THE MACEDONIAN WAR.[31]
Immediately after the battle of Cannæ, Philip III. of Macedon had sent ambassadors to Hannibal, and had concluded a treaty, which fell, by chance, into the hands of the Romans. Even without this accident, it could not have been kept secret, not at least for any length of time. By this treaty, of which we certainly read in Polybius a genuine text, and of which the form is not at all Greek, but quite foreign, undoubtedly Carthaginian, the two states had not after all bound themselves to much. Hannibal secured to Philip in case of victory, that the Romans were to give up their possessions beyond the Adriatic, Corcyra, Apollonia, Epidamnus, the colony of Pharus, the Atintanians (an Epirote people), Dimalus, and the Parthinian Illyrians; and in return for this, Philip was to let the Carthaginians have the supremacy over Italy. Had Philip then been what he became in his riper years, this alliance would have proved dangerous to the Romans. But they, with that perseverance and heroic courage which distinguished them in the whole war, sent out a fleet under the prætor M. Valerius Lævinus, to protect Illyria, and to raise a party against him in Greece. Hostilities began in the year 537, or 538 (Lævinus not being a consul, thecommencement is not quite certain), and the war lasted until the peace of P. Sempronius 548. This war was carried on very sluggishly on the side of the Romans, and Philip, who had to limit his exertions only to the few points on the mainland of Illyria, could have made himself master of these, had he not managed his affairs quite as feebly. His conduct then gives us quite a different idea of his powers from that which we are led to form afterwards. Had he given to Hannibal but ten thousand Macedonians as auxiliaries, Rome would have been in a sad plight; but he was too vain to do so.
Philip was at that time very young, hardly in his twenty-first or second year. His father Demetrius II. had left him at his death yet a child, and had given him for guardian an uncle, or elder cousin, Antigonus Epitropus (likewise called Doson). This Antigonus showed a conscientiousness which, considering the time in which he lived, really awakens our wonder; he seems to have taken as much care of the education of his ward, as of his rights: of this we see the traces in Philip, especially in the first years of his reign, in which he is said to have been very amiable. But there was something bad-hearted in him, which soon shook off that influence: like an eastern youth, he then wallowed in lust. Yet he was endowed with remarkable talents; he was highly gifted as a general, and he had courage and skill, to employ and to increase the resources of his empire. In the war against the Romans under Flamininus, he displayed much ability; and when in the peace he had lost part of his kingdom, he cleverly took advantage of circumstances to be set up again by Rome herself. Thus he managed to leave behind to his son a power, such as he himself had never possessed before.
The empire of Macedon, during the latter days of Antigonus Gonatas, had fallen into decay: the Ætolians had risen, the Achæans had made themselves free. Under Demetrius, it was going down hill still faster. From this condition, it only recovered in the last yearsof the guardianship of Antigonus, and that by the treason of old Aratus, who sacrificed the whole glory of a well-spent life; for he chose, rather to yield up Corinth and the liberty of Greece, and to make the Achæans sink into utter insignificance, than to let Cleomenes have that authority in the state, which was due to him, and without which the Lacedæmonians could not have joined the Achæan league. Philip, in the beginning of his reign, had, in conjunction with the Achæans, undertaken a war against the Ætolians, by which the latter were considerably humbled, important fortresses in Thessaly having been taken from them and their estimation in Greece lowered. They were obliged to agree to a disadvantageous peace, yet they still kept their independence. When Philip leagued himself with Hannibal, and began the war with the Romans, Greece was at peace. Thessaly, with the exception of that part which was Ætolian, Phocis, Locris, Eubœa with Chalcis, Corinth, Heræa, and Aliphera were well affected to Macedon, and had Macedonian garrisons. The Achæans were nominally free and united, but in reality dependent on their allies the Macedonians; so were likewise the Bœotians and Acarnanians. The Ætolians, who were hostile, were free, and had a territory of considerable extent. In Lacedæmon, at that time one revolution followed upon another: it was subjected to a nominal king, probably a son of Eudamidas; but soon afterwards Machanidas seized upon the government. The Syrian kings ruled over Western Asia, with the exception of Caria and Samos, which, as well as the Hellespont, Chersonesus, and the towns on the southern coast of Thrace, belonged to Egypt. Chios, Lesbos, and Byzantium formed together a confederacy of free cities. Rhodes was free, the mistress of the sea, and powerful; she was a friend of the Romans, without being actually allied with them. Egypt and Syria were at war with each other. The former retained Cœlesyria when the peace was made; but she lost the northern fortresses of Phœnicia to Syria.The Athenians were on friendly terms with the Romans; in their enfeebled state they kept aloof from all political activity. There was peace everywhere; the eyes of Greece were already very much turned towards Rome.
One would have thought that under these circumstances Philip might have undertaken something of importance against Rome; yet he did not exert himself. In the beginning of the contest, there were only little skirmishes going on, and he had some success; he overcame the Atintanians, and also the Ardyæans in the north of Illyricum, who were under the protection of Rome. About the fourth year of the war, the Romans made an alliance with the Ætolians, and from that time, unhappily for Greece, they became enterprising in those parts. They sent over indeed but one legion, in fact, only marines; but they also had a fleet in those seas, which was of some consequence, as the Macedonians had scarcely any at all. Through the Ætolians, the Romans also became connected with Attalus, who having begun with the small realm of Pergamus, had conquered Lydia, and created a rich principality. The Roman fleets of Lævinus, and after him of Sulpicius, were a real curse for ill-fated Greece. The treaty with the Ætolians stipulated, that of all the places beyond Corcyra which they should conquer together, the soil should belong to the Ætolians, the inhabitants with their goods and chattels to the Romans. Such a stipulation is indeed not unheard of; yet it shows what the Ætolians really were. After the Lamian war, they deserve praise; but all that happened afterwards, shows them to have been morally barbarians: their language may indeed have been partly Greek. This treaty had the saddest consequences. The Roman fleet made its appearance off the Greek coast; Ægina, Dyme, Oreus, were taken, and the whole population swept away by the Romans. These two last places the Ætolians were not able to keep; but Ægina with its harbour they sold to Attalus for thirty talents,—that noble Greek island to a princeof Pergamus! These atrocities drew upon the Ætolians and Romans the abhorrence of the whole of Greece. Philip, who thereby became popular, penetrated with the Greeks, for the first time, into Ætolia, and requited them in their own country for their devastations. The Ætolians, abandoned by the Romans, concluded a very disadvantageous peace. Philip made considerable conquests. Two or three years afterwards, (Livy’s chronology here is very little to be relied on,) about 548, the Romans also by means of Tib. Sempronius concluded a peace with Philip, beneath the conditions of which some great disadvantage again is veiled. Not only the country of the Atintanians, which had become subject to them,—a district not unimportant of itself, but of very great consequence on account of the pass of Argyrocastro, through which Philip had now a free passage between the Roman territory and the then republic of Epirus,—was by it expressly ceded to Philip, but also the country of the Ardyæans. The Romans, of course, had this mental reservation, that the time would not be long before they would break this peace, and gain back what they had lost. This is one of the few instances in which the Romans renounced part of their possessions. One ought to have remembered this, when such violent reproaches were made against Jovian, who, to save his army, ceded a tract of country to the Persians: there was an outcry at the time, as if such a thing had never happened before in the history of Rome. Aurelian had yielded Dacia to the Goths; Hadrian had given up the conquests of Trajan in the east; not to mention the peace with the Volscians in the earliest times.
Philip, after having concluded peace with the Romans, allied himself with Antiochus the Great against the infant Ptolemy Epiphanes, the child of the unworthy Ptolemy Philopator. The Egyptian kings since Philadelphus and Euergetes, were in possession of extensive districts and strongholds on the coasts of Syria and Asia Minor, as far as the coast of Thrace: Lycia atleast was subject to their supremacy. As under Ptolemy Philopator the empire had already fallen into utter decay, and his infant successor was growing up under the charge of an unworthy guardian, Antiochus and Philip took advantage of the moment. Egypt had since the rise of the Alexandrine empire been on friendly terms with Rhodes, and the Rhodians had a strong interest in being friends with Alexandria, as they had much more to fear from Macedon than from Egypt; they therefore defended Epiphanes. Yet their power was no match for that of Macedon and Syria; especially as the wretched Egyptian government hardly did anything, but on the contrary let the allies, among whom, besides Rhodes, there were also Byzantium, Chios, and Attalus of Pergamus, bear the whole brunt of the war. The two kings were therefore most successful. Philip conquered for himself the whole of the Thracian coast; Perinthus, Ephesus, and Lycia, fell to the lot of Syria, although the allies of the Egyptians had shortly before had some success in a sea-fight near Chios.
Philip had now reached the pinnacle of his greatness. Even from Crete, where Macedon had never before exercised any influence, he was applied to for his mediation.
The immediate cause, or at least the pretext for the second Macedonian war, was afforded to the Romans by the distress of Athens. That city was utterly impoverished and decayed; but it kept up a sort of independence, and as early as about twenty-five years after the first Illyrian war, it had made an alliance with the Romans, and had granted them isopolity.[32]Perhaps the Romans received the gift with a smile; yet such bright rays of her old departed glory still lingered upon Athens, that on her side at least, there was nothing ridiculous in the proffer. Pausanias tells us, that among the cenotaphs for those who had been slain, there werealso some for the men belonging to three triremes, who had fallen in battle abroad as allies of the Romans; but he does not give the date. It is not likely that this was a figment of the Athenians; the time may have been that of the second Illyrian war, as they were keen enough to see that they might gain the Romans by sending them a few ships. During the first Macedonian war, they very wisely kept neutral; but in the last years of the war of Hannibal they got involved in hostilities with Philip. The murder of two young Acarnanians who had intruded when the Eleusinian mysteries were celebrated, led their countrymen to call upon Philip for help. He had long wished to get possession of Athens, and he now savagely devastated the whole of Attica to the very walls of the city: all the temples in the Athenian territory were pulled down, and even the tombs were demolished. The Athenians betook themselves to the Rhodians, to Attalus, and in general to all the allies of that suddenly decayed Alexandrine empire, which had once been so highly blooming under Euergetes; yet their hopes were chiefly bent upon the Romans. In Rome there was much consultation what to do. The senate and the leading men, who already had unbounded views of extending the Roman power, would not have hesitated for a moment to declare war, and the more so, as they were likewise eager to make up for what they had lost by the unfortunate issue of the former one: but the people, who were most wretchedly off, and longed for rest, threw out the first motion for a war.
It is a most erroneous thing, for one to believe that a constitution remains the same, so long as its outward forms still last. When alterations have taken place in the distribution of property, in public opinion, and in the way in which people live, the constitution, even without any outward change, may become quite different from what it was, and the self-same form may at one time be democratical, and at another aristocratical. This internal revolution is hardly ever traced by modernwriters of history, and yet it is one of those very things which in history ought to be particularly searched into. That strange and wonderful preponderance of the oligarchy of wealth existed already at that time in Rome, and the many—who generally speaking have neither judgment nor a will of their own—now decree the very things which they did not wish. Here indeed we have one of the first and most remarkable symptoms of this: the people, contrary to their own wishes, vote for the war with Philip. It was the great misfortune of Rome, that after the war of Hannibal, there was no great man who had the genius to restore the constitution in accordance with its spirit. For great states always decline and fall, because, after great exertions, everything is left to the blind spirit of the age, and no healing of what is diseased is attempted.
The Romans now, with great zeal, sent ambassadors to Philip to demand indemnification for the Athenians, and cessation of all hostilities against the allies of Rome, to the number of whom Ptolemy also belonged. Philip clearly saw that this was but a pretext to raise a quarrel, and he had bitterly to repent of not having taken better advantage of the war with Hannibal. In the year 552, the war was decreed, and the command was given to the consul P. Sulpicius Galba, who had already made a campaign before in those parts, though not of the most glorious kind, as he devastated Dyme, Oreus, and Ægina. It must have been resolved upon late in the season, and as the consul besides fell ill, nothing more could be undertaken that year: Galba’s expedition therefore entirely belongs to the year which followed his consulship, a fact which is overlooked by Livy. Villius, the next consul, was only present at the seat of war for a very short period, towards the end of his time of office.
In Greece, the Ætolians just then were very much weakened, but independent, and hostile to Macedon. They possessed Ætolia, part of Acarnania, the countryof the Ænianians, that of the Ozolian Locrians, most of Phthiotis, the land of the Dolopians, part of southern Thessaly, and Thermopylæ; and they had isopolity with Lacedæmon, and with a number of distant places in Elis and Messene: yet for the last thirty years they had been going down hill. In the Peloponnesus, the Achæans held Achaia, Sicyon, Phlius, and Argolis, and Arcadia; but in reality they were entirely dependent on the Macedonians, and were protected by them against Ætolia and Lacedæmon. The Lacedæmonians were confined within very narrow limits in their old country, and they had lost their ancient constitution; they had no ephors, perhaps not even a senate, but they were ruled by a tyrant, Nabis, one of the worst of monsters. The Messenians stood apart from the Ætolians and Achæans, and were become sworn foes to the latter; the Eleans were independent, and leagued with the Ætolians; the Bœotians remained independent in appearance only, under the supremacy of Macedon; Corinth, Eubœa, Phocis, Locris, were nominally allies of the Macedonians, but in fact were subject to their rule. Thessaly was held to be a state which had become blended with Macedon. In Epirus, the house of the Æacidæ was extirpated, and the remainder of the people hemmed in by the Ætolians, formed a republic, sometimes under Ætolian, and at other times under Macedonian influence. On the Greek mainland, Athens survived as a mere name, without a connexion belonging to her, an object of Philip’s hate. The Acarnanians were, properly speaking, none of the subjects of the Macedonians, but were only united with them by their common enmity against the Ætolians. The Cyclades had formerly belonged to Egypt, and they were now in an unsettled state. Crete was independent, but torn by factions, owing to which Philip had been called upon to mediate. Chios and Mitylene were free; Rhodes was great and powerful; Byzantium also was free, and allied with Chios and Mitylene: they had taken as little part as possible in all the quarrels; butnow they were drawn into them, particularly Chios, and in a league with Attalus. As to their intellectual life, the Greeks were utterly fallen. There were indeed still some schools at Athens; but poesy was dead, and even the art of speech, that last blossom of the Greek spirit, had vanished away, and had sought a new home among the Asiatic peoples which had been hellenized, but without imbibing any of the excellencies of the Greek nation. Most places were mere shadows of what they had been; there were but few indeed which had not been destroyed more than once: of the number of those spared was Corinth, which therefore was the most flourishing of all Greek towns. The Achæans, ever since Aratus, out of spite to the Lacedæmonians, had given over his country into the hands of the Macedonians, were mere clients to their new patrons. Owing to this connexion, which had lasted nearly twenty years, they had many a time received the deepest cause for provocation; but they were on bad terms with their neighbours, and if their patriots had any wish, it was to have their dependence upon Macedon changed into a freer form of clientship; none, however, dreamed of independence. But then many were filled with bitter indignation at the cruelty with which several towns had been laid waste by the Romans. The Ætolians felt inclined to undertake the war; but they did not come to any decision, a misunderstanding having arisen between them and the Romans, whom they reproached with having given them unfounded hopes, whilst, on the other hand, the Romans complained of not having been supported by them in the Illyrian war.
In the first campaign of Sulpicius (553), the Romans could do nothing: they took the bull by the horns, and attacked Macedon from Illyria. Philip kept on the defensive. That part of Illyria, as far as Scutari, is a country of rather low hills, very much like Franconia; in many places it is flat. On the eastern frontier, near Macedon, a ridge of high mountains runs down, whichtakes in western Macedon, and from Scodrus, or Scardus, reaches southwards to Pindus and Parnassus. This range of mountains, lofty and broad, cold, barren, and naturally poor, is now hardly inhabited any longer; even the valleys are inhospitable. Here are the highlands of Macedon, the true home of the earliest Macedonians, who had formerly held under their own liege-lords, being dependent upon Philip, but at that time were entirely united with Macedon. The Romans found every thing here against them: nearly the whole of the population, consisting as it did of Macedonians, was hostile with the exception of the Epirote Orestians, and provisions were scarce everywhere. Sulpicius therefore retreated, and passed the winter in the fertile country of lower Illyria, near Apollonia and Epidamnus. However carefully historians may disguise the fact, certain it is that his undertaking was a complete failure.
T. Quinctius Flamininus, immediately after his being made consul, in the year 554, led reinforcements across the Adriatic, and changed the whole plan. This time also, the Macedonians had fortified their frontiers, and they kept on the defensive. The principal camp of the king was near what is now Argyrocastro, the old Antigonea, founded by Pyrrhus, where the Aous—so we must read instead of Apsus, in Plutarch’s life of Flamininus—has worn its way between two high ridges of limestone: both these mountain ranges are wild and impassable; they stretch out on one side as far as the Acroceraunian heights, on the other towards Pindus. The place cannot be mistaken from its very nature (fauces Antigoneæ); even to this day, the true road from Illyria into the interior of Epirus passes through it, part of which, on the brink of the river, is cut in the mountains. The Romans had renewed their alliance with the Ætolians, who took up arms and threatened the frontier of Thessaly, but undertook nothing of consequence. Philip was much bent on hindering the Ætolians, now that they were the allies of the Romans, from attacking the Thessalianfrontiers in right earnest, and uniting with them; and this he effected by taking up his position near Antigonea. Before this defile, Villius also who, when Flamininus arrived, was still in Greece, had during his proconsulship stood his ground against Philip; yet it was hopeless to attack him in front, and several attempts had miscarried. Perhaps the Romans expected that the Ætolians would compel the Macedonian army to change their position, as otherwise it would be incomprehensible why they should have encamped in that place.
Flamininus, who now entered upon the consulship, was a distinguished man, and had moreover been chosen by the people before he was thirty years old, owing to their confidence in his personal qualities. It is indeed a proof of the utter falsehood of the notion that the Romans had only in later times sought to make themselves acquainted with Greek literature, when we find it distinctly stated of men like Flamininus that they were imbued with Greek learning. His conduct towards Greece is not indeed to be approved of in every respect; but he was provoked, when his noble attempt to win her applause, was darkened by the ingratitude of a nation which was already partly degenerated. Had the Greeks been able to suit themselves to the actual state of things, they might have been spared many a sad experience. Flamininus became convinced that it was necessary to try and drive the Macedonians from their vantage ground, and he attained his end by means of that faithlessness then so general in Greece. He tampered with a chieftain belonging to the Epirote republic of the name of Charops; and the latter, being gained over by money and promises, undertook to lead a small Roman division of four thousand men through unknown roads to the rear of the Macedonian army. The Romans did not indeed trust their guides, and they carried them bound along with them; but no treachery was committed, and on the third day they reached theheights above the Macedonians. That day had been appointed for the attack. At sunrise, Flamininus began the battle in front, and thus engaged the attention of the Macedonians; he had already lost a great many men, when the detachment which had gone round the Macedonians, gave the signal with fire from the heights. He now renewed the attack with redoubled vigour: the other Romans fell upon the Macedonians from the rear, and these were panic-struck and fled; so that the Romans by one blow became masters of Epirus, where all the towns opened their gates to them. Philip escaped across mount Pindus into Thessaly. Flamininus did not follow, as he wished first to take advantage of these circumstances, entirely to drive the Macedonians out of Greece. But an expedition to Thessaly had no great results. He united with the Ætolians in Ambracia, and took up his winter-quarters in Phocis, where he besieged the strong town of Elatea.
During the campaign, the combined fleet of Attalus, the Rhodians, and the Romans, was in the Greek seas; they made several undertakings, which, however, led to nothing but the ravaging of unhappy Greece. Thus Chalcis, once so flourishing, was destroyed and pillaged. The Achæans had before been obliged to give up Megara and Corinth to Philip, who had likewise kept Orchomenus without asking their leave; at a later period only, that is to say at the beginning of the second war, he gave it back to them. Had he now after his defeat, likewise restored to them Corinth, they would hardly have forsaken him; for they had an implacable hatred against the Ætolians, and also against the Romans on account of the savage devastations of the former war. But now that Philip had not been able to stand his ground, and all the country as far as Thermopylæ was in the hands of the Romans, the Macedonian party, although certainly still considerable, could not come forward, and the proposal was discussed of concluding an alliance with the Romans. Roman ambassadors appeared at Sicyon;the Achæan strategus Aristænus, a shrewd statesman, took advantage of the disposition which was felt by many to yield to sense and reason, and to dwell on the injuries suffered from Philip; and he got the alliance with him dissolved, though not without difficulty, and another one concluded with the Romans. The restoration of the places of which Philip had stripped them, was promised; Nabis and the Ætolians were not to exercise any hostility against them. It was no longer possible, as Demosthenes once had done, to lead the nation by inspired eloquence and high feeling, but shrewdness had its effect. The Achæans were not warlike, although Philopœmen had done everything he could to make them so. The war with Macedon was very irksome to them; for, although there was only a small Macedonian garrison stationed at Corinth, yet it was able by its allies to do much harm to the neighbouring places in the Peloponnesus. The governor of Corinth, Philocles, even took Argos.
In the meanwhile, Flamininus called upon the Bœotians to enter into the league with Rome; yet they showed themselves wavering, as after a hundred and forty years of the Macedonian yoke, it seemed impossible that that power should have been suddenly broken. It was only by what was almost a stratagem, that Flamininus managed to bring them to that alliance (555). The proconsul (Flamininus’ consular year had expired, but hisimperiumhad been prolonged) appeared before Thebes, and demanded to be let in, that he might negotiate; now he had brought soldiers with him, who came forward whilst he was before the town, and so he marched in without asking leave. The decree which the Bœotians still made, was now but a mere form: there was, however, also a Macedonian garrison in the place.
One hundred and twenty-five years had passed away since the death of Alexander; the proud waves had gone down, and the Greeks no longer deemed themselves to be the people which alone had been called torule the world. They no longer thought Macedonians upstarts, but they beheld in them their protectors against the Gauls, Scordiscans, Thracians, and other Northern peoples; they looked up to the Macedonian court; Macedonian money also did its work; in short, they acknowledged their leadership. Nor did they indeed any more reckon them to be barbarians. At Pella, Greek was no doubt as much spoken as Macedonian; at court, and among all the educated classes, it was the language in vogue; so that the difference between Hellenes and Macedonians had by this time been effaced.
Before the new campaign had begun, but when the Achæans had already declared against him, Philip sought to negotiate. He would not, however, yield to the demand of the Romans that he should evacuate the whole of Greece; and so determined again to try his luck in war, as he had become much more spirited in the course of his reign. These negotiations failed, and the hostile armies marched against each other in the year 555. Thessaly was the natural scene of the campaign of this year, in which Philip had put forth all his strength. If what Livy tells us of his levy be true, and he was indeed able to raise but so small an army, then must the Gauls have dreadfully visited his country. But the statement does not seem to be correct; for if Macedon had any thing of a population, it must easily have furnished a hundred thousand men. The Romans took the field, reinforced by the Ætolians; no other allies are spoken of, and the Ætolians themselves are said not to have been more than a few thousand foot and four or five hundred horse, unless this be another mistake; altogether, we are told, the army of Flamininus consisted of twenty-six thousand men and a small body of horse. The struggle began rather early in the year. The harvest in Thessaly is gathered in about the middle of June, and by that time the battle of Cynoscephalæ must have taken place; for the corn was ripe, but not yet cut, so that the soldiers, when foraging, had only to reapit. The Romans and Macedonians, who were each advancing, fell in with each other at a spot where they were separated only by a range of low hills. This was on the borders of the Thessalian plain, at which the Phthiotic hills gently slope away into Thessaly proper. Here the two armies were marching in the same direction, without knowing it, each believing the other to be far behind: the object on both sides, was to take up their quarters wherever they might find provisions, and they wished to avail themselves of the ripe corn. Both were on their way to Scotussa. It had rained the day before, and in the morning there arose a thick fog; so that they scarcely saw the hills along which they were marching to the right and left, and the Romans chanced to hit upon one which the Macedonians were about to ascend. Philip had no wish whatever to fight; the Roman general also would rather have chosen another battle-field, as the country thereabouts was still too open: the force of circumstances, however, compelled them to engage. The Romans were already on the height when the Macedonians came up; but their number was small, and at first they were driven back, until they got reinforced. This took place on the left of the Macedonian army, and thus both generals became aware of the nearness of the enemy, and quickly sent troops to the help of their own men. With the support of the Ætolians, the Romans gained the upperhand on the hill; but this led the foe to make a grand attack upon them, and they were pushed down again by the whole of the Macedonian left wing. The Macedonians now thought themselves sure of victory, and Philip was obliged to risk a battle, lest he should damp the spirit of his soldiers. He therefore had only to choose the best line for their advance; and, what was bad for the Macedonian phalanx, he had to take up his position on the hill, where the moveable array of the Romans was much more efficient. The description of this battle in Polybius’ fragments is masterly. The whole of the left wing hadpressed forward, and had driven the Romans down the hill on the other side; but when the right wing had with great exertion ascended thither, the Roman left wing was already there before it, and thus was this part of the Macedonian army soon defeated. The Ætolian cavalry, to whom this success was owing, went in pursuit of the fugitives. On the left wing of the Romans, which had to encounter the phalanx, the struggle was undecided; at first, they had even the worst of it: the phalanx, which was once sixteen deep, and now fourteen, charged heavily with its immense masses and its terriblesarissæ, the rear ranks pushing those in front with almost irresistible force against the enemy. But the Romans wheeled half round to the right, and drove the Macedonians on the other side up the heights from which they had come down; and in this position, in which the phalanx was not able to move, the battle was won. There is no denying that the Romans owed their victory mainly to the Ætolian cavalry: the rout of the phalanx was the work of these alone. Philip had a narrow escape. The Macedonians lifted up their lances in token of submission; but the Romans, who did not understand this signal, fell upon them, and thus most of them were killed, and the rest taken prisoners. After this overthrow, in which the loss of the Macedonians, according to the lowest estimates, those which Polybius gives, was eight thousand killed, and five thousand prisoners, Philip fled to Larissa, and from thence to Tempe. He had led the whole of his forces into the field, so that he had no reserve left: this was his fatal mistake. He therefore began to negotiate, and after two vain attempts, a truce was agreed upon: he was to send ambassadors to Rome, and in the meanwhile to furnish supplies to the Roman army, and to pay a contribution.
The Romans were inclined to peace, as there had begun to be much ill-blood between them and the Ætolians. These had plundered the Macedonian camp afterthe battle of Cynoscephalæ, and in consequence dissension had arisen. The Romans were in much greater numbers in that fight than the Ætolians; but the cavalry of the Ætolians had indeed decided the victory, and moreover, in the beginning these had stood the brunt of the battle on the heights, by which the Romans were enabled to make an orderly retreat. As there was no blinking these arguments, the Ætolians, even if they had not been a vain people, might very well have taken to themselves the honour of the victory; and this indeed they did in a way which gave great offence to the sensitive Flamininus, who therefore, immediately after the day was won, tried to cut them out of all its advantages. Throughout the whole of Greece, the Ætolians were sung of as conquerors, and the Romans with their consul looked upon only as auxiliaries: there came out at that time a fine epigram still extant of Alcæus of Messene on the victory of Cynoscephalæ, full of scorn against Philip, in which it is said in plain words that the Ætolians, and with them the Latins under T. Quinctius, had beaten the Macedonians, and that thirty thousand Macedonians had been slain. This insolence the Greeks had dearly to pay for, as Flamininus was provoked by it; yet it would have done them still greater mischief, had any other than he been general. It is difficult to form an idea of the blind infatuation of the Ætolians,—a people, whose territory was not larger than the canton of Berne, and who yet could have been mad enough to think themselves the equals of the Romans: one of their generals, who had a quarrel with Flamininus, told him, that arms would decide it on the banks of the Tiber. The only clue for this is in the character of the southern nations, who, though unable to do anything, fancy that they can do everything. Even so it was with the Spaniards in their relations with the English: they are always talking of the immortal day of Salamanca, on which they beat the French, whereas they did not lose more than one manin that battle. And thus did the Ætolians, without any substantial cause, become at variance with the Romans. It is true that Flamininus was too irritable: he ought to have treated this with contempt, as his mission to give freedom to Greece was such a fine one. Nor were the Romans by any means just to the Ætolians: by the original conditions, these had a right to claim the restoration of all the places which had been taken from them by Philip; but the Romans decided against them, and they either kept the places themselves, or embodied them with other states, or else they left them independent. This would not have happened, unless there had been indeed some provocation; but it made the Ætolians quite furious.
It was, of course, the policy of the Romans, to restore Greece in such a manner, that the separate nations should balance each other. The peace was concluded in 556, and a most mortifying one for Philip it was. By its terms he was limited to the kingdom of Macedon, which, however, was larger than the old one of that name, as it reached as far as the Nestus, taking in part of Thrace, and many Illyrian and Dardanian tribes, and he had to give up all his places in Greece and on the Thracian coast, and all his conquests in Asia Minor and Caria: these last ought to have been restored to Ptolemy; yet, for appearance’s sake, they got their freedom. Moreover, he had to bind himself to keep no more than five thousand men as a standing army, and only five galleys, and his royal ship; to pay a thousand talents in ten years; and also to give hostages, among whom was his own son Demetrius.
Of this peace the Romans made a generous use. It would be hardly fair to search keenly into their reasons for it; yet it was perhaps that they might leave no vantage ground to Antiochus. Flamininus himself seems to have had very pure motives. The whole of Thessaly, the countries south of Thermopylæ, and the three fortresses, Acrocorinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias,were in the occupation of the Romans, and it was now a question what was to be done with them. Men were not wanting, who never would have sacrificed the positive advantage of the moment for the sake of a fair fame, and who strongly urged that these three places, with some others besides, should still be retained, so as to ensure the dependence of Greece; but Flamininus declared himself against this, and so effectually, that Corinth, the citadel of which had as yet been provisionally held by the Romans, was now already restored to the Achæans. This was the more nobly done, as not only the Ætolians, but also the Achæans, with Philopœmen at their head, claimed to be equal with the Romans; so that it certainly cost Flamininus a struggle with himself to follow his generous impulse. It was lucky for the Greeks, that, in spirit and education, he was a Greek, to which the epigrams on his votive gifts also bear witness.
On the day of the Isthmian games, the decision of the senate was to be made known, from which people expected different things according to their different dispositions. An immense throng was gathered together at Corinth; and there, in the theatre, Flamininus had the decree of the senate proclaimed, by which freedom was granted to all the Greeks. This beautiful moment of enthusiasm gave Greece fifty years of happiness. In the history of the world, fifty years are a long period,—not long enough indeed for a man to go down to his grave without having lived to see evil times; yet to many the sad experience of early youth was requited by a cheerful old age.
The Ætolians did not rejoice with the rest, neither did Nabis of Lacedæmon. The alliance with the latter was a disgrace to Rome. He had made it a condition that he should keep Argos, which he had got Philip to sell to him, and Flamininus was afterwards glad indeed to lay hold of an opportunity of setting aside the treaty, and of waging war against him. Livy is here veryexplicit, as he copies from Polybius, to whom these events had a peculiar interest. In this war, the tyrant showed himself to be not without ability; but he would have been crushed and Sparta taken, had not Flamininus, guided no doubt by his instructions, followed the baneful policy of not wishing to rid Greece of this source of apprehension, in order that the Achæans might be obliged to make great efforts, and thus want the help of Rome. A large part of Laconia, the district which is now called Maina, was wrested from the grasp of the tyrant, and formed into an independent state, inhabited by the former periœcians; the Achæans got Argos; and Nabis had to pay a war-contribution of a hundred talents down, and of four hundred more within eight years, and also to give his son as a hostage. This did not last long. When Flamininus was absent, the Achæans took advantage of a riot in which Nabis was slain, to unite Sparta with the rest of the Peloponnesus; which was very disagreeable to the Romans, but at that time could not be helped.
The two fortresses, Chalcis and Demetrius, the Romans bound themselves to evacuate, as soon as their affairs with Antiochus stood on a firm footing. Thessaly was made much larger than it had hitherto been; joined with Phthiotis, it formed the Thessalian republic: on the other hand, Perrhæbia and some other districts were detached from it. Orestis, which had fallen away from Macedon, was proclaimed free, and probably united with Thessaly, as I conclude from the list of the Thessalian generals. Magnesia became independent. Eubœa, Locris, Acarnania, Bœotia, Phocis, Athens, Elis, Messene, and Lacedæmon became separate states; the rest of the Peloponnesus and Megara were Achæan. Whilst, however, the Romans called themselves the liberators of Greece, they, in spite of principles which they had publicly professed, yielded up Ægina to Eumenes, the son of Attalus. Athens, down to the times of Sylla, was treated by Rome with peculiar favour: never were theMuses so beneficial to any people. The Romans gave them Scyros, Delos, Imbros, Paros.