37.53
The
king was brought back into the senate house by the praetor and requested to
speak his mind. "I should," he began, "have persisted in my silence, senators,
had it not been that you will presently call in the delegates from Rhodes, and
after they had been heard it would have been necessary for me to speak. It
will be all the more difficult for me to say what I have to say, because their
demands will apparently not be in any way opposed to my interests or in any
way affect you. They will plead the cause of the city-states of Greece and
will say that they ought to be declared free. If they gain their point, who can
doubt that they will sever from us not only those cities which will be
declared free, but also those which from ancient times have been tributary to
us, and after placing them all under obligation for so great a kindness will
hold them nominally as allies but really as subjects, wholly under their
dominion? And while they grasp at this immense power they will pretend
that it does not in any way concern their interests, and that you are only
doing what is right and proper and consistent with your policy in the past.
Do not let these professions deceive you, you will have to be on your guard,
lest you not only lower the status of some of your allies and raise unduly that
of others, but also place those who have borne arms against you in a better
position than those who have been your allies and friends. As regards myself,
I would rather be thought by anyone to have yielded within the limits of my
rights, so far as other things are concerned, than to have shown excessive
obstinacy in maintaining them; but when it is a question of being worthy of
your friendship, of giving you every proof of affection and goodwill, of
upholding the honour which comes from you -in such a contest I cannot
resign myself to defeat. This is the most precious inheritance I have received
from my father. He was the first of all who dwell in Greece or Asia to be
admitted to your friendship, and he preserved it with unbroken and
unchanging loyalty to the end of his life. Nor was it only in heart that he was
a good and faithful friend. He took his part in all the wars that you have
waged in Greece, he assisted you by sea and land and provided you with
supplies of all kinds to an extent beyond anything which your other allies
have done. And at last, whilst he was seeking to persuade the Boeotians to
accept your alliance, he became unconscious in the middle of his speech, and
shortly afterwards expired. Treading as I have done in his footsteps, I could
not have shown in any way greater goodwill or a stronger desire to cherish
your favour than he did, for those indeed were unsurpassable. That I have
been able to go further than he did in actual achievement, in services
rendered, in the sacrifices which duty imposes, is due to the opportunities
afforded by the circumstances of the time, by Antiochus and your war in
Asia. Antiochus, when monarch of Asia and a part of Europe, offered to give
me his daughter in marriage and to restore at once the cities which had
revolted from us, and he also held out great hopes of enlarging my
dominions in the future if I would join him in fighting against you.
"I will not pride myself on never having been false to you; I would
rather dwell upon those things in which I showed myself worthy of the
friendship which has existed from very ancient times between you and my
dynasty. I assisted your commanders with my military and naval forces in a
way in which none of your allies can be compared with me; I supplied your
commissariat both by land and sea; I took part in every one of the sea fights
which occurred in so many different places; I never spared myself in toil or
danger; I experienced what brings the worst suffering in war -a siege, and
was shut up in Pergamum with my life and realm in imminent danger. After I
had been relieved, in spite of the fact that Antiochus on the one side and
Seleucus on the other were threatening the citadel and heart of my kingdom,
I left my own interests to protect themselves and went with the whole of my
fleet to the Hellespont to meet your consul, L. Scipio, and assist in
transporting his army. When once your army had landed in Asia I never left
the consul's side. No Roman soldier was more regularly in his place in the
camp than I and my brothers were; there was no expedition, no cavalry
action, in which I was not present; I took my place in the battle line and held
the post which the consul assigned to me.
"I shall not ask, senators, who, in respect of services rendered in
this war, can be compared with me; there is none out of all the peoples or
monarchs whom you hold in high honour with whom I would not dare to
compare myself. Masinissa was your enemy before he was your ally, nor was
he friendly to you while his crown was safe and he could have given you
military help, but when he was a homeless fugitive and all his forces were
lost he sought refuge in your camp with a solitary troop of cavalry. And yet,
because he stood by you loyally and effectively against Syphax and the
Carthaginians, you have not only restored to him his kingdom, but by adding
the richest part of the dominions of Syphax to it you have made him the
most powerful of African kings. What reward or honour then do we seem in
your eyes to deserve, we who have never been your enemies, but always
your friends? Not only in Asia have my father, my brothers and myself taken
up arms on your behalf, but far from home in the Peloponnesus, in Boeotia,
in Aetolia, in the wars with Philip and Antiochus and the Aetolians, on sea as
well as on land. Someone will say, 'What, then, do you ask for?' As you
insist, senators, upon my speaking freely, I must comply. If, then, your
intention in removing Antiochus beyond the Taurus range is that you may
hold those lands yourselves, I would rather have you than any others as my
neighbours, nor do I see how my kingdom could be more secure or less
liable to disturbance under any other arrangement. But if you purpose to
retire and withdraw your armies from those parts, I would venture to
suggest that there is none of your allies more worthy to occupy the
territories you have conquered than myself. But I may be told it is a splendid
thing to liberate cities from servitude. I think so too, if they have done
nothing hostile to you. But if they have taken part with Antiochus, how
much more worthy of your wisdom and justice is it to study the interest of
allies who have done you good, rather than the interest of your foes."
