he held a fixed camp around the Macri Campi, near the mountains Sicimina and Papinus; then around the same places he wintered with the allies of the Latin name; the Roman legions, because the day for the army to assemble had been named with a flaw, had remained at Rome. And the praetors, except Gaius Papirius Carbo, to whom Sardinia had fallen, went into their provinces. The fathers had decreed that he administer justice at Rome—for he had that lot too—between citizens and foreigners.

Both Popilius and the embassy that had been sent to Antiochus returned to Rome; he reported that the controversies between the kings had been removed and the army led back from Egypt into Syria. Afterward the legates of the kings themselves came: Antiochus’s legates reporting that peace had seemed to the king preferable to any victory—the peace which had pleased the Senate—and that he had obeyed the orders of the Roman legates no otherwise than the command of the gods; then they congratulated [Rome] on the victory, which the king would have aided with all his might had anything been commanded. Ptolemy’s legates gave thanks in the common name of the king and Cleopatra: they owed more to the Senate and people of Rome than to their own parents, more than to the immortal gods, through whom they had been freed from a most wretched siege and had recovered their father’s kingdom, well-nigh lost. It was answered by the Senate that Antiochus had done rightly and in due order in obeying the legates, and that this was pleasing to the Senate and people of Rome; that, as for the kings of Egypt, Ptolemy and Cleopatra, if anything good and advantageous had befallen them through Rome, the Senate greatly rejoiced, and would take pains that they should reckon the greatest safeguard of their kingdom to be placed always in the good faith of the Roman people. To Gaius Papirius the praetor it was entrusted to see that gifts be sent to the legates according to custom. Then a letter from Macedonia was brought, which doubled the joy of the victory: that King Perseus had come into the power of the consul.

The legates dismissed, there was a dispute between the Pisan and the Lunensian envoys, the Pisans complaining that they were being driven from their land by Roman colonists, the Lunensians affirming that the land in question had been assigned to them by the triumvirs. The Senate sent five men to investigate and to determine concerning the boundaries: Quintus Fabius Buteo, Publius Cornelius Blasio, Titus Sempronius Musca, Lucius Naevius Balbus, Gaius Apuleius Saturninus.

And from Eumenes and Attalus and Athenaeus, the brothers, a joint embassy came to congratulate on the victory. And for Masgaba, son of King Masinissa, who landed from a ship at Puteoli, Lucius Manlius the quaestor was sent ahead to meet him with money, to conduct him to Rome at public expense. On his arrival the Senate was at once granted him. This young man spoke in such a way as to make things that were welcome in deed more welcome in words. He recounted how many foot and horse, how many elephants, how much grain his father had sent into Macedonia in that four-year span; that two things had been a cause of shame to him: one, that the Senate had asked of him through legates what was needed for the war, and had not commanded it; the other, that it had sent him money for the grain. Masinissa, he said, remembered that he held his kingdom gotten and increased and multiplied by the Roman people; content with the use of the kingdom, he knew that the ownership and the right of it belonged to those who had given it; and so it was fair that they take from him, not ask, nor buy from the fruits of the land given by them the things that grow there. This was, and would be, enough for Masinissa—whatever was left over for the Roman people. With these instructions, having set out from his father, horsemen afterward overtook him to announce that Macedonia was conquered, and to bid him congratulate the Senate, and to make known that this matter was of such great joy to his father that he wished to come to Rome and sacrifice to Jupiter Best and Greatest on the Capitol and give thanks; he asked of the Senate that, unless it were troublesome, this be permitted him. It was answered to the princeling that his father Masinissa did what it became a grateful and good man to do, in adding price and honor to a benefit owed; that the Roman people had been aided by him in the Punic war with brave and faithful service, and that he had attained his kingdom by the favor of the Roman people; these being matched, afterward in the wars of three kings in succession he had discharged all the offices. It was no wonder that that king rejoiced at the victory of the Roman people, who had mingled all the lot of his fortune and his kingdom with Roman affairs; let him give thanks to the gods for the victory at his own household altars; at Rome his son would do it for him. He had congratulated enough, too, in his own name and his father’s. As for himself leaving his kingdom and departing from Africa, besides that it would be useless to him, the Senate judged it was not for the interest of the commonwealth of the Roman people. To Masgaba, asking that Hanno son of Hamilcar be demanded as a hostage in place of [another], the quaestor was ordered by decree of the Senate to buy gifts for the princeling out of a hundred pounds of silver, and to escort him to Puteoli, and to furnish all his expense while he was in Italy, and to hire two ships in which he himself and the king’s companions should be conveyed to Africa; and to all his companions, free and slave, garments were given. Not long after, a letter was brought about the other son of Masinissa, Misagenes—that he had been sent by Lucius Paulus into Africa, after Perseus was conquered, with his horsemen; that, as he sailed, the fleet scattered in the Adriatic sea, he had been carried to Brundisium, sick, with three ships. To him Lucius Stertinius the quaestor was sent to Brundisium with the same gifts that had been given at Rome to his brother, and ordered to see that a house be provided for his lodging.

The freedmen had been distributed into the four urban tribes, except those who had a son older than five years born of themselves—these they ordered to be registered where they had been registered at the last lustrum—and those who had a farm or rural farms worth more than thirty thousand sesterces—to these the right of being registered [in a rural tribe] was given. This being so observed, Claudius denied that the censor could take the right of suffrage from any man, much less from a whole order, without the people’s command. For if he could move a man from a tribe—which is nothing else than to bid him change his tribe—he could not therefore remove him from all the thirty-five tribes, that is, snatch away citizenship and liberty: not determine where he should be registered, but exclude him from the census. These things were disputed between them; finally it came down to this, that out of the four urban tribes they should publicly, in the Atrium of Liberty, draw lots for one, into which they should throw all who had been in slavery. The lot of the Esquiline came out; in it Tiberius Gracchus proclaimed that it was his pleasure that all the freedmen be registered. This matter was of great honor to the censors in the Senate. Thanks were given both to Sempronius, who had persevered in a good beginning, and to Claudius, who had not hindered it. More than by their predecessors were both removed from the Senate and ordered to sell their horses. The same men were all both moved from their tribe and made aerarians by each censor, nor was the disgrace of anyone whom the one branded lightened by the other. When they asked that, by custom, the term of a year and six months be prorogued for them to exact the upkeep of roofs and to approve the works they had let out, Gnaeus Tremellius the tribune, because he had not been chosen into the Senate, interposed his veto.

In the same year Gaius Cicereius dedicated the temple of Moneta on the Alban Mount, five years after he had vowed it. The flamen of Mars was inaugurated that year, Lucius Postumius Albinus.

In the consulship of Quintus Aelius and Marcus Junius, the consuls referring about the provinces, the fathers decreed that two provinces of Spain be made again—which had been one through the Macedonian war—and that the same men, Lucius Paulus and Lucius Anicius, hold Macedonia and Illyricum until, on the advice of the legates, they had settled affairs both disturbed by war and to be formed, out of a kingdom, into another condition. To the consuls Pisae and Gaul were decreed, with two legions each of foot and four hundred horse. The praetors’ lots were these: Quintus Cassius the urban, Manius Iuventius Thalna [the jurisdiction] among foreigners, Tiberius Claudius Nero Sicily, Gnaeus Fulvius Hither Spain, Farther Spain Gaius Licinius Nerva. To Aulus Manlius Torquatus Sardinia had fallen; he could not go to his province, retained by decree of the Senate to investigate capital matters.

Then the Senate was consulted about prodigies reported. The temple of the Penates on the Velia had been struck by lightning, and in the town of Minervium two gates and a good part of the wall. At Anagnia it had rained earth, and at Lanuvium a torch had been seen in the sky, and at Calatia, on public land, Marcus Valerius, a Roman citizen, reported that blood had flowed from his hearth for three days and two nights. On account of this above all the decemvirs, ordered to consult the books, proclaimed a supplication for one day for the people and sacrificed fifty she-goats in the forum. And on account of the other prodigies there was a supplication another day at all the couches of the gods, and sacrifice was made with full-grown victims, and the city was purified. Likewise, as far as it pertained to the honor of the immortal gods, the Senate decreed that, since the enemies were overcome and the kings Perseus and Gentius, with Macedonia and Illyricum, were in the power of the Roman people, gifts as great as had been given at all the couches of the gods in the consulship of Appius Claudius and Marcus Sempronius for the conquest of King Antiochus should be seen given by Quintus Cassius and Manius Iuventius the praetors.

Then they decreed legates—on whose advice the commanders Lucius Paulus and Lucius Anicius should settle affairs—ten into Macedonia, five into Illyricum. Into Macedonia the first named were Aulus Postumius Luscus and Gaius Claudius, both of censorian rank, Quintus Fabius Labeo, and Gaius Licinius Crassus, Paulus’s colleague in the consulship, who then with prorogued command held the province of Gaul. To these of consular rank they added Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus, Servius Cornelius Sulla, Lucius Junius, Titus Numisius of Tarquinii, Aulus Terentius Varro. Into Illyricum these were named: Publius Aelius Ligus of consular rank, Gaius Cicereius and Gnaeus Baebius Tamphilus—the latter had been praetor the year before, Cicereius many years before—Publius Terentius Tuscivicanus, Publius Manilius. Then the consuls were advised by the fathers that, since it was fitting that one of these succeed Gaius Licinius, who had been named legate, in Gaul, they should at the earliest time either arrange the provinces between themselves or draw lots; they drew lots. To Marcus Junius Pisae fell—whom, before he went to his province, it pleased them to bring the embassies which had gathered from everywhere to Rome to congratulate into the Senate; to Quintus Aelius, Gaul. But although such men were being sent, on whose counsel it could be hoped that the commanders would decree nothing unworthy of either the clemency or the gravity of the Roman people, yet in the Senate too the chief heads of the plans were debated, so that the legates could carry all the outlines from home to the commanders. First of all, it pleased them that the Macedonians and Illyrians be free, so that it might appear to all nations that the arms of the Roman people brought not slavery to the free, but on the contrary liberty to the enslaved—both that the nations which were in liberty might believe it safe for them and perpetual under Rome’s tutelage, and that those which lived under kings might believe both that for the present they had these kings milder and juster out of respect for the Roman people, and that, if ever there should be war between their kings and the Roman people, its outcome would bring victory to the Romans, liberty to themselves. They resolved also that the leases of the Macedonian mine—which was a vast revenue—and of the rural estates be abolished; for it could neither be worked without a publican, and where there was a publican, there either the public right was void or there was no liberty for the allies. Not even the Macedonians themselves could work it; where there was booty in the midst for those administering it, there would never be lacking causes of sedition and strife. And lest the common council of the nation [be a snare]—lest at some time a wicked flatterer of the crowd should drag liberty, given with wholesome moderation, into a pestilent license—it pleased them that Macedonia be divided into four regions, so that each might have its own council, and pay to the Roman people half the tribute which they had been accustomed to bring to the kings. Similar instructions to these were given for Illyricum too. The rest was left to the commanders and the legates themselves, in whose hands the present handling of affairs would furnish surer counsels.

Among the many embassies of kings and nations and peoples, Attalus, the brother of King Eumenes, most of all turned upon himself the eyes and minds of all. For he was received by those who had served together in that war not a little more kindly than if King Eumenes himself had come. Two ostensibly honorable matters had brought him: the one, a congratulation befitting that victory which he himself had aided; the other, a complaint of the Gallic tumult and the disaster received, by which the kingdom had been brought into doubt. There underlay also a secret hope of honors and rewards from the Senate, which could scarcely fall to him with his loyalty unimpaired. For there were certain of the Romans too, no good advisers, who by hope would draw out his cupidity: that there was at Rome this opinion about Attalus and Eumenes, as though about the one a sure friend to the Romans, about the other an ally faithful neither to the Romans nor to Perseus. And so it could scarcely be settled whether the things he would ask for himself, or those against his brother, would be the more obtainable from the Senate—so ready were all both to grant everything to this one and to deny it to the other. Attalus was of those men, as the event showed, who covet as much as hope has promised, had not the prudent warning of a single friend laid, as it were, reins upon his spirit, exulting in prosperity. Stratius was with him, a physician, sent to Rome for that very purpose by the not-unconcerned Eumenes, as a spy upon what was being done by the brother and a faithful monitor, should he see his loyalty departing. He, when he had come to ears already preoccupied and a mind already worked upon, attacking the matter with timely discourse, restored a thing all but slipped, by saying that other kingdoms had grown by other means; that their kingdom, new, founded on no ancient resources, stood by fraternal concord—because, though one bore the royal name and the chief insignia of the head, all the brothers reigned. As for Attalus, who was next in age, who did not hold him as a king? And that not only because he saw such great present resources of his, but because it was beyond doubt that he would reign before long; such was the infirmity and age of Eumenes, who had no offspring of children—for he had not yet acknowledged the one who afterward reigned. What did it profit to bring force to a thing about to come to him soon of its own accord? There had been added too a new storm to the kingdom, the Gallic tumult, which could scarcely be withstood by the agreement and concord of the kings; but if to a foreign war domestic sedition were added, it could not be stayed; nor would he accomplish anything but, lest his brother die in the kingdom, snatch from himself the near hope of the kingdom. If both were glorious things—both to have saved the kingdom for his brother and to have snatched it—yet the praise of the kingdom saved, joined as it is to piety, had been the preferable. But indeed, since the other thing is detestable and next to parricide, what doubt remained for deliberation? For was he going to ask for part of the kingdom, or to snatch the whole? If part, both brothers, weakened, their strength torn apart, would be exposed to all injuries and reproaches; if the whole, would he then order his elder brother to be a private man—or an exile at that age, with that infirmity of body—or, at the last, to die? The end of Perseus seemed notable—to pass over the outcome of impious brothers as handed down in tales—who laid the diadem, snatched from his brother’s murder, at the feet of the conquering enemy in the temple of the Samothracians, as though the gods, present, were exacting the penalties. Those very men who urged him on, not as friends to him but as enemies to Eumenes, would praise his piety and constancy if he kept faith with his brother to the last. These things prevailed the more in Attalus’s mind. And so, brought into the Senate, he congratulated them on the victory, and set forth his own services in that war and his brother’s, if there were any, and the defection of the Gauls, which had lately been made with vast commotion; he asked that they send legates to them, by whose authority they might be called off from arms. These instructions delivered for the good of the kingdom, he asked Aenus and Maronea for himself. Thus, the hope of those frustrated who had believed that, his brother accused, he would ask for a partition of the kingdom, he left the Senate house. Rarely on any other occasion was any king or private man heard with so great a favor and so great an assent of all; he was both honored with all honors and gifts while present and escorted as he set out.

Among the many embassies of Asia and Greece, the legates of the Rhodians most of all turned the state upon them. For whereas at first they had been seen in white clothing—which both befitted men congratulating, and, had they worn squalid dress, could have offered the appearance of men mourning Perseus’s fall—after the fathers, consulted by Marcus Junius the consul while the legates stood in the comitium whether they should give them lodging, entertainment, and a hearing of the Senate, decided that no right of hospitality was to be kept toward them, and the consul, having gone out of the Senate house, when the Rhodians, saying that they had come to congratulate on the victory and to clear the charges against their state, asked that the Senate be granted them, announced that the Romans were accustomed to render to allies and friends both other courtesies, kindly and hospitably, and a hearing of the Senate, [but] that the Rhodians had not so deserved in that war as to be held in the number of friends and allies—on hearing this, they all prostrated themselves on the ground and, beseeching the consul and all who were present, [begged] that they not judge it fair that new and false charges should harm the Rhodians more than their ancient services, of which they themselves were witnesses. At once, squalid dress taken up, they went round the houses of the chief men with prayers and tears, begging that they investigate the cause before they condemned.

Manius Iuventius Thalna the praetor, whose jurisdiction was between citizens and foreigners, was inciting the people against the Rhodians and had promulgated a bill that war be declared on the Rhodians, and that they choose, from the magistrates of that year, one to be sent with a fleet to that war—hoping that he himself would be the one. To this proceeding Marcus Antonius and Marcus Pomponius, tribunes of the plebs, were opposed. But the praetor too had entered upon the matter by a new and evil precedent, in that, without the Senate first consulted, without the consuls informed, on his own single judgment he brought a bill whether they wished and ordered war to be declared on the Rhodians—whereas before, the Senate had always first been consulted about war, and then, on the authority of the fathers, it had been brought to the people; and the tribunes of the plebs, since it had been so handed down that no one should veto a law before private persons had been given the power of advising and dissuading it—whereby it had very often happened both that those who had not professed they would veto, the flaws of the law observed from the speech of the dissuaders, did veto, and that those who had come to veto desisted, overcome by the authority of those who advised the law. Then between the praetor and the tribunes there was a contest of doing everything unseasonably: the tribunes, by interposing their veto before the time, [sought to defer the matter] until the commander’s arrival. “... whether we have erred is still in doubt; the penalties, all the disgraces, we already suffer. Before, when—the Carthaginians conquered, Philip and Antiochus overcome—we had come to Rome, we went from the public lodging into the Senate house to congratulate you, conscript fathers, and from the Senate house up to the Capitol, bearing gifts to your gods; now, from a squalid inn, scarcely received for hire, and bidden, almost in the manner of enemies, to remain outside the city, in this squalor we have come into the Roman Senate house—we Rhodians, whom you lately endowed with the provinces of Lycia and Caria, with the most ample rewards and honors. And the Macedonians and Illyrians you order to be free, as we hear, though they were slaves before they warred with you—nor do we begrudge anyone’s fortune; nay, we acknowledge the clemency of the Roman people—but the Rhodians, who did nothing else than keep quiet, will you in this war make enemies out of allies? Surely you are the same Romans who carry it before you that your wars are fortunate because they are just, and who glory not so much in their outcome, that you conquer, as in their beginnings, that you undertake them not without cause. Messana in Sicily assaulted made the Carthaginians your enemies; Athens assaulted, and Greece sought into slavery, and Philip aided against you with money and auxiliaries to Hannibal, made Philip an enemy. Antiochus himself, of his own accord, summoned by the Aetolians, your enemies, crossed with a fleet from Asia into Greece; and, Demetrias and Chalcis and the pass of Thermopylae occupied, he tried to cast you out of the possession of empire. With Perseus, your allies assaulted, or the princelings and chief men of nations or peoples killed, were the cause of war to you. What title, pray, will our calamity have, if we are to perish? I do not yet separate the cause of the state from Polyaratus and Dinon, our citizens, and those whom we have brought to hand over to you; if we were all Rhodians equally guilty, what would be our crime in this war? We favored Perseus’s party; and as in the wars of Antiochus and Philip we stood for you against kings, so now we stood for a king against you. In what manner we are wont to aid allies, and how energetically to take up wars, ask Gaius Livius and Lucius Aemilius Regillus, who commanded your fleets in Asia. Never did your ships fight without us; with our own fleet we fought once at Samos, again in Pamphylia, against the commander Hannibal—which victory is the more glorious to us because, when at Samos we had lost a great part of our ships in an unfavorable battle, and our excellent youth, not even terrified by so great a disaster did we dare again to go to meet the royal fleet coming from Syria. These things I have related not for the sake of boasting—for such is not now our fortune—but to remind you in what manner the Rhodians were wont to aid their allies. The most ample rewards we received from you, both Philip and Antiochus conquered. If that fortune which is now yours, by the gods’ kindness and your own valor, had been Perseus’s, and we had come into Macedonia to the victor king to seek our rewards, what, pray, should we say? That we aided him with money, or with grain? With land or with naval auxiliaries? What garrison had we held? Where had we fought, either under his leaders or by ourselves? If he asked where our soldier, where our ship had been within his garrisons, what should we answer? We should perhaps plead our cause before the victor, as we plead it before you. For by sending legates to both sides about peace we have gained just this: that we won favor from neither party, and from the one there was even a charge and a peril. And yet Perseus might truly object—what you cannot, conscript fathers—that at the beginning of the war we sent legates to you, to promise you what was needed for the war; that with naval forces, with arms, with our youth, as in former wars, we would be ready for everything. That we did not furnish it stood through you, who, for whatever cause, then spurned our auxiliaries. We did nothing, therefore, like enemies, nor did we fail in the duty of good allies; but, forbidden by you, we could not furnish it. ‘What, then? Was nothing done or said in your state, Rhodians, that you would not wish, by which the Roman people might deservedly be offended?’ Here now I am not going to defend what was done—I am not so mad—but to separate the public cause from the fault of private men. There is no state which has not both wicked citizens sometimes and an ignorant multitude always. Even among you, I have heard, there have been men who made their way by flattering the multitude, and that the plebs once seceded from you, and that the commonwealth was not in your power. If this could happen in this state, so well-ordered, can anyone marvel that there were among us some who, seeking the king’s friendship, depraved our plebs by their counsels? Who yet availed nothing further than that we held back in our duty. I will not pass over what is the gravest charge against our state in this war: we sent legates at the same time both to you and to Perseus about peace—an unhappy counsel, which a frantic orator, as we afterward heard, made most foolish, who is agreed to have spoken just as though Gaius Popilius, the Roman legate whom you sent to keep the kings Antiochus and Ptolemy from war, were speaking. But yet that—whether it is to be called arrogance or folly—was the same toward Perseus as toward you. There are characters of states, as of individual men; some nations too are irascible, others bold, certain timid, others more prone to wine, to love. The Athenian people, report has it, is swift and, beyond its strength, bold in attempting; the Lacedaemonian a delayer, scarcely entering even upon those things in which it trusts. I would not deny that the whole region of Asia breeds emptier dispositions, and that the speech of our people is the more swollen, because we seem to excel among the neighboring states—and that very thing not so much by our own strength as by your honors and judgments. Surely even then, for the present, that embassy was chastised enough, when it was dismissed with so harsh an answer of yours. If too little was then paid for the disgrace, this embassy, certainly, so pitiable and suppliant, would be expiation great enough even for an embassy more insolent than that was. Arrogance, especially of words, the irascible hate, the prudent laugh at, particularly if it is of an inferior against a superior; no one ever judged it worthy of capital punishment. For this, indeed, was the peril—lest the Rhodians should despise the Romans! Some even rail at the gods with rather fierce words, nor do we hear that anyone was on that account struck by a thunderbolt. What, then, remains for us to clear, if neither is any deed of ours hostile, and the more swollen words of a legate have earned the offense of your ears, not the destruction of a state? I hear, conscript fathers, that the value of our tacit goodwill is being assessed, as it were a lawsuit, in your talks among yourselves: that we favored the king and preferred that he conquer, and that therefore, some of you believe, we must be pursued with war; others, that we did indeed wish this, yet not for that reason are to be pursued with war—since it is so established neither by the customs nor the laws of any state that, if someone wishes an enemy to perish, [yet] if he has done nothing whereby that may come about, he be condemned to death. To these, who free us from the penalty, not from the charge, we are indeed grateful; we ourselves pronounce this law upon ourselves: if we all wished what we are charged with, we do not distinguish the wish from the deed; let us all be punished. If some of our chief men favored you, others the king, I do not demand that, on account of us who were of your party, the king’s favorers be saved; this I deprecate, that we not perish on account of them. You are not more hostile to them than the state itself is; and because they knew this, most of them either fled or took their own lives; others, condemned by us, will be in your power, conscript fathers. As for the rest of us Rhodians, as we have earned no gratitude in this war, so neither have we earned punishment. Let the heap of our former good deeds make up for this, that we have now held back in our duty. You have waged wars with three kings through these years; let it not harm us more that we held back in one war than that we fought for you in two. Set Philip, Antiochus, Perseus, as it were, as three votes: two acquit us, one is doubtful; were they to judge of us, we should be condemned: you judge, conscript fathers, whether Rhodes shall be in the lands, or be destroyed from the foundations. For you do not deliberate about war, conscript fathers—which you can declare but cannot wage, since no Rhodian will bear arms against you. If you persevere in your wrath, we shall ask of you time in which to carry this mournful embassy home. All free persons, whatever there is of Rhodian men and women, with all our money, we shall board the ships; and, our public and private household gods abandoned, we shall come to Rome; and, all our gold and silver, whatever is public, whatever private, heaped up in the comitium, in the vestibule of your Senate house, we shall commit our bodies, and those of our wives and children, to your power, here to suffer whatever must be suffered; far from our eyes let our city be plundered, be burned. The Romans can judge the Rhodians to be enemies; for there is some judgment of ours too about ourselves, by which we shall never judge ourselves your enemies, nor do anything hostile, even if we suffer all things.”

After such a speech, all again prostrated themselves and, suppliantly casting olive branches, at last, roused up, left the Senate house. Then the opinions began to be asked. Most hostile to the Rhodians were those who, as consuls or praetors or legates, had waged the war in Macedonia. Their cause was most of all aided by Marcus Porcius Cato, who, harsh of disposition, then played the gentle and mild senator. I will not insert a likeness of that copious man by reporting what he said; his own speech is extant, included in the fifth book of the Origins. The answer was rendered to the Rhodians in such a way that they neither became enemies nor remained allies. Philocrates and Astymedes were the chiefs of the embassy. It pleased them that part of the embassy report back to Rhodes with Philocrates, part remain at Rome with Astymedes, to know what was being done and to keep their people informed. For the present they ordered them to withdraw their prefects from Lycia and Caria before a fixed day. These things, announced at Rhodes—which would have been sad in themselves—because the fear of a greater evil had been relieved, since they had feared war, turned into joy. And so they at once decreed a crown of twenty thousand gold pieces; they sent Theaetetus, the prefect of the fleet, on that embassy. They wished alliance to be sought from the Romans in such a way that no decree of the people be made about the matter or committed to writing, because, unless they obtained it, the disgrace from a repulse would be the greater. It was the right of the prefect of the fleet alone, that he could treat of that matter without any motion having been carried. For through so many years had they been in friendship that they did not bind themselves to the Romans by a treaty of alliance, for no other cause than lest they cut off from kings the hope of their aid, should there be any need, nor cut off from themselves the fruits to be reaped from the kings’ kindness and fortune. But then, at any rate, alliance seemed to be sought—not that which would make them safer from others (for they feared no one except the Romans), but that which would make them less suspect to the Romans themselves. About the same time both the Caunians revolted from them, and the Mylasenses seized the towns of the Euromenses. The spirits of the state were not so broken that they did not feel that, if Lycia and Caria were taken from them by the Romans, the rest would either free themselves by defection or be seized by their neighbors, and that they would be shut up within the shores of a small island and a sterile soil, which could by no means feed the population of so great a city. And so, their youth sent in haste, they both forced the Caunians—though these had taken on the auxiliaries of the Cibyratae—to obey their command, and conquered in battle, around Orthosia, the Mylasenses and the Alabandenses, who, with armies joined, had themselves too come to take away the province of the Euromenses.

While these things [are done] there, others in Macedonia, others at Rome, meanwhile in Illyricum Lucius Anicius—King Gentius, as was said before, reduced into his power—having placed a garrison at Scodra, which had been the royal seat, set Gabinius over it, and over Rhizon and Olcinium, convenient cities, Gaius Licinius. These set over Illyricum, with the rest of the army he set out into Epirus. There first Phanota was surrendered to him, the whole multitude pouring out to meet him with fillets of supplication. Hence, a garrison placed, he crossed into Molossis, all whose towns—except Passaron and Tecmon and Phylace and Horreum—being received, he first leads to Passaron. Antinous and Theodotus were the chief men of that state, conspicuous both for favor toward Perseus and for hatred against the Romans—the same men being the authors, to the whole nation, of revolting from the Romans. These, from consciousness of private guilt, because there was no hope of pardon for them, that they might be overwhelmed in the common ruin of their fatherland, closed the gates, urging the multitude to prefer death to slavery. No one dared mutter against the over-powerful men; at last a certain Theodotus, a noble and himself a young man, when the greater fear of the Romans had overcome the fear of his own chiefs, said: “What madness drives you, who make of a state an appendage to the guilt of two men? I have indeed often heard tell of men who met death for their fatherland; those who judged it fair that the fatherland perish for them, these are the first ever found. Why do we not open the gates and accept the command which the whole world has accepted?” When the multitude followed him as he said these things, Antinous and Theodotus rushed into the first outpost of the enemy and there, offering themselves to wounds, were killed; the city was surrendered to the Romans. With like obstinacy of Cephalon the chief man, Tecmon was closed; he being killed, it was received by surrender. Neither Phylace nor Horreum bore the assault. Epirus pacified, and the forces divided into winter quarters through the convenient cities, returning himself into Illyricum to Scodra—whither five legates had come from Rome—the chief men called out from the whole province, he held an assembly. There, before the tribunal, he announced, on the advice of the council, that the Senate and people of Rome ordered the Illyrians to be free: he would withdraw the garrisons from all towns, citadels, and forts. Not only free but also immune from tribute would be the Issenses and the Taulantii, the Pirustae of the Dassaretii, the Rhizonitae, the Olciniatae, because they had gone over to the Romans while Gentius was still unharmed. To the Daorsi too he gave immunity, because, leaving Caravantius, they had crossed with their arms to the Romans. On the Scodrenses and the Dassarenses and the Selepitani and the rest of the Illyrians he imposed a tribute of half of what they had paid to the king. Then he divided Illyricum into three parts: one he made that which was mentioned above; the second, all the Labeates; the third, the Agravonitae and the Rhizonitae and the Olciniatae and their neighbors. This formula declared in Illyricum, he himself returned thence into the winter quarters at Passaron in Epirus.

While these things are done in Illyricum, Paulus, before the arrival of the ten legates, sends Quintus Maximus his son, now returned from Rome, to plunder Aeginium and Agassae—Agassae because, when they had surrendered the city to the consul Marcius, having of their own accord sought Roman alliance, they had defected again to Perseus; the Aeginienses’ charge was a new one: not giving credit to the report of the Roman victory, they had savagely raged against some of the soldiers who had entered the city. To plunder the city of the Aenii too he sent Lucius Postumius, because they had been in arms more stubbornly than the neighboring states. It was about the time of autumn, at the beginning of which he resolved to use the season for going round Greece and seeing the things which, ennobled by report, are greater when received by the ears than they are known when seen by the eyes. Gaius Sulpicius Gallus set over the camp, having set out with no great retinue, his sides covered by his son Scipio and Athenaeus, brother of King Eumenes, through Thessaly he made for Delphi, the famous oracle; where, a sacrifice made to Apollo, the columns begun in the vestibule, on which they had been about to set statues of King Perseus, he, the victor, destined for his own statues. He visited too the temple of Jupiter Trophonius at Lebadia; there, when he had seen the mouth of the cave through which those who use the oracle descend to inquire of the gods, a sacrifice made to Jupiter and Hercynna, whose temple is there, he went down to Chalcis, to the spectacle of the Euripus and of Euboea, so great an island, joined to the continent by a bridge. From Chalcis he crosses to Aulis, three miles distant, a famous harbor, once the station of the thousand ships of the Agamemnonian fleet, and to the temple of Diana, where that king of kings, his daughter brought as a victim to the altars, sought a course to Troy for his ships. Thence one comes to Oropus of Attica, where an ancient seer is worshiped as a god, and there is an ancient temple, pleasant with springs and streams around; thence to Athens, full indeed itself too of the antiquity of fame, yet having many things to see—the citadel, the harbors, the walls joining the Piraeus to the city, the dockyards, the monuments of great commanders, the images of gods and men, notable in every kind of both material and art. A sacrifice made to Minerva, the guardian of the citadel, in the city, having set out he reached Corinth on the second day. The city was then renowned, before its destruction; the citadel too and the Isthmus afforded a spectacle: the citadel, raised within the walls to an immense height, gushing with springs; the Isthmus dividing by narrow jaws two neighboring seas, on the west and on the rising of the sun. Thence he visited Sicyon and Argos, noble cities; thence Epidaurus, not equal in resources, but famous for the noble temple of Aesculapius, which, five miles distant from the city, now is rich with the traces of plundered offerings, then was rich with the offerings which the sick had consecrated to the god as a wage for healing remedies. Thence he visits Lacedaemon, memorable not for the magnificence of its works but for its discipline and institutions; whence, through Megalopolis, he went up to Olympia. There, besides that other things seemed to him worth seeing, gazing at Jupiter as if present, he was moved in spirit. And so, no otherwise than as if he were about to sacrifice on the Capitol, he ordered a sacrifice more ample than usual to be made ready.

Greece thus traversed—so that he inquired into none of the things which anyone, privately or publicly, had felt in the war with Perseus, lest by the fear of any he should harass the minds of the allies—as he was returning to Demetrias, on the road a squalid crowd of Aetolians met him; and to him, marveling and asking what it was, it is reported that five hundred and fifty of the chief men had been killed by Lyciscus and Tisippus—the Senate beset by Roman soldiers sent by Aulus Baebius, the prefect of the garrison—others driven into exile, and that the goods of those who had been killed and of the exiles were held by [their accusers]. Having ordered those who were accused to be present at Amphipolis, he himself, Gnaeus Octavius met at Demetrias, after the report came that the ten legates had now crossed the sea, all else laid aside, proceeds to Apollonia to them. Whither, when Perseus came to meet him from Amphipolis—the guard too loosely kept (it is a day’s journey)—he addressed him indeed kindly; but after he came into the camp at Amphipolis, he is reported to have sharply rebuked Gaius Sulpicius, first because he had suffered Perseus to wander so far from himself through the province, then because he had so indulged the soldiers that he allowed them to strip the walls of the city of their tiles to roof their winter quarters; and he ordered the tiles to be carried back and the stripped roofs to be restored as they had been. And Perseus indeed, with his elder son Philip, handed over to Aulus Postumius, he sent into custody; his daughter, with her younger son, summoned from Samothrace to Amphipolis, he treated with all liberal care.

He himself, when the day came on which he had ordered ten chief men of each state to be present at Amphipolis, and all the documents wherever deposited and the royal money to be brought together, with the ten legates, all the multitude of the Macedonians poured around, took his seat on the tribunal. Though they were accustomed to royal command, yet it offered a new and terrible form—the tribunal, the clearing of the approach, the herald, the apparitor, all unwonted to eyes and ears—things that could terrify even allies, not to say conquered enemies. Silence made by the herald, Paulus in Latin announced what had seemed good to the Senate, and what to himself on the advice of the council. These Gnaeus Octavius the praetor—for he too was present—interpreting in the Greek tongue, reported: First of all they ordered the Macedonians to be free, holding the same cities and lands, using their own laws, creating annual magistrates; and paying as tribute to the Roman people half of what they had paid to the kings. Then Macedonia was to be divided into four regions. One, and the first, part would be what land is between the Strymon and the river Nessus; to this part would be added, beyond the Nessus, toward the east, where Perseus had held villages, forts, and towns, except Aenus and Maronea and Abdera; and, on this side of the Strymon, the parts verging to the west, all Bisaltica with Heraclea, which they call Sintice. The second region would be that which the river Strymon embraces from the east—except Sintice, Heraclea, and the Bisaltae—and which from the west the river Axius bounds, the Paeonians added who dwelt near the river Axius toward the eastern region. The third part was made of that which the Axius from the east, the river Peneus from the west, gird; to the north Mount Bora is set against it. Added to this part was the region of Paeonia, where from the west it stretches along the river Axius; Edessa too and Beroea fell to the same region. The fourth region was beyond Mount Bora, on one side bordering Illyricum, on the other Epirus. He made the capitals of the regions, where the councils should be held: of the first region, Amphipolis; of the second, Thessalonica; of the third, Pella; of the fourth, Pelagonia. There he ordered the councils of each its own region to be proclaimed, the money to be brought together, the magistrates to be created. He announced then that it pleased him that neither marriage nor commerce of lands and buildings be allowed to anyone with those beyond the bounds of his own region. The mines too of gold and silver were not to be worked, those of iron and copper were permitted. On those working them a tax was imposed of half of what they had paid to the king. And he forbade the use of imported salt. To the Dardani, claiming back Paeonia—because it had both been theirs and was continuous with their own borders—he announced that he gave liberty to all who had been under the kingdom of Perseus. After Paeonia was not obtained, he gave them the commerce of salt; he ordered the third region to convey it to Stobi of Paeonia, and fixed a price. He forbade them both to cut ship-timber themselves and to allow others to. To the regions which were adjacent to the barbarians—and all except the third were—he permitted that they keep armed garrisons on their outermost borders.

These things announced on the first day of the assembly variously affected their minds. The liberty given beyond hope raised them up, and the lightened annual tribute; but by commerce being cut off region from region, Macedonia seemed so torn apart, as when an animal is rent into limbs each needing the other: so far—how great Macedonia was, how easy to divide, how each part was content in itself—did even the Macedonians not know. The first part has the Bisaltae, bravest of men—they dwell beyond the river Nessus and around the Strymon—and many properties of crops, and mines, and the advantage of Amphipolis, which, set athwart, closes all approaches into Macedonia from the rising sun. The second part has the most frequented cities, Thessalonica and Cassandrea, and besides Pallene, a fertile and fruitful land; maritime advantages too the harbors afford it, some turned conveniently to Torone and Mount Athos and Aenea and Acanthus, others to Thessaly and the island of Euboea, others to the Hellespont. The third region has the noble cities Edessa and Beroea and Pella, and the warlike nation of the Vettii, and also very many inhabitants, Gauls and Illyrians, energetic tillers. The fourth region the Eordaei and the Lyncestae and the Pelagones inhabit; joined to these are Atintania and Tymphaeis and Elimiotis. This whole tract is cold and hard of cultivation and harsh; and it has the dispositions of its tillers too like to the land. The barbarian neighbors make them fiercer, now exercising them in war, now in peace mingling their own customs. So the division of Macedonia, by the separated uses of its parts, showed how great it was as a whole.

The formula of Macedonia declared, when he had shown that he would also give them laws, the Aetolians next were summoned. In which inquiry it was asked more which party had favored the Romans, which the king, than which had done or received injury; the slayers were freed of the guilt; exile to the banished was as good as ratified as death to the slain; Aulus Baebius alone was condemned, because he had furnished Roman soldiers for the service of the slaughter. This outcome of the Aetolians’ case puffed up the spirits, in all the nations and peoples of Greece, of those who had been of the Romans’ party, to an intolerable arrogance, and subjected beneath their feet those whom in any part the suspicion of favor toward the king had touched. There were three kinds of chief men in the states: two which, by flattering either the Romans’ empire or the kings’ friendship, made profit for themselves while the states were oppressed; the one middle part, adverse to both kinds, protected liberty and the laws. To these, as there was greater affection among their own people, so there was less favor with foreigners. Elated by prosperity, the favorers of the Roman party were then alone in the magistracies, alone in the embassies. These, when they were present in numbers both from the Peloponnese and from Boeotia and from the other councils of Greece, filled the ears of the ten legates: that not only those who had openly vaunted themselves, through vanity, as guests and friends of Perseus, but many more others, had favored the king from concealment—men who, under the appearance of protecting liberty, had arranged everything in the councils against the Romans; nor would those nations remain in their loyalty otherwise, unless, the spirits of the [opposing] parties broken, the authority of those who looked to nothing but the Roman empire were nourished and confirmed. By these the names being given, men were called out by the commander’s letters from Aetolia and Acarnania and Epirus and Boeotia, to follow the legates to Rome to plead their cause; into Achaia, from the number of the ten legates, two set out, Gaius Claudius and Gnaeus Domitius, to call them out themselves by edict. This was done for two causes: one, because they believed there was more confidence and spirit in the Achaeans for not obeying, and perhaps too that Callicrates and the rest, the authors of the charges and the informers, would be in peril; the other cause why they should call them out in person was that, from the other nations, they had the letters of the chief men, caught, in the royal records, but among the Achaeans the charge was blind, no letters of theirs found.

The Aetolians dismissed, the nation of the Acarnanians was summoned. Among these nothing was changed, except that Leucas was taken out of the council of the Acarnanians. Then, inquiring more widely who, publicly or privately, had been of the king’s party, they extended the inquiry into Asia too, and sent Labeo to destroy Antissa on the island of Lesbos and to transfer the Antissaeans to Methymna, because they had—at the time when Antenor, the royal prefect, roamed with galleys around Lesbos—received him into their harbor and aided him with supplies. Two notable men were beheaded: Andronicus, son of Andronicus, an Aetolian, because, following his father, he had borne arms against the Roman people; and Neo of Thebes, on whose authority they had joined alliance with Perseus.

These inquiries into foreign affairs interposed, the council of the Macedonians was summoned again; it was announced—what pertained to the constitution of Macedonia—that senators, whom they call synedri, must be chosen, by whose counsel the commonwealth should be administered. Then the names of the chief men of the Macedonians were read out, whom, with their children older than fifteen years, it pleased them should go ahead into Italy. This, at first sight savage, soon appeared to the multitude of the Macedonians to have been done for their own liberty. For those named were the king’s friends and courtiers, the leaders of armies, the prefects of ships or of garrisons, accustomed to serve the king abjectly and to command others haughtily; some exceeding rich, others, whom fortune did not equal, equal in expenditure to these; the way of life and dress of all was kingly, in none a citizen’s spirit, none patient of laws or of equal liberty. All, therefore, who had been in any of the king’s services, even those who had been on embassies, were ordered to depart from Macedonia and go into Italy; to him who had not obeyed the command, death was proclaimed. He gave laws to Macedonia with such great care that he seemed to give them not to conquered enemies but to well-deserving allies—laws which not even use over a long time, which is the one corrector of laws, would convict by experience.

From serious matters [he turned] to a spectacle, which—out of preparations made long before, both by men sent to the cities of Asia and to the kings to give notice, and when he himself went round the cities of Greece [and] proclaimed it to the chief men—he held at Amphipolis with great magnificence. For both a multitude of artists of every kind who practiced the art of the stage gathered from the whole world, and of athletes and noble horses, and embassies with victims, and whatever else is wont to be done at great games in Greece for the sake of gods and men. So it came about that they marveled not only at the magnificence but at the prudence in giving spectacles, in which the Romans were then unskilled. Banquets too were prepared for the embassies with the same opulence and care. It was commonly reported as his own saying, that to set out a banquet and to prepare games belonged to the same man who knew how to conquer in war.

The spectacle of every kind exhibited, and the bronze shields put aboard the ships, all the rest of the arms of every kind heaped into a vast pile, having prayed to Mars, Minerva, and Lua the mother, and the other gods to whom it is right and lawful to dedicate the spoils of enemies, the commander himself, a torch set under it, kindled it; then the military tribunes standing around, each for himself, cast in fires. It was remarked, in that gathering of Europe and Asia—a multitude drawn from everywhere, partly to congratulate, partly to the spectacle—with such great naval and land armies, [there was] such abundance of things, such cheapness of provisions, that gifts mostly of that kind were given by the commander to private men and to states and to nations, not for present use only, but also that they might carry them home. A spectacle to the throng that had come was no more the scenic show, nor the contests of men or the courses of horses, than all the Macedonian booty, set out to be viewed: of statues and paintings and woven stuffs and vessels made of gold and silver and bronze and ivory with enormous care in that palace, where they were made not for present show only—such as the palace at Alexandria was crammed with—but for perpetual use. These, put aboard the fleet to be conveyed to Rome, were given to Gnaeus Octavius.

Paulus, the legates kindly dismissed, having crossed the Strymon, pitched camp a mile from Amphipolis; setting out thence, on the fifth day he reached Pella. Having passed the city, at the place they call Spelaeum, delaying two days, he sent Publius Nasica and Quintus Maximus his son with part of the forces to lay waste the Illyrians who had aided Perseus in the war, ordered to meet him at Oricum; he himself, making for Epirus, on the fifteenth camp reached Passaron. Not far thence was the camp of Anicius. To him a letter sent, that he should not be moved at all by the things that were being done—the Senate had given the booty of the Epirote states which had defected to Perseus to its army—centurions sent into the several towns, who should say they had come to withdraw the garrisons, so that the Epirotes might be free as the Macedonians were, he called out ten chief men from each state. When he had given them notice that the gold and silver should be brought forth into the public store, he sent cohorts through all the states. They set out into the farther states sooner than into the nearer, so that on one day all might be reached at once. It had been declared to the tribunes and centurions what was to be done. In the morning all the gold and silver was collected; at the fourth hour the signal was given to the soldiers to plunder the cities; and so great was the booty that to a horseman four hundred denarii, to footmen two hundred, were divided, and a hundred and fifty thousand human persons were led away. Then the walls of the plundered cities were demolished; these towns were about seventy. All the booty was sold; from it that sum was paid out to the soldier. Paulus went down to the sea at Oricum, the spirits of the soldiers by no means satisfied, as he had thought—who, as though they had waged no war in Macedonia, were indignant to have had no taste of the royal booty. At Oricum, when he had found the forces sent with Scipio Nasica and Maximus his son, the army put aboard the ships, he crossed over to Italy. And a few days after, Anicius, an assembly of the rest of the Epirotes and the Acarnanians held, and the chief men—whose investigation of their cause he had reserved for the Senate—ordered to follow into Italy, himself too, the ships awaited which the Macedonian army had used, crossed over into Italy.

When these things were done in Macedonia and Epirus, the legates who had been sent with Attalus to end the war between the Gauls and King Eumenes reached Asia. A truce made through the winter, both the Gauls had gone home and the king had withdrawn into winter quarters at Pergamum and had been sick of a grave illness. The first of spring had called the Gauls out from home; and they had now reached Synnada, when Eumenes had gathered an army from all sides to Sardis. There the Romans, [meaning] to address Solovettius, the leader of the Gauls, at Synnada. And Attalus set out with them; but it pleased them that he not enter the camp of the Gauls, lest their spirits be provoked from the dispute. Publius Licinius spoke with the princeling of the Gauls and reported that he had been made fiercer by being entreated—so that it might seem wonderful that, among kings so opulent, the words of the Roman legates had availed so much with Antiochus and Ptolemy that they at once made peace, [but] among the Gauls had been of no weight.

To Rome first the captive kings Perseus and Gentius, with their children, were led into custody; then the other throng of captives; then those of the Macedonians who had been ordered to come to Rome, and the chief men of Greece—for these too were not only called out if present, but also, if any were said to be with the kings, were summoned by letter. Paulus himself, a few days after, in the royal ship of enormous size, which sixteen banks of oars drove, adorned with Macedonian spoils not only of notable arms but also of royal woven stuffs, was carried up the Tiber to the city, the banks filled, the multitude pouring out to meet him. A few days after, Anicius and Octavius were brought in by their own fleet. To all these three a triumph was decreed by the Senate, and it was entrusted to Quintus Cassius the praetor that he deal with the tribunes of the plebs, [so] that, by the authority of the fathers, they bring a bill to the plebs that, on the day they should be carried triumphing into the city, they have the command. The middling things are untouched by ill-will; it almost always aims at the highest. About neither Anicius’s nor Octavius’s triumph was there doubt; Paulus, to whom they themselves too would have blushed to compare themselves, detraction carped at. He had held his soldiers by the ancient discipline; of the booty he had given more sparingly than they had hoped from such great royal resources—[to men] who would have left nothing, if avarice were indulged, that he might carry into the treasury. The whole Macedonian army, angry at the commander, was going to be present negligently at the assembly for passing the law. But Servius Sulpicius Galba, who had been military tribune of the second legion in Macedonia, privately an enemy to the commander, by canvassing himself and by soliciting through the soldiers of his legion, had goaded them to be present in numbers at the vote: to avenge the imperious and grudging leader by rejecting the bill that was being brought about his triumph. The urban plebs would follow the soldiers’ judgments. He had not been able to give money; the soldier could give honor. Let him not hope for the fruit of favor there where he had not earned it.

These men incited, when Tiberius Sempronius the tribune of the plebs was bringing that bill on the Capitol, and there was a place for private persons to speak about the law, scarcely anyone came forward to advise it, as in a matter not at all doubtful, [when] Servius Galba suddenly came forward and demanded of the tribunes that, since it was now the eighth hour of the day, and he had not time enough to demonstrate why they should not order Lucius Aemilius to triumph, they put it off to the next day and deal with that matter in the morning: he needed a whole day to plead that cause. When the tribunes bade him say, if he wished anything, that day, he dragged out the matter by speaking into the night, recounting and reminding them of the duties of military service exacted with bitterness; more of toil, more of peril than the matter required had been laid upon them; on the contrary, in rewards and honors everything had been straitened; and military service, if it fell under such leaders, would be the more horrid and harsh to those waging war, and, to the victors, the same [service] needy and unhonored. The Macedonians were in better fortune than the Roman soldiers. If they were present in numbers the next day to reject the law, the powerful men would understand that not everything was in the leader’s hand, but something also in the soldiers’. Incited by these words, the next day the soldiers filled the Capitol in such great numbers that there was no approach for anyone else to cast a vote. When the first tribes called in were rejecting the law, a running-together of the chief men of the state to the Capitol was made, crying out that it was an unworthy deed that Lucius Paulus, victor of so great a war, should be despoiled of a triumph—that commanders were being handed over to the license and avarice of the soldiery. Even now too often was wrong done through ambition; what, if the soldiers were set as masters over commanders? Each for himself heaped reproaches on Galba. At last, this tumult quieted, Marcus Servilius, who had been consul and master of horse, asked of the tribunes that they deal with the matter afresh and grant him the power of speaking to the people. The tribunes, when they had withdrawn to deliberate, overcome by the authority of the chief men, began to deal with it afresh, and announced that they would recall the same tribes, when Marcus Servilius and other private persons who wished to speak had spoken.

Then Servilius: “How great a commander Lucius Aemilius was, Quirites, if it could be estimated from no other thing, even this were enough: that, when he had in his camp soldiers so seditious and fickle, an enemy so noble, so rash, so eloquent for instigating the multitude, he had no sedition in his army. The same severity of command which now they hate, then held them in check. And so, held by the ancient discipline, they neither said anything seditiously nor did. As for Servius Galba, if he wished to set down his apprenticeship in accusing Lucius Paulus and to give a proof of his eloquence, he ought not to have hindered the triumph, which the Senate—if nothing else—had judged just, but the day after the triumph was held, when he should see him a private man, to lay an information against him and interrogate him by the laws; or a little later, when he himself had first taken a magistracy, to name a day for his enemy and accuse him before the people. So both would Lucius Paulus have a triumph, as the reward of a thing rightly done, for a war excellently waged, and a penalty, if he had done anything unworthy both of his old glory and of his new. But, forsooth, the man of whom he could say no crime, no reproach, his praises he wished to detract. He asked yesterday a whole day for accusing Lucius Paulus: four hours, as much as was left of the day, he consumed in speaking. Who was ever so guilty a defendant, whose vices of life could not be set forth in so many hours? Meanwhile what did he allege, which Lucius Paulus, if he pleaded his cause, would wish denied? Let someone make me for a little two assemblies: one of the Macedonian soldiers, the other purer, of more upright judgment and free from the favor and hatred of the whole Roman people. Before the togaed and urban assembly let the defendant first be tried. What before the Roman Quirites, Servius Galba, would you say? For that whole speech of yours would be cut away: ‘On guard-duty you stood more severely and more intently; the watches were gone round more bitterly and more diligently; you did more of work than before, since the commander himself went round as an exactor; on the same day you both made a march and went from the march into battle, nor did he suffer you, even as victors, to rest, but at once led you to pursue the enemy. Though by sharing the booty he could make you rich, he is going to carry the royal money across in his triumph and bring it into the treasury.’ These things, just as they have some sting for goading the soldiers’ minds—who think too little has been served to their license, too little to their avarice—so before the Roman people they would have availed nothing; for that people, not to recall the old things heard from their parents—what disasters were received through the ambition of commanders, what victories gotten by the severity of command—certainly in the most recent Punic war remembers what difference there was between Marcus Minucius the master of horse and Quintus Fabius Maximus the dictator. And so the accuser could only gape, and the defense of Paulus would be superfluous. Let us pass to the other assembly; nor do I seem about to call you Quirites, but soldiers—if this name at least can strike some blush and bring some shame at the violating of a commander. For indeed I myself am otherwise affected in mind, who seem to speak before an army, than I was a little before, when my speech looked to the urban plebs. For what do you say, soldiers? Is there anyone at Rome, except Perseus, who does not wish a triumph over the Macedonians? And do you not tear him to pieces with the same hands with which you conquered the Macedonians? He would have prevented you from conquering, if he could, who prevents the triumphant general from entering the city. You err, soldiers, if you think the triumph is the honor only of the commander and not also of the soldiers and of the whole Roman people. Not of Paulus alone is the matter here—many, even who did not obtain a triumph from the Senate, triumphed on the Alban Mount; no one can snatch from Lucius Paulus the glory of the Macedonian war finished any more than from Gaius Lutatius that of the first Punic war, than from Publius Cornelius that of the second, than from those who had triumphed; nor will the triumph make Lucius Paulus a lesser or a greater commander—rather, in this the fame of the soldiers and of the whole Roman people is at stake: first, lest it bear the reputation of ill-will and of an ungrateful spirit toward every most distinguished citizen, and seem in this to imitate the Athenian people tearing its chief men with envy. Enough was sinned against Camillus by your ancestors, whom yet they wronged before the city was recovered from the Gauls through him; enough lately by you against Publius Africanus. That Liternum was the home and seat of the conqueror of Africa, that at Liternum his tomb is shown—let us blush. Let Lucius Paulus be equal to those men in glory; let him not be made equal to them by your wrong. Let this infamy, then, first be wiped away—foul among other nations, harmful among our own. For who would wish to be like either Africanus or Paulus in an ungrateful state, hostile to good men? If there were no infamy and only glory were at stake, what triumph, pray, does not hold the common glory of the Roman name? So many triumphs over the Gauls, so many over the Spaniards, so many over the Carthaginians—are they said to be of the commanders alone, or of the Roman people? As triumphs were held not over Pyrrhus only, nor over Hannibal, but over the Epirotes and the Carthaginians and the Macedonians, so not Manius Curius only nor Publius Cornelius, but the Romans triumphed. The soldiers’ cause indeed is their own, who, themselves laurelled and each conspicuous with the gifts with which they were presented, hail the triumph by name, and, singing their own and the commander’s praises, march through the city. If ever the soldiers were not brought back from the province for the triumph, they murmur; and yet even then they believe that they too, though absent, triumph, because by their hands the victory was won. If anyone should ask you, soldiers, for what purpose you were brought back into Italy and not, the province finished, at once discharged—why you came in numbers to Rome under your standards, why you tarry here and do not each separately depart to your homes—what else would you answer than that you wished to be seen triumphing? Surely you ought to wish to be beheld as victors. A triumph was lately held over Philip, the father of this man, and over Antiochus; both were reigning when the triumph was held over them. Over Perseus, captured, led into the city with his children, will there be no triumph? But if, when Lucius Anicius and Gnaeus Octavius were mounting the Capitol in their chariots, gilded and clad in purple, Lucius Paulus from a lower place, one private man in the crowd of the togaed, should ask, ‘Lucius Anicius, Gnaeus Octavius, do you judge yourselves more worthy of a triumph, or me?’—they would seem about to descend from their chariots and, for shame, to hand over their own insignia to him. And do you, Quirites, prefer that Gentius rather than Perseus be led in the triumph, and that the triumph be over the accession to the war rather than over the war itself? And shall the legions from Illyricum enter the city laurelled, and the naval allies, while the Macedonian legions, their own triumph abrogated, look on at others’? What, then, will become of so rich a booty, of the spoils of so opulent a victory? Where will those so many thousands of arms, stripped from the bodies of the enemy, be hidden away? Or will they be sent back into Macedonia? Whither the golden, the marble, the ivory statues, the painted tablets, the woven stuffs, so much chased silver, so much gold, so much royal money? Or will they be carried into the treasury by night, as if stolen? What? That greatest spectacle—the most noble and opulent king captured—where will he be shown to the victorious people? Most of us remember what crowds the captured King Syphax, an accession to the Punic war, drew together. Shall Perseus the captured king, [and] Philip and Alexander, the king’s sons, names so great, be withdrawn from the eyes of the state? Lucius Paulus himself, twice consul, the conqueror of Greece—all eyes long to behold him entering the city in his chariot; for this we made him consul, that he might finish the war drawn out through four years, to our great shame. To whom, the province allotted, to whom setting out, with presaging minds we destined the victory and a triumph—shall we, now that he is victor, deny the triumph? And indeed defraud not only him but the gods too of their honor? For to the gods too, not to men only, is the triumph owed. Your ancestors both began the beginnings of all great matters from the gods and set the gods as their end. A consul or praetor setting out for a province and to war, his lictors in their cloaks, pronounces vows on the Capitol; the victor, the war accomplished, returns triumphing to the same Capitol, to the same gods to whom he pronounced his vows, bearing the deserved gifts. Not the least part of the triumph are the victims going before, that it may appear the commander returns giving thanks to the gods for the commonwealth well managed. All those victims which he dedicated to be led across in the triumph, slay, one man one, another another. What? Those banquets of the Senate, which are eaten neither in a private place nor in a profane public one, but on the Capitol—are they, for the pleasure of men or the honor of the gods, that, on the authority of Servius Galba, you are going to disturb? Shall the gates be shut to Lucius Paulus’s triumph? Shall Perseus, king of the Macedonians, with his children and the other throng of captives, the spoils of the Macedonians, be left in the Circus Flaminius? Shall Lucius Paulus, a private man, go from the gate to his home, as though returning from the country? And you, centurion, soldier—hear what about Paulus the commander the Senate decreed, rather than what Servius Galba prates; and hear me say this, rather than him. He has learned nothing but to talk, and that itself maliciously and grudgingly; I have fought three-and-twenty times with an enemy on challenge; from all with whom I joined hand, I brought back spoils; I have a body marked with honorable scars, all received on the front of the body.” Then he is said to have stripped himself and to have recounted in what war each wound had been received. While he displayed these, the things which should have been veiled being by chance laid open, a swelling in the groin moved the nearest to laughter. Then: “This too, which you laugh at,” he said, “I have from sitting on horseback day and night; nor am I more ashamed and repentant of it than of these scars, since it was never a hindrance to me in managing the commonwealth well at home and in the field. I, an old soldier, have shown to young soldiers this body often hacked by the sword; let Galba bare his own, sleek and whole. Recall, tribunes, if it seem good, the tribes to the vote; I [will come] to you, soldiers.” Valerius Antias hands down that the sum of all the captive gold and silver carried across was a hundred and twenty million sesterces; which, without doubt, is made out to be somewhat greater from the number of the wagons and the weights of gold and silver written down, by kind, by Paulus himself. As much again, they hand down, was either consumed in the most recent war or scattered in the flight, when he was making for Samothrace; and that was the more wonderful, because so much money had been heaped up within thirty years after the war of Philip with the Romans, partly from the produce of the mines, partly from other revenues. And so Philip began to war with the Romans quite needy of money, Perseus on the contrary very rich. Last of all Paulus himself in his chariot, bearing before him a great majesty, both from the rest of his bodily dignity and from old age itself; after the chariot, among other illustrious men, his two sons, Quintus Maximus and Publius Scipio; then the cavalry by squadrons and the cohorts of foot, each in its own ranks. To the foot soldier a hundred denarii each were given, double to the centurion, triple to the horseman. They believe he would have given as much again to the foot soldier, and to the others in proportion, if they had either not opposed his honor or had, at this very sum announced, acclaimed it kindly.

But not Perseus only, in those days, was a proof of human chances, led in chains before the chariot of the victorious leader through the city of his enemies, but also Paulus the victor, gleaming with gold and purple. For of his two sons—whom, two having been given in adoption, he had retained at home, alone, as heirs of his name, his rites, and his family—the younger, about twelve years old, died five days before the triumph; the elder, fourteen years old, three days after the triumph: boys whom, in their bordered togas, it had been fitting to be carried in the chariot with their father, themselves destining for themselves like triumphs. A few days after, an assembly granted by Marcus Antonius the tribune of the plebs, when he discoursed about his exploits after the manner of other commanders, his speech was memorable and worthy of a Roman chief.

“Although both with what good fortune I have administered the commonwealth, and what two thunderbolts have struck my house in these days, I think you are not unaware, Quirites—since now my triumph, now the funerals of my children, have been a spectacle to you—yet allow me, I pray, in a few words to compare, with the spirit I ought, my private fortune with the public felicity. Having set out from Italy, I loosed the fleet from Brundisium at sunrise; at the ninth hour of the day I held Corcyra with all my ships. Thence on the fifth day I sacrificed at Delphi to Apollo, for myself and your armies and fleets. From Delphi on the fifth day I reached the camp; where, the army received, and certain things changed which were great hindrances to victory, having advanced—because the enemy’s camp was impregnable and the king could not be forced to fight—I escaped through his garrisons by the pass at Petra, and, the king forced to battle, I conquered in the line; I reduced Macedonia into the power of the Roman people; and the war which, through four years, four consuls before me had so waged that they always handed it over to their successor heavier, that I finished in fifteen days. Then, as it were the harvest of other prosperous things followed: all the cities of Macedonia surrendered, the royal treasure came into my power, the king himself, the gods almost themselves handing him over, was captured in the temple of the Samothracians with his children. To me too, myself, my fortune now seemed too great, and therefore suspect. I began to fear the perils of the sea, in carrying so much royal money across into Italy and transporting the victorious army. After all things, by the favorable course of the ships, reached Italy, and there was nothing further for me to pray for, this I wished: that, since fortune is wont to roll back from the summit, the change of it my house rather than the commonwealth should feel. And so I hope the public fortune is acquitted by my so notable calamity, because my triumph, as if to the mockery of human chances, was set between two funerals of my children. And since both I and Perseus are now beheld as the most notable examples of the lot of mortals, he, who before himself—a captive himself—saw his children led captive, yet has them unharmed; I, who triumphed over him, came from the funeral of one son, my chariot from the Capitol, [to find the other] now almost expiring; nor does there survive, out of so great a stock of children, one to bear the name of Lucius Aemilius Paulus. For two, as out of a great progeny of children, given in adoption, the Cornelian and the Fabian house have; in the house of Paulus no one survives but me. But this disaster of my house your felicity and the prosperous public fortune console.” These things, spoken with so great a spirit, confounded the minds of the hearers more than if he had spoken pitiably, bewailing his bereavement. Gnaeus Octavius on the Kalends of December held a naval triumph over King Perseus. That triumph was without captives, without spoils. He gave to the naval allies seventy-five denarii each, double to the steersmen who had been on the ships, fourfold to the masters of the ships.

Then the Senate was held. The fathers decreed that Quintus Cassius lead King Perseus, with his son Alexander, to Alba into custody; [with] his companions, the money, the silver, the furniture which he had, nothing [taken away]. Bithys, son of Cotys, king of the Thracians, with the hostages, was sent into custody at Carseoli. The rest of the captives who had been led in the triumph, it pleased them to be shut in prison. A few days after these things were done, legates came from Cotys, king of the Thracians, bringing money to ransom his son and the other hostages. To these, brought into the Senate, and putting forward this very thing as an argument for their speech—that Cotys had aided Perseus in the war not of his own will, because he had been compelled to give hostages—and begging that they suffer them to be ransomed for a price, as much as the fathers themselves should fix, it was answered, on the authority of the Senate, that the Roman people remembered the friendship which had been with Cotys and his ancestors and the nation of the Thracians; that the hostages given were a charge, not a defense of the charge, since for the nation of the Thracians Perseus—not even at peace, much less occupied with a Roman war—ought to have been feared. But although Cotys had preferred the favor of Perseus to the friendship of the Roman people, [Rome] would estimate rather what was worthy of itself than what could justly be done in return for his desert, and would send back to him his son and the hostages. The Roman people’s benefits were freely given; it preferred to leave their price in the minds of the receivers rather than to exact it on the spot. Three legates were named—Titus Quinctius Flamininus, Gaius Licinius Nerva, Marcus Caninius Rebilus—to lead the hostages back into Thrace, and gifts were given to the Thracians, two thousand asses each. Bithys, with the other hostages, summoned from Carseoli, was sent to his father with the legates. The royal ships captured from the Macedonians, of a size never before seen, were hauled up on the Campus Martius.

The memory of the Macedonian triumph still clinging not only in their minds but almost in their eyes, Lucius Anicius triumphed at the Quirinalia over King Gentius and the Illyrians. All things seemed to men more like than equal: the commander himself the lesser, and Anicius compared with Aemilius in nobility, and, as praetor with consul, in the right of command; nor could Gentius be compared with Perseus, nor the Illyrians with the Macedonians, nor spoils with spoils, nor money with money, nor gifts with gifts. And so, just as this triumph was outshone by the recent one, so it appeared, to those who looked at it in itself, by no means to be despised. He had thoroughly subdued, within a few days, by land and sea, the fierce nation of the Illyrians, relying on its positions and fortifications, and had captured the king and all the royal stock. He carried across in the triumph many military standards and other spoils and the royal furniture, twenty-seven pounds of gold, nineteen pounds of silver, thirteen thousand denarii, and a hundred and twenty thousand pieces of Illyrian silver. Before the chariot were led King Gentius, with his wife and children, and Caravantius the king’s brother, and several noble Illyrians. Of the booty he gave to the soldiers forty-five denarii each, double to the centurion, triple to the horseman; to the allies of the Latin name as much as to citizens, and to the naval allies as much as to the soldiers. A gladder soldier followed this triumph, and the leader himself was celebrated in many songs. Antias is the authority that twenty million sesterces was realized from that booty, besides the gold and silver which was brought into the treasury; but because it was not apparent whence it could have been realized, I have given the authority, rather than vouched for the fact. King Gentius, with his children and wife and brother, was led into custody at Spoletium by decree of the Senate, the rest of the captives thrown into prison at Rome; and, the Spoletines refusing the custody, the kings were transferred to Iguvium. The rest of the Illyrian booty was two hundred and twenty galleys; these, captured from King Gentius, Quintus Cassius, by decree of the Senate, granted to the Corcyraeans and the Apolloniates and the Dyrrhachini.

The consuls that year, the land of the Ligurians only ravaged—since the enemy never led out their armies—no memorable thing done, returned to Rome to hold the substitute elections of magistrates, and on the first comitial day created consuls Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Gaius Sulpicius Gallus, then, on the next day, the praetors: Lucius Iulius, Lucius Apuleius Saturninus, Aulus Licinius Nerva, Publius Rutilius Calvus, Publius Quinctilius Varus, Marcus Fonteius. To these praetors two urban provinces were decreed, two the Spains, Sicily and Sardinia.

There was an intercalation that year; the day after the Terminalia were the intercalary Kalends. An augur died that year, Gaius Claudius; in his place the augurs chose Titus Quinctius Flamininus. And the flamen Quirinalis died, Quintus Fabius Pictor.

That year King Prusias came to Rome with his son Nicomedes. He, having entered the city with a great retinue, proceeded from the gate to the forum and the tribunal of Quintus Cassius the praetor; and, a running-together made from all sides, he said that he had come to salute the gods who inhabited the city of Rome, and the Senate and people of Rome, and to congratulate them because they had conquered the kings Perseus and Gentius and, the Macedonians and Illyrians reduced into their dominion, had enlarged the empire. When the praetor said he would grant him a hearing of the Senate that day, if he wished, he asked for two days, in which to visit the temples of the gods and the city and his hosts and friends. There was given him, to lead him round, Lucius Cornelius Scipio the quaestor—who had also been sent to Capua to meet him—and a house was hired which should kindly receive him and his companions. On the third day after, he approached the Senate; he congratulated them on the victory; he recounted his own services in that war; he asked that it be permitted him to discharge his vow—at Rome on the Capitol ten full-grown victims, and at Praeneste one to Fortuna (these vows being for the victory of the Roman people)—and that the alliance be renewed with him, and that the land captured from King Antiochus, which the Gauls held, given to no one by the Roman people, be given to him. Last, he commended his son Nicomedes to the Senate. By the favor of all who had been commanders in Macedonia he was aided. And so the other things which he asked were granted; about the land it was answered that they would send legates to inspect the matter: if that land had been the Roman people’s and had been given to no one, they would hold Prusias most worthy of that gift; but if it appeared not to have been Antiochus’s, and so not even to have become the Roman people’s, or to have been given to the Gauls, Prusias ought to pardon them, if the Roman people wished nothing given to him out of the wrong of anyone. A gift could not even be pleasing to him to whom it is given, when he knows that the giver will take it away whenever he wishes. They accepted the commendation of his son Nicomedes: with how great care the Roman people protected the children of friendly kings, Ptolemy, king of Egypt, was the proof. With this answer Prusias was dismissed. Gifts were ordered to be given him out of [the] sesterces, and of silver vessels fifty pounds. And to the king’s son Nicomedes they decreed that gifts be given out of that sum out of which they had been given to Masgaba, son of King Masinissa; and that the victims and the other things which pertained to the sacrifice, whether he wished to sacrifice at Rome or at Praeneste, be furnished to the king from the public store, as to Roman magistrates; and that, out of the fleet which was at Brundisium, twenty warships be assigned for him to use. Until the king should reach the fleet given him as a gift, Lucius Cornelius Scipio was not to depart from him, and was to furnish the expense to him and his companions, until he had embarked. They report that the king was wonderfully glad at that kindness of the Roman people toward him; that he did not allow gifts to be bought for himself, but ordered his son to accept the gift of the Roman people. These things about Prusias our writers hand down. Polybius hands down that this king was unworthy of the majesty of so great a name; that he was wont to go to meet legates in a felt cap, his head shaved, and to call himself a freedman of the Roman people, and that he therefore wore the insignia of that order; that at Rome too, when he came into the Senate house, he lowered himself and touched the threshold of the Senate house with a kiss, and called the Senate his preserving gods, and made another speech not so honorable to the hearers as disgraceful to himself. Having tarried around the city not more than thirty days, he set out into his kingdom. And the war was waged in Asia...