21.  Antiochus, quitting Chalcis before the arrival of the consul, sailed first to Tenus, and thence passed over to Ephesus.  When the consul came to Chalcis, the gates were open to receive him:  for Aristoteles, who commanded for the king, on hearing of his approach, had withdrawn from the city.  The rest of the cities of Euboea also submitted without opposition; and peace being restored all over the island within the space of a few days, without inflicting punishment on any city, the army, which had acquired much higher praise for moderation after victory, than even for the victory itself, was led back to Thermopylae.  From this place, the consul despatched Marcus Cato to Rome, that through him the senate and people might learn what had been achieved from unquestionable authority.  He set sail from Creusa, a sea-port belonging to the Thespians, seated at the bottom of the Corinthian Gulf, and steered to Patrae, in Achaia.  From Patrae, he coasted along the shores of Aetolia and Acarnania, as far as Corcyra, and thence he passed over to Hydruntum, in Italy.  Proceeding hence, with rapid expedition, by land, he arrived on the fifth day at Rome.  Having come into the city before day, he went on directly from the gate to Marcus Junius, the praetor, who, at the first dawn, assembled the senate.  Here, Lucius Cornelius Scipio, who had been despatched by the consul several days before Cato, and on his arrival had heard that the latter had outstripped him, and was then in the senate, came in, just as he was giving a recital of the transactions.  The two lieutenant-generals were then, by order of the senate, conducted to the assembly of the people, where they gave the same account, as in the senate, of the services performed in Aetolia.  Hereupon a supplication of three days’ continuance was decreed, and that the praetor should offer sacrifice to such of the gods as his judgment should direct, with forty victims of the larger kinds.  About the same time, Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, who, two years before, had gone into Farther Spain, in the office of praetor, entered the city in ovation.  He carried in the procession a hundred and thirty thousand silver denarii,[1] and besides the coin, twelve thousand pounds’ weight of silver, and a hundred and twenty-seven pounds’ weight of gold.

[Footnote 1:  4097l. 16s. 4d.]

22.  The consul Manius Acilius sent on, from Thermopylae, a message to the Aetolians in Heraclea, admonishing them, “then at least, after the experience which they had of the emptiness of the king’s professions, to return to their senses; and, by surrendering Heraclea, to endeavour to procure from the senate a pardon for their past madness, or error:  that other Grecian states also had, during the present war, revolted from the Romans, to whom they were under the highest obligations; but that, inasmuch as, after the flight of the king, in reliance upon whom they had departed from their duty, they had not added obstinacy to their