Description of Greece

​Following this, our narrative demands of us both Pallantium, if indeed there is anything there worthy of memory, and for what reason the elder Emperor Antoninus made Pallantium a city instead of a village, and granted them to be free and exempt from taxes.

​They say indeed that there was a man named Evander, best of the Arcadians both in wisdom and in matters of war, and that he was the son of a nymph, a daughter of Ladon, and of Hermes. Having been sent out to found a colony and leading an army of the Arcadians from Pallantium, he settled a city by the river Tiber; and a part of the city of our own day of the Romans, which was inhabited by Evander and the Arcadians who followed him, obtained the name Pallantium in memory of the city in Arcadia. But at a later time the name changed by the omission of the letters ‘l’ and ‘n’. Because of these things that have been told, gifts were bestowed upon the Pallantians by the Emperor.

​But Antoninus, who also showed benefactions to the Pallantians, brought no war upon the Romans of his own free will; but when the Mauri, the greatest part of the independent Libyans, who were nomads and even more difficult to fight than the Scythian race inasmuch as both they and their women roamed not on wagons but on horses, began a war, he drove them out of their entire country and forced them to flee to the uttermost parts of Libya, both to Mount Atlas and to the people living near Atlas.

​He also cut off much of the territory of the Brigantes in Britain, because they too began to make armed incursions into the Genunian district, which was subject to the Romans. And although a violent earthquake descending upon them overthrew the cities of the Lycians and Carians, and Cos and Rhodes, the Emperor Antoninus restored these too by his lavish expenditure and his zeal for their rebuilding. As for the sums of money he distributed both to the Greeks and to those of the barbarians who stood in need, and the structures he built in Greece, around Ionia, Carthage, and in the land of the Syrians, other writers have recorded these with the greatest accuracy.

​This Emperor also left behind another such deed for remembrance. For those of his subjects who had the status of Roman citizens, but whose children were enrolled as Greeks, it was left either to distribute their property to those not related to them or to increase the Emperor’s wealth according to a certain law; but Antoninus permitted even these to leave their inheritance to their children, preferring to appear humane rather than to maintain a law useful for revenue. The Romans called this Emperor Pius, because he was seen to be most devoted to the honor of the divine.

​In my opinion, he might also bear the name of Cyrus the Elder, being called the father of mankind. He also left behind a son of the same name for his empire; and this second Antoninus marched against both the Germans, the most warlike and numerous of the barbarians in Europe, and the nation of the Sauromatae, who had begun a war and committed injustices, in order to punish them.