| Polybius, Histories (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Polyb.]. | ||
| <<Polyb. 25.6 | Polyb. 26.1 (Greek) | >>Polyb. 27.1 |
ANTIOCHUS EPIPHANES, nicknamed from his actions note Epimanes (the Madman), would sometimes steal from the court, avoiding his attendants, and appear roaming wildly about in any chance part of the city with one or two companions. His favourite place to be found was the shops of the silversmiths or goldsmiths, chatting and discussing questions of art with the workers in relief and other artists; at another time he would join groups of the people of the town and converse with any one he came across, and would drink with foreign visitors of the humblest description. Whenever he found any young men carousing together he would come to the place without giving notice, with fife and band, like a rout of revellers, and often by his unexpected appearance cause the guests to rise and run away. He would often also lay aside his royal robes, and, putting on a tebenna, note go round the market-place as though a candidate for office, shaking hands and embracing various
people whom he intreated to vote for him, sometime as aedile, and sometimes as tribune. And when he got the office and took his seat on an ivory curule chair, after the fashion of the Romans, he heard law cases which came on in the agora, and decided them with the utmost seriousness and attention. This conduct was very embarrassing to respectable people, some of whom regarded him as a good natured easy-going man, and others as a madman. In regard to making presents, too, his behaviour was on a par with this. Some he presented with dice made of gazelle horn, some with dates, others with gold. There were even instances of his making unexpected presents to men whom he met casually, and whom he had never seen before. In regard to public sacrifices and the honours paid to the gods, he surpassed all his predecessors on the throne; as witness the Olympieium at Athens and the statues placed round the altar at Delos. He used also to bathe in the public baths, when they were full of the townspeople, pots of the most expensive unguents being brought in for him; and on one occasion on some one saying, "Lucky fellows you kings, to use such things and smell so sweet!" without saying a word to the man, he waited till he was bathing the next day, and then coming into the bath caused a pot of the largest size and of the most costly kind of unguent called stacte to be poured over his head, so that there was a general rush of the bathers to roll themselves in it; and when they all tumbled down, the king himself among them, from its stickiness, there was loud laughter. . . .
In B.C.
The same year saw also commotions in Aetolia, which were settled by five Roman commissioners: and in Crete, on the old score of the status of the Lycians. Q. Minucius was sent to settle this also (Livy, 41, 25).
In B. C.
In B. C.
The Senate, already inclined to listen to these representations, was still more inclined to do so by the defiant tone of Harpalus, the representative of king Perseus; by the attempted assassination of Eumenes by emissaries of Perseus at Delphi on his home journey; by receiving a report from Greece from C. Valerius confirming the speech of Eumenes; and lastly by the confession of one L. Rammius of Brundisium, that he had been requested to poison certain Roman envoys who were accustomed to stay at his house on their journeys to and from Macedonia and Greece (Livy, 42, 15-17).
War was now determined on for the next year, and the praetor ordered to enroll troops. And Eumenes also, now recovered from the wounds of the assassins, made preparations to join in the struggle (Livy, 42, 18-27).
In B. C.
A few days afterwards five commissioners were sent into Greece, who distributed the districts to be visited among themselves: Servius and Publius Lentulus and Lucius Decimius were to go to Cephallenia, the Peloponnese, and the west coast generally; Q. Marcius and Aulus Atilius to Epirus, Aetolia, Thessaly, and thence to Boeotia and Euboea, where they were to meet the Lentuli. Meanwhile a letter from Perseus, demanding the cause of their coming and of the presence of troops in Macedonia, was received and left unanswered. After visiting the districts assigned to them, in the course of doing which Marcius and Atilius had met Perseus on the river Peneus, and granted him a truce to enable him to send envoys to Rome (Marcius knowing well that the Romans were not yet fully prepared for war note the commissioners reached their destination at Chalcis, where the earlier events narrated in the following extracts occurred (Livy, 42, 36-43).
| Polybius, Histories (English) (XML Header) [genre: prose] [word count] [lemma count] [Polyb.]. | ||
| <<Polyb. 25.6 | Polyb. 26.1 (Greek) | >>Polyb. 27.1 |
