57.
Thus Perseus caught everyone unprepared and ignorant, and grasped the sceptre which he had won by crime.
The death of Philip came at a fortunate time for delaying and for diverting strength from the war.1
[2]
For a few days later the tribe of the Bastarnae,2 after long solicitation, left their homes and with a great [p. 173]number of infantry and cavalry crossed the Hister.3
[3]
Thence Antigonus4 and Cotto came on in advance to bring the word to the king: Cotto was a nobleman among the Bastarnae, Antigonus one of Philip's courtiers who had often been sent with Cotto himself to stir up the Bastarnae. When they were not far from Amphipolis, first the rumour and then the authenticated tidings of the death of the king reached them. This event wholly upset the ordered plan of Philip.
[4]
But it had been so arranged that Philip was to guarantee to the Bastarnae a safe passage through Thrace and also supplies. In order that he might be able to accomplish this, he had cultivated the chiefs of these districts with gifts, pledging his word that the Bastarnae would cross their territories peaceably.
[5]
It had been his intention to destroy the race of the Dardanians and to give the Bastarnae homes on their lands.
[6]
From this policy there was a double advantage if, in the first place, the Dardanians, a people always most hostile to Macedonia and watchful for occasions unfavourable to the kings, should be destroyed, and, secondly, if the Bastarnae, leaving their wives and children in Dardania, could be sent to plunder Italy.
[7]
There was a road, he knew, through the country of the Scordisci to the Adriatic sea and Italy; an army could not be led by any other way.5 The Scordisci [p. 175]would readily give a passage to the Bastarnae: for6 they were not very different in either language or manners;7 and they themselves would join forces with them when they saw the Bastarnae going to plunder a most wealthy people.
[8]
From that point his plans were adapted to any issue: if the Bastarnae were cut to pieces by the Romans, yet the removal of the Dardani and the booty from the remnants of the Bastarnae and the unhindered occupancy of Dardania would be his consolation;
[9]
if on the other hand success attended their venture, while the attention of the Romans was distracted to the war with the Bastarnae Philip would recover his lost possessions in Greece.8 This was the plan of Philip.
1 The meaning is uncertain. One naturally expects this to mean the war with Rome, since Livy has been so insistent that Philip would himself have begun the war had he lived a little longer, and no one would infer from Livy's narrative that the war did not actually break out until 171 B.C. The episode of the Bastarnae (note particularly the introductory nam) which follows seems an insufficient cause for so long a delay, and one is tempted to think that Livy was so conscious of the tragic quality of the action that he, like the tragic poet, could ignore the passage of time.
2 Cf. v. 10 above.
3 B.C. 179
4 Not the Antigonus whom Philip had planned to make his heir.
5 It is perhaps easiest to visualize the geographical background by the use of modern place-names, so far as possible. The Bastarnae lived in what is now Bessarabia, on the Euxine north of the Danube delta. Philip planned to march them through northern Bulgaria, thence perhaps by the Morava valley to the Danube and west by the Danube and Save valleys to the country of the Scordisci, west of Belgrade. From there the Save valley with its continuations leads to Fiume, near the head of the Adriatic. The Dardani, among whom homes for them were to be found, lived in or to the east of the Morava valley. From the standpoint of the Bastarnae, a route following the Danube and Save would have been shorter, but then they would have had no contact with Philip. Some sound geographical knowledge, then, underlies Philip's grandiose plan.
6 B.C. 179
7 The Bastarnae were Germanic, the Scordisci Gallic, but either Philip or Livy may have been misinformed on that point.
8 Philip then stood to gain heavily in any case, with nothing but the trifling investment necessary to purchase the right of way through Thrace.
Livy. Books XL-XLII With An English Translation. Cambridge. Cambridge, Mass., Harvard University Press; London, William Heinemann, Ltd. 1938: published without copyright notice.
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