36.
During the same time envoys from King Perseus arrived. It was decided not to admit them to the city, since the senate had decreed and the people had ordered war with their king and the Macedonians.
[2]
On being presented before the senate in the temple of Bellona they spoke as follows: King Perseus wondered why armies had been carried across to Macedonia;
[3]
if he might persuade the senate to recall them, the king would make amends at the discretion of the senate for any wrongs done to their allies, of which they might complain. Spurius Carvilius, who had been sent back from Greece by Gnaeus Sicinius for this very purpose, was in the senate.
[4]
When he had complained of Perrhaebia's having been stormed by force of arms,1 of the capture of several Thessalian cities,2 and of other things which the king was either doing or about to do, the envoys were ordered to make a reply thereto.
[5]
After they hesitated, saying that they had no further instructions, they were ordered to report to the king that the consul Publius Licinius would shortly be in Macedonia with an army; let the king, if giving satisfaction was his purpose, send envoys to him.
[6]
[p. 399]There was no further reason, the senate declared,3 for his sending envoys to Rome; for none of them would be permitted to pass through Italy.
[7]
After they were thus dismissed, instructions were given to Publius Licinius the consul to order them to depart from Italy within eleven days, and that he should send Spurius Carvilius to guard them until they boarded ship.4 These things took place at Rome before the consuls took the field.
[8]
By this time5 Gnaeus Sicinius, who before giving up his office had been sent ahead to Brundisium to the fleet and army, had transported to Epirus five thousand infantry and three hundred cavalry6 and had encamped near the Place of the Nymphs7 in the territory of
[9]
Apollonia. Thence he sent tribunes with two thousand soldiers to hold forts of the Dassaretii and of the Illyrians, since these people themselves requested garrisons, in order that they might be better protected against attack by their neighbours the Macedonians.
1 But below, ch. liii. 8, Perseus takes Perrhaebia all over again. Livy's account here of the king's actions shows that the tale of Perseus' belligerence, as previously told, is a Roman invention to justify the forcing of the “irrepressible conflict” by Rome.
2 In XLI. xxii. 6 and xxiii. 14 only a peaceful tour of Thessaly is mentioned; by comparing below, ch. xlii. 1 and lxvii. 9-11, we may gather that at least three Thessalian cities struck up an alliance with Perseus as the result of this visitation; but “capture” is a Roman exaggeration.
3 B.C. 171
4 Livy repeats this account below ch. xlviii. 3, there following Polybius. It should be noted that the events next related actually precede those which Livy has been describing. Appian IX. xi. 5-9 mentions two embassies, the second of which is, as here, sent out of Italy. Both Appian and Polybius (XXVII. 6) say that all Macedonians were ordered to leave Italy, but on thirty days' notice, which was also given the ambassadors (cf. Livy, below).
5 B.C. 172
6 The number is smaller than that given above in xxvii. 3, and perhaps derives from Polybius.
7 Strabo VII. v. 8, describes this as “a rock that gives forth fire, and beneath it flow springs of warm water and asphalt — probably because the clods of asphalt in the earth are burned by the fire. And nearby, on a hill, is a mine of asphalt; and the part that is trenched is filled up again in the course of time, since, as Poseidonius says, the earth that is poured into the trenches changes to asphalt.” (tr. H. L. Jones, L.C.L.) Nymphs dancing about the fire appeared on coins of Apollonia. A convent preserved the religious association in recent times. The asphalt deposits are still worked, and leakage of gas sometimes supplies the fire.
Livy. Books XL-XLII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1938: published without copyright notice.
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