History of Rome

​To this the Roman general replied: “We have no friendship and alliance with you, but rather with Pelops, ​the just and lawful king of the Lacedaemonians, whose right the tyrants also, who afterwards held power at Lacedaemon by force, usurped, because now Punic wars, now Gallic, now others after others had occupied us, just as you also have done in this Macedonian war.

​For what could be less fitting than that we, who were waging war against Philip for the liberty of Greece, should establish friendship with a tyrant? And with a tyrant who was ever the most cruel and violent toward his own people?

​Indeed, for us, even if you had neither seized Argos by fraud nor were holding it, since we are liberating all Greece, Lacedaemon also had to be vindicated into its ancient liberty and into its own laws, of which you just now made mention as if you were a rival of Lycurgus.

​Or will it be a care to us that the garrisons of Philip be withdrawn from Iasus and Bargyliae, but shall we leave Argos and Lacedaemon, two most famous cities, once the lights of Greece, under your feet, so that by being in servitude they may disfigure our title of a liberated Greece?

​But indeed, you say, the Argives sided with Philip. We remit this to you, lest you should be angry on our account. We have it sufficiently ascertained that the fault in that matter belongs to two or at most three, and not to the state, ​just as indeed, in summoning you and your garrison and admitting you into the citadel, nothing was done by public counsel.

​We know that the Thessalians, Phocians, and Locrians by the consent of all belonged to Philip’s faction; yet we liberated them along with the rest of Greece; what, pray, do you think we will do in the case of the Argives, who are innocent of the public counsel?

​You said that charges of slaves called to liberty and of land divided among needy men were being objected to you, which are indeed not moderate themselves; but what are those things compared to those other deeds which are committed by you and yours daily, one after another?

​Hold a free assembly either at Argos or Lacedaemon, if it is pleasing to hear the true charges against a most impotent domination.

​To omit all other older matters, what slaughter did that Pythagoras of yours, your son-in-law, commit at Argos, almost before my eyes? What did you yourself commit, when I was already near the borders of the Lacedaemonians?

​Come now, those whom you arrested in the assembly and pronounced in the hearing of all your citizens that you would hold in custody, ​order them to be produced in chains; let their wretched parents, whom they falsely mourn, know that they are alive. But indeed, even though these things be so, what is that to you, Romans? Would you say this to the liberators of Greece? This to those who, so that they might liberate it, crossed the sea ​and waged war by land and sea? Yet you say, ‘I have not specifically violated you and your friendship and alliance.’ How many times do you wish me to prove that you have done so? But I do not wish to go on in more words;

​I will embrace the main point. By what things, then, is friendship violated? Surely by these two especially: if you hold my allies as enemies, and if you join yourself with enemies.

​Both have been done by you; for both Messene, accepted into our friendship under one and the exact same treaty right as Lacedaemon, you yourself, an ally, seized by force of arms, a city allied to us, and with Philip, ​our enemy, ​you covenanted not only an alliance but, if it please the gods, even an affinity through Philocles, his prefect, and how, waging war against us, you made the sea around Maleum infested with pirate ships, and captured and killed almost more Roman citizens than Philip did, ​and the coast of Macedonia was safer than the promontory of Malea for ships carrying provisions to our armies.

​Therefore, cease, if you please, to boast of the faith and rights of alliance, and, omitting popular speech, speak as a tyrant and an enemy.”