43 As he uttered these words with the apparent approbation of the ambassadors, Marcius advised him to send ambassadors to Rome, as he thought it best to try every expedient to the last, and to omit nothing that might afford any prospect of peace. The consideration still remained, how the ambassadors might travel with safety; and although, to this end, it was necessary that the king should ask a truce, which Marcius wished for, and in fact had no other view in consenting to the conference, yet he granted it with apparent reluctance, and as a great favour to the persons requesting it. At that juncture the Romans had not made sufficient preparations for war; they had no army, no general: whereas Perseus had every thing prepared and ready; and if a delusive hope of peace had not blinded his judgment, he might have commenced hostilities at a time most advantageous to himself and distressing to his enemies. At the breaking up of this conference, (the truce being ratified by both parties,) the Roman ambassadors bent their route towards Bœotia, where great commotions were now beginning; for several of the states withdrew themselves from the union of the general confederacy of the Bœotians, from the time that the answer of the ambassadors was announced, that “it would appear what particular states were displeased at the formation of the alliance with the king.” First deputies from Chæronea, then others from Thebes, met the Romans on the road, and assured them, that they were not present in the council wherein that alliance was resolved on. The ambassadors, giving them no answer at the time, ordered that they should go with them to Chalcis. At Thebes a violent dissension arose out of another contest. The party defeated in the election of prætors of Bœotia, resolving to revenge the affront, collected the multitude, and passed a decree at Thebes, that the new Bœotarchs should not be admitted into the cities. All the persons thus exiled betook themselves to Thespiæ; being recalled from it (for they were received there without hesitation) to Thebes, owing to a change in the minds of the people, they passed a decree that the twelve persons who, without being invested with public authority, had held an assembly and council, should be punished by banishment: and afterwards the new prætor, (he was Ismenias, a man of distinction and power,) by another decree, condemns them, although absent, to capital punishment. They had fled to Chalcis; and thence they proceeded to Larissa, to the Romans, and threw on Ismenias alone the blame of the alliance concluded with Perseus, asserting that the contest originated in a party dispute; yet ambassadors from both sides waited on the Romans, as did the exiles, accusers of Ismenias, and Ismenias himself.
44 When they were all arrived at Chalcis, the chiefs of the other states, each by a particular decree of their own, renounced the alliance of Perseus, and joined themselves to the Romans, a circumstance which gave very great pleasure to the latter. Ismenias recommended, that the Bœotian nation should be placed under the orders of Rome; on which so violent a dispute arose, that, if he had not fled for shelter to the tribunal of the ambassadors, he would not have been far from losing his life by the hands of the exiles and their abettors. Thebes itself, the capital of Bœotia, was in a violent ferment, one party struggling hard to bring the state over to the king, the other to the Romans; and multitudes had come together, from Coronæ and Haliartus, to support the decree in favour of Perseus. But by the firmness of the chiefs, (who desired them to judge, from the defeats of Philip and Antiochus, how great must be the power and fortune of the Roman empire,) the same multitude was overcome, and not only resolved that the alliance with the king should be cancelled, but also, to gratify the ambassadors, sent the promoters of that alliance to Chalcis; and ordered, that the state should be recommended to the protection of the Romans. Marcius and Atilius heard the Thebans with joy, and advised both them and each state separately to send ambassadors to Rome to renew the treaty. They required, above all things, that the exiles should be restored; and condemned by their own decree the advisers of the treaty with the king. Having thus disunited the members of the Bœotian council, which was their grand object, they proceeded to Peloponnesus, after summoning Servius Cornelius to Chalcis. An assembly was summoned to meet them at Argos, where they demanded nothing more from the Achæans, than the furnishing of one thousand soldiers, which were sent as a garrison to defend Chalcis until a Roman army should come into Greece.
45 Marcius and Atilius having finished the business that was to be done in Greece, returned to Rome in the beginning of winter. An embassy had been despatched thence, about the same time, into Asia, to the several islands. The ambassadors were three; Tiberius Claudius, Publius Postumius, and Marcus Junius. These, making a circuit among the allies, exhorted them to undertake the war against Perseus, in conjunction with the Romans; and the more powerful any state was, the more earnestly they requested them, judging that the smaller states would follow the lead of the greater. The Rhodians were esteemed of the utmost consequence on every account; because they could not only countenance the war, but also assist in it by their own strength, having, pursuant to the advice of Hegesilochus, forty ships ready for sea. This man being chief magistrate, whom they call Prytanis, had, by many arguments, prevailed on the Rhodians to banish the hope of courting the favour of kings, which they had, in repeated instances, found fallacious; and to maintain firmly the alliance with Rome (which was the only one in the earth that could be relied on for strength or honour). He told them, that “a war was upon the point of breaking out with Perseus: that the Romans would expect the same naval armament which they had seen lately in that with Antiochus, and formerly in that with Philip: that they would be hurried, in the hasty equipment of a fleet, when it ought to be sent at once, unless they immediately set about the repairing and manning of their ships: and that they ought to do this with the greatest diligence, in order to refute, by the evidence of facts, the imputations thrown on them by Eumenes.” Roused by these arguments, they showed to the Roman ambassadors, on their arrival, a fleet of forty ships rigged and fitted out, so that it might appear that they did not require to be urged. This embassy had great effect in conciliating the affections of the states in Asia. Decimius alone returned to Rome without effecting any thing, and disgraced by the suspicion of having received money from the Illyrian kings.
46 When Perseus, after the conference with the Romans, had retired into Macedon, he sent ambassadors to Rome to carry on the negotiation for peace commenced with Marcius, giving them letters, to be delivered at Byzantium and Rhodes. The purport of the letters to all was the same, viz. that he had conferred with the Roman ambassadors. What he had heard from them, and what he had said, was, however, represented in such a manner that he might seem to have had the advantage in the debate. In presence of the Rhodians, the ambassadors added, that “they were confident of a continuation of peace, for it was by the advice of Marcius and Atilius that they were sent to Rome. But if the Romans should commence their hostilities, contrary to treaty, it would then be the business of the Rhodians to labour, with all their power and all their interest, for the re-establishment of peace; and that, if they should effect nothing by their mediation, they ought then to take such measures as would prevent the dominion of the whole world from coming into the hands of one nation only. That, as this was a matter of general concern, so it was peculiarly interesting to the Rhodians, as they surpassed the other states in dignity and power, which must be held on terms of servility and dependence, if there were no other resource for redress than the Romans.” Both the letter and the discourse of the ambassadors were received by the Rhodians with every appearance of kindness, but by no means exerted any influence in working a change in their minds, for by this time the best-judging party had the superior influence. By a public order this answer was given:—that “the Rhodians wished for peace; but, if war should take place, they hoped that the king would not expect or require from them any thing that might break off their ancient friendship with the Romans, the fruit of many and great services performed on their part both in war and peace.” The Macedonians, on their way home from Rhodes, visited also the states of Bœotia. Thebes, Coronæa, and Haliartus; for it was thought that the measure of abandoning the alliance with the king, and joining the Romans, was extorted from them against their will. The Thebans were not influenced by his representations, though they were somewhat displeased with the Romans, on account of the sentence passed on their nobles, and the restoration of the exiles; but the Coronæans and Haliartians, out of a kind of natural attachment to kings, sent ambassadors to Macedon, requesting the aid of a body of troops to defend them against the insolent tyranny of the Thebans. To this application the king answered, that, “on account of the truce concluded with the Romans, it was not in his power to send troops; but he recommended to them, to guard themselves against ill-treatment from the Thebans, as far as they were able, without affording the Romans a pretext for venting their resentment on him.”
47 When Marcius and Atilius returned to Rome, they reported in the Capitol the result of their embassy, in such a manner that they assumed no greater merit for any one matter, than for having overreached the king by the suspension of arms, and the hope of peace given him; for “he was so fully provided,” they said, “with every requisite for the immediate commencement of war, while on their side no one thing was in readiness, that all the convenient posts might have been preoccupied by him before an army could be transported into Greece; but, by gaining so much time by the truce, the Romans would begin the war better provided with every thing; whereas he would come into the field in no respect better prepared.” They mentioned, also, that “they had so effectually disunited by stratagem the members of the Bœotian council, that they could never again, with any degree of unanimity, connect themselves with the Macedonians.” A great part of the senate approved of these proceedings, as conducted with consummate wisdom; but the older members, and those who retained the ancient simplicity of manners, declared, that “in the conduct of that embassy, they could discover nothing of the Roman genius. Their ancestors waged war not by stratagems and attacks in the night, nor by counterfeiting flight and returning unexpectedly on an unguarded foe, nor in such a manner as to glory in cunning more than in real valour. That they were accustomed to proclaim war before they waged it, that they sometimes appointed the day of battle and marked out the ground on which they were to fight. That with the same honourable feeling information was given to king Pyrrhus of his physician plotting against his life; and, from the same motive, they delivered bound, to the Faliscians, the betrayer of their children. These were the acts of the Roman law, not resulting from the craft of Carthaginians or the subtlety of Greeks, among whom it is reckoned more glorious to deceive an enemy than to overcome him by force. Sometimes greater present advantages may be acquired by artifice than by bravery. But an adversary’s spirit is finally subdued for ever, when the confession has been extorted from him, that he was vanquished, not by artifice, nor by chance, but in a just and open war, in a fair trial of strength hand to hand.” Such were the sentiments of the elder members, to whom this modern kind of wisdom was displeasing. But that part of the senate who paid more regard to utility than to honour, prevailed, and passed a vote approving of Marcius’ conduct in his former embassy; at the same time ordering that he should be sent again into Greece with some ships, and with authority to act in other matters as he should judge most conducive to the public good. They also sent Aulus Atilius to keep possession of Larissa in Thessaly; fearing lest, on the expiration of the armistice, Perseus might send troops and secure to himself that metropolis. For the execution of this, Atilius was ordered to receive from Cneius Sicinius two thousand infantry. And three hundred soldiers of the Italian race were given to Publius Lentulus, who had returned from Achaia, that he should fix his quarters at Thebes, in order that Bœotia might be kept in obedience.
48 After these preparations were made, the senate, notwithstanding their determination for war was fixed, yet judged it proper to give audience to the king’s ambassadors. Their discourse was, principally, a repetition of what had been urged by Perseus in the conference. The accusation of laying the ambush against Eumenes was defended with the greatest care, and yet with the least success, for the thing was manifest. The rest consisted of apologies: but their hearers were not in a temper to be either convinced or persuaded. Orders were given them to quit the city of Rome instantly, and Italy within thirty days. Then orders were given to Publius Licinius, the consul, to whose lot the province of Macedon had fallen, to appoint as early as possible the day for assembling the army. Caius Lucretius, the prætor, whose province was the fleet, sailed from the city with forty quinqueremes; for it was judged proper that some of the vessels that were repaired should be kept at Rome for other exigencies. The prætor sent forward his brother, Marcus Lucretius, with one quinquereme; ordering him to collect from the allies the ships due by treaty, and to join the fleet at Cephalonia. He received from the Rhegians one trireme, from the Locrians two, and from the Urites four; and then, coasting along the shore of Italy, until he passed the farthest promontory of Calabria, in the Ionian Sea, he shaped his course over to Dyrrachium. Finding there ten barks belonging to the Dyrrachians, twelve belonging to the Issæans, and fifty-four to king Gentius, affecting to understand that they had been brought thither for the use of the Romans, he carried them all off, and sailed in three days to Corcyra, and thence directly to Cephalonia. The prætor Caius Lucretius set sail from Naples, and, passing the strait, arrived on the fifth day at Cephalonia. There the fleet halted, waiting until the land forces should be carried over, and until the transport vessels, which had been separated from the fleet and scattered over the sea, might rejoin it.
49 About this time the consul Publius Licinius, after offering vows in the Capitol, marched out of the city in his military robes. This ceremony is always conducted with great dignity and solemnity; on this occasion particularly, it engaged people’s eyes and thoughts in an unusual degree,—and this, by reason that they escorted the consul against an enemy formidable and conspicuous both for abilities and resources. For not only their desire to pay him the customary respect, but an earnest wish to behold the show, and see the commander, to whose wisdom and conduct they intrusted the maintenance of the public safety, brought them together. Then such reflections as these entered their minds: “How various were the chances of war; how uncertain the issue of the contest; how variable the success of arms; how frequent the vicissitudes of losses and successes; what disasters often happened through the unskilfulness and rashness of commanders; and on the contrary, what advantages their judgment and valour conferred. What human being could yet know either the capacity or the fortune of the consul whom they were sending against the enemy; whether they were shortly to see him at the head of a victorious army ascending the Capitol in triumph, to revisit the same gods from whom he now took his departure, or whether they were to give a like cause of exultation to their enemies.” Then king Perseus, against whom he was going, had a high reputation, derived from the great martial character of the Macedonian nation, and from his father Philip, who, besides many prosperous achievements, had gained a large share of renown even in his war with the Romans. Besides too, the name of Perseus himself, which had never ceased, since his accession to the throne, to be the subject of conversation, owing to the expectation of the war. Two military tribunes, of consular rank, Caius Claudius and Quintus Mucius, were sent with him; and three illustrious young men, Publius Lentulus, and two of the name of Manlius Acidinus, one the son of Marcus Manlius, the other of Lucius. With these he went to Brundusium to the army; and sailing over thence with all his forces, pitched his camp at Nymphæum, in the territory of Apollonia.
50 A few days before this, Perseus, after the ambassadors returned from Rome, and cut off every hope of peace, held a council, in which a contest was carried on for some time between different opinions. Some were of opinion that he ought to pay a tribute, or even to cede a part of his dominions, if they should deprive him of that; in short, that he ought not to refuse, for the sake of peace, whatever must be submitted to, nor act in such a manner as would expose himself and his kingdom to such a perilous hazard. For, “if he retained undisputed possession of the throne, time and the revolution of affairs might produce many conjunctures, which would enable him not only to recover his losses, but to become formidable to those whom he now had reason to dread.” A considerable majority, however, expressed sentiments of a bolder nature. They insisted that “the cession of any part would be followed by that of the whole kingdom. The Romans were in want of neither money nor territory: but they considered that all human affairs, even kingdoms and empires are subject to many casualties. They had themselves broken the power of the Carthaginians, and settled in the neighbourhood a very powerful king, as a yoke on their necks, and had removed Antiochus and his future successors beyond the mountains of Taurus. There now remained only the kingdom of Macedonia near in situation, and such as might, if any where the fortune of Rome should waver, inspire its kings with the spirit of their forefathers. Perseus therefore ought, while his affairs were yet in a state of safety, to consider well in his own mind, whether he should prefer to give up one part of his dominions after another, until at length, stripped of all power and exiled from his kingdom, he should be reduced to beg from the Romans either Samothracia or some other island, where he might grow old in poverty and contempt; or, on the other hand, armed in vindication of his fortune and his honour, as is the part of a brave man, either should endure with patience whatever misfortune the chance of war might bring upon him, or by victory deliver the world from the tyranny of Rome. There would be nothing more wonderful in the Romans being driven out of Greece, than in Hannibal’s being driven out of Italy; nor, in truth, did they see how it could consist with the character of the prince, to resist with the utmost vigour his brother, who unjustly aspired to the crown, and, after he had fairly obtained it himself, surrender it up to foreigners. Lastly, that war had its vindication as well as peace, so that nothing was accounted more shameful than to yield up a dominion without a struggle, and nothing more glorious than for a prince to have experienced every kind of fortune in the defence of his crown and dignity.”
51 The council was held at Pella, in the old palace of the Macedonian kings. “Let us then,” Perseus said, “with the help of the gods, wage war, since that is your opinion;” and, despatching letters to all the commanders of the troops, he concentrated his entire force at Cytium, a town of Macedon. He himself, after making a royal offering of one hundred victims, which he sacrificed to Minerva, called Alcidemos, set out for Cytium, attended by a band of nobles and guards. All the forces, both of the Macedonians and foreign auxiliaries, had already assembled in that place. He encamped them before the city, and drew them all up, under arms, in order of battle, in a plain. The amount of the whole was forty-three thousand armed men; of whom about one half composed the phalanx, and were commanded by Hippias of Berœa; there were then two thousand selected for their superior strength, and the vigour of their age, out of the whole number of their shield-bearers: this legion they called, in their own language, Agema, and the command of them was given to Leonatus and Thrasippus of Eulyea. Antiphilus of Edessa commanded the rest of the shield-bearers, about three thousand men. Pæonians, and men from Parorea and Parstrymonia, (places subject to Thrace,) with Agrians, and a mixture of some native Thracians, made up the number of about three thousand men. Didas, the Pæonian, the murderer of young Demetrius, had armed and embodied these. There were two thousand Gallic soldiers, under the command of Asclepiodotus; three thousand independent Thracians, from Heraclea, in the country of the Sintians, had a general of their own. An equal number nearly of Cretans followed their own general, Susus of Phalasarna, and Syllus of Gnossus. Leonidas, a Lacedæmonian, commanded a body of five hundred Greeks, of various descriptions: this man was said to be of the royal blood, and had been condemned to exile in a full council of the Achæans on account of a letter to Perseus, which was intercepted. Lycho, an Achæan, was the commander of the Ætolians and Bœotians, who did not make up more than the number of five hundred men. These auxiliaries, composed of so many states and so many nations, made up about twelve thousand fighting men. Of cavalry, he had collected from all parts of Macedon, three thousand: and Cotys, son of Seutha, king of the Odrysian nation, was arrived with one thousand chosen horsemen, and nearly the same number of foot. The total number was thirty-nine thousand foot, and four thousand horse. Most certainly, since the army which Alexander the Great led into Asia, no king of Macedonia had ever been at the head of so powerful a force.
52 It was now twenty-six years since peace had been granted to the suit of Philip; and Macedon, having through all that period enjoyed quiet, was become exceedingly populous, and very many were now grown up, and become qualified for the duties of the field; and owing to the unimportant wars with the neighbouring states of Thrace, which had given them exercise rather than fatigue, were in continual practice of military service. Besides, a war with Rome having been long meditated by, first, Philip, and afterwards by Perseus, had effected that all things should be arranged and prepared. The troops performed some few movements, but not the regular course of exercise, only that they might not seem to have stood motionless under arms. He then called them, armed as they were, to an assembly. He himself stood on his tribunal, with his two sons, one on each side of him; the elder of whom, Philip, was by birth his brother, his son by adoption; the younger, named Alexander, was his son by birth. The king exhorted his troops to a vigorous prosecution of the war. He enumerated the injuries offered by the Romans to Philip and himself; told them, that “his father, having been compelled, by every kind of indignity, to resolve on a renewal of hostilities, was, in the midst of his preparations for war, arrested by fate: that ambassadors were sent by himself at the same time that soldiers were sent to seize the cities of Greece: that then, under the pretext of re-establishing peace, they spun out the winter, by means of a fallacious conference, in order to gain time to make their preparations; that their consul was now coming, with two Roman legions, containing each six thousand foot and three hundred horse, and nearly the same number of auxiliaries; and that, should they even be joined by the troops of Eumenes and Masinissa, yet these could not amount to more than seven thousand foot and two thousand horse.” He desired them, “after hearing the number of the enemy’s forces, to reflect on their own army, how far it excelled both in number and in the qualifications of the men, a body of raw recruits, enlisted hastily for the present occasion; whereas they themselves had from childhood been instructed in the military art, and had been disciplined and inured to toil in a course of many wars. The auxiliaries of the Romans were Lydians, Phrygians, and Numidians; while his were Thracians and Gauls, the bravest nations in the world. Their troops had such arms as each needy soldier procured for himself; but those of the Macedonians were furnished out of the royal stores, and had been made with much care at the expense of his father, in a course of many years. They must bring their provisions not only from a great distance, but expose them to all the hazards of the sea; while he, besides his revenue from the mines, had laid up a store, both of money and food, sufficient for the consumption of ten years. The Macedonians possessed in abundance every advantage, in point of preparation, that depended on the kindness of the gods, or the care of their sovereign: they ought therefore to have the same daring spirit which their fathers had before them; who, after subduing all Europe, passed over into Asia, and opened by their arms a world unknown to fame, and never ceased to conquer until they were stopped by the Red Sea, and when nothing remained for them to subdue. But in truth fortune has determined the present struggle to be carried on, not for the far remote regions of India, but for the possession of Macedon itself. When the Romans made war on his father, they held out the specious pretence of liberating Greece; now, they avowedly aimed at reducing Macedon to slavery, that there might be no king in the neighbourhood of the Roman empire, and that no nation, renowned in war, should have the possession of arms; for these must be delivered up to their imperious masters, together with the king and kingdom, if they chose to decline a war, and obey their orders.”