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". . . So far it is a question whether we have or have not been guilty of any offence; all the penalty, the humiliation we are suffering from already. In the past, when we visited Rome after the Carthaginians were defeated, after Philip and Antiochus had been overcome, we went from our quarters where we were the guests of the State to offer our congratulations in the senate house, and from there we went up to the Capitol with gifts for your gods. [2] Now we have come away from a miserable inn where we could hardly get admittance, ordered as we are to remain outside the City almost as though we were enemies. [3] In this squalid plight we have come into the Roman senate-house-we Rhodians to whom not long ago you granted the provinces of Lycia and Caria, and upon whom you have bestowed the greatest distinctions and rewards. [4] According to what we hear, you are ordaining that the Macedonians and Illyrians shall be free peoples, though before they went to war with you they were in servitude-not that we envy any one's [5??] good fortunes, on the contrary we recognise the clemency of Rome-but the Rhodians simply remained quiet, and are you going to convert friends into enemies by this proposed war? [6] Surely you are the same Romans who make it your boast that your wars are successful because they are just, and pride yourselves not so much upon bringing them to a close as victors as upon never beginning them without just cause. [7] The attack on Messana in Sicily made the Carthaginians your enemy; his attack on Athens, his attempt to enslave Greece, the assistance rendered to Hannibal in money and troops made Philip your enemy. Antiochus, on the invitation of the Aetolians, who were your enemies, sailed in person with his fleet from Asia to Greece, seized Demetrias, Chalcis and the Pass of Thermopylae and tried to dispossess you of your empire. [8] Your grounds for the war with Perseus were the attacks on your allies, or the murder of the princes and leading men in different communities and nationalities. [9] What pretext or justification will there be for our ruin, if we are to perish? So far I do not make any difference between the case of our city as a whole and that of our fellow-citizens Polyaratus and Dino and the others whom we have brought with us to deliver up to you. [10] Suppose all we Rhodians were equally guilty, what charge would be brought against us with regard to this war? You say we took the side of Perseus, and just as in the wars against Philip and Antiochus we stood by you against those monarchs, so now we stood by the king against you. [11] Ask the commanders of your fleets in Asia, C. Livius, L. Aemilius Regillus, how we were wont to help our allies and with what energy we prosecuted the war. [12] Your ships never fought without us to help you; we fought single-handed at Samos and a second time off Pamphylia against Hannibal, who was in command. [13] And this victory was all the more glorious for us because after losing a large proportion of our ships and the flower of our youth in the defeat at Samos, we were not daunted even by that disaster, and we met the king's fleet on its way from Syria. [14] I am not recounting these incidents in a spirit of boasting-our present circumstances forbid that-but to remind you how the Rhodians have been accustomed to help their allies.
Livy. History of Rome. English Translation by. Rev. Canon Roberts. New York, New York. E. P. Dutton and Co. 1912. 1. Livy. History of Rome. English Translation. Rev. Canon Roberts. New York, New York. E. P. Dutton and Co. 1912. 2.
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