33.
In the beginning of the following year,
1 when Quintus Caecilius, Marcus Baebius and Tiberius Sempronius, who had been sent to arbitrate between the kings, Philip and Eumenes, and the cities of the Thessalians, had reported on their mission, the consuls Publius Claudius and Lucius Porcius
[
2??]
also introduced into the senate the ambassadors of these
[p. 323]kings and of the cities.
[
3]
The same arguments were
2 repeated on both sides that had been used before the commissioners in Greece. Then the Fathers decreed another new commission, of which Appius Claudius was the chief, to go to Greece and Macedonia to see whether the cities had been restored to the Thessalians and Perrhaebians.
[
4]
They were also instructed that the garrisons were to be withdrawn from Aenus and Maronea and that the whole sea coast should be freed from Philip and the Macedonians.
[
5]
They were directed to visit the Peloponnesus also, from which the previous commission
3 had come away leaving the position of things more uncertain than if they had not gone: for in addition to everything else they had even been sent away without an answer, and the Achaean council had not been summoned as they
[
6]
requested. When Quintus Caecilius complained bitterly of this conduct and the Lacedaemonians at the same time lamented that their walls had been destroyed, their common people taken away to Achaia and enslaved, the laws of Lycurgus, on which their state had been based up to that time, annulled,
4 the principal reply of
[
7??]
the Achaeans to the charge that a council had been refused was to read the law which forbade the calling of the council except when it was a question of peace or war or when ambassadors arrived from the senate with letters or written
[
8]
instructions.
5 That this excuse might not be given again, the senate made it plain that it was their duty to see that Roman commissioners should always have the opportunity to address the council of the people,
[p. 325]just as to them too the senate was open as often as
6 they wished.
7