VIII. The Eastern States and the Second Macedonian War…

VIII. The Eastern States and the Second Macedonian War

The Hellenic East

The work, which Alexander king of Macedonia had begun a century before the Romans acquired their first footing in the territory which he had called his own, had in the course of time--while adhering substantially to the great fundamental idea of Hellenizing the east --changed and expanded into the construction of a system of Hellene- Asiatic states. The unconquerable propensity of the Greeks for migration and colonizing, which had formerly carried their traders to Massilia and Cyrene, to the Nile and to the Black Sea, now firmly held what the king had won; and under the protection of the -sarissae-, Greek civilization peacefully domiciled itself everywhere throughout the ancient empire of the Achaemenidae. The officers, who divided the heritage of the great general, gradually settled their differences, and a system of equilibrium was established, of which the very Oscillations manifest some sort of regularity.

The Great States Macedonia

Of the three states of the first rank belonging to this system --Macedonia, Asia, and Egypt--Macedonia under Philip the Fifth, who had occupied the throne since 534, was externally at least very much what it had been under Philip the Second the father of Alexander --a compact military state with its finances in good order. On its northern frontier matters had resumed their former footing, after the waves of the Gallic inundation had rolled away; the guard of the frontier kept the Illyrian barbarians in check without difficulty, at least in ordinary times. In the south, not only was Greece in general dependent on Macedonia, but a large portion of it--including all Thessaly in its widest sense from Olympus to the Spercheius and the peninsula of Magnesia, the large and important island of Euboea, the provinces of Locris, Phocis, and Doris, and lastly, a number of isolated positions in Attica and in the Peloponnesus, such as the promontory of Sunium, Corinth, Orchomenus, Heraea, the Triphylian territory--was directly subject to Macedonia and received Macedonian garrisons; more especially the three important fortresses of Demetrias in Magnesia, Chalcis in Euboea, and Corinth, "the three fetters of the Hellenes." But the strength of the state lay above all in its hereditary soil, the province of Macedonia. The population, indeed, of that extensive territory was remarkably scanty; Macedonia, putting forth all her energies, was scarcely able to bring into the field as many men as were contained in an ordinary consular army of two legions; and it was unmistakeably evident that the land had not yet recovered from the depopulation occasioned by the campaigns of Alexander and by the Gallic invasion. But while in Greece proper the moral and political energy of the people had decayed, the day of national vigour seemed to have gone by, life appeared scarce worth living for, and even of the better spirits one spent time over the wine-cup, another with the rapier, a third beside the student's lamp; while in the east and Alexandria the Greeks were able perhaps to disseminate elements of culture among the dense native population and to diffuse among that population their language and their loquacity, their science and pseudo-science, but were barely sufficient in point of number to supply the nations with officers, statesmen, and schoolmasters, and were far too few to form even in the cities middle- class of the pure Greek type; there still existed, or the other hand, in northern Greece a goodly portion of the old national vigour, which had produced the warriors of Marathon. Hence arose the confidence with which the Macedonians, Aetolians, and Acarnanians, wherever they made their appearance in the east, claimed to be, and were taken as, a better race; and hence the superior part which they played at the courts of Alexandria and Antioch. There is a characteristic story, that an Alexandrian who had lived for a considerable time in Macedonia and had adopted the manners and the dress of that country, on returning to his native city, now looked upon himself as a man and upon the Alexandrians as little better than slaves. This sturdy vigour and unimpaired national spirit were turned to peculiarly good account by the Macedonians, as the most powerful and best organized of the states of northern Greece. There, no doubt, absolutism had emerged in opposition to the old constitution, which to some extent recognized different estates; but sovereign and subject by no means stood towards each other in Macedonia as they stood in Asia and Egypt, and the people still felt itself independent and free. In steadfast resistance to the public enemy under whatever name, in unshaken fidelity towards their native country and their hereditary government, and in persevering courage amidst the severest trials, no nation in ancient history bears so close a resemblance to the Roman people as the Macedonians; and the almost miraculous regeneration of the state after the Gallic invasion redounds to the imperishable honour of its leaders and of the people whom they led.

Asia

The second of the great states, Asia, was nothing but Persia superficially remodelled and Hellenized--the empire of "the king of kings," as its master was wont to call himself in a style characteristic at once of his arrogance and of his weakness--with the same pretensions to rule from the Hellespont to the Punjab, and with the same disjointed organization; an aggregate of dependent states in various degrees of dependence, of insubordinate satrapies, and of half-free Greek cities. In Asia Minor more especially, which was nominally included in the empire of the Seleucidae, the whole north coast and the greater part of the eastern interior were practically in the hands of native dynasties or of the Celtic hordes that had penetrated thither from Europe; a considerable portion of the west was in the possession of the kings of Pergamus, and the islands and coast towns were some of them Egyptian, some of them free; so that little more was left to the great-king than the interior of Cilicia, Phrygia, and Lydia, and a great number of titular claims, not easily made good, against free cities and princes--exactly similar in character to the sovereignty of the German emperor, in his day, beyond his hereditary dominions. The strength of the empire was expended in vain endeavours to expel the Egyptians from the provinces along the coast; in frontier strife with the eastern peoples, the Parthians and Bactrians; in feuds with the Celts, who to the misfortune of Asia Minor had settled within its bounds; in constant efforts to check the attempts of the eastern satraps and of the Greek cities of Asia Minor to achieve their independence; and in family quarrels and insurrections of pretenders. None indeed of the states founded by the successors of Alexander were free from such attempts, or from the other horrors which absolute monarchy in degenerate times brings in its train; but in the kingdom of Asia these evils were more injurious than elsewhere, because, from the lax composition of the empire, they usually led to the severance of particular portions from it for longer or shorter periods.

Egypt

In marked contrast to Asia, Egypt formed a consolidated and united state, in which the intelligent statecraft of the first Lagidae, skilfully availing itself of ancient national and religious precedent, had established a completely absolute cabinet government, and in which even the worst misrule failed to provoke any attempt either at emancipation or disruption. Very different from the Macedonians, whose national attachment to royalty was based upon their personal dignity and was its political expression, the rural population in Egypt was wholly passive; the capital on the other hand was everything, and that capital was a dependency of the court. The remissness and indolence of its rulers, accordingly, paralyzed the state in Egypt still more than in Macedonia and in Asia; while on the other hand when wielded by men, like the first Ptolemy and Ptolemy Euergetes, such a state machine proved itself extremely useful. It was one of the peculiar advantages of Egypt as compared with its two great rivals, that its policy did not grasp at shadows, but pursued clear and attainable objects. Macedonia, the home of Alexander, and Asia, the land where he had established his throne, never ceased to regard themselves as direct continuations of the Alexandrine monarchy and more or less loudly asserted their claim to represent it at least, if not to restore it. The Lagidae never tried to found a universal empire, and never dreamt of conquering India; but, by way of compensation, they drew the whole traffic between India and the Mediterranean from the Phoenician ports to Alexandria, and made Egypt the first commercial and maritime state of this epoch, and the mistress of the eastern Mediterranean and of its coasts and islands. It is a significant fact, that Ptolemy III. Euergetes voluntarily restored all his conquests to Seleucus Callinicus except the seaport of Antioch. Partly by this means, partly by its favourable geographical situation, Egypt attained, with reference to the two continental powers, an excellent military position either for defence or for attack. While an opponent even in the full career of success was hardly in a position seriously to threaten Egypt, which was almost inaccessible on any side to land armies, the Egyptians were able by sea to establish themselves not only in Cyrene, but also in Cyprus and the Cyclades, on the Phoenico-Syrian coast, on the whole south and west coast of Asia Minor and even in Europe on the Thracian Chersonese. By their unexampled skill in turning to account the fertile valley of the Nile for the direct benefit of the treasury, and by a financial system--equally sagacious and unscrupulous --earnestly and adroitly calculated to foster material interests, the court of Alexandria was constantly superior to its opponents even as a moneyed power. Lastly, the intelligent munificence, with which the Lagidae welcomed the tendency of the age towards earnest inquiry in all departments of enterprise and of knowledge, and knew how to confine such inquiries within the bounds, and entwine them with the interests, of absolute monarchy, was productive of direct advantage to the state, whose ship-building and machine-making showed traces of the beneficial influence of Alexandrian mathematics; and not only so, but also rendered this new intellectual power--the most important and the greatest, which the Hellenic nation after its political dismemberment put forth--subservient, so far as it would consent to be serviceable at all, to the Alexandrian court. Had the empire of Alexander continued to stand, Greek science and art would have found a state worthy and capable of containing them. Now, when the nation had fallen to pieces, a learned cosmopolitanism grew up in it luxuriantly, and was very soon attracted by the magnet of Alexandria, where scientific appliances and collections were inexhaustible, where kings composed tragedies and ministers wrote commentaries on them, and where pensions and academies flourished.

The mutual relations of the three great states are evident from what has been said. The maritime power, which ruled the coasts and monopolized the sea, could not but after the first great success --the political separation of the European from the Asiatic continent --direct its further efforts towards the weakening of the two great states on the mainland, and consequently towards the protection of the several minor states; whereas Macedonia and Asia, while regarding each other as rivals, recognized above all their common adversary in Egypt, and combined, or at any rate ought to have combined, against it.

The Kingdoms of Asia Minor

Among the states of the second rank, merely an indirect importance, so far as concerned the contact of the east with the west, attached in the first instance to that series of states which, stretching from the southern end of the Caspian Sea to the Hellespont, occupied the interior and the north coast of Asia Minor: Atropatene (in the modern Aderbijan, south-west of the Caspian), next to it Armenia, Cappadocia in the interior of Asia Minor, Pontus on the south-east, and Bithynia on the south-west, shore of the Black Sea. All of these were fragments of the great Persian Empire, and were ruled by Oriental, mostly old Persian, dynasties--the remote mountain-land of Atropatene in particular was the true asylum of the ancient Persian system, over which even the expedition of Alexander had swept without leaving a trace--and all were in the same relation of temporary and superficial dependence on the Greek dynasty, which had taken or wished to take the place of the great-kings in Asia.

The Celts of Asia Minor

Of greater importance for the general relations was the Celtic state in the interior of Asia Minor. There, intermediate between Bithynia, Paphlagonia, Cappadocia, and Phrygia, three Celtic tribes --the Tolistoagii, the Tectosages, and Trocmi--had settled, without abandoning either their native language and manners or their constitution and their trade as freebooters. The twelve tetrarchs, one of whom was appointed to preside over each of the four cantons in each of the three tribes, formed, with their council of 300 men, the supreme authority of the nation, and assembled at the "holy place" (-Drunemetum-), especially for the pronouncing of capital sentences. Singular as this cantonal constitution of the Celts appeared to the Asiatics, equally strange seemed to them the adventurous and marauding habits of the northern intruders, who on the one hand furnished their unwarlike neighbours with mercenaries for every war, and on the other plundered on their own account or levied contributions from the surrounding districts. These rude but vigorous barbarians were the general terror of the effeminate surrounding nations, and even of the great-kings of Asia themselves, who, after several Asiatic armies had been destroyed by the Celts and king Antiochus I. Soter had even lost his life in conflict with them (493), agreed at last to pay them tribute.

Pergamus

In consequence of bold and successful opposition to these Gallic hordes, Attalus, a wealthy citizen of Pergamus, received the royal title from his native city and bequeathed it to his posterity. This new court was in miniature what that of Alexandria was on a great scale. Here too the promotion of material interests and the fostering of art and literature formed the order of the day, and the government pursued a cautious and sober cabinet policy, the main objects of which were the weakening the power of its two dangerous continental neighbours, and the establishing an independent Greek state in the west of Asia Minor. A well-filled treasury contributed greatly to the importance of these rulers of Pergamus. They advanced considerable sums to the kings of Syria, the repayment of which afterwards formed part of the Roman conditions of peace. They succeeded even in acquiring territory in this way; Aegina, for instance, which the allied Romans and Aetolians had wrested in the last war from Philip's allies, the Achaeans, was sold by the Aetolians, to whom it fell in terms of the treaty, to Attalus for 30 talents (7300 pounds). But, notwithstanding the splendour of the court and the royal title, the commonwealth of Pergamus always retained something of the urban character; and in its policy it usually went along with the free cities. Attalus himself, the Lorenzo de' Medici of antiquity, remained throughout life a wealthy burgher; and the family life of the Attalid house, from which harmony and cordiality were not banished by the royal title, formed a striking contrast to the dissolute and scandalous behaviour of more aristocratic dynasties.

Greece Epirots, Acarnanians, Boeotians

In European Greece--exclusive of the Roman possessions on the west coast, in the most important of which, particularly Corcyra, Roman magistrates appear to have resided,(1) and the territory directly subject to Macedonia--the powers more or less in a position to pursue a policy of their own were the Epirots, Acarnanians, and Aetolians in northern Greece, the Boeotians and Athenians in central Greece, and the Achaeans, Lacedaemonians, Messenians, and Eleans in the Peloponnesus. Among these, the republics of the Epirots, Acarnanians, and Boeotians were in various ways closely knit to Macedonia--the Acarnanians more especially, because it was only Macedonian protection that enabled them to escape the destruction with which they were threatened by the Aetolians; none of them were of any consequence. Their internal condition was very various. The state of things may to some extent be illustrated by the fact, that among the Boeotians --where, it is true, matters reached their worst--it had become customary to make over every property, which did not descend to heirs in the direct line, to the -syssitia-; and, in the case of candidates for the public magistracies, for a quarter of a century the primary condition of election was that they should bind themselves not to allow any creditor, least of all a foreign one, to sue his debtor.

The Athenians

The Athenians were in the habit of receiving support against Macedonia from Alexandria, and were in close league with the Aetolians. But they too were totally powerless, and hardly anything save the halo of Attic poetry and art distinguished these unworthy successors of a glorious past from a number of petty towns of the same stamp.

The Aetolians

The power of the Aetolian confederacy manifested a greater vigour. The energy of the northern Greek character was still unbroken there, although it had degenerated into a reckless impatience of discipline and control. It was a public law in Aetolia, that an Aetolian might serve as a mercenary against any state, even against a state in alliance with his own country; and, when the other Greeks urgently besought them to redress this scandal, the Aetolian diet declared that Aetolia might sooner be removed from its place than this principle from their national code. The Aetolians might have been of great service to the Greek nation, had they not inflicted still greater injury on it by this system of organized robbery, by their thorough hostility to the Achaean confederacy, and by their unhappy antagonism to the great state of Macedonia.

The Achaeans

In the Peloponnesus, the Achaean league had united the best elements of Greece proper in a confederacy based on civilization, national spirit, and peaceful preparation for self-defence. But the vigour and more especially the military efficiency of the league had, notwithstanding its outward enlargement, been arrested by the selfish diplomacy of Aratus. The unfortunate variances with Sparta, and the still more lamentable invocation of Macedonian interference in the Peloponnesus, had so completely subjected the Achaean league to Macedonian supremacy, that the chief fortresses of the country thenceforward received Macedonian garrisons, and the oath of fidelity to Philip was annually taken there.

Sparta, Elis, Messene

The policy of the weaker states in the Peloponnesus, Messene, and Sparta, was determined by their ancient enmity to the Achaean league --an enmity specially fostered by disputes regarding their frontiers --and their tendencies were Aetolian and anti-Macedonian, because the Achaeans took part with Philip. The only one of these states possessing any importance was the Spartan military monarchy, which after the death of Machanidas had passed into the hands of one Nabis. With ever-increasing hardihood Nabis leaned on the support of vagabonds and itinerant mercenaries, to whom he assigned not only the houses and lands, but also the wives and children, of the citizens; and he assiduously maintained connections, and even entered into an association for the joint prosecution of piracy, with the great refuge of mercenaries and pirates, the island of Crete, where he possessed some townships. His predatory expeditions by land, and the piratical vessels which he maintained at the promontory of Malea, were dreaded far and wide; he was personally hated for his baseness and cruelty; but his rule was extending, and about the time of the battle of Zama he had even succeeded in gaining possession of Messene.

League of the Greek Cities Rhodes

Lastly, the most independent position among the intermediate states was held by the free Greek mercantile cities on the European shore of the Propontis as well as along the whole coast of Asia Minor, and on the islands of the Aegean Sea; they formed, at the same time, the brightest elements in the confused and multifarious picture which was presented by the Hellenic state-system. Three of them, in particular, had after Alexander's death again enjoyed their full freedom, and by the activity of their maritime commerce had attained to respectable political power and even to considerable territorial possessions; namely, Byzantium the mistress of the Bosporus, rendered wealthy and powerful by the transit dues which she levied and by the important corn trade carried on with the Black Sea; Cyzicus on the Asiatic side of the Propontis, the daughter and heiress of Miletus, maintaining the closest relations with the court of Pergamus; and lastly and above all, Rhodes. The Rhodians, who immediately after the death of Alexander had expelled the Macedonian garrison had, by their favourable position for commerce and navigation, secured the carrying trade of all the eastern Mediterranean; and their well-handled fleet, as well as the tried courage of the citizens in the famous siege of 450, enabled them in that age of promiscuous and ceaseless hostilities to become the prudent and energetic representatives and, when occasion required, champions of a neutral commercial policy. They compelled the Byzantines, for instance, by force of arms to concede to the vessels of Rhodes exemption from dues in the Bosporus; and they did not permit the dynast of Pergamus to close the Black Sea. On the other hand they kept themselves, as far as possible, aloof from land warfare, although they had acquired no inconsiderable possessions on the opposite coast of Caria; where war could not be avoided, they carried it on by means of mercenaries. With their neighbours on all sides they were in friendly relations--with Syracuse, Macedonia, Syria, but more especially with Egypt--and they enjoyed high consideration at these courts, so that their mediation was not unfrequently invoked in the wars of the great states. But they interested themselves quite specially on behalf of the Greek maritime cities, which were so numerously spread along the coasts of the kingdoms of Pontus, Bithynia, and Pergamus, as well as on the coasts and islands of Asia Minor that had been wrested by Egypt from the Seleucidae; such as Sinope, Heraclea Pontica, Cius, Lampsacus, Abydos, Mitylene, Chios, Smyrna, Samos, Halicarnassus and various others. All these were in substance free and had nothing to do with the lords of the soil except to ask for the confirmation of their privileges and, at most, to pay a moderate tribute: such encroachments, as from time to time were threatened by the dynasts, were skilfully warded off sometimes by cringing, sometimes by strong measures. In this case the Rhodians were their chief auxiliaries; they emphatically supported Sinope, for instance, against Mithradates of Pontus. How firmly amidst the quarrels, and by means of the very differences, of the monarchs the liberties of these cities of Asia Minor were established, is shown by the fact, that the dispute between Antiochus and the Romans some years after this time related not to the freedom of these cities in itself, but to the question whether they were to ask confirmation of their charters from the king or not. This league of the cities was, in this peculiar attitude towards the lords of the soil as well as in other respects, a formal Hanseatic association, headed by Rhodes, which negotiated and stipulated in treaties for itself and its allies. This league upheld the freedom of the cities against monarchical interests; and while wars raged around their walls, public spirit and civic prosperity were sheltered in comparative peace within, and art and science flourished without the risk of being crushed by a dissolute soldiery or corrupted by the atmosphere of a court.

Philip, King of Macedonia

Such was the state of things in the east, at the time when the wall of political separation between the east and the west was broken down and the eastern powers, Philip of Macedonia leading the way, were induced to interfere in the relations of the west. We have already set forth to some extent the origin of this interference and the course of the first Macedonian war (540-549); and we have pointed out what Philip might have accomplished during the second Punic war, and how little of all that Hannibal was entitled to expect and to count on was really fulfilled. A fresh illustration had been afforded of the truth, that of all haphazards none is more hazardous than an absolute hereditary monarchy. Philip was not the man whom Macedonia at that time required; yet his gifts were far from insignificant He was a genuine king, in the best and worst sense of the term. A strong desire to rule in person and unaided was the fundamental trait of his character; he was proud of his purple, but he was no less proud of other gifts, and he had reason to be so. He not only showed the valour of a soldier and the eye of a general, but he displayed a high spirit in the conduct of public affairs, whenever his Macedonian sense of honour was offended. Full of intelligence and wit, he won the hearts of all whom he wished to gain, especially of the men who were ablest and most refined, such as Flamininus and Scipio; he was a pleasant boon companion and, not by virtue of his rank alone, a dangerous wooer. But he was at the same time one of the most arrogant and flagitious characters, which that shameless age produced. He was in the habit of saying that he feared none save the gods; but it seemed almost as if his gods were those to whom his admiral Dicaearchus regularly offered sacrifice--Godlessness (-Asebeia-) and Lawlessness (-Paranomia-). The lives of his advisers and of the promoters of his schemes possessed no sacredness in his eyes, nor did he disdain to pacify his indignation against the Athenians and Attalus by the destruction of venerable monuments and illustrious works of art; it is quoted as one of his maxims of state, that "whoever causes the father to be put to death must also kill the sons." It may be that to him cruelty was not, strictly, a delight; but he was indifferent to the lives and sufferings of others, and relenting, which alone renders men tolerable, found no place in his hard and stubborn heart. So abruptly and harshly did he proclaim the principle that no promise and no moral law are binding on an absolute king, that he thereby interposed the most serious obstacles to the success of his plans. No one can deny that he possessed sagacity and resolution, but these were, in a singular manner, combined with procrastination and supineness; which is perhaps partly to be explained by the fact, that he was called in his eighteenth year to the position of an absolute sovereign, and that his ungovernable fury against every one who disturbed his autocratic course by counter-argument or counter-advice scared away from him all independent counsellors. What various causes cooperated to produce the weak and disgraceful management which he showed in the first Macedonian war, we cannot tell; it may have been due perhaps to that indolent arrogance which only puts forth its full energies against danger when it becomes imminent, or perhaps to his indifference towards a plan which was not of his own devising and his jealousy of the greatness of Hannibal which put him to shame. It is certain that his subsequent conduct betrayed no further trace of the Philip, through whose negligence the plan of Hannibal suffered shipwreck.

Macedonia and Asia Attack Egypt

When Philip concluded his treaty with the Aetolians and Romans in 548-9, he seriously intended to make a lasting peace with Rome, and to devote himself exclusively in future to the affairs of the east. It admits of no doubt that he saw with regret the rapid subjugation of Carthage; and it may be, that Hannibal hoped for a second declaration of war from Macedonia, and that Philip secretly reinforced the last Carthaginian army with mercenaries.(2) But the tedious affairs in which he had meanwhile involved himself in the east, as well as the nature of the alleged support, and especially the total silence of the Romans as to such a breach of the peace while they were searching for grounds of war, place it beyond doubt, that Philip was by no means disposed in 551 to make up for what he ought to have done ten years before. He had turned his eyes to an entirely different quarter.

Ptolemy Philopator of Egypt had died in 549. Philip and Antiochus, the kings of Macedonia and Asia, had combined against his successor Ptolemy Epiphanes, a child of five years old, in order completely to gratify the ancient grudge which the monarchies of the mainland entertained towards the maritime state. The Egyptian state was to be broken up; Egypt and Cyprus were to fall to Antiochus Cyrene, Ionia, and the Cyclades to Philip. Thoroughly after the manner of Philip, who ridiculed such considerations, the kings began the war not merely without cause but even without pretext, "just as the large fishes devour the small." The allies, moreover, had made their calculations correctly, especially Philip. Egypt had enough to do in defending herself against the nearer enemy in Syria, and was obliged to leave her possessions in Asia Minor and the Cyclades undefended when Philip threw himself upon these as his share of the spoil. In the year in which Carthage concluded peace with Rome (553), Philip ordered a fleet equipped by the towns subject to him to take on board troops, and to sail along the coast of Thrace. There Lysimachia was taken from the Aetolian garrison, and Perinthus, which stood in the relation of clientship to Byzantium, was likewise occupied. Thus the peace was broken as respected the Byzantines; and as respected the Aetolians, who had just made peace with Philip, the good understanding was at least disturbed. The crossing to Asia was attended with no difficulties, for Prusias king of Bithynia was in alliance with Macedonia. By way of recompense, Philip helped him to subdue the Greek mercantile cities in his territory. Chalcedon submitted. Cius, which resisted, was taken by storm and levelled with the ground, and its inhabitants were reduced to slavery--a meaningless barbarity, which annoyed Prusias himself who wished to get possession of the town uninjured, and which excited profound indignation throughout the Hellenic world. The Aetolians, whose -strategus- had commanded in Cius, and the Rhodians, whose attempts at mediation had been contemptuously and craftily frustrated by the king, were especially offended.

The Rhodian Hansa and Pergamus Oppose Philip

But even had this not been so, the interests of all Greek commercial cities were at stake. They could not possibly allow the mild and almost purely nominal Egyptian rule to be supplanted by the Macedonian despotism, with which urban self-government and freedom of commercial intercourse were not at all compatible; and the fearful treatment of the Cians showed that the matter at stake was not the right of confirming the charters of the towns, but the life or death of one and all. Lampsacus had already fallen, and Thasos had been treated like Cius; no time was to be lost. Theophiliscus, the vigilant -strategus- of Rhodes, exhorted his citizens to meet the common danger by common resistance, and not to suffer the towns and islands to become one by one a prey to the enemy. Rhodes resolved on its course, and declared war against Philip. Byzantium joined it; as did also the aged Attalus king of Pergamus, personally and politically the enemy of Philip. While the fleet of the allies was mustering on the Aeolian coast, Philip directed a portion of his fleet to take Chios and Samos. With the other portion he appeared in person before Pergamus, which however he invested in vain; he had to content himself with traversing the level country and leaving the traces of Macedonian valour on the temples which he destroyed far and wide. Suddenly he departed and re-embarked, to unite with his squadron which was at Samos. But the Rhodo-Pergamene fleet followed him, and forced him to accept battle in the straits of Chios. The number of the Macedonian decked vessels was smaller, but the multitude of their open boats made up for this inequality, and the soldiers of Philip fought with great courage. But he was at length defeated. Almost half of his decked vessels, 24 sail, were sunk or taken; 6000 Macedonian sailors and 3000 soldiers perished, amongst whom was the admiral Democrates; 2000 were taken prisoners. The victory cost the allies no more than 800 men and six vessels. But, of the leaders of the allies, Attalus had been cut off from his fleet and compelled to let his own vessel run aground at Erythrae; and Theophiliscus of Rhodes, whose public spirit had decided the question of war and whose valour had decided the battle, died on the day after it of his wounds. Thus while the fleet of Attalus went home and the Rhodian fleet remained temporarily at Chios, Philip, who falsely ascribed the victory to himself, was able to continue his voyage and to turn towards Samos, in order to occupy the Carian towns. On the Carian coast the Rhodians, not on this occasion supported by Attalus, gave battle for the second time to the Macedonian fleet under Heraclides, near the little island of Lade in front of the port of Miletus. The victory, claimed again by both sides, appears to have been this time gained by the Macedonians; for while the Rhodians retreated to Myndus and thence to Cos, the Macedonians occupied Miletus, and a squadron under Dicaearchus the Aetolian occupied the Cyclades. Philip meanwhile prosecuted the conquest of the Rhodian possessions on the Carian mainland, and of the Greek cities: had he been disposed to attack Ptolemy in person, and had he not preferred to confine himself to the acquisition of his own share in the spoil, he would now have been able to think even of an expedition to Egypt. In Caria no army confronted the Macedonians, and Philip traversed without hindrance the country from Magnesia to Mylasa; but every town in that country was a fortress, and the siege-warfare was protracted without yielding or promising any considerable results. Zeuxis the satrap of Lydia supported the ally of his master with the same lukewarmness as Philip had manifested in promoting the interests of the Syrian king, and the Greek cities gave their support only under the pressure of fear or force. The provisioning of the army became daily more difficult; Philip was obliged today to plunder those who but yesterday had voluntarily supplied his wants, and then he had reluctantly to submit to beg afresh. Thus the good season of the year gradually drew to an end, and in the interval the Rhodians had reinforced their fleet and had also been rejoined by that of Attalus, so that they were decidedly superior at sea. It seemed almost as if they might cut off the retreat of the king and compel him to take up winter quarters in Caria, while the state of affairs at home, particularly the threatened intervention of the Aetolians and Romans, urgently demanded his return. Philip saw the danger; he left garrisons amounting together to 3000 men, partly in Myrina to keep Pergamus in check, partly in the petty towns round Mylasa--Iassus, Bargylia, Euromus and Pedasa --to secure for him the excellent harbour and a landing place in Caria; and, owing to the negligence with which the allies guarded the sea, he succeeded in safely reaching the Thracian coast with his fleet and arriving at home before the winter of 553-4.

Diplomatic Intervention of Rome

In fact a storm was gathering against Philip in the west, which did not permit him to continue the plundering of defenceless Egypt. The Romans, who had at length in this year concluded peace on their own terms with Carthage, began to give serious attention to these complications in the east. It has often been affirmed, that after the conquest of the west they forthwith proceeded to the subjugation of the east; a serious consideration will lead to a juster judgment. It is only dull prejudice which fails to see that Rome at this period by no means grasped at the sovereignty of the Mediterranean states, but, on the contrary, desired nothing further than to have neighbours that should not be dangerous in Africa and in Greece; and Macedonia was not really dangerous to Rome. Its power certainly was far from small, and it is evident that the Roman senate only consented with reluctance to the peace of 548-9, which left it in all its integrity; but how little any serious apprehensions of Macedonia were or could be entertained in Rome, is best shown by the small number of troops--who yet were never compelled to fight against a superior force--with which Rome carried on the next war. The senate doubtless would have gladly seen Macedonia humbled; but that humiliation would be too dearly purchased at the cost of a land war carried on in Macedonia with Roman troops; and accordingly, after the withdrawal of the Aetolians, the senate voluntarily concluded peace at once on the basis of the -status quo-. It is therefore far from made out, that the Roman government concluded this peace with the definite design of beginning the war at a more convenient season; and it is very certain that, at the moment, from the thorough exhaustion of the state and the extreme unwillingness of the citizens to enter into a second transmarine struggle, the Macedonian war was in a high degree unwelcome to the Romans. But now it was inevitable. They might have acquiesced in the Macedonian state as a neighbour, such as it stood in 549; but it was impossible that they could permit it to acquire the best part of Asiatic Greece and the important Cyrene, to crush the neutral commercial states, and thereby to double its power. Further, the fall of Egypt and the humiliation, perhaps the subjugation, of Rhodes would have inflicted deep wounds on the trade of Sicily and Italy; and could Rome remain a quiet spectator, while Italian commerce with the east was made dependent on the two great continental powers? Rome had, moreover, an obligation of honour to fulfil towards Attalus her faithful ally since the first Macedonian war, and had to prevent Philip, who had already besieged him in his capital, from expelling him from his dominions. Lastly, the claim of Rome to extend her protecting arm over all the Hellenes was by no means an empty phrase: the citizens of Neapolis, Rhegium, Massilia, and Emporiae could testify that that protection was meant in earnest, and there is no question at all that at this time the Romans stood in a closer relation to the Greeks than any other nation--one little more remote than that of the Hellenized Macedonians. It is strange that any should dispute the right of the Romans to feel their human, as well as their Hellenic, sympathies revolted at the outrageous treatment of the Cians and Thasians.

Preparations and Pretexts for Second Macedonian War

Thus in reality all political, commercial, and moral motives concurred in inducing Rome to undertake the second war against Philip--one of the most righteous, which the city ever waged. It greatly redounds to the honour of the senate, that it immediately resolved on its course and did not allow itself to be deterred from making the necessary preparations either by the exhaustion of the state or by the unpopularity of such a declaration of war. The propraetor Marcus Valerius Laevinus made his appearance as early as 553 with the Sicilian fleet of 38 sail in the eastern waters. The government, however, were at a loss to discover an ostensible pretext for the war; a pretext which they needed in order to satisfy the people, even although they had not been far too sagacious to undervalue, as was the manner of Philip, the importance of assigning a legitimate ground for hostilities. The support, which Philip was alleged to have granted to the Carthaginians after the peace with Rome, manifestly could not be proved. The Roman subjects, indeed, in the province of Illyria had for a considerable time complained of the Macedonian encroachments. In 551 a Roman envoy at the head of the Illyrian levy had driven Philip's troops from the Illyrian territory; and the senate had accordingly declared to the king's envoys in 552, that if he sought war, he would find it sooner than was agreeable to him. But these encroachments were simply the ordinary outrages which Philip practised towards his neighbours; a negotiation regarding them at the present moment would have led to his humbling himself and offering satisfaction, but not to war. With all the belligerent powers in the east the Roman community was nominally in friendly relations, and might have granted them aid in repelling Philip's attack. But Rhodes and Pergamus, which naturally did not fail to request Roman aid, were formally the aggressors; and although Alexandrian ambassadors besought the Roman senate to undertake the guardianship of the boy king, Egypt appears to have been by no means eager to invoke the direct intervention of the Romans, which would put an end to her difficulties for the moment, but would at the same time open up the eastern sea to the great western power. Aid to Egypt, moreover, must have been in the first instance rendered in Syria, and would have entangled Rome simultaneously in a war with Asia and with Macedonia; which the Romans were naturally the more desirous to avoid, as they were firmly resolved not to intermeddle at least in Asiatic affairs. No course was left but to despatch in the meantime an embassy to the east for the purpose, first, of obtaining--what was not in the circumstances difficult--the sanction of Egypt to the interference of the Romans in the affairs of Greece; secondly, of pacifying king Antiochus by abandoning Syria to him; and, lastly, of accelerating as much as possible a breach with Philip and promoting a coalition of the minor Graeco-Asiatic states against him (end of 553). At Alexandria they had no difficulty in accomplishing their object; the court had no choice, and was obliged gratefully to receive Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, whom the senate had despatched as "guardian of the king" to uphold his interests, so far as that could be done without an actual intervention. Antiochus did not break off his alliance with Philip, nor did he give to the Romans the definite explanations which they desired; in other respects, however--whether from remissness, or influenced by the declarations of the Romans that they did not wish to interfere in Syria--he pursued his schemes in that direction and left things in Greece and Asia Minor to take their course.

Progress of the War

Meanwhile, the spring of 554 had arrived, and the war had recommenced. Philip first threw himself once more upon Thrace, where he occupied all the places on the coast, in particular Maronea, Aenus, Elaeus, and Sestus; he wished to have his European possessions secured against the risk of a Roman landing. He then attacked Abydus on the Asiatic coast, the acquisition of which could not but be an object of importance to him, for the possession of Sestus and Abydus would bring him into closer connection with his ally Antiochus, and he would no longer need to be apprehensive lest the fleet of the allies might intercept him in crossing to or from Asia Minor. That fleet commanded the Aegean Sea after the withdrawal of the weaker Macedonian squadron: Philip confined his operations by sea to maintaining garrisons on three of the Cyclades, Andros, Cythnos, and Paros, and fitting out privateers. The Rhodians proceeded to Chios, and thence to Tenedos, where Attalus, who had passed the winter at Aegina and had spent his time in listening to the declamations of the Athenians, joined them with his squadron. The allies might probably have arrived in time to help the Abydenes, who heroically defended themselves; but they stirred not, and so at length the city surrendered, after almost all who were capable of bearing arms had fallen in the struggle before the walls. After the capitulation a large portion of the inhabitants fell by their own hand--the mercy of the victor consisted in allowing the Abydenes a term of three days to die voluntarily. Here, in the camp before Abydus. the Roman embassy, which after the termination of its business in Syria and Egypt had visited and dealt with the minor Greek states, met with the king, and submitted the proposals which it had been charged to make by the senate, viz. that the king should wage no aggressive war against any Greek state, should restore the possessions which he had wrested from Ptolemy, and should consent to an arbitration regarding the injury inflicted on the Pergamenes and Rhodians. The object of the senate, which sought to provoke the king to a formal declaration of war, was not gained; the Roman ambassador, Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, obtained from the king nothing but the polite reply that he would excuse what the envoy had said because he was young, handsome, and a Roman.

Meanwhile, however, the occasion for declaring war, which Rome desired, had been furnished from another quarter. The Athenians in their silly and cruel vanity had put to death two unfortunate Acarnanians, because these had accidentally strayed into their mysteries. When the Acarnanians, who were naturally indignant, asked Philip to procure them satisfaction, he could not refuse the just request of his most faithful allies, and he allowed them to levy men in Macedonia and, with these and their own troops, to invade Attica without a formal declaration of war. This, it is true, was no war in the proper sense of the term; and, besides, the leader of the Macedonian band, Nicanor, immediately gave orders to his troops to retreat, when the Roman envoys, who were at Athens at the time, used threatening language (in the end of 553). But it was too late. An Athenian embassy was sent to Rome to report the attack made by Philip on an ancient ally of the Romans; and, from the way in which the senate received it, Philip saw clearly what awaited him; so that he at once, in the very spring of 554, directed Philocles, his general in Greece, to lay waste the Attic territory and to reduce the city to extremities.

Declaration of War by Rome

The senate now had what they wanted; and in the summer of 554 they were able to propose to the comitia a declaration of war "on account of an attack on a state in alliance with Rome." It was rejected on the first occasion almost unanimously: foolish or evil-disposed tribunes of the people complained of the senate, which would allow the citizens no rest; but the war was necessary and, in strictness, was already begun, so that the senate could not possibly recede. The burgesses were induced to yield by representations and concessions. It is remarkable that these concessions were made mainly at the expense of the allies. The garrisons of Gaul, Lower Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia, amounting in all to 20,000 men, were exclusively taken from the allied contingents that were in active service--quite contrary to the former principles of the Romans. All the burgess troops, on the other hand, that had continued under arms from the Hannibalic war, were discharged; volunteers alone, it was alleged, were to be enrolled for the Macedonian war, but they were, as was afterwards found, for the most part forced volunteers--a fact which in the autumn of 555 called forth a dangerous military revolt in the camp of Apollonia. Six legions were formed of the men newly called out; of these two remained in Rome and two in Etruria, and only two embarked at Brundisium for Macedonia, led by the consul Publius Sulpicius Galba.

Thus it was once more clearly demonstrated, that the sovereign burgess assemblies, with their shortsighted resolutions dependent often on mere accident, were no longer at all fitted to deal with the complicated and difficult relations into which Rome was drawn by her victories; and that their mischievous intervention in the working of the state machine led to dangerous modifications of the measures which in a military point of were necessary, and to the still more dangerous course of treating the Latin allies as inferiors.

The Roman League

The position of Philip was very disadvantageous. The eastern states, which ought to have acted in unison against all interference of Rome and probably under other circumstances would have so acted, had been mainly by Philip's fault so incensed at each other, that they were not inclined to hinder, or were inclined even to promote, the Roman invasion. Asia, the natural and most important ally of Philip, had been neglected by him, and was moreover prevented at first from active interference by being entangled in the quarrel with Egypt and the Syrian war. Egypt had an urgent interest in keeping the Roman fleet out of the eastern waters; even now an Egyptian embassy intimated at Rome very plainly, that the court of Alexandria was ready to relieve the Romans from the trouble of intervention in Attica. But the treaty for the partition of Egypt concluded between Asia and Macedonia threw that important state thoroughly into the arms of Rome, and compelled the cabinet of Alexandria to declare that it would only intermeddle in the affairs of European Greece with consent of the Romans. The Greek commercial cities, with Rhodes, Pergamus, and Byzantium at their head, were in a position similar, but of still greater perplexity. They would under other circumstances have beyond doubt done what they could to close the eastern seas against the Romans; but the cruel and destructive policy of conquest pursued by Philip had driven them to an unequal struggle, in which for their self-preservation they were obliged to use every effort to implicate the great Italian power. In Greece proper also the Roman envoys, who were commissioned to organize a second league against Philip there, found the way already substantially paved for them by the enemy. Of the anti-Macedonian party--the Spartans, Eleans, Athenians, and Aetolians--Philip might perhaps have gained the latter, for the peace of 548 had made a deep, and far from healed, breach in their friendly Alliance with Rome; but apart from the old differences which subsisted between Aetolia and Macedonia regarding the Thessalian towns withdrawn by Macedonia from the Aetolian confederacy--Echinus, Larissa Cremaste, Pharsalus, and Thebes in Phthiotis--the expulsion of the Aetolian garrisons from Lysimachia and Cius had produced fresh exasperation against Philip in the minds of the Aetolians. If they delayed to join the league against him, the chief reason doubtless was the ill-feeling that continued to prevail between them and the Romans.

It was a circumstance still more ominous, that even among the Greek states firmly attached to the interests of Macedonia--the Epirots, Acarnanians, Boeotians, and Achaeans--the Acarnanians and Boeotians alone stood steadfastly by Philip. With the Epirots the Roman envoys negotiated not without success; Amynander, king of the Athamanes, in particular closely attached himself to Rome. Even among the Achaeans, Philip had offended many by the murder of Aratus; while on the other hand he had thereby paved the way for a more free development of the confederacy. Under the leadership of Philopoemen (502-571, for the first time -strategus- in 546) it had reorganized its military system, recovered confidence in itself by successful conflicts with Sparta, and no longer blindly followed, as in the time of Aratus, the policy of Macedonia. The Achaean league, which had to expect neither profit nor immediate injury from the thirst of Philip for aggrandizement, alone in all Hellas looked at this war from an impartial and national- Hellenic point of view. It perceived--what there was no difficulty in perceiving--that the Hellenic nation was thereby surrendering itself to the Romans even before these wished or desired its surrender, and attempted accordingly to mediate between Philip and the Rhodians; but it was too late. The national patriotism, which had formerly terminated the federal war and had mainly contributed to bring about the first war between Macedonia and Rome, was extinguished the Achaean mediation remained fruitless, and in vain Philip visited the cities and islands to rekindle the zeal of the nation--its apathy was the Nemesis for Cius and Abydus. The Achaeans, as they could effect no change and were not disposed to render help to either party, remained neutral.

Landing of the Romans in Macedonia

In the autumn of 554 the consul, Publius Sulpicius Galba, landed with his two legions and 1000 Numidian cavalry accompanied even by elephants derived from the spoils of Carthage, at Apollonia; on receiving accounts of which the king returned in haste from the Hellespont to Thessaly. But, owing partly to the far-advanced season, partly to the sickness of the Roman general, nothing was undertaken by land that year except a reconnaissance in force, in the course of which the townships in the vicinity, and in particular the Macedonian colony Antipatria, were occupied by the Romans. For the next year a joint attack on Macedonia was concerted with the northern barbarians, especially with Pleuratus, the then ruler of Scodra, and Bato, prince of the Dardani, who of course were eager to profit by the favourable opportunity.

More importance attached to the enterprises of the Roman fleet, which numbered 100 decked and 80 light vessels. While the rest of the ships took their station for the winter at Corcyra, a division under Gaius Claudius Cento proceeded to the Piraeeus to render assistance to the hard-pressed Athenians. But, as Cento found the Attic territory already sufficiently protected against the raids of the Corinthian garrison and the Macedonian corsairs, he sailed on and appeared suddenly before Chalcis in Euboea, the chief stronghold of Philip in Greece, where his magazines, stores of arms, and prisoners were kept, and where the commandant Sopater was far from expecting a Roman attack. The undefended walls were scaled, and the garrison was put to death; the prisoners were liberated and the stores were burnt; unfortunately, there was a want of troops to hold the important position. On receiving news of this invasion, Philip immediately in vehement indignation started from Demetrias in Thessaly for Chalcis, and when he found no trace of the enemy there save the scene of ruin, he went on to Athens to retaliate. But his attempt to surprise the city was a failure, and even the assault was in vain, greatly as the king exposed his life; the approach of Gaius Claudius from the Piraeeus, and of Attalus from Aegina, compelled him to depart. Philip still tarried for some time in Greece; but in a political and in a military point of view his successes were equally insignificant. In vain he tried to induce the Achaeans to take up arms in his behalf; and equally fruitless were his attacks on Eleusis and the Piraeeus, as well as a second attempt on Athens itself. Nothing remained for him but to gratify his natural exasperation in an unworthy manner by laying waste the country and destroying the trees of Academus, and then to return to the north.

Attempt of the Romans to Invade Macedonia

Thus the winter passed away. With the spring of 555 the proconsul Publius Sulpicius broke up from his winter camp, determined to conduct his legions from Apollonia by the shortest route into Macedonia proper. This principal attack from the west was to be supported by three subordinate attacks; on the north by an invasion of the Dardani and Illyrians; on the east by an attack on the part of the combined fleet of the Romans and allies, which assembled at Aegina; while lastly the Athamanes, and the Aetolians also, if the attempt to induce them to share in the struggle should prove successful, were to advance from the south. After Galba had crossed the mountains pierced by the Apsus (now the Beratind), and had marched through the fertile plain of Dassaretia, he reached the mountain range which separates Illyria from Macedonia, and crossing it, entered the proper Macedonian territory. Philip had marched to meet him; but in the extensive and thinly- peopled regions of Macedonia the antagonists for a time sought each other in vain; at length they met in the province of Lyncestis, a fertile but marshy plain not far from the north-western frontier, and encamped not 1000 paces apart. Philip's army, after he had been joined by the corps detached to occupy the northern passes, numbered about 20,000 infantry and 2000 cavalry; the Roman army was nearly as strong. The Macedonians however had the great advantage, that, fighting in their native land and well acquainted with its highways and byways, they had little trouble in procuring supplies of provisions, while they had encamped so close to the Romans that the latter could not venture to disperse for any extensive foraging. The consul repeatedly offered battle, but the king persisted in declining it; and the combats between the light troops, although the Romans gained some advantages in them, produced no material alteration. Galba was obliged to break up his camp and to pitch another eight miles off at Octolophus, where he conceived that he could more easily procure supplies. But here too the divisions sent out were destroyed by the light troops and cavalry of the Macedonians; the legions were obliged to come to their help, whereupon the Macedonian vanguard, which had advanced too far, were driven back to their camp with heavy loss; the king himself lost his horse in the action, and only saved his life through the magnanimous self-devotion of one of his troopers. From this perilous position the Romans were liberated through the better success of the subordinate attacks which Galba had directed the allies to make, or rather through the weakness of the Macedonian forces. Although Philip had instituted levies as large as possible in his own dominions, and had enlisted Roman deserters and other mercenaries, he had not been able to bring into the field (over and above the garrisons in Asia Minor and Thrace) more than the army, with which in person he confronted the consul; and besides, in order to form even this, he had been obliged to leave the northern passes in the Pelagonian territory undefended. For the protection of the east coast he relied partly on the orders which he had given for the laying waste of the islands of Sciathus and Peparethus, which might have furnished a station to the enemy's fleet, partly on the garrisoning of Thasos and the coast and on the fleet organized at Demetrias under Heraclides. For the south frontier be had been obliged to reckon solely upon the more than doubtful neutrality of the Aetolians. These now suddenly joined the league against Macedonia, and immediately in conjunction with the Athamanes penetrated into Thessaly, while simultaneously the Dardani and Illyrians overran the northern provinces, and the Roman fleet under Lucius Apustius, departing from Corcyra, appeared in the eastern waters, where the ships of Attalus, the Rhodians, and the Istrians joined it.

Philip, on learning this, voluntarily abandoned his position and retreated in an easterly direction: whether he did so in order to repel the probably unexpected invasion of the Aetolians, or to draw the Roman army after him with a view to its destruction, or to take either of these courses according to circumstances, cannot well be determined. He managed his retreat so dexterously that Galba, who adopted the rash resolution of following him, lost his track, and Philip was enabled to reach by a flank movement, and to occupy, the narrow pass which separates the provinces of Lyncestis and Eordaea, with the view of awaiting the Romans and giving them a warm reception there. A battle took place on the spot which he had selected; but the long Macedonian spears proved unserviceable on the wooded and uneven ground. The Macedonians were partly turned, partly broken, and lost many men.

Return of the Romans

But, although Philip's army was after this unfortunate action no longer able to prevent the advance of the Romans, the latter were themselves afraid to encounter further unknown dangers in an impassable and hostile country; and returned to Apollonia, after they had laid waste the fertile provinces of Upper Macedonia--Eordaea, Elymaea, and Orestis. Celetrum, the most considerable town of Orestis (now Kastoria, on a peninsula in the lake of the same name), had surrendered to them: it was the only Macedonian town that opened its gates to the Romans. In the Illyrian land Pelium, the city of the Dassaretae, on the upper confluents of the Apsus, was taken by storm and strongly garrisoned to serve as a future basis for a similar expedition.

Philip did not disturb the Roman main army in its retreat, but turned by forced marches against the Aetolians and Athamanians who, in the belief that the legions were occupying the attention of the king, were fearlessly and recklessly plundering the rich vale of the Peneius, defeated them completely, and compelled such as did not fall to make their escape singly through the well-known mountain paths. The effective strength of the confederacy was not a little diminished by this defeat, and not less by the numerous enlistments made in Aetolia on Egyptian account. The Dardani were chased back over the mountains by Athena-goras, the leader of Philip's light troops, without difficulty and with severe loss. The Roman fleet also did not accomplish much; it expelled the Macedonian garrison from Andros, punished Euboea and Sciathus, and then made attempts on the Chalcidian peninsula, which were, however, vigorously repulsed by the Macedonian garrison at Mende. The rest of the summer was spent in the capture of Oreus in Euboea, which was long delayed by the resolute defence of the Macedonian garrison. The weak Macedonian fleet under Heraclides remained inactive at Heraclea, and did not venture to dispute the possession of the sea with the enemy. The latter went early to winter quarters, the Romans proceeding to the Piraeeus and Corcyra, the Rhodians and Pergamenes going home.

Philip might on the whole congratulate himself upon the results of this campaign. The Roman troops, after an extremely troublesome campaign, stood in autumn precisely on the spot whence they had started in spring; and, but for the well-timed interposition of the Aetolians and the unexpected success of the battle at the pass of Eordaea, perhaps not a man of their entire force would have again seen the Roman territory. The fourfold offensive had everywhere failed in its object, and not only did Philip in autumn see his whole dominions cleared of the enemy, but he was able to make an attempt--which, however, miscarried--to wrest from the Aetolians the strong town of Thaumaci, situated on the Aetolo-Thessalian frontier and commanding the plain of the Peneius. If Antiochus, for whose coming Philip vainly supplicated the gods, should unite with him in the next campaign, he might anticipate great successes. For a moment it seemed as if Antiochus was disposed to do so; his army appeared in Asia Minor, and occupied some townships of king Attalus, who requested military protection from the Romans. The latter, however, were not anxious to urge the great-king at this time to a breach: they sent envoys, who in fact obtained an evacuation of the dominions of Attalus. From that quarter Philip had nothing to hope for.

Philip Encamps on the Aous Flaminius Philip Driven Back to Tempe Greece in the Power of the Romans

But the fortunate issue of the last campaign had so raised the courage or the arrogance of Philip, that, after having assured himself afresh of the neutrality of the Achaeans and the fidelity of the Macedonians by the sacri fice of some strong places and of the detested admiral Heraclides, he next spring (556) assumed the offensive and advanced into the territory of the Atintanes, with a view to form a well- entrenched camp in the narrow pass, where the Aous (Viosa) winds its way between the mountains Aeropus and Asnaus. Opposite to him encamped the Roman army reinforced by new arrivals of troops, and commanded first by the consul of the previous year, Publius Villius, and then from the summer of 556 by that year's consul, Titus Quinctius Flamininus. Flamininus, a talented man just thirty years of age, belonged to the younger generation who began to lay aside the patriotism as well as the habits of their forefathers and, though not unmindful of their fatherland, were still more mindful of themselves and of Hellenism. A skilful officer and a better diplomatist, he was in many respects admirably adapted for the management of the troubled affairs of Greece. Yet it would perhaps have been better both for Rome and for Greece, if the choice had fallen on one less full of Hellenic sympathies, and if the general despatched thither had been a man, who would neither have been bribed by delicate flattery nor stung by pungent sarcasm; who would not amidst literary and artistic reminiscences have overlooked the pitiful condition of the constitutions of the Hellenic states; and who, while treating Hellas according to its deserts, would have spared the Romans the trouble of striving after unattainable ideals.

The new commander-in-chief immediately had a conference with the king, while the two armies lay face to face inactive. Philip made proposals of peace; he offered to restore all his own conquests, and to submit to an equitable arbitration regarding the damage inflicted on the Greek cities; but the negotiations broke down, when he was asked to give up ancient possessions of Macedonia and particularly Thessaly. For forty days the two armies lay in the narrow pass of the Aous; Philip would not retire, and Flamininus could not make up his mind whether he should order an assault, or leave the king alone and reattempt the expedition of the previous year. At length the Roman general was helped out of his perplexity by the treachery of some men of rank among the Epirots--who were otherwise well disposed to Macedonia--and especially of Charops. They conducted a Roman corps of 4000 infantry and 300 cavalry by mountain paths to the heights above the Macedonian camp; and, when the consul attacked the enemy's army in front, the advance of that Roman division, unexpectedly descending from the mountains commanding the position, decided the battle. Philip lost his camp and entrenchments and nearly 2000 men, and hastily retreated to the pass of Tempe, the gate of Macedonia proper. He gave up everything which he had held except the fortresses; the Thessalian towns, which he could not defend, he himself destroyed; Pherae alone closed its gates against him and thereby escaped destruction. The Epirots, induced partly by these successes of the Roman arms, partly by the judicious moderation of Flamininus, were the first to secede from the Macedonian alliance. On the first accounts of the Roman victory the Athamanes and Aetolians immediately invaded Thessaly, and the Romans soon followed; the open country was easily overrun, but the strong towns, which were friendly to Macedonia and received support from Philip, fell only after a brave resistance or withstood even the superior foe--especially Atrax on the left bank of the Peneius, where the phalanx stood in the breach as a substitute for the wall. Except these Thessalian fortresses and the territory of the faithful Acarnanians, all northern Greece was thus in the hands of the coalition.

The Achaeans Enter into Alliance with Rome

The south, on the other hand, was still in the main retained under the power of Macedonia by the fortresses of Chalcis and Corinth, which maintained communication with each other through the territory of the Boeotians who were friendly to the Macedonians, and by the Achaean neutrality; and as it was too late to advance into Macedonia this year, Flamininus resolved to direct his land army and fleet in the first place against Corinth and the Achaeans. The fleet, which had again been joined by the Rhodian and Pergamene ships, had hitherto been employed in the capture and pillage of two of the smaller towns in Euboea, Eretria and Carystus; both however, as well as Oreus, were thereafter abandoned, and reoccupied by Philocles the Macedonian commandant of Chalcis. The united fleet proceeded thence to Cenchreae, the eastern port of Corinth, to threaten that strong fortress. On the other side Flamininus advanced into Phocis and occupied the country, in which Elatea alone sustained a somewhat protracted siege: this district, and Anticyra in particular on the Corinthian gulf, were chosen as winter quarters. The Achaeans, who thus saw on the one hand the Roman legions approaching and on the other the Roman fleet already on their own coast, abandoned their morally honourable, but politically untenable, neutrality. After the deputies from the towns most closely attached to Macedonia --Dyme, Megalopolis, and Argos--had left the diet, it resolved to join the coalition against Philip. Cycliades and other leaders of the Macedonian party went into exile; the troops of the Achaeans immediately united with the Roman fleet and hastened to invest Corinth by land, which city--the stronghold of Philip against the Achaeans --had been guaranteed to them on the part of Rome in return for their joining the coalition. Not only, however, did the Macedonian garrison, which was 1300 strong and consisted chiefly of Italian deserters, defend with determination the almost impregnable city, but Philocles also arrived from Chalcis with a division of 1500 men, which not only relieved Corinth but also invaded the territory of the Achaeans and, in concert with the citizens who were favourable to Macedonia, wrested from them Argos. But the recompense of such devotedness was, that the king delivered over the faithful Argives to the reign of terror of Nabis of Sparta. Philip hoped, after the accession of the Achaeans to the Roman coalition, to gain over Nabis who had hitherto been the ally of the Romans; for his chief reason for joining the Roman alliance had been that he was opposed to the Achaeans and since 550 was even at open war with them. But the affairs of Philip were in too desperate a condition for any one to feel satisfaction in joining his side now. Nabis indeed accepted Argos from Philip, but he betrayed the traitor and remained in alliance with Flamininus, who, in his perplexity at being now allied with two powers that were at war with each other, had in the meantime arranged an armistice of four months between the Spartans and Achaeans.

Vain Attempts to Arrange a Peace

Thus winter came on; and Philip once more availed himself of it to obtain if possible an equitable peace. At a conference held at Nicaea on the Maliac gulf the king appeared in person, and endeavoured to come to an understanding with Flamininus. With haughty politeness he repelled the forward insolence of the petty chiefs, and by marked deference to the Romans, as the only antagonists on an equality with him, he sought to obtain from them tolerable terms. Flamininus was sufficiently refined to feel himself flattered by the urbanity of the vanquished prince towards himself and his arrogance towards the allies, whom the Roman as well as the king had learned to despise; but his powers were not ample enough to meet the king's wishes. He granted him a two months' armistice in return for the evacuation of Phocis and Locris, and referred him, as to the main matter, to his government. The Roman senate had long been at one in the opinion that Macedonia must give up all her possessions abroad; accordingly, when the ambassadors of Philip appeared in Rome, they were simply asked whether they had full powers to renounce all Greece and in particular Corinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias, and when they said that they had not, the negotiations were immediately broken off, and it was resolved that the war should be prosecuted with vigour. With the help of the tribunes of the people, the senate succeeded in preventing a change in the chief command--which had often proved so injurious--and in prolonging the command of Flamininus; he obtained considerable reinforcements, and the two former commanders-in-chief, Publius Galba and Publius Villius, were instructed to place themselves at his disposal. Philip resolved once more to risk a pitched battle. To secure Greece, where all the states except the Acarnanians and Boeotians were now in arms against him, the garrison of Corinth was augmented to 6000 men, while he himself, straining the last energies of exhausted Macedonia and enrolling children and old men in the ranks of the phalanx, brought into the field an army of about 26,000 men, of whom 16,000 were Macedonian -phalangitae-.

Philip Proceed to Thessaly Battle of Cynoscephalae

Thus the fourth campaign, that of 557, began. Flamininus despatched a part of the fleet against the Acarnanians, who were besieged in Leucas; in Greece proper he became by stratagem master of Thebes, the capital of Boeotia, in consequence of which the Boeotians were compelled to join at least nominally the alliance against Macedonia. Content with having thus interrupted the communication between Corinth and Chalcis, he proceeded to the north, where alone a decisive blow could be struck. The great difficulties of provisioning the army in a hostile and for the most part desolate country, which had often hampered its operations, were now to be obviated by the fleet accompanying the army along the coast and carrying after it supplies sent from Africa, Sicily, and Sardinia. The decisive blow came, however, earlier than Flamininus had hoped. Philip, impatient and confident as he was, could not endure to await the enemy on the Macedonian frontier: after assembling his army at Dium, he advanced through the pass of Tempe into Thessaly, and encountered the army of the enemy advancing to meet him in the district of Scotussa.

The Macedonian and Roman armies--the latter of which had been reinforced by contingents of the Apolloniates and the Athamanes, by the Cretans sent by Nabis, and especially by a strong band of Aetolians--contained nearly equal numbers of combatants, each about 26,000 men; the Romans, however, had the superiority in cavalry. In front of Scotussa, on the plateau of the Karadagh, during a gloomy day of rain, the Roman vanguard unexpectedly encountered that of the enemy, which occupied a high and steep hill named Cynoscephalae, that lay between the two camps. Driven back into the plain, the Romans were reinforced from the camp by the light troops and the excellent corps of Aetolian cavalry, and now in turn forced the Macedonian vanguard back upon and over the height. But here the Macedonians again found support in their whole cavalry and the larger portion of their light infantry; the Romans, who had ventured forward imprudently, were pursued with great loss almost to their camp, and would have wholly taken to flight, had not the Aetolian horsemen prolonged the combat in the plain until Flamininus brought up his rapidly-arranged legions. The king yielded to the impetuous cry of his victorious troops demanding the continuance of the conflict, and hastily drew up his heavy-armed soldiers for the battle, which neither general nor soldiers had expected on that day. It was important to occupy the hill, which for the moment was quite denuded of troops. The right wing of the phalanx, led by the king in person, arrived early enough to form without trouble in battle order on the height; the left had not yet come up, when the light troops of the Macedonians, put to flight by the legions, rushed up the hill. Philip quickly pushed the crowd of fugitives past the phalanx into the middle division, and, without waiting till Nicanor had arrived on the left wing with the other half of the phalanx which followed more slowly, he ordered the right phalanx to couch their spears and to charge down the hill on the legions, and the rearranged light infantry simultaneously to turn them and fall upon them in flank. The attack of the phalanx, irresistible on so favourable ground, shattered the Roman infantry, and the left wing of the Romans was completely beaten. Nicanor on the other wing, when he saw the king give the attack, ordered the other half of the phalanx to advance in all haste; by this movement it was thrown into confusion, and while the first ranks were already rapidly following the victorious right wing down the hill, and were still more thrown into disorder by the inequality of the ground, the last files were just gaining the height. The right wing of the Romans under these circumstances soon overcame the enemy's left; the elephants alone, stationed upon this wing, annihilated the broken Macedonian ranks. While a fearful slaughter was taking place at this point, a resolute Roman officer collected twenty companies, and with these threw himself on the victorious Macedonian wing, which had advanced so far in pursuit of the Roman left that the Roman right came to be in its rear. Against an attack from behind the phalanx was defenceless, and this movement ended the battle. From the complete breaking up of the two phalanxes we may well believe that the Macedonian loss amounted to 13,000, partly prisoners, partly fallen--but chiefly the latter, because the Roman soldiers were not acquainted with the Macedonian sign of surrender, the raising of the -sarissae-. The loss of the victors was slight. Philip escaped to Larissa, and, after burning all his papers that nobody might be compromised, evacuated Thessaly and returned home.

Simultaneously with this great defeat, the Macedonians suffered other discomfitures at all the points which they still occupied; in Caria the Rhodian mercenaries defeated the Macedonian corps stationed there and compelled it to shut itself up in Stratonicea; the Corinthian garrison was defeated by Nicostratus and his Achaeans with severe loss, and Leucas in Acarnania was taken by assault after a heroic resistance. Philip was completely vanquished; his last allies, the Acarnanians, yielded on the news of the battle of Cynoscephalae.

Preliminaries of Peace

It was completely in the power of the Romans to dictate peace; they used their power without abusing it. The empire of Alexander might be annihilated; at a conference of the allies this desire was expressly put forward by the Aetolians. But what else would this mean, than to demolish the rampart protecting Hellenic culture from the Thracians and Celts? Already during the war just ended the flourishing Lysimachia on the Thracian Chersonese had been totally destroyed by the Thracians--a serious warning for the future. Flamininus, who had clearly perceived the bitter animosities subsisting among the Greek states, could never consent that the great Roman power should be the executioner for the grudges of the Aetolian confederacy, even if his Hellenic sympathies had not been as much won by the polished and chivalrous king as his Roman national feeling was offended by the boastings of the Aetolians, the "victors of Cynoscephalae," as they called themselves. He replied to the Aetolians that it was not the custom of Rome to annihilate the vanquished, and that, besides, they were their own masters and were at liberty to put an end to Macedonia, if they could. The king was treated with all possible deference, and, on his declaring himself ready now to entertain the demands formerly made, an armistice for a considerable term was agreed to by Flamininus in return for the payment of a sum of money and the furnishing of hostages, among whom was the king's son Demetrius,--an armistice which Philip greatly needed in order to expel the Dardani out of Macedonia.

Peace with Macedonia

The final regulation of the complicated affairs of Greece was entrusted by the senate to a commission of ten persons, the head and soul of which was Flamininus. Philip obtained from it terms similar to those laid down for Carthage. He lost all his foreign possessions in Asia Minor, Thrace, Greece, and in the islands of the Aegean Sea; while he retained Macedonia proper undiminished, with the exception of some unimportant tracts on the frontier and the province of Orestis, which was declared free--a stipulation which Philip felt very keenly, but which the Romans could not avoid prescribing, for with his character it was impossible to leave him free to dispose of subjects who had once revolted from their allegiance. Macedonia was further bound not to conclude any foreign alliances without the previous knowledge of Rome, and not to send garrisons abroad; she was bound, moreover, not to make war out of Macedonia against civilized states or against any allies of Rome at all; and she was not to maintain any army exceeding 5000 men, any elephants, or more than five decked ships--the rest were to be given up to the Romans. Lastly, Philip entered into symmachy with the Romans, which obliged him to send a contingent when requested; indeed, Macedonian troops immediately afterwards fought side by side with the legions. Moreover, he paid a contribution of 1000 talents (244,000 pounds).

Greece Free

After Macedonia had thus been reduced to complete political nullity and was left in possession of only as much power as was needful to guard the frontier of Hellas against the barbarians, steps were taken to dispose of the possessions ceded by the king. The Romans, who just at that time were learning by experience in Spain that transmarine provinces were a very dubious gain, and who had by no means begun the war with a view to the acquisition of territory, took none of the spoil for themselves, and thus compelled their allies also to moderation. They resolved to declare all the states of Greece, which had previously been under Phillip free: and Flamininus was commissioned to read the decree to that effect to the Greeks assembled at the Isthmian games (558). Thoughtful men doubtless might ask whether freedom was a blessing capable of being thus bestowed, and what was the value of freedom to a nation apart from union and unity; but the rejoicing was great and sincere, as the intention of the senate was sincere in conferring the freedom.(2)

Scodra The Achaean League Enlarged The Aetolians

The only exceptions to this general rule were, the Illyrian provinces eastward of Epidamnus, which fell to Pleuratus the ruler of Scodra, and rendered that state of robbers and pirates, which a century before had been humbled by the Romans,(3) once more one of the most powerful of the petty principalities in those regions; some townships in western Thessaly, which Amynander had occupied and was allowed to retain; and the three islands of Paros, Scyros, and Imbros, which were presented to Athens in return for her many hardships and her still more numerous addresses of thanks and courtesies of all sorts. The Rhodians, of course, retained their Carian possessions, and the Pergamenes retained Aegina. The remaining allies were only indirectly rewarded by the accession of the newly-liberated cities to the several confederacies. The Achaeans were the best treated, although they were the latest in joining the coalition against Philip; apparently for the honourable reason, that this federation was the best organized and most respectable of all the Greek states. All the possessions of Philip in the Peloponnesus and on the Isthmus, and consequently Corinth in particular, were incorporated with their league. With the Aetolians on the other hand the Romans used little ceremony; they were allowed to receive the towns of Phocis and Locris into their symmachy, but their attempts to extend it also to Acarnania and Thessaly were in part decidedly rejected, in part postponed, and the Thessalian cities were organized into four small independent confederacies. The Rhodian city-league reaped the benefit of the liberation of Thasos, Lemnos, and the towns of Thrace and Asia Minor.

War against Nabis of Sparta

The regulation of the affairs of the Greek states, as respected both their mutual relations and their internal condition, was attended with difficulty. The most urgent matter was the war which had been carried on between the Spartans and Achaeans since 550, in which the duty of mediating necessarily fell to the Romans. But after various attempts to induce Nabis to yield, and particularly to give up the city of Argos belonging to the Achaean league, which Philip had surrendered to him, no course at last was left to Flamininus but to have war declared against the obstinate petty robber-chieftain, who reckoned on the well-known grudge of the Aetolians against the Romans and on the advance of Antiochus into Europe, and pertinaciously refused to restore Argos. War was declared, accordingly, by all the Hellenes at a great diet in Corinth, and Flamininus advanced into the Peloponnesus accompanied by the fleet and the Romano-allied army, which included a contingent sent by Philip and a division of Lacedaemonian emigrants under Agesipolis, the legitimate king of Sparta (559). In order to crush his antagonist immediately by an overwhelming superiority of force, no less than 50,000 men were brought into the field, and, the other towns being disregarded, the capital itself was at once invested; but the desired result was not attained. Nabis had sent into the field a considerable army amounting to 15,000 men, of whom 5000 were mercenaries, and he had confirmed his rule afresh by a complete reign of terror--by the execution -en masse- of the officers and inhabitants of the country whom he suspected. Even when he himself after the first successes of the Roman army and fleet resolved to yield and to accept the comparatively favourable terms of peace proposed by Flamininus, "the people," that is to say the gang of robbers whom Nabis had domiciled in Sparta, not without reason apprehensive of a reckoning after the victory, and deceived by an accompaniment of lies as to the nature of the terms of peace and as to the advance of the Aetolians and Asiatics, rejected the peace offered by the Roman general, so that the struggle began anew. A battle took place in front of the walls and an assault was made upon them; they were already scaled by the Romans, when the setting on fire of the captured streets compelled the assailants to retire.

Settlement of Spartan Affairs

At last the obstinate resistance came to an end. Sparta retained its independence and was neither compelled to receive back the emigrants nor to join the Achaean league; even the existing monarchical constitution, and Nabis himself, were left intact. On the other hand Nabis had to cede his foreign possessions, Argos, Messene, the Cretan cities, and the whole coast besides; to bind himself neither to conclude foreign alliances, nor to wage war, nor to keep any other vessels than two open boats; and lastly to disgorge all his plunder, to give to the Romans hostages, and to pay to them a war-contribution. The towns on the Laconian coast were given to the Spartan emigrants, and this new community, who named themselves the "free Laconians" in contrast to the monarchically governed Spartans, were directed to enter the Achaean league. The emigrants did not receive back their property, as the district assigned to them was regarded as a compensation for it; it was stipulated, on the other hand, that their wives and children should not be detained in Sparta against their will. The Achaeans, although by this arrangement they gained the accession of the free Laconians as well as Argos, were yet far from content; they had expected that the dreaded and hated Nabis would be superseded, that the emigrants would be brought back, and that the Achaean symmachy would be extended to the whole Peloponnesus. Unprejudiced persons, however, will not fail to see that Flamininus managed these difficult affairs as fairly and justly as it was possible to manage them where two political parties, both chargeable with unfairness and injustice stood opposed to each other. With the old and deep hostility subsisting between the Spartans and Achaeans, the incorporation of Sparta into the Achaean league would have been equivalent to subjecting Sparta to the Achaeans, a course no less contrary to equity than to prudence. The restitution of the emigrants, and the complete restoration of a government that had been set aside for twenty years, would only have substituted one reign of terror for another; the expedient adopted by Flamininus was the right one, just because it failed to satisfy either of the extreme parties. At length thorough provision appeared to be made that the Spartan system of robbery by sea and land should cease, and that the government there, such as it was, should prove troublesome only to its own subjects. It is possible that Flamininus, who knew Nabis and could not but be aware how desirable it was that he should personally be superseded, omitted to take such a step from the mere desire to have done with the matter and not to mar the clear impression of his successes by complications that might be prolonged beyond all calculation; it is possible, moreover, that he sought to preserve Sparta as a counterpoise to the power of the Achaean confederacy in the Peloponnesus. But the former objection relates to a point of secondary importance; and as to the latter view, it is far from probable that the Romans condescended to fear the Achaeans.

Final Regulation of Greece

Peace was thus established, externally at least, among the petty Greek states. But the internal condition of the several communities also furnished employment to the Roman arbiter. The Boeotians openly displayed their Macedonian tendencies, even after the expulsion of the Macedonians from Greece; after Flamininus had at their request allowed their countrymen who were in the service of Philip to return home, Brachyllas, the most decided partisan of Macedonia, was elected to the presidency of the Boeotian confederacy, and Flamininus was otherwise irritated in every way. He bore it with unparalleled patience; but the Boeotians friendly to Rome, who knew what awaited them after the departure of the Romans, determined to put Brachyllas to death, and Flamininus, whose permission they deemed it necessary to ask, at least did not forbid them. Brachyllas was accordingly killed; upon which the Boeotians were not only content with prosecuting the murderers, but lay in wait for the Roman soldiers passing singly or in small parties through their territories, and killed about 500 of them. This was too much to be endured; Flamininus imposed on them a fine of a talent for every soldier; and when they did not pay it, he collected the nearest troops and besieged Coronea (558). Now they betook themselves to entreaty; Flamininus in reality desisted on the intercession of the Achaeans and Athenians, exacting but a very moderate fine from those who were guilty; and although the Macedonian party remained continuously at the helm in the petty province, the Romans met their puerile opposition simply with the forbearance of superior power. In the rest of Greece Flamininus contented himself with exerting his influence, so far as he could do so without violence, over the internal affairs especially of the newly-freed communities; with placing the council and the courts in the hands of the more wealthy and bringing the anti-Macedonian party to the helm; and with attaching as much as possible the civic commonwealths to the Roman interest, by adding everything, which in each community should have fallen by martial law to the Romans, to the common property of the city concerned. The work was finished in the spring of 560; Flamininus once more assembled the deputies of all the Greek communities at Corinth, exhorted them to a rational and moderate use of the freedom conferred on them, and requested as the only return for the kindness of the Romans, that they would within thirty days send to him the Italian captives who had been sold into Greece during the Hannibalic war. Then he evacuated the last fortresses in which Roman garrisons were still stationed, Demetrias, Chalcis along with the smaller forts dependent upon it in Euboea, and Acrocorinthus--thus practically giving the lie to the assertion of the Aetolians that Rome had inherited from Philip the "fetters" of Greece--and departed homeward with all the Roman troops and the liberated captives.

Results

It is only contemptible disingenuousness or weakly sentimentality, which can fail to perceive that the Romans were entirely in earnest with the liberation of Greece; and the reason why the plan so nobly projected resulted in so sorry a structure, is to be sought only in the complete moral and political disorganization of the Hellenic nation. It was no small matter, that a mighty nation should have suddenly with its powerful arm brought the land, which it had been accustomed to regard as its primitive home and as the shrine of its intellectual and higher interests, into the possession of full freedom, and should have conferred on every community in it deliverance from foreign taxation and foreign garrisons and the unlimited right of self-government; it is mere paltriness that sees in this nothing save political calculation. Political calculation made the liberation of Greece a possibility for the Romans; it was converted into a reality by the Hellenic sympathies that were at that time indescribably powerful in Rome, and above all in Flamininus himself. If the Romans are liable to any reproach, it is that all of them, and in particular Flamininus who overcame the well-founded scruples of the senate, were hindered by the magic charm of the Hellenic name from perceiving in all its extent the wretched character of the Greek states of that period, and so allowed yet further freedom for the doings of communities which, owing to the impotent antipathies that prevailed alike in their internal and their mutual relations, knew neither how to act nor how to keep quiet. As things stood, it was really necessary at once to put an end to such a freedom, equally pitiful and pernicious, by means of a superior power permanently present on the spot; the feeble policy of sentiment, with all its apparent humanity, was far more cruel than the sternest occupation would have been. In Boeotia for instance Rome had, if not to instigate, at least to permit, a political murder, because the Romans had resolved to withdraw their troops from Greece and, consequently, could not prevent the Greeks friendly to Rome from seeking their remedy in the usual manner of the country. But Rome herself also suffered from the effects of this indecision. The war with Antiochus would not have arisen but for the political blunder of liberating Greece, and it would not have been dangerous but tor the military blunder of withdrawing the garrisons from the principal fortresses on the European frontier. History has a Nemesis for every sin--for an impotent craving after freedom, as well as for an injudicious generosity.

Notes for Chapter VIII

1. III. III. Acquisition of Territory in Illyria

2. III. VI. Stagnation of the War in Italy

3. There are still extant gold staters, with the head of Flamininus and the inscription "-T. Quincti(us)-," struck in Greece under the government of the liberator of the Hellenes. The use of the Latin language is a significant compliment.

4. III. III. Acquisition of Territory in Illyria

IX. The War with Antiochus of Asia

Antiochus the Great

In the kingdom of Asia the diadem of the Seleucidae had been worn since 531 by king Antiochus the Third, the great-great-grandson of the founder of the dynasty. He had, like Philip, begun to reign at nineteen years of age, and had displayed sufficient energy and enterprise, especially in his first campaigns in the east, to warrant his being without too ludicrous impropriety addressed in courtly style as "the Great." He had succeeded--more, however, through the negligence of his opponents and of the Egyptian Philopator in particular, than through any ability of his own--in restoring in some degree the integrity of the monarchy, and in reuniting with his crown first the eastern satrapies of Media and Parthyene, and then the separate state which Achaeus had founded on this side of the Taurus in Asia Minor. A first attempt to wrest from the Egyptians the coast of Syria, the loss of which he sorely felt, had, in the year of the battle of the Trasimene lake, met with a bloody repulse from Philopator at Raphia; and Antiochus had taken good care not to resume the contest with Egypt, so long as a man--even though he were but an indolent one--occupied the Egyptian throne. But, after Philopator's death (549), the right moment for crushing Egypt appeared to have arrived; with that view Antiochus entered into concert with Philip, and had thrown himself upon Coele-Syria, while Philip attacked the cities of Asia Minor. When the Romans interposed in that quarter, it seemed for a moment as if Antiochus would make common cause with Philip against them--the course suggested by the position of affairs, as well as by the treaty of alliance. But, not far-seeing enough to repel at once with all his energy any interference whatever by the Romans in the affairs of the east, Antiochus thought that his best course was to take advantage of the subjugation of Philip by the Romans (which might easily be foreseen), in order to secure the kingdom of Egypt, which he had previously been willing to share with Philip, for himself alone. Notwithstanding the close relations of Rome with the court of Alexandria and her royal ward, the senate by no means intended to be in reality, what it was in name, his "protector;" firmly resolved to give itself no concern about Asiatic affairs except in case of extreme necessity, and to limit the sphere of the Roman power by the Pillars of Hercules and the Hellespont, it allowed the great-king to take his course. He himself was not probably in earnest with the conquest of Egypt proper--which was more easily talked of than achieved--but he contemplated the subjugation of the foreign possessions of Egypt one after another, and at once attacked those in Cilicia as well as in Syria and Palestine. The great victory, which he gained in 556 over the Egyptian general Scopas at Mount Panium near the sources of the Jordan, not only gave him complete possession of that region as far as the frontier of Egypt proper, but so alarmed the Egyptian guardians of the young king that, to prevent Antiochus from invading Egypt, they submitted to a peace and sealed it by the betrothal of their ward to Cleopatra the daughter of Antiochus. When he had thus achieved his first object, he proceeded in the following year, that of the battle of Cynoscephalae, with a strong fleet of 100 decked and 100 open vessels to Asia Minor, to take possession of the districts that formerly belonged to Egypt on the south and west coasts of Asia Minor--probably the Egyptian government had ceded these districts, which were -de facto- in the hands of Philip, to Antiochus under the peace, and had renounced all their foreign possessions in his favour--and to recover the Greeks of Asia Minor generally for his empire. At the same time a strong Syrian land-army assembled in Sardes.

Difficulties with Rome

This enterprise had an indirect bearing on the Romans who from the first had laid it down as a condition for Philip that he should withdraw his garrisons from Asia Minor and should leave to the Rhodians and Pergamenes their territory and to the free cities their former constitution unimpaired, and who had now to look on while Antiochus took possession of them in Philip's place. Attalus and the Rhodians found themselves now directly threatened by Antiochus with precisely the same danger as had driven them a few years before into the war with Philip; and they naturally sought to involve the Romans in this war as well as in that which had just terminated. Already in 555-6 Attalus had requested from the Romans military aid against Antiochus, who had occupied his territory while the troops of Attalus were employed in the Roman war. The more energetic Rhodians even declared to king Antiochus, when in the spring of 557 his fleet appeared off the coast of Asia Minor, that they would regard its passing beyond the Chelidonian islands (off the Lycian coast) as a declaration of war; and, when Antiochus did not regard the threat, they, emboldened by the accounts that had just arrived of the battle at Cynoscephalae, had immediately begun the war and had actually protected from the king the most important of the Carian cities, Caunus, Halicarnassus, and Myndus, and the island of Samos. Most of the half-free cities had submitted to Antiochus, but some of them, more especially the important cities of Smyrna, Alexandria Troas, and Lampsacus, had, on learning the discomfiture of Philip, likewise taken courage to resist the Syrian; and their urgent entreaties were combined with those of the Rhodians.

It admits of no doubt, that Antiochus, so far as he was at all capable of forming a resolution and adhering to it, had already made up his mind not only to attach to his empire the Egyptian possessions in Asia, but also to make conquests on his own behalf in Europe and, if not to seek on that account a war with Rome, at any rate to risk it The Romans had thus every reason to comply with that request of their allies, and to interfere directly in Asia; but they showed little inclination to do so. They not only delayed as long as the Macedonian war lasted, and gave to Attalus nothing but the protection of diplomatic intercession, which, we may add, proved in the first instance effective; but even after the victory, while they doubtless spoke as though the cities which had been in the hands of Ptolemy and Philip ought not to be taken possession of by Antiochus, and while the freedom of the Asiatic cities, Myrina, Abydus, Lampsacus,(1) and Cius, figured in Roman documents, they took not the smallest step to give effect to it, and allowed king Antiochus to employ the favourable opportunity presented by the withdrawal of the Macedonian garrisons to introduce his own. In fact, they even went so far as to submit to his landing in Europe in the spring of 558 and invading the Thracian Chersonese, where he occupied Sestus and Madytus and spent a considerable time in the chastisement of the Thracian barbarians and the restoration of the destroyed Lysimachia, which he had selected as his chief place of arms and as the capital of the newly-instituted satrapy of Thrace. Flamininus indeed, who was entrusted with the conduct of these affairs, sent to the king at Lysimachia envoys, who talked of the integrity of the Egyptian territory and of the freedom of all the Hellenes; but nothing came out of it. The king talked in turn of his undoubted legal title to the ancient kingdom of Lysimachus conquered by his ancestor Seleucus, explained that he was employed not in making territorial acquisitions but only in preserving the integrity of his hereditary dominions, and declined the intervention of the Romans in his disputes with the cities subject to him in Asia Minor. With justice he could add that peace had already been concluded with Egypt, and that the Romans were thus far deprived of any formal pretext for interfering.(2) The sudden return of the king to Asia occasioned by a false report of the death of the young king of Egypt, and the projects which it suggested of a landing in Cyprus or even at Alexandria, led to the breaking off of the conferences without coming to any conclusion, still less producing any result. In the following year, 559, Antiochus returned to Lysimachia with his fleet and army reinforced, and employed himself in organizing the new satrapy which he destined for his son Seleucus. Hannibal, who had been obliged to flee from Carthage, came to him at Ephesus; and the singularly honourable reception accorded to the exile was virtually a declaration of war against Rome. Nevertheless Flamininus in the spring of 560 withdrew all the Roman garrisons from Greece. This was under the existing circumstances at least a mischievous error, if not a criminal acting in opposition to his own better knowledge; for we cannot dismiss the idea that Flamininus, in order to carry home with him the undiminished glory of having wholly terminated the war and liberated Hellas, contented himself with superficially covering up for the moment the smouldering embers of revolt and war. The Roman statesman might perhaps be right, when he pronounced any attempt to bring Greece directly under the dominion of the Romans, and any intervention of the Romans in Asiatic affairs, to be a political blunder; but the opposition fermenting in Greece, the feeble arrogance of the Asiatic king, the residence, at the Syrian head-quarters, of the bitter enemy of the Romans who had already raised the west in arms against Rome--all these were clear signs of the approach of a fresh rising in arms on the part of the Hellenic east, which could not but have for its aim at least to transfer Greece from the clientship of Rome to that of the states opposed to Rome, and, if this object should be attained, would immediately extend the circle of its operations. It is plain that Rome could not allow this to take place. When Flamininus, ignoring all these sure indications of war, withdrew the garrisons from Greece, and yet at the same time made demands on the king of Asia which he had no intention of employing his army to support, he overdid his part in words as much as he fell short in action, and forgot his duty as a general and as a citizen in the indulgence of his personal vanity--a vanity, which wished to confer, and imagined that it had conferred, peace on Rome and freedom on the Greeks of both continents.

Preparations of Antiochus for War with Rome

Antiochus employed the unexpected respite in strengthening his position at home and his relations with his neighbours before beginning the war, on which for his part he was resolved, and became all the more so, the more the enemy appeared to procrastinate. He now (561) gave his daughter Cleopatra, previously betrothed, in marriage to the young king of Egypt. That he at the same time promised to restore the provinces wrested from his son-in-law, was afterwards affirmed on the part of Egypt, but probably without warrant; at any rate the land remained actually attached to the Syrian kingdom.(3) He offered to restore to Eumenes, who had in 557 succeeded his father Attalus on the throne of Pergamus, the towns taken from him, and to give him also one of his daughters in marriage, if he would abandon the Roman alliance. In like manner he bestowed a daughter on Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, and gained the Galatians by presents, while he reduced by arms the Pisidians who were constantly in revolt, and other small tribes. Extensive privileges were granted to the Byzantines; respecting the cities in Asia Minor, the king declared that he would permit the independence of the old free cities such as Rhodes and Cyzicus, and would be content in the case of the others with a mere formal recognition of his sovereignty; he even gave them to understand that he was ready to submit to the arbitration of the Rhodians. In European Greece he could safely count on the Aetolians, and he hoped to induce Philip again to take up arms. In fact, a plan of Hannibal obtained the royal approval, according to which he was to receive from Antiochus a fleet of 100 sail and a land army of 10,000 infantry and 1000 cavalry, and was to employ them in kindling first a third Punic war in Carthage, and then a second Hannibalic war in Italy; Tyrian emissaries proceeded to Carthage to pave the way for a rising in arms there(4) Finally, good results were anticipated from the Spanish insurrection, which, at the time when Hannibal left Carthage, was at its height.(5)

Aetolian Intrigues against Rome

While the storm was thus gathering from far and wide against Rome, it was on this, as on all occasions, the Hellenes implicated in the enterprise, who were of the least moment, and yet took action of the greatest importance and with the utmost impatience. The exasperated and arrogant Aetolians began by degrees to persuade themselves that Philip had been vanquished by them and not by the Romans, and could not even wait till Antiochus should advance into Greece. Their policy is characteristically expressed in the reply, which their -strategus- gave soon afterwards to Flamininus, when he requested a copy of the declaration of war against Rome: that he would deliver it to him in person, when the Aetolian army should encamp on the Tiber. The Aetolians acted as the agents of the Syrian king in Greece and deceived both parties, by representing to the king that all the Hellenes were waiting with open arms to receive him as their true deliverer, and by telling those in Greece who were disposed to listen to them that the landing of the king was nearer than it was in reality. Thus they actually succeeded in inducing the simple obstinacy of Nabis to break loose and to rekindle in Greece the flame of war two years after Flamininus's departure, in the spring of 562; but in doing so they missed their aim. Nabis attacked Gythium, one of the towns of the free Laconians that by the last treaty had been annexed to the Achaean league, and took it; but the experienced -strategus- of the Achaeans, Philopoemen, defeated him at the Barbosthenian mountains, and the tyrant brought back barely a fourth part of his army to his capital, in which Philopoemen shut him up. As such a commencement was no sufficient inducement for Antiochus to come to Europe, the Aetolians resolved to possess themselves of Sparta, Chalcis, and Demetrias, and by gaining these important towns to prevail upon the king to embark. In the first place they thought to become masters of Sparta, by arranging that the Aetolian Alexamenus should march with 1000 men into the town under pretext of bringing a contingent in terms of the alliance, and should embrace the opportunity of making away with Nabis and of occupying the town. This was done, and Nabis was killed at a review of the troops; but, when the Aetolians dispersed to plunder the town, the Lacedaemonians found time to rally and slew them to the last man. The city was then induced by Philopoemen to join the Achaean league. After this laudable project of the Aetolians had thus not only deservedly failed, but had had precisely the opposite effect of uniting almost the whole Peloponnesus in the hands of the other party, it fared little better with them at Chalcis, for the Roman party there called in the citizens of Eretria and Carystus in Euboea, who were favourable to Rome, to render seasonable aid against the Aetolians and the Chalcidian exiles. On the other hand the occupation of Demetrias was successful, for the Magnetes to whom the city had been assigned were, not without reason, apprehensive that it had been promised by the Romans to Philip as a prize in return for his aid against Antiochus; several squadrons of Aetolian horse moreover managed to steal into the town under the pretext of forming an escort for Eurylochus, the recalled head of the opposition to Rome. Thus the Magnetes passed over, partly of their own accord, partly by compulsion, to the side of the Aetolians, and the latter did not fail to make use of the fact at the court of the Seleucid.

Rupture between Antiochus and the Romans

Antiochus took his resolution. A rupture with Rome, in spite of endeavours to postpone it by the diplomatic palliative of embassies, could no longer be avoided. As early as the spring of 561 Flamininus, who continued to have the decisive voice in the senate as to eastern affairs, had expressed the Roman ultimatum to the envoys of the king, Menippus and Hegesianax; viz. that he should either evacuate Europe and dispose of Asia at his pleasure, or retain Thrace and submit to the Roman protectorate over Smyrna, Lampsacus, and Alexandria Troas. These demands had been again discussed at Ephesus, the chief place of arms and fixed quarters of the king in Asia Minor, in the spring of 562, between Antiochus and the envoys of the senate, Publius Sulpicius and Publius Villius; and they had separated with the conviction on both sides thata peaceful settlement was no longer possible. Thenceforth war was resolved on in Rome. In that very summer of 562 a Roman fleet of 30 sail, with 3000 soldiers on board, under Aulus Atilius Serranus, appeared off Gythium, where their arrival accelerated the conclusion of the treaty between the Achaeans and Spartans; the eastern coasts of Sicily and Italy were strongly garrisoned, so as to be secure against any attempts at a landing; a land army was expected in Greece in the autumn. Since the spring of 562 Flamininus, by direction of the senate, had journeyed through Greece to thwart the intrigues of the opposite party, and to counteract as far as possible the evil effects of the ill-timed evacuation of the country. The Aetolians had already gone so far as formally to declare war in their diet against Rome. But Flamininus succeeded In saving Chalcis for the Romans by throwing into it a garrison of 500 Achaeans and 500 Pergamenes. He made an attempt also to recover Demetrias; and the Magnetes wavered. Though some towns in Asia Minor, which Antiochus had proposed to subdue before beginning the great war, still held out, he could now no longer delay his landing, unless he was willing to let the Romans recover all the advantages which they had surrendered two years before by withdrawing their garrisons from Greece. He collected the vessels and troops which were at hand--he had but 40 decked vessels and 10,000 infantry, along with 500 horse and 6 elephants--and started from the Thracian Chersonese for Greece, where he landed in the autumn of 562 at Pteleum on the Pagasaean gulf, and immediately occupied the adjoining Demetrias. Nearly about the same time a Roman army of some 25,000 men under the praetor Marcus Baebius landed at Apollonia. The war was thus begun on both sides.

Attitude of the Minor Powers Carthage and Hannibal

Everything depended on the extent to which that comprehensively- planned coalition against Rome, of which Antiochus came forward as the head, might be realized. As to the plan, first of all, of stirring up enemies to the Romans in Carthage and Italy, it was the fate of Hannibal at the court of Ephesus, as through his whole career, to have projected his noble and high-spirited plans for the behoof of people pedantic and mean. Nothing was done towards their execution, except that some Carthaginian patriots were compromised; no choice was left to the Carthaginians but to show unconditional submission to Rome. The camarilla would have nothing to do with Hannibal--such a man was too inconveniently great for court cabals; and, after having tried all sorts of absurd expedients, such as accusing the general, with whose name the Romans frightened their children, of concert with the Roman envoys, they succeeded in persuading Antiochus the Great, who like all insignificant monarchs plumed himself greatly on his independence and was influenced by nothing so easily as by the fear of being ruled, into the wise belief that he ought not to allow himself to be thrown into the shade by so celebrated a man. Accordingly it was in solemn council resolved that the Phoenician should be employed in future only for subordinate enterprises and for giving advice--with the reservation, of course, that the advice should never be followed. Hannibal revenged himself on the rabble, by accepting every commission and brilliantly executing all.

States of Asia Minor

In Asia Cappadocia adhered to the great-king; Prusias of Bithynia on the other hand took, as always, the side of the stronger. King Eumenes remained faithful to the old policy of his house, which was now at length to yield to him its true fruit. He had not only persistently refused |the offers of Antiochus, but had constantly urged the Romans to a war, from which he expected the aggrandizement of his kingdom. The Rhodians and Byzantines likewise joined their old allies. Egypt too took the side of Rome and offered support in supplies and men; which, however, the Romans did not accept.

Macedonia

In Europe the result mainly depended on the position which Philip of Macedonia would take up. It would have been perhaps the right policy for him, notwithstanding all the injuries or shortcomings of the past, to unite with Antiochus. But Philip was ordinarily influenced not by such considerations, but by his likings and dislikings; and his hatred was naturally directed much more against the faithless ally, who had left him to contend alone with the common enemy, had sought merely to seize his own share in the spoil, and had become a burdensome neighbour to him in Thrace, than against the conqueror, who had treated him respectfully and honourably. Antiochus had, moreover, given deep offence to the hot temper of Philip by the setting up of absurd pretenders to the Macedonian crown, and by the ostentatious burial of the Macedonian bones bleaching at Cynoscephalae. Philip therefore placed his whole force with cordial zeal at the disposal of the Romans.

The Lesser Greek States

The second power of Greece, the Achaean league, adhered no less decidedly than the first to the alliance with Rome. Of the smaller powers, the Thessalians and the Athenians held by Rome; among the latter an Achaean garrison introduced by Flamininus into the citadel brought the patriotic party, which was pretty strong, to reason. The Epirots exerted themselves to keep on good terms, if possible, with both parties. Thus, in addition to the Aetolians and the Magnetes who were joined by a portion of the neighbouring Perrhaebians, Antiochus was supported only by Amynander, the weak king of the Athamanes, who allowed himself to be dazzled by foolish designs on the Macedonian crown; by the Boeotians, among whom the party opposed to Rome was still at the helm; and in the Peloponnesus by the Eleans and Messenians, who were in the habit of taking part with the Aetolians against the Achaeans. This was indeed a hopeful beginning; and the title of commander-in-chief with absolute power, which the Aetolians decreed to the great-king, seemed insult added to injury. There had been, just as usual, deception on both sides. Instead of the countless hordes of Asia, the king brought up a force scarcely half as strong as an ordinary consular army; and instead of the open arms with which all the Hellenes were to welcome their deliverer from the Roman yoke, one or two bands of klephts and some dissolute civic communities offered to the king brotherhood in arms.

Antiochus in Greece

For the moment, indeed, Antiochus had anticipated the Romans in Greece proper. Chalcis was garrisoned by the Greek allies of the Romans, and refused the first summons but the fortress surrendered when Antiochus advanced with all his force; and a Roman division, which arrived too late to occupy it, was annihilated by Antiochus at Deliurn. Euboea was thus lost to the Romans. Antiochus still made even in winter an attempt, in concert with the Aetolians and Athamanes, to gain Thessaly; Thermopylae was occupied, Pherae and other towns were taken, but Appius Claudius came up with 2000 men from Apollonia, relieved Larisa, and took up his position there. Antiochus, tired of the winter campaign, preferred to return to his pleasant quarters at Chalcis, where the time was spent merrily, and the king even, in spite of his fifty years and his warlike schemes, wedded a fair Chalcidian. So the winter of 562-3 passed, without Antiochus doing much more than sending letters hither and thither through Greece: he waged the war --a Roman officer remarked--by means of pen and ink.

Landing of the Romans

In the beginning of spring 563 the Roman staff arrived at Apollonia. The commander-in-chief was Manius Acilius Glabrio, a man of humble origin, but an able general feared both by his soldiers and by the enemy; the admiral was Gaius Livius; and among the military tribunes were Marcus Porcius Cato, the conqueror of Spain, and Lucius Valerius Flaccus, who after the old Roman wont did not disdain, although they had been consuls, to re-enter the army as simple war-tribunes. They brought with them reinforcements in ships and men, including Numidian cavalry and Libyan elephants sent by Massinissa, and the permission of the senate to accept auxiliary troops to the number of 5000 from the extra-Italian allies, so that the whole number of the Roman forces was raised to about 40,000 men. The king, who in the beginning of spring had gone to the Aetolians and had thence made an aimless expedition to Acarnania, on the news of Glabrio's landing returned to his head-quarters to begin the campaign in earnest. But incom prehensibly, through his own negligence and that of his lieutenants in Asia, reinforcements had wholly failed to reach him, so that he had nothing but the weak army--now further decimated by sickness and desertion in its dissolute winter-quarters--with which he had landed at Pteleum in the autumn of the previous year. The Aetolians too, who had professed to send such enormous numbers into the field, now, when their support was of moment, brought to their commander-in-chief no more than 4000 men. The Roman troops had already begun operations in Thessaly, where the vanguard in concert with the Macedonian army drove the garrisons of Antiochus out of the Thessalian towns and occupied the territory of the Athamanes. The consul with the main army followed; the whole force of the Romans assembled at Larisa.

Battle at Thermopylae Greece Occupied by the Romans Resistance of the Aetolians

Instead of returning with all speed to Asia and evacuating the field before an enemy in every respect superior, Antiochus resolved to entrench himself at Thermopylae, which he had occupied, and there to await the arrival of the great army from Asia. He himself took up a position in the chief pass, and commanded the Aetolians to occupy the mountain-path, by which Xerxes had formerly succeeded in turning the Spartans. But only half of the Aetolian contingent was pleased to comply with this order of the commander-in-chief; the other 2000 men threw themselves into the neighbouring town of Heraclea, where they took no other part in the battle than that of attempting during its progress to surprise and plunder the Roman camp. Even the Aetolians posted on the heights discharged their duty of watching with remissness and reluctance; their post on the Callidromus allowed itself to be surprised by Cato, and the Asiatic phalanx, which the consul had meanwhile assailed in front, dispersed, when the Romans hastening down the mountain fell upon its flank. As Antiochus had made no provision for any case and had not thought of retreat, the army was destroyed partly on the field of battle, partly during its flight; with difficulty a small band reached Demetrias, and the king himself escaped to Chalcis with 500 men. He embarked in haste for Ephesus; Europe was lost to him all but his possessions in Thrace, and even the fortresses could be no longer defended Chalcis surrendered to the Romans, and Demetrias to Philip, who received permission--as a compensation for the conquest of the town of Lamia in Achaia Phthiotis, which he was on the point of accomplishing and had then abandoned by orders of the consul--to make himself master of all the communities that had gone over to Antiochus in Thessaly proper, and even of the territories bordering on Aetolia, the districts of Dolopia and Aperantia. All the Greeks that had pronounced in favour of Antiochus hastened to make their peace; the Epirots humbly besought pardon for their ambiguous conduct, the Boeotians surrendered at discretion, the Eleans and Messenians, the latter after some struggle, submitted to the Achaeans. The prediction of Hannibal to the king was fulfilled, that no dependence at all could be placed upon the Greeks, who would submit to any conqueror. Even the Aetolians, when their corps shut up in Heraclea had been compelled after obstinate resistance to capitulate, attempted to make their peace with the sorely provoked Romans; but the stringent demands of the Roman consul, and a consignment of money seasonably arriving from Antiochus, emboldened them once more to break off the negotiations and to sustain for two whole months a siege in Naupactus. The town was already reduced to extremities, and its capture or capitulation could not have been long delayed, when Flamininus, constantly striving to save every Hellenic community from the worst consequences of its own folly and from the severity of his ruder colleagues, interposed and arranged in the first instance an armistice on tolerable terms. This terminated, at least for the moment, armed resistance in Greece.

Maritime War, and Preparations for Crossing to Asia Polyxenidas and Pausistratus Engagement off Aspendus Battle of Myonnesus

A more serious war was impending in Asia--a war which appeared of a very hazardous character on account not so much of the enemy as of the great distance and the insecurity of the communications with home, while yet, owing to the short-sighted obstinacy of Antiochus, the struggle could not well be terminated otherwise than by an attack on the enemy in his own country. The first object was to secure the sea. The Roman fleet, which during the campaign in Greece was charged with the task of interrupting the communication between Greece and Asia Minor, and which had been successful about the time of the battle at Thermopylae in seizing a strong Asiatic transport fleet near Andros, was thenceforth employed in making preparations for the crossing of the Romans to Asia next year and first of all in driving the enemy's fleet out of the Aegean Sea. It lay in the harbour of Cyssus on the southern shore of the tongue of land that projects from Ionia towards Chios; thither in search of it the Roman fleet proceeded, consisting of 75 Roman, 24 Pergamene, and 6 Carthaginian, decked vessels under the command of Gaius Livius. The Syrian admiral, Polyxenidas, a Rhodian emigrant, had only 70 decked vessels to oppose to it; but, as the Roman fleet still expected the ships of Rhodes, and as Polyxenidas relied on the superior seaworthiness of his vessels, those of Tyre and Sidon in particular, he immediately accepted battle. At the outset the Asiatics succeeded in sinking one of the Carthaginian vessels; but, when they came to grapple, Roman valour prevailed, and it was owing solely to the swiftness of their rowing and sailing that the enemy lost no more than 23 ships. During the pursuit the Roman fleet was joined by 25 ships from Rhodes, and the superiority of the Romans in those waters was now doubly assured. The enemy's fleet thenceforth kept the shelter of the harbour of Ephesus, and, as it could not be induced to risk a second battle, the fleet of the Romans and allies broke up for the winter; the Roman ships of war proceeded to the harbour of Cane in the neighbourhood of Pergamus. Both parties were busy during the winter in preparing for the next campaign. The Romans sought to gain over the Greeks of Asia Minor; Smyrna, which had perseveringly resisted all the attempts of the king to get possession of the city, received the Romans with open arms, and the Roman party gained the ascendency in Samos, Chios, Erythrae, Clazomenae, Phocaea, Cyme, and elsewhere. Antiochus was resolved, if possible, to prevent the Romans from crossing to Asia, and with that view he made zealous naval preparations--employing Polyxenidas to fit out and augment the fleet stationed at Ephesus, and Hannibal to equip a new fleet in Lycia, Syria, and Phoenicia; while he further collected in Asia Minor a powerful land army from all regions of his extensive empire. Early next year (564) the Roman fleet resumed its operations. Gaius Livius left the Rhodian fleet--which had appeared in good time this year, numbering 36 sail--to observe that of the enemy in the offing of Ephesus, and went with the greater portion of the Roman and Pergamene vessels to the Hellespont in accordance with his instructions, to pave the way for the passage of the land army by the capture of the fortresses there. Sestus was already occupied and Abydus reduced to extremities, when the news of the defeat of the Rhodian fleet recalled him. The Rhodian admiral Pausistratus, lulled into security by the representations of his countryman that he wished to desert from Antiochus, had allowed himself to be surprised in the harbour of Samos; he himself fell, and all his vessels were destroyed except five Rhodian and two Coan ships; Samos, Phocaea, and Cyme on hearing the news went over to Seleucus, who held the chief command by land in those provinces for his father.

But when the Roman fleet arrived partly from Cane, partly from the Hellespont, and was after some time joined by twenty new ships of the Rhodians at Samos, Polyxenidas was once more compelled to shut himself up in the harbour of Ephesus. As he declined the offered naval battle, and as, owing to the small numbers of the Roman force, an attack by land was not to be thought of, nothing remained for the Roman fleet but to take up its position in like manner at Samos. A division meanwhile proceeded to Patara on the Lycian coast, partly to relieve the Rhodians from the very troublesome attacks that were directed against them from that quarter, partly and chiefly to prevent the hostile fleet, which Hannibal was expected to bring up, from entering the Aegean Sea. When the squadron sent against Patara achieved nothing, the new admiral Lucius Aemilius Regillus, who had arrived with 20 war-vessels from Rome and had relieved Gaius Livius at Samos, was so indignant that he proceeded thither with the whole fleet; his officers with difficulty succeeded, while they were on their voyage, in making him understand that the primary object was not the conquest of Patara but the command of the Aegean Sea, and in inducing him to return to Samos. On the mainland of Asia Minor Seleucus had in the meanwhile begun the siege of Pergamus, while Antiochus with his chief army ravaged the Pergamene territory and the possessions of the Mytilenaeans on the mainland; they hoped to crush the hated Attalids, before Roman aid appeared. The Roman fleet went to Elaea and the port of Adramytium to help their ally; but, as the admiral wanted troops, he accomplished nothing. Pergamus seemed lost; but the laxity and negligence with which the siege was conducted allowed Eumenes to throw into the city Achaean auxiliaries under Diophanes, whose bold and successful sallies compelled the Gallic mercenaries, whom Antiochus had entrusted with the siege, to raise it.

In the southern waters too the projects of Antiochus were frustrated. The fleet equipped and led by Hannibal, after having been long detained by the constant westerly winds, attempted at length to reach the Aegean; but at the mouth of the Eurymedon, off Aspendus in Pamphylia, it encountered a Rhodian squadron under Eudamus; and in the battle, which ensued between the two fleets, the excellence of the Rhodian ships and naval officers carried the victory over Hannibal's tactics and his numerical superiority. It was the first naval battle, and the last battle against Rome, fought by the great Carthaginian. The victorious Rhodian fleet then took its station at Patara, and there prevented the intended junction of the two Asiatic fleets. In the Aegean Sea the Romano-Rhodian fleet at Samos, after being weakened by detaching the Pergamene ships to the Hellespont to support the land army which had arrived there, was in its turn attacked by that of Polyxenidas, who now numbered nine sail more than his opponents. On December 23 of the uncorrected calendar, according to the corrected calendar about the end of August, in 564, a battle took place at the promontory of Myonnesus between Teos and Colophon; the Romans broke through the line of the enemy, and totally surrounded the left wing, so that they took or sank 42 ships. An inscription in Saturnian verse over the temple of the Lares Permarini, which was built in the Campus Martius in memory of this victory, for many centuries thereafter proclaimed to the Romans how the fleet of the Asiatics had been defeated before the eyes of king Antiochus and of all his land army, and how the Romans thus "settled the mighty strife and subdued the kings." Thenceforth the enemy's ships no longer ventured to show themselves on the open sea, and made no further attempt to obstruct the crossing of the Roman land army.

Expedition to Asia

The conqueror of Zama had been selected at Rome to conduct the war on the Asiatic continent; he practically exercised the supreme command for the nominal commander-in-chief, his brother Lucius Scipio, whose intellect was insignificant, and who had no military capacity. The reserve hitherto stationed in Lower Italy was destined for Greece, the army of Glabrio for Asia: when it became known who was to command it, 5000 veterans from the Hannibalic war voluntarily enrolled, to fight once more under their beloved leader. In the Roman July, but according to the true time in March, the Scipios arrived at the army to commence the Asiatic campaign; but they were disagreeably surprised to find themselves instead involved, in the first instance, in an endless struggle with the desperate Aetolians. The senate, finding that Flamininus pushed his boundless consideration for the Hellenes too far, had left the Aetolians to choose between paying an utterly exorbitant war contribution and unconditional surrender, and thus had driven them anew to arms; none could tell when this warfare among mountains and strongholds would come to an end. Scipio got rid of the inconvenient obstacle by concerting a six-months' armistice, and then entered on his march to Asia. As the one fleet of the enemy was only blockaded in the Aegean Sea, and the other, which was coming up from the south, might daily arrive there in spite of the squadron charged to intercept it, it seemed advisable to take the land route through Macedonia and Thrace and to cross the Hellespont. In that direction no real obstacles were to be anticipated; for Philip of Macedonia might be entirely depended on, Prusias king of Bithynia was in alliance with the Romans, and the Roman fleet could easily establish itself in the straits. The long and weary march along the coast of Macedonia and Thrace was accomplished without material loss; Philip made provision on the one hand for supplying their wants, on the other for their friendly reception by the Thracian barbarians. They had lost so much time however, partly with the Aetolians, partly on the march, that the army only reached the Thracian Chersonese about the time of the battle of Myonnesus. But the marvellous good fortune of Scipio now in Asia, as formerly in Spain and Africa, cleared his path of all difficulties.

Passage of the Hellespont by the Romans

On the news of the battle at Myonnesus Antiochus so completely lost his judgment, that in Europe he caused the strongly-garrisoned and well-provisioned fortress of Lysimachia to be evacuated by the garrison and by the inhabitants who were faithfully devoted to the restorer of their city, and withal even forgot to withdraw in like manner the garrisons or to destroy the rich magazines at Aenus and Maronea; and on the Asiatic coast he opposed not the slightest resistance to the landing of the Romans, but on the contrary, while it was taking place, spent his time at Sardes in upbraiding destiny. It is scarcely doubtful that, had he but provided for the defence of Lysimachia down to the no longer distant close of the summer, and moved forward his great army to the Hellespont, Scipio would have been compelled to take up winter quarters on the European shore, in a position far from being, in a military or political point of view, secure.

While the Romans, after disembarking on the Asiatic shore, paused for some days to refresh themselves and to await their leader who was detained behind by religious duties, ambassadors from the great-king arrived in their camp to negotiate for peace. Antiochus offered half the expenses of the war, and the cession of his European possessions as well as of all the Greek cities in Asia Minor that had gone over to Rome; but Scipio demanded the whole costs of the war and the surrender of all Asia Minor. The former terms, he declared, might have been accepted, had the army still been before Lysimachia, or even on the European side of the Hellespont; but they did not suffice now, when the steed felt the bit and knew its rider. The attempts of the great- king to purchase peace from his antagonist after the Oriental manner by sums of money--he offered the half of his year's revenues!--failed as they deserved; the proud burgess, in return for the gratuitous restoration of his son who had fallen a captive, rewarded the great- king with the friendly advice to make peace on any terms. This was not in reality necessary: had the king possessed the resolution to prolong the war and to draw the enemy after him by retreating into the interior, a favourable issue was still by no means impossible. But Antiochus, irritated by the presumably intentional arrogance of his antagonist, and too indolent for any persevering and consistent warfare, hastened with the utmost eagerness to expose his unwieldy, but unequal, and undisciplined mass of an army to the shock of the Roman legions.

Battle of Magnesia

In the valley of the Hermus, near Magnesia at the foot of Mount Sipylus not far from Smyrna, the Roman troops fell in with the enemy late in the autumn of 564. The force of Antiochus numbered close on 80,000 men, of whom 12,000 were cavalry; the Romans--who had along with them about 5000 Achaeans, Pergamenes, and Macedonian volunteers --had not nearly half that number, but they were so sure of victory, that they did not even wait for the recovery of their general who had remained behind sick at Elaea; Gnaeus Domitius took the command in his stead. Antiochus, in order to be able even to place his immense mass of troops, formed two divisions. In the first were placed the mass of the light troops, the peltasts, bowmen, slingers, the mounted archers of Mysians, Dahae, and Elymaeans, the Arabs on their dromedaries, and the scythe-chariots. In the second division the heavy cavalry (the Cataphractae, a sort of cuirassiers) were stationed on the flanks; next to these, in the intermediate division, the Gallic and Cappadocian infantry; and in the very centre the phalanx armed after the Macedonian fashion, 16,000 strong, the flower of the army, which, however, had not room in the narrow space and had to be drawn up in double files 32 deep. In the space between the two divisions were placed 54 elephants, distributed between the bands of the phalanx and of the heavy cavalry. The Romans stationed but a few squadrons on the left wing, where the river gave protection; the mass of the cavalry and all the light armed were placed on the right, which was led by Eumenes; the legions stood in the centre. Eumenes began the battle by despatching his archers and slingers against the scythe-chariots with orders to shoot at the teams; in a short time not only were these thrown into disorder, but the camel-riders stationed next to them were also carried away, and even in the second division the left wing of heavy cavalry placed behind fell into confusion. Eumenes now threw himself with all the Roman cavalry, numbering 3000 horse, on the mercenary infantry, which was placed in the second division between the phalanx and the left wing of heavy cavalry, and, when these gave way, the cuirassiers who had already fallen into disorder also fled. The phalanx, which had just allowed the light troops to pass through and was preparing to advance against the Roman legions, was hampered by the attack of the cavalry in flank, and compelled to stand still and to form front on both sides--a movement which the depth of its disposition favoured. Had the heavy Asiatic cavalry been at hand, the battle might have been restored; but the left wing was shattered, and the right, led by Antiochus in person, had driven before it the little division of Roman cavalry opposed to it, and had reached the Roman camp, which was with great difficulty defended from its attack. In this way the cavalry were at the decisive moment absent from the scene of action. The Romans were careful not to assail the phalanx with their legions, but sent against it the archers and slingers, not one of whose missiles failed to take effect on the densely-crowded mass. The phalanx nevertheless retired slowly and in good order, till the elephants stationed in the interstices became frightened and broke the ranks. Then the whole army dispersed in tumultuous flight; an attempt to hold the camp failed, and only increased the number of the dead and the prisoners. The estimate of the loss of Antiochus at 50,000 men is, considering the infinite confusion, not incredible; the legions of the Romans had never been engaged, and the victory, which gave them a third continent, cost them 24 horsemen and 300 foot soldiers. Asia Minor submitted; including even Ephesus, whence the admiral had hastily to withdraw his fleet, and Sardes the residence of the court.

Conclusion of Peace Expedition against the Celts of Asia Minor Regulation of the Affairs of Asia Minor

The king sued for peace and consented to the terms proposed by the Romans, which, as usual, were just the same as those offered before the battle and consequently included the cession of Asia Minor. Till they were ratified, the army remained in Asia Minor at the expense of the king; which came to cost him not less than 3000 talents (730,000 pounds). Antiochus himself in his careless fashion soon consoled himself for the loss of half his kingdom; it was in keeping with his character, that he declared himself grateful to the Romans for saving him the trouble of governing too large an empire. But with the day of Magnesia Asia was erased from the list of great states; and never perhaps did a great power fall so rapidly, so thoroughly, and so ignominiously as the kingdom of the Seleucidae under this Antiochus the Great. He himself was soon afterwards (567) slain by the indignant inhabitants of Elymais at the head of the Persian gulf, on occasion of pillaging the temple of Bel, with the treasures of which he had sought to replenish his empty coffers.

The Roman government, after having achieved the victory, had to arrange the affairs of Asia Minor and of Greece. If the Roman rule was here to be erected on a firm foundation, it was by no means enough that Antiochus should have renounced the supremacy in the west of Asia Minor. The circumstances of the political situation there have been set forth above.(6) The Greek free cities on the Ionian and Aeolian coast, as well as the kingdom of Pergamus of a substantially similar nature, were certainly the natural pillars of the new Roman supreme power, which here too came forward essentially as protector of the Hellenes kindred in race. But the dynasts in the interior of Asia Minor and on the north coast of the Black Sea had hardly yielded for long any serious obedience to the kings of Asia, and the treaty with Antiochus alone gave to the Romans no power over the interior. It was indispensable to draw a certain line within which the Roman influence was henceforth to exercise control. Here the element of chief importance was the relation of the Asiatic Hellenes to the Celts who had been for a century settled there. These had formally apportioned among them the regions of Asia Minor, and each one of the three cantons raised its fixed tribute from the territory laid under contribution. Doubtless the burgesses of Pergamus, under the vigorous guidance of their presidents who had thereby become hereditary princes, had rid themselves of the unworthy yoke; and the fair afterbloom of Hellenic art, which had recently emerged afresh from the soil, had grown out of these last Hellenic wars sustained by a national public spirit. But it was a vigorous counterblow, not a decisive success; again and again the Pergamenes had to defend with arms their urban peace against the raids of the wild hordes from the eastern mountains, and the great majority of the other Greek cities probably remained in their old state of dependence.(7)

If the protectorate of Rome over the Hellenes was to be in Asia more than a name, an end had to be put to this tributary obligation of their new clients; and, as the Roman policy at this time declined, much more even in Asia than on the Graeco-Macedonian peninsula, the possession of the country on its own behalf and the permanent occupation therewith connected, there was no course in fact left but to carry the arms of Rome up to the limit which was to be staked off for the domain of Rome's power, and effectively to inaugurate the new supremacy among the inhabitants of Asia Minor generally, and above all in the Celtic cantons.

This was done by the new Roman commander-in-chief, Gnaeus Manlius Volso, who relieved Lucius Scipio in Asia Minor. He was subjected to severe reproach on this score; the men in the senate who were averse to the new turn of policy failed to see either the aim, or the pretext, for such a war. There is no warrant for the former objection, as directed against this movement in particular; it was on the contrary, after the Roman state had once interfered in Hellenic affairs as it had done, a necessary consequence of this policy. Whether it was the right course for Rome to undertake the protectorate over the Hellenes collectively, may certainly be called in question; but regarded from the point of view which Flamininus and the majority led by him had now taken up, the overthrow of the Galatians was in fact a duty of prudence as well as of honour. Better founded was the objection that there was not at the time a proper ground of war against them; for they had not been, strictly speaking, in alliance with Antiochus, but had only according to their wont allowed him to levy hired troops in their country. But on the other side there fell the decisive consideration, that the sending of a Roman military force to Asia could only be demanded of the Roman burgesses under circumstances altogether extraordinary, and, if once such an expedition was necessary, everything told in favour of carrying it out at once and with the victorious army that was now stationed in Asia. So, doubtless under the influence of Flamininus and of those who shared his views in the senate, the campaign into the interior of Asia Minor was undertaken in the spring of 565. The consul started from Ephesus, levied contributions from the towns and princes on the upper Maeander and in Pamphylia without measure, and then turned northwards against the Celts. Their western canton, the Tolistoagii, had retired with their belongings to Mount Olympus, and the middle canton, the Tectosages, to Mount Magaba, in the hope that they would be able there to defend themselves till the winter should compel the strangers to withdraw. But the missiles of the Roman slingers and archers--which so often turned the scale against the Celts unacquainted with such weapons, almost as in more recent times firearms have turned the scale against savage tribes--forced the heights, and the Celts succumbed in a battle, such as had often its parallels before and after on the Po and on the Seine, but here appears as singular as the whole phenomenon of this northern race emerging amidst the Greek and Phrygian nations. The number of the slain was at both places enormous, and still greater that of the captives. The survivors escaped over the Halys to the third Celtic canton of the Trocmi, which the consul did not attack. That river was the limit at which the leaders of Roman policy at that time had resolved to halt. Phrygia, Bithynia, and Paphlagonia were to become dependent on Rome; the regions lying farther to the east were left to themselves.

The affairs of Asia Minor were regulated partly by the peace with Antiochus (565), partly by the ordinances of a Roman commission presided over by the consul Volso. Antiochus had to furnish hostages, one of whom was his younger son of the same name, and to pay a war- contribution--proportional in amount to the treasures of Asia--of 15,000 Euboic talents (3,600,000 pounds), a fifth of which was to be paid at once, and the remainder in twelve yearly instalments. He was called, moreover, to cede all the lands which he possessed in Europe and, in Asia Minor, all his possessions and claims of right to the north of the range of the Taurus and to the west of the mouth of the Cestrus between Aspendus and Perga in Pamphylia, so that he retained nothing in Asia Minor but eastern Pamphylia and Cilicia. His protectorate over its kingdoms and principalities of course ceased. Asia, or, as the kingdom of the Seleucids was thenceforth usually and more appropriately named, Syria, lost the right of waging aggressive wars against the western states, and in the event of a defensive war, of acquiring territory from them on the conclusion of peace; lost, moreover, the right of navigating the sea to the west of the mouth of the Calycadnus in Cilicia with vessels of war, except for the conveyance of envoys, hostages, or tribute; was further prevented from keeping more than ten decked vessels in all, except in the case of a defensive war, from taming war-elephants, and lastly from the levying of mercenaries in the western states, or receiving political refugees and deserters from them at court. The war vessels which he possessed beyond the prescribed number, the elephants, and the political refugees who had sought shelter with him, he delivered up. By way of compensation the great-king received the title of a friend of the Roman commonwealth. The state of Syria was thus by land and sea completely and for ever dislodged from the west; it is a significant indication of the feeble and loose organization of the kingdom of the Seleucidae, that it alone, of all the great states conquered by Rome never after the first conquest desired a second appeal to the decision of arms.

Armenia

The two Armenias, hitherto at least nominally Asiatic satrapies, became transformed, if not exactly in pursuance with the Roman treaty of peace, yet under its influence into independent kingdoms; and their holders, Artaxias and Zariadris, became founders of new dynasties.

Cappadocia

Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, whose land lay beyond the boundary laid down by the Romans for their protectorate, escaped with a money- fine of 600 talents (146,000 pounds); which was afterwards, on the intercession of his son-in-law Eumenes, abated to half that sum.

Bithynia

Prusias, king of Bithynia, retained his territory as it stood, and so did the Celts; but they were obliged to promise that they would no longer send armed bands beyond their bounds, and the disgraceful payments of tribute by the cities of Asia Minor came to an end. The Asiatic Greeks did not fail to repay the benefit--which was certainly felt as a general and permanent one--with golden chaplets and transcendental panegyrics.

The Free Greek Cities

In the western portion of Asia Minor the regulation of the territorial arrangements was not without difficulty, especially as the dynastic policy of Eumenes there came into collision with that of the Greek Hansa. At last an understanding was arrived at to the following effect. All the Greek cities, which were free and had joined the Romans on the day of the battle of Magnesia, had their liberties confirmed, and all of them, excepting those previously tributary to Eumenes, were relieved from the payment of tribute to the different dynasts for the future. In this way the towns of Dardanus and Ilium, whose ancient affinity with the Romans was traced to the times of Aeneas, became free, along with Cyme, Smyrna, Clazomenae, Erythrae, Chios, Colophon, Miletus, and other names of old renown. Phocaea also, which in spite of its capitulation had been plundered by the soldiers of the Roman fleet--although it did not fall under the category designated in the treaty--received back by way of compensation its territory and its freedom. Most of the cities of the Graeco-Asiatic Hansa acquired additions of territory and other advantages. Rhodes of course received most consideration; it obtained Lycia exclusive of Telmissus, and the greater part of Caria south of the Maeander; besides, Antiochus guaranteed the property and the claims of the Rhodians within his kingdom, as well as the exemption from customs-dues which they had hitherto enjoyed.

Extension of the Kingdom of Pergamus

All the rest, forming by far the largest share of the spoil, fell to the Attalids, whose ancient fidelity to Rome, as well as the hardships endured by Eumenes in the war and his personal merit in connection with the issue of the decisive battle, were rewarded by Rome as no king ever rewarded his ally. Eumenes received, in Europe, the Chersonese with Lysimachia; in Asia--in addition to Mysia which he already possessed--the provinces of Phrygia on the Hellespont, Lydia with Ephesus and Sardes, the northern district of Caria as far as the Maeander with Tralles and Magnesia, Great Phrygia and Lycaonia along with a portion of Cilicia, the district of Milyas between Phrygia and Lycia, and, as a port on the southern sea, the Lycian town Telmissus. There was a dispute afterwards between Eumenes and Antiochus regarding Pamphylia, as to how far it lay on this side of or beyond the prescribed boundary, and accordingly belonged to the former or to the latter. He further acquired the protectorate over, and the right of receiving tribute from, those Greek cities which did not receive absolute freedom; but it was stipulated in this case that the cities should retain their charters, and that the tribute should not be heightened. Moreover, Antiochus had to bind himself to pay to Eumenes the 350 talents (85,000 pounds) which he owed to his father Attalus, and likewise to pay a compensation of 127 talents (31,000 pounds) for arrears in the supplies of corn. Lastly, Eumenes obtained the royal forests and the elephants delivered up by Antiochus, but not the ships of war, which were burnt: the Romans tolerated no naval power by the side of their own. By these means the kingdom of the Attalids became in the east of Europe and Asia what Numidia was in Africa, a powerful state with an absolute constitution dependent on Rome, destined and able to keep in check both Macedonia and Syria without needing, except in extraordinary cases, Roman support. With this creation dictated by policy the Romans had as far as possible combined the liberation of the Asiatic Greeks, which was dictated by republican and national sympathy and by vanity. About the affairs of the more remote east beyond the Taurus and Halys they were firmly resolved to give themselves no concern. This is clearly shown by the terms of the peace with Antiochus, and still more decidedly by the peremptory refusal of the senate to guarantee to the town of Soli in Cilicia the freedom which the Rhodians requested for it. With equal fidelity they adhered to the fixed principle of acquiring no direct transmarine possessions. After the Roman fleet had made an expedition to Crete and had accomplished the release of the Romans sold thither into slavery, the fleet and land army left Asia towards the end of the summer of 566; on which occasion the land army, which again marched through Thrace, in consequence of the negligence of the general suffered greatly on the route from the attacks of the barbarians. The Romans brought nothing home from the east but honour and gold, both of which were already at this period usually conjoined in the practical shape assumed by the address of thanks--the golden chaplet.

Settlement of Greece Conflicts and Peace with the Aetolians

European Greece also had been agitated by this Asiatic war, and needed reorganization. The Aetolians, who had not yet learned to reconcile themselves to their insignificance, had, after the armistice concluded with Scipio in the spring of 564, rendered intercourse between Greece and Italy difficult and unsafe by means of their Cephallenian corsairs; and not only so, but even perhaps while the armistice yet lasted, they, deceived by false reports as to the state of things in Asia, had the folly to place Amynander once more on his Athamanian throne, and to carry on a desultory warfare with Philip in the districts occupied by him on the borders of Aetolia and Thessaly, in the course of which Philip suffered several discomfitures. After this, as a matter of course, Rome replied to their request for peace by the landing of the consul Marcus Fulvius Nobilior. He arrived among the legions in the spring of 565, and after fifteen days' siege gained possession of Ambracia by a capitulation honourable for the garrison; while simultaneously the Macedonians, Illyrians, Epirots, Acarnanians, and Achaeans fell upon the Aetolians. There was no such thing as resistance in the strict sense; after repeated entreaties of the Aetolians for peace the Romans at length desisted from the war, and granted conditions which must be termed reasonable when viewed with reference to such pitiful and malicious opponents. The Aetolians lost all cities and territories which were in the hands of their adversaries, more especially Ambracia which afterwards became free and independent in consequence of an intrigue concocted in Rome against Marcus Fulvius, and Oenia which was given to the Acarnanians: they likewise ceded Cephallenia. They lost the right of making peace and war, and were in that respect dependent on the foreign relations of Rome. Lastly, they paid a large sum of money. Cephallenia opposed this treaty on its own account, and only submitted when Marcus Fulvius landed on the island. In fact, the inhabitants of Same, who feared that they would be dispossessed from their well-situated town by a Roman colony, revolted after their first submission and sustained a four months' siege; the town, however, was finally taken and the whole inhabitants were sold into slavery.

Macedonia

In this case also Rome adhered to the principle of confining herself to Italy and the Italian islands. She took no portion of the spoil for herself, except the two islands of Cephallenia and Zacynthus, which formed a desirable supplement to the possession of Corcyra and other naval stations in the Adriatic. The rest of the territorial gain went to the allies of Rome. But the two most important of these, Philip and the Achaeans, were by no means content with the share of the spoil granted to them. Philip felt himself aggrieved, and not without reason. He might safely say that the chief difficulties in the last war--difficulties which arose not from the character of the enemy, but from the distance and the uncertainty of the communications--had been overcome mainly by his loyal aid. The senate recognized this by remitting his arrears of tribute and sending back his hostages; but he did not receive those additions to his territory which he expected. He got the territory of the Magnetes, with Demetrias which he had taken from the Aetolians; besides, there practically remained in his hands the districts of Dolopia and Athamania and a part of Thessaly, from which also the Aetolians had been expelled by him. In Thrace the interior remained under Macedonian protection, but nothing was fixed as to the coast towns and the islands of Thasos and Lemnos which were -de facto- in Philip's hands, while the Chersonese was even expressly given to Eumenes; and it was not difficult to see that Eumenes received possessions in Europe, simply that he might in case of need keep not only Asia but Macedonia in check. The exasperation of the proud and in many respects chivalrous king was natural; it was not chicane, however, but an unavoidable political necessity that induced the Romans to take this course. Macedonia suffered for having once been a power of the first rank, and for having waged war on equal terms with Rome; there was much better reason in her case than in that of Carthage for guarding against the revival of her old powerful position.

The Achaeans

It was otherwise with the Achaeans. They had, in the course of the war with Antiochus, gratified their long-cherished wish to bring the whole Peloponnesus into their confederacy; for first Sparta, and then, after the expulsion of the Asiatics from Greece, Elis and Messene had more or less reluctantly joined it. The Romans had allowed this to take place, and had even tolerated the intentional disregard of Rome which marked their proceedings. When Messene declared that she wished to submit to the Romans but not to enter the confederacy, and the latter thereupon employed force, Flamininus had not failed to remind the Achaeans that such separate arrangements as to the disposal of a part of the spoil were in themselves unjust, and were, in the relation in which the Achaeans stood to the Romans, more than unseemly; and yet in his very impolitic complaisance towards the Hellenes he had substantially done what the Achaeans willed. But the matter did not end there. The Achaeans, tormented by their dwarfish thirst for aggrandizement, would not relax their hold on the town of Pleuron in Aetolia which they had occupied during the war, but on the contrary made it an involuntary member of their confederacy; they bought Zacynthus from Amynander the lieutenant of the last possessor, and would gladly have acquired Aegina also. It was with reluctance that they gave up the former island to Rome, and they heard with great displeasure the good advice of Flamininus that they should content themselves with their Peloponnesus.

The Achaean Patriots

The Achaeans believed it their duty to display the independence of their state all the more, the less they really had; they talked of the rights of war, and of the faithful aid of the Achaeans in the wars of the Romans; they asked the Roman envoys at the Achaean diet why Rome should concern herself about Messene when Achaia put no questions as to Capua; and the spirited patriot, who had thus spoken, was applauded and was sure of votes at the elections. All this would have been very right and very dignified, had it not been much more ridiculous. There was a profound justice and a still more profound melancholy in the fact, that Rome, however earnestly she endeavoured to establish the freedom and to earn the thanks of the Hellenes, yet gave them nothing but anarchy and reaped nothing but ingratitude. Undoubtedly very generous sentiments lay at the bottom of the Hellenic antipathies to the protecting power, and the personal bravery of some of the men who took the lead in the movement was unquestionable; but this Achaean patriotism remained not the less a folly and a genuine historical caricature. With all that ambition and all that national susceptibility the whole nation was, from the highest to the lowest, pervaded by the most thorough sense of impotence. Every one was constantly listening to learn the sentiments of Rome, the liberal man no less than the servile; they thanked heaven, when the dreaded decree was not issued; they were sulky, when the senate gave them to understand that they would do well to yield voluntarily in order that they might not need to be compelled; they did what they were obliged to do, if possible, in a way offensive to the Romans, "to save forms"; they reported, explained, postponed, evaded, and, when all this would no longer avail, yielded with a patriotic sigh. Their proceedings might have claimed indulgence at any rate, if not approval, had their leaders been resolved to fight, and had they preferred the destruction of the nation to its bondage; but neither Philopoemen nor Lycortas thought of any such political suicide--they wished, if possible, to be free, but they wished above all to live. Besides all this, the dreaded intervention of Rome in the internal affairs of Greece was not the arbitrary act of the Romans, but was always invoked by the Greeks themselves, who, like boys, brought down on their own heads the rod which they feared. The reproach repeated -ad nauseam- by the erudite rabble in Hellenic and post-Hellenic times--that the Romans had been at pains to stir up internal discord in Greece--is one of the most foolish absurdities which philologues dealing in politics have ever invented. It was not the Romans that carried strife to Greece--which in truth would have been "carrying owls to Athens"--but the Greeks that carried their dissensions to Rome.

Quarrels between Achaeans and Spartans

The Achaeans in particular, who, in their eagerness to round their territory, wholly failed to see how much it would have been for their own good that Flamininus had not incorporated the towns of Aetolian sympathies with their league, acquired in Lacedaemon and Messene a very hydra of intestine strife. Members of these communities were incessantly at Rome, entreating and beseeching to be released from the odious connection; and amongst them, characteristically enough, were even those who were indebted to the Achaeans for their return to their native land. The Achaean league was incessantly occupied in the work of reformation and restoration at Sparta and Messene; the wildest refugees from these quarters determined the measures of the diet. Four years after the nominal admission of Sparta to the confederacy matters came even to open war and to an insanely thorough restoration, in which all the slaves on whom Nabis had conferred citizenship were once more sold into slavery, and a colonnade was built from the proceeds in the Achaean city of Megalopolis; the old state of property in Sparta was re-established, the of Lycurgus were superseded by Achaean laws, and the walls were pulled down (566). At last the Roman senate was summoned by all parties to arbitrate on all these doings --an annoying task, which was the righteous punishment of the sentimental policy that the senate had pursued. Far from mixing itself up too much in these affairs, the senate not only bore the sarcasms of Achaean candour with exemplary composure, but even manifested a culpable indifference while the worst outrages were committed. There was cordial rejoicing in Achaia when, after that restoration, the news arrived from Rome that the senate had found fault with it, but had not annulled it. Nothing was done for the Lacedaemonians by Rome, except that the senate, shocked at the judicial murder of from sixty to eighty Spartans committed by the Achaeans, deprived the diet of criminal jurisdiction over the Spartans--truly a heinous interference with the internal affairs of an independent state! The Roman statesmen gave themselves as little concern as possible about this tempest in a nut-shell, as is best shown by the many complaints regarding the superficial, contradictory, and obscure decisions of the senate; in fact, how could its decisions be expected to be clear, when there were four parties from Sparta simultaneously speaking against each other at its bar? Add to this the personal impression, which most of these Peloponnesian statesmen produced in Rome; even Flamininus shook his head, when one of them showed him on the one day how to perform some dance, and on the next entertained him with affairs of state. Matters went so far, that the senate at last lost patience and informed the Peloponnesians that it would no longer listen to them, and that they might do what they chose (572). This was natural enough, but it was not right; situated as the Romans were, they were under a moral and political obligation earnestly and steadfastly to rectify this melancholy state of things. Callicrates the Achaean, who went to the senate in 575 to enlighten it as to the state of matters in the Peloponnesus and to demand a consistent and calm intervention, may have had somewhat less worth as a man than his countryman Philopoemen who was the main founder of that patriotic policy; but he was in the right.

Death of Hannibal

Thus the protectorate of the Roman community now embraced all the states from the eastern to the western end of the Mediterranean. There nowhere existed a state that the Romans would have deemed it worth while to fear. But there still lived a man to whom Rome accorded this rare honour--the homeless Carthaginian, who had raised in arms against Rome first all the west and then all the east, and whose schemes perhaps had been only frustrated by infamous aristocratic policy in the former case, and by stupid court policy in the latter. Antiochus had been obliged to bind himself in the treaty of peace to deliver up Hannibal; but the latter had escaped, first to Crete, then to Bithynia,(8) and now lived at the court of Prusias king of Bithynia, employed in aiding the latter in his wars with Eumenes, and victorious as ever by sea and by land. It is affirmed that he was desirous of stirring up Prusias also to make war on Rome; a folly, which, as it is told, sounds very far from credible. It is more certain that, while the Roman senate deemed it beneath its dignity to have the old man hunted out in his last asylum--for the tradition which inculpates the senate appears to deserve no credit--Flamininus, whose restless vanity sought after new opportunities for great achievements, undertook on his own part to deliver Rome from Hannibal as he had delivered the Greeks from their chains, and, if not to wield--which was not diplomatic--at any rate to whet and to point, the dagger against the greatest man of his time. Prusias, the most pitiful among the pitiful princes of Asia, was delighted to grant the little favour which the Roman envoy in ambiguous terms requested; and, when Hannibal saw his house beset by assassins, he took poison. He had long been prepared to do so, adds a Roman, for he knew the Romans and the word of kings. The year of his death is uncertain; probably he died in the latter half of the year 571, at the age of sixty-seven. When he was born, Rome was contending with doubtful success for the possession of Sicily; he had lived long enough to see the West wholly subdued, and to fight his own last battle with the Romans against the vessels of his native city which had itself become Roman; and he was constrained at last to remain a mere spectator, while Rome overpowered the East as the tempest overpowers the ship that has no one at the helm, and to feel that he alone was the pilot that could have weathered the storm. There was left to him no further hope to be disappointed, when he died; but he had honestly, through fifty years of struggle, kept the oath which he had sworn when a boy.

Death of Scipio

About the same time, probably in the same year, died also the man whom the Romans were wont to call his conqueror, Publius Scipio. On him fortune had lavished all the successes which she denied to his antagonist--successes which did belong to him, and successes which did not. He had added to the empire Spain, Africa, and Asia; and Rome, which he had found merely the first community of Italy, was at his death mistress of the civilized world. He himself had so many titles of victory, that some of them were made over to his brother and his cousin.(9) And yet he too spent his last years in bitter vexation, and died when little more than fifty years of age in voluntary banishment, leaving orders to his relatives not to bury his remains in the city for which he had lived and in which his ancestors reposed. It is not exactly known what drove him from the city. The charges of corruption and embezzlement, which were directed against him and still more against his brother Lucius, were beyond doubt empty calumnies, which do not sufficiently explain such bitterness of feeling; although it is characteristic of the man, that instead of simply vindicating himself by means of his account-books, he tore them in pieces in presence of the people and of his accusers, and summoned the Romans to accompany him to the temple of Jupiter and to celebrate the anniversary of his victory at Zama. The people left the accuser on the spot, and followed Scipio to the Capitol; but this was the last glorious day of the illustrious man. His proud spirit, his belief that he was different from, and better than, other men, his very decided family-policy, which in the person of his brother Lucius especially brought forward a clumsy man of straw as a hero, gave offence to many, and not without reason. While genuine pride protects the heart, arrogance lays it open to every blow and every sarcasm, and corrodes even an originally noble-minded spirit. It is throughout, moreover, the distinguishing characteristic of such natures as that of Scipio--strange mixtures of genuine gold and glittering tinsel--that they need the good fortune and the brilliance of youth in order to exercise their charm, and, when this charm begins to fade, it is the charmer himself that is most painfully conscious of the change.

Notes for Chapter IX

1. According to a recently discovered decree of the town of Lampsacus (-Mitth, des arch. Inst, in Athen-, vi. 95) the Lampsacenes after the defeat of Philip sent envoys to the Roman senate with the request that the town might be embraced in the treaty concluded between Rome and (Philip) the king (--opos sumperilephthomen [en tais sunthekais] tais genomenais Pomaiois pros ton [basilea]--), which the senate, at least according to the view of the petitioners, granted to them and referred them, as regarded other matters, to Flamininus and the ten envoys. From the latter they then obtain in Corinth a guarantee of their constitution and "letters to the kings." Flamininus also gives to them similar letters; of their contents we learn nothing more particular, than that in the decree the embassy is described as successful. But if the senate and Flamininus had formally and positively guaranteed the autonomy and democracy of the Lampsacenes, the decree would hardly dwell so much at length on the courteous answers, which the Roman commanders, who had been appealed to on the way for their intercession with the senate, gave to the envoys.

Other remarkable points in this document are the "brotherhood" of the Lampsacenes and the Romans, certainly going back to the Trojan legend, and the mediation, invoked by the former with success, of the allies and friends of Rome, the Massiliots, who were connected with the Lampsacenes through their common mother-city Phocaea.

2. The definite testimony of Hieronymus, who places the betrothal of the Syrian princess Cleopatra with Ptolemy Epiphanes in 556, taken in connection with the hints in Liv. xxxiii. 40 and Appian. Syr. 3, and with the actual accomplishment of the marriage in 561, puts it beyond a doubt that the interference of the Romans in the affairs of Egypt was in this case formally uncalled for.

3. For this we have the testimony of Polybius (xxviii. i), which the sequel of the history of Judaea completely confirms; Eusebius (p. 117, -Mai-) is mistaken in making Philometor ruler of Syria. We certainly find that about 567 farmers of the Syrian taxes made their payments at Alexandria (Joseph, xii. 4, 7); but this doubtless took place without detriment to the rights of sovereignty, simply because the dowry of Cleopatra constituted a charge on those revenues; and from this very circumstance presumably arose the subsequent dispute.

4. II. VII. Submission of Lower Italy

5. III. VII. The Romans Maintain a Standing Army in Spain

6. III. VIII. The Celts of Asia Minor ff.

7. From the decree of Lampsacus mentioned at III. IX. Difficulties with Rome, it appears pretty certain that the Lampsacenes requested from the Massiliots not merely intercession at Rome, but also intercession with the Tolistoagii (so the Celts, elsewhere named Tolistobogi, are designated in this document and in the Pergamene inscription, C. J. Gr. 3536,--the oldest monuments which mention them). Accordingly the Lampsacenes were probably still about the time of the wax with Philip tributary to this canton (comp. Liv. xxxviii. 16).

8. The story that he went to Armenia and at the request of king Artaxias built the town of Artaxata on the Araxes (Strabo, xi. p. 528; Plutarch, Luc. 31), is certainly a fiction; but it is a striking circumstance that Hannibal should have become mixed up, almost like Alexander, with Oriental fables.

9. Africanus, Asiagenus, Hispallus.