41.22
The
commission who had gone to Carthage, after interviewing Masinissa,
returned on June 7. They had been more accurately informed as to what was
going on in Carthage by the king than by the Carthaginians themselves. It
was an ascertained fact, so they asserted, that envoys from Perseus had gone
to Carthage, and that the senate there had given them audience at a
nocturnal session in the temple of Aesculapius. Masinissa had stated that
envoys had been sent from Carthage to Macedonia, and this the
Carthaginians did not directly deny. The Roman senate decided that they too
must send envoys to Macedonia. Three were sent -C. Laelius, M. Valerius
Messala, and Sextus Digitius. A certain section of the Dolopes refused to
obey Perseus' orders and appealed from him to the Romans to settle the
differences between them. He advanced against them with an army and
reduced the whole nation to complete submission. Then he crossed Mount
Oeta and went up to Delphi to consult the oracle about religious matters
which were disquieting his mind. His sudden appearance in the middle of
Greece created general alarm, not only amongst the neighbouring States, but
in Asia as well, where information of what was happening was hurriedly sent
to Eumenes. Perseus did not stay more than three days at Delphi, and
passing through Phthiotis, Achaia and Thessaly, returned to his kingdom
without damaging or injuring the districts through which he passed. Nor did
he consider it sufficient to conciliate those States through which his route
lay; he sent either letters or envoys to the different Greek peoples, asking
them to dismiss from their minds the hostile feelings which had existed
between them and his father. They were not, he urged, so bitter that they
could not, and ought not, to be put an end to in his case. As far as he was
concerned there was nothing to disturb their relations or to prevent the
growth of an honest and sincere friendship. With the Achaeans, especially,
he was anxious to find some way of ingratiating himself.
