Their course was one that no one can avoid condemning. In the first place their fellow-citizens were cognisant of all they had done and said; next both the letters of Perseus to them and theirs to him had been captured and published,
and the emissaries employed on both sides had fallen into the hands of the Romans: and yet they could not resolve to yield to facts and remove themselves but still continued to dispute.
Therefore by thus obstinately clinging to life in face of this desperate position, they so far annihilated their reputation for daring and venturesomeness, that they did not leave to posterity the slightest ground for pitying or pardoning them.
For, convicted as they were to their faces by their own handwriting and their own emissaries, they were considered not so much to be unfortunate, as to be unabashed.
There was in fact a certain ship captain called Thoas, who had made frequent voyages to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Macedonia&groupId=723&placeId=428">Macedonia</a> commissioned by these men.
This Thoas, at the time when the change in the situation took place, feeling the burden of what he had done weigh on his conscience, left for <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Cnidus&groupId=481&placeId=902">Cnidus</a>. There the Cnidians put him in prison, and upon the Rhodians demanding his extradition he came to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rhodes&groupId=931&placeId=1665">Rhodes</a>,
and there when put to the torture made full confession in agreement with the interpretation of the whole cypher used in the captured correspondence and with the reading of the letters sent by Perseus to Deinon and Polyaratus and theirs to the king.
This makes one wonder on what Deinon calculated in clinging to life and enduring this exposure.
Walbank Commentary