Summary of Book XL
When Philip ordered that the children of the noblemen
whom he had in prison should be sought out to be put
to death, Theoxena, fearing for her children, who were
still young, the lust of the king, placing before them swords
and a cup which contained poison, advised them to
escape by death the outrage which now threatened
them, and when she had persuaded them she also slew
herself. The rivalries between Perseus and Demetrius,
the sons of Philip, king of Macedonia, are related; and
how, by the treachery of his brother and on false charges,
among them a charge of parricide and of an attempt to seize
the throne, Demetrius was first accused and finally,
since he was friendly to the Roman people, put to death
by poison, and the kingdom of Macedonia, on the death
of Philip, went to Perseus. The book also contains the
events among the Ligurians and the victories over the
Celtiberians in Spain. The colony of Aquileia was
founded. The books of Numa Pompilius, locked up in
a stone chest, written in both Greek and Latin, were
found by the husbandmen on the property of Lucius
Petilius, a public clerk, at the foot of the Janiculan.
Since in them there were many things subversive of
religion, the praetor to whom they had been turned over,
after reading them, gave his oath to the senate that it
was against the public interest that they should be read
and preserved. Under a decree of the senate they were
burned in the
comitium. Philip, overcome by grief of
mind, because he had killed by poison his son Demetrius,
in consequence of false information laid against him by
his other son Perseus, both planned for the punishment
of Perseus and wished to leave his friend Antigonus
preferably as the successor to the throne, but in the midst
of this planning was carried off by death. Perseus received
the kingdom.
