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THE SELEUCID EMPIRE. 358-251 BC. HOUSE OF SELEUCUS

CHAPTER 19.

THE ADVANCE IN THE WEST

In the spring of 197 Antiochus launched his forces upon Asia Minor. The land forces were sent by the direct road over the Taurus under the command of the King's sons, Ardys and Mithridates, to Sardis, where they had orders to await his arrival. Antiochus himself went with the fleet along the coast The immediate object indeed of the expedition was to seize the possessions of the house of Ptolemy, and these were all on the coast. Was there an ulterior design? Had Antiochus at last made up his mind to intervene openly in the struggle going on in Greece? On the rumor of his advance this was believed—with what ground can never be known. As he passed along the coast of Rugged Cilicia he summoned all the towns and fortresses subject either to local dynasts or to Ptolemy to surrender. And one after another—Soli, Corycus, Zephyrium, Aphrodisias, Anemurium, Selinus—they obeyed the summons without resistance. Antiochus met with no check till he reached Coracesium, the strongest place along that rugged coast. The steep isolated hill of Alaya, which reminds modem travellers of the Rock of Gibraltar, still shows the masonry, of every date, by which the successive masters of the place, down to the Middle Ages, have labored to make it impregnable. The determination to reduce it brought the King to a halt, and he was still lying before it when the situation was modified in a disagreeable way.

First an embassy from the Rhodian Republic presented itself. It brought him the astonishing declaration that should he attempt to pass the Chelidonian promontory—the point assigned in the old days of Athenian supremacy as the bound for the Great King's ships—the Rhodians would oppose his advance with an armed squadron. They justified this action by accusing Antiochus of a design to join Philip. Antiochus had the self-command to return a polite answer; he assured them that their imputation was quite groundless, and promised an embassy which should dissipate the suspicions entertained of him in Rhodes. The embassy went, and by a strange chance, at the very moment when its spokesman was addressing the Rhodian Assembly, a post arrived with the disconcerting intelligence that the war was over. Philip had met with a final defeat at Cynoscephalae in the Thessalian plains.

The hesitating policy of Antiochus had thus let the opportunity of joining his forces with the Macedonian power, before it was crushed, go by, whilst it had at the same time awaked the suspicions of Rome. But the overthrow of Philip was not altogether unwelcome to Antiochus. All the time that Philip had been an ally, his other character, the rival, had peered through. It was plain that the king of Macedonia would now have to relinquish that share in the spoils of Ptolemy made over to him by the late compact, and Antiochus would stretch his hand over the whole.

But the imaginations kindled in the Seleucid court by the humiliation of the Antigonid reached farther than Asia Minor and Thrace. Those unfortunate memories of the first Seleucus could never be charmed to sleep; his successors had acquiesced perforce in seeing the European part of Alexander’s heritage occupied by the houses of Ptolemy and Antigonus, but now a moment was come when the house of Ptolemy had sunk into the extreme of impotence and the house of Antigonus had been bruised in the conflict with a remote power. Alone of the three, the house of Seleucus seemed to have renewed its youth and still to possess the secret of conquest. Wild hopes and heated language grew rife in the congenial atmosphere of a court; it was soon no secret that Antiochus meditated appearing in Greece as the heir of Alexander and Seleucus Nicator.

It was natural under these circumstances that Philip should not on his part feel any good will towards his late ally, who had not only left him to go down unaided, but who was preparing to seize the prizes in Asia Minor and Thrace which he himself was compelled to drop, and even dreamed of supplanting him in the domain where the house of Antigonus had been predominant for four generations. From the time of Philip’s defeat the alliance between the two kings was replaced by complete estrangement.

The Rhodians, after the news of Philip’s defeat reached them, had no further ground for opposing the advance of Antiochus. But they did their best to prevent his obtaining possession of the cities of Caria and the neighboring islands. After more than a century of Macedonian domination, during which the Greek ideal of separate independence for every Greek state, whether city or league, had suffered violence, it seemed as if that ideal were now at last to be realized. The great Italian republic had stood forward as its champion. In breaking the Macedonian power Rome had inscribed the liberty of Greece upon its banners. The victor of Cynoscephalae, Titus Quinctius Flamininus, was a phil-Hellene of the most enthusiastic type, and the circle of choice spirits among the Roman aristocracy whom he represented were as genuinely eager to create a free Greece as the phil-Hellenes at the banning of the nineteenth century. It was not the duplicity of Roman statecraft but the hard facts of the world which made these visions futile. After Cynoscephalae, however, liberty was in the air. Rhodes had borne a part in the struggle and was in a high degree animated by the ideal. But from the practical point of view Rhodes was more nearly concerned in the cessation of Macedonian rule over the cities of the neighboring coast and islands than in the emancipation of Greece itself. The Ptolemaic rule here was ready to vanish away; Rhodes was anxious that the Seleucid should not take its place.

Antiochus addressed himself to the conquest of the coast of Asia Minor from Cilicia to the Troad. Of his operations we know very little. We are not told whether he ended by reducing Coracesium or what were the remaining events of that year. Some of the states succeeded, with the help of Rhodes, in throwing off their present yoke and defying the efforts of Antiochus to impose another. Caunus, Halicarnassus, Myndus and Samos are mentioned as recovering their liberty at this moment. In the case of Caunus the Rhodians seem to have understood “liberty” in the sense most congenial to their own ambitions; the transaction consisted apparently in their paying down a sum of 200 talents to the Ptolemaic commanders as the price of their withdrawal and then annexing the city to their own dominions. In the Cyclades also a Rhodian supremacy seems to have now superseded the Ptolemaic or Antigonid.

Beyond Coracesium westwards Antiochus would come to the coast of Pamphylia. The interior had mostly been conquered by Achaeus, and perhaps the coast as well. If so it would have already passed in 216 under the sway of Antiochus. It is at any rate occupied by his forces seven years later, when we find him maintaining a garrison in Perga.

Lycia, the next country along the Asiatic coast, yielded at once to the summons of Antiochus. Jerome speaks of the capture of Andriace (the harbor of Myra), Limyra, Patara and Xanthus. Antiochus certainly had a garrison in Patara in 190. The Seleucid cause, in fact, seems to have been popular with the Lycians, probably because it was antagonistic to Rhodes.

In Caria Antiochus already touched the sphere which had been by the compact assigned to Philip. The political situation which Philip left there on his retirement in 201 had been a confused one. Some of the cities still obeyed Ptolemy; in Caunus at any rate we saw that there remained a Ptolemaic garrison. Other cities had been annexed by Philip; the headquarters of his army of occupation were at Stratonicea, and he had garrisons in Pedasa, Euromus, Bargylia and Iasus. A third category is made by cities like Alabanda and Mylasa, which maintained their independence alike of Macedonia, Egypt and Rhodes. Shortly before Cynoscephalae the Rhodians had struck to recover their Peraea from Philip's forces, and Alabanda seems to have made common cause with them. A battle had taken place near Alabanda between the Macedonian troops under Dinocrates and the Rhodians. The result was a complete victory for Rhodes, which was followed up by their recovery of a number of small townships and fortresses, but the larger towns occupied by Philip they were unable to reduce. Dinocrates, who had in the first instance fled to Bargylia, succeeded in entering Stratonicea, and the city defied all the efforts of the Bhodians to capture it.

Except, however, for the cities who asserted their freedom or were annexed by Rhodes, Antiochus appears to have brought Caria under his dominion without difficulty. From Ptolemy, even if his garrisons had not already all disappeared before the invasion of Philip and the active diplomacy of Rhodes, no opposition was possible. Philip was certain to be compelled, when Rome dictated the definite terms of peace, to evacuate everything he had occupied in Asia. The field was left empty for Antiochus. Only for a time in Bargylia, and perhaps in some other places, Philip's garrison was left in possession. At Iasus the garrison of Philip was soon replaced by that of Antiochus, and the anti-Seleucid party driven into exile. Towards Rhodes the King adopted a most conciliatory attitude. He acquiesced apparently in the occupation of the mainland, and not only so, but after taking over Stratonicea, either by the expulsion of Philip’s garrison or its withdrawal, he placed the city at the disposal of Rhodes.

In Ionia we find the Greek cities at this time in the possession of a high degree of freedom. Twenty years before, when Achaeus and Attalus had fought for mastery over them, the cities had not been merely passive. And since then the wars between Achaeus and Antiochus, and the diversion of the Seleucid strength to other quarters, while it was represented in this region since 216 by the comparatively inoffensive satrap of Lydia, had allowed the independence of the cities to grow more substantial. Philip, although he had subjugated the Ionian Samos, had left the Ionians of the mainland undisturbed. The greatest indeed of all these cities was an exception. In Ephesus there still remained a body of armed men which took its orders from King Ptolemy. This was the splendid prize towards which the thoughts of Antiochus were directed. It was the 'citadel which commanded, both by land and sea, Ionia and the cities of the Hellespont, the most convenient base from which the master of Asia could direct operations against Europe. Before the close of 197 the capture of Ephesus had crowned the work of the year. It was in Ephesus that Antiochus took up his quarters for the ensuing winter. Now that his attention is directed to the West, Ephesus, on the coast, seems to replace inland Sardis as the capital of the Seleucid King.

From Ephesus Antiochus undertook during the winter the restoration of Seleucid rule over the cities of northern Ionia and the Hellespont. A detachment had already gone north to occupy Abydos on Philip’s withdrawal, with a view to the passage of Antiochus the following year into Thrace. In both the Ionian and the Hellespontine group of free cities there was one pre-eminent in power and influence, Smyrna in Ionia, Lampsacus on the Hellespont. Their example would be of immense consequence in determining the action of the rest. Unfortunately for Antiochus, this very position of dignity made them less willing to accept a yoke, however much disguised in phrases. Not only so, both had ranged themselves heartily with the Pergamene power, which seemed to embody the purest Hellenic tradition. Antiochus tried to bring force and persuasion simultaneously to bear. While it was still winter a royal force appeared under the walls of Smyrna, and the main part of the garrison of Abydos was moved upon Lampsacus. At the same time within the walls his envoys stood before the citizens and spoke at large of the handsome treatment which awaited them, even the complete bestowal of liberty, if they would return to allegiance. But the citizens persisted in thinking their strong walls a better guarantee of freedom than the King's promises. Under pressure from Antiochus, Lampsacus took a step which holds a definite place in the series of events which brought about the collision we are soon to see. It appealed to Rome.

The history of this embassy, headed by Hegesias the Lampeacene, of which the historians say nothing, is preserved for us by an inscription. It throws many interesting lights upon the relations of that time. In the first place, it was not easy for Lampsacus to find among its citizens those who would face the inconvenience of the immense journey and its serious dangers, for it was intended that the envoys should go as far as Massalia (mod. Marseilles). Lampsacus and Massalia were both colonies of Phocaea, and the sentiment begotten by a common origin was in those days a really operative factor in politics. Lampsacus could now appeal to it in order to enlist the advocacy of the Massaliots, which was known to have weight with Rome. Even the mythical origin of Rome from a Trojan stock could be made seriously the ground for Lampsacus to urge the claims of kinship. Many of the citizens elected for this task excused themselves; Hegesias undertook it. He first proceeded with his fellow-envoys to Greece and had an interview with the commander of the Roman fleet, Lucius Quinctius Flamininus.

Arrived at last in Massalia, the Lampsacene envoys came before the Assembly of Six Thousand and put before them the predicament of the sister-state in Asia. The Massaliots at once sent an embassy of their own to support the Lampsacenes before the Roman Senate. What is still more curious, they delivered to Hegesias, in virtue of their relations with the Gauls of the Rhone valley, a letter to , the “demos of the Tolistoagioi Galatai” of Asia Minor, recommending to them the cause of Lampsacus. The Senate received the double embassy favorably, promised to include a declaration of the freedom of Lampsacus in the treaty of peace with Philip, and for the rest referred Hegesias to Titus Flamininus and the ten commissioners who were gone to settle the affairs of Greece. Hegesias proceeded to Corinth and once more pleaded the cause of Lampsacus before the ten commissioners. From them he obtained letters to the kings of Asia expressing the desire of Rome to see the freedom of Lampsacus respected. The result of the mission lay so far only on paper; its value was exactly according as Rome was prepared to follow up words by deeds.

But the other cities of Asia Minor seem to have been too weak, with the exception of Alexandria Troas, to follow the example of Smyrna and Lampsacus. They yielded with little difficulty to Antiochus.

A restoration of the condition of things under the first kings of his house was the formula of Antiochus’ policy of the old order, as we have seen it, with the cities on the one hand subservient to the kings, and the kings on the other hand liberal patrons of the cities. As of old, it was as the champion of liberty and autonomy that the King lent his arm to elevate in each city the party favorable to himself to power, and crush the party opposed to him. An inscription of Iasus gives us the official view of things. Antiochus has written repeatedly to the demos, declaring his devotion to the great principles of democracy and autonomy. In this he is following the example of his house, which has shown itself zealous to do good to the Hellenes. The city has been vexed by factions; Antiochus has addressed to it paternal admonitions on the excellence of concord. He has been reinforced by the voice of the god of Branchidae—the “divine ancestor of his family”. Concord restored, the demos are filled with gratitude, and so on in the usual strain. That the admonitions of Antiochus were also reinforced by his setting a garrison in the citadel and driving the faction opposed to him into exile the inscription does not betray.

We have evidence dating some years before of the favor shown by Antiochus to Magnesia-on-the-Meander. It was when that city was sending round to all the Greek kings and cities asking to have its festival of Artemis recognized as of Panhellenic standing. Its envoys found Antiochus in Persis on his return from the East (in 205), and his letter in answer promises to do all he can in the matter, and states that he is ordering the provincial governors to see to it that the cities under Seleucid influence give the required recognition to the Magnesian festival.

In the cases of the Carian Antioch and Teos we see again how opportunities to gratify the cities in ways which did not affect his supremacy were seized by the King. They are cases precisely parallel to that of Smyrna under Seleucus II—cities desiring to obtain a recognition of their sanctity from foreign powers. Antiochus instructed his own ambassador to Rome to undertake the cause of Teos with the Senate, and backed the envoys of the Teians in other places (Rhauca and Eleutherna in Crete) by an envoy, whom he himself sent on a peace mission in one of the eternal Cretan wars. The presence of an envoy of Antiochus in Crete shows that even lands altogether outside the Seleucid sphere came to know Antiochus as a good friend of the Hellenes.

At the very moment when Seleucid rule was being restored in the coast regions of Asia Minor a notable figure passed from the scene. Attalus of Pergamos, whilst addressing the assembly of the Boeotian League in the interests of Rome, had suddenly fallen under a paralytic seizure. He had been carried home to Pergamos, and had there died, an old man of seventy-two, on the threshold of a new time (197). He was succeeded by Eumenes, the eldest of his four sons; the other three, Attalus, Philetaerus and Athenaeus, remained, as Strabo says, “private persons”. The family concord continued undisturbed; the brothers of Eumenes, without share in the royal title, were ready to serve under him as ambassadors and commanders. They had some power and wealth of their own, which they used as benefactors of the Greek cities.

During this first winter that he spent in Ephesus (197-196) Antiochus sent another embassy to remove the suspicions of Rome. His ambassadors, Hegesianax and Lysias, went this time, not to Rome itself, but to Titus Flamininus and the ten commissioners, who had come to Greece to settle finally the conditions of peace with Philip and declare the will of Rome in the East. They were present at the historic Isthmian games, at which Flamininus proclaimed the freedom of the Hellenes, and they witnessed the scenes of wild enthusiasm, laughter and tears, which followed the proclamation. It was not a moment which made their task of justifying the conquests of Antiochus easy. Flamininus and the Ten gave them audience as soon as the festival was over. Full of the glow of disinterested benevolence, the Romans condemned with zest the aggressions of Antiochus. They required him to abstain from hostilities against any free city of Asia, and to evacuate those which had been before in the possession of Philip or Ptolemy. A declaration of the freedom of the Hellenes of Asia, as well as those of Europe, had indeed been included in the terms of the peace. Further, they cautioned Antiochus against crossing into Europe to disturb that reign of tranquillity and freedom which they had established, and announced their intention of deputing some of their own body to carry the King their mandate.

But before that deputation, or even his own returning ambassadors, could reach Antiochus he was on European soil. At the beginning of spring (196) he had sailed with the fleet to Thrace. The land forces were directed to move from Sardis to Abydos, and thence pass the straits into Europe, meeting the fleet at Madytus. This was effected, and Madytus itself—one of those towns which had thought to regain its liberty on the defeat of Philip—was brought to surrender. The submission of the other towns of the Chersonese followed.

Thrace was one of those regions where Hellenic civilization was continually menaced by the neighborhood of barbarism, whilst its position between East and West made it of peculiar importance for the traffic of the Greek world. As the country passed from one to the other of the great Macedonian houses, barbarism pressed forward upon the Hellenic frontiers. The capital of Lysimachus, once the centre of a strong kingdom which had been a dam against the Thracian onsets, had at last itself succumbed to the encroaching flood. Abandoned by Philip after his defeat, it had been seized by the Thracians and given to the flames. Lysimachia stood an abandoned ruin. In these regions Antiochus was able to present himself with some reason as the saviour of Hellenism. He designed to restore the kingdom of Lysimachus as an appendage of the Seleucid crown, and make his second son, Seleucus, king or viceroy. Without delay he set about the rebuilding of Lysimachia. The old inhabitants were in slavery, or scattered through the neighboring country. These he took pains to find and restore to their homes; at the same time he sought for new settlers. Half his land force and all the fleet was told off for the work of construction; with the remaining troops he made a foray into the country of the Thracians.

These magnificent designs were calculated to give offence in two quarters. The king of Macedonia could not but feel that geographical position and the traditions of his kingdom alike entitled him to be the protector of Hellenism on the Thracian marches; the revival of the kingdom of Lysimachus was probably the last thing that he desired. Secondly, Rome regarded with settled hostility the progress of Antiochus westward.

Antiochus was still in the field against the Thracians when Hegesianax and Lysias reached Lysimachia. About the same time a mission under Lucius Cornelius, which had been dispatched from Rome to make peace between Antiochus and Ptolemy, landed at Selymbria, and with its arrival coincided the appearance in Thrace of Publius Lentulus, who had come from Bargylia, where his business had been to expel the garrison left by Philip, and of the two deputed out of their number by the ten commissioners, Lucius Terentius and Publius Villius. All these Antiochus found waiting for him at Lysimachia on his return, as well as envoys from Lampsacus and Smyrna.

The distinguished Romans found the Seleucid King a charming host till they proceeded to business. It was then apparent how little the situation admitted a peaceful issue. Rome had now two grounds of quarrel with Antiochus—first, the subjugation of the Greek cities of Asia Minor, which had already been the subject of protest to his ambassadors in the Isthmus; and, secondly, the step he had since taken of entering Europe. The grounds on which objection was taken to his subjugation of the Greek cities varied, as the different cities in question had been, before his attack, in the possession of Ptolemy, or in that of Philip, or free; in the case of the first, Lucius Cornelius, who acted as spokesman, based the objection of Rome on its benevolent interest in the Ptolemaic kingdom; in the case of the second, on the right of conquest which gave the spoils of Philip to Rome; in the case of the third, the Romans assumed the rôle of the champions of Hellenic freedom. The inconsistency between these several positions is sufficiently obvious. Then as to the King’s passage into Europe, Cornelius asserted that it could have no meaning except a hostile design against Rome.

The audacity of these representations is difficult to realize when later history has invested Rome, to our thinking, with the birthright of indefinite empire. It was then only the most powerful state of the western Mediterranean—and that pre-eminence was but of yesterday—whose dealings with Asia had, up to the war with Philip, been limited to an embassy sent in a matter of religion to the king of Pergamos, and perhaps a few other transactions of a like kind. The fact that Philip had been not only a European but an Asiatic power as well, now indeed gave them an opening in that region, and the compact which had made him such was now bearing bitter fruit for the other party to the bargain.

When the Roman envoy had wound up his indictment, the demeanour of Antiochus expressed the liveliest astonishment. What possible locus standi, he asked, had Rome in these matters? How did the conduct of the king of Asia in regard to purely Asiatic questions concern them? He might as well, he exclaimed, meddle in the affairs of Italy! In answer to their sinister construction of his presence in Thrace he had but to indicate his hereditary title to that country, based on the conquest of Lysimachus by Seleucus Nicator. How did any menace to Rome lie in his restoration of Lysimachia, after its unfortunate destruction, to be his son's residence? As to the free cities of Asia, if the Romans were the champions of Hellenic liberty in Greece, it was for him, not for them, to assume that part in Asia, and by the concession of freedom to those cities reap their gratitude. As to Ptolemy, the solicitude of the Romans was quite superfluous; relations between the two courts were already friendly, and Antiochus was even about to cement that friendship by a marriage alliance.

At the instance of the Romans, the envoys from Lampsacus and Smyrna were called in. Emboldened by the countenance of the Romans, they arraigned the proceedings of Antiochus with great freedom. This was too much for the King. He cut short Parmenio, the Lampsacene envoy, with an angry command to be silent, adding that when he chose to submit the differences between himself and cities to the arbitration of an outside power, it was not to the Romans but to the Rhodians that the appeal should lie. With this stormy close the sitting broke up.

Before the conference could be brought to the shaping of any modus vivendi it became abortive by an unexpected change in the situation. The rumor ran through Lysimachia that the young king of Egypt was dead. In that case a great estate in which both parties to the conference were closely interested lay vacant. Neither thought it safe to avow a knowledge of the report, but Lucius Cornelius suddenly discovered that the duties of his mission required his immediate departure for Egypt, and Antiochus, leaving the land-forces with Seleucus in Lysimachia, sailed south with all possible expedition. From Ephesus he sent another embassy to Flamininus to assure the Romans of his pacific intentions, and continued his voyage along the coast. At Patara in Lycia the intelligence encountered him that the report of Ptolemy's death was false. This suspended the race for Egypt, but Antiochus, baffled in one ambition, only bethought him how he could use the strong naval force at his disposal to realize another. Of the Ptolemaic possessions over-seas Cyprus only was left, in such tempting proximity to the Asiatic mainland as even to be visible in clear weather from the hills of Rugged Cilicia. Antiochus resolved at once to strike for Cyprus, and with this end in view pursued his precipitate course along the coast. But he had barely rounded the Chelidonian promontory and reached the plain about the mouth of the river Eurymedon when the rowers, exasperated doubtless by the unrelaxed speed of these many days, mutinied. A vexatious delay was the consequence. But worse was to follow. Off the beach, where the river Sarus runs through the Cilician plain to the sea, the Seleucid armada was shattered by a storm. The loss of life and vessels was enormous, some of the great persons of the realm being among those who perished. After this all possibility of attacking Cyprus was gone; the King brought the remnants of his fleet home to Seleucia.

It was now past the season for active operations. During this winter (196-196) the King resided in Antioch. Since he had set out thence a year and a half before he had accomplished much; his rule had superseded that of Ptolemy on the Asiatic sea-board and in Thrace; but, on the other hand, Smyrna and Lampsacus were still contumacious, and the kingdom of Pergamos, touching the sea at Elaea, was driven through his empire like a wedge. More than this, the reconquest of his ancestral dominion in the West had brought him into collision with the advancing power of Rome. The winter was marked by a family event of importance in the Seleucid house. The King celebrated the marriage of his son, Antiochus, with his daughter, Laodice. This is the first instance to our knowledge of the marriage of full brother and sister in the house of Seleucus. It was, of course, in accordance with the practice both of the old Persian and of the old Egyptian kings, and had become the rule in the house of Ptolemy.

It was either in this year or the year before that the world was thrilled by the news that the eastern King had been joined by no less a person than Hannibal. The great Phoenician, since the end of the war with Rome, had taken an active part in the internal politics of Carthage. He had endeavored to correct some of those abuses in its constitution which sapped its strength, and had so come into conflict with the persons whom those abuses nourished. They accused him to their Roman friends of being in correspondence with Antiochus. When Rome sent a mission of inspection he was obliged to fly, and made his way, not without narrow escapes, to Tyre. The mother-city of Carthage received him as became one of the greatest of her children. A few days after his landing he took the occasion of one of the festivals celebrated by the court of Antioch at Daphne to present himself to the young Antiochus. Then he proceeded to Ephesus, and placed his genius and experience at the service of the Seleucid King. The conjunction of the conqueror of Spain and Italy with the conqueror of the East seemed of portentous significance.

There was a general feeling in the summer of 196 that a great war was brewing. But Antiochus himself, for all his victories and his empire, still faltered before its possibilities. If he held his hand at the point he had now reached, it might be avoided or indefinitely postponed. Rome was not likely to force a quarrel on behalf of the Asiatic Greeks, or even of Thrace, in itself; the interests there were too remote. But Rome was determined to maintain its ascendancy in Greece, or, at any rate, safeguard the neutralization of that country. It would be a casus belli if the Seleucid King set foot there; even if he gave Rome ground for believing he contemplated doing so, he might be attacked. Antiochus might perhaps avoid war by a frank acceptance of the existing position. But to this the heir of Seleucus could not reconcile himself. Greece had been a century before the prize for which the rival Macedonian houses fought; for a moment Seleucus Nicator had thought himself its master. And now the house of Seleucus saw its old rivals reduced to impotence, but Rome coming as an interloper among their family quarrels to take the coveted possession to herself. She could hardly do so unchallenged.

At Rome itself the report which the ten commissioners delivered that spring (195) represented the prospects of peace as gloomy. They averred their belief that had not Antiochus been turned aside the preceding year by the report of Ptolemy’s death, Greece would have been already ablaze. They called attention to the combustible material which existed in that country, where the most powerful of the Greek states, the Aetolian League, whose mountains the Macedonian conquerors had never been able to subdue, and whose alliance in the late war had been of substantial service to Rome, was profoundly dissatisfied with the terms of peace and in a dangerous frame of irritation.

About the same time that the ten commissioners were delivering their pessimistic report in Rome, the ambassadors of Antiochus those presumably whom he had sent the previous autumn from Ephesus—had audience of Flamininus at Corinth. A great conference, to which all the Greek states in alliance with Rome sent delegates, had just been held in that city, under the presidency of the Roman proconsul, and had served to make plain the angry mood of the Aetolians. Their suspicions were roused by the Roman garrisons which continued to occupy Demetrias, Chalcis and the Corinthian citadel—the “fetters of Greece”—a measure which was in fact inspired by the apprehension of an attack on Greece by Antiochus. To the ambassadors Flamininus declared himself unable to say anything without the ten commissioners, and referred them to the Senate in Rome. Instead of proceeding thither the ambassadors seem to have returned to report the answer of Flamininus to the King.

A year passed, and the summer of 194 was employed by Antiochus in completing the conquest of Thrace. He broke the yoke of the barbarians from the neck of the Greek cities. Byzantium had suffered heavily from the “eternal and grievous war” with the Thracian tribes, and had been accustomed to see its richest harvests carried off under its eyes. It now found itself the object of the King’s especial solicitude. He courted with lavish favors the good-will of a city in whose hands it was to open and shut the gate of the Black Sea. The Gallic tribes settled during the last century in the country he also tried to win by his largess, in order to enrol under his standards more of these large-limbed men of the North. The following winter (194-193) he was once more in Ephesus.

It was in 194 that the evacuation of Greece was actually carried out by the Romans. After another conference of the Greek states, held at Corinth in the spring of that year under Titus Flamininus, the Roman garrisons had been withdrawn from Demetrias, Chalcis and the Corinthian akra. The phil-Hellenic enthusiasts at Rome could now exult in the spectacle of a Greece really and absolutely free. Macedonian domination was a thing of the past; the days of Pericles would be restored. But Rome had yet to learn, as other nations with an imperial destiny have had to learn, that the process of expansion cannot be checked by creating a vacuum, that in such cases the alternatives for a conquering state are to assume the dominion itself, or to see it assumed by others. It was, in fact, an absurdity to declare it worth a war to prevent any foreign power establishing itself in Greece and at the same time to withdraw from the defence of its coasts. If, indeed, the Romans in retiring had left a united nation, devoted to Rome, and resolved to act together in excluding any third power from Greek soil, it might have been a practical, if not a magnanimous, policy for Rome to maintain Greece as an independent “buflfer-state” on its western frontier. But, as a matter of fact, the jealousies and hatreds between the various Greek states were as violent as ever; two of the most powerful, Aetolia and Sparta, were anything but well disposed towards Rome, the one her late ally smarting under a grievance, the other an enemy with whom she had just concluded an uneasy truce. So far from helping to defend the frontier, the Aetolians were ready to welcome Antiochus, or their old foe the king of Macedonia, as a deliverer. When, thanks to the hesitation of Antiochus and the prudence of Philip, the departure of the Roman legions was followed by no immediate breach of tranquillity, the Aetolians set to work of their own accord to stir up trouble. Their envoys incited Philip and Nabis, the tyrant of Sparta, to break the peace; Dicaearchus, the brother of the Aetolian strategos, Thoas, was sent to Antiochus (end of 194).

The common object of all these envoys was to bring about a great anti-Roman alliance of the houses of Antigonus and Seleucus, Aetolia and Nabis. Dicaearchus endeavored to impress upon Antiochus in what fierce earnest the Aetolians would act by enlarging upon their grievances; he magnified the Aetolian power; it was they who held the western door of Greece; they to whom Rome owed her late triumphs; and he paraded the great alliance before the dazzled eyes of the King, glozing the fact that it existed so far only in the heated brain of Greek intriguers.

The influence of Hannibal at the Seleucid court was, of course, thrown into the scale of war. He saw a prospect of matching himself once more with the hated oppressor of his race, of renewing that struggle which had so nearly ended fatally for Rome. It is said that he began to urge upon Antiochus a plan of campaign, of which the outlines were that he should take himself 100 ships of war, 10,000 foot and 1000 horse, and with these effect a landing in Italy, while the King should simultaneously invade Greece, and Carthage should rise in rebellion. No telling blow—on this he insisted—could be dealt Rome so long as her base was secure; only when the adversary wrested to himself those resources which Italy yielded her could Rome be really straitened. And who was there that knew the ground in Italy so well as the framer of this plan?

In pursuance, at any rate, of some such schemes, the secret agent of Hannibal, a Tyrian named Ariston, was dispatched from Ephesus to Carthage in the course of 194 to concert plans with the popular faction, whose leader Hannibal had been. But Antiochus had not yet brought his resolution or preparations to the point of an open rupture—not even when the suggestions of Hannibal were reinforced by the envoy of the Aetolians.

In the winter of 193-192 Antiochus was in Syria, and the marriage which he had announced in 196 to the Roman envoys at Lysimachia between his daughter Cleopatra and the young Ptolemy Epiphanes now took place. Antiochus escorted Cleopatra in person to the frontier. At Raphia they were met by the bridegroom, and the nuptial ceremonies were performed. Antiochus returned to Antioch, and Egypt knew the first of the famous Cleopatras. That name henceforward supersedes Arsinoe and Berenice as the characteristic name of a Ptolemaic queen.

Spring (192) was hardly yet come when Antiochus was on the move to Ephesus. He went this time by land across the Taurus, accompanied by the younger Antiochus, who, however, was sent back almost immediately to Syria to hold, as before, the place of king in that country. The elder Antiochus, with a view of consolidating his authority in the trans-Tauric country and securing the communications between Syria and Ionia, turned upon the immemorial foes of Asiatic empires, the Pisidians.

In the spring of the preceding year (193) ambassadors from Antiochus had been given a hearing in Rome. They were among the embassies from all parts of Greece and the East who thronged to Rome for the moment when Titus Flamininus should submit to the Senate for ratification the measures he had framed in concert with the ten commissioners. The Senate did not feel itself possessed of enough special knowledge, as a body, to engage the King’s envoys in debate, and therefore deputed Flamininus and the original ten commissioners to hear them separately and to speak for Rome.

It was ostensibly the object of the embassy to obtain a renewal of those friendly relations between the Seleucid court and the Republic which had been broken since the conference of Lysimachia, when Antiochus had repelled the Roman demands for the evacuation of Thrace and the liberation of the Greek cities of Asia. The real object of the mission was to ascertain how far Rome was prepared to go in sustaining these conditions. From the answer which Flamininus returned to the representations of Menippus it was plain that whilst only a sentimental interest was felt in the Asiatic cities, Rome was seriously concerned in dislodging Antiochus from Thrace. Flamininus intimated that if Antiochus evacuated Thrace, the other question would be suffered to drop. “The King contends that we have no right of interference in Asia; then let him keep his hands off Europe”. It was not difficult for the King’s envoy to point out the logical flaw in such an argument; the cases were not parallel; Antiochus had claims to Thrace, based both upon hereditary right and the sacrifices he had made to recover it from barbarism; the Romans had no such claims in Asia. Only it happens that such questions are not determined by formal logic. The newly-acquired ascendancy of Rome in Greece was threatened by the occupation of Thrace; in the face of this fact the legal reasonings of the Seleucid envoys missed the point. So long as the Seleucid court was obstinate on the Thracian question, Rome found it convenient to champion the liberty of the Asiatic cities. The orators of the Senate paraded this attitude to the assembled ambassadors from Greece and the East, contrasting the liberating policy of Rome with the tyrannic aggressions of the Seleucid King. Menippus lifted a voice of protest. He entreated the Romans, in the name of the peace of the world, to pause, and reiterated the pacific disposition of his master; diplomacy might still find a solution of the deadlock. The Senate on its side was not anxious to precipitate the conflict, and resolved to send an embassy to the King. For this office the persons chosen were Publius Sulpicius, Publius Villius (who had confronted Antiochus at Lysimachia) and Publius Aelius.

These emissaries were instructed first to visit the court of Pergamos and ascertain the leanings of Eumenes. Antiochus had indeed been doing his utmost to induce the powers of Asia Minor to oppose a solid front to the Roman aggression. On Prusias of Bithynia he could count, Prusias, the foe of Pergamos, and the ally of Philip before he had been humbled. Ariarathes IV of Cappadocia Antiochus essayed to bind to himself in the same way as he had bound Ptolemy; he had other daughters to give.

We last heard of the Cappadocian court when Antiochus Hierax took refuge with Ariamnes about 230. Since then it had continued its tranquil existence aloof from the broils of the world. Ariamnes, celebrated for the warmth of his domestic affections, had died after an uneventful reign of about forty years at a date probably not far removed from the visit of Hierax. His son, Ariarathes III, who had already borne the name of king during his father's lifetime, then reigned alone. It was this Ariarathes whose wife was a Seleucid princess, Stratonice, the daughter of Antiochus Theos, and aunt therefore of Antiochus III. The reign of Ariarathes III, like that of his father, is wrapped in complete obscurity. Only his coins bear witness to the Hellenic influence at work in his court. It is no Oriental potentate, with beard and tiara, that here is shown, but a king of the regular Hellenistic type, clean-shaven, with short hair and the simple diadem. On the reverse of his coins the barbarian goddess of Cappadocia is replaced by a classical Athena copied from the money of Lysimachus. Already under Ariamnes, it will be remembered, Greek had superseded Aramaic for the legend. Ariarathes III had died about 220, and the son who succeeded him, Ariarathes IV, was at that time quite an infant. He inherited the family characteristics of simplicity and affection, so far as we can judge by the little told us. He is the first of the dynasty for whom a surname appears, the modest one of Eusebes, the Pious. In an evil day for himself he received the Great King’s daughter Antiochis to wife. He was no mate for one of those tigress princesses whom the old Macedonian blood continued to produce.

Antiochus had yet a third daughter, and by means of her he did not despair of even overcoming the hostility of Eumenes, of bringing Pergamos into line with the other Asiatic courts. Together with her hand he offered the restoration of the cities which had once obeyed Pergamos and indefinite services in the future. But Eumenes was shrewd enough to refuse the splendid bribe. It was the policy of his house to ally itself with the more distant against the nearer power, and the wars, in which Attalus had fought side by side with the Romans, had led the Pergamene court to form a true estimate of the strength and persistency of the Republic; so that now, when their old confederates, the Aetolians, were estranged, Pergamos stood stoutly by the Roman alliance as the soundest speculation.

Sulpicius and his colleagues touched in 192 at Elaea, the harbour-town of Pergamos, and thence went up to the capital. They found Eumenes a strong advocate of war; he knew that a decisive conflict must come sooner or later between Pergamos and the Seleucid power, and grasped at the chance of entering into it side by side with Rome. In such a contingency he saw the prospect, not only of safety, but of aggrandizement, of recovering that dominion in Asia Minor which his father had held for a moment amid the broils of the Seleucid princes. He now used all his influence, as Hannibal was doing on the other side, to force on hostilities.

The Romans contrived to awake in the mind of Antiochus the suspicion that his great ally, Hannibal, was playing a double game.

Antiochus, as soon as he learnt the arrival of Villius at Ephesus, suspended operations against the hill folk and came down to Apamea, the Phrygian capital. The ambassador proceeded from the coast to the same city. The old arguments were gone through on either side once more, with as little result as ever. Then the conference, like the previous one at Lysimachia, was brought to a premature close by sudden tidings. The young Antiochus, the heir-apparent to the Seleucid throne, who had now shared the royal title for about seventeen years, was unexpectedly deceased in Syria. Whispers of foul play, how far justified we cannot know, ran abroad; it was the jealousy of the King at his son’s popularity, or his preference for the younger Seleucus. At any rate, the court at Apamea abandoned itself to mourning, and diplomatic propriety made Villius take his leave and return to Pergamos. Antiochus, without resuming the subjugation of the Pisidians, moved to Ephesus. At Ephesus the King continued to hold himself withdrawn from public intercourse. He was continually closeted with Minnio, the chief of the “Friends”, whose chauvinistic proclivities were known—an indication of the drift of the royal policy. Presently the Roman ambassadors were invited from Pergamos to a discussion with Minnio of the questions at issue. The King himself did not appear. Again the barren controversy as to Smyrna and Lampsacus, which did not really touch the ground of quarrel, was agitated. Minnio pressed the point that the Romans, who set up to be the champions of Hellenic liberty in Asia, themselves held the Greek cities of Italy and Sicily—Naples, Tarentum and Syracus— in subjection. This the Roman envoys evaded by a new distinction; their sovereignty over the Greek cities of the West had been uniform and continuous; the Greek cities of Asia in question had passed long ago from Seleucid rule to Ptolemy or Philip, or had in some cases acquired de facto independence. The distinction hardly removed the inconsistency; if it was lawful to keep Greek cities in subjection, it could hardly be outrageous to reconquer them. Then, as before at Lysimachia, the ambassadors of Smyrna and Lampsacus were called in. They had been drilled for their part by Eumenes, and with the encouragement of the Romans talked somewhat wildly. The conference ended in noisy words, and the Roman ambassadors, without having accomplished anything, returned home.

This diplomatic trifling served, at any rate, to convince either side that war was now inevitable. It was spoken of at Rome as an ultimate, if not an immediate, certainty. At Ephesus the more fiery spirits began to clamor for it in the council of the King. Adventurers from Greece, like Alexander the Acarnanian, talked excitedly of what would happen when Antiochus appeared on the other side of the Aegean, of the simultaneous rising of the Aetolians, Nabis the tyrant of Sparta, and, above all, Philip. Alexander had once been a familiar of that king's, and recounted how he had heard him again and again pray the gods during his war with Rome for the co-operation of his Seleucid ally. Did it occur to any one to reflect that, if this was true, the discovery that his Seleucid ally left him after all in the lurch might have had some effect upon the sentiments of Philip?

It is indeed hard to see what issue the situation could have had but war. And that, although war was by no means desired by either of the principals : Rome had hoped against hope to avert it by diplomacy. Flushed as the Romans were with the victories over Carthage and Macedonia, a contest with the Seleucid King would involve them with the unfamiliar East, with an adversary seen in the glamor of illimitable dominion and exhaustless treasuries. Before the unknown entanglements of such a struggle the homely sense of the Roman fathers recoiled. They were, nevertheless, resolved to maintain the Roman influence in Greece even at the cost of war. Antiochus on his part felt his nerve fail, as is shown by his long hesitation, at the prospect of trying issues with the legions; he was not disposed to declare war; at the same time he was informed that measures, which presented themselves to him as steps in the resumption of his legitimate inheritance, were regarded by Rome as hostile acts. Neither party in fact, desirous as they were of peace, could renounce its colliding ambitions. It may, however, be that had Rome and the house of Seleucus been the only agents in the matter, the caution of either side might have led to such an adjournment of the crisis as ultimately to make a modus vivendi possible; Antiochus might have relinquished Greece and Rome acquiesced in the occupation of Thrace. But there were those among the subordinate agents who exerted all their force to push the two great powers to a conflict. Hannibal saw in war a chance of avenging his country upon the oppressor; Eumenes of Pergamos a chance of aggrandizing his kingdom; above all, the mass of the Aetolians were eager to stir up trouble. A situation so delicately balanced was at the mercy of the subordinate agents.

The antagonism between Rome and the Seleucid King was a cleft which extended to the whole family of Greek states. The cleft was not so much between state and state as between the two factions of oligarchs and democrats, rich and poor, into which every Greek state was divided. The Roman party coincided in most cases with the oligarchical, the party favorable to Antiochus with the democratic. Even among the Aetolians many persons of influence were opposed to a rupture with Rome. The reason of this connection lay deeper than the mere policy of the Roman aristocracy to foster oligarchical institutions in the states to which its influence extended. That policy itself was based upon a natural alliance between the well-to-do classes everywhere and Rome. The Roman ascendancy on the one hand violated the imaginative ideal of the Greeks—Hellas completely free from barbarian control; on the other hand it gave, when once established, a novel guarantee for social stability. Now the propertied classes would at once be far less affected by sentimental considerations than the people, and would lose instead of gaining by disturbances of the status quo. To impose upon sentiment and imagination, the Seleucid King was more favorably situated than Rome. All that the name of Great King had evoked for generations, to the inhabitants of the Greek lands, of splendor and riches belonged to him, all the memories of the Greek conquest of the Persian Empire illuminated his diadem; upon him the glories of Xerxes and of Alexander converged. He could appear too to the Greeks, as the Romans could not, in the light of a compatriot. Whatever taint of barbarism had attached before Alexander to the Macedonian princes, the courts of his successors were Greek in their language and intellectual atmosphere, Greek to a large extent in blood and manners. One must add to this the personal lustre which had invested Antiochus III since his eastern expedition, the vision of the Indian elephants, of the mountains of gold, of the innumerable chivalry of the East which were conjured up by those who came from his court. The democracy of the Greek cities was ready, so soon after it had sobbed with emotion at the grant of freedom by phil-Hellenic Rome, to welcome Antiochus as the saviour of Hellenism. In the struggle of the two factions within the various states the war between Antiochus and Rome was already in a sense begun.

The ambassadors returned to Rome in 192 soon after the consuls for that year had entered upon their office. Their report showed the senate that no casus belli had as yet arisen, but the presentiment of war grew daily stronger. The air was thick with rumors. Attalus himself, the brother of the reigning Eumenes of Pergamos, brought the assurance that Antiochus had already crossed the Hellespont with an army, and that the Aetolians were ready to spring to arms at his arrival in Greece. The Senate took vigorous defensive measures. One Roman squadron had already early in the year sailed for Greek waters under the praetor Atilius to overawe Nabis; under the impulse of fresh alarms some legions were stationed under another praetor, Marcus Baebius, at Taventum and Brundisium, ready to cross at a moment's notice to Greece; a squadron of twenty ships was set to cruise off Sicily, where an attack of the Seleucid fleet was apprehended; and the governor of Sicily was instructed to levy fresh forces and maintain a strict watch along the eastern shores of the island. The force under Baebius was before long moved across the Adriatic and concentrated at Apollonia. The construction of fresh ships of war was pushed busily forward.

But the preparations on either side during the earlier part of 192 were not only military and naval. Diplomacy had still a work to do. That work, however, was now no longer to obviate a collision between Antiochus and Rome; it was to secure the adherence to the one side or the other of that country where the first encounter would take place, to prepare the ground in Greece. The connections of Antiochus were naturally closest with the Aetolians. No less responsible a person than Thoas, the strategos of the Aetolian Confederation, had been deputed as the intermediary in these transactions at the Seleucid court. In the course of 192 he returned to Greece, bringing Menippus, the late ambassador to Rome, with him. There was still a party among the Aetolians who advocated peace, and it was thought that the representations of Menippus would be useful in confirming the warlike temper of the majority. The Romans on their side were equally busy in bringing diplomatic pressure to bear upon the mobile Greeks. Titus Flamininus himself, the great phil-Hellene whose influence in Greece was paternal, was sent in 192, with Villius and other colleagues, to remind the Greek states of their engagements. Nabis had already taken up arms and was involved in a war with the Achaean League, which the Romans left to take its natural course, seeing in it a guarantee of Achaean fidelity. Chalcis and Demetrias, the two “fetters” of Greece, were visited. At both the authority of Flamininus sufficed to drive the head of the anti-Roman party into exile. In Aetolia, on the other hand, Flamininus failed to make any impression upon the excited people, now more than ever inflamed by the gorgeous descriptions of Menippus. The Great King was bringing enough gold with him to buy up Rome. Amid great popular effervescence the Federal Assembly passed a decree which called on Antiochus to liberate Greece and decide the controversy between the Confederation and Rome. Flamininus himself was not present on the occasion, and when he asked Damocritus, who was now strategos, to give him a copy of the decree, the hot-headed Greek bade him wait for his answer till the Aetolians were encamped on the banks of the Tiber.

The rupture between the Aetolians and Rome was thus complete. It now became a matter of immediate necessity to the Aetolians to occupy the points of vantage against the coming of the Great King. Thoas was commissioned to secure Chalcis with the help of the anti-Roman party in the city and a merchant-prince of Chios, Herodorus, whose connections there were considerable. Another Aetolian, Diodes, was sent on a similar errand to Demetrias. A third was to seize Sparta, where Nabis was now hemmed in by the victorious Achaeans. Of these enterprises that of Diocles alone met with success. An Aetolian garrison occupied Demetrias, and the friends of Rome were put to the sword. At Chalcis the attempt of Thoas was repulsed by the Roman party, thanks to the help of Eretria and Carystus. In Sparta the Aetolian force, after they had treacherously assassinated Nabis, was cut to pieces by the indignant Lacedaemonians. Demetrias, however, was securely held, and the anti-Roman magistrates refused to admit Villius when Flamininus sent him to recover the city, if it might be, by his earnest representations. The main door of Greece, which the Romans had evacuated two years before, was now held open for Antiochus. Thoas hastened to Asia to carry him the tidings.

Whilst his agents had been working against the Roman cause in Greece, Antiochus himself had not been idle. Now that all attempts to compose by diplomacy the differences between himself and Rome had been dropped, Antiochus had with the campaigning season of 192 resumed his efforts to subjugate, as a preliminary to his invasion of Greece, the independent cities of Asia by force of arms. Smyrna and Lampsacus, however, to which we now find the name of Alexandria Troas added, were still unsubdued when Thoas arrived with the news that Demetrias was secured. He found Antiochus still full of hesitations. The King was not only unwilling to start for Greece till the reduction of the cities had secured his base, but he could not make up his mind what to do with Hannibal. A fleet of open vessels, with which the exile was to make a diversion in Africa, was, after long Oriental delays, at last ready. But Antiochus had developed by then a reluctance to entrust the great Carthaginian with an independent commission. Hannibal had been able in some degree to reassure him as to his sincerity after the doubts aroused by the attentions of Villius early in the year. But his great abilities still showed to the masterful and jealous King in the light of a disqualification for service. Upon this posture of affairs Thoas supervened, and prevailed upon the irresolution of the court by his decision, assurance and boundless mendacity. The highly-colored picture he gave Antiochus of the situation in Greece was as false as the picture which he and his friends had given his wavering countrymen of the apparition of the Great King. His counsels were at the same time determined by the separate interests which the war-party in Aetolia intended a conflict between the two great powers of East and West to promote, and pointed therefore to the concentration of the King’s forces upon Greece. Thoas thus found himself opposed to Hannibal, whose outlook upon the war was of wider reach, and who saw in the invasion of Greece only a detail in a large scheme of attack, of which the telling stroke was the invasion of Italy. Thoas, much more than Hannibal, had the King’s ear, and under his influence the well-considered plan of action in the western Mediterranean was dropped and Hannibal reduced to the inoffensive rôle of unheeded adviser.

The invasion of Greece—this now occupied all the thoughts of Antiochus. The favorable opening given by the capture of Demetrias must not be let slip. The great project, so long the theme of courtiers, was at last come near accomplishment. As a solemn inauguration of the enterprise, Antiochus made the short voyage to Ilion, and sacrificed to the ancient Athena, as Xerxes had done before he invaded Europe, and Alexander when he invaded Asia. On his return to Ephesus, although the year was advanced, the forces destined for the invasion of Greece put out to sea—40 decked ships, 60 open, and 200 transports.

Passing by Imbros and Sciathos, the armada touched the Greek mainland at Pteleum, on the left side of the entrance of the Pagasaean Gulf. Here the King was received by Eurylochus and others of the party now dominant among the Magnesians and escorted the following day to Demetrias.

Antiochus was really on Greek soil at last! It was, however, characteristic of his procedure that, in spite of the years during which his hand had hovered to strike, the blow in the end was hurried and feeble. No adequate force was ready for the enterprise; instead of the looked-for myriads, the ruler of Asia had brought with him only 10,000 foot, 600 horse, and 6 elephants—a force hardly large enough for the bare occupation of Greece, to say nothing of the strain of a war with Rome. He had crossed incontinently, when the winter gales were already beginning, and although he had escaped with a buffeting, his little army was cut off from reinforcements till the following spring. In such a position he depended entirely upon the energy of the Aetolians, as indeed it had been in reliance upon the assurances of Thoas that he had taken his resolve.

On the news that the Great King was landed, a wave of excitement swept over Greece, not unmixed with disappointment at the meanness of his following. The political situation his presence created was to some extent ambiguous. He still professed innocence of any purpose hostile to Rome. He had not come to conquer Roman territory, but to achieve the very thing which the Romans declared to be their object—to emancipate Hellas from foreign control. If the Romans were sincere in recognizing Greek independence, what objection could they raise to the presence of a friendly king on these shores? If the Greeks were free, why might they not be friends with Rome and Antiochus alike? It cannot be denied that the glowing language of the phil-Hellenic party in Rome gave some hold to such contentions.

But the phrases of neither side could now conceal from anybody the real fact that what each power meant by the freedom of Greece was the predominance in every state of the faction subservient to itself— in fine, its own supremacy.

Immediately after the arrival of Antiochus at Demetrias a meeting of the Aetolian Federal Assembly was held at Lamia (in Aetolian possession for the last century), confirming the previous invitation to Antiochus. The King appeared in person. He was received with a storm of applause. Under the circumstances his speech was necessarily somewhat apologetic, but he promised that the spring should really show Greece those colossal armies and fleets of which they had heard so much; and meanwhile—well, he would thank the Aetolians to provide supplies for the troops which accompanied him. The Roman party among the Aetolians, reduced to futilities, were for an impossible compromise, by which, instead of war being declared with Rome, the services of Antiochus should be requested, as arbitrator only. It happened that the president of the year belonged to this party, but even his influence was overwhelmed by the popular feeling. Antiochus was elected Commander-in-Chief of the Confederation, and a body of thirty, chosen from among the Inner Council, the Apokletoi, was appointed to assist him with its advice.