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22. On the Nones of June the ambassadors returned from Africa1 who, after first interviewing King Masinissa, had gone to Carthage; but they [p. 257]had received much more accurate information as to2 what had been going on in Carthage from the king than from the Carthaginians themselves. [2] Nevertheless they reported it as an ascertained fact that ambassadors had come from King Perseus and had been given an audience by night before the senate, assembled in the temple of Aesculapius. The king, moreover, had asserted that envoys had been sent from Carthage to Macedonia, and the Carthaginians had denied this without very much firmness. [3] The senate decreed that ambassadors should also be sent to Macedonia. Three were dispatched, Gaius Laelius, Marcus Valerius Messalla, and Sextus Digitius.

[4] Perseus3 about this time, because certain of the Dolopians4 were insubordinate and wanted to refer the arbitration of the matters which were in dispute to the Romans instead of to the king, setting out with his army brought the whole district under his sovereignty and sway. [5] Thence, crossing over the Oetaean mountains, since certain religious difficulties beset his mind, he climbed up to Delphi to consult the oracle. When he had suddenly appeared in the midst of Greece, he not merely roused great terror in the neighbouring cities but even caused the dispatch of excited messages to King Eumenes in Asia.5 [6] Having tarried in Delphi not more than three days, he returned through Phthiotic Achaea [p. 259]and Thessaly to his kingdom without doing any6 damage or injury to those through whose lands he marched. [7] Nor was he content with winning the good will of only those states through which he was planning to march;7 he sent out either ambassadors or letters, asking that they should no longer remember the quarrels in which they had engaged with his father; for, he said, they had not been so serious that they could not and should not be ended with him; so far as he was concerned at least, everything was in order for a faithful establishment of friendly relations with them; [8] with the people of the Achaeans especially he was seeking for a way of restoring good feeling.

1 The sending of this embassy has not been mentioned, and it clearly had nothing to do with the boundary dispute of XL. xvii. The emendation which gives the exact date of the return of the embassy may well be wrong.

2 B.C. 174

3 Livy here turns to affairs in the east and follows Polybius as his source.

4 The Dolopians had been liberated in 196 B.C. (XXXIII. xxxiv. 6), reconquered by Philip with Roman consent in 191 B.C. (XXXVI. xxxiii. 7), while their status after the settlement of 185 B.C. (XXXIX. xxvi. 14) was somewhat uncertain. Perseus obviously claimed some sort of authority over them, and from XLII. xli. 14 it would seem that their “disobedience” amounted to actual revolt. In 185 B.C. Rome had ordered Philip to stay inside the ancient boundaries of Macedonia, and the conduct of Perseus now is in fact, if not literally, a defiance of Rome.

5 I take the liberty of translating misit thus rather than venture on further emendation, since the loss of text in V is small.

6 B.C. 174

7 The tense would indicate that these negotiations had preceded his visit to Delphi, but this conclusion seems to be contradicted by the account in sect. 5 of the effect actually produced on the Greeks. Perhaps something has been lost from the text to indicate that Perseus was planning to unite all Greece against the Romans.

Livy. Books XL-XLII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1938: published without copyright notice.

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  • Commentary references to this page (17):
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 35-38, commentary, 35.17
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 35-38, commentary, 36.39
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 39-40, commentary, 39.17
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 39-40, commentary, 40.31
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 41-42, commentary, 42.2
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 41-42, commentary, 42.23
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 41-42, commentary, 42.24
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 41-42, commentary, 42.38
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 41-42, commentary, 42.40
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 41-42, commentary, 42.40
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 41-42, commentary, 42.41
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 41-42, commentary, 42.42
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 41-42, commentary, 42.5
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 41-42, commentary, 42.5
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 43-44, commentary, 43.11
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, books 43-44, commentary, 43.5
    • Titus Livius (Livy), Ab urbe condita libri, erklärt von M. Weissenborn, book 45, commentary, 45.2
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