20.
They crossed over the top of Mount Scordus, and through desert tracts of Illyria, which the Macedonians had laid waste, for the purpose of preventing the Dardanians from passing easily into Illyria or Macedon; and, at length, after undergoing prodigious fatigue, arrived at Scodra.
[2]
King Gentius was at Lissus; to which place the ambassadors were invited, and received a favourable audience while stating their instructions, but obtained an indecisive answer: that “he wanted not inclination to go to war with the Romans, but was in extreme want of money to enable him to enter on such an undertaking, though he wished to do so.”
[3]
This answer they brought to the king at Stubera, whilst he was engaged in selling the Illyrian prisoners. The same ambassadors were immediately sent back, with an accession to their numbers in Glaucias, one of his body guards, but without any mention of money; the only thing by which the needy barbarian could be induced to take a part in the war.
[4]
Then Perseus, after ravaging Ancyra, led back his army once more into Penestia; and having strengthened the garrison of Uscana, and the surrounding fortresses which he had taken, he retired into Macedon. [p. 2054]
Livy. History of Rome by Titus Livius, books thirty-seven to the end, with the epitomes and fragments of the lost books. literally translated, with notes and illustrations, by. William A. McDevitte. York Street, Covent Garden, London. Henry G. Bohn. John Child and son, printers, Bungay. 1850. 4.
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