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 his _imperium_ had 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 to rule
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 reap
it. 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 had pressed 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 terrible _sarissæ_,
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 after the 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 man in 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 very explicit, 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 the
Muses so beneficial to any people. The Romans gave them Scyros, Delos,
Imbros, Paros.
THE INSUBRIANS AND BOIANS VANQUISHED. WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS. WAR WITH THE
GALATIANS.
We have now reached much beyond the times of the development of the
constitution at home, and the rest of the history has not for us the
same interest which it had for the ancients. Even the wars are losing
that grand character which arose from the display of native energy.
What sort of a subject for description, for instance, is the battle of
Magnesia, in which a well-ordered Roman army came off victorious over
a horde of eastern barbarians, which did not even deserve the name
of army? Some wars, like the Cimbric, form an exception. Livy from
henceforth becomes more and more diffuse; for he had other interests in
his history, and more than two-thirds of his work are taken up by the
two centuries which now follow. We are going to adopt just the opposite
plan, and are able to be more and more concise.
The Insubrians had risen against the Romans. During the second Punic
war, they had been quiet; except in the first years, they took no part
in it, as the scene of operations was in general too far distant from
them, and they kept up but little communication with Hannibal. But now
they were in arms, and the Romans met with peculiar difficulty, owing
to Hamilcar, an enterprising Carthaginian who had remained behind from
Mago’s army, and had organised the Ligurian and Gallic forces. The
Insubrians were very different from the Boians: the former made their
submission after one or two campaigns; but the war with the latter
lasted to the tenth year. They defended themselves with distinguished
bravery, and they destroyed the fortresses of Placentia and Cremona;
for they knew that the Romans were carrying on against them a war
of extermination, and they therefore fought with all the energy of
despair. Historians do not state as explicitly as a fragment of Cato
does, that they were utterly rooted out. The fate of this people is
remarkable. After their emigration from Gaul, they had either turned
themselves to Italy, or had gone to the Danube: in Gaul, their seats
are now hardly known; in the country near the Danube, they were
probably exterminated in the Cimbric war, and hence the _desertum
Boiorum_ (_Böheim_, Bohemia), which was afterwards occupied by the
Marcomanni: in Italy they are said to have had a hundred and twelve
cantons. That in Italy they were extirpated, and that there could
therefore have been no question about them, was not at all understood
by the jurists who have written on the _lex de Gallia Cisalpina_.
But all the Celts south of the Po were destroyed, and the whole of
their land taken up by Roman colonies: Bologna, Modena, Parma, and
also Lucca, were founded at that time, and received a considerable
territory. Yet even in the days of Polybius, that country was nearly
without inhabitants, and it was repeopled only by slow degrees. The
_Lex Julia_ united the Cispadana as to political rights with Italy.
At the close of the war with Philip, the Ætolians were filled with the
most envenomed resentment. This bitterness of feeling was by no means
softened down in the course of time; for the Ætolians made too great
pretensions, and the Romans were unfair towards them. Yet even without
that, they would have moved heaven and earth to drive the Romans out of
Greece. They therefore turned their eyes towards Antiochus.
Antiochus is one of those princes, who unjustly bear in history the
surname of the Great. The Seleucidæ were poorer in great men than any
of the dynasties which succeeded Alexander; even Seleucus himself
hardly deserved to be so called: the Asiatic degeneracy shows itself
in them much earlier than among the Ptolemies. Antiochus got that
surname because his reign was happy: compared with the princes of his
house who had the same name, Antiochus Soter, and the utterly infamous
Theos, his grandfather and great-grandfather, he may have been the
better man. He certainly restored his empire, which had come to him
almost in a state of dissolution from his brother Seleucus; but he did
this without any grand achievement of his own, as he only put forth
against his cowardly enemies the comparatively great might of his
dominion. He had no real difficulties in his way, and those, which he
had to face, he did not overcome like a great man. He might have called
himself εὐτυχής; for before his war with the Romans he had a more
extensive monarchy than the kings of Syria had ever possessed. He ruled
from the Hellespont to the borders of India, over Phrygia, Cilicia,
Syria, Palæstine, Cœle-Syria, Mesopotamia, Kurdistan, Media, Persia as
far as Sidgistan and Cabool; he had made treaties with Indian princes,
and his riches were immense: but with all this, there was nowhere
the vigour of a warlike state, but Asiatic effeminacy throughout.
His strength had not been put to the proof. The descendants of the
Macedonians and Greeks in the colonies of Alexander and Seleucus, had
become quite unwarlike; just as the _Pullani_ (the offspring of the
crusaders) in the Holy Land, a set of people with all the vices of
the east without its virtues. Yet, as he possessed the whole extent
of the Persian empire, Antiochus was looked upon in Asia as the μέγας
βασιλεύς, and in Europe, as the terrible adversary of the Romans: the
Ætolians therefore built great hopes on him.
It was natural that Hannibal should turn himself towards this prince,
and try to stir him up to a war against Rome; although as things then
were, he did not wish to begin it at once, especially as he had the
prospect of still remaining for a long time in the prime of life.
The Romans had, since the war with Philip, entered into negotiations
with Antiochus, which, however, led to nothing: it was a step, such
as they had often taken before, as they would risk an enterprise, and
not mind if it miscarried. When leagued with Philip, Antiochus had
gained the Egyptian possessions in Asia Minor, and he dreamt of nothing
less than of extending his empire to Europe. Philip, in consequence
of his peace with the Romans, had been obliged to abandon the towns
which he had conquered from the Egyptians; these were exposed to the
inroads of the savage Thracian tribes, and they called upon Antiochus
for help. This prince also meddled in the feuds in the Chersonesus,
and restored Lysimachia which had been destroyed by the Thracians.
But the Romans forbade him to set his foot in Europe; they declared
that they would never let him overstep the natural boundaries of his
empire, in which they very wisely kept to this undefined expression:
he was also to acknowledge the independence of the Greek towns in
Asia,--this was a piece of immense presumption, put forth by those
who wanted a war. Antiochus refused; and thus the negotiations were
carried on for four years, during which he fortified Lysimachia and the
Chersonesus as the outworks of Asia. He also fitted out a fleet, for
which he possessed the most ample resources, having taken the Phœnician
coast from the Ægyptians, and being likewise master of Cilicia and
Pamphylia. In Greece the Ætolians were on his side; but the Rhodians
were decidedly against him, as they were allies of the Egyptians, and
though not actually leagued with the Romans, yet on terms of such good
understanding with them, that it came nearly to the same thing.