Rhodians

Thus when Cassius demanded assistance of the Rhodians, according to treaty, they answered they would send it, if the senate thought proper.

The Rhodian deputies said, “You Romans profess to believe that your wars are successful, because they are just:

Cato in his speech for the Rhodians, says, “Are we to prevent them by doing first, what we say they intended to do to us?

Or from whom more authoritative and greater than from the people of Rhodes and your city?

For on the contrary you were both formerly the wealthiest of the Greeks and now are still more so;

for among those by whom such things are neglected, it shows some baseness of the city, and none of the rest can be done becomingly.

while the Rhodians, who were Argives by race, were compelled to wage war against the Syracusans, who were Dorians, and the Geloans, who were even their own colonists, serving with the Syracusans.

The Peloponnesians levied money from the Rhodians to the amount of two and thirty talents;

Then, having assembled both these and the people from the two other towns, Lindus and Ialysus, the Lacedaemonians prevailed on the Rhodians to revolt from the Athenians.

To you, pray, Spurius, do the Rhodians—among whom we lately were together—seem to have no commonwealth at all?

In my opinion it is right to restore the Rhodian democracy;

Yet everyone knows that the Rhodians are Greeks, while Egypt is a division of the Persian Empire.

For when he does claim it, you will have to take counsel, not for the Rhodians only, but for yourselves and all the Greeks.

Demosthenes in his speech on the liberty of the Rhodians says that it was necessary for those who wished to be free to keep away from treaties which were imposed upon them, because such treaties were almost the same as slavery.

At the beginning of this oration I speak on the question of making peace with the Chians, the Rhodians, and the Byzantines;

I maintain, then, that we should make peace, not only with the Chians, the Rhodians, the Byzantines and the Coans, but with all mankind, and that we should adopt, not the covenants of peace which certain parties have recently drawn up, but those which we have entered into with the king of Persia and with the Lacedaemonians, which ordain that the Hellenes be independent, that the alien garrisons be …

The Rhodians took his news so seriously that they manned triremes and brought in their merchantmen;

He won notoriety by his voyage to Rhodes and the discreditable report of you which he made officially to the Rhodians and to those merchants residing there;

the Rhodians, however, are versed also in the art of slinging leaden bullets.

Now I am told that there are Rhodians in our army, that most of them understand the use of the sling, and that their missile carries no less than twice as far as those from the Persian slings.

If, therefore, we should ascertain who among them possess slings, and should not only pay these people for their slings, but likewise pay anyone who is willing to plait new ones, and if, furthermore, we should devise some sort of exemption for the man who will volunteer to serve as a slinger at his appointed post, it may be that men will come forward who will be capable of helping us.