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Updated: May 25, 2025
For the time has come to ask you this, Aeschines, and to dismiss everything else. Amphipolis, Pydna, Poteidaea, Halonnesus all are blotted from my memory. But of this too I say nothing at present. Was it fit that one of the Hellenes should arise to prevent it, or not? But if it was right that one should arise to prevent it, for whom could the task be more fitting than for the people of Athens?
While the public works which can be shown to have been constructed from the battle of Pydna down to the time of Gaius Gracchus were numerous, from the period after 632 there is scarcely mention of any other than the projects of bridges, roads, and drainage which Marcus Aemilius Scaurus organized as censor in 645.
But in its miraculous character and good luck the swiftness with which the news spread surpasses all these; for on the fourth day after Perseus had been vanquished at Pydna, while the people at Rome were assembled at a horse race, suddenly there arose amongst them a rumour that Aemilius had defeated Perseus in a great battle and had subdued all Macedonia.
The battle of Pydna, moreover, marks the last occasion on which the senate still adhered to the state-maxim that they should, if possible, hold no possessions and maintain no garrisons beyond the Italian seas, but should keep the numerous states dependent on them in order by a mere political supremacy.
The Epirotic prince shielded him in spite of his former hostility, and furnished him with guides to Pydna, across the mountains, from which he succeeded in reaching Ephesus, and then repaired to the Persian court. At Athens he was proclaimed a traitor, and his property, amounting to one hundred talents, accumulated by the war, was confiscated.
Virtually, the known world was divided into subjects and dependencies of Rome, so vast was the change in the forty years between the battles of the Metaurus and Pydna.
This Strongylion left but two statues which placed Nero and Brutus in accord. Brutus was in love with the one, Nero with the other. All history is nothing but wearisome repetition. One century is the plagiarist of the other. The battle of Marengo copies the battle of Pydna; the Tolbiac of Clovis and the Austerlitz of Napoleon are as like each other as two drops of water.
The war was protracted three years without any decisive result; but was brought to a conclusion in 168 by the consul L. AEmilius Paulus, who defeated Perseus with great loss near Pydna. Perseus was carried to Rome to adorn the triumph of Paulus , and was permitted to spend the remainder of his life in a sort of honourable captivity at Alba.
On the contrary, as Polybius relates, no sooner was the battle begun, but the Macedonian king basely withdrew to the city Pydna, under a pretence of sacrificing to Hercules: a God that is not wont to regard the faint offerings of cowards, or to fulfill unsanctioned vows.
According to the policy hitherto pursued there was therefore no reason for depriving the Macedonians of the shadow of independence which the battle of Pydna had still left to them; nevertheless the kingdom of Alexander was now, by order of the senate, converted by Metellus into a Roman province.
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