THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

III. From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter X - The Third Macedonian War

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Page 33

But he himself put to death one of these, Evander of Crete, who was to be called to account as instigator of the attempted assassination of Eumenes; and then the king's pages and his last comrades also deserted him. For a moment he hoped that the right of asylum would protect him; but he himself perceived that he was clinging to a straw.

An attempt to take flight to Cotys failed. So he wrote to the consul; but the letter was not received, because he had designated himself in it as king. He recognized his fate, and surrendered to the Romans at discretion with his children and his treasures, pusillanimous and weeping so as to disgust even his conquerors.

With a grave satisfaction, and with thoughts turning rather on the mutability of fortune than on his own present success, the consul received the most illustrious captive whom Roman general had ever brought home. Perseus died a few years after, as a state prisoner, at Alba on the Fucine lake;(5) his son in after years earned a living in the same Italian country town as a clerk.

5. The story, that the Romans, in order at once to keep the promise which had guaranteed his life and to take vengeance on him, put him to death by depriving him of sleep, is certainly a fable.

Thus perished the empire of Alexander the Great, which had subdued and Hellenized the east, 144 years after its founder's death.

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