Æmilius now executed the commission of regulating affairs according to the instructions which he had from Rome, and this he did in a way which is shocking to our ideas. The Epirotes were involved in the fate of Perseus: although they were not faithful to the treaties which bound them to Rome, yet the dreadful revenge which the Romans took upon them, can never be justified. The Roman soldiers were quartered upon the Molossians, and the senate determined to reward them with the plundering of the Epirote towns: it was undoubtedly meant to requite them for the calamities which formerly had been brought upon the Romans by Pyrrhus. Æmilius was charged with the business of exterminating the Epirote nation. In seventy places, the Roman army was stationed, and the Epirotes were ordered to gather together and deliver up all their gold and valuables, having already been obliged before that to yield up their arms. When in this manner everything was collected which in a general plunder might have been spoilt and wasted, all the troops on the self-same day turned their arms against the inhabitants. One hundred and fifty thousand Epirotes are said to have been either slain or led away as slaves, and seventy places to have been destroyed. This is horrible; it shows the rank degeneracy of the Roman people, as there is no longer in it any balance of its different elements, but only the dead weight of one promiscuous mass. Slavery strips man of half of his virtue, but absolute liberty to do what one lists creates double vice: as rulers of the world, the Romans thought themselves privileged to do any thing and everything. After such a deed as this, we cannot agree with Plutarch in ranking Æmilius among great and virtuous men. Throughout the whole of Greece, and particularly in Bœotia, things were just as bad: the sword was put into the hands of the partisans of the Romans, and their rage was ruthless. In Ætolia, as in all Greek countries, there were two factions, the one devoted, and the other hostile to the Romans; the Roman party ruled without any one to control it, and the lengths to which it went in its outrages, beggar all belief. Besides other atrocities, it broke into the senate house, and butchered all the senators who were accused of being friendly to the Macedonians. Roman troops were sent thither under the command of A. Bæbius. This frightful state of things extended likewise to the Achæans: there the party of Perseus had not been very strong, but so much the stronger was that which had striven to uphold that dignity, which had been injured by the Romans. These had kept none of the treaties with them, and they had received separate embassies from some of the towns, which they had even encouraged; as in the case of Lacedæmon and Messene, which brought complaints against the Achæans, whilst, according to the treaty, none were to be listened to but those which came from the whole of the Achæan league. It was seen how much