6.
At the same time envoys from a large number of the states of Greece and Asia gathered in Rome.
[2]
The Athenians were presented first; they pointed out that they had sent their whole fleet and army to Publius Licinius the consul and Gaius Lucretius the praetor;
[3]
these officers had not employed their forces, but had ordered a hundred thousand pecks of grain; although they tilled a barren soil and supported even their farmers on imported grain, yet they had [p. 23]gathered this amount so as not to fail in their duty;1 and they were ready to furnish other things too which might be ordered.
[4]
The Milesians, without mentioning anything which they had furnished, promised that if the senate wished to order anything for the war they were ready to furnish it.
[5]
The envoys of Alabanda announced that they had built a temple to the City of Rome,2 and had established annual games in honour of that divinity;
[6]
they had also brought with them a golden crown of fifty pounds' weight to place in the Capitol as a gift to Jupiter Greatest and Best, besides three hundred cavalry shields; these they would deliver to whomever the senate ordered. They asked permission to place their gift in the Capitol and to offer sacrifice.
[7]
The same request was also made by the
[8??]
people of Lampsacus, who brought a crown of eighty pounds' weight,3 and called to mind that they had abandoned Perseus, after a Roman army had come into Macedonia, although they had been subject to Perseus and previously to Philip.4
[9]
In return for this and for their action in furnishing the Roman generals with everything, they asked only that they might be [p. 25]admitted to friendship5 with the Roman people, and6 that if peace should be made with Perseus, provision should be made for them, to prevent their reverting to the control of the king.
[10]
A kindly answer was given the other envoys; as for the Lampsacenes, the praetor Quintus Maenius was ordered to enroll them as allies. Gifts of two thousand asses apiece were given to all the envoys. Those from Alabanda were ordered to carry the shields back to Aulus Hostilius, the consul in Macedonia.
[11]
Envoys from Africa also arrived, both Carthaginians and those of Masinissa together. The Carthaginian envoys reported that they had conveyed to the sea a million pecks of wheat and five hundred thousand of barley, in order that they might deliver it wherever the senate should determine;
[12]
they said that this gift and act of duty of theirs was, they knew, less than a return for the favours of the Roman people and less than they would wish; but they had often, on other occasions when both peoples had been prospering, fulfilled the duties of grateful and faithful allies.
[13]
Likewise the envoys of Masinissa promised the same total of wheat as well as twelve hundred cavalry and twelve elephants;7 they requested the senate to order anything else which might be needed, for the king would furnish such things with as good a will as he gave what he, of his own accord, had [p. 27]promised.
[14]
Thanks both to the Carthaginians and to8 the king were expressed and they were asked to deliver what they had promised to Hostilius the consul in Macedonia. To each of the envoys a gift of two thousand asses was sent.
1 B.C. 171
2 Such a temple had been built by Smyrna in 195 B.C., Tacitus, Annals IV. 56. The conception of Rome as a goddess was quite un-Roman; it was invented by Greeks, adopted by Roman poets (e.g. Vergil, Aeneid VI. 781-7, Lucan, Pharsalia I. 186-192), but not officially adopted as part of Roman religion till the reign of Hadrian (Cassius Dio LXIX. 4. 3). The divinity of cities, either personified or represented by their “Fortune,” seems like a last freakish form of the glorification of the “polls” found in Aristotle (Politics I. i. 11: “Thus also the city-state is prior in nature to the household and to each of us individually. For the whole must necessarily be prior to the part ...” tr. Rackham, L.C.L.).
3 Perhaps a gift to the goddess Roma, like the similar but more lavish gift of Rhodes when in the bad graces of the Romans (Polybius XXX. 5. 4).
4 This statement may be inaccurate; Lampsacus declared itself independent of Antiochus in 196 B.C. (XXXIII. xxxviii. 3) and when last heard of (XXXVII. xxxv. 2, 190 B.C.) was apparently recognized as independent; perhaps Livy or his source has assumed that Lampsacus had abandoned Perseus at the time when it came forward as an ally of Rome.
5 Apparently they wanted an entente with Rome, without the precise and formal undertakings of an alliance (societas). Usually, “friendship” and “alliance” go hand in hand (e.g., XXXVI. iii. 8, XLV. xx. 8), but Rhodes maintained a state of “friendship” without alliance for 140 years (cf. below, XLV. xxv. 7-9) because, in the words of Polybius (XXX. 5. 8, tr. White, L.C.L.), “As they wished none of the kings and princes to despair of gaining their help and alliance, they did not desire to run in harness with Rome and engage themselves by oaths and treaties, but preferred to remain unembarrassed and able to reap profit from any quarter”; they sought alliance only when threatened with possible conquest as the alternative.
6 B.C. 171
7 He had previously sent a thousand cavalry, a thousand infantry, and twenty-two elephants (XLII. lxii. 2).
8 B.C. 171
Livy. Books XLIII-XLV With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1951: published without copyright notice.
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