AB URBE CONDITA

Volume X: Books 35–37 · The War with Antiochus III

by Livy

Translated by Evan T. Sage

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INTRODUCTION

Books 35–37 cover Rome's war with Antiochus III, king of the Seleucid empire — the most powerful monarch in the Hellenistic world and the first adversary Rome faced whose resources and territorial reach approached those of Carthage at its height. The war grew out of the settlement of the Macedonian question: once Philip V was neutralised, the question of what Antiochus intended with his armies in Thrace and his overtures to the discontented Greek states became urgent. The Aetolian League, disappointed that Rome had treated Philip leniently rather than destroying him, invited Antiochus into Greece as a liberator; Antiochus accepted, crossed into Europe with a modest force, and found himself at war with Rome almost before he was ready. Books 35–37 follow this miscalculation from its origins in diplomacy to its military resolution at Thermopylae (191 BCE) and Magnesia (190 BCE) — the two engagements that ended Seleucid power west of the Taurus mountains.

The presence of Scipio Africanus in these books — as a diplomatic figure, a participant in negotiations with Antiochus, and ultimately as the elder brother and guiding spirit of the consul Lucius Cornelius Scipio (who will earn the cognomen Asiaticus from this campaign) — gives the narrative an additional human dimension. The encounter between the two greatest commanders of their age, Scipio and Hannibal, who is living at Antiochus's court in exile, is one of the most celebrated anecdotes in these books.

The Books in This Volume

Book 35 covers the years 193–192 BCE, the period of rising tension before the war begins in earnest. Antiochus sends embassies to Rome; Rome sends embassies to Antiochus; the Aetolians agitate for intervention; and Hannibal, at the Seleucid court, argues for a co-ordinated strategy involving a Carthaginian fleet and an invasion of Italy. Livy records these diplomatic exchanges with a sense of the mutual misunderstanding at work: Antiochus underestimates the speed and scale of Rome's military response, while Rome underestimates Antiochus's ambitions. The book ends with the Aetolian vote for war and Antiochus's crossing into Greece.

Book 36 carries the war into Greece and to its first decisive engagement. The consul Manius Acilius Glabrio advances into Thessaly while Antiochus takes up a position at Thermopylae — the pass where Leonidas and his Spartans had held the Persian army in 480 BCE. Antiochus evidently hoped the historical resonance of the site would work in his favour; it did not. Roman forces, following the same route as the Persians, outflanked the Aetolian garrison on the heights, and Antiochus's army broke. He escaped with a remnant to Ephesus, abandoning Greece entirely. The Aetolians, left to face Roman anger alone, sued for terms. Book 36 also contains the naval operations in the Aegean, where Antiochus's fleet challenged Rome's Rhodian and Pergamene allies with limited success.

Book 37 follows the Roman crossing into Asia — the first time a Roman army operated east of the Hellespont — and the campaign that culminated in the Battle of Magnesia (190 BCE). The command was held nominally by the consul Lucius Scipio but effectively shaped by his elder brother Africanus, whose presence in Asia as a legate gave the campaign a personal dimension: Antiochus had briefly held Africanus's son as a prisoner and released him as a gesture of goodwill, an episode Livy records as evidence of the complicated codes of honour operating between the combatants. At Magnesia, Antiochus deployed a force of perhaps seventy thousand men against a Roman army of perhaps thirty thousand; the battle, nonetheless, was not close. The Roman legions broke the Seleucid centre while the cavalry held the wings, and the peace that followed — the Peace of Apamea (188 BCE) — expelled Antiochus from all territory west of the Taurus and imposed a crippling indemnity.

Scipio, Hannibal, and the Shape of the War

The most celebrated anecdote in these books — recorded by Livy as reported speech — is the supposed exchange between Scipio Africanus and Hannibal at the court of Antiochus, in which Scipio asks Hannibal whom he considers the greatest general in history. Hannibal names Alexander first, Pyrrhus second, and himself third. When Scipio asks where he would rank himself had he defeated Rome, Hannibal replies that he would in that case have placed himself above all others. The story, which may be apocryphal, captures something real about the relationship between the two commanders: a mutual recognition of excellence across the divide of the war they had fought against each other.

Transmission

Books 35–37 belong to the same medieval manuscript tradition as the rest of the Fourth Decade, described in the introduction to Volume IX. The text of these books is generally well preserved but contains passages — particularly in the military narrative of Magnesia — where the manuscripts diverge and editors have been forced to emend. The accounts of the battle in Livy and in Appian (Syriaca 30–36) serve as mutual checks, though they are ultimately derived from the same Greek sources (primarily Polybius) and so do not provide fully independent testimony.

This Translation

The translation is that of Evan T. Sage, published as Volume X of the Loeb Classical Library edition of Livy (Loeb 301; Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935). Sage presents the Latin text on facing pages with his English translation. The translation is in the public domain.

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FULL TEXT

Book 35

[Book 35 opens in 193 BCE with the diplomatic manoeuvrings that will lead to the war with Antiochus.]

I. The consuls of that year were Lucius Quinctius Flamininus and Gnaeus Domitius Ahenobarbus¹. At the beginning of their term, before the senate dealt with anything else, the question of the provinces was raised; and after all sides had been heard, Macedonia and Italy were assigned as the consular provinces. The reason for retaining a force in Macedonia was the uncertain intentions of Philip and of Antiochus: both kings were known to be arming, and their embassies to each other, the subject and outcome of which Roman agents could not discover with certainty, were a cause of anxiety. There were also reports that the Aetolians, always a restless people and at that moment additionally embittered by the peace Rome had granted Philip, were soliciting both kings with promises of a ready alliance if either of them chose to move against Rome.²

II. Embassies from many Greek peoples and kings came to Rome early in that year. From Antiochus came representatives with a reply to the embassy that Lucius Scipio had led to the king's court the previous year. The tenor of their instructions was vague: Antiochus wished for peace and friendship with Rome, was willing to conclude a formal treaty, and was prepared to discuss the situation of the Asian cities — though he maintained that Roman interference in Asian affairs was no more appropriate than Seleucid interference in Italian ones. The senate's response was equally careful: it welcomed Antiochus's desire for peace while noting that the freedom of the Greek cities in Asia, which Rome now considered her concern, was not negotiable.

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Bibliography

Sage, Evan T., trans. Livy: Ab Urbe Condita, Volume X (Books 35–37). Loeb Classical Library 301. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1935.

Bar-Kochva, Bezalel. The Seleucid Army: Organisation and Tactics in the Great Campaigns. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1976.

Grainger, John D. The Roman War of Antiochos the Great. Leiden: Brill, 2002.

Gruen, Erich S. The Hellenistic World and the Coming of Rome. 2 vols. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1984.

Sherwin-White, Susan, and Amélie Kuhrt. From Samarkhand to Sardis: A New Approach to the Seleucid Empire. London: Duckworth, 1993.

Footnotes