Kitap 34
32
You said that the enfranchisement of the slaves and the assignment of land to the needy were brought up as charges against you, and they are certainly serious ones, but what are they in comparison with the crimes committed by you and your adherents day by day? Produce an assembly where men are free to speak their minds, at either Argos or Lacedaemon, if you want to hear a true description of your unbridled tyranny. Not to mention earlier instances, what about the massacre which that son-in-law of yours, Pythagoras, perpetrated in Argos almost before my very eyes? What about the murders you yourself committed when I was close to your frontiers? Come now, order those prisoners to be produced whom you arrested in the Assembly after promising in the hearing of all present that they should be kept in custody. Let their unhappy relatives know that those whom they are mourning are still alive. But you say, 'Even if these things are so, what have they got to do with you Romans?' Would you use this language to the liberators of Greece? To those who, to effect this liberation have crossed the sea and carried on war by sea and land? 'At all events,' you say, 'I have not injured you directly or violated your friendship and alliance.' How many instances do you want me to allege of your having done this? I do not want to bring many forward, I will sum them up briefly. What acts, then, constitute a violation of friendship? These two, most of all-to treat my allies as enemies, and to make common cause with my enemies. Both of these things you have done. Though you were our ally you seized by force a city in alliance with us, namely Messene, which had been admitted to our friendship and enjoyed precisely the same privileges as Lacedaemon. And further, you not only concluded an alliance with Philip, our enemy, but you actually established a relationship with him through Philocles, one of his viceroys. In open hostility to us, you infested the sea round Malea with your piratical barques, and have seized and put to death almost more Roman citizens than Philip, so that our transports, which were supplying our armies, found coasting along the Macedonian shores safer than rounding the Cape of Malea. Forbear henceforth, if you please, to talk about your loyal observance of treaties; drop the language of a citizen and speak as a tyrant and an enemy."
