39.  Quinctius, having been informed of these proceedings, came with the fleet from Corinth, and met Eumenes in the Euripus of Chalcis.  It was agreed between them, that king Eumenes should leave there five hundred of his soldiers, for the purpose of a garrison, and should go himself to Athens.  Quinctius proceeded to Demetrias, as he had purposed from the first, hoping that the relief of Chalcis would prove a strong inducement to the Magnetians to renew the alliance with Rome.  And, in order that such of them as favoured his views might have some support at hand, he wrote to Eunomus, praetor of the Thessalians, to arm the youth; sending Villius forward to Demetrias, to sound the inclinations of the people:  but not with a view to take any step in the business, unless a considerable number of them were disposed to revive the former treaty of amity.  Villius, in a ship of five banks of oars, came to the mouth of the harbour, and the whole multitude of the Magnetians hastened out thither.  Villius then asked, whether they chose that he should consider himself as having come to friends, or to enemies?  Eurylochus, the Magnetarch, answered, that “he had come to friends; but desired him not to enter the harbour, but to suffer the Magnetians to live in freedom and harmony; and not to attempt, under the show of friendly converse, to seduce the minds of the populace.”  Then followed an altercation, not a conference, the Roman upbraiding the Magnetians with ingratitude, and forewarning them of the calamities impending over them; the multitude, on the other side, clamorously reproaching him, and reviling, sometimes the senate, sometimes Quinctius.  Villius, therefore, unable to effect any part of his business, went back to Quinctius, who despatched orders to the Thessalian praetor, to lead his troops home, while himself returned with his ships to Corinth.

40.  The affairs of Greece, blended with those of Rome, have carried me away, as it were, out of my course:  not that they were in themselves deserving of a recital, but because they constituted the causes of the war with Antiochus.  After the consular election, for thence I digressed, the consuls, Lucius Quinctius and Cneius Domitius, repaired to their provinces; Quinctius to Liguria, Domitius against the Boians.  The Boians kept themselves quiet; nay, the senators, with their children, and the commanding officers of the cavalry, with their troops, amounting in all to one thousand five hundred, surrendered to the consul.  The other consul laid waste the country of the Ligurians to a wide extent, and took some forts:  in which expeditions he not only acquired booty of all sorts, together with many prisoners, but he also recovered several of his countrymen, and of the allies, who had been in the hands of the enemy.  In this year a colony was settled at Vibo, in pursuance of a decree of the senate and an order of the people; three thousand seven hundred footmen, and three hundred horsemen, went out thither, conducted by the commissioners Quintus