Moagetes was tyrant of Cibyra. He was a cruel and treacherous man and worthy of more than a passing notice. ENGLISH TRANSLATION DOES NOT MATCH THE GREEK HERE.
When Gnaeus Manlius Vulso, the Roman consul, approached Cibyra and sent Helvius to find out what the mind of Moagetes was, the latter sent envoys begging Helvius not to lay the country waste as he was the friend of the Romans and ready to do anything they told him.
He at the same time offered a gold crown of fifteen talents.
Helvius, after listening to those envoys, promised to spare the country himself, but referred them to the consul for a general settlement. Manlius, he said, was close behind him with his army.
Upon this being done, Moagetes having sent his brother in addition to the other envoys, Manlius met them on his march and spoke to them in a threatening and severe manner,
saying that not only had Moagetes proved more hostile to the Romans than any other Asiatic prince, but had done all in his power to subvert their rule, and therefore deserved animadversion and chastisement rather than friendship.
The envoys, alarmed by the vehemence of his anger, neglected their other instructions and begged him to grant an interview to Moagetes himself.
On his agreeing to this request they returned to Cibyra;
and next day the tyrant and his friends came out to meet him dressed and escorted in the simplest and most unassuming manner, and in a submissive speech, bewailing his own powerlessness and the weakness of the towns subject to him, begged Manlius to accept the fifteen talents —
the places he ruled over being, besides Cibyra, Syleium and that called the town in the Lake.
Manlius, amazed at his impudence, said not another word, but merely that if he did not pay five hundred talents and thank his stars, he would not only lay waste his territory, but besiege and sack the city itself.
So that Moagetes, in dread of the fate that threatened him, implored him to do nothing of the kind; and, raising his offer little by little, persuaded Manlius to accept a hundred talents and ten thousand medimni of wheat and to receive him into his alliance.
Walbank Commentary