33.44
Such
was the distribution of the provinces. Before the consuls left the City they
were required, in accordance with a decree of the pontiffs, to proclaim a
Sacred Spring. This was in fulfilment of a vow made by the praetor A.
Cornelius Mammula at the desire of the senate and by order of the people
twenty-one years previously in the consulship of Cn. Servilius and C.
Flaminius. C. Claudius Pulcher, the son of Appius, was at the same time
appointed augur in place of Q. Fabius Maximus, who had died the year
before. Whilst general surprise was felt that nothing was being done about
the war which had broken out in Spain, a despatch arrived from Q. Minucius
announcing that he had successfully engaged the Spanish generals Budar and
Baesadines, and that the enemy had lost 12,000 men, Budar being made
prisoner and the rest routed and put to flight. When the despatch was read
less apprehension was felt about the two Spains, where a very serious war
had been anticipated. The general anxiety now centered on Antiochus,
especially after the return of the ten commissioners. After giving their report
on the negotiations with Philip and the terms on which peace had been made
with him, they made it evident that a war on at least as great a scale with
Antiochus was imminent. He had, so they informed the senate, landed in
Europe with an enormous fleet and a splendid army, and if his attention had
not been diverted by a groundless hope based upon a still more groundless
rumour, to the invasion of Egypt, Greece would very soon have been in the
blaze of war. Even the Aetolians, a nation naturally restless and now
intensely embittered against the Romans, would no longer remain quiet. And
there was another most formidable mischief with its roots in the very vitals
of Greece -Nabis, who was for the time being tyrant of Lacedaemon, but
who if he were allowed would soon become tyrant of the whole of Greece, a
man who in greed and brutality rivalled the most notorious tyrants in history.
If, after the Roman armies had been carried back to Italy, he were allowed to
hold Argos as a stronghold threatening the whole of the Peloponnese, the
deliverance of Greece from Philip would have been effected in vain; in any
case instead of a distant monarch as their lord they would have a tyrant at
their doors.
