lip, who was their enemy, but not a treaty of
alliance with Antiochus, their friend."

58. To this Quinctius answered: "Since you choose to deal
methodically, and enumerate the several modes of contracting
alliances, I also will lay down two conditions, without which you may
tell your king, that there are no means of contracting any friendship
with the Roman people. One, that, he does not choose that we should
concern ourselves in the affairs of the cities in Asia, he must
himself keep entirely out of Europe. The other, that if he does
not confine himself within the limits of Asia, but passes over into
Europe, the Romans will think themselves at full liberty to maintain
the friendships which they have already formed with the states of
Asia, and also to contract new ones." On this Hegesianax exclaimed,
that "this proposition was unworthy to be listened to, as its
tendency was to exclude Antiochus from the cities of Thrace and
the Chersonese,--places which his great-grandfather, Seleucus, had
acquired with great honour, after vanquishing Lysimachus in war and
killing him in battle, and had left to his successors; and part of
which, after they had been seized by the Thracians, Antiochus had,
with equal honour, recovered by force of arms; as well as others which
had been deserted,--as Lysimachia, for instance, he had repeopled, by
calling home the inhabitants;--and several, which had been destroyed
by fire, and buried in ruins, he had rebuilt at a vast expense. What
kind of resemblance was there, then, in the cases of Antiochus being
ejected from possessions so acquired and so recovered; and of the
Romans refraining from intermeddling with Asia, which had never been
theirs? Antiochus wished to obtain the friendship of the Romans; but
so that its acquisition would be to his honour, and not to his shame."
In reply to this, Quinctius said,--"Since we are deliberating on what
would be honourable, and which, indeed with a people who held the
first rank among the nations of the world, and with so great a king,
ought to be the sole, or at least the primary object of regard; tell
me, I pray you, which do you think more honourable, to wish to give
liberty to all the Grecian cities in every part of the world; or to
make them slaves and vassals? Since Antiochus thinks it conducive
to his glory, to reduce to slavery those cities, which his
great-grandfather held by the right of arms, but which his grandfather
or father never occupied