5.
While this was going on at Rome, Antiochus at Chalcis, not to waste the winter in idleness,1 sometimes was himself stirring up the minds of the states by sending embassies, sometimes was receiving delegations voluntarily sent to him, as, for instance, the Epirotes, who came with the unanimous approval of the people, and the men of Elis from the Peloponnesus.
[2]
The Elei were asking aid against the Achaeans, who, they thought, would attack their city first after declaring a war on Antiochus of which the Elei disapproved.2
[3]
A thousand infantry were sent to them under command of Euphanes the Cretan. The embassy of the Epirotes showed no outspoken and plain inclination to either side; they were trying to curry favour with the king, meanwhile avoiding giving any offence to the Romans.
[4]
For they asked that he should not heedlessly involve them in the affair,3 being placed face to face with Italy, in the forefront of Greece and fated to receive the first attacks of the Romans.
[5]
But if he himself could stand guard over Epirus with his armies and fleets, all the Epirotes would eagerly receive him in cities and harbours alike; if he could not, they [p. 171]begged that he should not make them, naked and4 unarmed, bear the brunt of the Roman war.
[6]
It was clear that the object of the embassy was that either, if, as they rather believed, he kept away from Epirus, they might not be committed to anything in the eyes of the Roman armies, though they had well established their position with the king, since they had been ready to receive him if he
[7??]
came, or, if he did come, that thus there would be the hope of pardon from the Romans because, not expecting from them aid which was so far away, they had yielded to the might of the king who was so close at hand.5
[8]
Since there was no sufficiently obvious reply to such an equivocal proposal, he said that he would send ambassadors to them to confer with them concerning the questions which pertained to them and himself alike.
1 Livy now resumes the narrative of events in the east, interrupted at the end of Book XXXV. The winter referred to is that of 192-191 B.C.
2 To judge by other casual references, such as Plutarch (Cato xii) and the hints in XXXV. 1, Greece was in a state of great unrest at this time, although Livy minimizes the trouble.
3 Polybius (XX. iii.) is more explicit, defining causa as the war itself.
4 B.C. 191
5 One can hardly blame the Epirotes for trying to guard themselves against any contingency. Apollonia, the usual port of debarkation of the Romans, lay just to the north, and Roman armies would soon be passing through their country (we know little of the whereabouts of the army brought over by Baebius). On the other hand, if the strength of Antiochus in any degree equalled the large forces promised by him, he would probably not hesitate to cut loose from his bases and try to locate the theatre of operations on the west coast.
Livy. Books XXXV-XXXVII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1935: published without copyright notice.
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