48.
With these preparations made, although1 plans for making war had been determined upon, yet it was decided to receive the envoys before the senate.2
[2]
Nearly the same statements as had been made at the conference by the king were presented by his envoys. The charge of setting an ambush for Eumenes was both their chief concern and at the same time —for the situation was obvious —the least plausibly refuted; the rest of what they had to say was mollification.
[3]
But the envoys were not heard by spirits which could be either enlightened or moved. [p. 439]The stern order was given them to depart from the3 walls of Rome at once, and within thirty days from Italy.
[4]
Then to the consul Publius Licinius, to whom Macedonia had fallen as province, the order was given that he should appoint the first possible day for the army to assemble.
[5]
Gaius Lucretius the praetor,4 whose duty was the command of the fleet, left the city with forty quinqueremes; for it had been decided to keep at the city several of the refitted ships for various purposes.
[6]
The praetor sent his brother Marcus Lucretius on in advance with one quinquereme, with orders to meet the fleet at Cephallania with the ships received from the allies according to treaty.
[7]
After taking on one trireme from Rhegium, two from Locri, four from the district of Uria,5 he coasted along Italy past the farthest cape of Calabria and crossed the Ionian sea to Dyrrhachium.
[8]
There he came upon ten cutters6 of the Dyrrhachians themselves, twelve of the Issaeans, and fifty-four of King Gentius, and pretending that he believed they had been collected for the use of the Romans, took them all with him on the third day to Corcyra and thence crossed at once to Cephallania. Gaius Lucretius the praetor set out from Naples, passed through the straits7 and made the crossing to Cephallania in five days.
[9]
There the fleet halted, not [p. 441]only to wait till the land forces were
[10??]
brought over,8 but also so that the supply-ships, scattered over the deep off their course, might catch up with it.9
1 B.C. 171
2 A different account of the same event, above, ch. xxxvi. 1-8; this later account follows Polybius, XXVII. 6, πάλαι προδιειληφότες ὑπὲρ τοῦ πολεμεῖν and cf. Diodorus, XXX. 1.
3 B.C. 171
4 Cf. above, ch. xxxv. 3.
5 Apparently the territory of the Sallentini in the extreme “heel” of Italy, although Uria is an inland town; there was also a Uria nearer the Adriatic in northern Apulia.
6 Small fast boats, usually undecked, for sail and oars, sometimes sizable, cf. XLIV. xxviii and Polybius II. 3. 1, also Livy XXXII. xxi. 27 and xxxii. 9, XXXIII. xix. 10, XXXV. xxvi. 1. The word lembus seems to mean “sharp.”
7 Of Messina.
8 B.C. 171
9 Polybius XXVII. 7 says that the Rhodians were summoned at this time.
Livy. Books XL-XLII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1938: published without copyright notice.
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