READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM 2025

HISTORY OF ROME. THE WAR FOR SUPREMACY IN THE EAST

CHAPTER II.

THE SYRO-AETOLIAN WAR, 192-189 BC

The Roman policy had succeeded in completely isolating Philip of Macedonia, and in forming against him a powerful coalition. The whole of the Greek states, usually so divided against each other, had merged their private quarrels in one common cause. The Aetolians and their hereditary foes, the Achaeans, the Spartan tyrant Nabis and degenerate Athens, the spirited merchants and enterprising mariners of Rhodes, and the cautious scheming king of Pergamum, nay, even Illyrian and Dardanian barbarians, had been acting for one common plan under one general direction. This was a great triumph of Roman diplomacy. But a still greater and more difficult task than that of uniting all those states in common opposition to Macedonia was that of keeping in a condition of neutrality the powerful kingdom of Syria—a kingdom, which if it had been ranged on the side of Philip, would in all probability have turned the scale against the Roman alliance, or at least would have compelled Rome to make efforts on a very much larger scale.

Antiochus the Great, of Syria, was, at the beginning of the war between Rome and Philip, allied with the latter for the common spoliation of Egypt. It was his ambition to recover for the kingdom of Syria all those provinces which it had lost after the death of its founder, Seleucus. He had in a bold and not wholly unsuccessful expedition to the far East made good his claims to the heritage of his ancestors, and was now planning the extension of the Syrian dominions beyond Asia Minor to Thrace, and the recovery of all the towns and countries which in the course of time had gained their independence, or had become Egyptian possessions. But Rome had assumed the part of protector of Egypt, as well as of the Greek towns in Asia Minor. Antiochus had therefore good reason to make common cause with his ally, the king of Macedonia, against the common enemies, in order to prevent their interference in the affairs of the East. However wise and natural, this policy was frustrated by the short­sighted covetousness of both princes, each of whom had secretly the intention of keeping for himself his own part of the common spoil, if this were possible by the sacrifice of his rival. The consummate diplomacy of the Roman senate turned this rivalry to the best advantage, and succeeded in preventing king Antiochus from interfering directly in Greek affairs, not only during the continuance of the war with Macedonia, but also after the subjection of Nabis, and down to the final settlement of affairs in Greece, in 194 BC.

We have already seen that while Philip was attacking the Egyptian possessions in the islands and in Asia Minor, Antiochus succeeded in establishing the old claims of Syria, which he had never fully relinquished, to the lands on the coast of Phoenicia. The attention of Rome was at that time so much taken up with Macedonia and Greece, that she could not venture to interfere in favour of the king of Egypt. Thus Antiochus, without caring about any protests that might be raised by Rome, conquered Coelesyria, Phoenicia, and Palestine, in the year 201 or 200 BC. He desisted from attacking the Pergamenian kingdom 199 BC., at the intercession of the Romans ; but after he had completely routed an Egyptian army, commanded by Scopas, an Aetolian leader of mercenaries, near Mount Panion, by the river Jordan, he thought that he had frustrated the chance which Egypt had of ever regaining the coast lands of Syria, and now directed his attacks against the Egyptian possessions in Asia Minor, where, in the year 201 BC, Philip of Macedon had been thwarted in his attempt at conquest by the interference of the allied Romans, Rhodians, and Pergamenians. Antiochus hoped to gain these countries for himself while Philip engaged the forces of the allies in Greece, and he actually took several fortified places in Cilicia and Caria.

This policy of the king of Syria was not less menacing to the republic of Rhodes than Philip’s love of conquest had been before. As on the former occasion the Rhodians had not hesitated to declare and to commence war against Philip, without waiting for the Roman alliance, so they now took it upon themselves, before Rome had signified her consent or promised her assistance, to warn the king of Syria that they should consider it an act of hostility if his fleet should sail westward beyond the Chelidonian promontory on the Cilician coast. Antiochus gave the pacific but evasive answer that he did not intend to mix himself up in the quarrel between the king of Macedonia and Rhodes and soon after, when the news of the battle of Cynoscephalae arrived, the Rhodians, in anticipation of speedy help from the Romans, did not consider it advisable to wage open war against Antiochus on their own account. They contented themselves with warning, or with reinforcing, those towns which were threatened by him, and thus, without a formal rupture, opposing the aggressive policy of the king in Asia Minor.  But they could not boast of much success.

 It would at first sight appear strange that the Rhodians should continue to be at peace with Antiochus, and yet give aid to his enemies. But the law of nations was lax in this respect. It was possible for two independent powers to remain ostensibly on terms of peace whilst they were indirectly making war on each other. A good illustration is offered by an incident which occurred in Greece after the conclusion of the fifty years’ peace in 421 BC. In spite of this peace between the Athenians and Lacedaemonians. the former fought as allies of the Argives in the battle of Mantinea, 418 BC, against the latter. And this act of hostility was not considered a rupture of the peace.

The power and the arrogance of Antiochus grew from day to day. He advanced victoriously in Asia Minor. A number of Greek towns were taken by force, others submitted voluntarily to him. The important town of Ephesus, which he wished to make his starting-point for further conquests, fell into his hands; and here, in 196 BC, he took up his winter quarters, intent on the complete conquest of the remaining part of Asia Minor, and even on regaining Thrace.

So far the king of Syria had pursued his schemes of aggrandisement without any serious check or interference on the part of the Romans. But after the victory over Philip a change took place in the policy of the great republic. It was no longer necessary to keep a watchful eye on Macedonia. Rome could hope henceforth to keep the ambition of the king of Syria within due bounds, and to establish a political equilibrium in Asia in which the Roman allies, especially the republic of Rhodes and the king of Pergamum, would be enabled to maintain their independent position. At the festival of the Isthmian games in 196 BC, where Flamininus solemnly proclaimed the freedom of the Greeks, he found ambassadors from king Antiochus who had been in Rome, and had been directed by the senate to confer with Flamininus and the committee of ten senators specially sent out to act as his council. The Romans now spoke out boldly, and without any reserve, declaring that Antiochus must surrender all the towns in Asia Minor which had formerly belonged to the Egyptian kingdom, and which had been partly conquered by Philip, and had then at the command of Rome been evacuated by him; that he must not touch any of the independent towns, for that Rome intended all the Greek towns to remain free; finally, he must not send any troops into Europe.

This warning, as it appeared, made no impression on Antiochus, who, surrounded by flatterers and blinded by vanity, really considered himself a “Great King”, and was now, by the success which he had hitherto met with, confirmed in the notion that he was destined to restore the Syrian empire of Seleucus, or even the great monarchy of Alexander.

For the present the Romans were too much occupied in Greece to insist upon his obeying their haughty command; and accordingly Antiochus continued his schemes of conquest unmolested. The most important among the towns which refused to submit to him were Smyrna and Lampsacus. He now laid siege to them, troubling himself but little about their appeal to the protection of Flamininus. Nay, in spite of the protest of the Romans, he even crossed over to Europe to conquer Thrace, which his ancestor Seleucus, after the overthrow of Lysimachus, had had in his possession for some time. He took several towns on the Hellespont, and restored Lysimachia, which shortly before had been destroyed by the barbarians of Thrace. Here a Roman embassy appeared before him, under the pretext of adjusting the dispute between him and the king of Egypt, the client of Rome. The ambassadors repeated the same demands which Flamininus had made a few months before to the Syrian ambassadors at Corinth. Antiochus replied with firmness and dignity. He denied the right of the Romans to mix themselves up in his dispute with Egypt, adding that he was not only on good terms with Ptolemaeus, but would soon be able to reckon him among his relations. He had a just claim to Thrace; and as to the Greek towns in Asia, he would grant them their freedom, not at the bidding of Rome, but by his own free will. Lastly, he said he could see no reason why Rome assumed the right to interfere in the affairs of Asia, considering that he had left her unmolested in Italy.

The negotiations assumed a threatening aspect, when suddenly they were interrupted by the rumour that the young king of Egypt was dead. The Romans as well as Antiochus now thought there were more important things to attend to than carrying on a dispute of words far away in Thrace. Without coming to a conclusion, both parties dropped the discussion, and hurried off to Egypt. But on the way they found that the rumour of the death of the king of Egypt was false. Antiochus now went to his capital to pass the winter. But previously he despatched a new embassy to Flamininus in Greece, in order, if possible, to preserve the hitherto untroubled relations with Rome, and to give the assurance that he had no hostile intentions.

Till now the negotiations between the two powers had brought to light no dissensions that might not have been peaceably smoothed over. There was nothing to show that either Rome or Antiochus was from the first determined to push the difference to a rupture. Rome, it is true, had assumed a haughty and offensive attitude. She had presumed to dictate laws to a power independent and equal with herself, and to control its action within its own proper sphere. But an arrogant and defiant tone was a peculiarity of the Roman diplomatic style, which was scarcely so dangerous as we might think, if we judge from the cautious, polite and respectful phrases of modern diplomacy. The real object of the Romans was to keep Antiochus at a distance during the Graeco-Macedonian complications, and this object they attained completely, by alternately quieting, entreating, and then again advising and threatening him through their ambassadors. Antiochus understood this completely; and as he too desired no rupture with Rome, he avoided everything which might have rendered it unavoidable, occasionally yielding and flattering the Roman pride, but never allowing himself to be thwarted in the pursuit of his own advantage.

This state of things, which, if it did not show hearty good feeling, was yet compatible with friendly relations, underwent a great change in the year 195 BC. In that year Hannibal and king Antiochus met in Ephesus, and thenceforth the preservation of peace was only a question of time and expediency.

A few years only had been granted to the greatest of all Carthaginians, in which to devote himself to the peaceful duties of a statesman. According to the traditions of his house, he exerted himself after the conclusion of peace to restore the strength of the exhausted state by means of democratic reform. Being elected a suffete, he proposed a law to change the office of judges, which had become an office for life, into an annual office, and he completely reformed the financial administration. Thus he had made himself so hated by the Conservative party, that, to get rid of him, they did not hesitate to denounce him in Rome as making plans for a new war. Hannibal’s name was still a terror to the Romans, and the senate considered it not beneath the dignity of Rome to send an embassy to Carthage to overthrow him by assisting the opposite party, in spite of the dissuasions of the proud and noble-minded Scipio Africanus. Hannibal did not venture to brave the threatening storm. The times were past when the Carthaginian senate could reply to the Roman demand of the surrender of Hannibal by a declaration of war. Like a convicted criminal, the greatest citizen and chief magistrate escaped from his native town, and took refuge in the far East, to nourish his hatred, and to continue that hostility to Rome to which he had pledged himself as a child. His eye had, of course, long been directed to the complications in Greece and Asia, and he had probably been retained in his home wholly by the conviction that Carthage beyond anything required internal reform before she could free herself from the humiliating bondage to which the exasperated victors had doomed her. The Romans might well ask themselves whether it was advisable to banish just that man, who alone was equal to an army, from a place where he was bound to pursue a peaceful policy, and where he was within the range of Roman ascendancy. Once in the enemy’s council of war Hannibal could no longer feel himself restrained by any secondary considerations. On the contrary, he could now have only one object in view, to implicate Rome in a great war, and to give his services to her enemies.

In the year 195 BC Hannibal visited Antiochus in Ephesus, and was received with great honour and respect. He took at once a prominent part in the councils of the king, who now, without paying any further regard to diplomatic intervention, was determined to pursue his conquests in Thrace. Flamininus was still fully occupied in Greece with the war against Nabis, and the arrogant language of the Romans had, up to this time, been supported  by no measures likely to convince the king of the risks to which his policy exposed him. He felt himself to be completely a match for Rome, and he hoped also to bring the Romans to recognize him as their equal. At once, then, without paying any attention to the further demands of the Romans, he despatched ambassadors to Flamininus in Greece, after the breaking off of negotiations in Lysimachia, offering to conclude an alliance with Rome on the footing of equality. Flamininus referred them to Rome and a long time seems to have passed in slow and tedious negotiations, which were made use of on both sides to gain time, to put off the final decision, and meanwhile to improve every opportunity for gaining some new ground of vantage.

While the Romans were occupied in the pacification of Greece, and concluded a formal alliance with king Philip of Macedonia, thus depriving Antiochus of the prospect of a most powerful confederate on whom Hannibal had especially calculated, Antiochus fortified and extended his possessions in Asia Minor and Thrace, and endeavoured to gain allies for the coming war. The town of Byzantium, important through its commerce and its position on the Thracian Bosporus, was drawn to his side by the promise of some advantages of trade; the Galatians were secured by presents and threats; one of the king’s daughters was betrothed to the youthful Ptolemaeus of Egypt, and the conquered Syro-Phoenician coast lands were promised her as a dowry. By this promise the king of Egypt, who had been neglected by Rome, was induced to remain neutral. Antiochus married his second daughter to Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia. In the same way he tried to gain over to his side Eumenes, king of Pergamum; but this keen-sighted prince declined to accede to his proposals. It was clear to him that if Antiochus succeeded in restoring the great Syrian empire, his own kingdom of Pergamum was exposed to a most ambitious and grasping neighbour. He therefore held firmly to the Roman alliance, the more so, as he felt assured that Roman valour and perseverance would in the end prevail. He now set himself to work to keep alive with the Romans the suspicion against Antiochus, and to urge them to a war. Thus Eumenes on the one side and Hannibal on the other acted as instigators to urge the powerful adversaries to the conflict.

In the year 194 BC, after the complete pacification and settlement of affairs in Macedonia and Greece, Titus Quinctius Flamininus returned to Italy, and celebrated a three days’ triumph. When the consuls had been elected for the following year, Flamininus and the senatorial commission which had acted as his council, gave their report of the regulations made in Greece, and asked for the final approval of the senate. On this occasion ambassadors from all parts of Greece and from Asia were collected in Rome. A great diplomatic congress took place, in which the preliminaries of peace were finally settled, and each of the new client states was anxious to obtain from the protecting power the most favourable conditions. With the rest had come to Rome a Syrian embassy, at the head of which was Menippus, an accomplished orator and good soldier. The senate did not enter into direct negotiations with these ambassadors, but referred them to the diplomatic committee, at the head of which was Flamininus, the man whose voice was now decisive in Greek affairs. It soon became evident that the disputes between Rome and Syria could not be settled amicably in a way satisfactory to both parties, because both obstinately maintained the position which they had occupied from the first. The Syrian ambassadors disputed the right of the Romans to mix themselves up in the affairs of Asia, and to dictate to their master how he should treat the several towns, just as if he, like Philip, had been conquered by them in war, and was not an independent sovereign, only animated by the desire to live with them in peace and friendship, without sacrificing either his dignity or his rights. Upon this, the Romans gave him his choice, either to relinquish Europe, which meant that he should resign his newly-acquired possessions in Thrace, or to recognise their right to interfere in favour of their friends in Asia.

Thus the dispute was brought to an issue, and an immediate rupture seemed unavoidable. Both parties, however, hesitated to speak the last and decisive word. Neither the one nor the other had really a decided wish for war, and they probably thought that they would gain their ends by negotiation. The Romans were interested only in playing to the end their part as protectors of the Greeks, to maintain the order of things which they had established in Greece, and, by protecting the minor states also in Asia, to establish a balance of power in the East. They could not speculate on acquisitions in Asia as long as they had no possessions in Greece. If, then, Antiochus yielded, they would have won a bloodless but important victory, which could not fail to strengthen their commanding position in the whole of the Eastern world. Antiochus, on the other side, found himself opposed by a coalition of the Romans and all the Greeks, including Macedonia, and his representatives thought it better, therefore, to ask for a delay, that the king might himself decide whether he would accept or reject the terms proposed. This delay was willingly granted them by the senate, and again a Roman embassy was sent to the East, to endeavour, by diplomatic skill, to avoid a great and dangerous war, and yet to gain the essential advantages of a victory.

The numerous embassies which we meet in these negotiations, and which play such a prominent part, appear strange at the first glance. We are accustomed to consider the political questions of antiquity more simple, and especially to assume that the diplomacy of Rome proceeded boldly and straightforwardly to its destined end, avoiding the crooked ways by which modern diplomatists try to edge their way through the endless complications and conflicting interests of our present commonwealth of states. Nor is such a view quite incorrect. But the international relations between state and state were at that time not so exactly regulated that an understanding about even a simple matter was quite easy. The mode of business and the language of business were not sufficiently established upon universally recognised principles. There was a great deal of palavering and haggling, as in an Eastern bazaar, whereas our modern statesmen cannot easily retreat from a position which they have once taken. Still more important is the fact, that the states of antiquity did not know the institution of resident ambassadors, and in case of difficulties arising from conflicting interests, had to avail themselves of special envoys, who not only made and received communications, but who also, like modern plenipotentiaries and representatives at foreign courts, acted as informants, and sent home all the news which they could pick up regarding the war-preparations, the views, plans, alliances, and political parties in the countries to which they were sent. This required time, a repetition of coming and going, and a large staff of envoys. It cannot, therefore, be wondered at, if after a war had been as good as determined on, messengers still used to come and go, and that they sometimes acted as spies, and were treated as such.

Such were the objects for which a Roman embassy was sent to Asia under Publius Sulpicius and Publius Villius in the year 194 BC, after the negotiations in Rome had led to no result. They endeavoured only to gain time, and to urge the Roman allies in Asia to make preparations for war. They went first to Pergamum, to king Eumenes. This ambitious potentate eagerly desired a war against Antiochus, in the hope of obtaining from the Romans an extension of power, which would enable him in future to maintain his position without foreign assistance against his powerful and encroaching neighbour. The Romans could with certainty reckon on him in case of need. The ambassadors next repaired to Ephesus, which town Antiochus had conquered a few years before, and since then had made his capital in Asia Minor. The king of Syria happened not to be there at that time, having just undertaken an expedition against the rebellious Pisidians in the south of the peninsula. But in Ephesus the Roman diplomatists found Hannibal, who for two years had been trying in vain to foment the differences between Rome and Antiochus, and to urge on a war. In case of such a war with Rome, he reckoned on the vigorous co­operation of Carthage, and he had sent a Tyrian merchant named Aristo to Carthage, with the knowledge and consent of the king, to sound the views of his countrymen, and especially of his own party, and to concert measures for united action. But Carthage lived at that period under the spell of a well-grounded fear of the power of Rome and of Rome’s readiness to embrace every opportunity of still further humbling and weakening her old rival. This fear had been the cause of Hannibal’s undignified flight, and it now compelled Aristo to leave his mission unaccomplished, and to flee by night from the dangerous place where abject fear had changed even good patriots into Roman spies and satellites.

Of course Villius knew of these intrigues; but when he met Hannibal in Ephesus, he expressed his surprise to him that he should have left his country, though peace was established between Rome and Carthage, and he had nothing to fear at home. These fine words and the many meetings which Villius arranged with Hannibal, were not designed to deceive Hannibal as to the intentions of the Romans, still less to reconcile him with Rome; for no Roman could think so meanly of the Punic general’s understanding or honour to hope to catch him by such talk. They were designed to throw suspicions of Hannibal’s honesty into the weak mind of king Antiochus, and thus to deprive him of so useful a servant. Nor did Villius fail in his deep-laid scheme. The jealous king, to whom faith and patriotism were incomprehensible feelings, or mere empty words, conceived a suspicion against Hannibal, and excluded him henceforth from the circle of his confidential councillors.

On the whole the position of the Roman ambassadors in Asia was one of great difficulty at the present juncture. Had they been charged to make a peremptory demand, and in case of refusal, to declare war without delay, their task would have been easy enough. But, it appears, they were commissioned to temporise, and, if possible, to obtain the advantages of Roman intervention by diplomatic means without the necessity of resorting to war. Unfortunately the time was less favourable for this now than in the previous year (194 BC), before the withdrawal of the Roman troops from Greece, and the evacuation of the three great fortresses of Demetrias, Chalcis, and Corinth. Antiochus was well acquainted with the state of things in Greece, with the universal agitation and discontent, and the utter weakness and insufficiency of the arrangements made there by the Romans. He was already importuned by Aetolian envoys to come to Greece. The Aetolians, whio, it is true, had been treated contemptuously and unjustly by the Romans, thirsted for revenge. They possessed a boundless confidence in their own strength, as is usual with ignorant and rude peoples who, having no idea of the relative power and resources of other states, always over-estimate their own importance. They assured Antiochus that Philip of Macedonia and Nabis of Sparta were prepared to unite with him against the Romans, and that Amynander also, the chief of Athamania, disappointed in his hopes of spoil after the victory over Philip, had joined the conspiracy against the Romans.

Thus the affairs of Greece were sufficiently complicated, and appeared highly favourable to Antiochus. At the same time his position in Asia seemed secure by his affinity with the kings of Egypt and Cappadocia, by the friendly disposition of the Galatians, and by the success which had hitherto accompanied his military enterprises. No wonder that he exhibited less readiness than before to accede to the Roman demands. In truly Oriental style he showed this immediately by a marked want of politeness to the Roman ambassadors. At first he caused Villius to wait for a long time at Ephesus, while he was occupied with his campaign against the Pisidians. Villius was then allowed to follow the king to the source of the river Maeander; but the negotiations were soon interrupted, under the pretext that the court was in mourning for a royal prince. Villius had to return to Pergamum, leaving his mission unaccomplished. At a later period, when Antiochus was residing at Ephesus, the Roman ambassadors returned; but they were no longer admitted to the presence of the king, and were referred to a royal officer called Minnio. The question was no longer discussed whether the Thracian conquests of Antiochus should be given up. Nor did Antiochus repeat his promise to grant the Asiatic towns their freedom on the condition that they should acknowledge him as their deliverer and protector, instead of the Romans. On the contrary, Minnio maintained his master’s right to all the states in Aeolia and Ionia, and especially to Smyrna, Lampsacus, and Alexandria Troas, which alone had not submitted to him, because all these towns had always been subject to the sovereigns of Asia, and latterly also to the predecessors of Antiochus. It looked like an intentional affront when Antiochus declared himself willing to leave their ancient independence to Rhodes, Cyzicus, and Byzantium, if the Romans would enter into an alliance with him, that is, if they would acknowledge and guarantee all those claims which hitherto they had uniformly disputed. The independence of Rhodes had never been questioned or attacked by any one, and a short time before even Antiochus himself had eagerly wished to obtain the friendship of the important town of Byzantium. It was, therefore, clear that on the basis now proposed by Antiochus an understanding with Rome was not possible. The Roman ambassadors returned home without having accomplished their object, and with the conviction that all the arts of diplomacy were now exhausted, and an appeal to arms had become indispensable.

At the court of Antiochus likewise a peaceful settlement with Rome was no longer thought of. The king and his councillors saw that war was now unavoidable. Antiochus could say with perfect truth that he had never sought a war with Rome, and would eventually carry it on only to defend himself against an uncalled-for and unjust interference in his affairs. Nothing was further from his intentions than an attack on the independence or on the dignity of the Roman republic. The Romans had pursued their usual insidious policy with regard to him. They had formed a friendship with his natural rivals and enemies; they had made Rhodes and the king of Pergamum their allies, while Antiochus, to avoid a rupture with Rome, had scrupulously refrained from making any attack on them, and had indeed avoided all open hostilities. But, not satisfied with setting limits to his free action so far, the Romans had assumed to be the protectors of all the Greek towns in Asia, as if the part which they had just played as liberators in European Greece gave them, as a natural consequence, the right to do the same everywhere. Antiochus was resolved to oppose this presumption with all his power, and from this time resolved to meet the inevitable war.

The question was now, whether he should await an attack of the Romans in Asia, or anticipate them by an invasion of Italy or Greece. The plan of the war was carefully discussed in Ephesus. Hannibal was at first excluded from the secret councils of the king in consequence of the suspicion of which he had recently become the object. As soon as he remarked this, he had no difficulty in convincing the king of his real sentiments. Then it was that he related the story of the oath by which, as a boy, he had sworn to his father, Hamilcar, to remain all his life long an enemy of Rome. Antiochus seemed inclined to avail himself of Hannibal’s services for a diversion to be directed from Carthage upon Italy; but he was wise enough to give up the idea of a serious invasion with his main force. After the experience which Hannibal had had, an offensive war in Italy seemed too dangerous an undertaking. If, however, giving up the plan of offensive warfare, Antiochus resolved to remain on the defensive, it seemed that Greece was the most favourable ground on which he could await the Roman assault. A faint hope yet remained that Rome might abate her demands, and in this case Antiochus would have preferred to avoid the war altogether. He therefore took no steps which might precipitate events; nor did he even get together the armaments which his critical situation urgently demanded.

The actual conflict of the two great powers was at length made unavoidable through the impatience of the minor Greek communities, which found the state of things created by Flamininus unbearable. In point of fact, all the Greeks were discontented after their first intoxication of joy had passed off. The time of universal happiness which they had expected had not come. The disappointment which must follow every extravagant hope was so much the greater, as, in truth, the Romans had not wished a single Greek state to enjoy so much of vitality and strength as would make it really independent, and consequently had only fostered aspirations which could not be gratified, and which led to just complaints. It is true, no settlement of Greek affairs could have been imagined which could satisfy every part of this restless and impatient people, and which would have remained undisturbed without the use of external force. The small Greek commonwealths were by their very nature and the temper of the race incapable of exercising sovereign rights with moderation. They could not bring themselves to respect the rights of others, nor make any sacrifices for the common good. Even the establishment of the Achaean league, the most hopeful creation of the Greeks in the field of internal politics, sowed the seeds of new discord. The natural and reasonable aspirations of this league to unite all the scattered fragments of the whole people into one body politic were frustrated by the obstinate exclusiveness of some, which at last paved the way for the interference of foreign powers. The best thing for Greece would have been the extension of the Achaean league to an organization embracing the whole Greek race. As this was not possible, a union with Macedonia, allowing a moderate degree of local self-government, might possibly have secured peace and prosperity to the great number of separate states; but monarchy was in the whole of antiquity a form of government which never could give any security for the permanence of political rights : besides, every union with a stronger power was apt at any time to lead to the oppression of the weaker. Philip of Macedonia might perhaps have made himself the Protector of the Greeks; instead of this, however, he degenerated soon into a despot, and made himself hateful to the noblest and best of his former friends. Nevertheless, some parts of Greece were so accustomed to Macedonian rule, that in all probability this rule would have been more widely extended, had not Rome interfered. Thessaly, Boeotia, Locris, Phocis, and Euboea were, to a certain extent, parts of the Macedonian empire. Even the Achaean league was only alienated from Philip for a time; Epirus and Acarnania were his warm adherents. All these bonds of union were broken by the interference of the Romans. A new order of things was forcibly introduced; but it was not likely that, at the dictation of a foreign power, the peoples who had suffered so much, and been so disturbed in their old customs and habits, would feel satisfied and quietly submit. Even under the eyes of the Roman army the Macedonian party had raised its head in Boeotia; what could be expected after the legions had evacuated the country, and left free scope to all the passions and the savage party spirit of the Greeks?

The first who tried to upset by force of arms the universal peace and liberty established in Greece by Roman arms was Nabis, the tyrant of Sparta, the same man whom, in spite of the general wish of the Achaeans, Flamininus had only weakened but not crushed, lest the Achaeans should grow too powerful in the Peloponnesus, and thus become independent of Rome. After the maritime districts of Laconia, with the important seaport of Gythium, had been taken from him, he behaved like a wild beast which, being confined in a cage, becomes conscious for the first time of the limits to its freedom. He was unable or unwilling to estimate correctly his own power, and that which was opposed to him. Seeing that the Romans had left the country, he determined in the year 192 BC to attack Gythium, without which he could not carry on his accustomed trade of piracy. The Achaean league, to which Gythium had been assigned by Flamininus in 195 BC, promptly sent a garrison into the place. They also informed the Romans of the outbreak of hostilities, and made preparations to resist the plundering of Achaean territory. But, fearing to offend Rome, they did not openly declare war, for as a Roman vassal state Achaia had lost the right of independent warfare.

The Romans were now fully aware that the time for immediate action had come. But in spite of this, they delayed, with their accustomed slowness, not only to declare themselves, but even to make the necessary preparations. It is true, one of the consuls of the year 192 BC was instructed to levy two new legions, with twenty thousand infantry and eight hundred cavalry of the allies; but only an insignificant fleet was sent to the Peloponnesus under the praetor, Atilius Serranus, while the praetor, Baebius Tamphilus, received only three thousand men (one thousand Romans and two thousand allies), with whom, after a time, he crossed over to Apollonia. In the meantime Flamininus was sent once more to Greece, in order, if possible, to compose the quarrel in the Peloponnesus, to prevent the spreading of the war, and, above all, to warn the Aetolians. Flamininus sent instructions to the Achaeans to abstain from hostilities against Nabis until the arrival of the Roman fleet. The able Philopoemen, who was now strategos of the Achaean league, saw that the chief object of the Romans was to prevent the overthrow of Nabis. He therefore resolved to put him down before the arrival of the Roman force, though he was well aware that Achaia would incur the displeasure of Rome by trying to assert her own right without waiting for the approval of the protecting power.

Unfortunately, the precipitation with which this plan was carried out led to a sad failure. Philopoemen, who did not shine as a naval commander, nevertheless tried an attack by sea. He sailed from Aegium on the Corinthian Gulf to Gythium with a squadron of a few ships, one of which had four tiers of oars and served as a flag-ship, though it was more than eighty years old, and of course rotten and unseaworthy. He was completely defeated by the small fleet of Nabis, consisting of only three decked vessels and a few smaller boats, so that he himself escaped with difficulty. A second naval expedition, starting from Argolis, landed Philopoemen in the neighbourhood of the besieged town, where he annihilated a part of the hostile troops by a night surprise, and hoped by devastating the Spartan territory and threatening Sparta to draw the besiegers off from Gythium. But this hope was disappointed. Gythium, which might easily have been relieved by the Romans, fell into the hands of Nabis, who now turned with all his forces against Philopoemen. Meanwhile the latter had collected a sufficient number of troops out of the Achaean towns, and so completely defeated Nabis in the mountainous region (called Barbosthenes), north of Sparta, that only the fourth part of the beaten army escaped to Sparta. Nabis was again in a desperate position, and this time he had been put down by the Achaeans alone, without the aid of the Romans. No wonder they were elated, and with pardonable vanity extolled the merits of their own general Philopoemen high above those of Flamininus. In this however they acted very unwisely; for the Roman held their fate in his hands. He wished naturally to uphold his former policy, and the bold and independent attitude which the Achaeans had assumed under the enterprising Philopoemen was calculated, even if his vanity had not been hurt, to induce Flamininus to put a stop to the military action of the Achaeans, and once more to take the wretched Nabis under his protection. At his bidding an armistice was concluded, and Philopoemen was obliged to evacuate Laconia with the Achaean troops.

Flamininus had now a difficult task to perform. It had been easier to “liberate” the Greek states than it was now to keep alive the persuasion that real liberty had been gained. A cry went through the whole of Greece that a new and a real liberation was needed, a liberation from the unbearable dominion of Rome. In all places the old enemies of Rome and the new malcontents rallied under this watchword. There was almost everywhere an active anti-Roman party, even in Athens, which had been so tenderly patronised by Rome, and where but a short time before the admiration for the Romans was without bounds.

The discontent of most of the Greek states counted for very little, for only three states in Greece were of any weight at that time. These were Macedonia, and the Achaean and Aetolian leagues. Before all, the Romans were bent on securing the alliance of the king of Macedonia, the more so as Antiochus was bidding for his friendship. Various promises, of the nature of which we are unfortunately not informed, were made to him by Rome. So much, however, is known for certain, that he was assured that if he remained true to the Roman alliance, his son Demetrius, who was then a hostage in Rome, would be sent back to him, and that the remainder of the contributions of war should be remitted. It is probable that the prospect was opened to him of recovering several of the lost possessions in Thessaly, especially the important fortress of Demetrias, as well as parts of Thrace, for instance, those towns which had been taken by Antiochus. The equivocal attitude of Amynander of Athamania probably induced Philip to reckon, in case of victory, on the acquisition of the district possessed by that chief. But what most decided Philip to take the part of the Romans was in all probability not so much the promises of the Romans as resentment against Antiochus, who had not only forsaken him in the late war, but had enriched himself at his expense, and was now short-sighted enough to favour a relative of the prince of Athamania, who put forward claims to the Macedonian throne. At a later period, as we shall see, Antiochus made other mistakes, which played into the hands of Flamininus and retained Philip in the Roman alliance. The consequence of Philip’s policy was that, in the end, he gained hardly any of the advantages on which he had reckoned, that he became still more dependent on Roman supremacy, and that he had to suffer the most unworthy and humiliating treatment.

The part to be taken by the Achaeans was determined by that of the Aetolians. If the latter ranged themselves on the side of Antiochus, the Achaeans were of necessity compelled to join the Roman alliance. The opposition between the two confederations was so great that there was something unnatural even in their common alliance with Rome. The hereditary animosity between the two nations contributed to a general discontent with the settlement of Flamininus: and as it was chiefly the Aetolians who fanned the flame of this discontent, the Achaean confederation was necessarily ranged on the side of the Romans. Flamininus reckoned so firmly upon it, that he ventured, plainly against the wishes and interests of the Achaeans, again to take the Spartan tyrant under his protection.

The Aetolians, from the very first, openly proclaimed that they were dissatisfied with the Roman settlement. They claimed for themselves, whether with justice or unjustly, the largest share in the victory over Macedonia; and in all the numerous negotiations they thought that they were entitled to have a weighty voice. They had advocated the complete annihilation of Philip’s power, hoping that in the place of Macedonia they would become a leading power in Greece. It had been a bitter disappointment for them that the Romans rejected their proposals, affronted them intentionally, neglected them on every occasion, and finally threw to them only small fragments of the spoil which they greedily demanded.

As long as the Roman army was stationed in Greece, the Aetolians gave vent to their resentment only in abusive language; but in the year 194 BC, as soon as Demetrias, Clialcis, and Acrocorinthus were evacuated, and the Roman legions had returned to Italy, they began a busy agitation which tended to nothing less than the total overthrow of the new order of things. They had already entered into a correspondence with Antiochus, and held out the hope to him that he would find numerous and zealous adherents in Greece, if he would now undertake its real deliverance. It was at their advice that Nabis had commenced hostilities, and when the conflict had been thus begun by the advanced guard, they hoped to be able to make it soon general. They assumed now a decided position. A congress of the league was called, and here, in the presence of Flamininus, who even to the last exerted himself to bring the excited nation to their senses, a resolution was adopted to call upon king Antiochus to liberate Greece, and to settle disputes between the Aetolians and the Romans. When Flamininus asked for a copy of this resolution, Democritus, the captain of the league for the time, had the impudence to say that he was too busy then, but that he would send the Romans a copy, when the Aetolian army should be encamped by the Tiber.

Were we not from former times acquainted with the slowness of the Romans in such matters, it would strike us as strange that with the sure prospect of such a course of events an adequate military force had not even before this been sent to Greece. Nothing, it appears, hindered the senate from ordering, even in the beginning of the year 192 BC, a fleet and troops to those important places which were most exposed to attack in the first line, particularly to Chalcis and Demetrias. But nothing was done, and the consequence was that first Demetrias and afterwards Chalcis were lost, and that the war against Antiochus, instead of being at once begun in Asia, had to be carried on in Greece for a long time, and there assumed a tedious and obstinate character.

The two leagues of the Achaeans and the Aetolians were not the only federal forms of government in Greece in this period of her decline. The germ of federal institutions can be discovered in the oldest times. Scattered about in many places we find towns which, under the significant names of Tripolis or Tetrapolis, make themselves known as federal communities. Triphylia, the southern part of Elis, was evidently a union of three phylae. Such phylae are met with not only in the early period of Attica, but in numerous localities inhabited by Ionians, as well as by Dorians and other Greeks. The ancient Amphictyonies rested on the same foundation, though they were rather religious than political associations. The leagues of Ionian, Aeolian, and Dorian towns in Asia Minor, as also the numerous Symmachiae and Sympolitiae (alliances for mutual support and common government) of the earlier and the later time, were so many attempts at permanent confederations. In Thessaly, Boeotia, and Arcadia, several attempts were made of the same kind; but they were all thwarted by the deep-rooted spirit of local independence. It was found impossible to form a powerful executive, and to assemble together in one locality the various bodies of sovereign citizens for periodical legislative action. Some of the larger communities, like Athens, Corinth, Argos, and Thebes, succeeded at different times in rising to comparative importance, by concentrating in a dominant capital the material strength of a number of dependent townships and villages. Each of these states aspired in turn to be the head and ruler of more or less extensive dependencies. Their efforts were not directed towards federal constitutions, but towards the establishment of centralised states on a larger scale. But they were too weak or too deficient in political qualities to succeed like Rome in establishing the permanent government of one town over a larger territory. Thus the best period of Greek history was not favourable to the development of federal governments. In the decline of national prosperity, when the greatness of Athens and Sparta had dwindled to a shadow, the old principle of confederation was revived, and became more vigorous than it had ever been before. Besides the Aetolian and the Achaean leagues, we find now the federal communities of the Acarnanians, the Epirots, the Magnesians, the Boeotians, the Euboeans. In Phocis, Doris, and Locris, the same political combinations appear to have sprung up spontaneously, or to have still continued from old habit. Everywhere each separate community or town had an independent local government, but it was united with others for common objects, political as well as religious. A chief magistrate, called captain (strategos), and a second in command (hipparchos), changing every year, commanded the forces. A public secretary (grammateus), and a committee of chosen councillors (apokletoi), conducted the internal government and the foreign policy; but only the people themselves had a voice in the periodical or extraordinary great assemblies, when they elected public officers, determined questions of war or peace, and passed general laws.

Such were the states which had received their independence as a gift of the Roman people, after they had been for a long time more or less dependent on Macedonia. It was, therefore, quite natural that states which had such a loose and weak constitution, should speedily relapse into disorder, and be agitated by the two opposing parties—the adherents of the old sovereign and those of the new protecting power. Unfortunately the possession of these states was the price for which alone the Romans could hope to purchase the co-operation of Philip. It was, therefore, easy for the Aetolians, whether they spoke the truth or not, to make the Magnesians believe that Demetrias had been promised to the king of Macedonia; and before the Romans had secured this place by a garrison, as they might have done, had they been less slow, it was betrayed to the Aetolians by the partisans. Thereupon the indefatigable Aetolian captain, Thoas, made an attempt on Chalcis; but the Roman party received information of the design in due time. Reinforcements, sent from Eretria and Carystus, placed the town in such a state of defence, that Thoas gave up his intended attack. In order still more to secure this important place, Eumenes soon afterwards, at the request of Flamininus, placed there a Pergamenian garrison of five hundred men.

It was a matter of great importance to the Aetolians to begin the war, on which they were bent, by some decided military success, and to spread in Greece the insurrectionary movement against Rome, in order to inspire Antiochus with confidence and to engage him to cooperate. The acquisition of Demetrias was, therefore, of great value to them; nor did they give up the hope of gaining Chalcis after the failure of their first attempt. But Sparta was almost of still greater importance, because by it the whole of the Achaean league could be kept employed during the war. When Nabis had been defeated by Philopoemen, he had, by the intercession of the Romans, obtained an armistice, and had applied to the Aetolians to send him a reinforcement. The Aetolian confederation readily acceded to this request, and sent Nabis about one thousand men, under the command of a certain Alexamenos. This was a step of very doubtful policy. The intimacy existing between Nabis and Flamininus could not be otherwise than suspicious to the Aetolians. If Flamininus allowed Nabis to keep possession of Gythium, which he had just taken in defiance of the Roman settlement, might he not easily be induced by this or any other promise to make peace with the Achaeans? In that case the latter had all their forces at their disposal against the Aetolians and the king of Syria. A precedent for such a combination had occurred in the war with Philip of Macedonia only a few years before. At that time the Romans had brought about an armistice between Nabis and the Achaean league, and had thus disengaged the Achaean contingents. The Aetolians determined to gain Sparta at all price, and gave secret instructions to Alexamenus, in case Nabis should be inclined to come to an understanding with the Romans and Achaeans. This contingency, it appears, really occurred. Alexamenos decided to act promptly. At a review of the combined Lacedaemonian and Aetolian troops, he watched a moment when Nabis had approached the body of one thousand horse under his command, suddenly attacked the unsuspecting tyrant, cut him down from his horse, and had him despatched by a few of his own trusty followers, before the amazed Spartans could hasten to the rescue. But the great body of the Aetolians, not initiated into the plot, and entirely ignorant of its political bearing, thought that it was a signal for falling upon the town and plundering it. While they were ransacking the houses, and revelling in their natural love of spoil, the Spartans recovered from their surprise, rushed upon the plunderers, and killed them to the last man. At the invitation of Philopoemen, Sparta shortly after joined the Achaean confederation. Thus the bold undertaking of the Aetolians failed, and the deep scheme of Flamininus was crossed, whilst the Achaean league, after long and fruitless endeavours, at length succeeded, suddenly and unexpectedly, in making Sparta one of its members.

Although this result was not what the Romans had intended, they yet accepted the situation such as it was, fully assured that if the Achaean league should at any time become too powerful, they would find means to confine it within due bounds, a calculation which, in the sequel, was proved to be correct. Hence, after their fleet had at last appeared before Gythium, they approved of the union of Sparta and Achaia, being determined, in the first place, to make full use of it in the war which was in prospect.

Of the three attacks which the Aetolians had planned, on Demetrias, Chalcis, and Sparta, the first only had been successful. In order to make the most of this first success, Thoas proceeded again to Asia to king Antiochus, and tried to convince him that the time had now come for him to take the field in Greece. He assured him that he would be received with open arms by the Greeks, to whom Roman tyranny had become unbearable, and who had already commenced so vigorously the work of deliverance with their own hands. Though Antiochus had not yet settled matters in Asia according to his desire, and especially had not broken the resistance of the three towns, Smyrna, Lampsacus, and Alexandria Troas, and though he had not nearly completed his preparations for war, he was yet so dazzled by the brilliant prospects which Thoas opened to him, that he actually resolved to start with the insufficient forces which he had at his disposal. Sailing with forty decked and sixty open ships of war, and two hundred transports from the Hellespont to Thessaly, he landed at Demetrias with ten thousand infantry, five hundred horse, and six elephants.

It is surprising that Antiochus ventured to commence war with Rome with such a paltry force. Evidently he calculated on the Greeks collecting around him, and he was blind enough not only to trust to the support of the Aetolians and the smaller states, but also to reckon on the assistance of Philip of Macedonia. The Achaeans, he hoped, would at least remain neutral. But even when he learnt how deceitful the promises of the Aetolians were, he was unable to draw sufficient reinforcements from Asia, and he succumbed in the following year to the superior power of his opponents. So great was the difference between the pretensions of the Great King and his actual power.

Under such circumstances an expedition led by Hannibal to Italy was not to be thought of, even if Antiochus had entertained neither distrust nor jealousy, as Livy says, , towards the great Punian commander. The conqueror of Cannae was condemned to play an undignified part among the courtiers and flatterers of an Asiatic despot. In endeavouring to secure the favour of the great potentate he had to encounter the ill-will, envy, and malevolence of obscure men, who shuddered at the thought that he might by some great exploit outshine the renown of the king, or be wanting in submission after the complete overthrow of the Romans. He was, therefore, not entrusted with an independent command, but remained as counsellor in the train of the king, until later on, in the course of the war, he obtained a post as commander of a fleet, for which, by his genius and his experience, he was least of all adapted.

After the Syrian army had landed in Demetrias in the autumn of the year 192 BC, the Aetolians held a congress in Lamia, near to the Malian gulf. Here Antiochus appeared on a formal invitation, was received with boundless rejoicings, and declared commander of the Aetolian confederation, after the failure of a feeble and unpractical attempt of the moderate party to settle the dispute with Rome by a compromise under his mediation. A committee of thirty members of the Aetolian federal council was appointed as a permanent addition to the royal council of war.

Things had gone now so far that neither party could retire from the contest without sustaining a moral defeat, and yet, curiously enough, war had not yet been formally declared. Nay, Antiochus acted and talked as if he were the friend and protector of the Greeks without necessarily becoming thereby the enemy of the Romans. Under this pretext he hoped to gain those who did not venture to desert Rome. Above all, he hoped to obtain possession of Chalcis. Thinking that by a personal appeal to the citizens he could induce them to embrace his cause, he hurried with a small force straight from Lamia to Salganeus, crossed the Euripus with but a few companions, and had an interview with the principal citizens of Chalcis. He requested them to regard him as a friend and ally without prejudice to their friendship for Rome; for he was come to Europe with no hostile intention, but to liberate the Greeks, really and truly, not in form and in words, as the Romans had done. Nothing, he said, could be more useful to the Greeks than that they should be friends with the two powers, for in this manner they would be protected by the one against the encroachments of the other. The people of Chalcis were too shrewd to allow themselves to be deceived by such words. They disclaimed a wish to reject the friendship of the king and of the Aetolians, but they would conclude an alliance only with the consent of the Romans. Thus the second attempt to gain Chalcis failed through the firmness of the Roman party of that place, and Antiochus was obliged to return to Demetrias, in order to determine with the council of thirty members of the Aetolian confederation, which had been deputed to assist him, what further steps should now be taken.

By this time it must have been evident to the king, that what Thoas had said about the universal readiness of the Greeks to join him was an empty boast and a deception, intended only to stimulate him to the enterprise. At the same time the Aetolians became aware how inconsiderable was the power of the king, who boasted that he would fill all Greece with arms, troops, and horses, and line its coasts with ships. Both parties had mutually encouraged each other by specious representations, and now, in the time for action, both found themselves deceived, when it was too late to retrieve the mistakes which had been made. It was not of much consequence that the Boeotians were the declared enemies of Rome, and that Amynander, the prince of the Athamanians, might be induced to join them. The only states which were of real weight and importance were Macedonia and Achaia. It was especially Hannibal who, in the council of Antiochus, pointed out the importance of the alliance of Macedonia; and it seems by that Antiochus actually made one more attempt to gain Philip, although by his policy hitherto he must entirely have forfeited the confidence of his old ally. He calculated that Philip could never give up the hope of regaining his former position, and made proposals to him which opened prospects of this kind. But Philip had no confidence in him, and determined to remain true to the Romans, whose power he had learnt to dread, but of whose perfidious policy he knew so little that he hoped after a common victory to obtain for himself a valuable prize for his services.

As there was no prospect of gaining the alliance of Macedonia, it was the more important for Antiochus to insure at least the neutrality of the Achaean confederation, the second greatest power in Greece, especially as since the death of Nabis, and after the annexation of Sparta to the league, it had the whole military strength of that city at its disposal. Antiochus cherished some hopes of being able to attain this object, as he had heard of a misunderstanding between Flamininus and Philopoemen; and the Achaeans actually admitted the ambassadors of Antiochus and of the Aetolians to a council held at Aegium in the presence of Flamininus. The result was that they found themselves placed in the proud position of seeing the greatest powers of the time sue, as it were, for their favour, and they seemed to hold the fate of Greece in their hands. On such a height of momentary power many an Achaean patriot was apt to turn giddy. Self-knowledge, self-control, and moderation were not exactly Greek virtues. But the Achaean confederation was at that time headed by a man who belongs to the wisest and best whom that highly gifted people ever produced. Philopoemen saw that neutrality would lead to nothing but unconditional subjection to the conqueror, and that steady fidelity to the Roman alliance was not less honourable than advantageous for the Achaean confederation. Rome had only just consented to the annexation of Sparta, and Rome alone could either secure or endanger that of the remaining communities in the Peloponnesus, such as Messenia and Elis, which were yet outside the league. The congress accordingly decided without hesitation to conclude a formal alliance with Rome, and it declared war at the same time against Antiochus and the Aetolians. This resolution was carried out immediately. At the request of Flamininus a body of five hundred Achaeans was sent to garrison Chalcis, which was most exposed, and an equal number was despatched to the Piraeus, because in the vacillating community of Athens a Syrian party was active, and threatened to deliver this important harbour into the hands of Antiochus.

Thus, at length, the war was formally declared, at least by one of the belligerents, and all the tedious discussions and deliberations were abandoned. Antiochus who, in order to maintain his position in Greece, was absolutely compelled to gain Chalcis, advanced now with his whole land and sea force against that town, which, though it had been twice threatened, still had no Roman garrison, and was defended only by the citizens, who were divided among themselves, and by a garrison of five hundred Pergamenians and five hundred Achaeans. At last a small Roman detachment of five hundred men was sent by Flamininus to assist in defending the town. Even this tardy and, as the event proved, too tardy step was taken only at the urgent entreaties of the party of Chalcidian citizens, faithful to Rome. But the Roman detachment never reached its destination. They found the passes already blocked up, and being attacked by superior forces at Delium, perished almost to a man. The first blood was thus shed, and the war, although not yet formally declared by either of the principal powers, had actually begun.

The destruction of the Roman detachment sent to the relief of Chalcis decided its fall. The courage of the Roman party sunk, and they made their escape from the town. The foreign garrison, too weak to confront enemies within and without, marched out, reached Salganeus on the continent, was here attacked by Syrian troops, and capitulated on condition of being allowed to retreat unmolested. The example of Chalcis, the capital of Euboea, was followed by the other towns in the island, and thus a short time after his arrival in Greece, Antiochus found himself in possession of a strong and secure basis of operations against northern and central Greece. This success did not fail to make such an impression on some of the smaller states, which were incapable of an independent line of policy, that they were induced at once to join the Syro-Aetolian alliance. Such were the Eleans in the Peloponnesus, who had of old been the neighbours and enemies of the Achaeans. Antiochus sent them an auxiliary corps of one thousand men to enable them to play the part originally assigned to the Spartans, and to give sufficient occupation to the Achaeans in the Peloponnesus. In central Greece, the weak and degenerate Boeotians now summoned up courage to express, at least in words and demonstrations, their hatred of the Romans. The Epirots, also, who, owing to their geographical position, had to expect the first attack from the Romans, tried to engage Antiochus to send a force for their protection, promising in that case to join him unreservedly. In the event of his being unable to do this, they begged him to excuse them if they should be compelled to avoid a rupture with the Romans. It was clear that Antiochus needed only to throw into Greece a powerful military force, in order to gain over all those who were still wavering and hesitating. He sent accordingly to Asia for more troops; but feeling now assured that he could no longer expect any aid from Philip, he resolved, even before the reinforcements could arrive, to make a sudden invasion into Thessaly.

Towards the end of the year 192 BC, when the winter had already set in, Antiochus, in conjunction with an Aetolian and Athamanian army, invaded Thessaly, and, after an obstinate resistance, took Pherae, Scotussa, and several other Thessalian towns. Having reached the neighbourhood of the battle-field of Cynoscephalae, he collected together the unburied remains of the slain Macedonians, and caused them solemnly to be interred, an act by which he mortally offended the pride of king Philip, and made him his personal enemy. But he found in Thessaly no disposition to join him; and after long and fruitless efforts he had to give up the siege of Larissa, on receiving tidings that a Roman army, in union with a Macedonian force, was advancing to relieve the place. As the winter was already advanced, Antiochus discontinued his operations, and returned to Chalcis, there to await the season for the opening of the next campaign and the arrival of the reinforcements which were expected from Asia.

The winter of 192-191 BC was spent by Antiochus in Chalcis in a series of festivities. The king, although upwards of fifty years, fell in love with a handsome Chalcidian girl, and celebrated his marriage with great pomp in true Oriental style, as if he had abundance of leisure, and as if the war with the Romans and the deliverance of Greece caused him no longer any anxiety. The army followed his example, and the Asiatic troops, whose discipline at all times was of no high order, indemnified themselves for the toils and fatigues of the prolonged campaign by indulging in luxuries and licentiousness, in which they found in the Boeotians no unworthy rivals.

Although in the year 192 BC the war was evidently impending, the Romans had made neither a formal declaration of war, nor such military preparations as might enable them in case of necessity to act at once with vigour. It appears that since Hannibal’s flight from Carthage they expected an attack on Italy or Sicily, and that on this account they delayed sending to Greece the forces at their disposal. It is easy to recognise in their entire policy and military proceedings at this time the influence of the Hannibalic invasion. Only the praetor, Atilius Senanus, was sent to the Peloponnesus with a small fleet of thirty quinqueremes (vessels with five tiers of oars), at the time when Nabis commenced hostilities. The praetor, Baebius Pamphilus, with two Roman legions and fifteen thousand five hundred Italian allies, that is, with an army of about twenty-five thousand or twenty-six thousand men, marched into Bruttium, that extreme corner of Italy, which had become celebrated by Hannibal’s long-continued defence, and which seemed to be the most natural basis of operations for an enemy landing in Italy from Greece. Besides these forces, armies of about equal strength were levied, one of which the consul, Domitius Ahenobarbus, was ordered to keep in readiness for the defence of Italy, or for operations abroad. The other consul, Lucius Flamininus, the brother of Titus, was instructed to watch the Gauls. A third army under Minucius was required to keep the Ligurians in check. Oppius Salinator was sent with twenty ships to Sicily, and the praetor of that province, Valerius Tappo, was ordered to organize an army of twelve thousand four hundred men, and to place the towns on the east coast of Sicily in a state of defence, because that island too appeared to be threatened with invasion. As, moreover, Sardinia, Corsica, and the two Spanish provinces required troops, Rome was forced to make greater exertions at this period than had ever been necessary since the end of the war with Hannibal.

In the levies now effected the Italian allies were called upon to furnish a larger proportion of men than formerly. Their contingents had been usually about equal to those of the Romans, and every Roman legion, combined with an equal number of Italian allies, formed what might be called in modern phrase a division. This equality was now no longer observed. One legion of Roman citizens now received an addition of as many allies as seemed necessary, often as much as double its own number. In the cavalry service the contingents of the allies had always been stronger than the Roman. Thus in the recent wars the burdens which the Roman subjects had to bear grew heavier and heavier, and yet they were not admitted to a larger share of the privileges of Roman citizens. It is well to bear this in mind in order to understand that the extension of the Roman power was in itself one of the causes which brought about the internal change in the constitution. The inequality between Roman citizens and allies was at the bottom of the disturbances of the period of the Gracchi; the inequality between Romans and provincials was the cause which changed the republic into an empire. 

At length, when the news of the landing of Antiochus in Greece had arrived and an invasion in Italy was no longer to be feared, Baebius received orders to cross over to Epirus with all his troops (about twenty-five thousand five hundred men), towards the end of the year 192 BC. It was then already too late to prevent the capture of Chalcis. Baebius remained stationary even after his landing with the principal force at Apollonia, and sent only a small detachment of two thousand men, under Appius Claudius, to Thessaly. But even this sufficed, as we have seen, in conjunction with a Macedonian corps, to decide Antiochus to abandon the siege of Larissa, and to retreat from Thessaly. The winter then put an end to further operations on both sides.

The consuls for the year 191 BC were Publius Cornelius Scipio Nasica, a cousin of the conqueror of Zama, and the plebeian, Marcus Acilius Glabrio. They entered on their office on the Ides of March, which month, owing to the confusion in the calendar at that time, coincided with our January; and now that the war had actually begun, Scipio Nasica, upon a resolution of the senate, brought before the people the proposal to authorise the government to declare and carry on war with king Antiochus and his allies. The vote of the people was by the constitution of the Roman republic indispensable, nay, it was that public act which alone could decide the question of peace or war. But Livy barely takes the trouble to mention it in four words, showing thereby that it had by this time become a mere form, and that the people of Rome and the thirty-one country tribes had ceased, at least in matters of foreign policy, to have a judgment and a will of their own, and were in a state of complete dependence on the senate. In truth, the Roman popular assembly had for a long time been unable to understand the complicated diplomatic questions, or to follow the negotiations with a great number of foreign states. They were absolutely obliged to trust to the skill and experience of professional politicians. If, by a capricious exercise of their sovereign rights, they had disapproved of the measures which the senate from time to time had taken, and if they had refused to accept a war which was the necessary consequence of such steps, the constitution of the republic would have broken down. The people as such, that is the popular assembly, could not dream of thwarting the deliberate policy of the senate. The majority of the senators formed what we should call the ‘government’ of the republic : the minority formed the  opposition’. Whatever contests took place between these two parties were confined to internal discussions within the senate. The people, as such, could take no part in these contests, unless a question was laid before it by one of the tribunes or other magistrates, who, being unable to secure a majority in the senate, might appeal to the people as the sovereign power in all matters. Such an appeal was made in the beginning of the second war with Macedonia. But the opposition was powerless when the majority of the senate were firm, and thus it was, that in spite of the formal law of the constitution, the senate and not the people actually enjoyed the right of declaring war.

The preparations were at last complete, and the troops were on the march. The army of twenty-five thousand men which was already stationed in Greece under Baebius was reinforced by a double legion, ten thousand seven hundred men strong, with twenty elephants, and five hundred Numidian horsemen furnished by Masinissa. The commander of this army, the strength of which was thus raised to upwards of thirty-six thousand men, was, moreover, directed to enlist five thousand men of the non­Italian allied peoples, and thus the actual forces with which the Romans took the field against Antiochus were increased to the number of forty thousand. The fleet of Atilius, consisting of thirty quinqueremes, was already stationed in the Greek seas. It was now raised to double the number of ships, and a reserve of twenty ships was kept ready in Sicily. As a reserve for the land forces, a consular army remained in the town of Rome, one army in Bruttium, and a third in Sicily, destined especially for the protection of the island. As apart from these various corps, considerable forces were necessary in the north of Italy, in Sardinia, Corsica, and Spain, it is apparent that the military preparations occasioned by the war with Antiochus were on a scale which recalled the memory of the stupendous efforts made during the war with Hannibal.

The question which of the consuls of the year was to have the command in the war against Antiochus being decided by lot in favour of Acilius Glabrio, the senate, as usual on such momentous occasions, appointed several days for prayer and sacrifice. Acilius Glabrio pronounced, after the chief pontiff, the solemn words of a vow : “If the war which the people have resolved to wage against king Antiochus shall have been carried on to the end, according to the wish of the senate and of the Roman people, then shall the Roman people for ten days celebrate to thee, oh Jupiter, great games! and at all the shrines of the gods gifts shall be offered out of the sum which the senate shall have appointed; and whatever magistrate shall celebrate these games, whenever and wherever he may celebrate them, they shall be reputed as celebrated according to divine law, and the gifts shall be considered to be duly offered”.

The sacrifices proved favourable. The haruspices announced victory and triumph, and an extension of the Roman frontier. The Fetiales being consulted as to the manner in which the war ought to be declared, gave the same opinion on the subject as in the case of the Macedonian war against Philip. The formal announcement, they said, could be made either to Antiochus himself or to any hostile post. Thereupon Acilius crossed over from Dyrrachium to Apollonia, about the middle of May.

Antiochus had already opened the campaign. Early in the year 191 BC he had proceeded from Chalcis to Acarnania, and had, in concert with the party hostile to the Romans, seized the town of Medeon, when he heard of the landing of the consul at Apollonia, and of the simultaneous attack of the united Roman and Macedonian army under Baebius and king Philip on Thessaly. He returned immediately to Chalcis, in order to complete his army with the reinforcements which he expected from Asia. In a very short space of time the Thessalian towns which he had conquered at the beginning of the past winter were lost again. The Romans and Macedonians steadily advanced with superior forces. One town after another fell into their hands, with many thousand men of the Syrian garrisons, part of whom, being mercenaries, readily entered Philip’s service. Among the prisoners was the brother­in-law of Amynander, the king or chief of Athamania. He was a citizen of Megalopolis, named Philip, and gave himself out for a descendant of the royal house of Macedonia. His absurd pretensions to the Macedonian throne had been supported by Antiochus. When the wretched pretender was brought in chains before king Philip, previously to being sent to Rome, Philip could not deny himself the satisfaction of greeting him ironically as king and brother. The king of Athamania saw his whole land over­run by the enemy, and fled to Ambracia. He was sadly disappointed. Dissatisfied with the Romans, because after the common victory over Philip they had not consented to his acquiring the land on which he calculated, he had deserted them, hoping for better success if he joined the Aetolians and Antiochus. He was now left to his fate by his allies at the very beginning of the war, and lost even his old hereditary possessions. These countries king Philip hoped to obtain as his share of the spoil. He therefore treated the Athamanian captives with humanity and kindness, and even gave them back their freedom, expecting that they would influence their countrymen favourably for him, as their future sovereign.

Antiochus now saw plainly the dangers of his position. His reinforcements from Asia arrived very slowly. He had only ten thousand foot soldiers and five hundred horse­men, to oppose to the united armies of the Romans and Macedonians, which amounted at least to fifty thousand men. The Aetolians were so lukewarm or so exhausted, that they could only furnish an auxiliary corps of four thousand men. It was not possible to keep the open plains of Thessaly with such insufficient forces. Antiochus therefore abandoned Thessaly, and retired behind Thermopylae, he fortified this celebrated pass by a double wall and trenches, and here he hoped, in a safe defensive position, to be able to detain the enemy till sufficient reinforcements from Asia should place him in a condition again to take the offensive. The Aetolians held Hypata and Heraclea, two towns belonging to the Aetolian confederation, and lying to the north of the pass. They were, moreover, intrusted by Antiochus with the task of guarding the mountain paths, by which the defensive position in the pass could be turned, and which, in the memorable defence of Thermopylae against Xerxes, the Persians had followed under the guidance of Ephialtes, in order to come upon the rear of the Spartans. It augured badly for the issue of the struggle that only one-half of the Aetolians deemed it necessary to obey the king’s command. Two thousand men remained in Heraclea, where they could be of no manner of use for keeping off the hostile attack. The remaining two thousand occupied, in three separate detachments, three different heights of mount Oeta, the most important of which was called Callidromus.

The consul Acilius Glabrio attacked the pass in front with his chief force, after having despatched two detachments of two thousand men the night before to cross the mountain by a devious path, and to attack the Syrians in the rear. One of these detachments was led by the famous Marcus Porcius Cato, the consul of 195 BC, who was serving as legate in the army of Glabrio. He arrived safely on the summit of Callidromus, surprised the careless Aetolians in the early morning, and drove them down the mountain with very little trouble. As soon as the troops of the king perceived the fugitive Aetolians and the Romans pursuing them, they gave up all resistance, and sought their safety in flight. The narrowness of the pass prevented a hot pursuit; but in the further retreat through Boeotia, where the defeated and disorganized army roamed about without plan or order, the greater number were overtaken, and either slain or captured. The king succeeded with only about five hundred men in crossing the straits to Chalcis, from whence, without further delay, he hurried back to Ephesus.

The victory at Thermopylae cost the Romans only two hundred men. In the first outset they had succeeded in driving the king of Syria out of Greece. All the towns in Phocis and Boeotia, which during the presence of Antiochus had declared themselves in his favour, now opened their gates to the victorious Roman army, praying for indulgence and forgiveness, which was readily granted by the Romans. In Coronea alone the conquerors lost patience, when they saw in a temple of Athene a statue of king Antiochus, which had been erected by command of the Boeotian confederation. The Coroneans had to suffer for this premature adulation. The exasperated Romans devastated their territory, until an order of the consul called back the soldiers. Chalcis, like the remaining towns in Euboea, out of which the men of the Aetolian party quickly withdrew, submitted with equal promptness. At the request of Flamininus, Acilius Glabrio remitted the punishment which he had intended to inflict.

By the defeat of Antiochus, and his return to Asia, the war in Greece would have been ended, if the Aetolians also had submitted. They were now isolated and exposed to the overwhelming force of the Romans. If they had been wise, they would simply have accepted any terms which Rome might impose. But this rude and ignorant people was not capable of a reasonable policy. Self-deceived with respect to their own and their enemy’s strength, they ventured to continue the resistance to Rome single-handed, and did so with a degree of courage and perseverance which almost inspires admiration. The garrison of Heraclea, which during the battle of Thermopylae had made an attempt to storm the Roman camp, resolutely declined to surrender, and the town was only taken after a regular siege and a desperate defence. Among the prisoners was Democritus, the officer who the year before had spoken the defiant words that he would make known to Flamininus the decision of the Aetolian people when he should be encamped with his own army by the side of the Tiber.

While the consul was besieging Heraclea, Philip of Macedonia was occupied with the siege of the Aetolian town of Lamia, about seven miles north of Heraclea. Probably he had detained a portion of the Aetolian troops stationed in this locality, so that though he took no direct part in the fight at Thermopylae, he rendered important help towards securing that victory. But he had not succeeded in taking the strong city of Lamia in due time, i.e. before Heraclea was reduced by the Romans. Acilius summarily commanded Philip to abandon the siege. Thus the king of Macedonia lost not only the booty of the conquered town, but also the prospect of obtaining Lamia as a lasting possession. His mortification was the greater, as the Romans did not continue the siege of Lamia, and thereby showed that they had interfered not from military considerations, but from mere jealousy.

Philip, although greatly offended, was not in a position to resent this scornful treatment. The time was past when he could choose between the Roman and the Syrian alliance. He was compelled to fight the Roman battles, and as he had neglected to insist on clear and definite stipulations at the beginning of the war, his only chance of obtaining any profit for himself was to yield to all the caprices of the Roman generals, to be ready at all times with his services, and finally to throw himself upon the generosity of the Romans for his share in the prize of victory. How he was deceived in these hopes we shall see in the sequel.

The fall of Heraclea seemed at last to have broken the courage of the Aetolians. Having, only a short time before, sent a message to Antiochus to intimate their intention of carrying on the war, and to beg for assistance either in troops or money, they now asked the consul for peace. Acilius Glabrio granted them an armistice of ten days, and sent Valerius Flaccus to the neighbouring town of Hypata to enter into negotiations with the deputies of the Aetolian government. At the advice of Flaccus a resolution was come to by which the Aetolians formally submitted themselves to the Romans. They naturally hoped for the considerate and merciful treatment, which, in truth, was demanded by the interests of Rome; for in the first place their national strength was by no means broken, and secondly the Romans were obliged to keep a power in Greece, which might serve to counterbalance Macedonia as well as the Achaean confederation. This was the policy observed throughout by the able and experienced Flamininus. But Acilius Glabrio was a rough warrior, who felt a pleasure in acting with brutality, and in tearing open a wound which had begun to heal. He required, therefore, from the Aetolians, by virtue of the right which their unconditional submission had given him, that they should immediately deliver up two of their principal men, and even king Amynander and the noblest Athamanians who had plotted the desertion of that people from Rome. The Aetolians had no notion that their formal submission was to be construed in this way. Phaeneas, their envoy, protested that the demand of the Romans was neither fair nor justified by any principle of right in the common practice of the Greeks. Thereupon Acilius Glabrio coolly observed, “It mattered little to him what the Aetolians considered to be the Greek custom, while he gave his orders according to Roman custom to the subjects of Rome”. Saying this, he bade his lictors fetch chains in order, in case of necessity, to bring the refractory to their senses. Phaeneas stood aghast and condescended to ask for mercy; at the same time Flaccus, as well as the tribunes who were present, begged that the sanctity of the ambassadors should be respected. Glabrio then granted delay of ten days, during which time Phaeneas might ascertain the will of the Aetolian people. But the pride of the haughty mountaineers recoiled from the dishonourable demand, and they roundly refused to obey, the more decidedly as just then Nicander, the envoy of Antiochus, had returned from Asia with money and promises.

The war now broke out into a new flame. The Aetolians sent their choicest troops to Naupactus on the Corinthian Gulf, which was strongly fortified, and here they stood at bay with the courage of despair. Had Flamininus been present when the negotiations with the Aetolians were going on, they would hardly have been driven to such an extremity. But Flamininus was occupied at that time in the Peloponnesus, where he had to perform the delicate task of disarming the Messenians and Eleans, who had always sided with the Aetolians, without thereby increasing too much the strength of the Achaean league. The Eleans bowed to the adverse circumstances, and submitted to the Achaeans. But the Messenians, who were already hard pressed by the Achaeans turned to Flamininus, hoping to gain more favourable conditions from him than from his Achaean allies. At the direction of Flamininus, Diophanes, who had succeeded Philopoemen as captain of the Achaeans, recalled his army from Messenia, and the Messenians now joined the Achaean league, under conditions which the Romans dictated. Thus was fulfilled the long-cherished wish of the Achaeans, and the whole of the Peloponnesus was united in the league. It is true that the manifold difficulties produced by internal revolutions in the various states, and by long-continued border feuds, were not removed by this union. But provided that foreign interference did not fan the flame of discord, there was room for hope that a happy time was coming, at least for the Peloponnesian Greeks. Under the protection of Rome, if she honourably and conscientiously fostered the elements of order and progress, Greece might again enjoy peace, opulence and prosperity, and a second season of intellectual greatness, though, perhaps, not of national independence. We shall see how the Romans, by an ungenerous, stern and perfidious policy, disappointed those hopes, drove the Greeks to despair by humiliating and cruel treatment, and almost forced them into a struggle which was utterly hopeless and ruinous.

As yet the Roman senate acted upon the principle that direct possessions on the Greek continent were not desirable for the republic; and this was the reason why the Epirots were not punished for their equivocal attitude. Though they had had transactions with Antiochus, they obtained a full pardon upon their promise of faithful attachment to Rome for the future. The Ionian islands, however, were not included in this policy of abstinence. They were not unfavourably situated between Greece and Italy, and promised to be of great importance to Rome as well for military as also for commercial intercourse with Greece. Corcyra, indeed, was already in possession of the Romans since the first Illyrian war. Now they took also Zacynthus, which the Achaeans were anxious to acquire. Flamininus gave the Achaeans to understand that it would be better for the league if it did not extend beyond the Peloponnesus; it would thus be less exposed to attack, just as a tortoise was quite safe as long as its head and legs did not protrude beyond the sheltering cover.

The Peloponnesus was now at peace, while the Achaeans, whose aid was most desirable for the prosecution of the war, were so far humoured, that they placed their forces at the disposal of the Romans as well in Asia as also against the Aetolians. Flamininus repaired to the army of the consul Acilius Glabrio, which had for two months been engaged in the siege of Naupactus, and was pressing the town very hard. The situation of affairs was similar to that in the year 196 BC. when Nabis was reduced to the last distress. It was not difficult to crush the Aetolians altogether. But, as at the earlier period Flamininus, contrary to all expectation, had granted peace to the conquered tyrant in order to leave a counterpoise to the Achaeans, so now he gave bis advice to the effect that the Aetolians should be treated leniently, because, in the meantime, king Philip had made use of the opportunity to strengthen his position in Thessaly and in the Aetolo-Athamanian frontier lands. He had conquered some fortified towns, among which was the important fortress of Demetrias, and had thus given uneasiness to the Roman diplomatists. As Philip’s help could not be dispensed with any more than that of the Achaeans until the war with Antiochus had been brought to a close, the Romans sanctioned his conquests, or at least seemed to sanction them, by leaving them unnoticed, and this inspired him with the hope that he would eventually be able to retain them. They then not only made up for the offence given him at the siege of Lamia, but fulfilled their former promise by restoring to him his son Demetrius, who had been kept till now as a hostage at Rome, and by remitting the payment of the war contribution still outstanding. The complete overthrow of the Aetolian power was not, however, in the interest of Rome. It sufficed so to humiliate them that they became willing and serviceable clients of the Roman republic, who might be used against Philip in case of necessity. For this reason the siege of the almost conquered Naupactus was relinquished on the advice of Flamininus; an armistice was granted to the Aetolians, and they were directed to send an embassy to Rome to negotiate the conditions of peace. Meanwhile the summer was spent, and Acilius Glabrio conducted his army back to Phocis into winter quarters.

The result of the campaign of the year, 191 BC, if not, in a military point of view, very brilliant, had a decided influence on the course of the war. The only great feats of arms were the victory at Thermopylae and the taking of Heraclea, both due to a crushing superiority of numbers, and not in the least to great strategic ability on the part of the Roman general. But Antiochus was forced to abandon Greece, and the resistance of the Aetolians was so effectually checked, that if it seemed desirable it might easily be put an end to altogether.

The operations of the Romans by sea were even less brilliant, being characterised not only by slowness and caution, but by timidity, and total want of enterprise. The small fleet of thirty larger and some smaller vessels, with which Atilius had been stationed as early as the preceding year on the coast of the Peloponnesus, had neither assisted in the siege of Gythium, nor had it protected Chalcis from the attack of Antiochus. It was only after the battle of Thermopylae that it ventured out into the waters east of Euboea, where it succeeded in dispersing a fleet of transports, and in capturing some of the ships sent with provisions to king Antiochus. After this performance the Roman fleet returned to the Piraeus, and awaited reinforcements from home. These reinforcements were long in coming. It seems that even in the year 191 BC, the Romans were apprehensive of an attack by Antiochus on Italy and Sicily, and that they hesitated to withdraw the fleets, and to leave the coasts unprotected. Possibly they doubted that Antiochus would, with so small a force as ten or fifteen thousand men, restrict himself to the invasion of Greece. This small number seemed to indicate that a larger army was in reserve to be directed against Italy under the command of Hannibal. It was only when this danger had entirely vanished in consequence of the events in Greece, that the praetor, Caius Livius, advanced with the principal fleet to undertake offensive operations in the eastern seas. With fifty Roman decked vessels, which were joined by contingents from Naples, Locri, Rhegium, and the other Greek towns in Italy, and by six Carthaginian ships, he sailed across the Ionian Sea to Corcyra; but he gave himself time to plunder the islands of Cephallenia and Zacynthus on the pretext of punishing them for their attitude, and used the opportunity for enriching himself and his soldiers. Having arrived in the Piraeus, he detached five-and-twenty ships from the squadron of Atilius, and about the time when Glabrio was besieging Naupactus, sailed across the Aegean Sea straight to Chios. After he had been joined by a Pergamenian fleet of twenty-four large and as many small vessels, he had under his command a fleet of a hundred and five decked ships, and about fifty smaller ones. Thinking himself sufficiently strong, he determined, without waiting for the arrival of the Rhodian contingent, at once to strike a blow at the hostile fleet which Polyxenidas, a Rhodian exile, had assembled in the neighbourhood of Chios, to the number of about seventy large and thirty smaller vessels. Polyxenidas had hoped to attack the Roman fleet before its union with its Asiatic allies. He saw himself now opposed by a greatly superior force, and was easily defeated near the small bay of Corycus between Chios and Ephesus. The allies lost only one vessel, a Carthaginian trireme which, with too much zeal, had pressed forward, and got in between two hostile ships. The Syrians retreated with a loss of twenty-three ships, and took shelter in the harbour of Ephesus. On the following day five-and-twenty Rhodian decked vessels joined the Roman and Pergamenian squadrons. This united naval force of the allies now appeared before Ephesus to challenge the Syrian fleet to renew the battle. But Polyxenidas of course refused to accept battle, and remained within the safe port. As the season was now far advanced, the allied fleets separated again and went into their winter quarters, the Rhodians and the Pergamenians to their respective homes, the Romans to Phocaea and Canae on the Aeolian coast, opposite the island of Lesbos.

The news of the brilliant victory at Corycus was received in Rome with great rejoicings and celebrated by a nine days’ festival. The anxiety with which the movements of the powerful king of Syria had been watched up to this time now disappeared. The decided superiority of the Roman naval force was clearly demonstrated, and there was no longer any occasion to apprehend an attack on Italy by king Antiochus. This feeling of security was fatal to the Aetolians, whose ambassadors shortly afterwards appeared in Rome to learn the conditions under which Rome would grant them peace. They were very ungraciously received, and were hardly allowed to speak in the senate. Denounced on all sides, and urged to confess their guilt, they endeavoured to plead their former services in mitigation of their punishment; but they were told they must either submit unconditionally to the decision of the senate, or pay at once a thousand talents, and enter into an offensive and defensive alliance with Rome. On their begging to be informed how the first alternative was to be understood, they received no decisive answer, and were ordered to leave the city of Rome on that very day, and Italy within a fortnight.

The decisive campaign against Antiochus was now in prospect. At the consular comitia the influence of the house of Scipio preponderated and secured the election of Lucius Cornelius Scipio, and of Caius Laelius, the faithful adherent of the Scipios, for the consulship for the ensuing year 190 BC. Lucius Scipio had nothing to recommend him, but that he was the brother of Publius Scipio, the conqueror of Zama. He was distinguished neither as a statesman nor as a soldier. In order, therefore, to secure for the house of Scipio the glory and the profit which were to be expected from the victorious termination of the war against Antiochus, the conqueror of Hannibal offered to accompany his brother as legate, and Laelius, the client of the house of Scipio, voluntarily resigned the chance of obtaining the command of the war in the east. The senate, without resorting to a decision by casting lots, conferred the command on Lucius Scipio. When it became known that Publius Cornelius Scipio would accompany his brother’s army as legate, five thousand old soldiers who had served under him in Spain and Africa came forward to offer themselves as volunteers. The arrangements for carrying on the war were as usual made in the senate. Scipio received, beside the volunteers just mentioned, a reinforcement of eight thousand three hundred men for the army which was in Greece under the command of Acilius Glabrio, and he was instructed, if circumstances permitted, to transfer the war into Asia. In order that Greece might not be left entirely without a military force, ten thousand seven hundred men were sent thither from Bruttium. The troops in which would have crushed the resistance of the Aetolians, and now, after giving them time to recover, they forced them to renew their resistance. They were clearly actuated by different motives at Naupactus and at Rome. At Naupactus they wished to spare the Aetolians, in order to reserve them as a counterpoise to Philip of Macedonia. After the battle of Corycus they no longer thought this necessary, and therefore they determined to compel the Aetolians to unconditional submission.

Sicily were reinforced by two thousand one hundred soldiers levied in the island. Twenty ships and two thousand marines were sent to the fleet in Asia under Aemilius Regillus, fifty new decked vessels were built as a reserve, and provisions were sent in sufficient quantities from Sicily and Sardinia.

Before the consul had arrived in Greece with the rein­forcements, hostilities had again commenced. The Aetolians, driven to despair, fortified the passes of their mountains, and awaited the enemy in their fortresses. The first to be attacked was Lamia, which, immediately after the battle of Thermopylae, Philip of Macedonia had besieged and almost taken, when, by the intercession of the Roman consul, he was compelled to raise the siege. Acilius Glabrio now resumed the attack, and succeeded in taking the town by storm after an obstinate resistance. The second operation ought to have been directed against Naupactus, which in the preceding year had been so hardly pressed and all but forced to surrender. But the mountain pass which led to that place was this time strongly defended, and Glabrio preferred besieging the town of Amphissa. In the meantime his successor, Lucius Scipio, had arrived in Greece with his reinforcements and assumed the command. But not liking to waste his time in Greece, and to expose his troops to an obstinate struggle with the Aetolians, he offered them a truce of six months, through the intercession of the Athenians, so that he might be at liberty to prosecute the war in Asia. Thus the final over­throw of the Aetolians was again postponed for another time. They had no choice, and in their distress they accepted joyfully the short respite, hoping perhaps, though hardly entitled to hope, that owing to some military success of Antiochus, or to the generosity of the Romans, they would finally obtain more favourable terms than unconditional surrender, and the total loss of their independence.

Scipio now took the long and circuitous road leading through Thessaly, Macedonia, and Thrace, towards the Hellespont, where he proposed to cross into Asia. It is surprising that, notwithstanding the immense superiority of the Romans at sea, they do not appear to have thought of avoiding this long march, on which they were exposed to the difficulty of procuring supplies, to the attack of the warlike Thracian tribes, to the fatigue and sickness of the troops, and, finally, to the impediments placed in their way by the towns on the Hellespont, which were strongly fortified by Antiochus. One would have thought the way across the Aegean Sea would have been preferred, even from the motive of gaining time. The long march of Scipio to the Hellespont and Asia Minor could not take less than six months. It reminds us almost of the march of Hannibal from Spain across the Pyrenees and the Alps; and so little do we really understand of the conditions of life in the ancient world, that we cannot say with any degree of certainty why this route was taken. Was it the want of transport ships, or the fear of the voyage, or was it simply custom which caused a land route to be preferred in all cases, except where a route by sea was absolutely unavoidable? We are not able to decide this, and must simply relate the fact, without attempting to explain it.

The march to the Hellespont would not have been safe, if the Roman general had not been able to trust to the loyalty, and to rely on the support of the Macedonians. Scipio may have been conscious that Philip had not been treated quite fairly by his predecessor, and he was not without anxiety with regard to the king’s present conduct. But Philip was throughout loyal, and even zealous in the service of the Romans. On the march through his territory, and further on through Thrace, he opened the road for the legions, built bridges for them, and supplied them with provisions and necessaries of all kinds, so that they reached the Hellespont without meeting with any considerable obstructions.

Antiochus had spent the winter in collecting troops, and preparing himself for the prosecution of the war. If at the commencement he had cherished the hope that the Romans would be satisfied with having driven him out of Europe, and that they would give up the idea of attacking him in Asia, he soon found that he was deceived. He was now inclined to adopt Hannibal’s opinion, that the war ought to have been carried on in Italy. But it was too late to think of that now, when the Roman navy was blockading his ports, and the Roman army was on its march towards the Hellespont. He sent Hannibal to Phoenicia to urge his Punic countrymen to fit out new ships. At the same time he assembled reinforcements from all sides, and attacked the king of Pergamum, in order, if possible, to crush him before the arrival of the Romans.

The Greek towns in Asia Minor were now all in a state of fermentation. The aristocratic party in them set their hopes on the Romans, who were advancing as the deliverers of the Greeks. The common people were attached to the king of Syria. Even in Phocaea, where a portion of the Roman fleet wintered, the two hostile parties were in arms against each other, and when the Romans left the port of the town, which they had completely drained, the populace gained the upper hand. Smyrna, however, which had so long defied Antiochus, with Mitylene, Erythrae, Cyme, and other towns, received the Romans as friends.

In the early spring a portion of the Roman and Pergamenian fleets sailed northwards towards the Hellespont, to remove the obstacles which prevented the legions from crossing. Antiochus had possession of the two fortified towns of Sestos and Abydos, on the narrowest part of the Hellespont, the usual and most convenient place of crossing. It does not seem that these two towns were furnished with more than the ordinary means of defence. Sestos surrendered at once to the Romans. Abydos, however, offered a stout resistance, and had to be besieged in due form.

While the Roman and Pergamenian fleets were thus occupied in the north of the Aegean Sea, the naval contingent of the Rhodians, under the command of Pausistratus, was watching the Syrian fleet, which had retired to the harbour of Ephesus after its defeat at Corycus in the preceding autumn. Pausistratus, with his thirty-six ships, was not a match for the hostile fleet which had been strengthened during the winter; but he was expecting no attack, especially as Polyxenidas, the Syrian admiral, who was his countryman and had been banished from Rhodes, had made him believe that, in order to facilitate his return to his beloved country, he would sacrifice the Syrian fleet. Thus deluded, and feeling quite secure, Pausistratus allowed himself to be surprised and suffered a disastrous defeat. Only five ships escaped, twenty were taken, and Pausistratus himself perished. Upon this news Samos, Phocaea, Cyme, Teos, and other towns again abandoned the Roman side.

The Romans might easily have averted this disaster, if they had only strengthened the Rhodian contingent by that portion of their fleet which lay on the coast at Canae, unemployed as if it were midwinter. Livius now raised the siege of Abydos, though the garrison was already negotiating about the conditions of a capitulation, proceeded in all haste from the Hellespont to Canae, ordered the ships immediately out to sea, and took up a position at Samos. Here, joined by a new Rhodian squadron of twenty ships, he vainly offered battle to the Syrian admiral. Polyxenidas prudently kept within the safe harbour of Ephesus, and when a portion of the Roman fleet tried to effect a landing, drove them back to their ships with great loss. There was nothing left for Livius but to return with his fleet to Samos, and there to keep himself in readiness for action. His position was embar­assed by the difficulty of procuring provisions. The maritime police, exercised by the Romans, appears in a most unfavourable light, when we hear that a Lacedaemonian pirate, named Hybristas, seized the ships which were carrying provisions to the Roman magazine at Chios. Livius was compelled to send out a small squadron under the Rhodian Epicrates, to clear the sea of these pirates near the island of Cephallenia. Epicrates met in the Piraeus the praetor, Aemilius Regillus, who, on receiving the news of the defeat of the Rhodians, had hurried to the theatre of war to take the command of the fleet. Instead of sanctioning the operations against the pirates the new admiral took the Rhodian squadron with him back to Samos, and having assumed the command of the combined fleets, held a general council of war to decide what was to be done under the present circumstances.

The task of the allied fleet was threefold. The first and foremost was to watch, or, if possible, to beat the principal Syrian armament, now safe in the harbour of Ephesus under the command of Polyxenidas; for if this fleet forced its way out, the communication of the Romans with Greece and Italy was endangered. The second object to be secured was to make preparations for the crossing of the Roman land army over the Hellespont, and to support it. Lastly, it was necessary to adopt measures to detain the new Syrian squadron, which Hannibal was ordered to bring from Phoenicia, and to prevent its union with the main fleet. In the last operation nobody was so much interested as the Rhodians, whose possessions on their own island and on the opposite coast of Asia Minor, were most exposed to an attack coming from the south. Hence, on the advice of Epicrates, a squadron of eight vessels under Caius Livius, who had just retired from the supreme command, was sent to Patara, a town on the coast of Lycia, opposite Rhodes, in order, if possible, to take that place, and thus to bar the passage of the Phoenician fleet.

The plan of taking Patara failed, and Livius, who had disapproved of the whole expedition, returned straight to Italy. Vexed with the failure of this his first enterprise, Aemilius now set sail with his whole fleet for Patara. But the discontent among his officers soon convinced him that this mode of carrying on the war more under the influence of passion than of reason was not likely to lead to success. He therefore stopped half-way, and returned to Samos, in order not to lose sight of the principal object of the campaign. The task of keeping in check the Phoenician fleet was left to the Rhodians, who, as experience showed, were fully equal to it.

With the advance of summer the Roman land army proceeded slowly, but without interruptions, from Greece to Thessaly, from Thessaly to Macedonia, in the direction approach of Thrace and the Hellespont. The danger, the possibility of which Antiochus at first refused to acknowledge, army, was thus approaching nearer and nearer.

He now made preparations for defence on a larger scale, and hurried about in Asia Minor from place to place with aimless impatience, attacking one ally of the Romans after another in the hope of overthrowing them before the arrival of the legions. The various maritime towns, which, as we have seen, wavered in their sympathies between Antiochus and the Romans, were all exposed to the attacks of the king; but nowhere did he act with any vigour or perseverance; nowhere did he undertake a regular siege. He indulged in the vain hope that by devastating the open country he could enforce the submission of the harassed towns.

His chief object was to capture Pergamum, the king of which had always been a most zealous and faithful friend of the Romans. Antiochus and his son Seleucus appeared before the town with a body of four thousand Galatian mercenaries, who, although good hands at plundering, were ill adapted for a regular attack upon a well-fortified city, and, of course, accomplished nothing but what might have been expected from the irregular war­fare of barbarians. Pergamum was not even completely blockaded. Day after day a band of undisciplined Asiatic mercenaries advanced up to the town to keep the defenders on the alert within the walls, whilst the rest of the investing army was occupied in plundering and laying waste the surrounding country. At length a reinforcement of one thousand foot and one hundred horse, which the Achaean league had sent to Eumenes, succeeded in slipping into the hard-pressed town. Under their com­mander Diophanes, a soldier from the school of Philopoemen, they soon changed the aspect of affairs. Making two sallies, they defeated the undisciplined hordes of the Galatians under the very walls of the town, pursued them a great distance, and thus convinced Antiochus that he had not the slightest prospect of reducing Pergamum except by a regular siege.

Whilst these skirmishes were going on under the walls of Pergamum, the Roman fleet had sailed from Samos to Elaea, the port of Pergamum. The near approach of the Roman armament, in conjunction with the failure of the attack directed against the Pergamenian capital, induced Antiochus to entertain ideas of peace. He tried to commence negotiations with Aemilius, but found that in the absence of the consul he neither could nor would receive any overtures. Moreover, Eumenes was opposed to any reconciliation between Rome and Antiochus, being persuaded that no peace would be really advantageous to himself which was concluded before the total overthrow of the king of Syria. The negotiations, therefore, led to nothing. Antiochus continued as before to attack one town or to defend another from Roman attacks. He also strengthened Lysimachia and other places near the Hellespont, in order to detain the Roman land army in that neighbourhood. On the other side, Eumenes also directed his attention to this spot, and sailed with a Pergamenian fleet to the Hellespont, in order to assist the Romans in crossing into Asia. Aemilius returned to his station near Samos, to watch the Syrian fleet, which still kept within the harbour of Ephesus; but he sent a squadron of fifteen ships, most of them Rhodian, southwards, to be joined by twenty-three more Rhodian ships, for the purpose of opposing the Phoenician fleet, which was now advancing, under the command of Hannibal and Apollonius. The battle took place at Sida, on the coast of Pamphylia, to the east of the mouth of the river Eurymedon, which falls into the sea below the town of Aspendus. The Rhodians had thirty-two quadriremes and four triremes. The fleet of the king of Syria had about the same number of ships, but the ships were of larger size. There were among them three of seven tiers of oars and four of six tiers. The total number of ships amounted to thirty-seven; but the Phoenician ships were not a match for the Rhodian, which were better built and better manned. This superiority at once decided the battle. The Phoenician line was broken, and their unwieldy vessels, attacked on all sides by the agile Rhodians, took to flight without offering an obstinate resistance. Their loss was slight, because the Rhodians did not follow up their advantage. Only one Phoenician vessel, of seven tiers of oars, fell into the hands of the victors, who returned to Rhodes less elated by their victory than disappointed by its smallness. The cause of this want of energy on their part was never fully ascertained though the question was angrily debated, and gave rise to much irritation. Whether it was that the ship of the admiral, Eudamus, had been disabled in the battle, and was compelled to stay behind, or whether the captains commanding under him did not do their duty, or whether the sailors were suffering from sickness and unequal to their work, we know not. Perhaps we may suppose that Hannibal, who here fought a naval battle for the first time, is entitled to the credit of having directed the retreat towards the coast, whither the Rhodian ships did not venture to follow. Though the great Punic captain may have done much to avoid complete disaster, we cannot without painful sympathy witness a spectacle in which the conqueror of Canute acted the part of an inferior officer in the service of a foreign potentate, and was reduced to be the colleague of an Apollonius. It is true he was only compelled to retreat, not entirely defeated; but he felt that he was not strong enough to attack the Rhodian fleet a second time. The passage was blocked up, and the two Syrian squadrons were prevented from joining.

During the whole of the summer the principal Syrian fleet had remained inactive in the port of Ephesus, because Polyxenidas, the admiral, had not felt confident enough in his strength to meet the combined naval forces of the Romans, Pergamenians, and Rhodians. But when towards the end of August the Pergamenian squadron had sailed to the Hellespont, and that of Rhodes to Lycia, he thought the time had come when he might venture to attack the Roman fleet, which alone was left behind. King Antiochus himself proceeded to Ephesus to concert plans for the operation with Polyxenidas. It was resolved to make an attack by land on Notium, a town close to Ephesus, which had taken the Roman side in the hope, that the Romans, hearing of the danger of their allies, would sail from Samos to Notium to protect the place, and that they could be compelled to accept battle.

Aemilius, the Roman admiral, had long been tired of remaining inactive at Samos, and would have been glad to sail to the Hellespont, where a great crisis was expected; but the Rhodian admiral, Eudamus, who, after the battle of Sida, had again joined the Roman fleet with  the Rhodian squadron, persuaded him to remain, so that he might protect Notium, and at the same time keep the hostile fleet in check. This led to a second encounter with the Syrian fleet near the promontory of Myonnesus, not far from Corycus, where in the former battle Polyxenidas had been defeated.

Aemilius had obtained provisions for his fleet in the island of Chios, and then sailed to the little town of Teos, to take in a supply of wine. On this occasion the Roman crews behaved in a very disorderly manner, and a great portion of them had gone on land. The whole fleet had entered the port of Teos, the entrance of which was so narrow that only one ship could pass through at a time. The attention of Aemilius having been directed to this circumstance by the Rhodian Eudamus, he ordered the fleet to be stationed in the open roadstead before the town. This proved a fortunate precaution. Polyxenidas, learning the movements of the Romans, had stood out to sea, hoping to surprise their fleet in the narrow port, and thus to repeat the operation which had been successful against the Rhodians at Samos. He had approached unperceived the small island of Macris, near the promontory of Myonnesus, when the alarm was given in the Roman fleet, and the crews were in the greatest haste and confusion called back from the land, and had only just time to get on board their ships. This time the Syrians were superior to the allies in numbers, having eighty-nine against fifty-eight Roman and twenty-two Rhodian vessels. But the Roman vessels were better manned, and the Rhodian were constructed for greater speed than the Syrian ships. In addition to this, the Rhodians had adopted a new mode of attack, which terrified and disordered their enemies. On both sides of their bows they had fastened long horizontal poles, at the ends of which were attached pans with burning pitch. With these fire-ships they boldly advanced on the enemy, and threw their line of battle into confusion. A complete and brilliant victory was the result. Though Ephesus was very near, and the wind was favourable to the defeated Syrians, scarcely half of their ships regained the port; thirteen were taken, twenty-nine were sunk or burnt. The loss of the allies was insignificant. Only two Rhodian vessels were sunk and one Rhodian ship was taken.

The victory of Myonnesus, the fourth naval battle in the course of the year, can rank with the great battles which the Romans fought in the first war with the Carthaginians. It not only put an end to the hostilities by sea, but had a decided influence also on the progress of the war by land. Antiochus was so stunned by the news, that he lost all confidence and self-possession. He at once raised the siege of Notium, and (what was of far more importance) withdrew the garrison and the whole body of inhabitants from Lysimachia, thus giving up the defence of the Chersonesus and of the Hellespont. The order was given and executed with such inconsiderate haste, that no measures were taken to remove, or at least to destroy, the magazines collected in Lysimachia. This town, therefore, which had been restored and colonised by Antiochus with great pains, instead of delaying the march of the Romans, and of detaining them in the inhospitable region of Thrace till the approach of winter, supplied the Roman army with ample provisions and furnished good shelter, so that the troops could recover themselves from their fatigues before they crossed into Asia with the aid of the fleet, which was now at their disposal.

Immediately after the battle of Myonnesus Aemilius had despatched a squadron of thirty vessels to facilitate the passage of the Hellespont. With the rest of his fleet he sailed to Phocaea, in order to punish this town for its defection to Antiochus. The Phocaeans offered a brave resistance; but when they were left without the prospect of support from Antiochus they were at last compelled to accept the terms of capitulation offered by Aemilius. They were promised that they should suffer no violence, and that they should resume their former position as allies of the Roman people. But on this occasion it was shown again that Roman generals were unable to control their soldiers when their object was to keep them from plundering. In defiance of the express orders of Aemilius, the troops broke open the houses and ransacked them, just as if the town had been taken by storm. How they were accustomed to act on such occasions has been reported in detail by Polybius. In the first rage and excitement the soldiers spared no living creature, cutting to pieces without distinction men, women and children, nay even animals. These horrors have been discreetly veiled by Polybius. He passes them over in silence, contenting himself by saying that the praetor endeavoured to save at least the lives of the Phocaeans from the rage of the soldiers. They were allowed to retain their freedom and their ransacked town, in which Aemilius took up his winter quarters.

During these proceedings Antiochus remained inactive at Sardes. He lost all hope and courage when he saw one plan after another miscarry. Prusias, too, the king of Bithynia, declared in favour of the Romans, who then leisurely effected the passage of the Hellespont, and stood now on Asiatic ground. Antiochus again thought of concluding peace. So erroneous was his notion of the policy and character of the Romans, that he flattered himself he could induce them to advance no further if he declared his readiness to accept the conditions which they had offered at the beginning of the war. He sent as his agent Heraclides of Byzantium into the Roman camp on the Hellespont, offering to recognise the independence of the three cities, Smyrna, Lampsacus, and Alexandria Troas, and, if it should be desired, also of the other cities in Asia Minor which had taken the part of Rome. He, moreover, undertook to pay one half of the expenses of the war, and to resign those Thracian cities which he had just been compelled to evacuate. He had great confidence, it seems, in the influence of the powerful Publius Scipio, whose gratitude and friendship he was bent on gaining. Heraclides had a special commission to him of a private and very delicate nature. It appears that a son of Scipio’s had been made prisoner in the early part of the war. Antiochus had treated him very kindly, and now promised his father to send him back without a ransom, if in return Scipio would assist him in his negotiations for peace. It appears that even money was promised, as if Scipio could lower himself so much as to accept bribes from an enemy of the republic. Scipio thanked the king for the release of his son, and as if to return the kindness advised him at once to make peace on the conditions which would be offered to him. These conditions, of course, could be no longer the same as those which had been proposed when the legions were still on their march to the Hellespont. Scipio asked for the payment of the whole of the war expenses, and for the surrender of all countries in Asia Minor this side the Taurus range.

Such were the terms of peace which Heraclides brought back to Sardes. The king was of opinion that worse terms could not be accepted even in case of a total defeat, and therefore, resolved to try once more the fortune of war. Having neglected to oppose the Romans in Thrace, and having allowed them to pass the Hellespont without opposition, and to concentrate their forces in Asia Minor, where the kingdom of Pergamum was a basis for their further operations, he ought to have tried to draw them into the interior of the country, to tire them out with long marches, and to expose them to the difficulties of a prolonged campaign in a country drained of its resources. But he was so confused and bewildered that he adopted precisely that plan which was most favourable to his enemies. He took up his position in a strongly fortified camp behind the river Phrygius, near Magnesia, on the slope of Mount Sipylus, with the intention of making a final stand against the further advance of the Romans.

The Roman army, as we have seen, had reached the Hellespont without opposition, and had crossed it without difficulty. The consul then allowed his troops some time of repose, during which the army was joined by all those who had not been able to keep up on the march. As it happened to be the time for the festival of the Salians, Publius Scipio, who belonged to the fraternity of the Salian priests, remained behind; for the sacred law required that no priest should leave the place where he might happen to be during the festive period of thirty days. Having rejoined the army on the Asiatic side of the straits, Scipio, as we have related above, conferred with Heraclides, the king’s minister, about terms of peace. Immediately after this he was taken ill, and was obliged to remain at Elaea, the port of Pergamum, to wait for his recovery. To this place Antiochus, according to his promise, sent him his son, and received as a return gift the advice not to accept battle before Publius Scipio should again be with the army. What the meaning of this advice may have been is somewhat doubtful. Antiochus, it appears, could not interpret it in any other way than as a promise that Scipio would prevent a battle from resulting in the entire defeat of the Syrian army. But how could a Roman citizen make such a promise to an enemy ? or even hint at the probability of it ? Or is it possible that Scipio, knowing the incapacity of his brother, tried by this means to put off the decisive battle in order to destroy the hostile army the more surely, as soon as his health would permit him to conduct the operations himself? In the former case, we should have to accuse the greatest Roman general of a crime of which the worst man in his army was incapable. In the latter case, he appears liable to the charge of discreditable double-dealing and overreaching an enemy who, with regard to himself, at least, had been open and generous. If such perfidious conduct was at that time looked upon as a legitimate stratagem, the individual citizen who might avail himself of it cannot be blamed severely, whatever we may be inclined to think of the public feeling, and the general conscientiousness of a nation that sanctioned it.

After having crossed the Hellespont the Roman army had entered upon ground which to every Roman was, to some extent, sacred, as the original home from which Tineas had started to settle in the plain of Latium. The seed which had been sown on the banks of the Tiber had grown to such a prodigious and goodly tree, that its extended branches cast a shadow even on the old site of Ilium. For the first time an army of Romans was drawn up in the plains of the Scamander, where the mythical ancestors of their race had fought with Achilles. We should like to know whether Scipio was under the spell of that enthusiasm which many years before had prompted Alexander the Great to celebrate funeral rites in this place, in honour of the ancient heroes. We cannot believe it; for in spite of the official recognition in Borne of the legend of Aeneas, and in spite of the growing popularity of the heroic poetry of Greece, the Italians had not enough of the true spirit of poetry to feel real enthusiasm for the grand conceptions of the Homeric age. The Ilians, an insignificant community, living near the spot where the Ilium of old had stood and boasting of belonging to the race of the ancient Trojans, welcomed with delight their mighty descendants, and the Romans, it is said, were pleased to recognise their relationship. The consul went up to the citadel of the town, and offered sacrifices to Athene, the protecting goddess, but if we may judge from the style of Livy’s narrative, the whole affair was a mere empty formality, in which neither the heart nor the imagination of the persons concerned was engaged.

From Troas the Roman army marched to the immediate vicinity of Pergamum. During the absence of Publius Scipio, who lay ill at Elaea, his brother Lucius had for his military adviser Cneius Domitius, apparently an able and experienced officer. Winter was approaching. It was desirable that the Romans should make use of what remained of the favourable season to deal, if possible, a vigorous blow, and thus to prevent the prolongation of the campaign into another year. Antiochus, by concentrating the whole of his force on one point, had made it possible for the Romans to fight a decisive battle. Domitius, therefore, without delay, marched straight upon the Syrian position, crossed the small river Phrygius, which joins the Hermus not far from Magnesia, and encamped close to the enemy. For some time Antiochus declined to accept battle, but fluctuating as usual between two decisions, he at last made up his mind to fight, when Domitius was approaching nearer and nearer, and challenged him to come out of his entrenchments. Thus the memorable battle of Magnesia on Mount Sipylus was brought about late in the autumn of 190 BC, a battle which was to decide the fate of the Syrian empire, as the battles of Zama and of Cynoscephalae had decided the fate of Carthage and Macedonia.

The Roman army numbered about thirty thousand men, and was made up of four legions, with a few thousand Achaean, Macedonian, and Pergamenian auxiliaries. Besides these there were Cretan, Illyrian, and Thracian mercenaries, and sixteen Libyan elephants, which, however, were not employed in the battle, as they seemed unfit to be matched against the larger and more spirited Indian elephants, of which Antiochus mustered fifty-four. The Syrian army, as we are informed by Livy, numbered seventy thousand men, of whom not less than twelve thousand were horse. The elite of the infantry composed the phalanx, sixteen thousand men strong, to which Antiochus, to make it irresistible, had given double its usual depth. It consisted of ten solid squares, each fifty men in rank, and thirty-two men in file, resembling so many living walls. In thus condensing his heavy armed infantry, Antiochus made the same mistake which the Romans had committed at Cannae. He contracted his front and massed his best troops so as to form an unwieldy body, unable to come to the assistance of the light troops, and liable to be out­flanked and attacked in the rear, in case the light troops should be first defeated. By the side and in front of the phalanx Antiochus drew up a heterogeneous mass of his various Asiatic contingents and several bodies of mercenaries, Gallic and Cappadocian infantry, heavy armed horsemen, archers on foot and on horseback, slingers, various kinds of light armed troops, and his body-guard, distinguished by their silver shields. On both flanks were stationed the elephants, and in front of the whole line were chariots with scythes projecting, and Arabs mounted on dromedaries, armed with bows and arrows and with swords of enormous length. The motley armaments of this host were surpassed by the variety of nations of which it consisted. It reminds us of those times when the kings of Persia led all the nations of their vast empire, each in its own peculiar dress and arms, against the Greeks and Macedonians, trusting to numbers alone. And, indeed, the various Graeco-Macedonian kingdoms and more particularly the kingdom of Syria under the Seleucidae, had relapsed into the condition of the old despotic empires of Asia. It was again a contest between the effeminate East and the vigorous and rising countries of the West; and again the torpid mass succumbed to youthful strength.

How the Romans gained the battle of Magnesia, we do not know with any degree of certainty. The description which Livy and Appian have preserved from the lost narrative of Polybius will barely allow us to sketch some vague outlines. It appears that the Syrian army was seized by a panic on the left wing, when the useless chariots armed with scythes were attacked by Pergamenian archers, thrown into confusion, and in their disorderly flight broke through the ranks drawn up behind them. The various bodies of the cowardly Syrians, Phrygians, Lydians, Carians, Cilicians, Pisidians, Pamphylians, Elyineans, Cyrtians, and numerous other tribes, were broken up into a confused mass and driven upon the phalanx, which alone kept its ground. But this, too, was obliged to retreat when the Syrian elephants tore up its ranks.

While thus the left wing and the centre of the Syrians were forced back, without having offered any serious resistance, Antiochus, who commanded the right wing, had succeeded with his body-guard, aided by Cretans and Dahians, in routing a cavalry division of the Romans, which was drawn up between the Roman left wing and the river Phrygius. He actually advanced as far as the Roman camp. But here he was stopped by the cohorts which defended the camp, and upon the arrival of other Roman troops he was compelled to retreat. He now beheld the whole of his army in full flight, closely pursued by the victorious enemy. Giving up all hopes of further resistance, he rode off straight to Sardes. After a feeble attempt to defend their camp, the routed Syrians were enclosed on all sides, and destroyed like game at a battue. It is said that fifty thousand foot soldiers and three thousand horsemen were on that day killed, or rather slaughtered; for they cannot have offered any resistance, as in the whole battle the Pergamenians lost only twenty-five men and the Romans barely more than three hundred. The overthrow of the great king of Asia was effected at even a smaller cost than the defeat of Philip at Cynoscephalae, and it was far more complete. The victory was decided by the very first onset of the allied troops, before the Roman legions had time to advance to the attack, and it was gained in the absence of that man who, as the conqueror of Hannibal, had the reputation of being the best general of Rome. Publius Cornelius Scipio was obliged to leave the glory of the victory to his incapable brother, or rather to his brother’s adviser, Cneius Domitius. But perhaps we shall not err in supposing that the plan of the campaign was his work, and that he displayed no less enterprise and ability in this Asiatic expedition than on his expedition to New Carthage and Africa.

By the battle of Magnesia the war was not only decided, but brought to an end. The impression produced by the sudden and total defeat of the king was such that it entirely destroyed his prestige in the eyes of the Asiatic nations accustomed to adore power and to cringe to power alone. The star of the successors of Alexander the Great paled in proportion as that of Rome rose to the ascendant. One town after another surrendered to the victors, and implored them for mercy; among them Thyatira, Tralles, the two Magnesias, one on the Sipylus, the other on the Maeander, and even Sardes, the capital of the satrapy of Asia Minor. Polyxenidas, the admiral of the Syrian fleet, did not think himself any longer safe in the port of Ephesus. He sailed to Patara in Lycia, but, for fear of the Rhodians, abandoned his ships, and with his crews continued his flight to Syria by land. The allied forces by land and by sea advanced without opposition, and the Roman head­quarters were soon after the battle removed to Sardes, where Publius Scipio, who had meanwhile recovered from his sickness, rejoined the army.

To the same place Antiochus soon after sent messengers to ask in the most humble terms for peace at any price. The Roman answer had been determined upon beforehand. Scipio did not ask for more than he had stipulated for in the last negotiations which had taken place before the battle of Magnesia was fought. Antiochus had no alternative left but to accept as the basis for a treaty of peace the terms which the Romans proposed. All hostilities were consequently suspended at once. The winter had by this time set in. Whilst the Roman army went into winter quarters at Ephesus, Tralles, and Magnesia on the Maeander, ambassadors were sent to Rome by Antiochus, Eumenes, the Rhodians, and almost all the cities of Asia Minor, each endeavouring to obtain the best possible terms from the men who had in their hands the power of settling the affairs of the Eastern world. It must have been a most curious spectacle for the citizens of Rome to see their Forum and the steps and the interior of the senate-house crowded with foreign ambassadors, who were eager to obtain, not only from the magistrates and senators, but from every one of the people, kind words and promises of protection, and who most probably were not slow in trying the persuasion of words, and things more powerful than words, to which Roman pride was no longer inaccessible. Where such momentous questions were decided as the liberties and rights of many wealthy towns, the enlargement of the territory of such states as Pergamum and Rhodes, and the payment of thousands of talents, we may easily imagine that the indirect influence of money made itself felt. All acts of direct bribery are necessarily kept most carefully secret, and are consequently not easily noticed by the historian; but if one single case can be proved, we may infer that under circumstances like the present, it was not the only one. We know that Lucius Scipio himself was some years afterwards accused of having embezzled large sums of money. Whether he was guilty or not, is a question which we are unable to decide. But even if his innocence had been clearly proved, we must infer from the fact of the accusation alone that his contemporaries did not look upon an act of bribery and corruption as something unheard of and impossible. It is well known how accessible the Romans were to bribes not a very long time after. The state of things which induced Jugurtha to declare that the whole of Rome was venal provided a purchaser could be found, was surely not the result of a sudden change in the public morality of the people. If all the Romans had been as upright and honest as Cato, they might have resisted the temptations to which they were now exposed. But we know that men like Cato were rare exceptions, and it is difficult to imagine stronger temptations than those offered on this occasion, when large and wealthy states were vying with each other to secure the favour of the leading men of Rome.

The position which Rome occupied with regard to her clients is sufficiently characterised by the humble and almost abject tone in which the latter thought proper to address the all-powerful senate. This tone is pervaded by the spirit of Oriental slavery and adulation, which must, on the whole, have been faithfully represented by the Roman annalists, although, perhaps, these writers, who saw in it a glorification of Rome, were inclined not to abate but to exaggerate it.

Eumenes, the sovereign of the small kingdom of Pergamum, had played in Asia the part which Hiero had taken in the Sicilian war, and Masinissa in the latter period of the war with Hannibal. He had been staunch and faithful to Rome, and had contributed not a little to the defeat, first, of Philip of Macedonia, and then to that of the king of Syria. Now the time was come in which he could expect his reward. The republic of Rhodes was in a similar position. Having rendered equally important services, it looked forward now to a full compensation. But the interests of these two states were to some extent conflicting. Apart from the enlargement of territory which both wished for, and which Rome had it in her power to grant them to their full satisfaction out of the immense territory conquered in the war, they had special wishes of an opposite tendency with regard to the Greek states of Asia Minor, which were now released from the Syrian dominion. Eumenes hoped to obtain these cities for himself: Rhodes, on the other hand, looked upon their independence as a barrier against the extension of monarchical government in Asia, and as a condition for the development of her trade.

The Roman senate was obliged to decide between two allies of equal importance and deserts. They could not satisfy one without offending the other, and yet a decision was absolutely necessary. The Roman republic, which had claimed to be the protector and deliverer of the Greeks, could not for very shame rescue a town like Miletus from the dominion of Antiochus in order to hand it over to Eumenes. It would have been still less honourable to curtail the independence of those which, like Smyrna and Lampsacus, had boldly and successfully resisted all the attacks of the king. No towns could possibly be made to suffer degradation or punishment by being incorporated in the Pergamenian kingdom, unless they had been guilty of treason or had taken the part of Antiochus during the war. These views were recognised in principle by the senate, and a commission of ten members was sent out to examine in detail the claims of every town, and to decide their fate accordingly. Eumenes, though sorely disappointed, was obliged to submit to this decision; nor had he in truth cause to complain, for he rose suddenly from the precarious position of a fortunate adventurer and a petty potentate to that of the most powerful prince of Asia Minor, and he became the rival of the king of Syria himself.

The decisions made by the ten ambassadors, in compliance with the order of the senate, for the final settlement of the conditions of peace, and for the regulation of the affairs of Asia, were substantially the following. The first and most essential of all was the limitation of the kingdom of Syria to that part of Asia which lay beyond the Taurus range. In drawing the boundary line, however, the Roman commissioners seemed to have been so ignorant of the geographical features of Asia, or else so careless, that a dispute could afterwards arise, whether Pamphylia was to be considered as on this side or on the further side of the boundary, and as appertaining to the kingdom of Antiochus or of Eumenes, a question settled ultimately in favour of the latter. Some of the territorial arrangements, it is true, were more nominal than real; for in some cases the king of Syria did not give up what he actually possessed, but what he had only claimed, and had never been able fully to incorporate with his kingdom. Nevertheless, the loss was considerable enough to degrade Syria for ever from the rank of the first great power in Asia, and to weaken it so effectually that, as we shall soon see, the son of Antiochus the Great was obliged to humble himself like a reprimanded menial before the raised stick of a Roman ambassador. Nor was Antiochus allowed to retain without limitation the sovereignty of those countries which remained to him. He was obliged to give up his elephants of war, to reduce his fleet to the number of ten ships, and to promise not to allow his armed vessels to sail further  west than Calycadnus, in Cilicia, nor to attack any one of the Greek islands. In addition to these permanent reductions of his former power, he had to submit to the payment of a war indemnity, which even the wealthy country of Syria felt to be a heavy burden. He had to pay to the Romans the sum of fifteen thousand talents, part to be furnished at once, part in annual payments during twelve years to come, and a further sum of five hundred talents to Eumenes. To insure the execution of these terms, Antiochus gave twenty hostages, and promised, moreover, to give up Hannibal and four other enemies of the Reman people who had served him, ‘provided it were in his power to do so’. This last clause, which made it possible to evade the most humiliating and disgraceful concession, was, as we would fain believe, inserted into the treaty of peace at the instigation of Publius Cornelius Scipio, who may have thought it beneath his dignity to play the part of executioner of his great opponent. He ceded this part to no less a man than Flamininus, the ‘liberator’ of Greece, who devoted himself to it a few years later with the utmost zeal.

The vast territories which Antiochus had lost through his presumptuous policy, were made use of by the Roman commissioners chiefly to enlarge the Pergamenian kingdom. Eumenes obtained, first, the Syrian possessions on the Thracian Chersonesus; and, secondly, all the country of Asia Minor as far east as the river Halys, and as far south as the Taurus, with the exception of the Greek cities, which were to remain free, of the possessions of Prusias of Bithynia, of a few districts belonging to the Galatians, and of the territories of Rhodes in Lycia and Caria. By this aggrandisement the Pergamenian kingdom was enabled to protect the Roman interests on the one side against Syria, and on the other against Macedonia. Care was taken, however, that the king of Pergamum should not easily become so independent as to forget that he was a client of Rome. For, besides the great neighbouring kingdoms of Macedonia and Syria, Rome allowed the continuance of several smaller states in Asia, such as Bithynia, Cappadocia, greater and lesser Armenia, and even the robber state of the Galatians; and apart from this, the continued independence of the flourishing commercial towns of the Greeks in every direction was calculated to restrain the ambition, and to control the liberty of action, of the Pergamenian kings.

In the regulation of these affairs the senatorial commission had a task which required time and patience.

Until every town and every state should have received its due, the treaty of peace could not be ratified, nor the Roman army withdrawn from Asia. In the course of the winter 190-189 BC, that army was even reinforced by twelve thousand six hundred men, one-third of whom were Roman citizens and two-thirds Italian allies. At the same time supplies of corn were sent to the east from Sicily and Sardinia. Nor was the Roman fleet recalled.

Thus it happened that in the year 189 BC considerable military forces were stationed on the east side of the Aegean Sea without any definite occupation. But the new commanders, who started from Rome in the year 189, were at no loss to find employment for their troops. The proctor Fabius Labeo, who took the command of the fleet, sailed with it to Crete, where the independent townships were, as usual, at war with each other. Fabius, though he had not the shadow of a pretext for interfering in these quarrels, ordered the Cretans in the name of the Roman republic to lay down their arms, and to deliver up to him all the Romans who in the previous wars had been made prisoners, and had been sold as slaves in the island. The Cretans paid little attention to this request. The town of Gortyna alone sent up a number of Roman prisoners. Fabius did not think proper to enforce his demands with the means at his disposal. He sailed back to Ephesus without having drawn the sword, but, nevertheless, had the face to ask, and the good luck to obtain from the senate, the honours of a triumph for this bloodless expedition to Crete.

The consul Manlius Vulso, who commanded the land army, was not content to remain inactive any more than his colleague. He, too, hoped to return from Asia with just claims to a triumph, and to obtain not only glory and honour, but also the material advantages which a distribution or appropriation of rich spoils procured for a victorious general. The war in Asia, it is true, was ended, but a pretext for hostilities might easily be found, if he thought it necessary to take so much trouble. He knew that the Galatians had supplied the army of Antiochus with mercenaries, or at least had allowed him to engage mercenaries in their country. This was evidently a sufficient reason for making war upon them, although neither the senate nor the Roman people had given any instructions for it. At a great distance from Rome a magistrate invested with the imperium was de facto in possession of dictatorial power, and able to act without reference to the wishes of the home government. The senate possessed no means of interfering with his proceedings. If, after the termination of his year of office, he had a chance of justifying his actions, or could boast of military success, he ran no risk whatever in employing as he pleased the military forces of the republic. This abuse of official power had first become apparent during the second Punic war in Spain, where the Scipios had acted as if they were independent sovereigns. It became more and more general in consequence of the extension of the Roman dominions, and of the increasing distances of the theatres of war from Rome, which made it impossible for the central government to control the actions of their generals. It was favoured, moreover, by the continual succession of annual magistrates which prevented the systematic carrying out of a preconceived plan, and suggested to every man placed at the head of the armies to think more of the furtherance of his own interests than of the welfare of the republic.

We need not follow step by step the expedition of Manlius through Asia Minor, for its character can be described in a few words. It was simply a plundering razzia of the commonest sort, and would have been as worthy of the Gauls as it was unworthy of a Roman army. Before Manlius reached that country in the interior of Asia Minor where the Galatians dwelt he laid under contributions, without distinction, a number of native tribes through whose country he passed. Those communities which did not readily submit to pay the contributions imposed were unsparingly plundered. From several places the inhabitants fled into the mountains, and left to the mercy of the invaders what they could not carry with them.—The proceedings of Manlius are characterised by the manner in which he managed to extort a hundred talents from one of the petty native chiefs called Moagetes. On the approach of the Roman army, this chief had endeavoured to conciliate the consul by sending him a golden crown, had appeared before him in the attitude of a suppliant, had implored him to spare his country, and had offered a sum of five-and-twenty talents as a ransom for himself and his people. Manlius overwhelmed him with abuse, and threatened to treat him as an enemy if he did not pay five hundred talents within three days. After a great deal of haggling, it was agreed that he should pay one hundred talents and a supply of corn for the army.

Laden with booty, the Romans at last reached the country of the Galatians, which was the northern part of Central Asia Minor. The Galatians were at this time divided into three tribes. Since their immigration, nearly a century before, they had made themselves conspicuous by their bravery in the armies of the different Asiatic princes, but still more by their adventurous plundering expeditions. Even the great king of Syria had not thought it beneath his dignity to pay them a tribute. Attalus the First, of Pergamum, was the only one who had offered them a successful resistance, and after several years of warfare had driven them back to the river Halys, where they now occupied permanent settlements, and gradually began to apply themselves to peaceful occupations. But their youth continued to serve as mercenaries, and a considerable number of them had fought in the army of Antiochus in the battle of Magnesia. This furnished Manlius with a pretext for attacking them; but his real motive, as we have already hinted, was different. It was generally believed that the Galatians had accumulated great wealth in their country, the proceeds of their numerous plundering expeditions. This it was which allured Manlius. He might think, moreover, that he was especially called upon to make war upon the Gauls, for a Manlius had, in times of old, saved the Capitol, when Gallic warriors had scaled it by night, and another Manlius, surnamed Torquatus, had overcome a Gallic giant in single combat. The king of Pergamum, too, was deeply interested in the punishment of the Galatians, for they were still troublesome neighbours. But a true Roman politician, like Flamininus, would, for this very reason, have been inclined to spare them, as a counterpoise to the enlarged power of the Pergamenian kingdom. The consul Manlius appears to have acted from personal motives in deciding upon the expedition. He paid no attention to the entreaties of the Galatians, who tried to pacify him; nor did he find much difficulty, with his greatly superior force, in overcoming the resistance which the barbarians at last offered, more from despair than from any fair prospect of success.

The Tolistobogians were attacked first. They had retired, with their families and property, into the mountain range of Olympus, and had there entrenched themselves. They were defeated with very little trouble. Many thousands of them were made prisoners, especially women and children, and the camp in which they had heaped up their treasures was plundered. The Tektosagians suffered the same fate. The third tribe, called the Trokmians, fled beyond the river Halys, whither the Roman general did not pursue them. As winter was  approaching, Manlius led back his army, laden with spoil, to take up his winter quarters in the countries near the coast. Meanwhile, the peace negotiations between the Roman ambassadors and Antiochus had been brought to an end, and the complicated affairs of the East had been settled in the manner already described. Nothing was left for Manlius but the formal ratification of the treaty by mutual oaths. This business being finished, lie received from the towns, which he had secured against Galatian invasions, acknowledgments of gratitude, which took the shape, not of empty declarations and votes of thanks, but of heavy golden crowns.

At length the Roman army evacuated Asia. Instead of returning to Italy by sea, Manlius marched along the coast of Thrace to Macedonia and Greece. On this march the army was exposed to the attacks of warlike barbarian tribes. It was impossible for the Romans to march in a compact body. They were encumbered with booty, which prolonged their straggling lines, and at the same time attracted the barbarians. They suffered greatly, and lost a large portion of the booty before they reached the friendly country of Macedonia. In spite of this ignominious termination of the campaign, Manlius demanded and obtained a triumph upon his arrival in Rome. There was, indeed, in the senate a strong opposition to the granting of this triumph. The more honourable among the senators pointed to the dangers to which the state would be exposed if generals were allowed to undertake wars without the sanction of the home government, and if, instead of being punished for such presumption, they were even rewarded. The warning voices were not heeded; but not many years passed before the republic had to suffer from that overweening power of the nobility which had grown with the growth of the Roman dominion.

The End of the Aetolian War.

When, in the spring of 190 BC, Lucius Scipio granted the Aetolians a six months’ truce, in order to be disengaged for the march into Asia, public attention in Rome had watched him with impatience, though not with great anxiety, for since the battle of Thermopylae, Antiochus had ceased to be feared. Nevertheless, great excitement ensued at Rome when the false news was spread that the two Scipios had been treacherously taken prisoners, that thereupon the Roman camp had been stormed, and the whole army annihilated, that the Aetolians had again taken up arms, and were collecting troops in Macedonia, Dardania, and Thrace. The news of the brilliant victory at Magnesia, arriving soon after, completely calmed the public mind with respect to the Asiatic war. On the other hand, it turned out that there was some truth in the rumour concerning the rising of the Aetolians, and that the war with these obstinate mountaineers, which was dragging on for such a length of time, was not yet brought to an end. The Aetolians had indeed again taken up arms, either because they really hoped for or believed in a defeat of the Romans in Asia, or because the demands of unconditional submission made again by the senate drove them to despair. They invaded Athamania and the neighbouring territories which Philip had conquered during the war and had hoped to unite with Macedonia. The inhabitants had rebelled against the Macedonian governors and garrisons, and thus with their aid the Aetolians and king Amynander, who had returned from exile, succeeded in taking one town after another, and defeating Philip, who approached with a force of six thousand men. The army stationed in Aetolia under Cornelius Mammula watched these proceedings without making an effort to prevent them. We cannot help suspecting that the Romans looked without displeasure on the expulsion of Philip from Athamania by the Aetolians. They were thereby saved the trouble of taking from him countries which they had not intended' him to retain, but which, for decency’s sake, they had been obliged to leave to him after he had cleared them of the common enemy. The Aetolians now grew bolder. They took possession of the districts of Amphilochia and Dolopia, and defended them successfully against the Macedonians. But at length the time had come when Rome was forced to settle accounts with them, after the war had twice been interrupted by truces on account of the far more important operations against Antiochus. For now the news arrived of the victory at Magnesia. Rome was at full liberty to arrange the affairs of Greece at her leisure and her pleasure. Marcus Fulvius Nobilior, the consul of the year 189 BC, the colleague of Caius Manlius Vulso, who had been sent to Asia, landed with reinforcements in Apollonia; and now began the third and last period of the war with this bold defiant people, which, in its tenacious struggle against overwhelming numbers, deserves our respect if not our admiration.

The same desperate courage with which the Aetolians had defended Heraclea, Lamia, Naupactus and Larissa, was now shown by them again in the defence of their last stronghold, Ambracia, which Fulvius attacked in union with the Epirots, whilst on every side the enemies of Aetolia availed themselves of the opportunity for ravaging their country. The frontier districts in the north were invaded by Perseus, the son of Philip; those in the west by the Acarnanians, whilst an Illyrian and Achaean fleet appeared in the south, and devastated the coast. Everywhere the Aetolians fought with a decree of courage such as the natives of the highlands on the eastern side of the Adriatic have ever shown. The defenders of Ambracia were indeed worthy forerunners of the heroes of Missolonghi. Ambracia, which had become an important and flourishing town at the time of king Pyrrhus, had been separated from Epirus since the first war between the Romans and Macedonia, and had become a member of the Aetolian confederation. The inhabitants, supported by an Aetolian garrison, now opposed to the vigorous attack of the Romans and Epirots a still more vigorous resistance. When one part of the walls fell under the force of the battering-rams, a fresh barricade appeared behind it, and the work of destruction had to be continued without much prospect of better success. Aetolian reinforcements succeeded in penetrating into the town through the lines of circumvallation, and in a sally of the defenders some of the Roman siege-works were destroyed. The mode of attack was therefore altered. The Romans attempted to enter the town by underground passages. As soon as the besieged perceived this by the accumulated earth, they dug a passage behind the wall, parallel with it, and there listened to the strokes of the enemy’s picks, in order to find the spot towards which the Romans were directing their tunnel. They then worked in this direction, and thus the enemies met under ground, and the struggle  raged in the dark. At length the Aetolians drove the Romans from the tunnel by pushing in a cask filled with feathers, and lighting the feathers, so that the whole place was filled with suffocating smoke. The accurate description of this extraordinary apparatus given by Polybius is of considerable interest for the history of ancient warfare, and throws a favourable light upon the inventive skill of the Aetolians.

Yet however heroically the Ambracians continued the contest, their efforts were in vain; for the Aetolian confederacy at length gave up the hope of being able to resist the enemies who were advancing on all sides, and leaving Ambracia to its fate, they began to negotiate for peace with the consul. Through the mediation of king Amynander of Athamania, who had now made his submission to Rome, a capitulation was concluded. The Aetolian garrison was allowed to withdraw from the town, and the inhabitants were spared; but the numerous masterpieces of Greek sculpture and painting with which the town had been adorned since the times of Pyrrhus, were all transported to Rome.

At the same time the preliminaries of a peace between Rome and the Aetolians were settled with the help of the Rhodian and Athenian ambassadors, and through the intercession of Caius Valerius, the step-brother of the consul Fulvius, and son of that Marcus Valerius Laevinus who, twenty-two years before, had concluded the first alliance between Rome and Aetolia. The conditions of the peace, which were afterwards more accurately defined in Rome, were more favourable to the Aetolians than was to be expected after their complete subjection, and in the irritation which the Romans felt at their conduct before the war, and at the obstinacy with which they had carried it on. The Romans did not even insist on their former demands, and took off one-half of the war contribution. It is true that the Aetolian state was obliged to have the same friends and the same enemies as Rome, i.e. it was made a vassal state of Rome, as Macedonia, Achaia, the remaining Grecian states, Pergamum, Rhodes, Carthage, and Numidia were already in fact, if not in name. With the exception, however, of the right of peace and war, it retained in a somewhat restricted area all the attributes of an independent state. It was arranged that all the towns which the Aetolian confederation had lost since the beginning of the war were to remain separated from it, especially the island of Cephallenia, which the Romans meant to keep for themselves, and which, after an obstinate resistance, they reduced. On the other hand, the Aetolians were probably allowed to keep the frontier districts towards Macedonia, which they had just reconquered from Philip, and it appears certain that Amynander regained possession of Atliamania. Of course these concessions were not made from motives of clemency and forbearance to the obstinate Aetolians, but for the same reasons that formerly operated in the case of Nabis. It was jealousy at the increasing power of Macedonia which determined the Romans to spare the Aetolians; for Philip had lately shown a high degree of energy and ambition. The policy of Rome was directed towards limiting as much as possible Achaia and Macedonia, the two Grecian states which had been employed as auxiliaries in the late war with Antiochus. In order to gain this end, they showed a moderation which the Aetolians had not deserved by their conduct, and which they themselves had not expected.

Troubles in the Peloponnesus.

The union of the whole of the Peloponnesus in the Achaean league, the long-wished-for object of the best patriots and the last hope of a degenerate race, was at length accomplished. Messenia, Elis and Sparta had become members of the league, and a new and better time might now begin, if the Greeks of the Peloponnesus could make up their minds to sacrifice the spirit of petty local patriotism and city-autonomy, the besetting sin of their race, and to submit to a greater and more comprehensive political union. Fate, which had been so prodigal to the Greeks of eminent men, was again propitious to them, and had given them in Philopoemen a leader worthy to rank as a states­man, and still more as a general, with the heroes of past ages. But it was soon apparent that even the experience of long years of trouble was unable to control their intertribal animosity, and that the Greeks had not yet learnt to raise the majesty of a national life above the selfishness of factions and local attachments. The Romans have been charged with having caused the decline and fall of the Greeks, and grave accusations have been brought against them on this ground. It is true the Romans did not honestly wish for the national regeneration of Greece; on the contrary, they fomented internal strife and widened existing divisions. They believed that a powerful Greece was not compatible with the interest of their own state. But, to be candid, we can hardly venture seriously to blame the Roman statesmen for acting according to a policy which has been adhered to from their time to our own, and which, to name but one instance, France has always followed with respect to Italy and Germany. On the other hand, it is evident that even if the Romans had not interfered, the Greeks would never have been able to recover in the second century before our era the ground that they had lost during the three hundred years which preceded it. Considering their incapability for forming a national state, it would undoubtedly have been the best thing for them, if they had all been included in the Macedonian empire, and that result would probably have been achieved if Macedonia had remained what it was under Philip II. But the ill-cemented empire of Alexander, comprising both Greeks and Barbarians, even if it had lasted, was not favourable to a separate and national organization of the Greeks. Afterwards, in the period of the successors of Alexander the Great, the tragedy of Hellenic discord was repeated on a larger scale, and Greece was implicated in distant wars without putting an end to internal dissensions. If the second Macedonian kingdom had been qualified by its organization, or by the character of its rulers to inspire confidence, the energetic Philip V would have been able to solve the problem, and to found a Graeco-Macedonian state. But he failed through his own tyranny and boundless ambition, and himself gave a pretext to the Romans for interfering in Greek affairs. In this state of things emancipation from foreign influence was out of the question, and the best, or at least the wisest friends of the Grecian cause, were those who without hesitation recognized Rome as their protecting power, and who sought to gain in union with Rome at least a moderate degree of local independence, to preserve their honour and dignity, to obtain the great blessing of internal peace, with a prospect of material development as a compensation for the loss of complete freedom and political power. This union with Rome was prevented by the want of moderation shown by the extreme parties, and by the relentless spirit with which the Romans, abusing their superior power, finally drove the ill-treated and maddened Greeks to a hopeless resistance.

The light in which the Romans regarded the freedom and independence which Flamininus had announced with so much pomp in the year 196 BC,, was soon shown in an unmistakeable manner. The senate constituted itself a supreme court of appeal for hearing and judging the innumerable disputes which constantly sprung up among  neighbours and parties in every one of the small Grecian states. As soon as a difference arose, the contending parties hastened to bring their case before this august assembly, and there to court the intercession of the most influential men. It would certainly have been a great blessing to poor tortured Greece if the Romans had possessed the sense and the desire to allow an impartial judgment to supersede the decisions of rude force, however humiliating it might have been for the Greeks to have to. apply to a foreign court of justice. The Romans, however, lacked not only insight into the complicated legal questions submitted to them, but also the wish to let justice prevail without regard to political considerations. Nor could it be otherwise. Even Flamininus, whom generous historians have credited with the noblest intentions in the liberation of Greece, had thought proper, as early as 196 BC, to censure the Achaeans for having ventured to attack the Messenians without awaiting the result of his arbitration. He ordered them to disband their army, and though he incorporated Messenia in the Achaean league, he encouraged the Messenians to apply directly to him upon any disputed point. It is clear that under such circumstances, in a country undermined by party strife, the peaceable settlement of old disputes was out of the question. The old national spirit of discord had spread too far among the Greeks to allow a new growth like that of the Achaean league to take root and prosper.

The settlement of the affairs of Sparta, and its annexation to the Achaean league, had been brought about forcibly, and therefore were not likely to remain long undisturbed. The old citizens, whom Nabis had plundered and expelled, had not been reinstated by Flamininus after the overthrow of the tyrant. They had only obtained the permission to settle as free Lacedaemonians in the townships around Sparta, and these townships had been made independent. The exiles were not satisfied. They hoped for an opportunity of regaining the full enjoyment of their lost rights, and they surrounded Sparta almost like a hostile army, eagerly awaiting an opportunity of returning to their old homes. The new citizens, whom Machanidas and Nabis had recruited from aliens, Perioeci, emancipated helots and mercenaries, felt the danger of their position and the weakness of the commonwealth, which, being deprived of the surrounding districts and cut off from the sea, was but a shadow of the warlike Sparta of old. It seemed as if Roman diplomacy had by its tender treatment of Nabis, and by the half-measure with regard to the return of the exiles, purposely scattered the seeds of new dissensions. As we have already seen, Nabis had attempted to overthrow by force the new order of things introduced by Flamininus. He had failed, and perished in the attempt. Now would have been the time to get rid of at least the worst among the partisans of the tyrant, and to reinstate the old citizens in their former rights. But this was again omitted, though the Romans had always given the exiles hope of restitution, and had profited by their aid in the war against the usurpers. After the battle of Thermopylae, 191 BC, Acilius Glabrio had at length wished to re­instate the Spartan exiles; but Philopoemen had for good reasons wished to arrange this matter through the Achaean league without Roman interference. In this he had succeeded; but still his measure cannot have been sweeping. At any rate, the exiles were not allowed to return to the town of Sparta itself. The dissensions continued, and passions became more and more heated. In 189 BVC, after the close of the Aetolian war, the disputes broke out anew, and led to a lamentable incident, which exhibits in the most striking light the hopelessness of the state of Greece, and shows how effectively all parties co-operated to further the ends of Rome.

The inhabitants of Sparta, unable to bear the idea of being for ever cut off from the sea, tried to help themselves, and disregarding all the arrangements and settlements made by the Romans, suddenly attempted to seize the small seaport of Las, on the Lacedaemonian coast; but they were repulsed by the free Laconians settled in the neighbourhood. This breach of the peace caused the Achaean league to interfere, and Philopoemen demanded the surrender of those who were guilty of the attack on Las. The Spartans, incensed at this demand, executed thirty men whom they accused of conspiracy with the Achaeans, and declared that they no longer acknowledged themselves members of the league. At the same time they sent messengers to the consul Marcus Fulvius, who was still in Cephallenia, begging him to come to Lacedaemon, and to receive the town formally into Roman protection. We see here how the mere possibility of foreign interference fostered internal quarrels.

The Achaeans held firm by their good right, and unanimously declared war against Sparta. The consul came into the Peloponnesus, gave an audience to both parties in Elis, and without interfering himself persuaded them to break off their military operations, and to refer the matter to the arbitration of the Roman senate. Thus, this question also came to be discussed in Rome. A party of the Achaeans, headed by Philopoemen and Lycortas, warmly insisted on maintaining the federal rights, and repudiated all Roman interference in the internal affairs of the Peloponnesus, whilst another party, headed by Diophanes, yielded to the actual predominance of the Romans, and was prepared to leave the decision in this matter to them. That this party judged more wisely than the other is evident from the mere fact that the negotiations were carried on in Rome. A clear decision in favour of one or the other of the two parties would no doubt have been the best for both. But unfortunately the senate’s decision was so ambiguous, that the Achaeans considered themselves justified in punishing the Spartan breach of peace as they thought fit, and further in restoring order in a most summary manner. And here it was seen how easily even the best of the Greeks allowed themselves to be carried away by the passion of revenge and cruelty, as if they had meant to show that they did not possess the self­control necessary for the enjoyment of freedom. Philopoemen marched to Sparta with a federal army, in which there was also a number of Spartan exiles, men whom the wrongs, the sufferings, the poverty of many sad years had made reckless, and who hoped now at length to enjoy the sweets of revenge, and to recover their lost privileges and possessions. The Spartans felt that they were unable to resist; and when Philopoemen demanded the surrender of the guilty, they sent eighty men into the Achaean camp, upon the understanding that they should be punished only after a regular trial and a formal judicial sentence. But these unfortunate men had hardly arrived in the Achaean camp, when the Spartan exiles fell upon them and murdered seventeen out of their number. With difficulty Philopoemen succeeded in preventing a general massacre. But those who were thus spared only gained a short time of grace. On the next day they were all summarily tried without being heard in their defence, were all sentenced to death, and instantly executed. Philopoemen then entered Sparta, levelled the walls, and expelled all the foreign mercenaries and liberated slaves, who formed the great majority of the new citizens. By the decision of a federal council of the Achaeans assembled in Tegea, the exiles were now formally reinstated in their rights; and thus the whole social revolution and all the settlements of property of the last twenty years were overthrown with one stroke. These resolutions were carried out with extreme severity.

The expelled citizens were not allowed to remain anywhere within the Peloponnesus; those who were caught were sold as slaves, and from the proceeds of their sale a colonnade (stoa) in Megalopolis, which had formerly been destroyed by the Spartans, was rebuilt.

Thus all traces of the usurpation were removed, and liberated Sparta, in which the laws of Lycurgus were now formally abolished, again took its place as a member of the Achaean league. Success seemed to justify Philopoemen’s bold uncompromising proceeding; for the Romans raised no objection to the accomplished fact, which seemed to prove that healthy self-reliance and bold resolve inspired more respect in Rome than unconditional obedience.

But it was too soon manifest that Sparta could no more under the new government than under the previous kings and tyrants submit to be merely a member of a Greek confederation; for the oligarchs who had been reinstated by the Achaeans soon forgot their gratitude, and worked with the utmost zeal to get rid of the hateful connexion with the Achaean league.

In Rome all complaints of contending Greek factions were received with open ears. The senate was a standing­court of law for deciding all internal quarrels in Greece. Upon the remonstrance of some Spartans two years later (187 BC) the senate immediately expressed their disapproval of the harsh proceedings of the Achaeans, and Philopoemen was obliged to justify or to excuse himself in Rome by a special messenger. The Romans, after their fashion, prolonged the dispute by commissioning an embassy, which about the same time had to negotiate with Philip, to examine more closely into the dispute between the Spartans and Achaeans. In the following year (186) this commission held its sittings in Argos, under the presidency of the violent and imperious Caecilius Metellus. Metellus disapproved of the proceedings of the Achaeans, and called upon them to undo what had been done; but he found that they took their stand on their formal right, and even refused to convoke an extraordinary federal congress to please the ambassadors of mighty Rome. This led to a greater coolness between the unequal allies, a coolness which encouraged the enemies of the Achaeans to continue their agitation. Areus and Alcibiades, two of the exiles brought back to Sparta by Philopoemen, men from whom he was justified in expecting gratitude rather than enmity, went to Rome and complained loudly that Sparta was obliged to obey the Achaean laws and authorities. No wonder that such perpetual intrigues irritated the Achaeans. By the rules of the league no single state had the right of direct communication with Rome. This salutary and most necessary law, without which the independence of the Achaean league would have been reduced to a shadow, had been more than once violated by the malcontents in Sparta. The Romans, who should have refused to listen to direct complaints, had on the contrary encouraged them, and had thus prolonged and embittered the internal disputes. The Achaeans considered themselves justified in punishing this breach of the established law; and though they knew that they would exasperate the Romans, they plucked up courage to summon the two intriguers, Areus and Alcibiades, before a court of law, and, as they did not appear, to condemn them to death in their absence. At the same time they again sent ambassadors to Rome to justify their course of action. But they were obliged to submit to a great humiliation. The senate, not only received and listened to the Spartan deputies, but also allowed them to depart with another Roman embassy for Greece, in order to appear personally, under Roman protection, as complainants before the Achaean authorities, who of course could only regard and treat them as condemned criminals. With such haughty scorn the Romans humbled their allies in their own eyes. The result was that patriotic Achaeans, whose prudence or fear bore down their pride, gave up all hope of saving their independent position, and bowed their heads in despair under the inevitable destiny of their country. It was of no avail that Lycortas, who was then captain of the Achaean league, boldly addressed the Roman ambassador, Appius Claudius, in a manly speech, and proved to him that the Achaeans had but acted as they were by law entitled to act. To the proud Romans it may have appeared simply the act of overbearing self-delusion, and perhaps mere arrogance on the part of a vainglorious Greek to struggle against the interference of Rome in the internal affairs of Greece, and to remind their masters that Greece had been solemnly declared free, and that the Romans had as little right to criticise the punishment of the rebellious Spartans as the Greeks would have had to blame the treatment of Capua by Rome in the Hannibalic war. But even if the Achaeans recognised Rome as umpire, they, as the tried old friends of Rome, might have expected to be treated at least as favourably as the Spartans, who had always been enemies. They had fought by the side of the Romans against Philip, against the Aetolians, against Antiochus, and against these same Spartans; and it was to keep up the order of things established by Rome and Achaia, and attacked by the Spartans, that Philopoemen had interfered. Moreover, the worst atrocity, the murder of the seventeen Spartans, had been committed by the Spartan exiles themselves, who now, with unparalleled effrontery, accused the Achaeans of severity. In strict law no objection could be taken to the proceeding of the Achaeans, and Appius Claudius could only silence Lycortas by appealing to the will and power of Rome, and by advising the Achaeans to submit in peace, lest they might soon have to yield to force. This peremptory command could not of course be resisted. The Achaeans submitted with murmurs; but they refused to lend their hand for the cancelling of their own resolutions and sentences. They left it to the Romans to make what arrangements they thought proper. Appius Claudius thereupon first caused the sentence of death against Areus and Alcibiades to be annulled; then (184 BC) fresh discussions took place before the senate, and finally, a new Roman commission arranged matters so that, though Sparta remained a member of the Achaean league, her walls and her own laws were restored to her, and she was exempted from the penal jurisdiction of the confederacy. The difficult question of disputed titles to land and houses in Sparta, remained unsolved, and with it was preserved the seed of new dissensions.

When Philopoemen subdued the Spartan revolt and punished the leaders of the riot, he expelled, as we have seen, a number of the new citizens received by the tyrants, Machanidas and Nabis. These new citizens appealed to Rome, like the other parties which then wrangled with each other in Sparta, and Rome took up their cause also. The Roman commission, which had carried out the recent settlement of Spartan affairs, had decided in favour of the return of these exiles; but the resistance of the Achaeans, who justly regarded those whom they had expelled as their worst enemies, had prevented the resolution from being carried out. The Romans, who might easily have enforced this decision if they had wished, were not displeased to see this wound left open and festering. In the unfulfilled wishes of this party they possessed a weapon which they could at any time make use of against the Achaeans. At length, in the year 179 BC, they gave orders for the return of these exiles, after their consistent policy had ruined the party of Philopoemen and Lycortas in Achaia, and had placed at the head of the government men like Callicrates, who had proved themselves willing servants of their Roman masters.

The Messenians were not less reluctant members of the Achaean league than the Spartans. In this reluctance they were supported by the well-founded conviction that Rome was not pleased to see their union with the league continue. For Flamininus himself had urged them to apply to him if they should have grounds for any complaint. Flamininus accordingly was the man selected as special patron by the leader of the Messenian malcontents, the disreputable Dinocrates, a man, who though possessing eminent qualifications as a soldier and a politician, contributed greatly by his dissolute life to attach a bad reputation to the name of Greek statesmen among the Romans, but who, nevertheless, enjoyed great influence with the honourable Flamininus. In Messenia, as elsewhere, the everlasting disputes between the aristocracy and democracy were mixed up in the engrossing question of the day. The friends of Rome, that is to say, the opponents of the Achaean league, were supported by the aristocratic party, which always sided with Rome, and was favoured by her in return. As early as the year 189 BC an insurrection had been attempted by this party, but had been put down by Philopoemen. Now, when in consequence of the Spartan dissensions, the coolness between Rome and the Achaeans had visibly increased, the Messenians thought that their time had come, and with the approval and help of Flamininus, they openly seceded from the Achaean league. Their undertaking was at first favoured by success. Philopoemen, in the hope of suppressing the revolt by prompt action, hastened to Messenia with insufficient forces. After an unfortunate battle, he fell into the hands of the enemy, who immediately put to death the venerable statesman, now in his seventy-first year, by making him drink poison.

The death of Philopoemen, who was not only the soul of the Achaean league, but also the most eminent man in the whole of Greece, would certainly have decided the issue of the war if the Achaeans had not fortunately found an able successor to Philopoemen in the brave Lycortas, the father of the historian Polybius. They carried on the war with Messenia with vigour, and at the same time invoked the assistance of the Romans, who were bound in justice, and by special treaty, to maintain the existing order, which they had only themselves helped to establish. But the Romans had consented to the extension of the Achaean league over the whole of the Peloponnesus much against their will, and under the pressure of events, at a time when they thought that they could hardly dispense with the help of the Achaeans. Now even men like Flamininus had so far forgotten their pretended sympathy with the Greeks, that they secretly and publicly favoured the dissensions in the Peloponnesus. The senate accordingly not only refused to grant the aid asked for by the Achaeans, or even to forbid the exportation of arms, but openly declared to the Achaean ambassadors that they would look on with indifference if even Sparta, Argos, and Corinth seceded from the league. This was, as Polybius justly observes, nothing less than an invitation to those states to break up the confederation, and was calculated to discourage even the bravest Achaeans. Nevertheless, Lycortas did not despair. He continued the war with perseverance, and at length, with the help of the Messenian democrats, succeeded in overpowering the rebels, and in forcing them to surrender their capital.

Thus, in spite of the insidious policy of the Romans, the courage and firmness of the Achaeans had reduced the rebellious members of the league, and had, to a certain degree, restored order in the Peloponnesus. The Romans thought proper to raise no difficulties; and the Greek patriots had now a fair prospect of establishing their independence on the basis which they had thus secured. That these hopes were wrecked was principally the fault of the Greeks themselves; but we shall see how the perfidious policy of the Romans was busy stirring up the evil passions of the Greeks, which they might have restrained, and that they thus hastened the ruin of that freedom which they prided themselves on having given to the Greeks out of pure magnanimity.

CHAPTER III.

THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR, 171-168 B.C.