READING HALL

THE DOORS OF WISDOM 2025

HISTORY OF ROME. THE WAR FOR SUPREMACY IN THE EAST

CHAPTER IV.

THE FALL OF MACEDONIA AND GREECE, 148-145 B.C.

It would have been better for the Macedonian nation if the Romans, immediately after the overthrow of the monarchy, had converted the country into a Roman province. The unnatural division of Macedonia into four separate parts, and the restrictions put upon free commercial intercourse, stood in the way of a rapid recovery from the calamities of war which the people had suffered while the form of a republican constitution, forced upon them and called ‘liberty’, in contrast to their old monarchical government, was of no value to a nation not accustomed to republican institutions. The result was that disputes and civil wars immediately broke out in the unhappy country. If our records were not so extremely meagre (the narrative of Livy breaks off at the forty-fifth book, and the fragments of Polybius become more and more scanty), we should probably hear of more than one act of atrocity like that of a certain Damasippus who caused the whole legislative assembly of a community to be massacred. Perhaps a revolt would have taken place immediately after the fall of Perseus, if the country had not been too much exhausted and deprived of its natural leaders by the banishment of all influential men. But at length, nineteen years after the battle of Pydna, the Macedonians unexpectedly found a chief who led them once more, and for the last time, to a desperate struggle against the Roman legions, and forced the Romans to put an end for evermore to that shadow of independence which was more ruinous than subjection.

Perseus, having borne the disgrace of public exhibition in his conqueror’s triumph, was thrown into a close subterraneous dungeon with a number of common criminals, and would have perished of starvation in the midst of foulness and filth, had not his fellow-prisoners, showing more feeling than the Roman gaolers, spared him some scraps of their scanty food. When the unhappy man had been kept for seven days in this condition, Aemilius Paullus and some of the more humane among the Roman nobles obtained for him from the senate the permission to breathe the fresh air of heaven and to see the light of day. He was allowed to spend the remainder of his life in the small Marsian town of Alba, on the lake Fucinus, always, it is said, looking forward to the day which would place him once more on the throne of Macedonia. His eldest son Philip soon followed him to the grave. The younger outlived him, and afterwards served the magistrates in Alba as town-clerk; he is also reported to have distinguished himself as a turner and carver.

Some months after Philip, the son of Perseus, had died in Alba at the age of eighteen, the surprising news arrived from Macedonia that this same Philip had appeared on the banks of the Strymon at the head of an army of Thracians, intending to take possession of the Macedonian throne, the heritage of his father. He had defeated the Macedonian militia, crossed the river Strymon, and then gained another victory which gave him access to the interior of the country. At first the Romans would not believe these reports. They recalled to mind a mean adventurer, the son of a fuller in Adramyttium, who had a short time previously given himself out for a natural son of Perseus, and had been delivered up to Rome by Demetrius of Syria. This adventurer, Andriscus by name, had hardly been thought worthy of notice, and had been so badly guarded that he succeeded in escaping from Italy. Once more entering upon the scene of action under the name of Philip, he had, as reports ran, in a short time obtained possession of Macedonia, where adherents joined him from all sides. But the Romans would not yet look upon the matter as serious. They thought it sufficient to send Publius Scipio Nasica to Macedonia, without troops, to re-establish order by the mere authority of the Roman name. When Nasica arrived in Greece, he found a state of affairs that could not be controlled by peaceable means. It was necessary to support the commands of the Roman senate by force of arms. He, therefore, collected troops in Greece, especially in Achaia; and with these he succeeded in driving the pseudo-Philip out of Thessaly, into which country he had already penetrated. Soon afterwards the praetor Publius Juventius Thalna arrived with a Roman legion and entered Macedonia. But the despised opponent now showed himself not quite unworthy of the honour to which he had boldly aspired. He defeated the Romans in a pitched battle, killing the praetor and a great part of the army. The Macedonian revolt was assuming the proportions of a war just at a time when Carthage was beginning to defend herself desperately in order to preserve her existence as a state, and when Roman arms in Spain were baffled by an unexpected vigour on the part of the native races. There was plenty of fuel accumulated in all parts of Greece; if this should catch fire, it was possible that a time might come like that of the Hannibalic war, when Rome was threatened by Africa, Spain, and Macedonia at once.

At this conjuncture the Romans had the good fortune to select the praetor Quintus Caecilius Metellus to take the command (148 BC), and to send him with a consular army to Greece. He was supported along the coast by the fleet of King Attains II of Pergamum, who was glad of an opportunity of serving the Romans, and thus proving his loyal attachment. Andriscus, after a successful cavalry engagement, divided his army, in order to invade Thessaly with a part of it in the praetor’s rear. This was the cause of his ruin. The two corps, thus weakened, were defeated one after another. Metellus pursued the adventurer in his flight to Thrace, and after another victory obtained his extradition by the Thracian king Byzes. Within a year the war was ended. Macedonia was converted into a Roman province, and from this time forward lost its position in history as an independent state. It was enlarged as far as the Adriatic, so as to include the harbours of Apollonia and Dyrrhachium. The unlucky division into four separate districts was abolished, and the different communities were allowed to preserve their own local self­government; but all sovereign rights passed over to the Roman republic, and were exercised by an annually changing governor. The defence of the northern frontier was now in the bands of the Romans, the country paying for it the moderate tax of one hundred talents. These conditions were, no doubt, favourable for the social and economic condition of the impoverished country. The preservation of internal peace was a compensation for the loss of the powerful position which Macedonia had held for more than two centuries. If the Romans had known how to protect their subjects from the cupidity of their own officials and capitalists, as well as from foreign enemies, the loss of independence would, under the prevailing circumstances, have been an unqualified gain for Macedonia.

We must notice one more and final struggle of the expiring national feeling in Macedonia. In the year 142 BC, six years alter the overthrow of the false Philip, another pretended son of Perseus made his appearance and attempted to upset the firmly-rooted Roman dominion. However, the quaestor Tremellius soon put an end to the insurrection, and henceforward we hear of no further attempts to restore the monarchy of Philip and Alexander the Great. It was, and remained, absorbed in the new empire of Rome.

For the Hellenic nation too, the same fatal end had by this time come. Although they had degenerated and fallen from the high position to which they had been raised by their intellect, by their wonderful genius in art and literature, by their great achievements in policy and war, by their national virtues and even their passions, they, nevertheless, continue to engage our attention and our sympathy in an immeasurably higher degree than the nations whose early history we do not know or cannot trace back so far as that of the Hellenes. The Greeks, it is true, rushed blindly and madly into the last struggle, and fought in a manner unworthy of their past history; still we cannot deny them our sympathies, for it was the detestable policy of the Roman senate which, creating in Greece a state of things worse than political death, had produced that exasperation which finally turned into rage and madness.

We have seen that after the victory over Perseus all the Greek states, without distinction, were treated by the Romans as open or secret enemies. When the natural leaders and advisers of the people had been carried off to Italy, the intimidated and impoverished remnant was handed over to the tender mercies of the creatures of Rome, who were now lords and masters in the country, without rivals or opponents. The outrages committed by Lyciscus in Aetolia, by Mnasippus in Boeotia, and by others, but especially by the infamous Charops in Epirus, were so great that the Romans themselves could not countenance them, though they were ostensibly committed in the interest of Roman supremacy. It was a system of the most shameless robbery, aided by exile and murder, either without all forms of justice or under such forms as were a mockery of it. When at last the worst of these tyrants had, one after another, sunk into the grave, the tormented countries were allowed a short time of peace; but decay and ruin were visible everywhere, just as if a devastating storm had passed over them. The impoverished people sank into a new and terrible barbarism. The primaeval state of man seemed to have returned, in which everybody’s hand was raised against his neighbour. Sheer hunger drove the miserable wretches to despair and violence. Whole populations became bands of robbers. It was no longer the despised Aetolians alone who lived by plunder. Other nations, such as the Thebans, nay, the highly cultivated Athenians themselves, were not ashamed to do the same.

Athens had, indeed, suffered greatly during the war, partly from the contributions imposed upon it by the Roman armies and fleets, partly from the stagnation of commerce. In order to indemnify the city, and at the same time to honour the principal seat of Greek science and art, the Romans had bestowed upon it the territory around the ruined town of Haliartus and also the islands of Delos and Lemnos. Nevertheless, the Athenians found themselves in such distress, that they undertook an expedition (156 BC) against the town of Oropus, which was subject to them, merely for the purpose of plundering it. Nothing shows in more striking colours the utter wretchedness and degeneracy of the Greeks, at this time, than the consequences resulting from this expedition. The Oropians, of course, complained at Rome of the wrong they had suffered at the hand of Athens. The town of Sicyon was designated by the Romans to act as arbitrator, and condemned Athens to pay to the Oropians a compensation of five hundred talents, a sum which the impoverished city was utterly unable to raise, and which was, moreover, quite out of proportion to the plunder gained in Oropus. The Athenians, in their trouble, applied to Rome for a reduction of the fine. For this purpose they employed the eloquence of the most eminent philosophers, selecting as their spokesman the academician Carneades, the stoic Diogenes, and the peripatetic Critolaus. These men, appearing as ambassadors at Rome, produced so great an impression among the numerous admirers of the Greek language and literature, that old Cato began to fear for the preservation of the ancestral morals, and urged the senate to dismiss the dangerous visitors as quickly as possible. The Roman senate enjoyed the rare pleasure of hearing philosophy and eloquence combined, begging for the remission of a fine which the town of the Muses and Graces, the home of Sophocles, Phidias, and Plato, had incurred by an outrageous act of robbery.

The senate reduced the fine to one hundred talents. But the Athenians had neither the inclination nor the means to pay even this sum. They agreed upon some sort of compromise with the Oropians and placed a garrison in the town, whereupon the dispute seemed to subside and some years passed in peace. But at length the Oropians, wishing to rid themselves of the Athenian garrison, applied to the Achaean league, and, in order to insure the aid which they needed, bribed the chief magistrate of the league, the Spartan Menalcidas, with the sum often talents; whereupon the Athenians plundered Oropus once more and then withdrew their garrison. Menalcidas, with his troops, arrived too late to save the Oropians from this second spoliation. He nevertheless extorted from them the ten talents for which he had bargained. He had promised to pay to Callicrates one half of this sum for lending him his assistance; but be preferred keeping the whole for himself. Callicrates actually threatened to bring an action for the recovery of the money; Menalcidas sought to screen himself from the charge by applying to Diaeus, whom he first propitiated with a bribe. This contemptible quarrel about money grew into a dispute between Sparta and the Achaean league, and caused the Romans to interfere and to sweep away the last remnant of freedom.

After the war with Perseus the expulsion of all the best citizens had, as we have seen, placed the Achaean league in the power of the party which, headed by Callicrates, followed only one principle in their policy, that of showing themselves obedient to Rome in all things. The Romans, having thus full security for their obedience, had allowed the Achaeans to preserve nominally their independence and to call themselves the allies of Rome. The constitution and territory of the league remained what they had been. It included the whole of Peloponnesus, with some towns like Pleuron in Aetolia and Heraclea on Mount Oeta. Our records are very meagre regarding the events of the years immediately following the victory at Pydna. It appears that the Peloponnesus was thoroughly exhausted, and that, in consequence, there was a dearth of events. One feeling predominated among the Achaean people for many years, a longing for the return of the exiles. We can easily realise how painfully the sudden removal of one thousand prominent men must have been felt, if we imagine the occurrence of a similar calamity in a country like Switzerland or Belgium. Nay, would not even a great European power be paralysed for years if so many, or half as many, of its leading citizens suddenly disappeared from the scene of public life.

In addition to their sorrow for the exiles, the Achaeans had the feeling of having suffered an injustice; and this feeling was augmented and aggravated by the consciousness of their impotence to revenge themselves on the authors of their misfortune. Callicrates and his adherents tried in vain to moderate the exasperation of their countrymen, or at least to impose silence. He would have had to banish the whole people if he wished to protect himself from hearing even the boys in the street call him a traitor. By degrees the Achaeans took courage, not indeed to entertain thoughts of resistance, but to proffer a humble request. They carried the resolution in their federal congress, that an embassy should be sent to Rome for the purpose of imploring the senate graciously to let the exiles be tried in a court of law, so that those at least might return home against whom there was no cause of complaint. The Romans pretended to be astonished at this modest request. As the exiles had been condemned by the Achaeans themselves, it was not for the senate, they said, to try them again. A second embassy (164 BC) sought to confute this assertion, and entreated the senate, if they had no time themselves, at least to allow the Achaean league to appoint judges; but the senate replied that they did not consider it advantageous either for Rome or for the Greek states that the exiles should return home.

This answer deprived the unhappy men of the last chance of returning to their country, and showed that the measure was a mere act of violence without even the appearance of justice. Nevertheless, the Achaeans did not cease repeating their request from time to time (from 160 to 155), until at length, in the year 150, through the influence of Polybius, Cato was induced to intercede on their behalf, and persuaded the senate to waste no more time in debating “whether a few decrepit old men should die in Italy or in their own country”. He did this not from sympathy or from magnanimity, but because he was indifferent as to the fate of the exiles and tired of the everlasting petitions. Of the whole number who had been transported seventeen years before, about seven hundred had already died. Disease, grief, and weariness of life had hastened the silent work of time. The executioner had also lent his aid; for every attempt at flight had been punished with death. Only one of the exiles had met with a cheerful lot and had almost found a second home in Italy. The learned historian and states­man Polybius had been enthusiastically received as friend and teacher by the two youthful sons of Aemilius Paullus. While the other exiles were scattered about in the country towns of Italy, he had obtained permission to remain in Rome, and had gained great influence, which, with a noble zeal, he always employed to alleviate the hard fate of his countrymen; and now, after he had contributed in great part to the decree of the senate for the return of the exiles, he endeavoured to obtain for them an additional favour, he asked Cato to lend his help, that they might have their lost honours and possessions restored to them. But in this request Polybius found that he had gone too far, and he was obliged to put up with Cato’s scornful reply, that Ulysses might as well have returned to the cave of Polyphemus to fetch the hat and belt he had left behind.

The exiles, on their return, found the Peloponnesus in a woful plight. The revolutions following each other in rapid succession had caused a general feeling of insecurity in political as well as social institutions and property. Since Achaean Agis and Cleomenes had endeavoured seriously to realise exiles the socialistic theories of the Athenian philosophers, and to restore what they supposed to be the Lycurgean division of property; since the tyrants Machanidas and Nabis had recklessly confiscated and again given away land and houses, had annulled debts, emancipated slaves, and received into the state new citizens in great numbers, a deeply-rooted enmity had everywhere sprung up between the rich and the poor, interfering with the property of all and acting injuriously upon the political life of the people. In spite of the support which the aristocracy found in the protection of Rome, democratic views continued to spread among the people; they became from day to day more extravagant, and adopted more and more the form of socialism. Owing to the practice of using mercenaries in war, a great part of the population of the Peloponnesus had become unsettled and averse to peaceful life. Large tracts of land lay waste. The population decreased with alarming rapidity, not only in consequence of the devastating wars (though these left visible traces in some parts), but much more through the uncertainty of property and the difficulty of gaining the means of living. This prevented the natural increase of population, it diminished the number of marriages, and, worse than that, prompted the cruel and unnatural practice of exposing children to death. A large family of children weighed so heavily on the shoulders even of the rich, that they preferred getting rid of their offspring to educating them. Probably the practice of paederasty, the most disgraceful taint in the moral life of the Hellenes, had by this time also begun to produce marked effects, the just chastisement of unnatural sensuality. We must not forget that to all these evils was added slavery, which to ancient thinkers did not appear to be any great evil, merely because it was not a peculiar and exceptional institution, but which, being common to all nations, and equally affecting the whole social and political life of antiquity, prevented everywhere a free development of true humanity.

Such was the condition in which the exiles, on their return in the year 150 BC, found every part of Greece; and unfortunately they had not the power to apply a remedy. They had become estranged from their native country by long absence, and could not make allowance for the altered state of affairs. One feeling pervaded them all, inextinguishable hatred of Rome. This hatred was accepted as a substitute for talent, and recommended them to the people for public offices. If there had been able men among them, the revolution might have been advantageous to the Achaean league; but the best of them had died in Italy, and Polybius, who was almost the only one of eminent capacities, saw soon after his arrival that the Peloponnesus was not a place where he could do much good, and he, therefore, returned voluntarily to Italy. The difficulty in the state of affairs was increased by dis­putes concerning the property of the exiles which had been confiscated by their opponents and was now claimed back. It would indeed have been better, as succeeding events showed, if the perpetrated wrong had never been redressed, and if the exiles had remained in Italy. The severed limbs could not be joined again to the body without destroying it. In a commonwealth, as in every living organism, nature begins to repair an injury from the moment it is inflicted; it creates a new state of things which cannot, when it has had time to grow and become consolidated, be disturbed without danger even by the most careful restoration. 

Immediately after his return to Peloponnesus, Diaeus was appointed chief magistrate of the Achaean league for the year 119 BC. Blinded by his hatred for Rome, this violent and moreover dishonest man seized the first opportunity for rekindling the old disputes with Sparta about the boundaries and the authority of the league. He thus compelled the Spartans again to apply to Rome for protection, a proceeding which increased the antipathy of the Achaeans and made them think that prompt action against Sparta was at the same time a demonstration against Rome. Having got somewhat into discredit by his dishonourable bargain with Menalcidas, Diaeus was now eager to avail himself of an opportunity for engaging the attention of his countrymen in another direction, and for showing that he was indeed a true patriot. The Spartans submitted, not thinking themselves a match for their enemies; and while they banished seventy-four of their most prominent citizens marked out as especially obnoxious to the Achaean league, they also sent immediately to Rome, according to the now established custom, to ask for aid. The Achaeans were forced to do the same, and thus the humiliating spectacle was again witnessed of hostile Greek ambassadors wrangling with one another before the Roman senate, to obtain justice from the goodwill and favour of the foreign power. The senate, as on a former occasion, gave no clear or decisive answer. After some vague and general phrases, they promised to send an embassy to Greece to settle the dispute on the spot. Thus they gained time, and could hope that the difficulties in Macedonia, Africa, and Spain, which were just then looking very serious, would be removed by the time the Greek question would have to be finally decided. The Spartan and Achaean ambassadors returned to the Peloponnesus, both sides bringing home the news that the senate had decided in their favour. The natural result was a continuation of the quarrel with more embittered passions. The Achaeans, being the stronger, resolved to force the Spartans to submission. They hoped that the Romans, as on a former occasion, would not protest against an accomplished fact; and just at this time the war in Macedonia, which occupied the attention of Rome, seemed to furnish an opportunity for gaining their object. In spite of a protest from Metellus, who was commanding in Macedonia, Damocritus, the general of the league, invaded Laconia in the year 148 BC, defeated the Spartans, and inflicted on them a loss of one thousand men. He neglected, however, to make use of his victory and to take the defenceless town of Sparta. We do not know whether in thus acting he was intimidated by Metellus. At any rate, his successor Diaeus, it is reported, was warned by the Roman generals, who, meanwhile, had been victorious in Macedonia, not to continue the war against Sparta. He was told to await the decision of the senate, which, at length, in the year 147 BC, sent into the Peloponnesus the embassy announced long before to settle the dispute between Sparta and the Achaeans. There could scarcely be any doubt even among the Achaeans themselves what the decision would be. The Romans had always been inclined to defend the independence of Sparta and to oppose the extension of the Achaean league. But hitherto the wars with Syria, Aetolia, and Macedonia had made it necessary for them to treat the Achaeans with some degree of consideration, and even favour. The Romans, though vexed and angry, had, on a former occasion, been compelled to sanction the extension of the league over the whole of Peloponnesus, and even to allow some towns in other parts of Greece to be received into it. But after the defeat of Perseus the true sentiments of Rome with regard to Achaia came to light. The league was so weakened by Rome that it was quite helpless. In the year 163 BC, the town of Pleuron was separated from it, and other towns were invited to secede, though, it would seem, without result. But, in the war against the pretender Philip, Rome once more needed the aid of Achaean troops, and had, therefore, waited until the final end of this war enabled her to treat the Achaeans with that brutal overbearing and disdain which henceforth she had no inducement to disguise. The Roman ambassador, Aurelius Orestes, appeared in Corinth, in the year 147 BC, to notify a decree of the senate to the chiefs the of the league there assembled. This decree declared that Sparta and Corinth, as well as Argos, Orchomenus, and Heraclea, could not with propriety remain in the league, because the citizens in these towns were not of the same race as the Achaeans. The Achaeans had not expected such a crushing blow. The severance of such important towns as Corinth and Argos would be virtually a sentence of death for the league. What was the object of possessing towns like Dyme and Aegium, if Corinth, then the richest and most flourishing town in Greece, were taken from it? The popular feeling revolted against this humiliation and disgrace. The Achaeans asked themselves by what act they had deserved such hostile treatment. What had they done to injure Rome? Had they ever taken up arms against her, or endangered her safety, or even so much as her interests or welfare? On the contrary, it was to them that the Romans, to a great extent, owed the advantages which they had gained in the east. Now their reward was a heartless sentence of annihilation. We cannot be surprised that their anger was exasperated into fierce rage. Without waiting till the Roman ambassadors had finished speaking, the chiefs of the league rushed into the street, called together the people, and imparted to them the message from the senate. The passions of the Greeks, so easily roused, were suddenly fired to a pitch of ungovernable hatred against the Spartans, who were regarded as the authors of the Roman decree. All the Spartans who chanced to be in Corinth at the time, all who from their name or dress appeared to be Spartans, were attacked, ill-used, and thrown into prison, some of them even killed. The mob pursued the detested strangers as far as the house where the Roman ambassador lodged, so far forgetting their fear of the powerful republic that they even mocked and insulted the ambassador himself. This was the protest pronounced by Corinth against the senatorial decree which invited and permitted it to secede from the league. Neither did the other towns, with the exception of the distant Heraclea, show any inclination to fall in with the wishes of Rome. If the Romans had counted upon finding a desire among the confederates to break up their league and to assert the independence of the several members, they were mistaken. The best proof of the utility and popularity of the league was this, that even on the invitation of Rome, now as well as in the year 163., all the Peloponnesian members refused to secede. In fact, the league could not be dissolved by a mere decree of the Roman senate. It was necessary to employ the force of Roman arms. But this was what the Romans were just at that time not inclined to do. They preferred waiting for a more favourable moment. The senate, disregarding the exaggerated reports which Aurelius brought home of the insults offered to him and to the Roman Republic in Corinth, sent a second embassy to the Peloponnesus, under Sextus Julius Caesar, for the purpose of appeasing and soothing the Greeks. They seem not to have insisted on the execution of the decree which separated Corinth and the other towns from the league. This design was given up for the present, to be resumed later at a more convenient time. The proceedings at Corinth and the insult to the Roman ambassadors were hardly mentioned. Sextus Julius in a conciliatory speech endeavoured, above all, to settle the dispute between the league and Sparta, and in the meantime to bring about an armistice. A conference of the chief magistrates of the league and the Spartans was appointed to take place at Tegea under the presidency of the Roman ambassador, and it seemed possible, if both sides were inclined for a reconciliation, to prevent the threatened outbreak. On the other hand the Achaeans, by an embassy to Rome, sought to excuse themselves for insulting the Roman ambassadors at Corinth.

But, at this momentous crisis in the history of the Greek nation, a man appeared on the scene who blasted all hopes entertained by the better class of patriots. For the year 146 BC, Critolaus had been appointed captain of the Achaean league, a demagogue of the worst sort, as incapable as he was passionate. He deluded himself and the blind multitude with vain hopes and false fancies, and knew how to gain the applause of the ignorant by empty phrases which please the populace, and thus to obtain their approval of his mad freaks. He seemed persuaded that Rome acted at present with much apparent moderation, only because she was in great distress on account of the Spanish and Carthaginian wars. There was some truth in this opinion; but instead of keeping in mind the relative strength of Achaeans and Romans, and instead of using the favourable state of affairs for a reasonable arrangement which would, at least, have secured to Achaia a fair amount of national independence, and would have warded off the horrors of a conflict, Critolaus stood upon his dignity, assumed a haughty and defiant air, excited the populace, and finally left the Romans no alternative but to draw the sword.

Critolaus even succeeded in rendering the negotiations at Tegea abortive. He kept the Romans and Spartans waiting for him a long time, and finally refused to agree to their proposals. He asserted that he had no full powers, and that it would be necessary to await the general meeting of the Achaean league, which would take place in six months. Meanwhile, therefore, both agreement and truce were out of the question. He evidently hoped, before the end of six months, to confront the Romans with an accomplished fact. The Roman ambassadors at once indignantly left the Peloponnesus. Critolaus, on the other hand, employed every means of exciting the nation to war. He travelled to all the towns of the league, assembled public meetings, preached hatred of Rome, and secured the support of the lowest class of people by a decree stopping the recovery of debts during the continuance of the war. He also looked about for allies, and offers actually came from Thebes and Chalcis. But, on the whole, Greece showed no inclination to join the mad democrat in a struggle against mighty Rome.

Metellus had now brought the war in Macedonia to an end, and sent ambassadors (in the spring of 146 BC) warning Critolaus to abstain from further measures against Sparta. The regular spring meeting of the Achaean league happened just to be assembled in Corinth, and this chap. time it was more numerously attended than usual. But the greater portion of the assembly consisted of the lower people, the workmen and artisans of the great trading and manufacturing town of Corinth, over whom Critolaus had complete power, and whom he made use of for intimidating the more quiet and sensible men. When the Romans urged the league to yield to the request of the senate, and to allow Sparta, as well as the other towns named in the decree, to secede from the league, a storm of indignation broke out, similar to that of the preceding year when Aurelius had first made the same demand. The Romans were hissed and forced to leave the assembly. But Critolaus made grand speeches of the sort so congenial to the Greeks. They were willing, he said, to serve the Romans as their friends, but not as their masters. If the Greeks were men, they would easily find allies; but if they were women they would be certain to find those who would lord it over them. He hinted that he was not trusting blindly to fortune, but that he could reckon upon the help of kings and confederate republics. Critolaus violently suppressed the opposition of the more prudent members of the executive council by calling in armed men and defiantly challenging his opponents to touch even the hem of his garment. He called them traitors to the common cause, and invited the national assembly to put an end to further hesitation by declaring war against the Spartans, and to invest himself with unlimited military power. His advice was followed. The Roman ambassadors hastily left the town, and Critolaus collected the armed forces of the league for the last struggle which was fought by independent Greece.

The war was formally declared only against Sparta and not against Rome. But that it would, in fact, have to be waged with the latter power could not be doubtful even to those who had tried to deceive themselves. Sparta had already been completely defeated and humiliated in the preceding year. From that quarter no attack was to be apprehended. Critolaus, therefore, marched northwards with his troops, with the intention of reducing first the town of Heraclea, near Mount Oeta, which had seceded from the league on the invitation of the Romans, but probably also with a view of giving battle to Metellus, who was stationed in Macedonia, and of engaging the northern Greeks in the war.

The great difference between the boasts of Critolaus and his performances now became evident. He received no material aid except from Thebes and Chalcis; Heraclea was defended so bravely that he could not take the town; and when the news arrived that the Roman army was approaching, he gave up in all haste his favourable position at Thermopylae, and retreated into Locris. But he was overtaken and completely beaten at Scarphea on the Malian gulf. Many thousands were slain or taken prisoners. Critolaus himself was among the former; at least he disappeared in the battle, and no one could say what became of him. The Romans vigorously pushed the pursuit of the defeated army; in Phocis they annihilated the contingent of the town of Patrae, and, at Chaeronea in Boeotia, a select body of Arcadians who had not arrived till after the battle.

After such misfortunes a continued resistance seemed, and was in fact, nothing less than madness. Metellus, anxious to bring the war to a close before his appointed successor, the consul Lucius Mummius, should relieve him, requested the Achaeans to accept the conditions of the senate. He was probably willing to treat the conquered enemies with clemency, if we may judge by the indulgence shown to Thebes, which had surrendered to him, and where he had punished only Phaeneas, the captain (Boeotarch) of the Boeotian confederacy, who had dragged the town into the war. The Achaeans might now, without discredit, have bowed to superior force. They had done what was in their power. Their former position towards Rome  was already forfeited, and further resistance could only bring upon them unspeakable miseries. But, as their ill luck would have it, the management of the league once more fell into the hands of a desperate fanatic, who was determined, without any prospect of success, to continue the struggle to the last. After the death of Critolaus his predecessor Diaeus took the command provisionally, according to the constitutional practice of the league, and was then formally elected. He at once prepared for further resistance, and unfortunately Metellus gave him time to do so. Diaeus mustered up all men capable of bearing arms, filled the gaps in the army with freedmen, and forced the rich to pay heavy contributions, and even the women to give up their trinkets. By the most atrocious terrorism he overcame the advocates of peace, headed by an inferior general named Sosicrates, together with those members of the aristocratic party who had formerly supported Roman interests under the lead of Callicrates. These men probably began to negotiate with Metellus in the absence of the dictator. All sensible men longed for the end of a war in which they saw no hope of success. Metellus was disposed to offer the most favourable conditions. But Diaeus and the nibble frustrated all peaceful measures. The negotiators were branded as traitors. Sosicrates was tortured to death.The others escaped by bribing Diaeus, who, in spite of his fanaticism, was avaricious and mean enough to take money from his political opponents in the very crisis and death-struggle of his country. Thus all opposition was silenced, and the deluded people were led to ruin by a madman.

Meanwhile Lucius Mummius, the consul for that year, 146 BC, had arrived in Greece with a consular army, and had sent back Metellus and his troops to Macedonia. Mummius was not a great general, nor was he distinguished in any other way, but he was not a bad man. On the contrary, he was honest and good-natured, though somewhat dull and ignorant. We do not know by what merits he had risen from a low station to the consular dignity, and had thus become what was technically called ‘a new man (homo novus). It was to chance that he was indebted for the command in Greece, as he had drawn lots with his colleague to decide the distribution of provinces. It signified little, however, whether he possessed great military ability or not. The war was already virtually ended. The demoralised and hastily mustered army of the Achaeans consisted of twelve thousand slaves turned into soldiers. It was confronted by a picked Roman army of two double legions and a powerful cavalry of three thousand five hundred men, besides Cretan archers and other auxilaries. Even before the arrival of Mummius, as soon as Metellus approached from Boeotia, a division of four thousand Achaeans, who had occupied Megara, retreated to the isthmus to join the main force. The two armies now confronted each other, not far from Corinth. An advanced guard of the Romans suffered itself to be surprised, and was driven back to the main body with considerable loss. The courage of the Greeks rose. They already began to think themselves equal at least to the ten thousand who, at Marathon, had driven the countless host of barbarians back to the sea. They advanced, and succeeded in forcing Mummius to give battle. The fate of Greece was decided in the autumn, 146 BC, near a town on the isthmus, called Leucopetra, which is not mentioned on any other occasion. The Achaean horse was scattered by the first attack of the far stronger Roman cavalry. The infantry resisted the legions for some time until it was attacked in flank and routed. Then the whole defeated army broke up. The majority of the men hastened back at once to their homes. Diaeus seems to have made no attempt to occupy Corinth with the remainder of his troops and to defend this fortified town, a course which would have made the Greek death-struggle similar to that of Carthage, or which might, perhaps, have been followed by favourable conditions of peace. He fled straight to his native town of Megalopolis, killed his wife, and poisoned himself, leaving his countrymen to their fate. Corinth was deserted not only by her defenders, but by almost the whole population. The gates remained open, so that Mummius, fearing that the enemy were in ambush, hesitated for two days before he entered the town, just as in the old time the Gauls had hesitated before the walls of Rome. He then made his entry, and treated Corinth like a town taken by storm. The few remaining inhabitants were killed, the women and children reserved to be sold as slaves; the town was systematically plundered. Thus far Corinth shared the fate of Capua, Syracuse, and Tarentum, and, as we might think, more than expiated the crime which she had committed by insulting the Roman ambassadors. But the Romans thought differently. The senate had resolved to demolish the finest and richest town in Greece, to sweep it from the face of the earth, and to leave the site a desert like those of her former rivals, Alba Longa, Veii, and Carthage. By an express order from Rome the deserted town was set on fire and burnt to the ground, the walls were pulled down, the spot was cursed, and the land was declared to be the property of the Roman people.

In the long list of destroyed towns which mark the course of Greek history by columns of smoke and fire, the devastation of Corinth occupies a foremost place. The flames which consumed Miletus and Athens were the signal for the great rising of the people, the dawn of a magnificent day of Greek splendour: after the fall of Corinth came the long, dark night. Corinth, it is true, rose once more from her ashes, when one hundred years later Julius Caesar founded the new Julian Corinth on the site which had been condemned by the priest to lie waste for ever; but it was no longer the Corinth of former days. The new plantation could strike but feeble roots in the soil covered with ruins. The legions of Mummius had thoroughly performed their task. Roman rapacity left nothing behind that recalled the ancient splendour of the Isthmian town. What could not be carried off was destroyed, and many things were thrown away or spoiled through ignorance. When Polybius arrived and saw the ruins, almost before they had ceased to smoke, he found common soldiers playing at dice on the paintings of the most celebrated masters. It is well known how conscientiously the honest Mummius endeavoured to see that nothing was lost which was worth transporting to Italy. An anecdote is reported by Velleius, that he advised those who undertook the transport to take the greatest care, adding that every lost work of art would have to be replaced by another of equal value. But not the whole of the art treasures found their way to Italy. Some were bestowed upon Pergamum, others sent to adorn various sanctuaries in Greece.

This terrible catastrophe was surely not wanted to overawe by sheer terror any further resistance on the part of the Achaeans. All Greece bent under the iron rod of her masters. The towns which had borne arms against Rome were deprived of their walls; among them was Thebes, though Metellus apparently had accorded a pardon to this city. Chalcis was punished with peculiar severity. The chiefs of the popular party paid the penalty of their lives. Even those inhabitants of Corinth who had fled before the approach of the Romans were sold into slavery with the emancipated slaves who had fought in the army. Nothing remained to the Greeks but the mournful consolation that the death-struggle for freedom had been sudden and short, and that it had not, as in the case of Carthage, involved the whole people in one ruin.

After severe punishments had been inflicted on the most guilty, the conquerors were in a mood to show mercy to the rest, and they allowed themselves to be guided herein especially by the advice of Polybius. It was due to his influence that, among other soothing measures, the statues of Achaeus, the mythical ancestor of their race, and those of Aratus and Philopoemen which were already on their way to Rome, were brought back. But the most signal benefit which he conferred upon his countrymen was this, that he obtained permission to regulate the new form of government to be set up in the different communities. After a long series of violent convulsions and revolutions, Polybius established a new order of things, and thus to some extent mitigated the calamity which he had not been able to avert.

The consul Mummius was not by nature one of those hard-hearted wretches who take a personal delight in the agonies of victims delivered over to them for execution. He was not a man like Fulvius in the Hannibalic war, who by his promptness in butchering the conquered Capuans prevented the chance of their being pardoned by the senate. Having carried out his orders for inflicting punishment, he gave full scope to the better promptings of his heart, gaining thereby respect and even gratitude among the Greeks themselves. But no intercession could save the conquered from being disarmed, for by no other means was it possible to prevent internal warfare. Nor could they be spared the payment of an annual tribute to Rome as a recognition of their subjection to the Roman commonwealth. The confiscations of land, however, were not made on a very large scale. They were limited to the territory of Corinth and some tracts in Boeotia and Euboea, probably parts of the land belonging to Thebes and Chalcis. These became public domains of the Roman state. The local government remained in the hands of the respective communities. Nothing was changed in the existing customs, institutions, and laws. No governors were sent from Rome to force upon the conquered Greeks foreign laws with the help of Italian garrisons. After some time the law was also withdrawn which forbade the acquisition of landed property in more than one community; even the various confederations were re-established. The Achaeans continued to elect their annual Strategos, the Boeotians their Boeotarch and other magistrates. In addition to this, some few towns enjoyed special privileges, such as immunity from paying tribute; for it seemed reasonable that Athens, Sparta, and the other towns which had taken no part in the war, or had even favoured the Romans, should be rewarded rather than punished. But yet such special exemptions and privileges made little difference in the actual subjection of the whole of Greece under the sovereignty of Rome. The Roman governor of the province of Macedonia was charged with the supervision and control of the Greek communities. It was not till the time of Augustus that Greece became a separate province under the name of Achaia. Until then it enjoyed a kind of exceptional position, not unlike that which the American territories occupy before their reception into the Union. The several communities retained complete self-government, but the full sovereignty, i.e. the right of peace and war, was taken away from them, and for the military protection which Rome guaranteed them, they paid an annual tribute.

After all that they had of late years gone through, this condition, which at least secured internal peace, might, be regarded by the Greeks as a great improvement. If for the present Achaeans and Spartans could no longer make war upon one another in quarrels about wretched frontier villages like Belmina; if they were prevented from laying waste corn-fields, burning houses, killing thousands of people or carrying them away as slaves, they might perhaps miss the excitement which had almost become necessary to their existence. But, if they were so minded, they could find ample compensation in the safety of their property and the chance of enjoying it peaceably. The rich especially were released from the danger of socialistic confiscations, which had been a constant weapon in the hands of demagogues and tyrants. Rome took care that the terrorism exercised by the proletarians should come to an end. Everywhere democracy was restrained within proper barriers, and the poorest class excluded from a share in the government. It was the beginning of a new era, and the Greece of old disappeared from the historical stage. The sovereign states in which the most excitable of all peoples had struggled for centuries in endless contests subsided, from thorough exhaustion, into the sleepy monotony of provincial towns. Material well-being was destroyed for a long time. The country was depopulated and impoverished, the energy of the people was paralysed. Yet these were the effects of past misfortunes, not the result of the present state of affairs. Greece needed only time and rest to recover by degrees. But before this recovery could take place, the Mithridatic war broke out in the time of Sulla, and again threw the country into a state of complete exhaustion, from which, even in the time of the emperors, it only partially recovered.

If we consider the causes which led to the loss of Hellenic independence, we must allow that the Greeks themselves were primarily answerable for it. Their besetting sin was abuse of power and disregard for the rights of others. The Spartans, instead of receiving the conquered Peloponnesians as members into their community, reduced, them to the condition of helots, and thus condemned themselves to political stagnation and to the rough camp life of a nation of warriors, ever threatened by internal revolt and mutiny. They thus deprived themselves of the means of establishing a legitimate dominion over their neighbours. The Athenians also, though in a milder form, but essentially in the same spirit, abused the power which their enterprise, their courage, and favourable circumstances had placed in their hands. Being unable to conciliate neighbouring communities by equal rights and just government, and thus to make them part of themselves, the Greeks knew only one way of profiting by their military achievements—that of weakening, taxing, enslaving, or even annihilating their conquered enemies. Hence every individual Greek state was, by the necessity of its posi­tion, compelled to fight desperately for its independence, and to oppose every attempt at forming a national state of larger dimensions. Greek cities had a choice only between independence and utter ruin. Animated by this feeling, they opposed the most obstinate resistance to the dominion of the Macedonian kings, which was by no means as oppressive as that of other Greeks, and now they pushed the desperate struggle with Rome to a point where it ceased to be rational and heroic.

But though the Greeks were unable to overcome their attachment to small independent communities, to bind together in one state the whole strength of their race, and to defend their liberty, and though they were thus the authors of their own misfortunes, yet we cannot help tracing to the perfidy of Roman policy the immediate cause of the catastrophe. If there is one thing certain and indisputable in the whole history of antiquity, it is this—that the Romans, ever since they set foot in Greece, strove steadily and systematically to undermine and to destroy the independence of the Greek people. Instead of establishing peace, they scattered the seeds of discord. With masterly skill they availed themselves of the Greek passions to keep the people in a continual ferment, and they drove them at length to a desperate resistance by heartless ill-usage, such as had never been experienced by any proud nation.

CHAPTER V.

THE THIRD WAR WITH CARTHAGE, 149-146 B.C.