th this purpose in view they gave it clearly to
be understood that the senate forgave the father for the sake of the
son; the natural effect of which was, that dissensions arose in the
royal household itself, and that the king's elder son, Perseus, who,
although the offspring of an unequal marriage, was destined by his
father for the succession, sought to ruin his brother as his future
rival. It does not appear that Demetrius was a party to the Roman
intrigues; it was only when he was falsely suspected that he was
forced to become guilty, and even then he intended, apparently,
nothing more than flight to Rome. But Perseus took care that his
father should be duly informed of this design; an intercepted letter
from Flamininus to Demetrius did the rest, and induced the father to
give orders that his son should be put to death. Philip learned, when
it was too late, the intrigues which Perseus had concocted; and death
overtook him, as he was meditating the punishment of the fratricide
and his exclusion from the throne. He died in 575 at Demetrias, in
his fifty-ninth year. He left behind him a shattered kingdom and a
distracted household, and with a broken heart confessed to himself
that all his toils and all his crimes had been in vain.

King Perseus

His son Perseus then entered on the government, without encountering
opposition either in Macedonia or in the Roman senate. He was a man
of stately aspect, expert in all bodily exercises, reared in the camp
and accustomed to command, imperious like his father and unscrupulous
in the choice of his means. Wine and women, which too often led
Philip to forget the duties of government, had no charm for Perseus;
he was as steady and persevering as his father had been fickle and
impulsive. Philip, a king while still a boy, and attended by good
fortune during the first twenty years of his reign, had been spoiled
and ruined by destiny; Perseus ascended the throne in his thirty-first
year, and, as he had while yet a boy borne a part in the unhappy war
with Rome and had grown up under the pressure of humiliation and under
the idea that a revival of the state was at hand, so he inherited
along with the kingdom of his father his troubles, resentments, and
hopes. In fact he entered with the utmost determination on the
continuance of his father's work, and prepared more zealously than
ever for war against Rome; he was stimulated, moreover, by the
reflection, that he was by no means