University of Virginia Library

34.58

The following was Quinctius' reply: "Since it pleases you to draw these distinctions and to enumerate the various ways in which friendly relations can be established, I too will lay down the two conditions apart from which, you may tell your king, no friendship with Rome can be established. One is this -if he does not wish us to concern ourselves with the cities of Asia, he must himself keep his hands off every part of Europe. The other is this -if instead of confining himself within the frontiers of Asia he crosses over into Europe, the Romans will be perfectly justified in protecting their friendship with those cities where it exists and in winning new ones." Hegesianax replied: "Surely it is an unworthy suggestion to say that Antiochus is excluded from the cities of Thrace and the Chersonese which his great-grandfather Seleucus won most gloriously after defeating Lysimachus, who fell in the battle, and some of which Antiochus himself recovered by force of arms from the Thracians who had taken possession of them, whilst others which had been deserted, like Lysimachia, he repeopled with tillers of the soil, and where they had been burnt or laid in ruin he rebuilt them at a vast expense. What resemblance could there be between the renunciation by Antiochus of his right to cities which had been acquired or recovered in this way and the non-interference of the Romans in Asia, which had never belonged to them? Antiochus was asking for the friendship of Rome, but it was such a friendship as would bring him honour, not shame." On this Quinctius observed: "As it is a question of honour -a question which ought to be the sole, or at all events the primary, one for the foremost nation in the world and for a monarch so great as yours, which course appears to you the more honourable, to desire the freedom of all the Greek cities wherever they are or to keep them tributary and in bondage? If Antiochus thinks that he is acting honourably in claiming the lordship of cities which his great-grandfather held by the right of war, a right which his father and grandfather never asserted, the Roman people also consider that their sense of honour and consistency forbid them to abandon their championship of the liberties of Greece. As they liberated Greece from Philip, so it is their intention to liberate the Greek cities in Asia from Antiochus. Colonies were not founded in Aeolis and Ionia to be in bondage to monarchs, but that their stock might multiply and a nation of ancient lineage be propagated throughout the world."