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Antiochus, on his return from Pisidia to Ephesus, entered upon the business with the Roman ambassadors and promised to leave the Rhodians, the Byzantines, the Cyzicaeans, and the other Greeks of Asia free and independent if the Romans would make a treaty with him, but he would not release the Aetolians and the Ionians, since they had long been accustomed to obey the barbarian kings of Asia. The Roman ambassadors came to no agreement with him — in fact, they had not come to make an agreement, but to find out his purposes. So they returned to Rome. There-upon an Aetolian embassy came to Antiochus, of which Thoas was the principal member, offering him the command of the Aetolian forces and urging him to embark for Greece at once, as everything was in readiness there. They would not allow him to wait for the army that was coming from upper Asia, but by exaggerating the strength of the Aetolians and promising the alliance of the Lacedaemonians and of Philip of Macedon in addition, who was angry with the Romans, they urged his crossing. He assembled his forces very hastily, nor did even the news of his son’s death in Syria delay him at all. He sailed to Eubœa with 10,000 men, who were all that he had in hand at the time. He took possession of the whole island, which surrendered to him through fear. Michithio, one of his generals, fell upon the Romans at Delium (a place sacred to Apollo), killed some of them, and took the rest prisoners.
