nsequence of the
rising of the Lycians, who were handed over to Rhodes after the defeat
of Antiochus, against their oppressors who had (576) cruelly reduced
them to slavery as revolted subjects; the Lycians, however, asserted
that they were not subjects but allies of the Rhodians, and prevailed
with this plea in the Roman senate, which was invited to settle the
doubtful meaning of the instrument of peace. But in this result a
justifiable sympathy with the victims of grievous oppression had
perhaps the chief share; at least nothing further was done on the part
of the Romans, who left this as well as other Hellenic quarrels to
take their course. When the war with Perseus broke out, the Rhodians,
like all other sensible Greeks, viewed it with regret, and blamed
Eumenes in particular as the instigator of it, so that his festal
embassy was not even permitted to be present at the festival of Helios
in Rhodes. But this did not prevent them from adhering to Rome and
keeping the Macedonian party, which existed in Rhodes as well as
everywhere else, aloof from the helm of affairs. The permission given
to them in 585 to export grain from Sicily shows the continuance of
the good understanding with Rome. All of a sudden, shortly before the
battle of Pydna, Rhodian envoys appeared at the Roman head-quarters
and in the Roman senate, announcing that the Rhodians would no longer
tolerate this war which was injurious to their Macedonian traffic and
their revenue from port-dues, that they were disposed themselves to
declare war against the party which should refuse to make peace, and
that with this view they had already concluded an alliance with Crete
and with the Asiatic cities. Many caprices are possible in a republic
governed by primary assemblies; but this insane intervention of a
commercial city--which can only have been resolved on after the
fall of the pass of Tempe was known at Rhodes--requires special
explanation. The key to it is furnished by the well-attested account
that the consul Quintus Marcius, that master of the "new-fashioned
diplomacy," had in the camp at Heracleum (and therefore after the
occupation of the pass of Tempe) loaded the Rhodian envoy Agepolis
with civilities and made an underhand request to him to mediate a
peace. Republican wrongheadedness and vanity did the rest; the
Rhodians fancied that the Romans had given themselves up as lost;
they were eager to play the part of mediator among four great power