History of Rome

​While the war was being waged in Macedonia, Transalpine envoys from a petty king of the Gauls—Balanus is handed down as his own name; the tribe from which he came is not handed down—came to Rome promising auxiliaries for the Macedonian war.

​Thanks were returned by the senate, and gifts were sent: a golden collar of two pounds in weight, and golden bowls of four pounds in weight, a horse with trappings, and equestrian armor.

​Following the Gauls, Pamphylian envoys brought into the senate-house a golden crown made from twenty thousand Philippics; and when they requested that they might be permitted to place that gift in the shrine of Jupiter Optimus Maximus and to offer sacrifice on the Capitol, permission was granted.

​And a gracious answer was returned to the envoys who wished to renew friendship, and a gift of two thousand asses of bronze was sent to each.

​Then envoys from King Prusias, and shortly after from the Rhodians, were heard, arguing far differently about the same matter.

​Both embassies pleaded for the restoration of peace with King Perseus. The words of Prusias were prayers rather than a demand, as he declared both that up to that time he had stood with the Romans and that, as long as the war should last, he would continue to stand.

​But when envoys had come to him from Perseus concerning the ending of the war with the Romans, he had promised them that he would be an intercessor before the senate; he requested that, if they could bring their minds to end their anger, they should also place him in the favor of the restored peace.

​Thus spoke the king’s envoys. The Rhodians, after arrogantly recounting their services toward the Roman people and claiming for themselves the greater part of the victory, especially over King Antiochus, added:

​That when there was peace between the Macedonians and the Romans, their friendship with King Perseus had begun; and that they had interrupted it against their will, although he had done nothing to deserve it from them, because it had seemed fit to the Romans to draw them into an alliance of the war.

​That they were now in the third year of feeling many inconveniences of that war, the sea being closed; and that their island was destitute and could not be inhabited unless it were aided by maritime supplies.

​And so, since they could no longer endure this, they had sent other envoys to Perseus in Macedonia to announce to him that it was the pleasure of the Rhodians that he should make peace with the Romans;

​And that they themselves had been sent to Rome to announce the same things. That they would consider, on the part of the Rhodians, what they ought to do against those through whom it should have been due that an end to the war was not made.

​I hold it certain that even now these things cannot be read or heard without indignation; from this it can be estimated what the state of mind of the senators must have been as they listened to them.