Internal History and Miscellaneous Occurrences of the Period from the Lucanian down to the first Punic War

Summary

Two years after Pyrrhus had been conquered, 473 (479), Ptolemy Philadelphia sought the friendship and alliance of the Romans by an embassy, which was received at Rome with great distinction. The senate accepted the proposal very readily, and in reply sent three embassadors with presents to Alexandria: it was the custom however to transmit to kings in friendship with the Romans a purple toga and tunic, and an ivory throne. In costliness the Romans could not pretend to vie with the treasures of Alexandria: but the chief of the embassy, Q. Fabius Gurges, was the chief of the senate; a distinction of which no second example occurs. The embassadors were splendidly received: the king, according to the Greek custom, had golden crowns offered them: to preserve the omen and honour the king, they accepted the present, but placed them on the heads of his statues. Other marks of honour which could not be refused thus, they gave up to the treasury, even before making their report upon the embassy: but the senate gave it all to them as their property.

These transactions were not an empty display of vanity. The ruler of the first commercial state in the world at that time had not a few important relations with the rulers of Italy: but political ones, which can only be perceived by attentive reflection, in consequence of the isolation of the histories of states which are destroyed even down to almost unintelligible fragments, induced the Alexandrian king to seek something more than a connexion favorable to the commerce of his subjects.