g
a wife, for passion's sake, out of a private house, and a family
obscure even among its neighbours; and now as a newly married man,
surfeited as it were with nuptial feasts, comes out to fight. His
chief reliance and strength was in the Aetolians,--a nation of
all others the most faithless and ungrateful, as you have formerly
experienced, and as Antiochus now experiences; for they neither joined
him with numbers, nor could they be kept in the camp; and, besides,
they are now in a state of dissension among themselves. Although they
requested permission to defend Hypata and Heraclea, yet they defended
neither; but one half of them fled to the tops of the mountains, while
the others shut themselves up in Heraclea. The king himself, plainly
confessing that, so far from daring to meet us in battle on the level
plain, he durst not even encamp in open ground, has abandoned all that
tract in front, which he boasted of having taken from us and Philip,
and has hid himself behind the rocks; not even appearing in the
opening of the pass, as it is said the Lacedaemonians did formerly,
but drawing back his camp completely within it. What difference is
there, as a demonstration of fear, between this and his shutting
himself up within the walls of a city to stand a siege? But neither
shall the straits protect Antiochus, nor the hills which they have
seized, the Aetolians. Sufficient care and precaution have been used
on every quarter, that you shall have nothing to contend with in the
fight but the enemy himself. On your parts, you have to consider, that
you are not fighting merely for the liberty of Greece; although, were
that all, it would be an achievement highly meritorious to deliver
that country now from Antiochus and the Aetolians, which you formerly
delivered from Philip; and that the wealth in the king's camp will not
be the whole prize of your labour; but that the great collection of
stores, daily expected from Ephesus, will likewise become your prey;
and also, that you will open a way for the Roman power into Asia and
Syria, and all the most opulent realms to the extremity of the East.
What then must be the consequence, but that, from Gades to the Red
Sea, we shall have no limit but the ocean, which encircles in its
embrace the whole orb of the earth; and that all mankind shall regard
the Roman name with a degree of veneration next to that which they
pay to the divinities? For the attainment of prizes of such magnitude,
pr