Book XXXII
(The years 183-175 B.C.)
The Aetolians are
deprived of their liberty by the Romans; war between the Messenians and
Achaeans; death of Philopoemen; defeat of the Messenians, I. — Death of
Antiochus; Philip oppresses Greece; the Romans pardon him for the sake
of his son Demetrius; Demetrius killed through the artifices of his
brother Perseus, II. — Death of Philip; Emigration of the Gauls; the
Tectosages,
Istrians, Dacians, III. — Prusias,
assisted by Hannibal, defeats Eumenes; death of Hannibal, IV.
1 THE Aetolians, who had persuaded Antiochus to make war on
the Romans, were left, after he was defeated, to oppose them by
themselves, unequal in force, and unsupported by assistance. Being soon
after, in consequence, subdued, they lost that liberty which they alone,
among so many states of Greece, had preserved inviolate against the
power of the Athenians and Spartans. This state of things was the more
grievous to them, as it was later in befalling them; for they reflected
on those times in which they had withstood the mighty power of the
Persians by their own strength, and had humbled, in the Delphic war, the
violent spirit of the Gauls that was dreaded by Asia and Italy; and
these glorious recollections increased their grief at the loss of their
liberty.
During the course of these occurrences, a
dispute at first, and afterwards a war, arose between the Messenians and
Achaeans, to determine which of the two should rule the other. In this
struggle Philopoemen, the famous general of the Achaeans, was taken
prisoner, not from having been fearful of exposing his life in the
field, but from having fallen from his horse in leaping a ditch, as he
was rallying his men for the contest, and being overpowered by a host of
enemies. The Messenians, whether from fear of his valour, or respect for
his dignity, did not venture to kill him as he lay on the ground; but,
as if they had ended the war by capturing him, they led him prisoner
through their whole city as in triumph, while the people poured forth to
meet him, as if it were their own general, and not that of the enemy,
that was coming; nor would the Achaeans have more eagerly beheld him
victorious than the enemy saw him under defeat. They ordered him
accordingly to be led into the theatre, that every one might see him
whose capture seemed incredible to every one. Being then conducted to
prison, they gave him, from respect for his high character,1
poison to drink, which he received with pleasure, just as if he had been
conqueror, first asking “whether Lycortas,” a general of the Achaeans,
whom he knew to be next to himself in the art of war, “had got off
safe?” Hearing that he had escaped, he observed that “things were not
utterly desperate with the Achaeans,” and expired. The war being renewed
shortly after, the Messenians were conquered, and made some atonement
for putting Philopoemen to death.
2 In Syria,
meanwhile, king Antiochus, being burdened, after he was conquered by the
Romans, with a heavy tribute under his articles of peace, and being
impelled by want of money or stimulated by avarice, brought up his army
one night, and made an assault upon the temple of Jupiter in Elymais,2
hoping that he might more excusably commit sacrilege under plea of wanting
money to pay his tribute. But the affair becoming known, he was killed
by a rising of the people who dwelt about the temple.3
At Rome, as many cities of Greece had sent
thither, to complain of injuries received from Philip king of Macedonia,
and as a dispute arose in the senate-house between Demetrius, Philip’s
son, whom his father had sent to justify him to the senate, and the
deputies of the cities, the young prince, confounded at the number of
accusations brought forward, suddenly became speechless; when the
senate, moved at his modesty, which had been admired by every one when
he was a hostage at Rome, suffered the controversy to terminate in his
favour. Thus Demetrius, by his modesty, obtained pardon for his father,
which was granted, not to the justice of his defence, but from respect
for his bashfulness; and this was particularly signified in the decree
of the senate, that it might be known that it was not so much the king
that was acquitted, as the father that was excused for the sake of the
son. The circumstance, however, procured Demetrius no thanks for his
embassy at home, but rather odium and detraction; for envy drew upon him
hatred from his brother Perseus, and with his father, the cause of the
indulgence shown him, as soon as he knew it, become a source of dislike
towards him, as he was indignant that the character of his son should
have had more weight with the senate than his own authority as a father
or his dignity as a king. Perseus, in consequence, observing his
father’s chagrin, laid before him, day after day, accusations against
Demetrius in his absence, and rendered him first an object of hatred,
and afterwards of suspicion, charging him at one time with friendship
for the Romans, and at another with treachery to his father. At last he
pretended that a plot was laid for his own life by Demetrius, and, to
prove the charge, brought forward informers, suborned witnesses, and
committed the very crime4
of which he accused his brother. Impelling his father, by these artifices,
to put his son to death, he filled the whole palace with mourning.
3 After Demetrius was killed, and his rival removed. Perseus
grew not only more careless in his behaviour towards his father, but
even more insolent, conducting himself, not as heir to the crown, but as
king. Philip, offended at his manner, became every day more concerned
for the death of Demetrius, and began at length to suspect that he had
been deceived by treachery, and put to the torture all the witnesses and
informers. Having, by this means, come to the knowledge of the
deception, he was not less afflicted at the dishonesty of Perseus than
at the execution of the innocent Demetrius, whom he would have avenged,
had he not been prevented by death; for shortly after he died of a
disease contracted by mental anxiety, leaving great preparations for a
war with the Romans, of which Perseus afterwards made use. He had
induced the Scordiscan Gauls to join him, and would have had a desperate
struggle with the Romans, had not death carried him off.
The Gauls, after their disastrous attack
upon Delphi, in which they had felt the power of the divinity more than
that of the enemy, and had lost their leader Brennus, had fled, like
exiles, partly into Asia, and partly into Thrace, and then returned, by
the same way by which they had come, into their own country. Of these, a
certain number settled at the conflux of the Danube and Save, and took
the name of Scordisci. The Tectosagi, on returning to their old
settlements about Toulouse, were seized with a pestilential distemper,
and did not recover from it, until, being warned by the admonitions of
their soothsayers, they threw the gold and silver, which they had got in
war and sacrilege, into the lake of Toulouse; all which treasure, a
hundred and ten thousand pounds of silver, and fifteen hundred thousand
pounds of gold, Caepio, the Roman consul, a long time after, carried
away with him. But this sacrilegious act subsequently proved a cause of
rain to Caepio and his army. The rising of the Cimbrian war, too, seemed
to pursue the Romans as if to avenge the removal of that devoted
treasure. Of these Tectosagi, no small number, attracted by the charms
of plunder, repaired to Illyricum, and, after spoiling the
Istrians, settled in Pannonia.
The
Istrians,
it is reported, derive their origin from those Colchians who were sent
by king Aeetes in pursuit of the Argonauts, that had carried off his
daughter,5
who, after they had sailed from the Pontus Euxinus into the Ister, and had
proceeded far up the channel of the river Save, pursuing the track of
the Argonauts, conveyed their vessels upon their shoulders over the tops
of the mountains, as far as the shores of the Adriatic sea, knowing that
the Argonauts must have done the same before them, because of the size
of their ship.6 These Colchians, not
overtaking the Argonauts, who had sailed off, remained, whether from
fear of their king or from weariness of so long a voyage, near Aquileia,
and were called Istrians from the
name of the river up which they sailed out of the sea.
The Dacians are descendants of the Getae.
This people having fought unsuccessfully, under their king Oroles,
against the Bastarnae, were compelled by his order, as a punishment for
their cowardice, to put their heads, when they were going to sleep, in
the place of their feet,7
and to perform those offices for their wives which used previously to be
done for themselves. Nor were these regulations altered, until they had
effaced, by new exertions in the field, the disgrace which they had
incurred in the previous war.
4 Perseus, having succeeded to the throne of his father
Philip, applied to all these nations to join him in a war against the
Romans. In the meanwhile a war broke out between king Prusias, to whom
Hannibal had fled when peace was granted Antiochus by the Romans, and
Eumenes; a war which Prusias was the first to begin, having broken his
treaty with Eumenes through confidence in Hannibal.
Hannibal, when the Romans, among other
articles of peace, demanded from Antiochus that he should be surrendered
to them, received notice of this demand from the king, and, taking to
flight, went off to Crete. Here, when he had long led a quiet life, but
found himself envied for his great wealth, he deposited some urns,
filled with lead, in the temple of Diana, as if thus to secure his
treasure. The city,8
in consequence, being no longer concerned about him, as they supposed that
they had his wealth in pledge, he betook himself to Prusias, putting his
gold into some statues which he carried with him, lest his riches, if
seen, should endanger his life. Prusias being subsequently defeated in a
battle by land, and transferring the war to the sea, Hannibal, by a new
stratagem, was the cause of procuring him a victory; for he ordered
serpents of every kind to be enclosed in earthen pots, and to be thrown,
in the hottest of the engagement, into the enemy’s ships. This seemed at
first ridiculous to the Pontic soldiers,9
that the enemy should fight with earthen pots, as if they could not
fight with the sword.10 But when the ships
began to be filled with serpents, and they were thus involved in double
peril, they yielded the victory to the enemy.
When the news of these transactions was
brought to Rome, ambassadors were despatched by the senate to require
the two kings to make peace, and demand the surrender of Hannibal. But
Hannibal, learning their object, took poison, and frustrated their
embassy by his death.
This year was rendered remarkable by the
deaths of the three greatest generals then in the world, Hannibal,
Philopoemen, and Scipio Africanus. Of these three it is certain that
Hannibal, even at the time when Italy trembled at him, thundering in the
war with Rome, and when, after his return to Carthage, he held the chief
command there, never reclined at his meals, or indulged himself with
more than one pint11
of wine at a time; and that he preserved such continence among so many
female captives, that one would be disposed to deny that he was born in
Africa. Such, too, was his prudence in command, that though he had to
rule armies of different nations, he was never annoyed by any conspiracy
among his troops, or betrayed by their want of faith, though his enemies
had often attempted to expose him to both.
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