<head>Philip V in misfortune</head><head>III. Affairs of Italy</head><head>Embassy from Lycia</head>After the dispatch of the consuls Tiberius Sempronius Gracchus and Gaius Claudius Pulcher against the Istri and Agrii, the Senate, when summer was approaching its end, gave audience to the envoys from <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Lycia&groupId=711&placeId=1304">Lycia</a> who reached <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a> after <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Lycia&groupId=711&placeId=1304">Lycia</a> had been entirely reduced, but had been dispatched a good deal earlier.
For the Xanthians, at the time they were about to embark on this war, had sent Nicostratus at the head of a mission to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Achaea&groupId=272&placeId=533">Achaea</a> and <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a>.
He arrived at <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a> only now, and appealed to the sentiments of many of the senators by bringing before their eyes the oppressiveness of the Rhodians and their own imminent danger.
Finally they succeeded in persuading the senate to send legates to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rhodes&groupId=931&placeId=1665">Rhodes</a>, to inform that state, that after referring to the reports that the ten commissioners had drawn up in Asia when they were arranging matters with Antiochus, they found that the Lycians had not been handed over the <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rhodes&groupId=931&placeId=1665">Rhodes</a> as a gift, but rather to be treated like friends and allies.
The imposition of these terms by no means pleased many people in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rhodes&groupId=931&placeId=1665">Rhodes</a>.
For it was thought that the Romans were constituting themselves arbiters in the matter of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rhodes&groupId=931&placeId=1665">Rhodes</a> and <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Lycia&groupId=711&placeId=1304">Lycia</a> with the object of exhausting the stores and treasure of the Rhodians,
having heard of their recent home-bringing of the bride of Perseus and of the refitting of their ships.
Indeed, a short while previously the whole of the Rhodian navy had been splendidly and munificently refitted. For Perseus had presented them with a quantity of wood for shipbuilding, and had given a golden tiara to each of the sailors in the galleys that had escorted his bride Laodice on her way to him.
Walbank Commentary