38.
Marcius and Atilius went up to Gitana, a town of Epirus, ten miles from the sea, called a conference of Epirotes, and were heard with great and universal approval;1 and they sent four hundred native young men to the Orestans2 to be a guard for those who had been freed from the Macedonians.
[2]
Thence the Romans proceeded to Aetolia, and, after a stay of a few days there, while a general was being elected in place of the one who had died, upon the election of Lyciscus,3 who, it was quite certain, favoured the Roman side, the envoys crossed to Thessaly. There Acarnanian envoys and Boeotian exiles came to them.
[3]
The Acarnanians were ordered to report that an opportunity had presented itself to them of making amends for the acts of hostility done by them against the Roman people because they had been deceived by the kings' promises, first in the war with Philip, then in that with Antiochus.4
[4]
If, when they had ill deserved it, they had experienced the mercy of the Roman people, let them by deserving well experience the Romans' generosity. The Boeotians were reproached [p. 405]for having entered into an alliance with Perseus.5
[5]
When they placed the blame on Ismenias, the leader of the opposite faction, and said that certain cities had been drawn into the affair against their will, Marcius replied that this was about to be made clear; for they were about to give the individual cities an opportunity of providing for their own welfare.6
[6]
A council of the Thessalians was held at Larisa.7 Both parties found there a pleasant opportunity to express their thanks, the Thessalians for the Romans' gift to them of freedom, and the Roman envoys for the vigorous help from the Thessalian confederacy, first in the war with Philip and again later in that with Antiochus.
[7]
By this mutual recital of benefits the minds of the gathering were fired to vote everything which the Romans wished.
[8]
Following this council, envoys came from King Perseus, relying especially on the personal guest-friendship which existed between his father and the father of Marcius. Beginning with a mention of this relationship, the envoys asked that he give the king the opportunity of coming to confer with him.
[9]
Marcius said both that he had been told by his father that a relationship of amity and hospitality had existed with Philip, and also that he had been by no means forgetful of this relationship when he undertook this embassy.
[10]
As for a conference, if he were in sufficiently good health he would not think of deferring it; as it was, they would come, as soon as he was able, to the Peneus river, at the crossing between Homolium and Dium,8 after sending ahead messengers to inform the king. [p. 407]
1 The leaders of Epirus belonged to the “wisest” class who favoured a balance of power, and neutrality, as nearly as might be inoffensive to Rome, in the war. The story of how this policy was disturbed by intrigues of Charops, a young man on the make, is told by Polybius (XXVII. 15) but not by Livy.
2 A tribe on the border of Macedonia and Epirus; they were made independent of Macedonia in 196 B.C., cf. XXXIII. xxxiv. 6.
3 Polybius XXXII. 4, does not give this leader a good character; cf. Livy XLV. xxviii. 7.
4 Cf. XXXI. xiv. 9, XXXIII. xvi. 3-4, XXXVI. xi. 8 ff.
5 B.C. 172
6 Cf. below ch. xliii. 7 ff.
7 This Thessalian League had been set up under Roman auspices, cf. XXXIII. xxxiv. 7 and XXXIV. li. 6.
8 That is, at the northern end of the Vale of Tempe.
Livy. Books XL-XLII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1938: published without copyright notice.
The Annenberg CPB/Project provided support for entering this text.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.