20.
This embassy left within three days along with the envoys from Alexandria. The mission from Macedonia arrived on the last day of the Quinquatrus1 amid such eagerness that, had it not been evening, the consuls would have summoned the senate at once.
[2]
Next day the session was held and the envoys were heard. They reported as follows: “The army has been led into Macedonia by trackless passes at a risk disproportionate to the gain.
[3]
Pieria, which the army has reached, is in the hands of the king; the encampments are so nearly in contact that hardly more than the Elpeüs River separates them.
[4]
The king does not offer battle, and our forces have [p. 155]not the strength to compel him to do so. Also the2 winter is an added obstacle to an active campaign. The soldiers are being supported in idleness and have grain for no more than six days.
[5]
The Macedonian forces are said to number thirty thousand. If Appius Claudius3 had sufficient strength in the region of Lychnidus, he could have distracted the king with a second front; as it is, Appius and the force with him are in the greatest danger unless either a full-fledged army is quickly sent him or his present force is extricated.
[6]
As to the fleet, we heard after we left the camp that some of the sailors have been lost by disease, and some, especially the Sicilians, have gone home, so that the ships lack crews. Those who are there have not received their pay and are insufficiently clothed.
[7]
Eumenes and his fleet have come and gone for no good reason, as if his ships were drifting before the wind; and there is no good evidence that the spirit of this king is unwavering.”4 The envoys reported that Attalus was as gallantly unswerving as Eumenes was entirely undependable.
1 This festival, first mentioned for the year 207 B.C., occurred on March 19-23, see XXVI. xxvii. 1 and the note, also Ovid, Fasti III. 810; C.I.L. I.2 1, p. 312 gives a discussion of the origin of the name (probably because it originally fell on the “fifth” day, Roman inclusive reckoning, after the Ides), and points out that besides being connected with Minerva, the day had associations with Mars, and seems to have been the time for ceremonial readying of weapons for the campaigning season.
2 B.C. 168
3 Livy has not mentioned him since XLIII. xxiii. 6; Polybius XXVIII. 13 (11) tells how Appius in the meantime had tried to raise Achaean troops, but had been hindered by Marcius.
4 The immediate facts reported by Livy, above, x. 12-xiii. 10, and xxviii, do not bear this out; but Eumenes was not above bargaining with Perseus, below, xxiv-xxv (based on Polybius), and some of Livy's sources may have projected back later Roman suspicions, cf. above, xiii. 9. 12-13. Livy usually falls into the attitude, natural enough for his own day, that no one had any business to act contrary to Roman interests; but in the second century, Rome was not the paramount power in the Macedonian-Greek world, and it was not even clear that she proposed at this time to take a permanent interest in the affairs of that region.
Livy. Books XLIII-XLV With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1951: published without copyright notice.
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