11.
Antiochus went from Demetrias to Chalcis, where he became captivated with a young woman, daughter of Cleoptolemus.
[2]
When he had plied her father, who was unwilling to connect himself with a condition in life involving such serious consequences, first by messages, and afterwards by personal importunities, and had at length gained his consent; he celebrated his nuptials in the same manner as if it were a time of profound peace. Forgetting the two important undertakings in which he was at once engaged, —the war with Rome, and the liberating of Greece, —he banished every thought of business from his mind, and spent the remainder of winter in feasting and the pleasures connected with wine; and then in sleep, produced rather by fatigue than by satiety with these things.
[3]
The same spirit of dissipation seized all his officers who commanded in the several winter quarters, particularly those stationed in Bœotia, and even the common men abandoned themselves to the same indulgences;
[4]
not one of whom ever put on his armour, or kept watch or guard, or did any part of the duty or business of a soldier.
[5]
When, [p. 1620]therefore, in the beginning of spring, the king came through Phocis to Chaeronea, where he had appointed the general assembly of all the troops, he perceived at once that the soldiers had spent the winter under discipline no more rigid than that of their commander.
[6]
He ordered Alexander, an Acarnanian, and Menippus, a Macedonian, to lead his forces thence to Stratum, in Etolia; and he himself, after offering sacrifice to Apollo at Delphi, proceeded to Naupactum.
[7]
After holding a council of the chiefs of Aetolia, he went by the road which leads by Chalcis and Lysimachia to Stratum, to meet his army, which was coming along the Malian bay.
[8]
Here Mnasilochus, a man of distinction among the Acarnanians, being bribed by many presents, not only laboured himself to dispose that nation in favour of the king, but had brought to a concurrence in the design their praetor, Clytus, who was at that time invested with the highest authority.
[9]
This latter, finding that the people of Leucas, the capital of Acarnania, could not be easily seduced to defection, because they were afraid of the Roman fleets, one under Atilius, and another at Cephallenia, practised an artifice against them. He observed in the council, that the inland parts of Acarnania should be guarded from danger, and that all who were able to bear arms ought to march out to Medio and Thurium, to prevent those places from being seized by Antiochus, or the Aetolians;
[10]
on which there were some who said, that there were no necessity for all the people to be called out in that hasty manner, for a body of five hundred men would be sufficient for the purpose.
[11]
Having got this number of soldiers at his disposal, he placed three hundred in garrison at Medio, and two hundred at Thurium, with the design that they should fall into the hands of the king, and serve hereafter as hostages.
Livy. History of Rome by Titus Livius, books twenty-seven to thirty-six. literally translated, with notes and illustrations, by. Cyrus Edmonds. York Street, Covent Garden, London. Henry G. Bohn. John Child and son, printers, Bungay. 1850. 3.
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