“ [2] The Romans hesitated a long time, being much intimidated by the prestige of Pyrrhus and by the calamity that had befallen them. Finally Appius Claudius, surnamed the Blind (because he had lost his eyesight from old age), commanded his sons to lead him into the senate-chamber, where he said: "I was grieved at the loss of my sight; now I regret that I did not lose my hearing also, for never did I expect to see or hear deliberations of this kind from you. Have you become so forgetful of yourselves all of a sudden, by reason of one misfortune, as to take the man who brought it upon you, and those who called him hither, for friends instead of enemies, and to give back to the Lucanians and Bruttians the property that your ancestors took from them? What is this but making the Romans servants of the Macedonians? And some of you dare to call this peace instead of servitude!" Many other things in the like sense did Appius urge to arouse their spirit. If Pyrrhus wanted peace and the friendship of the Romans, let him withdraw from Italy and then send his embassy. As long as he remained let him be considered neither friend nor ally, neither judge nor arbitrator in Roman affairs.
”
Appian. The Foreign Wars. Horace White. New York. THE MACMILLAN COMPANY. 1899.
This text was converted to electronic form by optical character recognition and has been proofread to a medium level of accuracy.
This work is licensed under a
Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 3.0 United States License.
An XML version of this text is available for download, with the additional restriction that you offer Perseus any modifications you make. Perseus provides credit for all accepted changes, storing new additions in a versioning system.