History of Rome

​To these terms the ambassadors, both because they were severe and because they knew the unsubdued and fickle temper of their people, returned no answer and went back home, in order to consult again and again with the praetor and the leading men while the matter was still open.

​Received with clamor and reproaches, and asked how long they would spin out the business, and being ordered to bring back peace on any terms whatsoever, as they were returning to Ambracia they were surrounded near the road by an ambush of the Acarnanians, with whom they were at war, and were conducted to Thyrreum to be kept under guard.

​This delay was thrown in the way of peace, when already the ambassadors of the Athenians and Rhodians, who had come to intercede for them, were with the consul.

​Amynander also, the king of the Athamanes, having received a pledge of safety, had come to the Roman camp, more concerned for the city of Ambracia, where he had spent the greater part of his exile, than for the Aetolians.

​Having been informed of the accident of the ambassadors through these men, the consul ordered them to be brought from Thyrreum; and after their arrival, the negotiation for peace began.

​Amynander, since this was his chief business, worked indefatigably to persuade the Ambraciots to surrender.

​When he made little progress toward this end by conferring with the leaders near the wall, at last, with the permission of the consul, he entered the city and, partly by advice and partly by entreaties, prevailed upon them to surrender themselves to the Romans.

​The Aetolians were also greatly assisted by Gaius Valerius, the son of Laevinus, who had first concluded a friendship with that nation, and who was the consul’s brother by the same mother.

​The Ambraciots, having first stipulated that the Aetolian auxiliaries should be allowed to depart without injury, opened their gates. Then the conditions of peace were dictated to the Aetolians: that they should pay five hundred Euboic talents, of which two hundred were to be paid down, and three hundred in six equal annual installments; that they should restore to the Romans the prisoners and deserters;

​that they should not include in their jurisdiction any city which, after the time when Titus Quinctius crossed into Greece, had either been taken by force of arms by the Romans or had voluntarily entered into friendship with them; and that the island of Cephallania should be excluded from the treaty.

​Although these terms were somewhat lighter than their own expectation , upon the request of the Aetolians to refer them to their council, permission was granted.

​A brief debate was held concerning the cities, which, having once been independent, they bore with difficulty being torn away, as it were, from their own body; nevertheless, they all to a man ordered the peace to be accepted.

​The Ambraciots presented the consul with a golden crown weighing one hundred and fifty pounds. The bronze and marble statues and the paintings, with which Ambracia was more richly adorned than the other cities of that region because the palace of Pyrrhus had been there, were all taken down and carried away;

​nothing else was touched or violated.