45.22
". . .
So far it is a question whether we have or have not been guilty of any
offence; all the penalty, the humiliation we are suffering from already. In the
past, when we visited Rome after the Carthaginians were defeated, after
Philip and Antiochus had been overcome, we went from our quarters where
we were the guests of the State to offer our congratulations in the senate
house, and from there we went up to the Capitol with gifts for your gods.
Now we have come away from a miserable inn where we could hardly get
admittance, ordered as we are to remain outside the City almost as though
we were enemies. In this squalid plight we have come into the Roman
senate-house -we Rhodians to whom not long ago you granted the
provinces of Lycia and Caria, and upon whom you have bestowed the
greatest distinctions and rewards. According to what we hear, you are
ordaining that the Macedonians and Illyrians shall be free peoples, though
before they went to war with you they were in servitude -not that we envy
any one's good fortunes, on the contrary we recognise the clemency of Rome
-but the Rhodians simply remained quiet, and are you going to convert
friends into enemies by this proposed war? Surely you are the same Romans
who make it your boast that your wars are successful because they are just,
and pride yourselves not so much upon bringing them to a close as victors as
upon never beginning them without just cause. The attack on Messana in
Sicily made the Carthaginians your enemy; his attack on Athens, his attempt
to enslave Greece, the assistance rendered to Hannibal in money and troops
made Philip your enemy. Antiochus, on the invitation of the Aetolians, who
were your enemies, sailed in person with his fleet from Asia to Greece,
seized Demetrias, Chalcis and the Pass of Thermopylae and tried to
dispossess you of your empire. Your grounds for the war with Perseus were
the attacks on your allies, or the murder of the princes and leading men in
different communities and nationalities. What pretext or justification will
there be for our ruin, if we are to perish? So far I do not make any difference
between the case of our city as a whole and that of our fellow-citizens
Polyaratus and Dino and the others whom we have brought with us to
deliver up to you. Suppose all we Rhodians were equally guilty, what charge
would be brought against us with regard to this war? You say we took the
side of Perseus, and just as in the wars against Philip and Antiochus we
stood by you against those monarchs, so now we stood by the king against
you. Ask the commanders of your fleets in Asia, C. Livius, L. Aemilius
Regillus, how we were wont to help our allies and with what energy we
prosecuted the war. Your ships never fought without us to help you; we
fought single-handed at Samos and a second time off Pamphylia against
Hannibal, who was in command. And this victory was all the more glorious
for us because after losing a large proportion of our ships and the flower of
our youth in the defeat at Samos, we were not daunted even by that disaster,
and we met the king's fleet on its way from Syria. I am not recounting these
incidents in a spirit of boasting -our present circumstances forbid that -but
to remind you how the Rhodians have been accustomed to help their allies.