enrol Athens among the "friends of Rome." This was again and again the first step to a Roman protectorate, merging in Roman annexation. And, in fact, the Roman government had resolved to intervene. The disorders in the Greek world were regarded as a danger to their commerce in the Mediterranean, and a kind of Philhellenism became the fashion at Rome, never standing in the way of active measures of suppression or extension, yet never quite insincere. A free Egypt, as a free Greece, seemed now of supreme importance, and the Roman government promptly answered to the appeal from Alexandria for help against Antiochus, and from the Greek states for aid against Philip. War was resolved upon against the king of Macedonia early in B.C. 200. At first this only led. to fresh miseries in Greece. Philip sent a strong force into Attica, overran in person the Chersonese, and, crossing the Hellespont, laid siege to Abydos. Here he was met with the Roman ultimatum—demanding that he should refrain from attacking any Greek city or any place belonging to Ptolemy, and submit to arbitration the indemnity claimed by Attalus and the Rhodians.
But though the Roman commissioners travelled through Greece assuring the towns that joined the Roman alliance that they would be protected, and though a Roman consul and a consular army landed in Epirus in the autumn of B.C. 200, for two years little was done to redeem this promise. Philip went on his way unchecked: reduced Abydos, twice
invaded and ravaged Attica (though prevented by
20
