Titus Livius (Livy), The History of Rome, Book 35
Cyrus Evans, Ed.

17. He then desired, that the deputies of those states should be called, for they had been prepared beforehand, and kept in readiness by Eumenes, who reckoned, that every share of strength that should be taken away from Antiochus, would become an accession to his own kingdom. [2] Many of them were introduced; and, while each enforced his own complaints, and sometimes demands, and blended together the reasonable with the unreasonable, they changed the debate into a mere altercation. The ambassadors, therefore, without conceding or carrying any one point, returned to Rome just as they had come, leaving every thing in an undecided state. [3] On their departure the king held a council, on the subject of a war with Rome, in which each spoke more violently than his predecessor; for every one thought, that the more bitterly he inveighed against the Romans, the greater share of favour he might expect to obtain. [4] One animadverted upon the insolence of their demands, in which they presume to impose terms on Antiochus, the greatest king in Asia, as they would on the vanquished Nabis. [5] “Although to Nabis they left absolute power over his own country, and its capital, Lacedaemon, yet it seems to them a matter for indignation, that Smyrna and Lampsacus should yield obedience to Antiochus.” [6] —Others said, that “to so great a monarch, those cities were but a trivial ground of war, scarcely worth mention; [7] but, that the beginning of unjust impositions was always made in the case of matters of little consequence; unless, indeed, it could be supposed, that the Persians, when they demanded earth and water from the Lacedaemonians, stood in need of a scrap of the land or a draught of the water. [8] The proceedings of the Romans, respecting the two cities, were meant as a trial of the same sort. The rest of the states, when they saw that two had shaken off the yoke, would go over to the party of that nation which professed the patronage of liberty. [9] If freedom was not actually preferable to servitude, yet the hope of bettering their circumstances by a change, was more flattering to every one than any present situation.”