CHAPTER I.

THE SECOND MACEDONIAN WAR, 200-196 B.C.

The peace of the year 201 BC between Rome and Carthage had not put an end to hostilities in all the countries which had been the theatre of the Hannibalic war. The Gauls were not included in its provisions, and were now carrying on the war on their own account with a degree of determination and energy which they had failed to display for a long time. Nor could Spain be transferred without much difficulty from the dominion of Carthage to that of Rome. The Spaniards had hoped to find in the Romans their deliverers from a hateful oppression, not new and more exacting masters. The proud and war­like nation, impatient of control, struggled hard, before it would submit. At the same time the periodical insurrections in Corsica and Sardinia continued as before, and in Italy the long war had brought about a state of things which imperatively demanded permanent peace, if order and national wealth were to be restored. In spite of all these considerations, the peace with Carthage was scarcely concluded, when the Roman senate decided on commencing a new war, a war not like those of Cisalpine Gaul, Liguria, and Spain, which were only continuations of the Punic war, but one coolly planned for a political purpose and forced upon an enemy who wished nothing more than to live in peace with Rome.

Four years before the end of the Hannibalic war, in the year 205 BC, Rome had come to terms with king Philip of Macedonia. This step had become necessary, because Rome’s allies, the Aetolians, had already given up the unequal struggle with Philip, in which they had not been strenuously supported by Rome. The exhaustion of Italy in the latter part of the Hannibalic war, which had been the cause of this neglect of the Aetolians, made it imperative for the senate to purchase the peace with Philip even at the sacrifice of some Roman possessions in Illyria. That a peace concluded under such circumstances and such conditions could not be a sincere and lasting one is very clear. The Romans looked upon it only as a suspension of hostilities, and resolved to use the first opportunity to make Philip suffer for the troubles which he had caused them by interfering in the Hannibalic war. Yet it was not solely a feeling of revenge by which the cool and far-seeing statesmen in the Roman senate were determined in their policy. It was the well-founded apprehension which the alliance between Philip and Hannibal in the course of the second Punic war had called forth. It seemed at that dark period that the power of Rome would soon be at an end, if Philip acted as boldly as his ally, and carried the war into Italy. After the humiliation of Carthage, a similar danger, it is true, was not to be feared, at least for some time to come; but who would undertake to answer for the future? Once already Carthage had recovered with wonderful rapidity after a great fall, and had become more formidable to Rome in the second war than she had been in the first. Though Masinissa, the king of Numidia, was now a troublesome neighbour and relentless foe of the Carthaginians, yet he afforded the Romans no absolute security. No reliance could be placed on the permanence of a Numidian kingdom. The condition of the unsteady barbarian communities in the north of Africa changed as easily as the sand of their native desert. The very existence of these states depended mostly on the life and prosperity of a chief, and their policy was equally shifting and uncontrollable. Syphax had once been the great enemy of Carthage. He became afterwards her useful ally. Who could vouch for Masinissa’s fidelity, if the crafty Punians should offer a sufficient temptation to gain him over to their side? Above all, Hannibal was yet living, and was actually guiding the policy of the Carthaginian states. His name, even after the defeat at Zama, had hardly lost anything of the terror with which during a seventeen years’ war it had fascinated all Italy. It was, therefore, a natural and well-considered plan of the men who ruled the Roman state, to make use of the first leisure which the peace with Carthage afforded for the purpose of humbling Macedonia. The actual conquest of the lands on the east side of the Adriatic was not yet aimed at; at most, a moderate extension of the possessions in Illyria was contemplated as the prize of victory.

Macedonia alone, as things then stood, was not dangerous to the Roman republic. It was no longer the Macedonia of the second Philip and of the great Alexander. The endless wars and the inroads of the Northern barbarians had depopulated and impoverished the country. But it was still the first power on the eastern peninsula, and king Philip, who had ruled it since the year 221 BC had displayed unusual military abilities which had procured for him an undisputed pre-eminence in Greece. He had humbled the Aetolian confederation, the most powerful of his enemies, notwithstanding its alliance with the Romans. The Achaean League, which was second in importance among the Greek states, had ever since the time of Aratus been entirely subject to Macedonian influence. The Acarnanians, Boeotians, Locrians, Dorians, Phocians, Euboeans were intimately connected with Macedonia as friends and allies. Besides these states, which were more or less independent, the kings of Macedonia possessed, as direct dependencies, the whole of Thessaly, and several places in different parts of Greece, the most valuable of which were the three great fortresses, Demetrias on the Pagasaean Gulf, Chalcis on the Euripus, and Corinth. Holding these towns with strong garrisons, they commanded the most important military positions in Greece.

After the reverses sustained by the Aetolians, no single state on the whole of the Greek continent was in a position to counterbalance the preponderance of Macedonia. The Athenians were anti-Macedonian in their politics, and did their utmost to counteract the supremacy of the leading state; but their power was small, and it was only the memory of the days of past greatness that secured for this degenerate people any consideration or respect. In the Peloponnesus the anti-Macedonian party was headed by Sparta, more from old enmity to the Achaeans than for any other reason; and the insignificant states of Messenia and Elis were united with Sparta in like opposition to Achaia. It was only on the islands and in different commercial towns on the coasts of Asia Minor and of Thrace that the old Greek spirit of restless activity survived together with the pride of local independence. Before all others, it was the island of Rhodes which, as champion for the ancient republican and city freedom, stoutly opposed the encroachments of the military monarchies.

Philip was a thorough soldier-king, like the first successors of Alexander the Great. He knew nothing of any duties of a king but the extension of his territory. Always on the watch for the chance of new conquests, he led a restless life, full of excitement and vicissitudes. Personally courageous, active, and skilful in war, he had made himself the terror of all those states which seemed to offer a tempting spoil. He delighted in destroying works of art, in devastating towns and lands, in torturing and murdering conquered enemies. From year to year he became more reckless, more grasping, and more savage. At last he ceased to be a Greek king, and assumed the character of an Eastern despot, self-willed and tyrannical, jealous, and cruel. His most intimate friends and counsellors were no longer safe from a sudden outbreak of suspicion, which was equivalent to a sentence of death. Thus he gradually alienated most of his friends, and created for himself throughout Greece well-founded distrust and bitter enmity. Not content with the success which he had had in his war with the Aetoliaus and the Romans, he contemplated extending his territory on the east after the conclusion of the treaty of peace with Rome, and he flattered himself with the deceitful hope that, even after the overthrow of Carthage, the Romans would stand by as quiet spectators of his aggrandisement. By this short­sightedness and love of conquest he brought about complications and difficulties which enabled and even invited the Romans to turn their arms against him.

The king of Egypt, Ptolemaeus Philopator, had died in 205 BC leaving a son only five years old. Under the first three Ptolemies, from 321 to 220 BC. Egypt had enjoyed a century of great prosperity, and had grown to power and opulence. The kingdom comprehended not only the valley of the Nile properly so called, but had been extended under these warlike and victorious rulers far into Asia, Africa, and Europe, thus relinquishing the secure and defensive position of Egypt proper, and offering tempting objects of attack to the ambition and cupidity of its neighbours. It had acquired in Africa the important Greek city of Cyrene, in Asia the provinces of Palestine and Phoenicia together with Coelesyria; besides the island of Cyprus and many towns on the coast of Asia Minor, a number of islands in the Aegean Sea, and even in Europe some districts on the Thracian coast. By these conquests Egypt was completely brought out of its former isolation; and by her possessions on the opposite coasts, and by the importance of her commercial towns, she had risen to be a great maritime power. Such a kingdom could be protected and kept together only by able and vigorous rulers; the distant possessions especially were not easily defended. The kings of Macedonia and Syria saw their advantage, and without any other pretext or excuse than the desire to make use of so good an opportunity, they formed an alliance in 205 BC for the purpose of robbing the youthful Ptolemaeus Epiphanes.

The ally of Philip in this project for robbing or eventually dismembering Egypt was Antiochus III of Syria, the fourth successor of Seleucus, the founder of the Syrian monarchy and of the royal house of the Seleucidae. Of the three great states into which the vast Macedonian empire was broken up, the kingdom of Syria was in size the largest, and her rulers arrogated to themselves the first rank among the so-called Successors of Alexander the Great. It extended from the coasts of the Mediterranean, beyond the two great rivers Euphrates and Tigris, over the high lands of Persia, as far as the Indus and the Jaxartes (the modern Sir Daria), thus including the empire of Persia proper with the renowned old capitals of Babylon, Susa, Persepolis, and Ecbatana. But, notwithstanding its enormous size, and the claim derived therefrom, the empire of Syria was in point of fact weaker than either Egypt or Macedonia. It was a helpless Colossus, the members of which were no longer moved and governed by one spirit; it was in a state of progressing decomposition, and new life was already springing up in the elements which composed it. Even before the conquest of Alexander the Great, when the vast territories between India and Europe were yet parts of the Persian empire, many indigenous races had opposed a stubborn resistance to the invading Persians, and had succeeded in maintaining a more or less complete independence. The rapid march of Alexander’s victorious army left but few traces among these tribes. That which could be accomplished neither by the Persian kings in the prolonged period of their mighty sway nor by the genius of Alexander, was still more beyond the power of the degenerate successors of the brave Seleucus. Upper Asia, the old empire of Persia, on the eastern side of the Tigris, cast off the Macedonian yoke soon after Alexander’s death, and notwithstanding some expeditions undertaken by the third Antiochus, fell under the dominion of the Parthians, who, under their native kings of the house of Arsaces, successfully maintained their independence against Syria as afterwards against Rome. The rule of the Seleucidae and the influence of Greek culture extended only as far as the Tigris. But on the western side of that boundary independent states had also been formed in the east and north of Asia Minor, whilst in the south of this peninsula many different nations, for instance, the wild Isaurians, lived in a state of independence, which was never seriously interfered with. The Greek commercial towns on the sea coast were more or less autonomous. The Galatians had established themselves in the centre of Asia Minor and had formed a free Gallic community. Even in the immediate vicinity of Syria itself and of the chief town of Antiochia the provinces of Coelesyria, Phoenicia, and Palestine had been annexed by Egypt, which had moreover seized Cyprus and many other islands, as well as a strip of land on the coast of Caria and Cilicia in Asia Minor.

Thus the king of Asia was in truth nothing but the shadow of a great name, and the Seleucidae did not supply by personal qualifications the want of material power. In no part of the old Persian empire had the spirit of Greek self-respect, moderation, and the love of liberty so completely died out after the Macedonian conquest as in Syria. Nowhere else had the brave leaders of the Macedonian army so quickly degenerated into Asiatic despots. Nowhere had Eastern voluptuousness, immorality, servility, and an effeminate spirit become so general as at the court of Antioch, where in the family of the royal house poison and the dagger became more familiar instruments of policy than they ever had been in the house of the Persian Achaemenidae. Antiochus III had been on the throne since the year 224 BC. After an unhappy war, which he carried on with Egypt for the possession of Phoenicia and Coelesyria, and which terminated in his complete overthrow in the decisive battle of Raphia (217 BC), he succeeded in vanquishing his rebellious uncle, Achaeus, whom he put to a cruel and ignominious death. Elated by this success, Antiochus aspired to greater things. He endeavoured to reunite with his empire that great extent of territory in which the kings of Parthia and Bactria had asserted their independence. But the result of a war of several years did not answer his expectations. He was finally compelled to recognise the independence of these states; and though he actually penetrated into India and returned home with a large number of elephants and other trophies, he had really gained nothing except the barren title of ‘the Great,’ which he allowed his flatterers to bestow upon him.

When in 205 BC Ptolemaeus Philopator, the king of Egypt had died, Antiochus formed an alliance with Philip of Macedonia for the purpose of despoiling Ptolemy’s successor, a child of five years, of his kingdom. He overran and conquered Coelesyria, Phoenicia, and Palestine, the long-disputed territory between Syria and Egypt—a conquest, which in the sequel led to the heroic opposition of the Maccabees against Syrian oppression, and to the independence of the Jewish nation.

While Antiochus was taking that portion of the Egyptian spoil which he had bargained for in his contract with Philip, his ally was anxious on his side to secure the advantages which he had hoped to gain from the plunder of Egypt. Instead of attacking with combined forces the seat and centre of the Egyptian power, each of the allies tried to obtain those countries which were most conveniently situated for him, just as in his alliance with Hannibal against Rome the shortsighted Philip only thought of extending his territory on the side of Illyria, instead of supporting Hannibal in Italy with all his strength. Philip had in his service, as commander of the fleet, the Aetolian Dicaearchus, a pattern of a reckless, insolent mercenary, who, in his contempt of the old Greek veneration for the gods, went so far as to put up altars for ‘Godlessness’ (Asebeia) and ‘Lawlessness’ (Paranomia). This worthy servant of Philip sailed about in the Aegean Sea with a fleet of twenty Macedonian ships, practised piracy, laid the smaller islands under contribution, and subjected without difficulty those of the Cyclades which were under Egyptian rule, and which were for the most part utterly defenceless. Every independent Greek state seemed now exposed to be plundered and violated by the two great allied powers of Syria and Macedonia.

No Greek community felt this danger more than the island and republic of Rhodes, which had for a long time been closely connected with Egypt by commerce and mutually profitable intercourse. A great contrast to the industrious and thrifty Rhodians was presented by the rude and half-barbarised communities of Crete. No Greek island was so completely estranged from peaceful pursuits and the habits of order. In Crete every man grew up a soldier and pursued war as his profession. Whoever was not engaged in the eternal fends within the island, enlisted as mercenary in some foreign service, or practised piracy on his own account. Rich trading towns like Rhodes had to suffer the greatest annoyances from these lawless robbers, and the encouragement and support of Philip and his admiral Dicaearchus were hardly necessary to excite the Cretans against Rhodes.

Philip, like the captain of a band of robbers, revelled in the delights of pouncing upon innocent towns, burning them to the ground, and murdering the inhabitants or selling them as slaves. He troubled himself with no scruples and asked for no pretext, for he thought himself secure and far above all such consideration of the weak. The towns of Lysimachia on the Thracian Chersonesus, Perinthus on the European, Cios on the Asiatic coast of the Propontis, Chalcedon opposite Byzantium, and the island of Thasos on the Thracian coast, experienced one after another his treachery, violence, and savage cruelty. Those which did not submit voluntarily, or, like Thasos, were entrapped into submission by false promises, were conquered by force, and had to suffer the dreadful consequences of such a fate. The unhappy city of Cios suffered all the terrors of a siege; and, notwithstanding the intercession of the Rhodians, was utterly destroyed, the inhabitants being sold into slavery. This ruthless abuse of power roused the discontent even of Prusias, king of Bithynia, Philip’s ally, who had hoped to acquire the town of Cios uninjured. The Aetolians, Philip’s old enemies, resented his proceedings as an act of hostility against themselves, for some of the towns thus shamefully treated (like Lysimachia, Chalcedon and Cios) were old members of the Aetolian league. For the same reason the important city of Byzantium, the close ally of Perinthus, was forced into opposition to Philip as the common enemy of independent city communities. Indeed, Philip earned in the whole of Greece nothing but hatred and distrust. For, notwithstanding’ many internal wars and outrages committed by Greeks against Greeks, a generous Hellenic feeling had not yet died out entirely, and the cruel treatment of a Greek town by a foreign conqueror deeply wounded the whole people. Those states especially which were more directly exposed to similar attacks saw the necessity of strenuously opposing the rapacity of Philip for the sake of their own security.

Thus a league was formed against him, at the head of which were the enterprising Rhodians, united with Attalus, the king of Pergamum, in Asia Minor, who even in the first Macedonian war had fought on the side of Philip’s foes. Byzantium, Chios, and other Greek towns joined this league, and had the courage to undertake a contest with the powerful and defiant king of Macedonia, even before they had the prospect that Rome would join in the struggle for the independence of the smaller Greek states. Yet the hopes of all the enemies of Philip were fixed on the great Western power, and embassies were being continually sent to Rome to warn the senate of the danger with which the increasing strength of Macedonia threatened not only her weaker neighbours and Egypt, which had stood so long in friendly relations with Rome, but also the security of Rome herself.

In the meantime, before Rome was able to interfere in Eastern affairs—that is, before the peace with Carthage had been concluded, the war between Philip and the allied cities broke out with great fury. Philip advanced quickly to the attack. He sailed with his fleet and army against the Egyptian island of Samos, and took possession of it. Whilst he was proceeding to lay siege to Chios, he encountered, between the island and the continent, a fleet of Pergamenian and Byzantian ships, under the command of old king Attalus, of Pergamum, and of the enterprising Rhodian admiral Theophiliscus, the man who had decided his countrymen to enter on the war, and had even induced king Attalus to take part in it.

It was the object of the allies not only to prevent the conquest of Chios, but also to cut off Philip’s retreat to Samos. They had sixty-five decked vessels at their disposal against fifty-three of the Macedonians; but Philip had a larger number of smaller craft, and thus the two fleets may have been about equally matched. Philip had the advantage of not being obliged to consult an ally. He was consequently enabled to act quickly, and he surprised the hostile fleets before they had quite effected a junction. The battle is one of the most interesting of the ancient sea fights, for Polybius has handed down to us a full and detailed account, which enables us to form a tolerably clear notion of the naval tactics of that period, of which, comparatively speaking, we know so little. Philip had several large vessels with from six to ten rows of oars, which must have been very unwieldy, and probably served more for royal pomp than for real war, or, like the elephants on land, caused more consternation than harm in the hostile ranks. Some of these ships were pierced by the enemy’s beaks below the water-line and sunk; others, being entangled in collisions with hostile vessels, were too slow of movement to clear off, and were boarded. Others, again, had whole rows of oars brushed off by fast­sailing small craft. Thus were destroyed a Macedonian ship of ten rows of oars, one of nine, one of seven and one of six, besides twenty other decked vessels and sixty-eight smaller ones, while only nine were captured. It is reported that the allies lost in all only seven ships.

The reports of the losses on both sides represent the issue of the battle as so favourable to the Rhodians and Attalus, and so pernicious to Philip, that we are at a loss to understand how, under such circumstances, Philip could claim the victory at all, and how his enemies did not reap the benefit of the battle. For it is stated that, besides the great number of ships mentioned in the text, Philip lost nine thousand dead, whereas the allies lost only one hundred and twenty. It seems almost certain that the materials for the description of the sea fight at Chios wore furnished by Zenon and Antisthenes, the Rhodian historians, whom Polybius charges with the perversion of the truth in the interest of their native city, and who did not scruple to represent tin; defeat of their countrymen at Lado soon after as a victory. It is always a great temptation for a beaten general to palliate his discomfiture by representing the loss of his opponents as enormous, and as larger, if possible, than his own. In such false statements patriotic historians can easily find arguments to show that a battle in which the enemy lost so much was a victory; at least, they will easily persuade themselves and their own countrymen of it. The only things which cannot well be concealed or perverted are the results and consequences of a battle; and though a victory is not always followed by an advance of the victors, yet it is not difficult, on the whole, to infer the issue of a battle from the subsequent movements of the belligerents. With regard to the sea fight at Chios, we are inclined to think that the advantage was on the side of Philip, as Attalus returned home with his fleet, and the Rhodians could not effectually stop Philip’s advance.

Notwithstanding this, however, the result of the battle was, by no means favourable to them. Attalus had narrowly escaped being captured in the fight by running his flagship aground, and sacrificing it to the enemies who plundered it. And, moreover, whilst the Rhodians suffered an irreparable loss through the mortal wound of their brave admiral Theophiliscus, Philip actually kept possession of the ground, collected the wrecks of the vessels, buried the slain, and openly boasted of a triumph, though the allies offered battle again on the following day. Yet the continuance of the siege of Chios was not possible on account of the great losses which Philip had sustained, and he had to be content with being able to return unmolested to Samos. The Pergamenian fleet sailed home. The Rhodians, perhaps reinforced by other Greek ships, ventured soon after to encounter the Macedonians again; but they were defeated at Lade, and thus prevented from opposing the further operations of Philip, who soon afterwards conquered Chios, landed with his army in Asia Minor, entered Miletus in triumph, and ravaged the territories of king Attalus, of the Rhodians, and of Egypt.

It appears that he no longer encountered any opposition on the part of his enemies, and he took a number of fortified places. An attempt to take Pergamum failed. But he so effectually laid waste Caria, in the south of Asia Minor, that at last he began to suffer want in the hostile and desolated country, and was in danger of losing his whole army by famine. When the summer and autumn of 201 BC were past and the inclement season had set in, it became absolutely necessary for him to return to Macedonia. The return was now rendered dangerous, partly by the tempestuous state of the weather and partly by the hostile fleets which had been gathering in the interval. Still Philip, against all expectation, did succeed in avoiding both these dangers, and in bringing his army back to Macedonia after a campaign which proved utterly fruitless in results.

It might have been expected that Philip would soon give up the task of making conquests in Asia, and prepare to meet the danger which he could not fail to see approaching from the West. In the course of the year just expired, 201 BC, the peace between Rome and Carthage had been concluded; nor did it need a keen vision to foresee that Rome would soon call Philip to account for his support of Hannibal, and join the alliance against him which had been called forth by his aggressive policy in Greece. But whether Philip, after the manner of despots, obstinately closed his eyes to an unpleasant fact, or whether he allowed himself to be deceived by his wretched counsellors, a band of adventurers from all nations, who encouraged his worst vices and passions (for no one ventured to tell him the truth), certain it is that in the beginning of the year 200 BC he engaged with blind recklessness in new enterprises, which, even in case of complete success, must have weakened him for a contest with Rome. It is plain that he and his captains of mercenaries had begun to take great pleasure in the capturing and plundering of Greek towns, without carefully discriminating between such as were independent and those that were Egyptian dependencies. But his campaign in Caria had almost terminated fatally, because during the winter season he had been very nearly prevented by the enemy’s fleet from returning home. He marched now towards the Hellespont, where the towns of Sestos and Abydos commanded the narrow arm of the sea between Europe and Asia, the spot where Xerxes had constructed his celebrated bridge of boats. If he possessed these towns, his communication with Asia could not be interrupted. Therefore, after taking some of the Thracian coast towns and castles in the neighbourhood, which belonged to the kingdom of the Ptolemies, he marched to the Hellespont, and laid siege to Abydos. This undertaking occupied a considerable time, for Abydos offered a determined resistance. During the progress of the siege, his enemies, especially the Rhodians and Athenians, had full leisure, with the assistance of their fleet, not only to expel the Macedonian garrisons from most of the islands which he had conquered, but to form an alliance against him, to which he was soon doomed to succumb.

Whilst Philip was pursuing his ambitious policy beyond the Aegean, serious disagreements had broken out between Athens and Macedonia, which, in the end, furnished the ostensible grounds for the Roman declaration of war. At a festive celebration of the Eleusinian mysteries two Acarnanian youths, who happened to be on a visit in Attica, mingled with a crowd of mystics, and thus found their way into the sacred precincts of the temple of Demeter. They intended no harm, and were unconscious of the enormity of the offence which they had committed. Betrayed by their incautious questions, they were discovered as intruders, brought up before the high priest of the temple to answer for their conduct, condemned to death and executed.

This fanatical outrage produced a violent outburst of rage among the Acarnanians. They addressed their complaints to their ally and protector, the king of Macedonia, and were encouraged and supported by him to invade Attica, to lay waste the level country with fire and sword, and to gratify not only their revenge but their love of spoil.

All this happened in the autumn of the year 201 BC, when Philip had not yet returned from his campaign against the possessions of the Rhodians, of Egypt, and of Attalus in Asia Minor. The Athenians in their distress immediately sent an embassy to Rome, asking for help against the Acarnanians and Philip, and thus affording the Romans the best excuse they could desire for interfering in the internal affairs of Greece, and for a formal declaration of war. The senate had already foreseen the necessity of such a war so clearly that they had ordered a part of the fleet on its return from Africa to set sail from Vibo in southern Italy for Macedonia, and to hold itself in readiness for any emergency. The Athenian ambassadors found therefore an attentive hearing in Rome. The senate, notwithstanding the remonstrances of two tribunes of the people, and in spite of the unpopularity of a new war, obtained the consent of the people to their proposed warlike policy, and immediately despatched an embassy commissioned to visit the several Greek states, for the purpose of enlisting allies, and of eventually delivering to the king of Macedonia the final demands of the Roman republic. This embassy arrived at Athens at the time when the fleet of the allied Greek states, which had endeavoured to cut off the retreat of the Macedonian king from Curia, had returned from its fruitless expedition, and had just cast anchor at the island of Aegina. Attalus was received by the Athenians as their deliverer, and was overwhelmed with extravagant honours, in conformity with a practice which unfortunately had, by this time, ceased to be novel at Athens. The whole people came out from Athens to meet him in the Piraeus; the priests awaited him in their festive robes; the temples were opened, and solemn offerings prepared; even the gods themselves were to receive the honoured guest of the republic. Amidst universal acclamations, Attalus was enrolled among the national heroes, and a phyle, or tribe, of the Attic land was named after him.

Similar honours sealed the fraternal bond between the Athenians and the Rhodians, and a formal declaration of war against Macedonia followed immediately. The first fruit of the alliance with Rome was the retreat of the Macedonian general, Nicanor, who, in the meantime, had marched into Attica, but did not like the risk of provoking the anger of the Roman ambassadors by harassing the new allies of the great republic.

Meanwhile Philip, as we have seen, had opened the Siege of campaign of the year 200 BC on the Hellespont, and was by now besieging Abydos, leaving the Rhodians in undisturbed possession of the Aegean sea. These accordingly retook all the Cyclades, with the exception of Andros, Paros, and Cythnos, but they accomplished nothing more, neither attacking Macedonia, which was destitute of troops, nor coming to the assistance of Abydos, perhaps, because they expected everything from the Romans.

But the latter had not yet completed the preliminary diplomatic arrangements which they deemed indispensable before the commencement of hostilities. Their object was to unite, if possible, all the Greek states in one great offensive and defensive alliance, in order to carry on the war against Philip (just as they had done in the first Macedonian war), chiefly with the arms of their allies, and with the smallest possible addition of Italian troops. The Roman embassy had already visited Epirus, Acarnania, Aetolia, Achaia, and lastly Attica. They had not everywhere found a hearty readiness to join the alliance. But, on the other hand, they discovered no decided sympathy for Philip.

From Greece the ambassadors proceeded to Egypt, where they had a most delicate commission to execute.

The Egyptian government had asked the Roman people to act as guardians of the infant king, Ptolemaeus Epiphanes, in other words, to protect him from the spoliation which his two powerful enemies, Philip of Macedonia and Antiochus of Syria, had planned. The Romans had not the slightest wish to commit themselves to a contest with these two powers at once. But how could they proceed against Philip without giving such offence to his ally as would make him take an active part in the war? This object was nevertheless attained. Rome made her client, the king of Egypt, pay the cost of securing the neutrality of Antiochus. No obstacle was placed in the way of the conquest of the whole of Phoenicia by that monarch. Whether his claims to it were formally recognised by Rome we do not know; at any rate, they were recognised de facto, and Antiochus, who wisely gave up all thoughts of conquering Egypt proper, found in the unchallenged acquisition of Phoenicia a sufficient inducement to leave his ally, the king of Macedonia, to his fate, and to avoid the hostility of Rome. The government of Egypt were not in a position to compel their Roman friends and protectors to render direct assistance for the defence of Phoenicia. Perhaps they hoped for or received assurances that after the overthrow of Philip the Egyptian possessions in Asia Minor, Thrace, and in the Aegean sea would be restored to Egypt.

Before the termination of their mission in Egypt and Syria, the Roman ambassadors despatched Marcus Aemilius, the youngest of their number, from Rhodes to Philip, who was still occupied with the siege of the dauntless town of Abydos. The task of Aemilius was only to comply with an empty formality. He had to declare war on the part of Rome; for it was easy to foresee that Philip would a reject the terms on which peace might yet be preserved. These terms contained a demand that the king of Macedonia should make war upon no Greek city, that he should give up the possessions of Ptolemy which he had seized, and submit to a court of arbitration, which would settle the damages to be paid by him to king Attalus and the Rhodians. There is no mention made of a demand in the interest of the Athenians; probably because the Macedonian general Nicanor had, at the request of the Roman ambassadors during their stay in Athens, evacuated Attica. The ostensible pretext under which the senate had obtained the sanction of the Roman people for a declaration of war, viz., Philip’s attack upon a Roman ally, had under these circumstances become untenable. The Romans were constrained to speak for Attalus and the Rhodians, although, as Philip justly observed, the Rhodians were the aggressors and not the attacked. Moreover, in assuming the attitude of a protecting power with regard to Egypt and Greek towns in general, and in requiring of Philip that he should refrain from all attacks upon them, the Romans claimed a right which was founded neither on special treaties nor on international law, but merely on the consciousness of their superior power and on the calculation of what their own interest demanded. Philip’s answer, therefore, contained a sharp and deserved rebuke. The Romans, he said, should strictly observe the sworn treaty and not break the peace. But if they were bent on war, the Macedonians would call upon the gods as witnesses, and resist force by force. With these words, which breathe a truly royal pride, and with the feeling that he was resisting an unjustifiable interference, Philip broke off the negotiations. But, with some approach to the courteous diplomacy of our own days, he seized the opportunity of assuring the representative of the Roman people personally of his distinguished respect and regard. He told him he would pardon the frankness of his speech for three reasons, first, because he was young and inexperienced; secondly, because he was a handsome man; and, thirdly, because he was a Roman.

Soon after the failure of the Roman negotiations, the fate of the unhappy town of Abydos was decided. Up to the present time it had been defended with the courage of despair. The town wall had already been thrown down by a mine in one place, and a second wall, which had been built behind the first, had been undermined, when at length, despairing of all assistance from without, the besieged offered to surrender the town to Philip on condition of being permitted to leave it unmolested. But Philip required unconditional submission; and the inhabitants of Abydos, knowing full well that this meant death, slavery, and dishonour, prepared to die as free men on their native soil. They collected the women in the temple of Artemis, the children in the gymnasium, and commissioned a number of older men to kill them all, and then to cast into the sea or to burn all the gold and silver and other treasures as soon as they should see the enemy penetrate into the town over the corpses of the defenders. Thereupon they took up their post in the breach of the inner wall, and fought as men determined to conquer or die. In the evening, after most of them had fallen, the Macedonians desisted from the attack. The courage of some of the survivors then gave way, and they resolved to send the priests to supplicate Philip for mercy. This weakness the patriotic fanatics abominated as treason to the cause of the fatherland and as a crime against the gods whom they had called upon to witness their voluntary death. On the following day, therefore, while the Macedonian troops were taking possession of the treasures heaped up in the market-place, the remnant of the people of Abydos carried out their terrible resolution. Philip gave them three days’ time to murder the women and children, and finally themselves, and then he took possession of the depopulated town.

The terrible end of Abydos reminds us of the similar catastrophe of Saguntum in 218 BC. But it is not subject to historical doubts, like the narrative of the fall of the Spanish town. It is authenticated by the testimony of Polybius. There are other points of likeness in the fate of the two towns. The siege and conquest of each of them mark the commencement of a great war of the Romans; and both towns were left to their fate by their allies, while greater decision and promptness might have been the means of saving them. And as during the siege of Saguntum Roman ambassadors appeared before Hannibal in the camp, begging him to desist, so Aemilius came to Philip while he was blockading Abydos, without being able to stop the impending war by a mere diplomatic interference.

Attalus meanwhile had sailed with his fleet from Aegina, where he had passed the winter, and proceeded as as the coast of the Troad, near Tenedos; but he had not courage enough to avert the fall of Abydos. In spite of the threats of Rome and the hostile demonstrations of his Greek enemies, Philip had attained his object. He had won bloody laurels, and returned to Macedonia towards the autumn of the year 200 BC to prepare for the attack of the Romans, which now he could expect with positive certainty.

We have seen with what decision the Roman senate determined upon the struggle with Macedonia immediately after the conclusion of peace with Carthage, and how skilfully they made use of the complications in the east for carrying on that war, more with the arts of diplomacy and the military strength of allied towns than with Roman legions. Yet the Roman negotiators had not succeeded in uniting all the Greeks in an alliance against Philip. The Acarnanians, the Boeotians, Phocians, Locrians, Dorians, and Euboeans were too dependent on Macedonia, because Macedonian power protected them from their nearest enemies, especially the Aetolians. But the Aetolians were slow to declare themselves. During the preceding winter Attalus had in vain urged them to a war against Philip. Between them and Rome a marked coolness, almost amounting to enmity, had been apparent from the time when, in the first Macedonian war, they had been insufficiently supported by Rome, and had in consequence concluded a separate peace with Philip. Since then the former allies accused one another mutually of a breach of contract. But the Romans were quite right in thinking that the force of circumstances would after all draw the Aetolians into the war with Macedonia, especially as the domineering spirit of Philip had during the last few years become very troublesome to the Aetolians, and as they had not been able to repel or to punish his attacks on their allies, the towns of the Propontis.

If it was not quite easy for the Romans to gain the hearty alliance of the Aetolians in a war with Macedonia, it seemed utterly hopeless to determine the Achaeans to the same line of policy. Ever since the time of Aratus the Achaeans had been closely allied with Macedonia, because they had found in the Macedonian kings their natural allies in their continual struggles with their neighbours the Aetolians and Sparta. Yet when the Achaean league, under the able direction of Philopoemen, had become a great military power, a party of the Achaean people was no longer opposed to a line of policy which seemed likely to make them independent of Macedonian protection. Moreover, Philip had alienated his best friends, and given just cause of apprehension, by attempting the assassination of Philopoemen, because he could not look upon him on all occasions as a ready tool.

Under such circumstances the Roman envoys could hope to organize a party hostile to Philip. Their watchword was ‘the liberation of Greece’, a phrase which had always exercised a magic influence on the easily deluded Greeks. Nevertheless, the Achaeans could not be brought at once to act a decided part. Whether from fear of Philip or from distrust of the Romans, most of the Greek states could not summon resolution enough to side with one or the other party. When the war actually broke out, Rome had for acknowledged allies only those who were already at war with the Macedonians, namely, Egypt, Rhodes, Pergamum, Byzantium, and lastly, Athens.

Immediately after the consuls for the year 200 BC, Publius Sulpicius Galba and Caius Aurelius Cotta, had entered on their office, the war against Macedonia was formally determined on. Nevertheless, the greater part of the year passed away in the negotiations just related and in military preparations. The chief cause, however, for the delay in the operations was an alarming rebellion among the Gauls, who, under the command of an able Punic general named Hamilcar, in the year of the conclusion of peace with Carthage, attacked and utterly destroyed a Roman army of seven thousand men. Thus it happened that the autumn of the year 200 BC was almost past before the consul P. Sulpicius Galba set out with his army for Macedonia. Two legions only were destined for this campaign, and with a view of taxing Italy with no more new levies of troops than was absolutely necessary, the senate ordered that Sulpicius should collect as many volunteers as possible from Scipio’s army just then returned from Africa. He received, moreover, a reinforcement of one thousand Numidian horse, and a number of elephants. Having landed in Apollonia, the Roman consul was prevented from commencing operations by the advanced season of the year; for between the western coast of the Graeco-Macedonian peninsula and the kingdom of Philip lay a broad, wild, impracticable mountain tract, which, extending from north to south, formed an almost impassable barrier. The navigation, however, was not yet closed. The fleet, therefore, had time to inflict a quick and unexpected blow.

Attica, as we have seen, was freed by the protest of the Roman ambassadors from the Acarnanian and Macedonian bands, which under the command of Nicanor had advanced so far in order to take revenge for the two murdered Acarnanians. But Philip in his hatred of Athens had disapproved of Nicanor’s retreat, and had commissioned another general Philocles, who then commanded the Macedonian troops in Euboea, to attack Attica with renewed vigour. In their trouble the Athenians had received but little help from Attalus, and now turned to the Romans. Sulpicius had crossed the Ionian sea, and by this time had selected Corcyra as the winter station for the Roman fleet. From this island he sent a number of ships and one thousand men to the Piraeus under the command of Caius Claudius.

On reaching Athens, Claudius was informed by exiles from Chalcis in Euboea that this chief fortress of the Macedonians was left with an insufficient garrison and was badly guarded; that it might, therefore, be easily surprised and taken. He seized the opportunity without delay, sailed to Sunium the southern cape of Attica, and from thence in the night to Chalcis, which he reached before break of day. The walls were scaled, all men capable of bearing arms cut down, the magazines and arsenals, which were full of provisions and stores, were set on fire, the statues of the king thrown down and mutilated, and a quantity of rich spoil carried away to the ships. Unfortunately, the Roman force, too weak to hold the important town, was compelled, after inflicting as much damage as they could, to return in all haste to the Piraeus.

The report of this disaster reached Philip at Demetrias on the northern extremity of the Pagasaean gulf, not far from the venerable old town of Iolkos, from whence, according to the legend, the Argonauts had sailed to the land of Colchis in quest of the Golden Fleece. Beside himself with rage, he determined to take summary vengeance, hoping to be able by great expedition still to overtake the Romans in Chalcis. In a run rather than a march, he proceeded to Chalcis with five thousand light armed troops and three hundred horse. When he found, instead of the Romans, only the smoking ruins of the destroyed houses and the unburied bodies of the slain, he hurried across the Euripus, and through Boeotia straight to Athens, in the hope of taking it by surprise. His plan almost succeeded, for the Athenians were far from expecting an attack of the Macedonians. But a spy, on the look-out, had observed the advance of the enemy, had traversed the space from the Euripus to Athens in one day, and arriving in the middle of the night alarmed the town. When Philip appeared before the walls a few hours later, he found his plan frustrated, and the Athenians not only prepared to receive him, but bold enough actually to sally out and attack him. Philip having driven them into the town without difficulty, applied himself deliberately and systematically to lay waste the immediate neighbourhood.  In true barbaric fashion he desecrated, destroyed, or defaced all the temples, sacred groves, and even the burial places of the dead. After an attempt to carry by assault the fortified temple of Demeter in Eleusis, he marched off to Megara, and from thence to Corinth, the Macedonian fortress of the Peloponnesus.

It so happened, that at that very time the federal council of the Achaean league was assembled at Argos, for the purpose of devising ways and means for a war against Nabis, the tyrant of Sparta. Sparta, of old the enemy of the Achaeans, and the chief obstacle to the extension of the Achaean league over the whole of the Peloponnesus, had been humbled seven years before, in the year 207 BC at Mantinea by Philopoemen, the re-organizer of the Achaean army, and had since then been obliged to submit and keep the peace. But when Philopoemen in 200 BC, annoyed at not being re-elected to the place of federal chief magistrate (strategos), left the Peloponnesus to take part in the domestic quarrels of Crete, Nabis watched his time, and harassed the Achaeans again.

The Achaeans found themselves now in a very difficult position. Having already been called upon by the Romans to join the alliance against Philip, a demand which they had not without some misgivings declined, on the plea that they wished conscientiously to preserve their neutrality, they were now importuned by Philip in person, who pressed them, in conformity with their ancient connexion with Macedonia, to place their military force at his disposal against the Romans. He promised on his part to protect them against Sparta, desiring only that the Achaean troops should be used for garrisoning Corinth, Chalcis, and Oreus. But the Achaeans neither trusted Philip’s words nor did they place confidence in his power. They were afraid that he would use their troops as hostages to compel the league to engage in the war against the overwhelming power of Rome, and that after all he would give them no security from the attacks of Nabis. Hence, although Philip had some sincere friends and partisans in the Achaean towns, and though the chief magistrate of the year was personally devoted to him, the assembly refused to depart from their neutrality, and declined even to submit Philip’s proposal to a formal vote, under the pretext that it was irregular to pass a resolution on any but those subjects for which the assembly had been called together.

Full of resentment, Philip, on his return from the Peloponnesus, attempted another attack upon Athens, the Piraeus, and Eleusis, and avenged himself for his failure by a second and more systematic devastation of the open country. In the course of these ravages he caused the pillars and sculptured stones of the temples and public buildings, not only to be thrown down, but to be defaced and broken, in order to render the injury irreparable. He then left Attica, and retreated with his troops through Boeotia to Macedonia, where he passed the winter, and where he planned the campaign for the following year.

The Roman consul, Publius Sulpicius Galba, had landed in Apollonia in the autumn of the year 200 BC, after the season for advancing into the mountains on the frontier of Macedonia had long passed; he was moreover incapacitated for a time from military action by illness. He therefore sent for his legate, Lucius Apustius, who was with the fleet then wintering near Corcyra, and commissioned him to make a series of short expeditions into the country near the Apsus, a large river on the coast, flowing from the watershed in the middle of the peninsula through the territory of Dassaretia, and falling into the Adriatic between Apollonia and Dyrrhachium. Here were some inconsiderable towns and fortresses, protecting the extreme frontier of Macedonia on the west, of which the most important seems to have been the town of Antipatrea. Apustius passed through the district, took Antipatrea and other places, and returned to Apollonia almost unmolested and laden with spoil.

If, in a military point of view, but little had been accomplished by this march, still the neighbouring tribes were now convinced that the Romans meant to carry on the war in earnest, and it induced the petty chiefs of the Dardanians, Illyrians, and Athamanians to make common cause with the Romans, and to agree with them on a combined attack upon Macedonia in the following year. The Dardanians, a powerful tribe of mountaineers in the north of Macedonia, on the other side of the Scardus chain, were bitter enemies to the Macedonian kingdom, and nothing could be more welcome to their king or chief, Bato, than to unite with the Romans for an invasion of Macedonia. Not less ready in his friendship was Pleuratus, the prince of Illyria, who threatened Macedonia on the west. Amynander, the chief of the Athamanians, one of the tribes of Epirus, had some time previously been visited by the Roman ambassadors, but had hesitated to relinquish his neutral position. His scruples were now overcome; he not only joined the Roman alliance, but undertook at the same time to secure the co-operation of the Aetolians, who had always been on friendly terms with him, for the purpose of securing a road from the south through Thessaly into Macedonia. It was also arranged with Attains and the Rhodians that the allied fleet should meet at Aegina, to open the attack on Macedonia from the sea.

It was not, however, quite certain that the Aetolians would enter into the Roman alliance. Considering their adhesion to be of the greatest importance, the consul, Sulpicius Galba, resolved formally to solicit their alliance, though such a step could not fail to be somewhat humiliating to Roman pride; for it showed that Rome could not dispense with the aid of these unruly and way­ward allies. The consul’s legate, Lucius Furius Purpureo, accordingly appeared at a congress of the Aetolian league, which was held at Naupactus in the course of the winter. His request was vigorously supported by the loud declamations of the Athenians, who, with just and pardonable bitterness, declared that Philip’s treatment of them was that of a savage barbarian, while the representatives of the Macedonian king did all they could to justify their master’s proceedings. The Aetolian congress, before which the most powerful states of the time thus presented themselves as petitioners for aid, must have felt not a little flattered; and the arrogance with which this small mountain tribe behaved is as easy to comprehend as the cool contempt with which Rome treated it after the overthrow of the Macedonian power. The Romans were already sufficiently disgusted with the Aetolians. But their anger was greatly increased, when, even after their urgent entreaties, the Aetolians, like the Achaeans, declined to give a final deci­sion, but persisted in remaining neutral, evidently from distrust of the Romans, who had once already left them without support in a quarrel with Macedonia, which they had undertaken in the Roman interest.

In the meantime the season for opening the campaign of the year 199 BC had become favourable. For the purpose of protecting the Thessalian coast from an attack on the sea side, Philip had already destroyed the towns of Sciathos and Peparethos on the islands of the same name, and had thus rendered these places useless as a basis for the operations of the enemy’s vessels. He then ordered his fleet, under the command of the Tarentine Heraclides, to take shelter in Demetrias, as it was decidedly too weak to keep the open sea against the combined squadrons of the Romans, the Rhodians, and king Attalus. Against a threatened invasion of the Dardanians and Illyrians he sent his son Perseus to occupy the mountain passes of Pelagonia, on the north-west boundary of Macedonia, while with the principal part of his troops he marched westward to the neighbourhood of Lyncestis, where he expected the approach of the Romans.

About the same time Sulpicius also had started from Apollonia, and the two hostile armies, after marching about apparently lost in the wild uncultivated mountain districts, formed by the watershed between the Aegean and Adriatic seas, at length encountered each other. A few cavalry engagements took place without any decisive result. Philip seems to have intended to draw the Roman army into the barren mountain regions, where it was difficult for the troops to obtain the necessary supplies. In vain Sulpicius tried to bring about a decisive battle. While he had been marching forwards and backwards, through the border countries of Dassaretia, Lyncestis, Eordaea, and Elimia without accomplishing anything, and finally had commenced his retreat to Apollonia, Philip was able to send a body of troops under Athenagoras against the united forces of the Dardanians and the Illyrians, who endeavoured to penetrate through Pelagonia into Macedonia, intending to effect a junction with the Roman army. They were easily repulsed; and now there remained only a third enemy, but one who for the moment was more dangerous than the northern barbarians. For when Sulpicius had begun the campaign in good earnest, the Aetolians had at last resolved to take the side of Rome, and early in the summer of 199 BC had invaded Thessaly in conjunction with Amynander, the chief of the Athamanians. Without meeting with any opposition, they marched through that fertile land, ravaging everywhere without mercy, till at last Philip, after the retreat of the Roman army, was at liberty to turn towards Thessaly. He surprised the undisciplined bands of plunderers, and drove them back to their own country with great loss.

In this manner the three attacks which the Romans and their allies had made on Macedonia by land on the north, west, and south, utterly failed. Not much more satisfactory was the result of the attacks of the allied fleet, although the Macedonian ships did not venture to issue from their safe refuge in the port of Demetrias to thwart the operations of the enemy. The Roman fleet, from its winter station at Corcyra, had sailed round the Peloponnesus in the beginning of the summer, and had in the Saronic gulf joined the Pergamenian fleet, which came from Aegina. Later on in the season this squadron was reinforced by twenty large ships of the Rhodians, and the same number of smaller undecked vessels from the Illyrian island of Issa. The chief object of this naval force seemed to be plunder, as may be seen by the readiness with which the Illyrians of Issa took part in the expedition. They evidently hoped to carry on their favourite occupation of piracy, under the plea that for belligerents it was legitimate. First of all, the island of Andros, close to the southern extremity of Euboea, was taken. The Romans carried off all the moveable spoil, especially the works of art, and handed over the island to Attalus as a permanent possession, although by right it should have been restored to the king of Egypt, from whom it had been taken by Philip. The southern port of Euboea was plundered next. Sciathus would have suffered a similar fate, if Philip had not devastated it before the campaign, and thus deprived his enemies of this pleasure. The fleet sailed afterwards further northwards, and visited the Chalcidian peninsula. Here it suffered from storms, and being repulsed from Cassandrea, found a compensation in the capture of Acanthus. Having returned to Euboea, the expedition finished the year’s operations by achieving a great success in the capture of the fortress of Oreus on the north of the island, after a long and obstinate resistance. Here, also, the Romans and their allies divided the spoil, according to their custom. The town was given over to Attalus, the Romans took the prisoners with the rest of the booty.

With this final stroke the naval operations terminated for the year. Philip had not suffered any material loss. The Rhodians and the Pergamenians returned home; the Romans sailed to Corcyra, leaving thirty ships in the Piraeus for the protection of the Athenians. The Athenians alone, who had carried on the war with brave slashing words and patriotic demonstrations, could boast of complete success. They destroyed all the monuments erected in honour of Philip and his ancestors, whether male or female, desecrated the altars which had been erected to him, and commanded the priests of the state to add to the prayer for the prosperity of Athens a curse on Philip, on his children, his empire, his army, his fleet, nay, on the whole Macedonian people and name. It was further resolved that, if any one in future should make a proposal for putting some fresh insult or dishonour on Philip, the Athenian people should be bound to sanction such a proposal; on the other hand, whoever should be found guilty, either in words or in deed, of honouring or respecting the memory of Philip, should be declared an outlaw. Finally, all the old decrees against the tyrannical house of Pisistratus should be applied to Philip. In order to give these resolutions the proper relief, king Attalus and the Romans were loaded with extravagant and boundless honours.

The result of the campaign of 199 BC was, that Philip had repulsed the attacks of his opponents on all sides, and was now the master of the theatre of war. He employed the remainder of the favourable season of the year to make an attack on the fortified town of Thaumaci, which was held by an Aetolian garrison, and commanded the road from Macedonia into Thessaly. But a body of Aetolians succeeded in passing into the town through the midst of the besieging army of Macedonians, and thus frustrated all Philip’s attacks, so that at last, as the winter was approaching, he desisted from the undertaking.

Publius Villius Tappulus, the consul of the year 199 BC, had waited until the autumn, before he proceeded to Greece to relieve his predecessor, Publius Sulpicius Galba. He arrived at Apollonia just when Sulpicius Galba returned from his fruitless campaign in the mountainous border country of western Macedonia. Military operations were out of the question at that late season of the year, particularly as discontent, amounting to mutiny, had broken out in the Roman army. The volunteers, who in the beginning of the war had been selected from Scipio’s African legions, now declared that they were sent to Macedonia against their will, and insisted on being discharged. The men had probably hoped to amass rich and easy spoil in Greece, and were tired of inarching to and fro in the barren and thinly populated mountains of Macedonia, where they found no reward for endless toils. Perhaps we may even infer that the discontent of the soldiers had something to do with the failure of the consul’s campaign, and contributed to determine him to an early retreat. How the mutiny of the soldiers was put down, we are not informed. It may have been that the Roman government yielded, and allowed the malcontents to go home, for we hear that in the following year, 198 BC, Flamininus brought eight thousand eight hundred fresh troops with him to Macedonia, who served to replace those who had been discharged.

In the course of the winter Philip displayed great activity. Indefatigable in his military preparations, he was at the same time intent on strengthening his political position. The commander of the fleet, Heraclides of Tarentum, had by his injudicious conduct and his cruelty made the king’s government generally detested. To gain popularity Philip now sacrificed this man to the vengeance of his subjects by dismissing him and throwing him into prison. Above all things, it was his great desire to gain allies. The king of Syria had been detached from his alliance. In truth, Antiochus could offer him no help. Though he made common cause with Philip for the purpose of attacking Egypt, he had so far been influenced by Roman diplomacy as to preserve friendly relations with Rome. Probably, as we have surmised, the Romans had promised him to acquiesce in his obtaining permanently the province of Coelesyria, which he had conquered from Egypt. He was therefore prevented from supporting Philip in his war with Rome, even if he had been willing to do so, which is very doubtful. He could not hope to gain anything by such a policy. But as he had succeeded, with the consent of Rome, in despoiling their client Ptolemaeus, he thought he might possibly meet with equal success on the northern frontier of his kingdom. He calculated that the Romans were too busy in Macedonia to trouble themselves much about the affairs of Asia. But here he found himself mistaken. Upon the complaint of Attalus, the Romans gave Antiochus to understand that he had better desist from hostilities against their friend. Thus Attalus was free to continue in conjunction with Rome his operations against Macedonia.

Philip had now only one faint hope left, that, namely, of persuading the Achaeans to take part with him in the war with Rome. He delivered over to them several towns in Peloponnesus, which he had seized at a former time, and had kept in his possession. But he failed to conciliate the Achaeans by this tardy restitution. When the election of a new chief magistrate of the league came on, Cycliades, who favoured the Macedonian party, succumbed to Aristaenus, the Roman candidate.

Significant as this decision was, it was by no means final, and the Achaeans persevered for the present in their neutrality, which did them but little honour, and prejudiced their vital interests.

After the expiration of the winter (199-198 BC), when the mountain passes became practicable, Philip, without waiting for the attack of the Romans, went to meet them in the direction of Corcyra, more to the southward than in the previous year. He crossed the water­shed, and took up a position in the narrow valley of the Aous, near Antigonea, which he strongly fortified by intrenchments. Thus the consul Publius Villius, who, on the arrival of spring, had set himself likewise in motion, and was advancing up the same valley, was forced to remain stationary for some time in front of the Macedonian position, unable to commence an attack. During this inaction the summer approached, and the newly elected consul for the year 198 BC, Titus Quinctius Flamininus, who had started for the scene of action earlier in the year than his predecessor, landed in Corcyra with reinforcements of fight thousand foot and eight hundred horse, crossed from thence to the continent, and assumed the command of the Roman army and the allied contingents.

The family of the Quinctii belonged to the noblest and most prominent of the Roman people. Though they did not boast, like the Julii, that they were descended directly from the Trojans, yet they pretended to trace their family  traditions back to the time of the earlier kings, and derived their descent from one of those families, which, after the destruction of Alba Longa under Tullus Hostilius, the third king, were transplanted to Rome, and received among the patrician houses. One branch, of the gens was the family of the Cincinnati, highly respected in the time of the older republic. The family of the Flaminini was a younger branch of the Quinctian gens. At any rate, they first appear in the ranks of the high official nobility after the war with Hannibal. Immediately after this period, however, they seem to have been distinguished by great wealth; for in the year 200 BC the dramatic games of the Aediles, of whom Lucius Quinctius Flamininus was one, were represented with unusual splendour. This liberality may have had some influence on the Comitia Centuriata, by which Titus Quinctius Flamininus, the brother of the aedile, was chosen as consul for the year 198 BC, though he was scarcely thirty years old, and had never filled the office either of aedile or of praetor. It is true he had served in the war with Hannibal as legionary tribune, but he had had no opportunity of distinguishing himself in an independent command, and he belonged, therefore, to that large number of Roman generals who owed their election to party influence among the citizens, and not to any proved personal merit. Nothing justified the expectation of great military success from the young man, nor did he at the head of the legions show himself superior to the common run of Roman citizen-generals. It appears, however, that he was a skilful diplomatist, and particularly qualified to sift and settle the affairs of Greece; for he understood the Greek character, and was not inaccessible, like so many other Romans, to Greek views and opinions. But it is a great error to attribute to him, as is often done, a predilection or partiality for the Greeks; a, partiality which overruled the calculations of interested statesmanship, and made political considerations to depend on sentiment. It is a great error to suppose that he was induced by mere generosity and good will for the Greeks to make concessions which were not entirely in harmony with the interests of Rome. He proved himself throughout to be a cool, clear-headed statesman, keeping always in view the solid advantage of his own country. If he acted the part of friend and liberator of the Greeks, he adhered closely to his instructions; for the Roman senate desired by means of the Greeks to keep the king of Macedonia in check, and thus to use the Greeks for the interests of Rome; while the freedom of Greece itself was as much a matter of utter indifference to all true Romans as in recent times the so-called Germanic liberties were to the statesmen of France. Flamininus was just the man to undertake the part of protector of the Greeks, and if he was to a certain extent a Philhellene, that sentiment did not interfere with his main duty. In one point only he showed himself weak. He was most sensitive to praise and blame, and easily wounded by the sharp tongue of the Greeks. Many actions which he may have wished to see attributed to his high admiration of the Greeks may really have been prompted by considerations such as these. He was, however, never misled into forgetting that he was a Roman, and responsible for all his acts to an inexorable judge, the Roman senate.

His first operations against Philip promised no better result than those of his predecessors. During the whole of forty days he lay before the strongly fortified position of the king in the narrow valley of the Aous, making plans for the attack. During this period of inactivity an attempt was made, through the Epirots, who had always been well inclined to Philip, to settle the quarrel amicably. But as Flamininus insisted on the original demands of Rome, and required that Philip should set free all the Greek towns which he held in his possession, and that he should give, moreover, full compensation to those whom he had injured, Philip indignantly broke off the negotiations.

Flamininus was now in doubt, whether he should force the pass of the Aous or, retreating to the coast, should try to penetrate into Macedonia by the road which Sulpicius had followed through the more northerly passes. The failure of Sulpicius was no recommendation of this plan; and, on the other hand, an attack on the Macedonians in their very strong position would have been too great a risk, and would even, in case of success, have considerably weakened his army. It happened, therefore, very opportunely for the Roman general that with the help of an Epirote chief named Charops a shepherd acquainted with the country was found who promised to show the Romans a path over the mountains by which they could get into the rear of the enemy’s position. This plan was carried out. After a difficult march of three days, a few thousand men arrived in the rear of the Macedonian camp, and announced the success of their march by fire signals, upon which the king, attacked on two sides at the same time, was forced to abandon his position with a loss of two thousand men, and to retire into Thessaly. In order to retard the expected pursuit of the Romans, Philip devastated the whole country which he traversed on his march to Macedonia. He burnt down towns and villages, and carried the inhabitants away with him. The province so barbarously treated was not, as one might think, a hostile country; it was part of the Macedonian kingdom, and the Thessalians were no rebels, but faithful subjects. No wonder if the inhabitants of Pherae closed the gates of their town, thinking that if they must perish, it was preferable to be ruined by the enemies of their country rather than by their own sovereign.

On the news of Philip’s retreat the Aetolians again invaded unhappy Thessaly, and their worthy ally, Amynander of Athamania, vied with them in their work of devastation. The open towns were plundered and reduced to ashes, the inhabitants cut down or made prisoners, and the land transformed into a desert. 

This dreadful devastation of Thessaly stopped the advance of the allied armies. Flamininus, instead of marching after the king of Macedonia, turned back towards Epirus, and secured for himself by mild treatment the neutrality and even support of a portion of the Epirote population, who till now had remained true to Philip. He then ordered the fleet at Corcyra to bring provisions for his troops to the eastern end of the Ambracian gulf; and having from thence supplied his army, he advanced to attack the fortified town of Atrax, on the Peneus, westwards from Larissa, in the heart of the Thessalian plain. The town was defended by the Macedonian garrison with persevering bravery; and, after an assault had been repelled, Flamininus found himself obliged to retreat from a land which had been totally devastated by four armies, and was utterly destitute of means for the maintenance of the troops.

Thus Philip’s desperate method of resisting the advance of his enemies had answered his purpose, and this campaign also ended in the evacuation of Thessaly by the combined allied forces. Flamininus returned southwards before the fine season of the year was quite gone, and took up his winter quarters in the Phocean town of Anticyra, on the Corinthian gulf. He had previously taken some small places in the neighbourhood necessary to cover his position, but had been repulsed from the fortified town of Elatea. In Anticyra he was able to procure during the winter provisions for his army by sea, and at the same time he was in close vicinity to the Peloponnesus, so that he had an opportunity during the cessation of hostilities of treating with the Achaean league, and of inducing them at last to take part in the war.

The operations of Flamininus by land were to some extent supported by those of the allied fleet. This was commanded by Lucius Quinctius Flamininus, the consul’s brother, a man who several years later (184 BC) was ignominiously expelled from the senate by Marcus Porcius Cato for wantonly murdering a prisoner of war. When the Roman ships had joined, near the island of Andros, the ships of the Rhodians and of Attains, the combined naval force took two Euboean towns, Eretria and Carystus, pillaged them in the usual manner, and left them. After this feat the allied vessels sailed to Cenchreae, the eastern harbour of Corinth, in order to be in readiness to support the consul’s policy in the Peloponnesus. The allies were making preparations to besiege the town of Corinth, the chief fortress of the Macedonians in all Greece; but before they commenced their operations, the consul, Titus Flamininus, commissioned his brother Lucius, the commander of the fleet, to offer to the Achaeans this important and long desired town as the price for their participation in the league against Philip. To decide this important question, Aristrenu, the chief magistrate of the Achaean league, and a partisan of Rome, called together a federal congress at Sicyon. Here the representative of the several Achaean towns, and the ambassadors of the Romans, of the Rhodians, of Attalus, and of the Athenians met together. An embassy of Philip was also admitted, and demanded nothing more than the continued neutrality of the Achaeans.

The Achaeans were in a state of deplorable difference of opinion, fear, and indecision; and the earnest appeals of the various negotiators contributed still more to confuse them. The Macedonians could plead the ancient alliance and the essential services rendered by their king to the league in the war with Sparta. Then there was Philip’s promise to continue to defend the league against this ever dangerous hereditary enemy. Lastly, he had quite recently given them possession of several places in the Peloponnesus as a proof of his goodwill. But all these reasons in his favour were counterbalanced by his notorious dishonesty, and by his tyrannical and cruel temper, by which he had long made himself detested. On the other side, the Romans could allege neither old friendly relations with the Achaean league, nor especial services rendered. Nay, their amicable relations with Nabis, the detestable tyrant of Sparta, were calculated to call forth serious apprehensions. Nor had the success of the Roman arms up to this time been such that it could weigh heavily in their favour. On the contrary, the eagerness with which they sought the alliance of the Achaeans showed clearly that they did not feel themselves strong enough to carry on the war alone.

Thus the opinions wavered from side to side, and none of the assembled Achaeans ventured to make a clear and distinct proposal. This indecision, so unworthy of a proud and independent nation, was at length put an end to by Aristamus, the strategos of the league. He gave his vote in favour of the Romans, declaring that the neutrality of the Achaean league was no longer to be maintained, and that an alliance with Rome was their only true policy, partly on account of the geographical situation of the Achaean towns, partly on account of the superior power of the Romans. He went so far as to urge that it was also in the interest of Greece, which, under the protection of such powerful allies, might at length regain her freedom, and her independence from Macedonia. Notwithstanding these weighty reasons, the ten representatives of the Achaean towns were split up into two equal parts; and it was not till one of the members of the congress was threatened with death by his own father, and consequently changed his opinion, that a majority in favour of the Romans was formed on the following day. But even now the men of Argos, Megalopolis, and Dyme could not make up their minds to renounce the Macedonian alliance, and they resentfully left the assembly. The remainder agreed upon a formal resolution to take the Roman side, and a part of the Achaean army was at once despatched to join the allied forces destined for the siege of Corinth. To calm the apprehensions of the Achaeans with respect to the designs of Nabis, Flamininus brought about the conclusion of an armistice between the two.

Thus the anti-Macedonian alliance had grown very considerably in strength and numbers. It now embraced all Greek towns with but few exceptions, and gave the war more and more the character of a national contest against the king of that country, which, under a former Philip, had destroyed the independence of Greece. There were now on the side of Macedonia only the Acarnanians, who did not count for much; Boeotia which, except in the days of Epaminondas, had always systematically opposed the rest of Greece; and a few isolated towns, such as the three members of the Achaean league, which could not be induced to make common cause with the rest.

Notwithstanding all this, the cause of Philip was by no means lost. The Romans, indeed, succeeded in taking Elatea in Phocis by storm ; but the attacks of the allies on Corinth were all beaten off by the citizens and the brave Macedonian garrison, which had been reinforced in good time by a detachment of one thousand five hundred men, under the command of Philocles, sent from Chalcis, the Macedonian stronghold in Euboea. After the allied fleets had separated and returned to their winter stations in the Piraeus and Corcyra, the enterprising Philocles, not satisfied with the successful defence of Corinth, made an attempt to gain the important city of Argos for Philip. He appeared suddenly before this town, into which the Achaeans, immediately after embracing the Roman alliance, had thrown a garrison of five hundred chosen warriors. The sympathy of the citizens was entirely on the Macedonian side, and they had not by any means accommodated themselves to the resolution of the Achaean league. When, therefore, Philocles advanced to the town, and the five hundred Achaeans of the garrison made preparations to repel him, they were attacked in the rear by the armed citizens. The valiant Achaean captain, Aenesidemus, saw the fruitlessness of resistance, and instead of uselessly sacrificing the troops which had been entrusted to him, he surrendered the town on condition that he might send away his men unmolested. But, resolved to save his military honour, he himself remained with a few faithful men at his post, threw away his shield, and allowed himself to be pierced to death by Thracian archers.

The two principal towns of the Peloponnesus, Corinth and Argos, were, therefore, at the end of the year 198 BC, in the hands of Philip, and he hoped by this means to keep the Achaeans in check, the more so, as he finally reckoned on securing the alliance of their irreconcilable enemy, the tyrant Nabis of Sparta, although Nabis had concluded an armistice with the Achaeans under Roman mediation.

Although winter had now put an end to the operations in the field, hostilities did not altogether cease. The Romans occupied Phocis and Locris, and the town of Opus opened her gates voluntarily to them, after the Macedonian garrison had retired into the fortress. Flamininus had not had time in his year of office to bring the war to a close, and he much feared that he would be called upon to resign the command to his successor in the consulship. He did all he could, and exercised all his influence in Rome, to be allowed to remain in Greece with the power of proconsul; but as he could not calculate with certainty upon a prolongation of his command, he was not disinclined to meet the wishes of Philip, who now for the second time offered to enter into negotiations for the settlement of disputes. An interview was, therefore, agreed upon on the coast of the Malian gulf, not far from the town of Nicaea. Flamininus appeared accompanied by prince Amynander of Athamania, by Dionysodorus the Pergamenian ambassador, by Agesimbrotus the commander of the Rhodian fleet, by Phaeneas the strategos of the league of the Aetolians, and by the two Achaeans Aristaenus and Xenophon. The king of Macedonia, standing on the prow of a ship, approached the shore, where the Roman consul and the allied chiefs were waiting for him. Flamininus and his suit advanced to the margin of the water to meet the king. The ship cast anchor  but the king remained standing on the deck, hesitating to go on land at the invitation of the consul. Being asked of whom he was afraid, he said he feared none but the gods, but he could not place confidence in all those who accompanied the consul, and least of all in the Aetolians. With such distrust on both sides the negotiations were commenced, and as was io be expected they led to no satisfactory result.

Philip, more and more conscious of the difficulty of his situation, was resolved to make great concessions. He declared himself prepared to restore the districts on the Illyrian coast which he had taken from the Romans, to give up the deserters and prisoners, to send back to Attalus the ships taken in the battle near Chios with the captured sailors, to resign the possessions of the Rhodians called Peraia on the continent of Asia Minor, to give to the Aetolians Pharsalus and Larissa, and to the Achaeans Argos, and even Corinth, the most important town of all. But these concessions satisfied neither the Romans nor their allies. The Romans insisted on the evacuation of all Greek towns, and the restoration of the Egyptian possessions which Philip had conquered after the death of Ptolemaeus Philopator. Attalus wanted compensation for the ravages committed in his kingdom; the Rhodians demanded that all the towns conquered by Philip in Asia and on the Hellespont should be declared free. But the highest demands were made by the Aetolians, who wished to make use of this opportunity thoroughly to weaken Macedonia, and to recover all the places which at one time or another had been members of the Aetolian confederation. The animosity and personal rancour between Philip and the representatives of the Aetolians were so great that they threatened to break off the negotiations. Flamininus felt obliged on the second day of the conference to agree to Philip’s wish and to negotiate with him alone, without admitting the allies, although their exclusion could not fail to offend them. Finally, contrary to the advice of the Greeks, he granted an armistice of two months to the king of Macedonia, the price of which was the evacuation of all the places in Locris and Phocis which were still occupied by Macedonian troops. Thus time was gained to send an embassy to Rome, and to ascertain the final decision of the senate respecting the conditions of peace. It was not difficult to foresee that in the present state of things a peaceful settlement of the dispute was impossible. The demands of the Romans went a great way beyond the concessions which Philip was prepared to make, and yet up to this time no single military event had taken place during the war of decided importance. Philip’s power was as yet untouched. Neither his army nor his fleet had suffered a defeat. The devastations which the Romans, and still more their allies, had committed in Thessaly had no other result than that of hindering the military operations against Macedonia, for they made it difficult to feed an army in that country, which was the only direct road for an army bent on invading Macedonia. If the Romans and their allies had conquered a number of fortified places, they, were on the other hand, baffled in their attacks on others, or they had been compelled to give up again places which they had taken. The alliance between Achaia and the Romans was almost outweighed by the acquisition of Argos by Philip, who moreover retained in his hands the chief fortresses of Greece. It was therefore, as we have already remarked, not to be expected that he should comply with the demands of the Romans before he should have suffered a decided defeat. When his ambassadors were roundly asked in Rome whether they were authorised to promise the evacuation of Corinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias, they had to reply by a negative, and were requested to leave Rome immediately.

The war accordingly continued. The chief command was prorogued to Flamininus, as proconsul for the year 197 BC, through the intercession of his friends in Rome, and a reinforcement of six thousand infantry, three hundred horse, and three thousand sailors was sent out to him. Flamininus, more intent, as Livy remarks, on victory than on peace, declined all further negotiations with Philip, which should not have for their basis the acceptance of all the demands of the senate, and prepared himself to strike a decisive blow.

From that moment when the Achaeans had joined the Roman alliance, the prospect was opened to Philip of securing the co-operation of Nabis in their place. It seemed natural that, of the two hostile neighbours in the Peloponnesus, the one should make common cause with that party with which the other was at war. Up to this time Macedonia had been always allied with Achaia against Sparta. Now, after this alliance had been broken, Philip hoped to be able to draw Nabis over to his side, and he determined to do this in a manner which was calculated to brand him throughout all Greece as an infamous traitor to his best friends, and to deprive him of the small remnant of confidence and attachment still felt for him.

The citizens of Argos had given proofs of their loyalty to Macedonia by seceding from the Achaean league, and by surrendering their town to the Macedonian general Philocles. As a reward for this service, Philip now gave over the town of Argos to the detestable Nabis, who had most deservedly drawn upon himself the loathing of all the Greeks. Some of the most respectable citizens, knowing well what fate awaited them, made a timely escape out of the betrayed town, and thus sacrificed only the property which they had to leave behind. The others found themselves exposed not only to plunder, but also to ill-treatment, and even the women were robbed by Apega, the worthy spouse of Nabis, of their costly garments and their jewels. A general cancelling of debts, and an assignation of land to the poor, secured for the tyrant a numerous party of warm adherents and admirers, and thus he obtained secure possession of Argos, just as similar measures had established his dominion over Sparta.

When we read of these revolting proceedings we feel a kind of satisfaction in learning that one villain cheated the other. Nabis accepted the town of Argos from Philip. But instead of joining his party, he entered into negotiations with the Romans, by whose mediation an armistice was concluded between him and the Achaeans for the duration of the war. He even sent them an auxiliary force of six hundred Cretan mercenaries for the war against Philip; and thus the tyrant loaded with the curses of half Greece, the man who had made a robber’s den of the proud commonwealth of Sparta, could boast of taking part under the chief leadership of Rome in the great war of liberation of the Greek people.

The whole of the Peloponnesus had now joined the league against Philip. In central Greece the Boeotians alone still held aloof. These, too, Flamininus managed now to gain for his side. Their good will was of the greatest importance to him, as they might have interrupted his line of operations, which extended from the south of Greece through Thessaly. Determined to secure it, he entered Boeotia in the spring of 197 BC, gained possession of Thebes by a stratagem, and by displaying the overwhelming force at his command, frightened the  Boeotians, though most reluctant to abandon the Macedonian side, to declare for the Roman alliance. There was nothing now to threaten the rear of the advancing army, except the two Macedonian fortresses of Chalcis and Corinth, the latter of which alone contained a garrison of no less than six thousand men. However, as all the Greek states had now declared themselves in favour of Rome, and were united in a common war against Macedonia, these two strongholds could easily be kept in check, and they could benefit Philip only so far as they detained before them a portion of the auxiliary forces which otherwise would have joined the invading army in its advance northwards. Flamininus, therefore, as soon as he had secured the co-operation of Boeotia, advanced at once towards Thessaly, determined, if possible, to bring the war to a close in this the fourth campaign. He commanded, in addition to his two legions, a heterogeneous mass of Greek and African soldiers, an army such as no Roman general had ever before led into the field. Besides the Roman legions, he had Numidian and Aetolian horsemen, African elephants, Cretan archers, Epirots, Illyrians, and Greek Hoplites and Peltasts. The whole force seems to have amounted to no more than twenty-four thousand men, if we can rely on the accuracy of Livy’s statements. But the numbers appear very small, and, as usual with Roman annalists, the contingents of the allies seem to have been unduly understated.

Philip in the preceding autumn could hardly have entertained any hope of successful negotiations for peace. He, therefore, made use of the winter to replenish his army and to train his new soldiers. Macedonia was so exhausted that Philip had to press boys and old men into his service to raise in all about twenty-three thousand five hundred men. Sixteen thousand of these were Phalangites or heavy-armed men. The rest were light­armed, and among them were Thracians, Illyrians, mercenaries from different countries, Thessalian horse, and some Greek auxiliaries, notably the Boeotians, who had remained faithful to him, when the rest of their countrymen had joined the Romans. The strength of this army consisted in the dreaded Phalanx, which was still regarded as invincible, but the charm of which was soon to be broken. Notwithstanding the efficient Thessalian cavalry in Philip’s army, the allies were superior to Philip in this respect, thanks to the excellent Aetolian horse.

It was the summer of the year 198 BC, and the yellow corn was waving in the fields of Thessaly, when Philip, marching southwards from Larissa, on the Peneus, looked out for the Roman army, which was moving northwards, near the coast of the Pagasaean Gulf. The intention of Flamininus may have been to attack the fortress of Demetrias, and perhaps Philip came to protect it. But our informants are silent on the cause which brought the two armies into this corner of Thessaly. The light-armed advanced guards of both encountered each other in the neighbourhood of Pherae. As, on account of numerous fences and garden walls, this locality was very unfavourable for the evolutions of large bodies of troops, Philip retired in the direction of Scotussa. A low chain of hills called Cynoscephalae (the hound’s heads) stretched in the direction from Pherae towards Scotussa. Separated by these hills from one another, the Macedonians and the Romans marched for two whole days side by side in the same direction, without seeing one another or having the remotest idea that a collision was all but unavoidable. If there had been a Hannibal opposed to the Romans, it would have been difficult for them to escape the fate of the unhappy Flaminius at the Thrasymenian lake. But Philip knew neither how to make use of the ground nor to avail himself of the negligence of the Roman general, who, although he had a numerous and excellent cavalry, familiar with the country, had entirely lost sight of the enemy, and was groping about like a blind man. On the third day, while mist and heavy showers of rain almost enveloped the country in darkness, Philip halted, pitched a camp, and sent out a detachment to take possession of the ridge of the hills. By chance a troop of Roman horse and light-armed foot met the Macedonians, who were coming from the other side. Thus a skirmish took place, without object or plan, in which alternately one and the other side had the advantage, according as each received reinforcements. Philip did not wish to bring on a battle, especially as one half of his phalanx had been sent out to forage. But when the fight of the advanced guard seemed to grow more and more favourable for the Macedonians, and the Romans were repulsed, in spite of the devoted bravery of the Aetolian horse, Flamininus found himself obliged, for the protection of his fleeing troops, to draw up his whole army in order of battle. Philip now complied with the solicitations of his chief officers, and gave orders for a general advance. He marched himself at the head of the right wing of the phalanx towards the hills, and having reached the top saw his advanced troops engaged with the whole left wing of the Romans. The light-armed Macedonians, unable to withstand the onslaught of the legions, sought protection behind and near the approaching phalanx, which now commenced the attack, and by the weight of its closed ranks, increased by the sloping ground, drove back the Romans, and compelled them to retire fighting towards their camp.

The chances of the battle seemed to turn in favour of the Macedonians. But as yet only one wing had been engaged as well on the Roman as on the Macedonian side. The right wing of the Romans was yet unbroken, and now moved, with the elephants at its head, towards the heights where the remainder of the Macedonian phalanx, which had only just returned from their foraging expedition, were in the act of forming into line, an operation which the broken and irregular ground rendered peculiarly difficult. Nicanor, who commanded here, did not wait until the phalanx had completed its order of battle. He rushed, without order, with the foremost ranks against the advancing Romans; but the feeble line was in a moment broken and routed by the elephants. Disorder soon spread over the whole wing, and the phalanx turned to flight without even waiting for the arrival of the Roman infantry.

At this momentous juncture a legionary tribune, whose name is unfortunately not recorded, seized the favourable opportunity to shape the battle which had been begun without plan into a brilliant victory for Rome. He desisted from pursuing the routed wing of the Macedonians, and wheeling round to the left with a small detachment against the victorious wing of the enemy’s right, which was advancing upon the Roman camp, fell upon their rear. The phalanx, firm as a wall against an attack in front, was too unwieldy to turn quickly and meet an attack coming from behind. It was at once broken. The Macedonians threw away their long spears, which were only impediments in a hand-to-hand combat. At the same moment the Romans on the left wing, which was in full retreat towards the camp, had no sooner perceived what was going on in the rear of the phalanx, than they turned round and resumed the attack. The Macedonians, thus assaulted in front and rear, were utterly routed and turned to flight.

The battle was soon decided. Five thousand Macedonians were made prisoners, eight thousand were killed, partly in consequence of a mistake, because the Roman soldiers, not knowing that the Macedonians placed their lances upright as a token of surrender, cut down many who asked for quarter. The Romans lost altogether only seven hundred men. That was the price paid for a victory which laid the monarchy of Alexander the Great in the dust.

The detailed account of Polybius, which we have followed in our narrative, leaves no room for a doubt as to the character of the battle. It was won, not by the superior generalship of Flamininus, but by the superiority of the Roman manipular tactics over the cumbrous and unwieldy Macedonian phalanx. In a narrow breach, or wherever the flanks and rear were covered, the phalanx, it is true, formed an impenetrable living wall; but where it could be attacked in flank or rear it was helpless. It was scarcely possible to move round quickly or to change the front of a solid body of men of sixteen ranks, drawn up behind one another and armed with spears twenty feet long,1 which projecting from the second, third, fourth and fifth rank to a distance of eight, six, four and two cubits beyond the front, bound them all together into a compact mass. Every inequality in the ground, every ditch, bush, or stone that hindered the closing of ranks, every quick and sudden movement, necessarily broke up this solid mass, in which the single soldier counted for nothing unless he remained closely united to the whole. One gap in the forest of lances was sufficient to split up the whole phalanx, and once broken it could not easily form again.

Thus it happened that in the first serious encounter after the commencement of the war the rapidly moving maniples of the Roman legions, without any direction from an able leader, found out almost by instinct the weak part of the phalanx and broke into it, as water finds its way into the chinks of an old ship. This result was perhaps materially facilitated by the circumstance that a portion of Philip’s soldiers consisted of newly levied and almost useless recruits. At least it is probable that the discredit­able conduct of the left wing may be attributed to the inferior quality of the troops composing it.

What share the Greek auxiliaries had in the victory at Cynoscephalae is not reported by our authorities. We hear only that in the beginning of the combat the Aetolian horse conducted themselves well and delayed the Macedonian advance. But after the victory an outcry was raised among the legions against the Aetolians for having immediately broken into the enemy’s camp to plunder it, while the Romans were still occupied with the pursuit. The jealousy and envy among the allies therefore broke out immediately after the first great success which they  had gained by their united efforts, and this feeling could not fail to lead more and more to mutual estrangement.

At about the same time when Philip’s principal army succumbed in Thessaly to the Roman legions and to the allied Greeks, he experienced in three different places unexpected and heavy blows which, in connexion with his own defeat, impressed upon him the absolute necessity of a speedy reconciliation with Rome.

After the successive defection of the Epirots, the Achaeans and Boeotians, and after the loss of Phocis, Locris and Thessaly, the only allies which Philip had yet in Greece were the Acarnanians. Their chief town, Leucas, on the island of the same name, was at that time besieged by a Roman fleet under the proconsul’s brother, Lucius Quinctius Flamininus, and after an heroic resistance was taken. When after this loss the news arrived of the battle of Cynoscephalae the brave and faithful Acarnanians resigned themselves to their fate, and submitted to the Romans.

The second mishap was announced from Peraea, an ancient possession of the Rhodians, on that part of Caria which was opposite the island of Rhodes. It had lately been conquered by Philip on his expedition into Asia Minor in 201 BC, of which we have spoken above. The Rhodians had formed an army of Greek, Gallic, Asiatic, and African mercenaries, and defeated so completely the Macedonian general Dinocrates, who commanded a no less heterogeneous army, that he had to give up all the fortified towns in the land, except Stratonicea.

The third and heaviest reverse of the Macedonian arms was reported from the Peloponnesus. Though the strong Macedonian garrison of Corinth, of six thousand men, had not been able to stop the advance of the Romans towards Thessaly, nor to threaten them in the rear, they had occupied the forces of the Achaeans, and the Macedonian commander, Androsthenes, considered himself strong enough to lay the surrounding lands under contribution, while Nicostratus, the strategos of the Achaean league, for a long time did not venture to leave the shelter of the walls of Sicyon. But at last Nicostratus made a well-planned attack on the plundering bands, routed them completely, and drove them back to Corinth, with the loss of eighteen hundred men.

Even before Philip could have heard of these disasters, he had lost the courage to continue the contest any longer. Straight from the field of battle, he hurried into his own country, where he collected the flying remnants of his army. He sent heralds to ask for the permission to bury the dead, and at the same time to ascertain whether Flamininus was inclined or not to receive ambassadors. The Roman general showed so much readiness to enter into negotiations, and such a generous disposition towards the king of Macedonia, that his allies, the Aetolians, were baffled in their eagerness for revenge, and at once accused him of neglecting their wishes and interests, inasmuch as he was about to negotiate with the enemy without consulting those “who had contributed most towards the victory.”

Such presumption had only the effect of confirming the Roman statesman in his determination to grant the king of Macedonia at once favourable terms of peace. He was, moreover, anxious to bring the Macedonian war to a close before the king of Syria should be tempted to make common cause with his old ally. It was enough for the present, if Macedonia was humbled and weakened. By a show of moderation it might be expected that king Philip would be reconciled to the position of a Roman ally. It was desirable to establish a kind of political equilibrium in the East, so that no single state might grow powerful enough to pursue an independent policy, to withdraw itself from Roman influence, and possibly become dangerous in the end. Flamininus had, moreover, a personal interest in his conciliatory policy, as was so often the case with Roman statesmen. He wished to put an end to the war before the arrival of a successor in the command could deprive him of the glory of triumphing in Rome as the conqueror of Macedonia. He explained, therefore, to his allies that Rome had determined to let Macedonia remain intact within her old boundaries. She would thus, he said, serve to protect Greece from the Northern barbarians without being able further to threaten the liberty of the Greek states. He then arranged a conference with Philip at the opening of the pass of Tempe, which leads from Thessaly to Macedonia along the foot of Mount Olympus. Here Philip declared himself ready to comply with all the demands formerly made by Rome, and to let the Roman senate draw out the final and detailed conditions of peace. When the Aetolians saw that in these negotiations between Macedonia and Rome they were being disregarded, Phaeneas, the strategos of their league, tried to establish the claim of the Aetolians to those towns in Thessaly which Philip had taken from them. He thought himself at liberty to base his claim on the treaty which was concluded in the year 211 BC between the Aatolians and the Romans, and according to which the spoil gained in the war was to be divided, so that Rome should have all that was movable, and Aetolia all the conquered countries and towns. But he was severely rebuked by Flamininus, and reminded that that treaty could no longer be considered as binding, since the Aetolians had violated it by their separate peace with Philip. This act the Romans could never forget or forgive, and it made it impossible for them to entertain perfect con­fidence and hearty goodwill towards the Aetolians in the second alliance against Macedonia, an alliance which nothing but the necessities of the war had compelled them to seek.

In order to give time to the Roman senate to settle the questions of peace and war, a truce of four months was concluded. As a security for its rigid observance, Philip gave up his son Demetrius and several men of high rank as hostages, besides the sum of two hundred talents, on condition that the money and the hostages should be returned if the peace were not concluded. During this time of truce Philip was at liberty to drive back the Dardanians, who in the meantime had invaded Macedonia. Why the Romans abandoned those barbarians, who till now had been their allies, we cannot tell. Perhaps the Dardanians had neglected to make the diversion in favour of the Romans at the right time, according to the agreement. At all events, the proceeding of both allies shows that they did not consider themselves much bound by their mutual obligations. The Dardanians, being left to themselves, could not resist the Macedonian army, and were driven back to their own country with great loss.

As hostilities were now at an end, the troops out of the different Greek towns, which fill now had served in the Macedonian army, returned to their homes at the suggestion of Flamininus. This measure was indispensable, because the connexion was dissolved which up to this time had united so many Greek towns to Macedonia. The Macedonian army—the strength of which was to be reduced to a lower standard—could for the future no longer contain any Greek contingents; and, on the other hand, the Greeks, if they wished to preserve their independence, were obliged to keep their fighting men at home.

The return, however, of so many men from the Macedonian service could not fail to give a new impulse to party hatred, and to impart new strength to the adherents of Macedonia, who had temporarily given way to the superiority of Rome. In Boeotia they felt themselves so encouraged, that they chose for the coming year as head of the Boeotian league one Brachyllas, the late commander of the contingents just returned from Macedonia, the most zealous friend of Philip, and, of course, leader of the opposition to Rome.

That the beaten party could summon up courage to take such a bold step before the eyes and under the pressure of the Roman army was a warning to their opponents, and caused them to fear the worst after the Romans should have left the country. In order to secure the power for themselves betimes, they determined to get rid of the head of the Macedonian party. Flamininus knew of the plan, and neither disapproved nor prevented its execution. He confined himself to allowing the Boeotians to do as they pleased, and this alone was encouragement enough for the hot-headed faction. Two of the Roman sympathisers, Zeuxippus and Pisistratus, hired assassins to kill Brachyllas in the street by night, as he was returning, full of wine, with some boon companions from a public banquet. This criminal as well as foolish deed, for which the authors immediately suffered death, produced in the whole of Boeotia such a violent rage against the Romans, that no isolated Roman soldier was safe anywhere, and some hundreds of them were surprised and murdered. Flamininus saw himself compelled to adopt most rigorous measures of repression. He imposed a heavy fine on the Boeotians; and when they were unable to pay it, and endeavoured to excuse or even to justify themselves, he sent troops to lay waste the neighbourhood of Coronea and Acraephia, in the vicinity of the lake Copais, where most of the murders had taken place. At length, through the mediation of the Athenians and Achaeans, a compromise was agreed upon. The Boeotians consented to give up the chief malefactors, and to pay a penalty of thirty talents. This whole episode shows how little prospect there was that, if the Greeks gained their independence and freedom with Roman help, they would ever put off their old sins, and establish order and peace under any form of national self-government.

Towards the end of the year 197 BC Philip’s ambassadors appeared in Rome, and tried to obtain the consent of the Roman people to the treaty of peace. At the same time the allies of the Romans made use of the opportunity to lay their especial wishes, demands, and complaints before the senate. No doubt the worthy senators must have felt confused and worried when they were called upon by the glib-tongued Greeks to decide whether Triphylia belonged in justice to the Eleans or to the Achaeans, whether the Messenians had a well-grounded claim upon Asine and Pylos, or the Aetolians on Hersea, and to determine other like questions of detail. The difficulty was increased by the circumstance that Marcus Claudius Marcellus, one of the consuls elected for the ensuing year, did all he could to frustrate the peace, in hopes that the glory of bringing the Macedonian war to a close might devolve upon him. Fortunately these machinations utterly failed. The senate and the people approved the proceedings of Flamininus, and it was determined to send a commission of ten senators to Greece for the final settlement of the conditions of peace, and for the regulation of all matters of detail. The ten deputies arrived a few days after the disturbances in Boeotia had been put down, and now the conditions under which the Roman people were inclined to conclude peace were communicated to the king of Macedonia.

These conditions were so hard that only the consciousness of thorough exhaustion could make them appear acceptable. Macedonia was, indeed, allowed to continue as an independent state, but like Carthage a few years before, she was to lose all foreign possessions; even the old dependency of Orestis was to be detached and declared free. This district of Orestis was of special importance, because it was an easily defended mountain region, and lay on the line of communication with Illyria, the line by which the Romans, in a future war, were likely to advance, provided the kings of Macedonia were no longer able, as hitherto, to close the road against a hostile army. Moreover, the so-called independence of Macedonia was very materially modified by restrictions, whereby it was placed under the suzerainty of Rome, and in fact sunk to the level of a vassal state. Philip was obliged to reduce his army to five thousand men, his fleet to five ships, to keep no war elephants, and to pledge himself to carry on no foreign war without the consent of the senate. The last of these conditions alone sufficed to take away the semblance of independence, and to range Macedonia among those states which, though honoured by the name of allies and friends, were really subject to Rome. A last condition which followed, as a matter of course, was the delivering up of all the prisoners of war, of the deserters, and of those ships which were over and above the stipulated number of five. Finally, a war indemnity was imposed of a thousand talents, or about two hundred and fifty thousand pounds sterling.

The conclusion of a treaty of peace with Philip offered no very great difficulty to the ingenuity of the Roman negotiators, as Philip was bent upon peace at any price. But a task much more complicated and delicate was the new order to be established in all those towns which had been delivered from the Macedonian dominion, and the settlement of their mutual relations to one another. It was in no way sufficient to leave each separate community to itself. All were not in a position to maintain such independent existence. Many of them were, of old, either subject to a more powerful neighbouring state, or they were members of confederacies more or less extensive.

Some were claimed by jealous neighbours on all sorts of pleas. It was impossible to fulfil all hopes. The general declaration that the war had been undertaken for the liberation of Greece, could not, except under many limitations and reserves, be carried out without giving mortal offence to deserving allies. The Aetolians hoped to rule in Thessaly in Philip’s place; the Rhodians insisted on recovering their possessions on the continent of Asia Minor; nor could it be expected of the king of Pergamum that he should lose the Greek towns lying within the boundaries of his kingdom, which had always been subject to him, or that he should resign Aegina which Attalus had purchased from the Aetolians in the first Macedonian war for the sum of thirty talents.

But the most difficult question of all seemed to be what should be done with the three great Macedonian fortresses of Corinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias. Whatever might be thought of Corinth, which had always been a great auto­nomous state, and was safe as a member of the Achaean league, the condition of Chalcis and Demetrias was very different. It was not to be expected that, if left to themselves, they would be able to remain neutral or independent, because they bad not sufficient resources to resist a vigorous attack from one of the greater powers. The king of Syria assumed from day to day a more hostile position. If he, or any other power, were to get possession of them, they would again become what they had been in the hands of Macedonia—the means for enslaving Greece.

Across all these difficulties Flamininus, with the senatorial committee deputed to assist him, at length found a way which promised to satisfy, if not all, at least the great majority of the Greeks, and he resolved to declare his resolutions with such solemnity that their new liberty might appear to the Greeks in the light of a free gift of Roman magnanimity. The grand festival of the Isthmian games was about to be celebrated. A rumour had already prepared the Greeks for the important message which was to be delivered to them by their powerful protectors at this national meeting of the whole race. Full of expectation and delight, like children who are promised an unusual pleasure, they assembled in large numbers on the isthmus of Corinth, and filled the race-course with an impatient crowd, expressing their wishes, doubts, and hopes with the liveliness and excitement characteristic of the Greek race. At length a herald stepped forth into their midst. A blast of the trumpet commanded silence, and with a loud voice the herald read the following decree: “The Roman senate and Titus Quinctius the consul, having conquered king Philip and the Macedonians, accord their liberty to the Corinthians, Phocians, Locrians, Euboeans, Phthiotians, Magnesians, Thessalians, Perrhaebeans, that they may live according to their own laws without foreign garrisons, and without paying tribute.” The herald was obliged to read the resolution a second time, for many thought they were dreaming, or could not trust their own ears, so overjoyed were they when the news reached them. There were no bounds to the rejoicings, and Flamininus was overwhelmed with the demonstrations of thanks from the intoxicated crowd.

The sanguine people gave themselves up without reserve to the hope that now at last, purchased almost without a sacrifice of their own, the long-desired day of freedom and independence was breaking, and that all the long trials and calamities of evil days would be forgotten in the new prosperity of the people. They believed with child-like simplicity that the Romans really cared for their freedom, and that they had crossed the sea with no other object than to deliver Greece from a foreign yoke. They seriously considered it a gain that they had exchanged the domi­nion of a neighbour, arrogant indeed, but of kindred blood, for that of a foreign people, because this people, conscious of superior strength, left them for the present undisturbed to the play of their national passions, their everlasting jealousies, their mutual encroachments, waiting patiently for the time when it might be opportune to make them feel that they had only placed a heavier yoke about their necks. A close observer might indeed, even now, have had a foretaste of the Roman mode of treating their friends. For in the solemn proclamation of independence the co-operation of the Greeks in the war against Macedonia was passed over with significant silence, and Greece was treated as if she were the private property of the Roman people. Was it possible not to feel the humiliation which lay in the whole proceeding, or to hope that Greece would be able to guard a possession which she had received as a free gift of generosity?

Though such considerations were swallowed up in the first gush of excitement and in the general rejoicings, it was unavoidable that here and there, where private interests had been injured, discontent should show itself. Perhaps after the first frenzy of delight had abated, few were perfectly satisfied, when they compared what had been granted by Flamininus with that to which, by their own services, they thought they could lay just claim. Above all others, the Aetolians were deeply hurt. They had reckoned on new acquisitions in Thessaly and Acarnania. But Thessaly, according to the intentions of Rome, was to form a neutral ground between Macedonia and Aetolia to keep the ambition of both states within bounds. It was, therefore, divided into four free and autonomous cantons, called Phthiotis, Magnesia, Thessaly, and Perrhaebia, and every kind of dependence on Macedonia as well as on Aetolia which had formerly existed was removed. Moreover, the Aetolians received neither Acarnania, nor the towns in the Peloponnesus which formerly belonged to them ; they were allowed to extend their confederacy only in the direction of Locris and Phocis, and besides this they received Ambracia and Oeniadoe in Epirus.

The year 196 BC was spent in adjusting the internal affairs of Greece. The most difficult task, however, of all yet remained to be done, the final establishment of peace in the Peloponnesus. The Romans found themselves here in a very awkward position, in so far as they had for their allies both Sparta and Achaia, two states at war with one another. Each of these had rendered important services in the last campaign, and each expected now to be rewarded by Rome at the expense of the other. The Achaeans had joined the Roman alliance not readily, but with great reluctance, while Sparta could boast of her old friendly relation to Rome. Still Rome could hardly side with a tyrant like Nabis, while ostensibly fighting for the liberty of the Greeks. Nabis had not only laid his neighbours in the Peloponnesus under contributions in a shameless manner, but had also practised piracy on a large scale in connexion with notorious pirates from the island of Crete where he had possessions. He had not even spared Italian vessels. He paid not the slightest respect to sworn obligations, or to international rights and duties; and as till now he had acted with impunity, his presumption passed all bounds. All principles of political honour would, therefore, justify the Romans in delivering Greece and the world from such a monster, if only they could release themselves from the obligation which they had incurred towards the tyrant by the acceptance of Spartan aid.

A cause of war with Nabis was easily found in his refusal to give up Argos, which he had acquired by treachery, and oppressed with heartless cruelty. He thus compelled the Romans to take part openly against him. Flamininus was authorised, or rather commissioned, by the Roman senate to compel the tyrant by force to submit to the Roman demands, and he summoned at Corinth an assembly of the great states, in which the war with Sparta was determined upon. The most eager of all the enemies of Nabis were of course the Achaeans, who, having suffered most from his hostility, now hoped to have their long-cherished desire fulfilled, and to receive Sparta as a member into their confederation. Their strategos, Aristaenus, with no less than ten thousand foot and a thousand horse, joined the Roman army, which Flamininus at the commencement of the mild season of 195 BC led from Elatea into the Peloponnesus. The Aetolians took no part in this expedition. They were dissatisfied with the whole turn which affairs had taken, and looked with great displeasure and jealousy on the possible increase of power which their old rivals, the Achaeans, might derive from the subjection of Sparta. But king Philip of Macedonia, the most recent ally of Rome, sent a detachment of one thousand five hundred men. In addition to these military contingents, the allied forces were joined by a number of Spartan citizens, who had been robbed and exiled by the tyrant, with Agesipolis the legitimate heir to the throne of Sparta at their head.

The first point of attack was the important town of Argos, which was besides the foremost object of contention. But Pythagoras, the son-in-law of Nabis, a determined and able soldier, who had the command in the town, frustrated a conspiracy among the citizens, and foiled an attempt of the besiegers to carry the place by a sudden onset. Flamininus, on the advice of the Achaeans, now determined not to allow himself to be detained by the siege of Argos, but to march straight against Sparta, in the hope that Nabis would submit, as soon as he saw himself seriously threatened in the very centre of his dominions. But the petty tyrant’s power was by no means contemptible. Being determined to resist to the utmost, he had collected a force of no less than fifteen thousand men. To guard against internal treason, he had caused eighty of the chief men in Sparta, and a number of Helots whom he looked upon as suspicious, to be seized and murdered in prison. The town of Sparta, which in the old time was not fortified, had been protected since the Macedonian period in many places by walls and trenches wherever the approach was open and easy. Nabis had strengthened these defences, and so had made the town secure against a surprise. The Romans, however, attempted no serious attack. After some slight skirmishes they marched round the town to Amyclae, in order to reach the important town of Gythium, on the coast, by which Nabis had access to the sea, and which was his starting point and place of refuge on his piratical excursions. Before this port appeared now the Capture of united fleets of the Romans, the Rhodians, and Eumenes, who two years before had succeeded his deceased father, Attalus, in the kingdom of Pergamum. The surrender of the town of Gythium, after a valiant defence, enabled the allies, whose numbers had grown to fifty thousand, to march leisurely against Sparta. 

Nabis had, in the meantime, been reinforced by the brave Pythagoras and a portion of the garrison of Argos; but in spite of this he had not the least chance of being able to resist such an overwhelming force as was now brought against him. He would, perhaps, at once have submitted, if he had not felt convinced that it was not the intention of the Romans to put an end to the independence of Sparta. He knew that they were jealous of the Achaeans; that they desired to see the influence of the league in the Peloponnesus checked by another power; and that, therefore, the existence of Sparta was indispensable to Rome. Thus he was encouraged to resist, as long as possible, the feeble attack, and even to propose a peaceful arrangement. Flamininus seemed indeed disposed to negotiate. He offered conditions which must have appeared most favourable to Nabis in his desperate situation. Nabis, however, was aware of the dilemma in which the Romans found themselves, and knowing how unwilling they were to take extreme steps against him, he hoped to satisfy them by promising to restore Argos. At the same time he stimulated his soldiers to the most desperate resistance by spreading reports of the fearful treatment to be expected from Flamininus. The wild beast was fairly at bay, and it was absolutely necessary to use force against him. The allies made an assault, forced the weak defences of the town, and drove the enemy into the interior. Sparta was taken, and it might have been thought that the conquerors had only to follow up their advantage in order to crush the tyrant completely with their immensely superior forces, when, at the command of Pythagoras, the streets, already crowded by the assailants, were set on fire. Flamininus immediately gave the signal for retreat. But it soon became evident that the retreat had not been caused only by a sudden alarm. There was nothing to prevent the repetition of the attack. Nevertheless, when, after a few days, the tyrant declared himself ready to accept the conditions offered before, to give hostages, and to pay an indemnity, Flamininus granted him an armistice, and at length concluded peace under conditions similar to those which he had imposed on the king of Macedonia. The first condition was of course the restoration of Argos. But this had in the meantime become superfluous, for the citizens of Argos had themselves recovered their freedom, after the withdrawal of Pythagoras and the Spartan garrison. The second demand of Flamininus was the surrender of all the country along the sea coast of Laconia, and of the Spartan possessions in Crete. Nabis was thus completely cut off from the sea, was obliged to sacrifice his fleet, and to discontinue the practice of piracy, which had been such a source of profit to him. As a matter of course, he was called upon to give up the deserters and prisoners of war, and to restore all the plunder that was not yet destroyed or consumed, and which could be identified. He was, moreover, compelled to discharge those mercenaries who had left his service, or in other words, had deserted to the allies, and to give up to them their private property. As a mark of his lasting dependence on Rome, Nabis had to resign the right of carrying on war or making alliances with foreign powers, and he was forbidden to establish anywhere fortified castles or towns. As a war indemnity one hundred talents were to be paid at once, and four hundred talents in eight years.

The one condition which Nabis personally must have dreaded most he was spared. He was not compelled to allow the Spartan exiles to return, and to restore to them their right of citizenship and the property which had been divided among the mercenaries and the freed slaves. Such a measure would naturally have called forth without delay a political and social revolution in Sparta, the consequence of which, in case of success, would have been the down­fall of the tyrant. The exiles who, with Agesipolis, the legitimate claimant of the Spartan throne, at their head, had joined the Roman army, could not obtain the full acknowledgment of their rights. The only condition made in their favour was, that Nabis was compelled to deliver up to them their wives and children, if these should wish to leave Sparta. The fate of these women seems not to have been enviable. Nabis had given them in marriage to his new citizens, who were either the emancipated slaves of the exiles, or adventurers and criminals from abroad. These conditions of peace exhibit a mournful picture of the terrible disruption of family ties, of property, and of all domestic life, which the infamous reign of terror had caused in Sparta. The exiles, instead of returning to their old possessions, were settled in the coast district which had been detached from the Spartan territory, and entered into the Achaean confederation under the name of free Laconians.

Thus were the affairs of the Peloponnesus settled at last, but settled in a way which fulfilled neither the promises of the Romans nor the wishes of the best men in of the new Greece. The root of the most destructive dissensions was left in the ground in the person of the tyrant Nabis, and the Roman politicians could not justify themselves by saying that their power was insufficient for the liberation of Sparta. Evidently they had not desired the downfall of Nabis and the reception of Sparta in the Achaean league. As in the north of Greece they had only humiliated and weakened Philip, and had prevented the Aetolians from extending their power, so they tried to establish a political equilibrium in the Peloponnesus, and they allowed Sparta to continue within moderate bounds as an independent state, in order to teach the Achaeans that the protection of Rome was indispensable to them. This was deeply felt as a great disappointment, and no real joy was possible in Greece, especially as Roman garrisons continued to hold the strongest fortresses, the most important of which were Acrocorinthus, Chalcis, and Demetrias. Flamininus, who personally coveted the fame of being known as the deliverer of Greece, was very sensitive to the censure directed against him as the most prominent expounder of the Roman policy; but he had no choice in his actions, and he could not help seeing that in view of the threatening attitude of Antiochus the withdrawal of all Roman troops from Greece might be attended with danger. At last, however, the Roman senate yielded to the entreaties of the Greeks and their friends. Perhaps they hoped that the moral conquest of Greece might outweigh the material possession of it, and that in a war with Antiochus, who threatened the freedom of Greek towns in Asia and Thrace, the Greeks, completely freed from foreign rule, would, from gratitude and self-interest, support the Roman cause as their own. In the spring of the year 194 BC Flamininus was able, in a large assembly of deputies from all the Greek states at Corinth, and amid the joyful acclamations of the crowd, to communicate the resolution of the senate that all the towns still occupied by the Roman troops should now be evacuated. The promise was no sooner made than fulfilled. Under the eyes of the assembly the Roman garrison marched off from Acrocorinthus. The same scene was witnessed soon afterwards in Chalcis and in other Euboean towns, Oreus, and Eretria, as also in the Thessalian town of Demetrias.

Flamininus was occupied for some months longer with settling the internal affairs of many towns, being especially anxious to set limits to the extravagance of democracy, and to secure to the owners of property the influence which was their right. The deliverer of Greece had at the conclusion of his successful work the satisfaction of setting free from slavery some thousands of his own countrymen. At his desire the different states purchased the freedom of all the Italians who in the war with Hannibal had been sold as slaves in great numbers throughout Greece. The Roman legions then marched to Oricum in Epirus, and embarked for Italy, where celebrations of victory and a brilliant triumph awaited them.

On reviewing the course of the second Macedonian war from a military point of view, we are struck by a fact which we have already remarked on former occasions, and of which we can easily explain from the Roman military organization and the frequent change of commanders. The first operations were not favourable to the Roman arms. More than two years passed in fruitless marches and counter-marches in the frontier lands of Macedonia, and when at length a more skilful general than the first two consuls was sent to the theatre of war, it was not by calculation, but by accident, that the decisive encounter took place; and the victory was attributable, not to the genius of the leader, but to the greater ease and rapidity with which the Roman legions could outmanoeuvre the unwieldy Macedonian phalanx, and to the skill and promptitude of a nameless inferior officer. If the manner in which the war against Nabis was conducted had to be judged from military grounds alone, the Roman commander would appear in a still more unfavourable light. It cannot, however, be doubted that Flamininus had orders to spare Nabis, and that for this reason he displayed no more military force than was necessary to bring him to subjection.

More than in former wars we observe that the Romans availed themselves of auxiliary troops. By the side of the legions we find Numidians with elephants, Illyrians, Epirots, and Greeks from all parts, towards the end even Macedonians. For wars beyond the sea it was evidently difficult to make use of the Italian militia. At the beginning of the war, therefore, volunteers were enlisted; but soon these also began to create difficulties, and clamoured to be discharged and sent home as soon as they had experienced the fatigues and dangers of the campaign. The senate sent no more than one consular army to the East, and yet it was with much trouble that its numbers were kept up, and that supplies were provided. We discover here the traces of the exhaustion of Italy by the war with Hannibal, which was more keenly felt when the unnatural strain on the national strength was relaxed by the treaty of peace in 201 BC.

If the war by land was not carried out with vigour, nor on a grand scale, the naval war showed even less enterprise and consequently contributed, but in a small degree to secure the final result. The Roman fleet, in conjunction with the Rhodian and the Pergamenian, dealt some successful blows against hostile ports; but they had no chance of a conflict with the Macedonian fleet, which, during the whole war, did not venture out of Demetrias, nor did they make an attack on Macedonia itself. It seems never to have occurred to either of the belligerents that under the protection of their fleets the allied army could effect a landing in Macedonia, instead of advancing with difficulty through inhospitable or impoverished frontier lands. Lastly, it must have been humiliating to Roman pride that, while the allied fleets were scouring the sea without encountering an antagonist, they could not suppress the outrageous proceedings of the Lacedaemonian and Cretan pirates. 

The political object of the war was completely gained at a small expense. It was undertaken to restore the political liberty of Greece, or rather to destroy the predominance of Macedonia, and to establish a sort of balance of power among the second-rate states, which would compel them to keep one another in check, and to remain dependent on the protecting power of Rome. It is certain that the Romans in general were perfectly innocent of anything like enthusiasm for the Greeks as a race. They saw no reason for dealing with them in a way different from that pursued towards other states. Even Flamininus was not guilty of such weakness; at any rate, he would never have dreamt of carrying his admiration of Greek art and literature so far as to sacrifice Roman interests. The influence of the Greek mind, it is true, had been growing in Rome for some time, and was still on the increase. But there was a great deal of mere fashion in all this, and even the admiration which the great Grecian works of art called forth suffered by the low estimation in which the Romans were taught to hold the character of the Greeks, the more they came in contact with them politically and socially. The Romans were disgusted by the servility, the dishonesty and cunning, the mean and estimation revengeful spirit, which characterised the degenerate Greeks, as well as by the impotence and rottenness of their political life. They considered themselves superior men, though they admitted that in painting, carving and writing verses they possessed less skill. That a Roman like Flamininus, though holding such opinions, should feel gratified by the eulogiums of Greek orators and poets, that he should be pleased when the crowd applauded him, when statues and chaplets were dedicated to him, can scarcely seem strange to those who know that such human weakness is by no means unusual or unnatural.

But if a Frederick, with all his partiality for the French language and literature, remained yet in heart and action a German, and as a politician never made the smallest sacrifice to his literary predilections, we are justified in thinking that the statesmen of antiquity were still less influenced by sentiments of this sort, as all human virtues and duties were in those times confined to the narrow circle of fellowship in civil rights and national worship.