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35.
A full council being assembled, audience was given to the ambassador,
[2??]
who said, that, “though many embassies about peace had already been sent backwards and forwards, without producing any effect, yet he conceived strong hopes of obtaining it, because the former ambassadors had obtained nothing. For the objects of contention in those discussions were Smyrna and Lampsacus, Alexandria in the Troad, and Lysimachia in Europe.
[3]
Of these, the king had already ceded Lysimachia, that they might not say that he possessed any thing in Europe; and those cities which lay in Asia, he was now ready to deliver up as well as any others, which the Romans might wish to render independent of the king's government, because they belonged to their party. The king was also willing to pay to the Roman people half the expense of the war.”
[4]
These were the conditions of peace.
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The rest of his discourse was, “that, mindful of human affairs, they should use with moderation their own good fortune, and not press too severely on the misfortune of others; that they should limit their empire by Europe; that single acquisitions [p. 1692]could be made with more ease than that necessary for holding them collectively.
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But if they would wish to take away some part of Asia, provided
[7??]
that they would define it by indisputable limits, the king, for the sake of peace and harmony, would willingly suffer his own moderate temper to be overcome by the insatiableness of the Romans.” These concessions, which appeared to the ambassador of great moment towards obtaining a peace, the Romans deemed trifling.
[8]
They thought it just, that “the king should defray the whole expense occasioned by the war, because it was through his fault that it was begun.
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And that, not only Ionia and Aeolia ought to be evacuated by the king's troops, but as all Greece had been set free, so all the cities of that nation in Asia should also be free.
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That this could be effected in no other way, than by Antiochus relinquishing the possession of that part of Asia on the hither side of Mount Taurus.”
Livy. History of Rome by Titus Livius, books thirty-seven to the end, with the epitomes and fragments of the lost books. literally translated, with notes and illustrations, by. William A. McDevitte. York Street, Covent Garden, London. Henry G. Bohn. John Child and son, printers, Bungay. 1850. 4.
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