Kitap 39
37
"I am quite aware, Appius Claudius, that the language I have so far used is not the language that allies should hold towards allies, nor does it befit a nation of freemen; it is really appropriate to the bickerings of slaves before their masters. If there is any meaning in the words of the herald in which you ordered that the Achaeans should be the first of all the Greeks to be free; if our treaty is still in force; if the terms of amity and alliance are kept equally for both sides, why should I not ask what you Romans did when you took Capua, as you demand from us an account for what we Achaeans did to the Lacedaemonians, after we had conquered them in war? 'Some of them were killed.' Suppose they were killed by us, what then? Did not you, senators, behead the Campanians? We destroyed the walls; you deprived the Campanians not only of their walls but of their city and their fields. The treaty, you say, is on the face of it just to both sides. As a matter of fact, the Achaeans enjoy a precarious freedom; the supreme power rests with the Romans. I am sensible of this, and I do not, unless compelled, protest against it; but I do implore you, however great the difference between the Romans and the Achaeans, not to let our common enemies stand in as favourable position with you as we, who are your allies, still less in a more favourable one. For we put them on an equality with ourselves when we gave them our laws. What satisfies the victors is too little for the vanquished; enemies demand more than allies receive. The agreement which has been sworn to and inscribed in stone for a perpetual memorial as being sacred and inviolable, that agreement they are preparing to do away with, and make us forsworn. We have a profound respect for you, Romans, and if you wish it, we hold you in fear, but we have a more profound respect for and a greater fear of the immortal gods."
