[23.]The effect of the message from the Romans in the Achaean league. Supra ch. 13. In the Peloponnese, when the ambassadors arrived and announced the answers from Rome, there was no longer mere clamour, but downright rage and hatred against Callicrates and his party....
An instance of the hatred entertained for Callicrates and Adronidas, and the others who agreed with them,Unpopularity of Callicrates, Adronidas, and their party. was this. The festival of the Antigoneia was being held at Sicyon,—the baths being all supplied with large public bathing tubs, and smaller ones placed by them used by bathers of the better sort,—if Adronidas or Callicrates entered one of these, not a single one of the bystanders would get into it any more, until the bathman had let every drop of water run out and filled it with fresh. They did this from the idea that they would be polluted by entering the same water as these men. Nor would it be easy to describe the hissing and hooting that took place at the public games in Greece when any one attempted to proclaim one of them victor. The very children in the streets as they returned from school ventured to call them traitors to their faces. To such height did the anger and hatred of these men go....
[24.] The inhabitants of Peraea were like slaves unexpectedly released from chains,Joy of the people of Peraea at the Roman decree emancipating them from Rhodes. who are scarcely able to believe their present good fortune, thinking it a change almost too great to be natural; and cannot believe that those they meet can understand or fully see that they are really released, unless they do something strange and out of the ordinary course....
BOOK XXXI
[1.]B.C. 165. War in Crete of Cnosus and Gortyn against Rhaucus. At this time the Cnosians, in alliance with the Gortynians, made war upon the Rhaucians, and swore a mutual oath that they would not end the war until they had taken Rhaucus.
But when the Rhodians received the decree regarding Caunus, and saw that the anger of the Romans was not abating,The Rhodians are again refused an alliance. after having scrupulously carried out the orders contained in the Senate’s replies, they forthwith sent Aristotle at the head of an embassy to Rome, with instructions to make another attempt to secure the alliance. They arrived in Rome at the height of summer, and, having been admitted to the Senate, at once declared how their people had obeyed the Senate’s orders, and pleaded for the alliance, using a great variety of arguments in a speech of considerable length. But the Senate returned them a reply in which, without a word about their friendship, they said that, as to the alliance, it was not proper for them to grant the Rhodians this favour at present....
[2.] To the ambassadors of the Gauls in Asia they granted autonomy,Autonomy to Galatia on conditions. on condition that they remained within their dwellings, and went on no warlike expeditions beyond their own frontiers....
[3.] When this same king (Antiochus Epiphanes) heard of the games in Macedonia held by the Roman proconsul Aemilius Paulus, wishing to outdo Paulus by the splendour of his liberality,The grand festival held by Antiochus Epiphanes at Daphne, a suburb of Antioch, sacred to Apollo. he sent envoys to the several cities announcing games to be held by him at Daphne; and it became the rage in Greece to attend them. The public ceremonies began with a procession composed as follows: first came some men armed in the Roman fashion, with their coats made of chain armour, five thousand in the prime of life. Next came five thousand Mysians, who were followed by three thousand Cilicians armed like light infantry, and wearing gold crowns. Next to them came three thousand Thracians and five thousand Gauls. They were followed by twenty-thousand Macedonians, and five thousand armed with brass shields, and others with silver shields, who were followed by two hundred and forty pairs of gladiators. Behind these were a thousand Nisaean cavalry and three thousand native horsemen, most of whom had gold plumes and gold crowns, the rest having them of silver. Next to them came what are called “companion cavalry,” to the number of a thousand, closely followed by the corps of king’s “friends” of about the same number, who were again followed by a thousand picked men; next to whom came the Agema or guard, which was considered the flower of the cavalry, and numbered about a thousand. Next came the “cataphract” cavalry, both men and horses acquiring that name from the nature of their panoply; they numbered fifteen hundred. All the above men had purple surcoats, in many cases embroidered with gold and heraldic designs. And behind them came a hundred six-horsed, and forty four-horsed chariots; a chariot drawn by four elephants and another by two; and then thirty-six elephants in single file with all their furniture on.