One animadverted upon the insolence of their demands, in which they presume to impose terms on Antiochus, the greatest king in Asia, as they would on the vanquished Nabis.
"Although to Nabis they left absolute power over his own country, and its capital, Lacedaemon, yet it seems to them a matter for indignation, that Smyrna and Lampsacus should yield obedience to Antiochus."-- Others said, that "to so great a monarch, those cities were but a trivial ground of war, scarcely worth mention; but, that the beginning of unjust impositions was always made in the case of matters of little consequence; unless, indeed, it could be supposed, that the Persians, when they demanded earth and water from the Lacedaemonians, stood in need of a scrap of the land or a draught of the water.

The proceedings of the Romans, respecting the two cities, were meant as a trial of the same sort.

The rest of the states, when they saw that two had shaken off the yoke, would go over to the party of that nation which professed the patronage of liberty.

If freedom was not actually preferable to servitude, yet the hope of bettering their circumstances by a change, was more flattering to every one than any present situation." 18.

There was, in the council, an Acarnanian named Alexander, who had formerly been a friend of Philip, but had lately left him, to follow the more opulent court of Antiochus.