On his return from Rome, Eumenes was attacked by assassins in Delphi. This plot may have been laid by Perseus; it was very like him, although he positively disavowed it: perhaps also it was a farce of Eumenes himself, intended to give the Romans a handle for war; yet it would, after all, have been too bad. The demand of the Romans, that Perseus should deliver up persons who stood highest in his estimation, because they were accused of having been the instigators of that attack, met with a flat refusal, and thence arose the war, which lasted until the fourth year, from 581-584. This war took a different turn from what the Romans had expected. They had hoped to be able to bring it to an end, like the second Macedonian one and that against Antiochus, in one campaign; besides which, they wished to crush Macedon, and to reconstruct the whole state of things in the eastern countries. But Perseus began the struggle with extraordinary resources: Macedon, for the first time, had enjoyed a twenty-five years’ peace, and it was thriving; so that besides his auxiliaries and four thousand horse, he had an army of forty thousand foot. The last books of Livy are mutilated, and thus we are without any clear view of part of the operations. The duration of the war, considering the disproportion between the two powers, is very great; but indeed the Roman generals carried it on at first in the worst way that could be, and strategical talent seems to have very much fallen off just then among the Romans. P. Licinius Crassus appeared in Thessaly, where Perseus advanced to meet him, and gained a pretty considerable advantage over his cavalry: the Romans had many killed and taken prisoners. The king, in waging the war, did it with the wish to obtain a favourable peace; and he believed that by showing himself resolute, he would get it on better terms. Yet this was contrary to the settled maxim of the Romans; in fact, it was exactly a case in which they felt that they must humble him. Perseus immediately began to negociate; but it was answered, that he was to make his submission, and to await the decision of the senate. This led to the battle in Thessaly, the result of which was favourable to the king. This victory threw such lustre on the arms of Perseus, that the whole of Greece was ready to go over to him. Yet the Romans had a vast advantage in their fleet, which was a dreadful scourge to the Greek sea-port towns; and though indeed it was now opposed by a Macedonian squadron, which did more than any one expected, they had still the best of it. Only some few party-leaders in Greece, such as Charops in Epirus (who had been brought up in Rome, and made it his boast that he was able to speak Latin), Lyciscus in Ætolia, and Callicrates in Achaia, were for the Romans: the public opinion was altogether against them. Whilst men like Polybius, who certainly hated the Romans as bitterly as his father Lycortas did,--but this was a different hatred