53.
While these events,
1 from which my narrative turned aside, were occurring in the Peloponnesus, the return of Demetrius and the other ambassadors to Macedonia had made different impressions upon different minds.
[
2]
The mass of the Macedonians, terrified by the fear of the war which threatened from the Romans, looked with very great favour upon Demetrius as the author of peace, and at the same time marked him with assured hope for the throne after the death of his father.
[
3]
For although he was younger in years than Perseus, men recalled that Demetrius was born of a legal wife, the other of a concubine; that the elder, the offspring of a body accessible to all, bore no sure mark of his father,
2 while Demetrius displayed a notable resemblance to Philip.
[
4]
Besides, they said, the Romans would establish Demetrius upon his father's throne, while Perseus would have no influence with them. Such was the general talk.
[
5]
Accordingly Perseus, on the one hand, was anxiously afraid that his age by itself would not carry sufficient weight in his behalf, while his brother had the advantage in all other respects, and on the other, Philip himself, believing that
[
6??]
it would hardly be in his power to decide which son, he should leave as heir to his
[p. 389]throne, kept saying that his younger son was a
3 greater burden to him than he wished.
4
[
7]
He was displeased at times by the throngs of Macedonians who visited his son, and was indignant that while he lived there should be a second court.
[
8]
And there is no doubt that the young man had returned too much puffed up regarding himself,
5 relying somewhat on the judgments of the senate about him, and on the concessions made to him of what had been refused to his father;
[
9]
and whatever importance every reference to the Romans brought to him with the rest of the Macedonians, it brought him also exactly as much ill-will,
[
10??]
not only with his brother but even with his father, especially after other
6 Roman commissioners came and Philip was compelled to evacuate Thrace and withdraw his garrisons and do other things in accordance with either the decisions of previous commissioners or the new arrangements of the senate.
[
11]
But, although it was with grief and lamentation, the more because he saw his son more frequently in the company of the commissioners than with himself, he nevertheless obeyed the Romans in everything, in order to give them no reason for immediately declaring war.
[
12]
Thinking also that their thoughts should be diverted from any suspicion of such designs, he led his army through the interior of Thrace against the Odrysae and Dentheleti and Bessi:
[
13]
he took the city of Philippopolis,
7 deserted by the flight of its citizens, who with their families had fled to the nearest mountains, and received in surrender the barbarians of the plain, after plundering their farms.
[
14]
Leaving a garrison in Philippopolis
[p. 391](it was expelled a little later by the Odrysae), he
8 decided to found a city in Deuriopus —this is a district in Paeonia —near the Erigonus river, which flows from Illyricum through Pelagonia and empties into the Axius river not far from the ancient city of Stobi:
[
15]
to the new city he ordered the name of Perseis to be given, so as to show honour to his elder son.
[
16]