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Quote of the day: That he would bring the war to conclusio
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Annals by Tacitus
Translated by Alfred John Church and William Jackson Brodribb
Book IV Chapter 43: Embassies from Greece[AD 25]
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Then a hearing was given to embassies from the Lacedaemonians and Messenians on the question of the temple of Diana in the Marshes. The Lacedaemonians asserted that it had been dedicated by their ancestors and in their territory, and appealed to the records of their history and the hymns of poets, but it had been wrested from, they said, by the arms of the Macedonian Philip, with whom they had fought, and subsequently restored by the decision of Gaius Caesar and Marcus Antonius. The Messenians, on the contrary, alleged the ancient division of the Peloponnesus among the descendants of Hercules, in which the territory of Denthelia (where the temple stood) had fallen to their king. Records of this event still existed, engraven on stone and ancient bronze. But if they were asked for the testimony of poetry and of history, they had it, they said, in greater abundance and authenticity. Philip had not decided arbitrarily, but according to fact, and king Antigonus, as also the general Mummius, had pronounced the same judgment. Such too had been the award of the Milesians to whom the arbitration had been publicly entrusted, and, finally, of Atidius Geminus, the praetor of Achaia. And so the question was decided in favour of the Messenians. Next the people of Segesta petitioned for the restoration of the temple of Venus at Mount Eryx, which had fallen to ruin from its antiquity. They repeated the well-known story of its origin, which delighted Tiberius. He undertook the work willingly, as being a kinsman of the goddess. [Note 1] After this was discussed a petition from the city of Massilia, and sanction given to the precedent of Publius Rutilius, who having been legally banished from Rome, had been adopted as a citizen by the people of Smyrna. Volcatius Moschus, also an exile, had been received with a similar privilege by the inhabitants of Massilia, and had left his property to their community, as being now his own country.

Note 1: goddess = Venus