[5.] [Demetrius] offered him five hundred talents if he would surrender Cyprus to him, with other similar advantages and honours from himself if he would do him this service....
Archias, therefore, wishing to betray Cyprus to Demetrius, and being caught in the act and led off to stand his trial, hanged himself with one of the ropes of the awnings in the court. For it is a true proverb that led by their desires “the reckonings of the vain are vain.” This man, for instance, imagining that he was going to get five hundred talents, lost what he had already, and his life into the bargain....
[6.] About this time an unexpected misfortune befell the people of Priene. They had received a depositHonesty of the people of Priene (in Caria) in preserving the money deposited by Orophernes. of four hundred talents from Orophernes when he got possession of the kingdom; and subsequently when Ariarathes recovered his dominion he demanded the money of them. But they acted like honest men, in my opinion, in declaring that they would deliver it to no one as long as Orophernes was alive, except to the person who deposited it with them; while Ariarathes was thought by many to be committing a breach of equity in demanding a deposit made by another.
However, up to this point, one might perhaps pardon his making the attempt, because he looked upon the money as belonging to his own kingdom; but to push his anger and imperious determination as much farther as he did seems utterly unjustifiable. At the period I refer to, then, he sent troops to pillage the territory of Priene, Attalus assisting and urging him on from the private grudge which he entertained towards the Prienians. After losing many slaves and cattle, some of them being slaughtered close to the city itself, the Prienians, unable to defend themselves, first sent an embassy to the Rhodians, and eventually appealed for protection to Rome....
But he would not listen to the proposal. So it came about that the Prienians, who had great hopes from the possession of so large a sum of money, found themselves entirely disappointed. For they repaid Orophernes his deposit, and, thanks to this same deposit, were unjustly exposed to severe damage at the hands of Ariarathes....
[7.] This year there came ambassadors also from the people of Marseilles, who had long been suffering from the Ligurians,B.C. 155. The Ligurians harass Marseilles and besiege Antibes and Nice. and at that time were being closely invested by them, while their cities of Antipolis and Nicaea were also subjected to a siege. They, therefore, sent ambassadors to Rome to represent the state of things and beg for help. On their being admitted, the Senate decided to send legates to see personally what was going on, and to endeavour by persuasion to correct the injurious proceedings of the barbarians....
The peaceful mission failed, and the consul Opimius subdued the Oxybii, a Ligurian tribe, in arms, B.C. 154. Livy, Ep. 47.
[8.] At the same time as the Senate despatched Opimius to the war with the Oxybii,B.C. 154. Coss. Q. Opimius, L. Postumius Albinus. Ptolemy Physcon charges his brother with inciting a plot against his life. Ptolemy the younger arrived at Rome; and being admitted to the Senate brought an accusation against his brother, laying on him the blame of the attack against his life. He showed the scars of his wounds, and speaking with all the bitterness which they seemed to suggest, moved his hearers to pity him; and when Neolaidas and Andromachus also came on behalf of the elder The Senate refuses to hear the ambassadors of Ptolemy Philometor,Ptolemy, to answer the charges brought by his brother, the Senate refused even to listen to their pleas, having been entirely prepossessed by the accusations of the younger. They commanded them to leave Rome at once; while they assigned five commissioners to the younger, headed by and send commissioners to restore Physcon to Cyprus.Gnaeus Merula and Lucius Thermus, with a quinquereme for each commissioner, and ordered them to restore Ptolemy (Physcon) to Cyprus; and at the same time sent a circular to their allies in Greece and Asia, granting permission to them to assist in the restoration of Ptolemy....
[9.] When the commissioners under Hortensius and Arunculeius returned from Pergamum,Prusias having refused obedience to the former commission (see supra, ch. 1), a new commission is sent out with peremptory orders. and reported Prusias’s disregard of the orders of the Senate; and how by an act of treachery he had besieged them and Attalus in Pergamum,[212] and had given rein to every kind of violence and lawlessness: the Senate, enraged and offended at what had happened, immediately appointed ten commissioners, headed by Lucius Anicius, Gaius Fannius, and Quintus Fabius Maximus, and sent them out with instructions to put an end to the war, and compel Prusias to indemnify Attalus for the injuries received by him during the war....