This, I think, was the beginning of their overtures to each other; and as it was a match between two princes, one of whom had the reputation of being most unprincipled and the other most avaricious, the contest proved very ridiculous.
For Eumenes on the one hand was holding out all kinds of hopes to Perseus and tempting him with every variety of bait, feeling sure he would catch him by his promises;
while Perseus from a distance pretended to rush at these offers and to be coming to an agreement, but could never persuade himself to swallow any of the baits to the extent of making a sacrifice of money.
The kind of tussle between the two was as follows. Eumenes asked five hundred talents for keeping quiet in the fourth year of the war and not supporting the Romans either by sea or by land, and fifteen hundred talents for putting an end to the war. For either of the two he promised to give at once hostages and security.
Perseus was ready to receive the hostages, and arranged how many they should be, when they should be sent and how they were to be kept in charge by the people of Cnosus.
As for the money, he said regarding the five hundred talents that it was disgraceful for the giver and still more so for the receiver to be thought to be hired to keep neutral; but he said have would send Polemocrates to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Samothrace&groupId=945&placeId=1681">Samothrace</a> with the fifteen hundred talents and then mediate there, <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Samothrace&groupId=945&placeId=1681">Samothrace</a> being part of his own dominions.
But Eumenes who, like bad physicians, was more concerned about his retaining fee than about his final fee, renounced his efforts, having found it beyond his power to get the better by his own cunning of the meanness of Perseus;
and so, neither of them winning the prize for avarice, they made a drawn match of it like two good wrestlers.
Some of these facts leaked out at the time and others shortly afterwards to the intimate friends of Perseus, from whom I learnt enough to convince me that avarice is, as it were, the tuning-peg of every vice.
Walbank Commentary