That deputy, after receiving this answer, returned in triumph, without reflecting that he was the cause of all the calamities which Greece, and particularly Achaia, were upon the point of experiencing. For hitherto a sort of equality had been observed between the Achæans and Romans, which the latter thought fit to permit, out of gratitude for the considerable services the Achæans had done them, and for the inviolable fidelity with which they had adhered to them, in the most perilous junctures, as in the wars against Philip and Antiochus. The members of this league distinguished themselves at that time in a most conspicuous manner by their authority, their forces, their zeal for liberty, and, above all, by the shining merit and exalted reputation of their commanders. But the treason of Callicrates, for we may justly bestow that name upon it, gave it a deadly wound. The Romans, says Polybius, noble in their sentiments, and full of humanity, are moved at the complaints of the wretched, and think it their duty to afford their aid to all who fly to them for protection; and this it was that inclined them to favour the cause of the Lacedæmonian exiles. But if any one, on whose fidelity they may safely depend, suggests to them the inconveniences they would bring upon themselves, should they grant certain favours, they generally return to a just way of thinking, and correct, so far as lies in their power, what they may have done amiss. Here, on the contrary, Callicrates studies nothing but how he might best work upon their passions by flattery. He had been sent to Rome to plead the cause of the Achæans, and, by a criminal and unparalleled prevarication, he declared against his superiors, and became the advocate of their enemies, by whom he had suffered himself to be corrupted. At his return to Achaia, he spread so artfully the terror of the Roman name, and intimidated the people to such a degree, that he got himself elected captain-general. He was no sooner invested with this command, than he restored the exiles of Lacedæmonia and Messene to their country.

Polybius, on this occasion, praises exceedingly the humanity of the Romans, the tenderness with which they listened to the complaints of the unfortunate, and their readiness to atone for such unjust actions as they may have committed, when they are once made acquainted with them. I know not whether the applauses he gives them will not admit of great abridgment. The reader must call to mind that he wrote this in Rome, and under the eye of the Romans, after Greece had been reduced to a state of slavery. We are not to expect from a historian, who is subject and dependent, so much veracity as he very possibly would have observed in a free state, and at a time when men were permitted to speak the truth; and we must not blindly believe every circumstance of this kind advanced by him; facts have more force, and speak in a clearer manner than he does. The Romans themselves did not scruple to commit injustice, whenever they had an opportunity of employing a foreign means for that purpose, which procured them the same advantage, and served to conceal their unjust policy.

Eumenes, in the mean time, was engaged in war against Pharnaces, king of Pontus. The latter took Sinope, a very strong city of Pontus, of which his successors remained possessors ever afterwards. Several cities made complaints against this at Rome. Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, who was united in interest with Eumenes, sent also ambassadors thither. The Romans several times employed their mediation and authority, to put an end to their differences; but Pharnaces was insincere on these occasions, and always broke his engagements. Contrary to the faith of treaties, he took the field, and was opposed by the confederate kings. Several enterprises ensued; and after some years had been spent in this manner, a peace was concluded.*

Never were more embassies sent than at the time we are now speaking of.† Ambassadors were seen in all places, either coming from the provinces to * A. M. 3822. Ant. J. C. 182. Polyb. in Legat, c. 51–59. †A. M. 3824. Ant. J. C. 180.

Rome, or going from Rome to the provinces; or from the allies and nations to one another. The Achæans deputed, in this quality, to Ptolemy Epiphanes, king of Egypt, Lycortas, Polybius his son, and the young Aratus, to return that monarch thanks for the presents he had already bestowed on their republic, and the new offers he had made them. These ambassadors, however, did not leave Achaia, because, when they were preparing to set out, advice came that Ptolemy was dead.*

This prince, after having overcome the rebels within his kingdom, as has already been mentioned, resolved to attack Seleucus, king of Syria. When he began to form the plan for carrying on this war, one of his principal officers asked, by what methods he would raise money for the execution of it. He replied, that his friends were his treasure. The principal courtiers concluded from this answer, that as he considered their purses as the only fund he had to carry on this war, they were upon the point of being ruined by it. To prevent, therefore, that consequence, which had more weight with them than the allegiance they owed their sovereign, they caused him to be poisoned. This monarch was thus despatched, in his twenty-ninth year, after he had sat twenty-four years on the throne. Ptolemy Philometer, his son, who was but six years of age, succeeded him, and Cleopatra his mother was declared regent.†

CHAPTER II.

THIS second chapter includes the space of twenty years, from the year of the world 3821 till 3840. In this interval are contained the first twenty years of Ptolemy Philometer's reign over Egypt, which amounted in the whole to thirty-four years; the five last years of Philip, who reigned forty years in Macedonia, and was succeeded by Perseus, who reigned eleven; the eight or nine last years of Seleucus Philopator in Syria, and the eleven years of Antiochus Epiphanes, his successor, who exercised the most horrid cruelties against the Jews. I shall reserve the eleven years of the reign of Perseus over Macedonia for the following book, though they coincide with part of the history related in this chapter.

SECTION 1.-PERSEUS CONSPIRES AGAINST DEMETRIUS. THE LATTER IS INNOCENTLY PUT TO DEATH; AND PERSEUS SUCCEEDS TO THE THRONE.

FROM the spreading of a report among the states contiguous to Macedonia, that such as went to Rome to complain against Philip, were heard there, and many of them very favourably; a great number of cities, and even private persons, made their complaints in that city against a prince who was a very troublesome neighbour to them all, with the hopes either of having their injuries redressed, which they pretended to have received, or, at least, to console themselves in some measure for them, by being allowed the liberty to deplore them. Eumenes, among the rest, to whom, by order of the Roman commissioners and senate, the fortresses in Thrace were to be given up, sent ambassadors, at whose head was Athenæus his brother, to inform the senate, that Philip did not evacuate the garrisons in Thrace as he had promised, and to complain of his sending succours into Bithynia to Prusias, who was then at war with Eumenes.‡

Demetrius, the son of Philip, king of Macedon, was at that time in Rome, whither, as has been already mentioned, he had been sent by his father, in order to superintend his affairs in that city. It was properly his business to answer the several accusations brought against his father; but the senate, imagining that this would be a difficult task for so young a prince, who was not

*Polyb. in Legat. e. 57.

† A. M. 3824. Ant. J. C. 180. Hieron in Daniel. A. M. 3821. Ant. J. C. 183. Liv. 1. xxxix. n. 46, 47.

accustomed to speak in public, to spare him that trouble, sent certain persons to him to inquire, whether the king his father had not given him some memorials, and contented themselves with his reading them. Philip therein justified himself to the best of his power, with respect to most of the articles which were exhibited against him; but he especially showed great disgust at the decrees which the Roman commissioners had enacted against him, and at the treatment he had met with from them. The senate saw plainly what all this tended to; and, as the young prince endeavoured to apologise for certain particulars, and assured them, that every thing should be done agreeably to the will of the Romans, the senate replied, that his father Philip could not have done more wisely, or what was more agreeable to them, than in sending his son Demetrius to make his excuses: that, as to past transactions, the senate might dissemble, forget, and bear with a great many things: that, as to the future, they relied on the promise which Demetrius gave: that, although he was going to leave Rome, in order to return to Macedon, he left there, as the hostage of his inclinations, his own good heart and attachment for Rome, which he might retain inviolably, without infringing, in any manner, the duty he owed his father: that, out of regard to him, ambassadors should be sent to Macedon, to rectify, peaceably and without noise, whatever might have been hitherto amiss: and that, as to the rest, the senate was well pleased to let Philip know, that he was obliged to his son Demetrius for the tenderness with which the Romans behaved toward him. Those marks of distinction which the senate gave him, with the view of exalting his credit in his father's court, only excited envy against him, and at length occasioned his destruction.

The return of Demetrius to Macedon, and the arrival of the ambassadors, produced different effects, according to the various dispositions of men's minds. The people, who extremely feared the consequences of a rupture with the Romans, and a war that was preparing, were highly pleased with Demetrius, from the hopes that he would be the mediator and author of a peace; not to mention that they considered him as the successor to the throne of Macedon, after the demise of his father. For though he was the younger son, he had one great advantage of his brother, and that was, his being born of a mother who was Philip's lawful wife; whereas Perseus was the son of a concubine, and even reputed suppositious. Besides, it was not doubted that the Romans would place Demetrius on the throne of his father, Perseus not having any influence with them. And these were the common reports.*

On the one side also, Perseus was very uneasy, as he feared that the advantage of being elder brother would be but a very feeble title against a brother, superior to him in all other respects; and, on the other, Philip, imagining that it would not be in his power to dispose of the crown as he pleased, beheld with a jealous eye, and dreaded the too great authority of his younger son. It was also a great mortification to him, to see rising, in his lifetime, and be fore his eyes, a kind of second court in the concourse of Macedonians who crowded about Demetrius. The young prince himself did not take sufficient care to prevent or sooth the growing disaffection to his person. Instead of endeavouring to suppress envy, by gentleness, by modesty, and complacency, he only inflamed it, by a certain air of haughtiness which he had brought with him from Rome, valuing himself upon the marks of distinction with which he had been honoured in that city; and not scrupling to declare, that the senate had granted him many things they had refused his father.

Philip's discontent was much more inflamed at the arrival of the new ambassadors, to whom his son made his court more assiduously than himself; and when he found he should be obliged to abandon Thrace, to withdraw his garrisons from that country, and to execute other things, either pursuant to the decrees of the first commissioners, or to the fresh orders he had re

* Liv. l. xxxix. n. 53.

ceived from Rome: all these orders and decrees he complied with very much against his will, and with the highest secret resentment; but which he was forced to obey, to prevent his being involved in a war, for which he was not sufficiently prepared. To remove all suspicion of his harbouring the least design that way, he carried his arms into the very heart of Thrace, against people with whom the Romans did not concern themselves in any manner.

His schemes, however, were not unknown at Rome. Marcius, one of the commissioners, who had communicated the orders of the senate to Philip, wrote to Rome to inform them, that all the king's discourses, and the several steps, he took, visibly threatened an approaching war. To make himself the more secure of the maritime cities, he forced all the inhabitants, with their families, to leave them; settled them in mathia, formerly called Poenia, the most northern part of Macedon, and substituted in their place, Thracians and other barbarous nations, who he believed would be more faithful to him. These changes occasioned a general murmur in every part of Macedon; and all the provinces echoed with the cries and complaints of those unhappy beings, who were forced away out of their houses and the places where they were born, to be confined in unknown countries. Nothing was heard on all sides but imprecations and curses against the king, who was the author of these innovations.* But Philip, far from being moved at their grief, grew more cruel from it. All things were suspected by him, and gave him umbrage. He had put to death a great number of persons, upon suspicion that they favoured the Romans. He thought his own life could not be safe, but in securing their children; and he imprisoned them under a good guard, in order to have them all destroyed one after another. Nothing could be more horrid in itself than such a design; but the sad catastrophe of one of the most powerful and most illustrious families in Thessaly, made it still more execrable.†

He had put to death, many years before, Herodicus, one of the principal persons of the country, and some time after, his two sons-in-law. Theoxena and Archo, his two daughters, had lived widows, each of them having a son, both very young. Theoxena, who was sought for in marriage by the richest and most powerful noblemen in Thessaly, preferred widowhood to the nuptial state; but Archo married a nobleman of Enia, called Poris, and brought him several children, whom Archo, dying early, left infants. Theoxena, that she might have an opportunity of bringing up her sister's children under her eye, married Poris; took the same care of them as she did of her own son; and was as tender of them as if she had been their mother. When news was brought her of Philip's cruel edict, to murder the children of those who had been put to death, plainly foreseeing that they would be given up to the brutal fury of the king and his officers, she formed a surprising resolution, declaring that she would imbrue her hands in the blood of all her children, rather than suffer them to fall into the merciless power of Philip. Poris, whose soul was struck with horror at this design, told her, in order to divert her from it, that he would send all their children to Athens, to some friends on whose fidelity and humanity he could safely rely, and that he himself would convey them thither. Accordingly, they all set out for Thessalonica, in order to sail to the city of Enia to assist at a solemn festival, which was solemnized annually in honour of Æneas their founder. Having spent the whole day in festivity and rejoicing, about midnight, when every body else was asleep, they embarked on board a galley which Poris had prepared for them, as if intending to return to Thessalonica, but, in reality, to go for Euboea, when unhappily a contrary wind prevented them from advancing, in spite of their utmost efforts, and drove them back toward the coast. At daybreak, the king's officers, who were posted to guard the port, having perceived them, immediately sent off an armed sloop; commanding the captain of it, upon the severest penal

Liv. 1. xl. n. 3-5.

†A. M. 3822. Ant. J. C. 182.

ties, not to return without the galley. As it drew nearer, Poris was seen every moment, either exhorting the ship's company, in the strongest terms, to exert themselves to the utmost in order to get forward; or lifting up his hands to heaven, and imploring the assistance of the gods. In the mean time Theoxena, resuming her former resolution, and presenting to her children the deadly dose she had prepared, and the daggers she had brought with her: "Death," said she, "only can free you from your miseries; and here is what will procure you that last, sad refuge. Secure yourselves from the king's horrid cruelty by the method you like best. Go, my dear children, such of you as are more advanced in years, and take these poniards; or, in case a slower kind of death may be more grateful, take this poison." The enemy were now almost in reach, and the mother was very urgent with them. They obeyed her fatal commands; and all, having either swallowed the deadly draughts, or plunged the daggers in their bosoms, were thrown into the sea. Theoxena, after giving her husband a last sad embrace, leapt into the sea with him. Philip's officers then seized the galley, but did not find one person alive in it.

The horror of this tragical event revived, and inflamed to a prodigious degree, the hatred against Philip. He was publicly detested as a bloody tyrant; and people vented in all places, both against him and his children, dreadful imprecations, which, says Livy, soon had their effect; the gods having abandoned him to a blind fury, which prompted him to wreak his vengeance against his own children.

Perseus saw, with infinite pain and affliction, that the regard of the Macedonians for his brother Demetrius, and his influence and authority among the Romans, increased daily. Having now no hopes left of being able to ascend the throne but by criminal methods, he made them his only refuge. He began, by sounding the disposition of those who were in greatest favour with the king, and by addressing them in obscure and ambiguous words. At first some seemed not to enter into his views, and rejected his proposals, from believing that there was more to be hoped from Demetrius. But afterwards, observing that the hatred of Philip for the Romans increased sensibly, which Perseus endeavoured daily to inflame, and which Demetrius, on the contrary, opposed to the utmost, they changed their opinion. Judging naturally that the latter, whose youth and inexperience made him not sufficiently upon his guard against the artifices of his brother, would at last fall a victim to them; they thought it their interest to promote an event which would happen without their participation, and to go over immediately to the strongest party. They accordingly did so, and devoted themselves entirely to Perseus.*

Having postponed the execution of their more remote designs, they were of opinion, that for the present it would be proper for them to employ their utmost efforts to exasperate the king against the Romans, and to inspire him with thoughts of war, to which he was already very much inclined. At the same time, to render Demetrius every day more suspected, they industriously, on all occasions, made the discourse turn in the king's presence upon the Romans; some expressing the utmost contempt for their laws and customs, others for their exploits; some for the city of Rome, which, according to them, was void of ornaments and magnificent buildings; and others, even for such of the Romans as were in highest estimation; making them all pass in this manner in a kind of review. Demetrius, who did not perceive the scope and tendency of all those discourses, never failed, out of zeal for the Romans, and by way of contradiction to his brother, to take fire on these occasions. Hence Demetrius, without considering the consequences, grew suspected and odious to the king, and opened the way for the accusations and calumnies preparing against him. Accordingly, his father did not communicate to him any of the designs he continually meditated against Rome, and unbosomed himself only to Perseus.

Liv. l. xl. n. 5-16.