But should our embassy fail of producing any effect on him, let us then take care, that if we cannot unite him to ourselves, he may not be united to our enemies.

Your son, Seleucus, is at Lysimachia; and if, with the army which he has there, he shall pass through Thrace, and once begin to make depredations on the nearest parts of Macedonia, he will effectually divert Philip from carrying aid to the Romans, to the protection, in the first place, of his own dominions.

Such is my opinion respecting Philip.

With regard to the general plan of the war, you have, from the beginning, been acquainted with my sentiments: and if my advice had been listened to, the Romans would not now hear that Chalcis in Euboea was taken, and a fort on the Euripus reduced, but that Etruria, and the whole coast of Liguria and Cisalpine Gaul, were in a blaze of war; and, what is to them the greatest cause of alarm, that Hannibal was in Italy.

Even as matters stand at present, I recommend it to you, to call home all your land and sea forces; let storeships with provisions follow the fleet; for, as we are here too few for the exigencies of the war, so are we too many for the scanty supplies of necessaries.