e Attalus, who had passed the winter at Aegina and had spent his
time in listening to the declamations of the Athenians, joined them
with his squadron. The allies might probably have arrived in time
to help the Abydenes, who heroically defended themselves; but they
stirred not, and so at length the city surrendered, after almost all
who were capable of bearing arms had fallen in the struggle before the
walls. After the capitulation a large portion of the inhabitants fell
by their own hand--the mercy of the victor consisted in allowing the
Abydenes a term of three days to die voluntarily. Here, in the camp
before Abydus. the Roman embassy, which after the termination of its
business in Syria and Egypt had visited and dealt with the minor Greek
states, met with the king, and submitted the proposals which it had
been charged to make by the senate, viz. that the king should wage no
aggressive war against any Greek state, should restore the possessions
which he had wrested from Ptolemy, and should consent to an
arbitration regarding the injury inflicted on the Pergamenes and
Rhodians. The object of the senate, which sought to provoke the king
to a formal declaration of war, was not gained; the Roman ambassador,
Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, obtained from the king nothing but the polite
reply that he would excuse what the envoy had said because he was
young, handsome, and a Roman.

Meanwhile, however, the occasion for declaring war, which Rome
desired, had been furnished from another quarter. The Athenians
in their silly and cruel vanity had put to death two unfortunate
Acarnanians, because these had accidentally strayed into their
mysteries. When the Acarnanians, who were naturally indignant, asked
Philip to procure them satisfaction, he could not refuse the just
request of his most faithful allies, and he allowed them to levy men
in Macedonia and, with these and their own troops, to invade Attica
without a formal declaration of war. This, it is true, was no war
in the proper sense of the term; and, besides, the leader of the
Macedonian band, Nicanor, immediately gave orders to his troops to
retreat, when the Roman envoys, who were at Athens at the time, used
threatening language (in the end of 553). But it was too late. An
Athenian embassy was sent to Rome to report the attack made by Philip
on an ancient ally of the Romans; and, from the way in which the
senate received it, Philip saw clearly what awaited him; so tha