Book 35
16
Sulpicius replied: "If these are the only arguments that can be advanced in support of his case, Antiochus has shown a discreet modesty in letting them be brought forward by anybody rather than by himself. For what possible resemblance can there be between the circumstances of the two groups of cities which you have mentioned? From the day when Regium, Tarentum, and Neapolis passed into our hands we have demanded the fulfilment of their treaty obligations by an unbroken tenor of right which has always been asserted and never intermitted. Those communities have never, either of themselves or through anyone else, made any change in those obligations; would you venture to assert that the same holds good of the cities of Asia, and that after once becoming subject to the ancestors of Antiochus they have remained in the uninterrupted possession of your monarchy? Can you deny that some of them have been subject to Philip, others to Ptolemy, others again have for many years enjoyed an independence which no one has ever challenged? Granting that they at some time or other under the pressure of misfortune lost their freedom, does that give you the right after so many ages to claim them as your vassals? If so, we accomplished nothing when we delivered Greece from Philip; his successors can reassert their right to Corinth, Chalcis, and the whole of Thessaly. But why do I defend the cause of States which they themselves should more properly defend in the hearing of the king and themselves?"
