sympathy with the Greeks and reverence for their past. It is equally clear that no other course was open to them. For Rome to have annexed Greece, as she had annexed Sicily and Spain, would have been a flagrant violation of the pledges she had repeatedly given both before and during the war; the attempt would have excited the fiercest opposition, and would probably have thrown the Asiatic as well as the European Greeks into the arms of Antiochus. But a friendly and independent Greece would be at once a check on Macedon, a barrier against aggression from the East, and a promising field for Roman commerce. Nor while liberating the Greeks did Rome abstain from such arrangements as seemed necessary to secure the predominance of her own influence. In the Peloponnese, for instance, the Achaeans were rewarded by considerable accessions of territory; and it is possible that the Greek states, as allies of Rome, were expected to refrain from war upon each other without her consent.[1]
Antiochus III. of Syria, Philip's accomplice in the proposed partition of the dominions of their common rival, Egypt, with returned from the conquest of Coele-Syria (198) to learn first of all that Philip was hard pressed by the Romans, and shortly afterwards that he hadWar with Antiochus, 192–89 = 562–65. been decisively beaten at Cynoscephalae. It was already too late to assist his former ally, but Antiochus resolved at any rate to lose no time in securing for himself the possessions of the Ptolemies in Asia Minor and in eastern Thrace, which Philip had claimed, and which Rome now pronounced free and independent. In 197–96 he overran Asia Minor and crossed into Thrace.[2] But Antiochus was pleasure-loving, irresolute, and no general, and it was not until 192 that the urgent entreaties of the Aetolians, and the withdrawal of the Roman troops from Greece, nerved him to the decisive step of crossing the Aegean; even then the force he took with557–58.
562. him was so small as to show that he completely failed to appreciate the nature of the task before him.[3] At Rome the prospect of a conflict with Antiochus excited great anxiety, and it was not until every resource of diplomacy had been exhausted that war was declared,[4] and the real weakness which lay behind the once magnificent pretensions of the “king of kings” was revealed.
Had Antiochus acted with energy when in 192 he landed in Greece, he might have won the day before the Roman legions appeared. As it was, in spite of the warnings of Hannibal,[5] who was now in his camp, and of the Aetolians, he frittered away valuable time between562.
563.
564. his pleasures at Chalcis and useless attacks on petty Thessalian towns. In 191 Glabrio landed at the head of an imposing force; and a single battle at Thermopylae broke the courage of Antiochus, who hastily recrossed the sea to Ephesus, leaving his Aetolian allies to their fate. But Rome could not pause here. The safety of her faithful allies, the Pergamenes and Rhodians, and of the Greek cities in Asia Minor, as well as the necessity of chastising Antiochus, demanded an invasion of Asia. A Roman fleet had already (191) crossed the Aegean, and in concert with the fleets of Pergamum and Rhodes worsted the navy of Antiochus. In 190 the new consul L. Scipio, accompanied by his famous brother, the conqueror of Africa, led the Roman legion for the first time into Asia. At Magnesia ad Sipylum, in Lydia,
he met and defeated the motley and ill-disciplined hosts of the
great king.[6] For the first time the West, under Roman leadership,
successfully encountered the forces of the East, and
the struggle began which lasted far on into the days of the
Settlement of western Asia.
emperors. The terms of the peace which followed
the victory at Magnesia tell their own story clearly
enough. There is no question, any more than in
Greece, of annexation; the main object in view is that
of securing the predominance of Roman interests and influence
throughout the peninsula of Asia Minor, and removing to a safe
distance the only eastern power which could be considered
dangerous.[7] The line of the Halys and the Taurus range, the
natural boundary of the peninsula eastward, was established
as the boundary between Antiochus and the kingdoms, cities
and peoples now enrolled as the allies and friends of Rome. This
line Antiochus was forbidden to cross; nor was he to send ships
of war farther west than Cape Sarpedon in Cilicia. Immediately
to the west of this frontier lay Bithynia, Paphlagonia and the
immigrant Celtic Galatae, and these frontier states, now the
allies of Rome, served as a second line of defence against attacks
from the east. The area lying between these “buffer states”
and the Aegean was organized by Rome in such a way as should
at once reward the fidelity of her allies and secure both her own
paramount authority and safety from foreign attack. Pergamum
and Rhodes were so strengthened—the former by the gift of the
Chersonese, Lycaonia, Phrygia, Mysia and Lydia, the latter by that
of Lycia and Caria—as not only amply to reward their loyalty,
but to constitute them effective props of Roman interests and
effective barriers alike against Thracian and Celtic raids in the
north and Syrian aggression in the south. Lastly, the Greek cities
on the coast, except those already tributary to Pergamum, were
declared free, and established as independent allies of Rome.
In a space of little, over eleven years (200–189) 554–65. Third Macedonian War, 171–68 = 583–86. 557. Rome had broken the power of Alexander's successors and established throughout the eastern Mediterranean a Roman protectorate.
It was in the western half of this protectorate that the first steps in the direction of annexation were taken. The enthusiasm provoked by the liberation of the Greeks had died away, and its place had been taken by feelings of dissatisfied ambition or sullen resentment. Internecine feuds and economic distress had brought many parts of Greece to the verge of anarchy, and, above all, the very foundations of the settlement effected in 197 were threatened by the reviving power and aspirations of Macedon. Loyally as Philip had aided Rome in the war with Antiochus, the peace of Magnesia brought him nothing but fresh humiliation. He was forced to abandon all hopes of recovering Thessaly, and he had the mortification to see the hated king of Pergamum installed almost on his borders as master of the Thracian Chersonese. Resistance at the time 565–75. was unavailing, but from 189 until his death (179) he laboured patiently and quietly to increase the internal resources of his own kingdom,[8] and to foment, by dexterous intrigue, feelings of hostility to Rome among his Greek and barbarian neighbours. His successor, Perseus, his son by a left-handed alliance, continued his father's work. He made friends among the Illyrian and Thracian princes, connected himself by marriage with Antiochus IV. of Syria and with Prusias of Bithynia, and, among the Greek peoples, strove, not without success, to revive the memories of the past glories of Greece under the Macedonian leadership of the great Alexander.[9] The senate could no longer hesitate. They were well aware of the restlessness and discontent in Greece; and after hearing from Eumenes of Pergamum, and from their own officers, all details of Perseus's intrigues and preparations, they declared war.[10] The struggle, in spite of Perseus's courage and the incapacity at the outset of the Roman commanders, was short and decisive. The sympathy of the Greeks with Perseus, which had been encouraged by the hitherto passive attitude assumed by Rome, instantly evaporated on the news that the Roman legions were on their way to Greece. No assistance came from Prusias or Antiochus, and Perseus's only allies were the Thracian king Cotys and the Illyrian Genthius. The victory gained by L. Aemilius 586. Paulus at Pydna (168) ended the war.[11] Perseus became the prisoner of Rome, and as such died in Italy a few years later.[12] Rome had begun the war with the
- ↑ For the conflicting views of moderns on the action of Rome, see Mommsen, Hist. of Rome, ii. 442; Holm, Hist. of Greece, iv. 349; and on the other side Ihne, Hist. of Rome, iii. 76 ff., and C. Peter, Studien zur röm. Gesch. (Halle, 1863), pp. 158 seq.
- ↑ Livy xxxiii. 38; Polyb. xviii. 50.
- ↑ Livy xxxv. 43.
- ↑ Ibid. xxxv. 20, xxxvi. 1.
- ↑ Ibid. xxxvi. 7.
- ↑ Livy (xxxvii. 40) describes the composition of Antiochus's army.
- ↑ Livy xxxvii. 55, xxxviii. 38; Polyb. xxi. 17.
- ↑ Livy xxxix. 24 seq.
- ↑ Ibid. xlii. 5.
- ↑ Ibid. xlii. 19, 36.
- ↑ Ibid. xliv. 36–41; Plut. Aemil. 15 seq.
- ↑ Diod. xxxi. 9; Livy xlv. 42; Polyb. xxxvii. 16.
