Humiliation of Rhodes

Similar treatment befell the Rhodians.  They had a singularly privileged position:  their relation to Rome assumed the form not of symmachy properly so called, but of friendly equality; it did not prevent them from entering into alliances of any kind, and did not compel them to supply the Romans with a contingent on demand.  This very circumstance was presumably the real reason why their good understanding with Rome had already for some time been impaired.  The first dissensions with Rome had arisen in consequence 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