The History of Rome, Books 37 to the End / with the Epitomes and Fragments of the Lost Books

by Livy

45 They elected to serve as consuls for the ensuing year, Marcus Claudius Marcellus and Quintus Fabius Labeo. These, on the ides of March, the first day of their assuming the administration, proposed to the senate to determine their provinces, and those of the prætors. The prætors appointed were, Caius Valerius, flamen of Jupiter, who had been candidate the year before, Spurius Posthumius Albinus, Publius Cornelius Sisenna, Lucius Pupius, Lucius Julius, and Cneius Sicinius. Liguria was ordered to be the province of the consuls, and the armies were assigned to them, which Publius Claudius and Marcus Porcius had commanded. The two Spains, without being put to the lot, were reserved for the prætors who held them the year before, and also their own armies. The prætors were ordered to regulate their casting lots, in such a manner, that the flamen of Jupiter should have one or other of the judicial employments at Rome. The foreign jurisdiction fell to his lot, that between citizens to Cornelius Sisenna. Sicily was assigned to Spurius Posthumius, Apulia to Lucius Pupius, Gaul to Lucius Julius, Sardinia to Cneius Sicinius. Lucius Julius was ordered to hasten to his province, because some transalpine Gauls, as was mentioned before, having made their way through the forests into Italy, by an unknown road, were building a town in the country which now forms the district of Aquileia. Orders were given to the prætor to prevent their doing so, as far as might lie in his power without appealing to arms; and, if it should be necessary to stop them by force, to give information to the consuls, one of whom was, in that case, directed to march his legions against those Gauls. Towards the close of the preceding year, an assembly had been held for the purpose of electing an augur, in the room of Cneius Cornelius deceased, when Spurius Posthumius Albinus was chosen.

46 In the beginning of this year, Publius Licinius Crassus, chief pontiff, died, in whose room was appointed Marcus Sempronius Tuditanus, and Caius Servilius Geminus was raised to the place of chief pontiff. On occasion of the funeral of Publius Licinius a largess of flesh was distributed to the people, and one hundred and twenty pair of gladiators fought. The funeral games lasted three days; and, after the games, a public feast was given. During the feast, and while the couches were spread over the forum, a storm came on with violent gusts of wind, and compelled most of the people to pitch tents in that place. The same, on the weather clearing up, in a short time after, were removed. It was rumoured about, that they had fulfilled a prophecy which soothsayers had pronounced, among the decrees of the fates, that, inevitably, tents would be pitched in the forum. As soon as they were relieved from those religious fears, they were struck with new ones, by showers of blood falling for two days, in the area of Vulcan’s temple, and a supplication was ordered by the decemvirs for the sake of expiating the prodigy. Before the consuls set out for their provinces, they introduced the embassies from the countries beyond the sea to an audience of the senate; and at no time was there in Rome such a number of people from those regions. For, as soon as a report spread through the nations which border on Macedon, that accusations and complaints against Philip were listened to by the Romans with some degree of attention, and that it had been of advantage to many to complain;—all these states and nations, and even individuals, on their own accounts, (for he was a troublesome neighbour to every one,) flocked to Rome, with hopes of obtaining either redress of their injuries, or, at least, the consolation of expressing their griefs. An embassy came also from king Eumenes, with his brother Athenæus, to complain of the garrisons not being withdrawn by Philip out of Thrace; and, likewise, of his sending succours into Bithynia, to Prusias, who was at war with Eumenes.

47 Demetrius, who was then very young, had to answer all these representations; and it was no easy matter to retain in memory, either all the charges which were brought against his father, or what was proper to be said in reply. For the charges were not only numerous, but most of them exceedingly frivolous; of disputes about boundaries, of men forced away and cattle driven off; of justice, either capriciously administered or refused; of property adjudged either by force or influence. When the senate perceived that Demetrius could not explain any of those matters distinctly, and that they could not gain satisfactory information from him, and when, at the same time, the youth, through inexperience and bashfulness, was much embarrassed, they ordered that he should be asked whether he had received from his father any written instructions on those points; and on his answering that he had, it appeared to them better and more proper to receive the answers of the king himself, on each particular head; so they immediately called for the scroll, but afterwards gave him leave to read it to them in person. Here were his apologies on each subject, compressed into a narrow compass; informing them that, in some cases, he had acted in conformity to the determinations of the ambassadors; in others, that the fault of not conforming to them, lay not in him, but actually in the persons themselves who accused him. He had interspersed, also, complaints concerning the injustice of the decrees, and the partiality with which the discussion was carried on in presence of Cæcilius, and of the insults that were offered him, in a most unworthy and unmerited manner by all. The senate inferred from these marks that his mind was irritated; nevertheless, on the young man apologizing for some things, and undertaking that others should be performed in the manner most agreeable to the senate, they ordered the answer to be given him, that “in no instance had his father acted with more propriety, or given more pleasure to the senate, than in his choosing, whatever the nature of those transactions might be, to send his excuses for them to the Romans, by his son Demetrius. That the senate could leave unnoticed, forget, and put up with, many past matters, and believe also that they might place confidence in Demetrius; for though they restored his person to his father, they still had his mind as a hostage, and were convinced that, as far as he could, without infringing on his duty to his father, he was a friend to the Roman people. That, to do him honour, they would send ambassadors into Macedon, in order that, if any thing which ought to have been done was left undone, it might then be effected, but still without requiring an atonement for former omissions. That they wished Philip also to be sensible, that it was owing to the kind offices of his son Demetrius, that the treaty between him and the Roman people remained inviolate.”

48 These declarations, which were made with the intention of adding to the dignity of his character, proved to the young man the cause of immediate envy, and of not far distant ruin. The Lacedæmonians were next introduced, when many insignificant disputes were agitated. Those which might be deemed important were—whether the persons whom the Achæans had condemned, should be reinstated or not; whether they slew with justice or the reverse those whom they put to death; the question was debated also whether the Lacedæmonians should continue in the Achæans’ council, or, as had formerly been the case, that single state in Peloponnesus should have separate independence. It was determined Òthat the condemned should be reinstated, and the sentences passed reversed; that Lacedæmon should continue in the Achæan council, and that this decree should be committed to writing, and signed by the Lacedæmonians and Achæans. Quintus Marcius was sent ambassador into Macedon, with orders, likewise, to take a view of the affairs of the allies in Peloponnesus; for there also disturbances still subsisted, in consequence of the old quarrels, and Messene had revolted from the Achæan confederacy. But if I were to trace out the cause and progress of this war, I should deviate from the resolution by which I determined not to treat of foreign events, further than they are connected with the affairs of Rome.

49 One event deserves to be mentioned: that, notwithstanding the Achæans had a superiority in the war, Philopœmen, their prætor, was taken prisoner on his march to secure Corone, which the enemy meant to attack, being, with a small party of horse, surprised in a dangerous defile. It is said that he might have effected his own escape, by the aid of some Thracians and Cretans who were with him, but the shame of deserting his horsemen, the most distinguished youths in the nation, selected by himself a short time before, detained him there. Whilst he is procuring for these an opportunity of getting clear of the narrow defile, by closing the rear in person, and sustaining the assaults of the enemy, his horse fell. By the shock of his fall, and the weight of the horse, which fell upon him, he was very nearly killed on the spot; for he was now seventy years old, and his strength had been greatly impaired by a tedious illness, from which he was but just recovered. Lying thus on the ground, the enemy pouring on, secured him. Out of respect to his character, however, and from regard to his merit, they raised him up, when they recognised him, with as much care as if he had been their own commander, and revived him, and carried him out of that remote valley into the road, and they scarcely believed their own senses, on account of the unexpected joy; however, some of them sent on messages to Messene, that the war was at an end, for they were bringing Philopœmen prisoner. At first it seemed so incredible, that the messenger was deemed either a liar or a madman. Afterwards, when numbers came, one after another, all asserting the same, credence was at length given to the matter; and, before they well knew whether he was come near the city, all, freemen and slaves, with even women and children, poured out to enjoy the sight; insomuch that the multitude quite closed up the gate, whilst each person seemed unlikely to consider the thing as certain unless he should obtain certain belief by his own eye-sight. Those who conducted Philopœmen, with difficulty removing those in their way, were able to enter the gate, but the dense crowd completely blocked up the street; and, as the greatest part of these were excluded from the sight, they suddenly filled a theatre which was contiguous to the street, and all with one voice insisted that he should be brought thither for the public view. The magistrates and leading men, fearing that compassion for so great a man, on seeing him, would cause some disturbance; as many would be moved by respect for his former dignity, when they compared it with his present condition, and many by the recollection of his transcendent merits, placed him where he could be seen at a distance. And quickly after hurried him away out of the sight of the people, who were told by the prætor, Dinocrates, that there were some subjects intimately connected with the decision of the war, on which the magistrates wished to interrogate him. Having carried him thence to the senate-house, and called the council together, they began a consultation on the measures to be pursued.

50 The evening came on while they were still at a loss, not only about other matters, but even about the place where he might be kept with proper security during the following night. They were quite confounded at the greatness of his former fortune and merit; and they neither dared to undertake the guarding of him at their houses, nor thought it safe to trust the custody of him to any individual. At last some persons reminded them of a public treasury under ground, enclosed with hewn stone; into this place he was put down, in chains, and a huge stone, with which it is generally covered, was placed over it, with the help of a machine. After having thus determined to trust to the place, rather than to any man, for his safe keeping, they waited with impatience for the dawn. On the following day, the whole populace, mindful of his former services to the state, declared their opinion, that they ought to spare him, and to seek through his means some remedies for their present misfortunes. But the authors of the revolt, in whose hands was the management of affairs, consulting in secret, unanimously resolved to put him to death; but whether they should do it speedily, or defer it, was for some time a matter of doubt. The party that were more eager for his immediate execution, at length prevailed, and a person was sent to him with poison. They relate, that on receiving the cup, he only asked if Lycortas, the other commander of the Achæans, and the horsemen had escaped; and being told that they were safe, he said, “It is well,” and then intrepidly drinking the contents of the cup, expired shortly after. The actors of this piece of cruelty, however, did not long rejoice at his death; for Messene being conquered in war, delivered up the guilty individuals to the Achæans, when they positively demanded them. The bones of Philopœmen were restored, and his funeral was attended by the whole Achæan council, every human honour being heaped on him to such a degree, that they did not withhold divine ones. So much is conceded to this man by historians, both Greek and Latin, that several of them have recorded, as a circumstance remarkably distinguishing this year, that three illustrious commanders died in it, Philopœmen, Hannibal, and Publius Scipio. To such an extent have they placed him on an equal footing with the most consummate generals of the two most powerful nations.

51 Titus Quintius Flamininus came ambassador to king Prusias, who had incurred the jealousy of the Romans, by entertaining Hannibal after the flight of Antiochus, and by making war on Eumenes. At the court of Prusias, either because, among other discourse, he reproached him with his giving protection to a person, who, of all men living, was the most inveterate enemy to the Roman nation, who had incited, first his own country, and afterwards, when its power was reduced, king Antiochus, to make war on Rome; or because Prusias himself, with the design of gratifying Flamininus and the Roman people, conceived the design of killing Hannibal, or delivering him into their hands; immediately after the first conference with Flamininus, a party of soldiers was sent to guard Hannibal’s house. The Carthaginian had always foreseen some such end of his life; for he knew the implacable hatred which the Romans bore him, and placed little confidence in the faith of kings. Besides, he had experienced the fickle temper of Prusias, and had, for some time, dreaded the arrival of Flamininus, as an event fatal to him. Encircled by enemies on every side, in order to have always some path open for flight, he had made seven passages from his house, of which some were concealed, lest they might be invested by a guard. But the imperious government of kings suffers nothing to remain secret which they choose to discover. They surrounded the circuit of the entire house with guards in such a manner, that no one could escape from it. Hannibal, on being told that some of the king’s soldiers were in the porch, endeavoured to escape through a back door, which was the most private, and from which the passage was most secret; but, perceiving that to be guarded by a body of soldiers, and every avenue round to be blocked up by the guards that were posted, he called for poison, which he had long kept in readiness to meet such an event, and said, “Let us release the Romans from their long anxiety, since they think it too long to wait for the death of an old man. Flamininus will gain no very great or memorable victory over one unarmed and betrayed. What an alteration has taken place in the behaviour of the Roman people, this day affords abundant proof. Their fathers gave warning to Pyrrhus, their armed foe, then heading an army against them in Italy, to beware of poison. The present generation have sent an ambassador, of consular rank, to persuade Prusias villanously to murder his guest.” Then imprecating curses on the head of Prusias, and on his kingdom, and calling on the gods who presided over hospitality, and were witnesses of his breach of faith, he drank off the contents of the cup. This was the end of the life of Hannibal.

52 Both Polybius and Rutilius say, that Scipio died in this year; but I do not agree either with them, or Valerius. Not with them, because I find that in the censorship of Marcus Porcius and Lucius Valerius, the censor himself, Lucius Valerius, was chosen prince of the senate, although Africanus had occupied that place for the three preceding lustrums; and, if he were alive, unless he had been displaced from the senate, which disgrace no one has recorded, another prince would not have been chosen in his room. The authority of Antias is refuted by the plebeian tribunate of Marcus Nævius, against whom there is extant a speech signed by Publius Africanus. Now, this Marcus Nævius, in the register of the magistrates, appears to have been plebeian tribune in the consulate of Publius Claudius and Lucius Porcius; but he entered on the tribuneship in the consulate of Appius Claudius and Marcus Sempronius, on the fourth day before the ides of December, from which time to the ides of March, when Publius Claudius and Lucius Porcius became consuls, there are three months. Thus it appears that he was living in the tribunate of Marcus Nævius, and might have been prosecuted by him; but that he died before the censorship of Lucius Valerius and Marcus Porcius. The deaths of the three most illustrious men of their respective nations have a similarity, not only in respect to the concurrence of the times, but in this circumstance also, that no one of them met a death suitable to the splendour of his life. In the first place, neither of them died or was buried in his native soil. Hannibal and Philopœmen were taken off by poison; Hannibal breathed his last in exile, betrayed by his host; Philopœmen in captivity, in a prison, and in chains. Scipio, though neither banished nor condemned, yet under prosecution, and summoned as an absent criminal to a trial, at which he did not appear, passed sentence of voluntary exile, not only on himself while alive, but likewise on his body after death.

53 During these transactions in Peloponnesus, from which my narration digressed, the return of Demetrius with the ambassadors into Macedonia, affected people’s minds in various manners. The generality of the Macedonians, whom the apprehension of an impending war with the Romans had struck with terror, looked with the highest esteem on Demetrius, as the promoter of peace; and, at the same time, with confident hope, destined for him the throne, after the demise of his father. They argued, that “although he was younger than Perseus, yet he was born of a wife, and the other of a concubine; that the latter, born of a mother who prostituted her person, had no likeness to any particular father, whereas the former had a striking resemblance of Philip. Besides it was probable that the Romans would place him on the throne of his father, as Perseus had no pretensions to their favour.” Such was the conversation of people, in general. Fear tortured Perseus, lest his age alone might not sufficiently secure his interest, his brother having the advantage of him in every other particular; while Philip himself, believing that it would scarcely rest with his decision which of them he should leave heir to his dominions, began to think that his younger son encroached on him more than he could wish. He was sometimes displeased at the numerous attendance of the Macedonians round Demetrius, and chagrined at perceiving that there was a second court during his own life-time. The young prince no doubt came home much elevated in his own estimation, elated with the honours paid him by the senate, and their having conceded to him, what they had refused to his father; insomuch that every mention of the Romans, whatever degree of respect it procured him from the rest of the Macedonians, created an equal degree of envy, not only in the breast of his brother, but also in that of his father; especially after the Roman ambassadors arrived, and the king was obliged to evacuate Thrace, to withdraw his garrisons, and to perform the other articles, either according to the decisions of the former ambassadors or the late regulations made by the senate. But all this he did with great reluctance, and even with anguish of mind, the more on this account, because he saw his son more frequently in company with them than with himself; nevertheless, to avoid giving any pretence for an immediate commencement of hostilities, he acted submissively towards the Romans. Thinking it necessary to turn away their thoughts from a suspicion of any such designs, he led an army into the heart of Thrace, against the Odrysians, Dantheletians, and Bessians. He took the city of Philoppopolis, after it was deserted by the inhabitants, who fled with their families to the tops of the nearest mountains; and, by wasting the country, reduced the barbarians living in the plains to submission. Then leaving a garrison in Philoppopolis, which, was soon after expelled by the Odrysians, he began to build a town in Deuriopus. This is a district of Pæonia, near the river Erigonus, which, flowing from Illyricum through Pæonia, falls into the river Axius. Not far from the old city of Stobæ he built his new one, which he ordered to be called Perseis, that this honour might be conferred on his eldest son.

54 While these things passed in Macedonia, the consuls went to their provinces. Marcellus sent forward an express to Lucius Porcius, the proconsul, to lead up the legions to the new town of the Gauls; they surrendered themselves to the consul on his arrival. There were of these twelve thousand fighting men, most of whom had arms, which they had forced from the inhabitants: all which, to their great mortification, were taken from them, as was every thing else which they had either acquired by plundering in the country, or had brought along with them. They sent ambassadors to Rome to complain of those proceedings, who being introduced to an audience of the senate, by the prætor Caius Valerius, represented that “in consequence of a redundancy of people in Gaul they had been compelled by the want of land, and indeed of every thing, to cross the Alps in quest of a settlement: that they had settled in those lands which they found waste and uncultivated without doing injury to any. They had likewise begun to build a town, which was a proof that they did not come to ravage either city or lands. That some time ago, Marcus Claudius sent them a message, that unless they surrendered to him he would march against them, and that preferring a certain, though not very honourable peace, to the uncertainties of war, they had thrown themselves on the protection of Rome before they submitted to its power. That in a short time after, being ordered to quit the country, they had intended to remove without murmuring to whatever part of the world they were able; and that, notwithstanding, their arms, and finally all the property which they had brought with them, or driven before them, were taken from them. They therefore besought the senate and people of Rome not to treat harmless people, who had surrendered themselves, with greater severity than they would enemies.” To this discourse the senate ordered the following answer to be given: That “neither had they acted properly in coming into Italy, and attempting to build a town in the territory of others, without permission from any Roman magistrate commanding in that province; nor did the senate approve of people who had surrendered being stripped of their property. They would therefore send to the consuls ambassadors, who would order all their effects to be restored, provided they returned to the place whence they came; and who would also proceed to the other side of the Alps, and give warning to the Gallic states to keep their people at home. That the Alps, an almost impassable barrier, lay between the two countries, and whoever should pass in future, should meet no better fate than those who first proved them to be passable.” The ambassadors sent were Lucius Furius Purpureo, Quintus Minucius, Publius Manlius Acidinus. The Gauls, on the restoration of such property as they were in possession of, without wronging any man, withdrew out of Italy.