Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 42
Evan T. Sage, Ph.D. and Alfred C. Schlesinger, Ph.D., Ed.

37. A few days later, Quintus Marcius, Aulus Atilius, Publius and Servius Cornelius Lentulus and Lucius Decimius, who had been sent as envoys to Greece, brought a thousand infantry with them to Corcyra; there they divided among themselves both the districts they were to approach, [p. 401]and the soldiers. [2] Lucius Decimius was sent to¹ Gentius, king of the Illyrians; if he saw that the king had any regard for friendship with the Roman people, he was ordered to try also to induce him to become an ally in the war.² [3] The Lentuli were sent to Cephallania, so that they might cross to the Peloponnese and before winter make the circuit of the coast of the westward sea. [4] To Marcius and Atilius, the task of making the circuit of Epirus, Aetolia and Thessaly was assigned; after that, they were ordered to investigate Boeotia and Euboea, and then to cross to the Peloponnese; there they agreed to meet the Lentuli. [5] Before they left Corcyra, a letter from Perseus was brought them, in which he asked what reason the Romans had for either sending troops over to Greece or garrisoning cities. [6] It was decided not to answer him in writing, but to say to the king's messenger, who had brought the letter, that the Romans were acting for the protection of the cities themselves. As the Lentuli went about the towns of the Peloponnese, exhorting all cities indiscriminately [7??] to aid the Romans against Perseus with the same good will and loyalty with which they had assisted them first in the war against Philip, then in that against Antiochus, they aroused an unfriendly murmur in the assemblies, because the Achaeans were angered that they, who had [8??] offered every assistance to the Romans from the first beginnings of war against Macedonia,³ should be placed on a level with the peoples of Messene and Elis, who in [p. 403]the war with Philip the Macedonian had been enemies⁴ of the Romans and later had borne arms for Antiochus against the Roman people, and, having been recently assigned to the Achaean League, were complaining that they were being handed [9??] over as spoils of war to the victorious Achaeans.