Book 31
29
The meeting of the Aetolian League which they call the Pan-Aetolium was to be held on a certain day. The king's envoys hastened their journey in order to be in time for it and Lucius Furius Purpurio was also present as representing the consul, as was also a deputation from Athens. The Macedonians were allowed to speak first, as the treaty with them was the latest that had been made. They said that as no new circumstances had arisen they had nothing new to urge in support of the existing treaty. The Aetolians, having learnt by experience how little they had to gain by alliance with the Romans, had made peace with Philip, and they were bound to keep it now that it was made. "Would you prefer," asked one of the envoys, "to copy the unscrupulousness-or shall I call it the levity? —of the Romans? When your ambassadors were in Rome, the reply they received was 'Why do you come to us, Aetolians, after you have made peace with Philip without our consent?' And now the very same men insist upon your joining them in war against Philip. Formerly they pretended that they had taken up arms against him on your account and for your protection, now they forbid you to be at peace with Philip. In the first Punic war they went to Sicily, ostensibly to help Messana; in the second, to deliver Syracuse from Carthaginian tyranny and restore her freedom. Now Messana and Syracuse and in fact the whole of Sicily are tributary to them: they have reduced the island to a province in which they exercise absolute power of life and death. You imagine, I suppose, that the Sicilians enjoy the same rights as you, and that as you hold your council at Naupactus under your own laws, presided over by magistrates of your own choice, and with full power of forming alliances or declaring war as you please, so it is with the councils which meet in the cities of Sicily, in Syracuse or Messana or Lilybaeum. No: a Roman governor manages their meetings; it is at his summons that they have to assemble; they see him issuing his edicts from his lofty tribunal like a despot, and surrounded by his lictors; their backs are threatened with the rod, their necks with the axe, and every year they have a different master allotted them. Nor ought they, nor can they wonder at this when they see the cities of Italy, such as Regium, Tarentum and Capua, lying prostrate beneath the same tyranny, to say nothing of those close to Rome out of whose ruin she has grown to greatness.
