45.31
After
the constitution of Macedonia had been thus announced, and the consul had
declared his intention of providing a code of laws, the Aetolians were
summoned to appear. The enquiry was directed more to find out who had
been in favour of the Romans and who in favour of the king than to discover
which party had inflicted and which had suffered wrongs. The murderers
were acquitted, the exiles and the slain were alike considered to have
deserved their fate; the only one found guilty was A. Baebius because he had
allowed his soldiers to be the instruments of the massacre. This result of the
case of the Aetolians had the effect of inflating the adherents of the Roman
party in all the communities and peoples of Greece to an insupportable pitch
of insolence, and whenever there was any suspicion of having favoured the
king their opponents were trampled in the dust. The leaders in the various
cities fell into three classes; two of these consisted of men who, whilst
insinuating themselves into the confidence of the Romans on the one hand or
the king on the other, aggrandised themselves at the expense of their
fellow-citizens, the third class sought to defend their liberties and their laws
by opposing both the others. The greater the affection which their
compatriots felt for them at home, the less were they appreciated abroad.
Elated by the success of the Romans, the supporters of that party were in
sole possession of the magistracies and the sole representatives of their
States. Numbers of these men came from the Peloponnesus, from Boeotia,
and the other national councils in Greece to be present at the congress, and
they filled the ears of the commissioners with their charges. They averred
that the supporters of Perseus included not only those who in a spirit of idle
vanity openly boasted that they were his friends and intimates, but a far more
numerous body who had secretly espoused his cause, and under the pretext
of defending their liberties had everywhere induced the councils to act in
direct hostility to Rome. The loyalty of the different States could only be
maintained by crushing these parties and strengthening the authority of those
whose sole aim was to support the power of Rome. A list of names was
furnished by these men, and letters from the commander were despatched to
Acarnania, Aetolia, Epirus and Boeotia, ordering those named to follow him
to Rome to make their defence. Two of the commissioners, C. Claudius and
Cnaeus Domitius, went in person to Achaia to publish this order. There were
two reasons for this. One was their belief that the self-confidence and high
spirit of the Achaeans would prevent their obeying the order, and possibly
Callicrates and the other informers might even be in danger of their lives.
The other was that while letters from the leaders in other States had been
discovered in the royal archives, none had been found from the Achaeans,
and the charges against them lacked proof. After the Aetolians had
withdrawn, the Acarnanian deputation was called in. In their case no change
was made beyond the removal of Leucas as a member of their league. Then
the commissioners extended the scope of this enquiry as far as Asia. Labeo
was sent to destroy the city of Antissa in the island of Lesbos, and transfer
the inhabitants to Methymna, the reason for this step being that they had
admitted the king's naval commander, Antenor, into their harbour and helped
him with supplies while he was cruising off Lesbos. Two of their leaders
were beheaded: Andronicus, the son of Andronicus, an Aetolian, because he
had followed his father and borne arms against Rome, and Neo, a Theban,
who had been the prime agent in their forming an alliance with Perseus