Eumenes Intrigues With Perseus
We can easily satisfy ourselves that Eumenes cannot
The origin of the intrigue between Eumenes and Perseus
was the idea of the former that, both sides being tired of the war, he might intervene with profit to himself. |
have wished Perseus to be the victor in the war
and become supreme in Greece. For to say
nothing of the traditional enmity and dislike
existing between these two, the similarity of
their respective powers was sufficient to breed
distrust, jealousy, and, in fact, the bitterest animosity between them. It was always open to
them to intrigue and scheme against each other
secretly, and that they were both doing. For
when Eumenes saw that Perseus was in a bad way, and was
hemmed in on every side by his enemies, and would accept
any terms for the sake of putting an end to the war, and was
sending envoys to the Roman generals year after year with
this view; while the Romans also were uneasy about the
result, because they made no real progress in the war until
Paulus took the command, and because
Aetolia was in a dangerous state of excitement, he conceived that it would not be impossible that the
Romans would consent to some means of ending the war and
making terms: and he looked upon himself as the most proper
person to act as mediator and effect the reconciliation.
With
these secret ideas in his mind, he began sounding Perseus by
means of Cydas of Crete, the year before, to find out how
much he would be inclined to pay for such a chance. This
appears to me to be the origin of their connexion with each
other.