Hide browse bar
Your current position in the text is marked in blue. Click anywhere in the
line to jump to another position:
Table of Contents:
[3]
Gnæus,1 the chief of the embassy, demanded that Antiochus should allow Ptolemy, who was a friend of the Roman people, to rule over all the countries that his father had left to him, and that the cities of Asia that had been part of the dominions of Philip should be independent, for it was not right that Antiochus should usurp powers of which the Romans had deprived Philip. "We are wholly at a loss to know," he said, "why Antiochus should come from Media bringing such a fleet and such an army from the upper country to the Asiatic coast, make an incursion into Europe, build cities there, and subdue Thrace, unless these are the preparations for another war." Antiochus replied that Thrace had belonged to his ancestors, that it had fallen away from them when they were occupied elsewhere, and that he had resumed possession because he had leisure to do so. He had built Lysimacheia as the future seat of government of his son Seleucus. He would leave the Greek cities of Asia independent if they would acknowledge the gratitude therefor as due to himself and not to the Romans. "I am a relative of Ptolemy," he said, "and I shall be his father-in-law, although I am not so now, and I will see to it that he renders gratitude to you. I am at a loss to know by what right you meddle with the affairs of Asia when I never interfere with those of Italy." And so they separated without coming to any understanding, and both sides broke into more open threats.
