History of Rome

​He then ordered the embassies of the cities to be summoned, which had already been prepared and instructed beforehand by Eumenes, who reckoned that whatever strength should be lost to Antiochus would accrue to his own kingdom.

​More were admitted, and while each introduced now his complaints, now his demands, and mixed just things with unjust, they turned the discussion into an altercation. Thus, with nothing either remitted or obtained, the envoys returned to Rome as uncertain of all things as they had come.

​The king, having dismissed them, held a council concerning the Roman war. There, one spoke more fiercely than another, because the more harshly each spoke against the Romans, ​the greater was his hope of favor. One censured the insolence of their demands, as if they were imposing laws on Antiochus, the greatest of the kings of Asia, in the same way as on the defeated Nabis;

​although to Nabis, nevertheless, his sovereign power in his own country and native Lacedaemon had been left, ​while to Antiochus, if Smyrna and Lampsacus should do what was commanded, ​it seemed a humiliation. Others said that those cities were small causes of war for so great a king, and scarcely worth mentioning; but that the beginning of commanding unjust things always starts from small matters, unless they believed that the Persians, when they demanded water and earth from the Lacedaemonians, ​had been in need of a clod of earth and a draught of water. By a similar trial, the business concerning the two cities was being conducted by the Romans; but the other cities, as soon as they saw that the two had cast off the yoke, ​would revolt to the liberating people. Even if liberty were not preferable to slavery, nevertheless, the hope of changing one’s situation was more alluring to everyone than any present state.