Kitap 42
41
"These charges have been brought against me as though I were a defendant in a criminal trial, but those others touch my conduct as king, and depend upon the interpretation of the treaty which is in force between us. If that treaty expressly says that not even if anyone levies war against me am I allowed to defend myself and my realm, then I must admit that I have violated the treaty by defending myself in arms against Abrupolis, an ally of Rome. If, however, it is allowed by treaty and established as a rule of international law that arms may be repelled by arms, what ought I to have done after Abrupolis had devastated the frontiers of my kingdom right up to Amphipolis, and carried off many freeborn persons, a large body of slaves, and many thousand head of cattle? Was I to keep quiet and let him go on till he had carried his arms into Pella and taken possession of my palace? Yes, but granting that I was justified in opposing him by force, it is said that he ought not to have been vanquished or suffer all the evils which befall the vanquished. Since it was I who was attacked and ran the risk of all these evils, how can he complain of their happening to him who was the cause of the war? I am not going to defend my coercion of the Dolopians on the same grounds, Romans, because whatever they may have deserved, I exercised my sovereign rights; they were my subjects, a part of my dominions, assigned by your own decree to my father. Seeing that they put to death Euphranor, whom I had appointed governor, with such cruelty that death was the lightest of his sufferings, I cannot possibly be thought to have exercised undue or unjust severity-I do not say by you and your federal allies, but-by those who disapprove of cruelty and injustice even towards slaves.
