18.
Before the surrender, Marcus Aemilius, the youngest of the three ambassadors1 who had been sent to Alexandria, hearing of the siege of [p. 55]Abydus, came to Philip with the consent of his2 colleagues.
[2]
He protested against the attack on Attalus and the Rhodians, and because Philip was at that very moment besieging Abydus, and when the king replied that Attalus and the Rhodians had made an unprovoked attack upon him, Aemilius asked, “Did the people of Abydus also take up arms against you, unprovoked?”
[3]
This speech seemed to the king, who was unused to hearing the truth, too arrogant for delivery in the royal presence. “Your age,” he replied, “your good looks,3 and, above all, the Roman name, make you too arrogant.
[4]
I should myself prefer first that you remember the treaties and keep the peace with me; but if you attack me in war, you will find that I too have the resolution to make both the kingdom and the name of Macedonia no less renowned than those of Rome.”
[5]
Thus dismissing the envoy,4 Philip took possession of all the gold, silver, and other accumulated treasure, but lost all the human booty.
[6]
For such madness laid hold of the people that all at once, thinking that those who had fallen in the fight had met death from treachery, each reproaching another's perjury, and especially that of the priests, who had delivered alive to the enemy those whom they had consecrated to death, they hastily ran to kill their wives and children and then themselves sought death by every path.
[7]
The king, astounded by this frenzy, checked the assaults of his soldiers and announced that he would give the [p. 57]Abydenians three days in which to die.
[8]
In this time5 the conquered did themselves more violence than they would have suffered from their enraged conquerors, and no living man fell into Philip's hands save those whom chains or some other constraint forbade to die. Philip, leaving a garrison at Abydus, returned to his kingdom.
[9]
When, as Hannibal's destruction of Saguntum had aroused the Romans to war against him, so now the slaughter of the people of Abydus had roused them against Philip, word came that the Roman consul was already in Epirus and had sent his army to Apollonia and his fleet to Corcyra to winter.6
1 See ii. 3 above.
2 B.C. 200
3 See the similar dialogue quoted by Polybius (XVI. xxxiv. 5); Polybius adds that Aemilius was the handsomest man of his time.
4 According to Justin (XXX. iii. 3-4), the ambassadors carried instructions to Antiochus and Philip to keep their hands off Egypt, and Aemilius was designated to act as a quasi- guardian to the young Ptolemy. For the alliance between Egypt and Rome see XXVII. iv. 10. Livy has abridged his account of the embassy's activities, but it should be remembered that the embassy left Rome before the declaration of war upon Philip.
5 B.C. 200
6 Livy here abandons Polybius and returns to his usual sources, the works of one or more annalists. Since the military year, which began when conditions permitted active operations, the civil year, which began on March 15, and the calendar year did not coincide, Livy has a good deal of difficulty in adjusting his material to his plan of composition. The events related in chaps. xv-xviii preceded Sulpicius' arrival in the east (xiv. 2 above), and we are now ready for his campaign. But since he reached Greece only in time to go into winter quarters, Livy turns aside to narrate events in Rome in the later months of 200 B.C.
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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