19.
Aemilius summoned Eumenes from Pergamum and the Rhodians and held a council. The Rhodians did not disdain peace; Eumenes maintained that it was neither honourable to discuss the question of peace at that time nor possible to reach a conclusion to the discussion: “For how,” he said, “shall we honourably, shut up and besieged within our walls, accept what may be called terms of peace?
[2]
Again, in whose eyes will this be a valid peace, which we shall conclude without a consul, with no authority of the senate, without the order of the Roman people?
[3]
Now I ask, if peace is made by you, will you return immediately to Rome and withdraw your fleet and army, or wait to see what the consul's pleasure is regarding it, what the senate decrees, or what the people orders?1
[4]
And so the result is that you stay in Asia and that your forces, led back once more to their winter stations, abandoning the war, exhaust your allies with furnishing supplies, and then, if it
[5??]
seems proper to those with whom the authority lies, start [p. 347]wholly afresh a new war, although this war, if there2 is no slackening, through delay, of the impetus we now have, we can have finished, with the aid of the gods, before winter.”
[6]
This argument prevailed, and the answer was given to Antiochus that until the arrival of the consul the question of peace could not be discussed.
[7]
Antiochus, having tried in vain for peace, devastated first the lands of the Elaeans, then of the Pergamenians, and leaving there his son Seleucus, marching as though through a hostile country to Adramytteum, sought the rich land which they call the plain of Thebe, celebrated in
[8??]
the poem of Homer,3 and in no place in Asia was richer booty won by the king's troops. Likewise to Adramytteum came Aemilius and Eumenes, brought thither by the fleet.
1 While Aemilius had the imperium, that of Scipio was superior to his, and it is not certain that Aemilius had any authority on land, since he had been assigned the maritima provincia (ii. 10 above). There would surely have been a dispute had Aemilius concluded a peace treaty under such conditions, before the arrival of the consul, and in any case the ratification of senate and assembly was necessary. The position of Eumenes is sound in Roman constitutional practice, as well as consistent with his own dignity. He did not wish Antiochus to use the siege of Pergamum as something with which to bargain.
2 B.C. 190
3 The city, but not the plain, of Thebe is mentioned by Homer (Il. I. 366, etc.).
Livy. Books XXXV-XXXVII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1935: published without copyright notice.
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