Afterwards he frequently let his desire for re-election
be seen, and once became a candidate, but as he failed and was passed
over, he thenceforth remained in retirement, occupying himself with
religious matters, and teaching his children not only the Roman
education in which he himself had been brought up, but also the Greek,
and that more carefully. For not only were the grammarians,
philosophers, and orators Greek, but also the sculptors and painters,
and the young men kept Greeks to manage their horses and hounds, and
instruct them in hunting. Aemilius, unless hindered by public business,
always was present at the exercises and studies of his sons, and was the
kindest father in Rome.
VII. This was the period during which the Romans, who were at war with
Perseus, King of Macedon, complained of their generals, whose ignorance
and cowardice had led to the most disgraceful and ridiculous failure,
and to the sustaining of much more loss than they inflicted. They, who
had just driven Antiochus, called the Great, out of Asia Minor, beyond
Taurus, and restricted him to Syria, making him glad to purchase peace
at the price of fifteen thousand talents; who, a little before, had
crushed Philip in Thessaly, and set free the Greeks from the power of
Macedon; and who had also utterly subdued Hannibal himself, a man whose
daring and immense resources rendered him far more dangerous an opponent
than any king, thought that it was not to be borne that Perseus should
wage war as if he were on equal terms with the Roman people, and that,
too, with only the remnants of his father's routed forces; for they did
not know that Philip, after his defeat, had greatly increased the power
and efficiency of the Macedonian army.
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