dressed
them in a long speech, in which, beginning from the first commencement
of friendship between the Romans and the nation of the Greeks, he
enumerated the proceedings of the commanders who had been in Macedonia
before him, and likewise his own. His whole narration was heard with
the warmest approbation, except when he came to make mention of
Nabis; and then they expressed their opinion, that it was utterly
inconsistent with the character of the deliverer of Greece to have
left seated, in the centre of one of its most respectable states,
a tyrant, who was not only insupportable to his own country, but a
terror to all the states in his neighbourhood. Whereupon Quinctius,
not unacquainted with this tendency of their feelings, freely
acknowledged, that "if the business could have been accomplished
without the entire destruction of Lacedaemon, no mention of peace with
the tyrant ought ever to have been listened to; but that, when it was
not possible to crush him otherwise than by the utter ruin of this
most important city, it was judged more eligible to leave the tyrant
in a state of debility, stripped of almost every kind of power to do
injury to any, than to suffer the city, which must have perished in
the very process of its delivery being effectuated, to sink under
remedies too violent for it to support."

49. To the recital of matters past, he subjoined, that "his intention
was to depart shortly for Italy, and to carry with him all his troops;
that they should hear, within ten days, of the garrisons having
evacuated Demetrias; and that Chalcis, the citadel of Corinth, should
be before their own eyes evacuated to the Achaeans: that all the world
might know whose habit it was to deceive, that of the Romans or the
Aetolians, who had spread insinuations, that the cause of liberty had
been unwisely intrusted to the Romans, and that they had only received
as their masters the Romans in exchange for the Macedonians. But they
were men who never scrupled what they either said or did. The rest of
the nations he advised to form their estimate of friends from deeds,
not from words; and to satisfy themselves whom they ought to trust,
and against whom they ought to be on their guard; to use their liberty
with moderation: for, when regulated by prudence, it was productive
of happiness both to individuals and to states; but, when pushed to
excess, it became not only obnoxious to others, but to the possessors
of it themselves an u