History of Rome

​On the following day, as soon as he had the opportunity of meeting his father, Perseus entered the palace and, with a troubled countenance, stood in his father’s presence at a distance in silence.

​When his father asked him, “Is all well?” and what was the meaning of that sadness, he replied: “Know that I live thanks to you as a matter of clear profit. We are no longer targeted by my brother with hidden plots; by night he came to my house with armed men to murder me, and by barring the gates, I protected myself from his madness through the defense of the walls.”

​When he had struck his father with fear mixed with astonishment, he added, “And yet, if you can lend your ears, I will make you master of a clear and manifest fact.”

​Thereupon Philip said indeed that he would hear him, and ordered Demetrius to be summoned immediately; he also sent for two elderly friends, who had no part in the youthful rivalries between the brothers and were now rare visitors to the palace, Lysimachus and Onomastus, to have them in his council.

​While the friends were coming, he walked up and down alone, with his son standing at a distance, revolving many thoughts in his mind.

​After it was announced that they had arrived, he retired into the inner part of the palace with the two friends and the same number of bodyguards; he permitted his sons, to bring in three unarmed attendants each with them.

​When he had taken his seat there, he said, “I sit here as a most wretched father, a judge between two sons, about to find among my own children either an accuser of parricide or a defendant of a crime either fabricated or committed, in either case a stain on my family.

​Indeed, I have long feared this impending storm, when I saw faces between you that were far from brotherly, and when I overheard certain voices.

​But sometimes a hope entered my mind that your anger could burn out and your suspicions be cleared away; that even enemies, laying down their arms, have struck treaties, and the private feuds of many have ended; and that the memory of your brotherhood would some day come upon you, ​of your former boyish simplicity and intimacy, and finally of my precepts, which I fear I have sung in vain to deaf ears.

​How often, while you were listening, have I detested the examples of brotherly discord and related the horrible ends of those who had utterly destroyed themselves, their offspring, their houses, and their kingdoms!

​I have also placed better examples on the other side: the cooperative partnership between the two kings of the Lacedaemonians, which was beneficial to themselves and their country for many centuries;

​and that same state, after the custom of each seizing the tyranny for himself arose, was overthrown.

​Furthermore, I told you how these brothers, Eumenes and Attalus, from such humble beginnings that they were almost ashamed of the royal name, had made their kingdom equal to mine, to that of Antiochus, or to that of any king of this age, by no other means more than by brotherly unanimity. I did not even abstain from Roman examples, ​which I had either seen or heard of, such as Titus and Lucius Quinctius, who waged war with me, Publius and Lucius Scipio, who conquered Antiochus, and their father and uncle, whose lifelong harmony death also mingled.

​Yet neither the crime of those others and the end similar to their crime could deter you from your mad discord, nor the sound mind and good fortune of these latter bend you to sanity.

​While I am alive and breathing, both of you, by hope and wicked desire, have already declared your acceptance of my inheritance.

​You wish me to live only so long until, surviving one of you, I make the other the undisputed king by my death. You can tolerate neither brother nor father; nothing is dear, nothing is sacred. In place of all things, an insatiable love for one kingdom has succeeded.

​Come then, defile your father’s ears with crimes, decide your quarrel with accusations, you who are soon to decide it with the sword; speak openly whatever truth you can or whatever you please to invent.

​My ears are opened, which henceforth will be closed to the secret accusations of one against the other.” When he had spoken these words in raging anger, tears started to everyone’s eyes, and a sad silence held for a long time.