14.
Thereupon Publius Sulpicius, after the announcement of the vows on the Capitoline, left the city with his lictors in uniform,1 arrived
[2]
at Brundisium and there, enrolling in the legions veteran volunteers from the African army and selecting ships from the fleet of Gnaeus Cornelius, he arrived in Macedonia the second day after he set sail from Brundisium.
[3]
There Athenian ambassadors met him, begging that he release them from siege. He at once sent to Athens Gaius Claudius Cento with twenty warships and a thousand soldiers.
[4]
For2 the king3 himself was not conducting the siege of Athens, but was principally occupied with the attack on Abydus,4 and was now trying his strength in naval battles with the Rhodians and Attalus, in neither case with conspicuous success;
[5]
however, his spirits were kept up, partly by his naturally impetuous disposition, partly by a treaty5 which he had concluded with Antiochus, king of Syria, according to which the wealth of Egypt, which both coveted when they heard of the death of King Ptolemy, was soon to be divided between them.
[6]
[p. 45]
Now the Athenians6 had undertaken the war7 against Philip for no sufficient reason, since they retained nothing of their ancient greatness except their spirit.
[7]
Two young men from Acarnania,8 during the celebration of the mysteries at Eleusis, though not initiated, had entered the temple of Ceres, ignorant that they were committing a sacrilege, and merely following the crowd.
[8]
Their words easily betrayed them, since they asked foolish questions, and though it was clear that they had come in openly and by mistake they were put to death as if they had committed some heinous crime.
[9]
The Acarnanians reported this revolting and unfriendly act to Philip, and prevailed upon him to send them Macedonian aid and permit them to attack Athens.
[10]
This army at first laid waste Attica with fire and sword and returned to Acarnania laden with every kind of booty. This was the original provocation; later regular war was declared and waged by decree of the state after formal notification.
[11]
Now when King Attalus and the Rhodians had arrived at Aegina in pursuit of Philip, who was retiring to Macedonia, Attalus crossed to Piraeus to renew and confirm his alliance with the Athenians.9
[12]
The whole body of citizens,10 with their wives and [p. 47]children, poured out to meet him; the priests in their11 vestments and the very gods, so to speak, starting up from their thrones, welcomed him as he entered the city.
1 One might expect paludatus cum lictoribus; I have however retained the reading of the MSS.: cf. XLI. x. 5; 7; 13; XLV. xxxix. 11 (in the first of these Gronovius conjectured paludatus sine lictoribus), in which the same phrase occurs.
2 Livy's elliptical neque enim suggests that if Philip had been before Athens a larger relief expedition would have been necessary.
3 Livy here summarizes the activities of Philip during the campaign of 200 B.C. before the arrival of Sulpicius in the late summer or early autumn of that year. He resumes the narrative dealing with Sulpicius in xxii. 4 below.
4 Philip's attack upon this famous city on the Hellespont was part of the aggressive campaign against the Greek cities on the islands and in Asia Minor, some of which were free, while others belonged to the Ptolemies, whose empire he had agreed with Antiochus (see below) to dismember. His policy threatened both Pergamum and Rhodes (cf. the Introductory Note) and brought them into the war.
5 Cf. Polyb. III. ii. 8. The death of Ptolemy Philopator (cf. the note on ii. 3 above) gave Philip and Antiochus their apparent opportunity to expand at the expense of the boy Epiphanes. The treaty was probably made in 203 B.C.
6 Livy here summarizes briefly and somewhat inaccurately the events leading up to Roman intervention in the east. In 201 B.C., in consequence of the treaty mentioned in sect. 5 above, Philip had begun operations against the Egyptian possessions in Thrace, northern Asia Minor, and the Cyclades. This brought him into conflict with Pergamum, already allied with Athens, and with Rhodes. At the approach of winter he had withdrawn to Europe, after a campaign somewhat more successful than Livy's account intimates. Athens was not immediately involved in this war, but was embroiled with Philip in the manner described in the following sections. The alignment is then: Philip and the Aetolian League vs. Athens, Pergamum, Rhodes, Rome. Antiochus, allied with both Rome and Philip, was not involved directly, nor was Ptolemy, allied with Rome, although Philip's attack on his possessions precipitated the war.
7 B.C. 200
8 Acarnania, in the north-west, was a part of the Aetolian League.
9 See, for this alliance, XXIX. xii. 14.
10 Polybius (XVI. xxv. 5) similarly describes this scene.
11 B.C. 200
Livy. Books XXXI-XXXIV with an English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1935: no copyright notice.
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