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,
the commencement 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 years of 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 prince of 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 at least 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 were also 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 modern writers 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 country of 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; but now 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, which takes 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 Thessalian frontiers 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 the heights 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.