Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 32
Evan T. Sage, Ph.D. Professor of Latin and Head of the Department of Classics in the University of Pittsburgh, Ed.

22. After the praetor's speech there arose an outcry, some applauding, some sharply rebuking those who approved; and soon not individuals only but whole communities were involved in the quarrel. [2] Then among the magistrates of the people —they call them damiurgi,¹ and the number appointed is ten —an argument began no less violent than that among the mass of the delegates. [3] Five announced that they would put a motion favouring a Roman alliance and call for a vote; five held that it was illegal either for the magistrates to submit or the council to decree anything subversive of the alliance with Philip. This day too was spent in argument.

[4] One day of the legal council remained; for the law ordered the decision to be reached on the third day; on the matter to be decided that day feeling ran so high that parents could scarcely keep their hands off their children. [5] There was present Pisias of Pellene; he had a son, a damiurgus, Memnon by [p. 223]name, of the faction which forbade a motion to be² made or a vote taken. [6] Pisias for a long time entreated his son to allow the Achaeans to consult the general welfare and not to destroy the entire race by his obstinacy, but when prayers [7] proved unavailing he swore that he would kill him with his own hand, treating him not as a son but as an enemy, and with these threats he won his point, so that next day he joined the party which proposed a vote. [8] When now the majority favoured that course, and almost all the cities were clearly expressing their approval of the motion and openly declaring what the decision would be, the delegates from Dymae and Megalopolis [9] and some of the Argives, before the motion was passed, arose and left the council, no one expressing either surprise or reproach. [10] For within the memory of their forefathers, the Megalopolitani, defeated by the Spartans, had been restored to their homes by Antigonus,³ and to the Dymaei, who had recently been captured and plundered by the Romans, Philip had restored both liberty and their homes, having ordered them to be ransomed wherever they were enslaved; [11] many of the Argives, too, besides believing that the kings of Macedon were derived from them, were bound to Philip by personal ties as well and by private friendship. [12] For such reasons they withdrew from a council which had leaned towards ordering an alliance with Rome, and indulgence was granted them for withdrawing, bound as they were by great and recent acts of kindness.