History of Rome

​While these things were being done at Rome, Antiochus, at Chalcis, lest he should be inactive during the winter season, was partly himself soliciting the minds of the cities by sending envoys, and partly they came to him of their own accord, just as the Epirotes came by the common consent of their nation, and the Eleans from the Peloponnese.

​The Eleans were asking for aid against the Achaeans, whom they believed would first bring war upon their state after declaring war against Antiochus, which had not been declared in accordance with their own wish.

​One thousand infantry were sent to them with Euphanes, a Cretan commander. The embassy of the Epirotes was by no means of a free or straightforward mind; they wished to establish favor with the king, but on the condition that they should take care not to offend the Romans in any way.

​For they requested him not to drag them rashly into the cause, since they, exposed as they were opposite Italy on behalf of all Greece, would be the first to receive the initial attacks of the Romans;

​but if he himself could protect Epirus with land and sea forces, all the Epirotes would eagerly receive him both into their cities and their harbors; if he could not do this, they begged him not to expose them, naked and unarmed, to the Roman war.

​By this embassy it was clear that their aim was that, if—as they rather believed—he should abstain from Epirus, their position with the Roman armies might remain entirely unimpaired, while they had sufficiently secured the king’s favor ​on the ground that they would have received him if he had come; or, if he did come, there would still be hope of pardon from the Romans, because, not waiting for a distant aid from themselves, they had succumbed to the forces close at hand.

​Since it was not easy to decide what to reply to this so complicated embassy, he said that he would send envoys to them, who would speak concerning those matters which pertained to them and to himself in common.