the case between a victor and a party vanquished.  As Antiochus came under this last description, he wondered, he said, that the Romans should think it becoming to dictate terms to him; as to which of the cities of Asia they chose should be free and independent, which should be tributary, and which of them the king’s troops and the king himself should be prohibited to enter.  That a peace of this kind might be ratified with Philip, 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 as their property while the Roman people, having undertaken the patronage of the liberty of the Greeks, deem it incumbent on their faith and constancy not to abandon it.  As they have delivered Greece from Philip, so they have it in contemplation to deliver, from Antiochus, all the states of Asia which are of the Grecian race.  For colonies were not sent into Aeolia and Ionia to be enslaved to kings; but with design to increase the population, and to propagate that ancient race in every part of the globe.”