39.27
Leaving the king intensely annoyed, the
commissioners proceeded to Thessalonica to consider the question of the
cities of Thrace. Here they met the envoys of Eumenes, who asserted that if
the Romans wished Aenus and Maronea to be free, their sense of honour
forbade them to say more, unless it was to warn them to leave those people
in the enjoyment of a real and not merely nominal liberty, and not to allow
their boon to be intercepted by some one else. But if they thought the
question of the Thracian cities comparatively unimportant, it would be much
more reasonable that those which had been under Antiochus should be held
as prizes of war by Eumenes rather than by Philip. This would be a return to
Eumenes for the services of his father Attalus during the war which the
Romans waged against this same Philip, and also for what he had himself
done in sharing all their toils and dangers on land and sea. Moreover,
Eumenes had the decision of the ten commissioners in his favour, for in
giving him the Chersonese and Lysimachia they certainly gave him Aenus
and Maronea as well, for these two places owing to their proximity formed
appendages as it were of the larger gift. "What service rendered to the
Roman people, or what sovereign right could justify Philip in forcing his
garrison on these cities, lying as they do so far from the frontiers of
Macedonia? Let the Maronites be called in, then the commissioners will learn
everything about the status of those cities." The Maronites were then called
in. They told the commissioners that the king's troops were not confined to
one part of the city, as in other places, but were dispersed everywhere; the
city was full of Macedonians. The king's adherents were complete masters;
they alone were allowed to speak in the senate and the public assembly; they
secured all the posts of honour for themselves and their friends. Every
respectable citizen who had any regard for liberty and law was either
expelled from his native place or, unhonoured, and at the mercy of the mob,
was compelled to remain silent. Briefly explaining what were their legal
boundaries, they stated that when Q. Fabius Labeo was in that district he
fixed the old "king's road," which goes up to Parorea in Thrace and nowhere
descends to the sea, as Philip's boundary line; Philip subsequently
constructed a new road by which he took in the cities and lands of the
Maronites.
