Kitap 32
21
Because the Romans are asking for your friendship voluntarily, take care that you do not disdain what you ought to have desired and done your best to obtain. Do you imagine that they are entrapped in a strange land and driven by their fears into wishing to lurk under the shadow of your assistance and seek the refuge of an alliance with you in order that they may have the entry of your harbours and make use of your supplies? The sea is under their control, whatever shores they visit they at once bring under their dominion, what they deign to ask for they can obtain by force. It is because they wish to spare you that they do not allow you to take a step which would destroy you. As to the middle course which Cleomedon pointed out as the safest, namely, that you should keep quiet and abstain from hostilities, that is not a middle course, it is no course at all. We have either to accept or reject the proferred alliance with Rome; otherwise we shall win the gratitude of neither side, but like men who wait upon the event, leave our policy at the mercy of Fortune, and what is this but to become a prey of the conqueror? What you ought to have sought with the utmost solicitude is now spontaneously offered; beware lest you scorn the offer. Either alternative is open to you today, it will not be open always. The opportunity will not long remain, nor will it often recur. For a long time you have wished rather than ventured to free yourselves from Philip. The men who would win your liberty for you without any risk or effort on your part have crossed the seas with mighty fleets and armies. If you reject their alliance you are hardly in your right senses, but you will be compelled to have them as either friends or enemies."
