The Histories

​After this, the Senate, having summoned the Rhodians, heard them.

​Astymedes, having entered, stood in a moderate manner, and behaved better than during the embassy before this one;

​for, refraining from accusing others, he turned to begging off, like those who are being whipped [begging to avoid] the blows, claiming that his country had fallen into sufficient penalties, and even greater than its error. And adding to this, he explained their losses, ​traversing the points summarily: first, that they had lost Lycia and Caria, on which from the beginning they had spent a considerable amount of money, having been forced to wage three wars against them, and now they were deprived of many revenues which they used to receive from the aforementioned places.

”But perhaps,” he said, “these things are reasonable; for you yourselves gave them to our people as a favor because of our goodwill, and when some suspicion and disagreement arose between you, you seemed to act reasonably in taking them away.

​But as for Caunus, surely we bought it for two hundred talents from Ptolemy’s generals, and we received Stratonicea as a great favor from Antiochus, the son of Seleucus;

​and from both of these cities a revenue of one hundred and twenty talents used to accrue to our people every year. Of all these revenues we have been deprived, ​because we wished to obey your commands.

​By which you have imposed a greater penalty upon the Rhodians for their ignorance than upon the Macedonians who had been your enemies throughout. And this is the greatest disaster for our city;

​for the revenue of our harbor has been ruined, because you made Delos a free port, and deprived our people of that freedom of speech by which both the affairs of the harbor and all other affairs of the city obtained their fitting protection.

​And that this is true is not difficult to understand;

​for while the harbor dues in former times brought in one million drachmae, now you have reduced it to fifteen myriads, so that your anger, O Romans, has indeed too heavily touched the main resources of our city.

​If, then, it had happened that the error and estrangement of our people had been universal, perhaps you might with good reason be thought to keep your anger persistent and hard to appease;

​but if you know clearly that those responsible for such folly were entirely few, and that all of them have been put to death by the people themselves, why do you remain irreconcilable toward those who are in no way responsible, ​and that too when you are thought to be the mildest and most magnanimous toward all others?

​Therefore, O men, having lost its revenues, its freedom of speech, and its equality of voice, for the sake of which our people have continuously undertaken every danger in former times, ​now, having received sufficient blows, they request and entreat all of you, that having ceased your anger, you be reconciled and conclude an alliance, so that this may become manifest to all, that you have laid aside your anger toward the Rhodians, and have returned to your original policy and friendship. For of this our people now have need, ​not an alliance of arms and soldiers.” Astymedes, having spoken these and similar words, was thought to have made a speech suited to the occasion.

​But those who had just arrived with Tiberius co-operated most of all with the Rhodians toward obtaining the alliance.

​For these, having testified first that the Rhodians had obeyed all the decrees of the Senate, and secondly that all those responsible for the estrangement had been condemned to death by them, defeated those who opposed them, and concluded the alliance with the Romans.