<head>Dispute between <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rhodes&groupId=931&placeId=1665">Rhodes</a> and Lycia</head>A difference arose between the Lycians and Rhodians owing to the following reasons.
At the time when the ten commissioners were administering the affairs of Asia, two envoys, Theaedetus and Philophron, arrived from <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rhodes&groupId=931&placeId=1665">Rhodes</a> asking that <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Lycia&groupId=711&placeId=1304">Lycia</a> and Caria should be given to the Rhodians in return for their goodwill and active assistance in the war with Antiochus;
and at the same time two envoys from the people of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Ilium&groupId=645&placeId=1183">Ilium</a>, Hipparchus and Satyrus, came begging that, for the sake of the kinship between <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Ilium&groupId=645&placeId=1183">Ilium</a> and <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a>, the offences of the Lycians might be pardoned.
The ten commissioners, after giving both embassies a hearing, attempted as far as possible to meet the requests of both. For to please the people of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Ilium&groupId=645&placeId=1183">Ilium</a> they took no very severe measures against the Lycians;
but, as a favour to the Rhodians, they assigned <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Lycia&groupId=711&placeId=1304">Lycia</a> to them as a gift.
Owing to this decision a quarrel of no trivial character arose between the Lycians and the Rhodians themselves. For the representatives of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Ilium&groupId=645&placeId=1183">Ilium</a>, visiting the Lycian cities, announced that they had deprecated the anger of the Romans and had been instrumental in obtaining their freedom.
Theaedetus, however, and his colleague published in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rhodes&groupId=931&placeId=1665">Rhodes</a> the message that <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Lycia&groupId=711&placeId=1304">Lycia</a> and Caria, south of the <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Meander&groupId=725&placeId=1331">Meander</a>, had been given to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rhodes&groupId=931&placeId=1665">Rhodes</a> as a present by the Romans.
After this envoys from <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Lycia&groupId=711&placeId=1304">Lycia</a> came to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rhodes&groupId=931&placeId=1665">Rhodes</a> to propose an alliance, but the Rhodians appointed some of their citizens to proceed to the cities of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Lycia&groupId=711&placeId=1304">Lycia</a> and Caria and give general orders as to what was to be done.
Though the conceptions formed on both sides were so widely divergent, yet up to a certain point the difference between them was not manifest to every one;
but when the Lycians came into the Rhodian Assembly and began to talk about alliance, and when afterwards Pothion the Rhodian prytanis got up and after a clear statement of the two views rebuked the Lycians, they . . . for they said they would submit to anything rather than obey the orders of the Rhodians.
Walbank Commentary