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Character and First Measures of Perseus

After despatching the consuls Tiberius and Claudius
B. C. 177. Coss. C. Claudius Pulcher, Ti. Sempronius Gracchus. Embassy from Lycia against Rhodes. See bk. 24. ch. 9.
against the Istri and Agrii,1 the Senate towards the end of summer transacted business with the ambassadors that had come from the Lycians. They had not arrived at Rome until the Lycians had been completely conquered, but they had been despatched a considerable time before. For the people of Xanthus in Lycia, when about to embark upon the war, had sent Nicostratus and others to Achaia and Rome as ambassadors: who coming to Rome at that time moved many of the Senators to pity them, by laying before them the oppressiveness of the Rhodians and their own danger; and at length induced the Senate to send envoys to Rhodes to declare that "On inspecting the record of the arrangements made by the ten commissioners in Asia, when settling the dominions of Antiochus, it appeared that the Lycians had been given to the Rhodians, not as a gift, but rather as friends and allies." But many were still dissatisfied with this solution of the matter. For the Romans seemed to wish, by thus pitting Rhodes against Lycia, to exhaust the accumulations and treasures of the Rhodians, because they had heard of the recent conveyance of the bride of Perseus by the Rhodians, and of their grand naval review. For shortly before this the Rhodians had been holding, with great splendour and elaboration of equipment, a review of all vessels belonging to them; the fact being that a vast quantity of timber for ship-building had been presented to them by Perseus.
Laodice, daughter of Seleucus IV. Livy, 42, 12.
Moreover he had presented a gold tiara to each of the rowers on the upper bench in the ship that had brought him his bride Laodice.2 . . .

1 The war in Istria, and the mutiny of the troops against the consul Manlius, are described in Livy, 41, 8-11.

2 Besides this connexion with Seleucus of Syria, sure to be offensive to Rome, Perseus gave a sister to Prusias, another enemy of Rome and Eumenes. Livy, 42, 12.

Histories. Polybius. Evelyn S. Shuckburgh. translator. London, New York. Macmillan. 1889. Reprint Bloomington 1962.

Robert B. Strassler provided support for entering this text.

This text was converted to electronic form by professional data entry, Running heads in Walbank's reprint have been converted to chapter titles, and titles have been added, usually from the marginal notes, for chapters without them. Some pages have notes of the form "line X: A should read B," which I believe are Walbank's; they have "resp=fww". Summaries of missing sections are encoded as inline notes with "resp=ess." A very few unidentified quotations are marked in notes with "resp=aem" (the markup editor) Citations are marked using Perseus abbreviations. and has been proofread to a high level of accuracy.

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