ned on peace with the same Philip, contrary to the inclinations
of the same Romans, who now wish that the peace should be broken,
after it has been adjusted and ratified. In the subject of your
deliberation, fortune has made no change; why you should make any, I
do not see."

30. Next, after the Macedonians, with the consent and at the desire
of the Romans, the Athenians were introduced; who, having suffered
grievously, could, with the greater justice, inveigh against the
cruelty and inhumanity of the king. They represented, in a deplorable
light, the miserable devastation and spoliation of their fields;
adding, that "they did not complain on account of having, from an
enemy, suffered hostile treatment; for there were certain rights of
war, according to which, as it was just to act, so it was just to
endure. Their crops being burned, their houses demolished, their
men and cattle carried off as spoil, were to be considered rather as
misfortunes to the sufferer than as ill-treatment. But of this they
had good reason to complain, that he who called the Romans foreigners
and barbarians, had himself so atrociously violated all rights, both
divine and human, as, in his former inroad, to have waged an impious
war against the infernal gods, in the latter, against those above.
That the sepulchres and monuments of all within their country had been
demolished, the graves laid open, and the bones left unprotected by
the soil. There had been several temples, which, in former times, when
their ancestors dwelt in the country in their separate districts,
had been consecrated in each of their little forts and villages, and
which, even after they were incorporated into one city, they did not
neglect or forsake. That around all these temples Philip had scattered
his destructive flames, and left the images of the gods lying scorched
and mutilated among the prostrated pillars of their fanes. Such as
he had rendered the country of Attica, formerly opulent and adorned,
such, if he were suffered, would he render Aetolia and the whole of
Greece. That the mutilation of their own city, also, would have been
similar, if the Romans had not come to its relief: for he had shown
the same wicked rage against the gods who are the guardians of the
city, and Minerva who presides over the citadel; the same against the
temple of Ceres at Eleusis; the same against Jupiter and Minerva at
Piraeeus. In a word, having been repelled by force of arms not only
fro