Polybius, Histories

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Services of Macedonians To Greece

"Not being able to say anything in defence of

B.C. 279.

any of these acts, you talk pompously about your having resisted the invasion of Delphi by the barbarians, and allege that for this Greece ought to be grateful to you. But if for this one service some gratitude is owing to the Aetolians; what high honour do the Macedonians deserve, who throughout nearly their whole lives are ceaselessly engaged in a struggle with the barbarians for the safety of the Greeks? For that Greece would have been continually involved in great dangers, if we had not had the Macedonians and the ambition of their kings as a barrier, who is ignorant? And there is a very striking proof of this.

Defeat and death of Ptolemy Ceraunus in the battle with the Gauls, B.C. 280. See Pausan. 10.19.7.

For no sooner had the Gauls conceived a contempt for the Macedonians, by their victory over Ptolemy Ceraunus, than, thinking the rest of no account, Brennus promptly marched into the middle of Greece. And this would often have happened if the Macedonians had not been on our frontiers.

"However, though I have much that I could say on the past, I think this is enough. Of all the actions of Philip, they have selected his destruction of the temple, to fasten the charge of impiety upon him. They did not add a word about their own outrage and crime, which they perpetrated in regard to the temples in Dium, and Dodona, and the sacred enclosures of the gods. The speaker should have mentioned this first. But anything you Aetolians have suffered you recount to these gentlemen with exaggeration: but the things you have inflicted unprovoked, though many times as numerous as the others, you pass over in silence; because you know full well that everybody lays the blame of acts of injustice and mischief on those who give the provocation by unjust actions themselves.