[9]
The following events I have written as I have found them, not in due order according to their times of occurrence, but rather taking each Illyrian nation separately. When the Romans were at war with the Macedonians during the reign of Perseus, the successor of Philip, Genthius, an Illyrian chief, made an alliance with Perseus for money and
attacked Roman Illyria. When the Romans sent ambassadors
to him on this subject he put them in chains, charging that they had not come as ambassadors, but as spies. The Roman general, Anicius, in a naval expedition, captured some of Genthius' pinnaces and then engaged him in battle on land, defeated him, and shut him up in a castle. When he begged a parley Anicius ordered him to surrender himself to the Romans. He asked and obtained three days for consideration, at the end of which time, his subjects having meanwhile gone over to Anicius, he asked for an interview with the latter, and, falling on his knees, begged pardon in the most abject manner. Anicius encouraged the trembling wretch, lifted him up, and invited him to supper, but as he was going away from the feast he ordered the lictors to cast him into prison. Anicius afterward led both him and his sons in triumph at Rome. The whole war with Genthius was finished within twenty days. When Æmilius Paulus, the conqueror of Perseus, returned to Rome, he received secret orders from the Senate to go back on particular business relating to the seventy towns that
had belonged to Genthius. They were much alarmed, but
he promised to pardon them for what they had done if they would deliver to him all the gold and silver they had. When they agreed to do so he sent a detachment of his army into each town appointing the same day for all the commanding officers to act, and ordering them to make proclamation at daybreak in each that the inhabitants should bring their money into the market-place within three hours, and when they had done so to plunder what remained. Thus Paulus despoiled seventy towns in one hour.
Y.R. 586 |
B.C. 168 |
Y.R. 587 |
B.C. 167 |
