No More Learning

In the valley of the Hermus, near Magnesia at the foot
0j \fount Sipylus not far from Smyrna, the Roman
190. fell in with the enemy late in the autumn of 564. The
force of Antiochus numbered close on 80,000 men, of whom 12,000 were cavalry ; the Romans —who had along with them about 5000 Achaeans, Pergamenes, and Mace donian volunteers — had not nearly half that number, but they were so sure of victory, that they did not even wait for the recovery of their general who had remained behind sick at Elaea ; Gnaeus Domitius took the command in his stead. Antiochus, in order to be able even to place his immense mass of troops, formed two divisions. In the first were placed the mass of the light troops, the peltasts, bowmen, slingers, the mounted archers of Mysians, Dahae, and Elymaeans, the Arabs on their dromedaries, and the scythe- chariots. In the second division the heavy cavalry (the Cataphractae, a sort of cuirassiers) were stationed on the flanks; next to these, in the intermediate division, the Gallic and Cappadocian infantry ; and in the very centre
Battle of Magnesia.
troops
chap, IX THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA
467
the phalanx armed after the Macedonian fashion, 16,000 strong, the flower of the army, which, however, had not room in the narrow space and had to be drawn up in double files 32 deep. In the space between the two divisions were placed 54 elephants, distributed between the bands of the phalanx and of the heavy cavalry. The Romans stationed but a few squadrons on the left wing, where the river gave protection ; the mass of the cavalry and all the light armed were placed on the right, which was led by Eumenes; the legions stood in the centre. Eumenes began the battle by despatching his archers and slingers against the scythe-chariots with orders to shoot at the teams ; in a short time not only were these thrown into disorder, but the camel-riders stationed next to them were also carried away, and even in the second division the left wing of heavy cavalry placed behind fell into confusion. Eumenes now threw himself with all the Roman cavalry, numbering 3000 horse, on the mercenary infantry , which was placed in the second division between the phalanx and the left wing of heavy cavalry, and, when these gave way, the cuirassiers who had already fallen into disorder also fled. The phalanx, which had just allowed the light troops to pass through and was preparing to advance
the Roman legions, was hampered by the attack of the cavalry in flank, and compelled to stand still and to form front on both sides—a movement which the depth of its disposition favoured. Had the heavy Asiatic cavalry been at hand, the battle might have been restored ; but the left wing was shattered, and the right, led by Antiochus in person, had driven before it the little division of Roman cavalry opposed to and had reached the Roman camp, which was with great difficulty defended from its attack. In this way the cavalry were at the decisive moment absent
from the scene of action. The Romans were careful not to assail the phalanx with their legions, but sent against the
against
it
it,
Conclusion
archers and slingers, not one of whose missiles failed to take effect on the densely-crowded mass. The phalanx neverthe less retired slowly and in good order, till the elephants stationed in the interstices became frightened and broke the ranks. Then the whole army dispersed in tumultuous flight ; an attempt to hold the camp failed, and only increased the number of the dead and the prisoners. The estimate of the loss of Antiochus at 50,000 men considering the infinite confusion, not incredible the legions of the Romans had never been engaged, and the victory, which gave them third continent, cost them 24 horsemen and 300 foot soldiers. Asia Minor submitted including even Ephesus, whence the admiral had hastily to withdraw his fleet, and
Sardes the residence of the court.
The king sued for peace and consented to the terms
proposed by the Romans, which, as usual, were just the same as those offered before the battle and consequently included the cession of Asia Minor. Till they were ratified, the army remained in Asia Minor at the expense of the king which came to cost him not less than 3000 talents (,£730,000). Antiochus himself in his careless fashion soon consoled himself for the loss of half his kingdom
was in keeping with his character, that he declared himself grateful to the Romans for saving him the trouble of governing too large an empire. But with the day of Magnesia Asia was erased from the list of great states; and never perhaps did great power fall so rapidly, so thoroughly, and so ignominiously as the kingdom of the Seleucidae under this Antiochus the Great He himself
468
THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA BOOK m
187. was soon afterwards (567) slain the indignant inhabit ants of Elymais at the head of the Persian gulf, on occasion of pillaging the temple of Bel, with the treasures of which he had sought to replenish his empty coffers.
The Roman government, after having achieved the victory, had to arrange the affairs of Asia Minor and of
by
is,
a
;
;
;
it a
;
chap, IX THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA
469
Greece. If the Roman rule was here to be erected on a Expedition firm foundation, it was by no means enough that Antiochus J? "^,. should have renounced the supremacy in the west of Asia of Asia Minor. The circumstances of the political situation there Mtaor- have been set forth above 401 ff. ). The Greek free cities
on the Ionian and Aeolian coast, as well as the kingdom of Pergamus of substantially similar nature, were certainly the natural pillars of the new Roman supreme power, which here too came forward essentially as protector of the Hellenes kindred in race. But the dynasts in the interior of Asia Minor and on the north coast of the Black Sea had hardly yielded for long any serious obedience to the kings of Asia, and the treaty with Antiochus alone gave to the Romans no power over the interior. was indispensable to draw
certain line within which the Roman influence was hence forth to exercise control. Here the element of chief importance was the relation of the Asiatic Hellenes to the Celts who had been for century settled there. These had formally apportioned among them the regions of Asia Minor, and each one of the three cantons raised its fixed tribute from the territory laid under contribution. Doubt less the burgesses of Pergamus, under the vigorous guid ance of their presidents who had thereby become hereditary princes, had rid themselves of the unworthy yoke and the fair afterbloom of Hellenic art, which had recently emerged afresh from the soil, had grown out of these last Hellenic wars sustained national public spirit But was vigorous counterblow, not decisive success; again and again the Pergamenes had to defend with arms their urban peace against the raids of the wild hordes from the eastern mountains, and the great majority of the other Greek cities probably remained in their old state of dependence. 1
From the decree of Lampsacus mentioned at p. 447, appears pretty certain that the Lampsacenes requested from the Massiliots not merely intercession at Rome, but also intercession with the Tolistoagii (so the Celts, elsewhere named Tolistobogi, are designated in this document and in the
1
it
a
a
It
(p.
by a
; it
a
a
a
470
THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA book m
If the protectorate of Rome over the Hellenes was to be in Asia more than a name, an end had to be put to this tributary obligation of their new clients ; and, as the Roman policy at this time declined, much more even in Asia than on the Graeco-Macedonian peninsula, the possession of the country on its own behalf and the permanent occupation therewith connected, there was no course in fact left but to carry the arms of Rome up to the limit which was to be staked off for the domain of Rome's power, and effectively to inaugurate the new supremacy among the inhabitants of Asia Minor generally, and above all in the Celtic cantons.
This was done by the new Roman commander-in-chief, Gnaeus Manlius Volso, who relieved Lucius Scipio in Asia Minor. He was subjected to severe reproach on this score ; the men in the senate who were averse to the new turn of policy failed to see either the aim, or the pretext, for such a war. There is no warrant for the former objection, as directed against this movement in particular; it was on the con trary, after the Roman state had once interfered in Hellenic affairs as it had done, a necessary consequence of this
Whether it was the right course for Rome to undertake the protectorate over the Hellenes collectively, may certainly be called in question ; but regarded from the point of view which Flamininus and the majority led by him had now taken up, the overthrow of the Galatians was in fact a duty of prudence as well as of honour. Better founded was the objection that there was not at the time a proper ground of war against them ; for they had not been, strictly speaking, in alliance with Antiochus, but had only according to their wont allowed him to levy hired troops in their country. But on the other side there fell
Pergamene inscription, C. J. Gr. 3536,—the oldest monuments which mention them). Accordingly the Lampsacenes were probably still about the time of the war with Philip tributary to this canton (comp. Li*. xxxviii. 16).
policy.
chap, ix THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA
471
the decisive consideration, that the sending of a Roman military force to Asia could only be demanded of the Roman burgesses under circumstances altogether extra ordinary, and, if once such an expedition was necessary, everything told in favour of carrying it out at once and
with the victorious army that was now stationed in Asia.
So, doubtless under the influence of Flamininus and of those who shared his views in the senate, the campaign
into the interior of Asia Minor was undertaken in the spring of 565. The consul started from Ephesus, levied 189. contributions from the towns and princes on the upper Maeander and in Pamphylia without measure, and then turned northwards against the Celts. Their western canton, the Tolistoagii, had retired with their belongings
to Mount Olympus, and the middle canton, the Tectosages, to Mount Magaba, in the hope that they would be able there to defend themselves till the winter should compel the strangers to withdraw. But the missiles of the Roman slingers and archers—which so often turned the scale against the Celts unacquainted with such weapons, almost as in more recent times firearms have turned the scale against savage tribes — forced the heights, and the Celts succumbed in a battle, such as had often its parallels before and after on the Po and on the Seine, but here appears as singular as the whole phenomenon of this northern race emerging amidst the Greek and Phrygian nations. The number of the slain was at both places enormous, and still greater that of the captives. The survivors escaped over the Halys to the third Celtic canton of the Trocmi, which the consul did not attack. That river was the limit at which the leaders of Roman policy at that time had resolved to halt. Phrygia, Bithynia, and Paphlagonia were to become de pendent on Rome; the regions lying farther to the east were left to themselves.
The affairs of Asia Minor were regulated partly by the
affairs of Minor.
Antiochus had to furnish hostages, one of whom was his younger son of the same name, and to pay a war-contribution —proportional in amount to the treasures of Asia—of 1 5,000 Euboic talents (^3, 600,000), a fifth of which was to be paid at once, and the remainder in twelve yearly instalments. He was called, moreover, to cede all the lands which he possessed in Europe and, in Asia Minor, all his possessions
and claims of right to the north of the range of the Taurus and to the west of the mouth of the Cestrus between Aspendus and Perga in Pamphylia, so that he retained nothing in Asia Minor but eastern Pamphylia and Cilicia. His protectorate over its kingdoms and principalities of course ceased. Asia, or, as the kingdom of the Seleucids was thenceforth usually and more appropriately named, Syria, lost the right of waging aggressive wars against the western states, and in the event of a defensive war, of acquiring territory from them on the conclusion of peace ; lost, moreover, the right of navigating the sea to the west of the mouth of the Calycadnus in Cilicia with vessels of war, except for the conveyance of envoys, hostages, or tribute; was further prevented from keeping more than ten decked vessels in all, except in the case of a defensive war, from taming war-elephants, and lastly from the levying of mercenaries in the western states, or receiving political refugees and deserters from them at court The war vessels which he possessed beyond the prescribed number, the elephants, and the political refugees who had sought shelter with him, he delivered up. By way of compensation the great-king received the title of a friend of the Roman commonwealth. The state of Syria was thus by land and sea completely and for ever dislodged from the west ; it is a significant indication of the feeble and loose organization of the kingdom of the Seleucidae, that it alone
472
THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA book hi
189. peace with Antiochus (565), partly by the ordinances of a of'the*00" Roman commission presided over by the consul Volso.
chap, :x THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA
473
of all the great states conquered by Rome never after the first conquest desired a second appeal to the decision of arms.
The two Armenias, hitherto at least nominally Asiatic Armenia, satrapies, became transformed, if not exactly in pursuance
with the Roman treaty of peace, yet under its influence
into independent kingdoms; and their holders, Artaxias and Zariadris, became founders of new dynasties.
Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, whose land lay beyond Cappa-
°
Prusias, king of Bithynia, retained his territory as it BUhynU, stood, and so did the Celts; but they were obliged to
In the western portion of Asia Minor the regulation of The free the territorial arrangements was not without difficulty, espe- <^ek cially as the dynastic policy of Eumenes there came into collision with that of the Greek Hansa. At last an un derstanding was arrived at to the following effect All the
Greek cities, which were free and had joined the Romans
on the day of the battle of Magnesia, had their liberties confirmed, and all of them, excepting those
tributary to Eumenes, were relieved from the payment of tribute to the different dynasts for the future. In this way
the towns of Dardanus and Ilium, whose ancient affinity with the Romans was traced to the times of Aeneas,
the boundary laid down by the Romans for their protector- ate, escaped with a money-fine of 600 talents (^146,000) ; which was afterwards, on the intercession of his son-in-law Eumenes, abated to half that sum.
that they would no longer send armed bands their bounds, and the disgraceful payments of
promise
beyond
tribute by the cities of Asia Minor came to an end. The Asiatic Greeks did not fail to repay the benefit — which was certainly felt as a general and permanent one — with golden chaplets and transcendental panegyrics.
free, along with Cyme, Smyrna, Clazomenae, 'Erythrae, Chios, Colophon, Miletus, and other names of old renown. Phocaea also, which in spite of its capitula-
became
previously
474
THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA book hi
tion had been plundered by the soldiers of the Roman fleet —although it did not fall under the category designated in
the treaty — received back by way of compensation its territory and its freedom. Most of the cities of the Graeco-Asiatic Hansa acquired additions of territory and other advantages. Rhodes of course received most con sideration; it obtained Lycia exclusive of Telmissus, and the greater part of Caria south of the Maeander ; besides, Antiochus guaranteed the property and the claims of the Rhodians within his kingdom, as well as the exemption from customs-dues which they had hitherto enjoyed.
All the rest, forming by far the largest share of the spoil,
Extension
kingdom of ^ to tne Attalids, whose ancient fidelity to Rome, as well Pergamus. as the hardships endured by Eumenes in the war and his
personal merit in connection with the issue of the decisive battle, were rewarded by Rome as no king ever rewarded his ally. Eumenes received, in Europe, the Chersonese with Lysimachia ; in Asia—in addition to Mysia which he already possessed —the provinces of Phrygia on the Hellespont, Lydia with Ephesus and Sardes, the northern district of Caria as far as the Maeander with Tralles and Magnesia, Great Phrygia and Lycaonia along with a portion of Cilicia, the district of Milyas between Phrygia and Lycia, and, as a port on the southern sea, the Lycian town Telmissus. There was a dispute afterwards between Eumenes and Antiochus regarding Pamphylia, as to how far it lay on this side of or beyond the prescribed boundary, and accordingly belonged to the former or to the latter. He further acquired the protectorate over, and the right of receiving tribute from, those Greek cities which did not receive absolute freedom ; but it was stipulated in this case that the cities should retain their charters, and that the tribute should not be heightened. Moreover, Antiochus had to bind himself to pay to Eumenes the 350 talents (£85,000) which he owed to his father Attalus, and like
chap, ix THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA
475
wise to pay a compensation of 127 talents (^31,000) for arrears in the supplies of corn. Lastly, Eumenes obtained the royal forests and the elephants delivered up by Antiochus, but not the ships of war, which were burnt : the Romans tolerated no naval power by the side of their own. By these means the kingdom of the Attalids became in the east of Europe and Asia what Numidia was in Africa, a powerful state with an absolute constitution dependent on Rome, destined and able to keep in check both Mace donia and Syria without needing, except in extraordinary cases, Roman support With this creation dictated by policy the Romans had as far as possible combined the liberation of the Asiatic Greeks, which was dictated republican and national sympathy and by vanity. About the affairs of the more remote east beyond the Taurus and Halys they were firmly resolved to give themselves no concern. This is clearly shown by the terms of the peace with Antiochus, and still more decidedly by the peremptory refusal of the senate to guarantee to the town of Soli in Cilicia the freedom which the Rhodians requested for With equal fidelity they adhered to the fixed principle of
no direct transmarine possessions. After the Roman fleet had made an expedition to Crete and had accomplished the release of the Romans sold thither into slavery, the fleet and land army left Asia towards the end
of the summer of 566 on which occasion the land army, 188. which again marched through Thrace, in consequence of
the negligence of the general suffered greatly on the route from the attacks of the barbarians. The Romans brought nothing home from the east but honour and gold, both of
which were already at this period usually conjoined in the practical shape assumed the address of thanks — the golden chaplet
European Greece also had been agitated this Asiatic Settlement war, and needed reorganization. The Aetolians, who had
acquiring
by
°
it.
by
by
;
190. Conflicts
with aiT* Aetoiians.
not yet learned to reconcile themselves to their insignifi cance, had, after the armistice concluded with Scipio in the spring of 564, rendered intercourse between Greece and Italy difficult and unsafe by means of their Cephal- lenian corsairs ; and not only so, but even perhaps while the armistice yet lasted, they, deceived by false reports as to the state of things in Asia, had the folly to place Amynander once more on his Athamanian throne, and to carry on a desultory warfare with Philip in the districts occupied by him on the borders of Aetolia and Thessaly, in the course of which Philip suffered several discomfitures. After this, as a matter of course, Rome replied to their request for peace by the landing of the consul Marcus Fulvius Nobilior. He arrived among the legions in the spring of 565, and after fifteen days' siege gained possession of Ambracia by a capitulation honourable for the garrison ; while simultaneously the Macedonians, Illyrians, Epirots, Acarnanians, and Achaeans fell upon the Aetolians. There was no such thing as resistance in the strict sense ; after
repeated entreaties of the Aetolians for peace the Romans at length desisted from the war, and granted conditions which must be termed reasonable when viewed with refer ence to such pitiful and malicious opponents. The Aetolians lost all cities and territories which were in the
189.
476
THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA took m
hands of their adversaries, more especially Ambracia which afterwards became free and independent in consequence of an intrigue concocted in Rome against Marcus Fulvius, and Oenia which was given to the Acarnanians : they likewise ceded Cephallenia. They lost the right of making peace and war, and were in that respect dependent on the foreign relations of Rome. Lastly, they paid a large sum of money. Cephallenia opposed this treaty on its own account, and only submitted when Marcus Fulvius landed on the island. In fact, the inhabitants of Same, who feared that they would be dispossessed from their well-situated
chap, ix THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA
477
town by a Roman colony, revolted after their first sub mission and sustained a four months' siege; the town, however, was finally taken and the whole inhabitants were sold into slavery.
In this case also Rome adhered to the principle of con- Mace- fining herself to Italy and the Italian islands. She took no doni* portion of the spoil for herself, except the two islands of Cephallenia and Zacynthus, which formed a desirable sup plement to the possession of Corcyra and other naval stations in the Adriatic. The rest of the territorial gain
went to the allies of Rome. But the two most important
of these, Philip and the Achaeans, were by no means content with the share of the spoil granted to them. Philip
felt himself aggrieved, and not without reason. He might safely say that the chief difficulties in the last war—diffi culties which arose not from the character of the enemy,
but from the distance and the uncertainty of the communi cations —had been overcome mainly by his loyal aid. The senate recognized this by remitting his arrears of tribute
and sending back his hostages ; but he did not receive
those additions to his territory which he expected. He
got the territory of the Magnetes, with Demetrias which he
had taken from the Aetolians; besides, there practically remained in his hands the districts of Dolopia and Athamania and a part of Thessaly, from which also the Aetolians had been expelled by him. In Thrace the interior remained under Macedonian protection, but nothing
was fixed as to the coast towns and the islands of Thasos and Lemnos which were de facto in Philip's hands, while the Chersonese was even expressly given to Eumenes ; and it
was not difficult to see that Eumenes received possessions
in Europe, simply that he might in case of need keep not
only Asia but Macedonia in check. The exasperation of
the proud and in many respects chivalrous king was natural;
it was not chicane, however, but an unavoidable political
The Achaean s.
necessity that induced the Romans to take this course. Macedonia suffered for having once been a power of the first rank, and for having waged war on equal terms with Rome ; there was much better reason in her case than in that of Carthage for guarding against the revival of her old powerful position.
It was otherwise with the Achaeans. They had, in the course of the war with Antiochus, gratified their long-che
rished wish to bring the whole Peloponnesus into their confederacy ; for first Sparta, and then, after the expulsion of the Asiatics from Greece, Elis and Messene had more or less reluctantly joined it. The Romans had allowed this to take place, and had even tolerated the intentional disregard of Rome which marked their proceedings. When
Messene declared that she wished to submit to the Romans but not to enter the confederacy, and the latter thereupon employed force, Flamininus had not failed to remind the Achaeans that such separate arrangements as to the disposal of a part of the spoil were in themselves unjust, and were, in the relation in which the Achaeans stood to the Romans, more than unseemly ; and yet in his very impolitic com plaisance towards the Hellenes he had substantially done what the Achaeans willed. But the matter did not end there. The Achaeans, tormented by their dwarfish thirst for aggrandizement, would not relax their hold on the town of Pleuron in Aetolia which they had occupied during the war, but on the contrary made it an involuntary member of their confederacy ; they bought Zacynthus from Amynander the lieutenant of the last possessor, and would gladly have acquired Aegina also. It was with reluctance that they gave up the former island to Rome, and they heard with great displeasure the good advice of Flamininus that they should content themselves with their Peloponnesus.
The Achaeans believed it their duty to display the inde pendence of their state all the more, the less they really
478
THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA book III
The Achaean patriots.
chap, ix
THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA
479
had ; they talked of the rights of war, and of the faithful aid of the Achaeans in the wars of the Romans ; they asked the Roman envoys at the Achaean diet why Rome should concern herself about Messene when Achaia put no questions as to Capua; and the spirited patriot, who had thus spoken, was applauded and was sure of votes at the elections. All this would have been very right and very dignified, had it not been much more ridiculous. There was a profound justice and a still more profound melancholy in the fact, that Rome, however earnestly she endeavoured to establish the freedom and to earn the thanks of the Hellenes, yet gave them nothing but anarchy and reaped nothing but ingratitude. Undoubtedly very generous sentiments lay at the bottom of the Hellenic anti pathies to the protecting power, and the personal bravery of some of the men who took the lead in the movement was unquestionable; but this Achaean patriotism remained not the less a folly and a genuine historical caricature. With all that ambition and all that national susceptibility the whole nation was, from the highest to the lowest, per vaded by the most thorough sense of impotence. Every one was constantly listening to learn the sentiments of Rome, the liberal man no less than the servile ; they thanked heaven, when the dreaded decree was not issued; they were sulky, when the senate gave them to understand that they would do well to yield voluntarily in order that they might not need to be compelled ; they did what they were obliged to do, if possible, in a way offensive to the Romans, " to save forms " ; they reported, explained, postponed, evaded, and, when all this would no longer avail, yielded with a patriotic sigh. Their proceedings might have claimed •ndulgence at any rate, if not approval, had their leaders been resolved to fight, and had they preferred the destruc tion of the nation to its bondage ; but neither Philopoemen nor Lycortas thought of any such political suicide — they
*So
THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA book hi
wished, if possible, to be free, but they wished above all to live. Besides all this, the dreaded intervention of Rome in the internal affairs of Greece was not the arbitrary act of the Romans, but was always invoked by the Greeks them selves, who, like boys, brought down on their own heads the rod which they feared. The reproach repeated ad nauseam by the erudite rabble in Hellenic and Hellenic times — that the Romans had been at pains to stir up internal discord in Greece — is one of the most foolish absurdities which philologues dealing in politics have ever invented. It was not the Romans that"carried strife to Greece —which in truth would have been carrying owls to Athens "—but the Greeks that carried their dissensions to Rome.
The Achaeans in particular, who, in their eagerness to round their territory, wholly failed to see how much it would have been for their own good that Flamininus had not incorporated the towns of Aetolian sympathies with their league, acquired in Lacedaemon and Messene a very hydra of intestine strife. Members of these communities were incessantly at Rome, entreating and beseeching to be released from the odious connection ; and amongst them, characteristically enough, were even those who were indebted to the Achaeans for their return to their native land. The
Achaean league was incessantly occupied in the work of reformation and restoration at Sparta and Messene; the wildest refugees from these quarters determined the measures of the diet Four years after the nominal admis sion of Sparta to the confederacy matters came even to open war and to an insanely thorough restoration, in which all the slaves on whom Nabis had conferred citizenship were once more sold into slavery, and a colonnade was built from the proceeds in the Achaean city of Megalopolis ; the old state of property in Sparta was re-established, the b^s of I. vcurgus were superseded by Achaean laws, and
post-
Quarrels between Achaeans and Spartans.
chap, IX THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA
481
the walls were pulled down (566). At last the Roman 188. senate was summoned by all parties to arbitrate on all these doings — an annoying task, which was the righteous punish
ment of the sentimental policy that the senate had pursued.
Far from mixing itself up too much in these affairs, the senate not only bore the sarcasms of Achaean candour with exemplary composure, but even manifested a culpable indifference while the worst outrages were committed. There was cordial rejoicing in Achaia when, after that restoration, the news arrived from Rome that the senate had found fault with but had not annulled it. Nothing was done for the Lacedaemonians by Rome, except that the senate, shocked at the judicial murder of from sixty to eighty Spartans committed by the Achaeans, deprived the diet of criminal jurisdiction over the Spartans—truly heinous interference with the internal affairs of an inde pendent state The Roman statesmen gave themselves as
little concern as possible about this tempest in nut-shell, as best shown by the many complaints regarding the superficial, contradictory, and obscure decisions of the senate in fact, how could its decisions be expected to be clear, when there were four parties from Sparta simultane ously speaking against each other at its bar Add to this the personal impression, which most of these Peloponnesian statesmen produced in Rome even Flamininus shook his head, when one of them showed him on the one day how to perform some dance, and on the next entertained him with affairs of state. Matters went so far, that the senate at last lost patience and informed the Peloponnesians that
would no longer listen to them, and that they might do what they chose (572). This was natural enough, but 182. was not right; situated as the Romans were, they were under moral and political obligation earnestly and stead fastly to rectify this melancholy state of things. Callicrates
the Achaean, who went to the senate in 575 to enlighten 179.
vok it
63
it a
is ;
;
?
it a
a
!
it,
Death of
it as to the state of matters in the Peloponnesus and to demand a consistent and calm intervention, may have had somewhat less worth as a man than his countryman Philopoemen who was the main founder of that patriotic policy ; but he was in the right.
Thus the protectorate of the Roman community now embraced all the states from the eastern to the western end of the Mediterranean. There nowhere existed a state that the Romans would have deemed it worth while to fear. But there still lived a man to whom Rome accorded this rare honour—the homeless Carthaginian, who had raised in arms against Rome first all the west and then all the east, and whose schemes perhaps had been only frustrated by infamous aristocratic policy in the former case, and by stupid court policy in the latter. Antiochus had been obliged to bind himself in the treaty of peace to deliver up Hannibal ; but the latter had escaped, first to Crete, then to Bithynia,1 and now lived at the court of Prusias king of
Bithynia, employed in aiding the latter in his wars with Eumenes, and victorious as ever by sea and by land. It is affirmed that he was desirous of stirring up Prusias also to make war on Rome ; a folly, which, as it is told, sounds very far from credible. It is more certain that, while the Roman senate deemed it beneath its dignity to have the
old man hunted out in his last asylum—for the tradition which inculpates the senate appears to deserve no credit — Flamininus, whose restless vanity sought after new oppor tunities for great achievements, undertook on his own part to deliver Rome from Hannibal as he had delivered the Greeks from their chains, and, if not to wield —which was not diplomatic —at any rate to whet and to point, the
1 The story that he went to Armenia and at the request of king Artaxias built the town of Artaxata on the Araxes (Strabo, xi. p. 528 ; Plutarch, Luc. 31), is certainly a fiction ; but it is a striking circumstance that Hannibal should have become mixed up, almost like Alexander, with Oriental fables.
482
THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA book in
chaf. ix THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA
483
dagger against the greatest man of his time. Prusias, the most pitiful among the pitiful princes of Asia, was delighted
to grant the little favour which the Roman envoy in ambiguous terms requested ; and, when Hannibal saw his house beset by assassins, he took poison. He had long been prepared to do so, adds a Roman, for he knew the Romans and the word of kings. The year of his death is uncertain ; probably he died in the latter half of the year
571, at the age of sixty-seven. When he was born, Rome 183. was contending with doubtful success for the possession of Sicily ; he had lived long enough to see the West wholly subdued, and to fight his own last battle with the Romans against the vessels of his native city which had itself become Roman ; and he was constrained at last to remain
a mere spectator, while Rome overpowered the East as the tempest overpowers the ship that has no one at the helm, and to feel that he alone was the pilot that could have weathered the storm. There was left to him no further hope to be disappointed, when he died ; but he had honestly, through fifty years of struggle, kept the oath which he had sworn when a boy.
About the same time, probably in the same year, died Dwth of also the man whom the Romans were wont to call his conqueror, Publius Scipio. On him fortune had lavished
all the successes which she denied to his antagonist— successes which did belong to him, and successes which
did not He had added to the empire Spain, Africa, and Asia; and Rome, which he had found merely the first community of Italy, was at his death mistress of the civilized world. He himself had so many titles of victory, that some of them were made over to his brother and his cousin. 1 And yet he too spent his last years in bitter vexation, and died when little more than fifty years of age in voluntary banishment, leaving orders to his relatives not
1 Africanus, Asiagenus, Hispallui,
484
THE WAR WITH ANTIOCHUS OF ASIA book hi
to bury his remains in the city for which he had lived and in which his ancestors reposed. It is not exactly known what drove him from the city. The charges of corruption and embezzlement, which were directed against him and still more against his brother Lucius, were beyond doubt empty calumnies, which do not sufficiently explain such bitterness of feeling ; although it is characteristic of the man, that instead of simply vindicating himself by means of his account-books, he tore them in pieces in presence of the people and of his accusers, and summoned the Romans to accompany him to the temple of Jupiter and to celebrate the anniversary of his victory at Zama. The people left the accuser on the spot, and followed Scipio to the Capitol; but this was the last glorious day of the illustrious man. His proud spirit, his belief that he was different from, and better than, other men, his very decided family -policy, which in the person of his brother Lucius especially brought forward a clumsy man of straw as a hero, gave offence to many, and not without reason. While genuine pride protects the heart, arrogance lays it open to every blow and every sarcasm, and corrodes even an originally noble-minded spirit. It is throughout, moreover, the distinguishing characteristic of such natures as that of Scipio —strange mixtures of genuine gold and glittering tinsel—that they need the good fortune and the brilliance of youth in order to exercise their charm, and, when this charm begins to fade, it is the charmer himself that is most painfully conscious of the change.
chap, X THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR
485
CHAPTER X
THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR
Philip or Macedonia was greatly annoyed by the treatment which he met with from the Romans after the peace with Antiochus ; and the subsequent course of events was not fitted to appease his wrath. His neighbours in Greece and Thrace, mostly communities that had once trembled at the Macedonian name not less than now they trembled at the Roman, made it their business, as was natural, to retaliate on the fallen great power for all the injuries which since the times of Philip the Second they had received at the hands of Macedonia. The empty arrogance and venal anti-Macedonian patriotism of the Hellenes of this period found vent at the diets of the different confederacies and in ceaseless complaints addressed to the Roman senate. Philip had been allowed by the Romans to retain what he had taken from the Aetolians ; but in Thessaly the con
federacy of the Magnetes alone had formally joined the Aetolians, while those towns which Philip had wrested from the Aetolians in other two of the Thessalian confed eracies—the Thessalian in its narrower sense, and the Perrhaebian —were demanded back by their leagues on the ground that Philip had only liberated these towns, not conquered them. The Athamanes too believed that they might crave their freedom ; and Eumenes demanded the maritime cities which Antiochus had possessed in Thrace
Dissatis-
p^^^j, Rome,
486
THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR BOOK Hi
proper, especially Aenus and Maronea, although in the peace with Antiochus the Thracian Chersonese alone had been expressly promised to him. All these complaints and numerous minor ones from all the neighbours of Philip as to his supporting king Prusias against Eumenes, as to competition in trade, as to the violation of contracts and the seizing of cattle, were poured forth at Rome. The king of Macedonia had to submit to be accused by the sovereign rabble before the Roman senate, and to accept justice or injustice as the senate chose ; he was compelled to witness judgment constantly going against him ; he had with deep chagrin to withdraw his garrisons from the Thracian coast and from the Thessalian and Perrhaebian towns, and courteously to receive the Roman commissioners,
who came to see whether everything required had been carried out in accordance with instructions. The Romans were not so indignant against Philip as they had been against Carthage ; in fact, they were in many respects even favourably disposed to the Macedonian ruler; there was not in his case so reckless a violation of forms as in that of Libya; but the situation of Macedonia was at bottom substantially the same as that of Carthage. Philip, how ever, was by no means the man to submit to this infliction with Phoenician patience. Passionate as he was, he had after his defeat been more indignant with the faithless ally than with the honourable antagonist ; and, long accustomed to pursue a policy not Macedonian but personal, he had seen in the war with Antiochus simply an excellent oppor tunity of instantaneously revenging himself on the ally who had disgracefully deserted and betrayed him. This object he had attained; but the Romans, who saw very clearly that the Macedonian was influenced not by friendship for Rome, but by enmity to Antiochus, and who moreover were by no means in the habit of regulating their policy by such feelings of liking and disliking, had carefully abstained
chap, x THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR
487
from bestowing any material advantages on Philip, and had preferred to confer their favours on the Attalids. From their first elevation the Attalids had been at vehement feud with Macedonia, and were politically and personally the objects of Philip's bitterest hatred ; of all the eastern powers they had contributed most to maim Macedonia and Syria, and to extend the protectorate of Rome in the east ; and in the last war, when Philip had voluntarily and loyally embraced the side of Rome, they had been obliged to take the same side for the sake of their very existence. The Romans had made use of these Attalids for the purpose of reconstructing in all essential points the kingdom of Lysimachus —the destruction of which had been the most important achievement of the Macedonian rulers after Alexander —and of placing alongside of Macedonia a state, which was its equal in point of power and was at the same time a client of Rome. In the special circumstances a wise sovereign, devoted to the interests of his people, would perhaps have resolved not to resume the unequal struggle with Rome ; but Philip, in whose character the sense of honour was the most powerful of all noble, and the thirst for revenge the most potent of all ignoble, motives, was deaf to the voice of timidity or of resignation, and nourished in the depths of his heart a determination once more to try the hazard of the game. When h» received the report of fresh invectives, such as were wont to be launched against Macedonia at the Thessalian diets, he replied with the line of Theocritus, that his last sun had not yet set. 1
Philip displayed in the preparation and the concealment The latter
of his designs a calmness, earnestness, and
which, had he shown them in better times, would perhaps have given a different turn to the destinies of the world. In particular the submissiveness towards Rome, by which
1 "RSij yip (ppiody rivff dXtof d/i/u fa&bKta 103).
£j*J? of
persistency
(i.
488
THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR book hi
he purchased the time indispensable for his objects, formed a severe trial for the fierce and haughty man ; nevertheless he courageously endured although his subjects and the innocent occasions of the quarrel, such as the unfortunate Maronea, paid severely for the suppression of his resent ment. seemed as war could not but break out as
183. early as 571 but Philip's instructions, his younger son, Demetrius, effected reconciliation between his father and Rome, where he had lived some years as hostage and was great favourite. The senate, and
particularly Flamininus who managed Greek affairs, sought to form
Macedonia Roman party that would be able to paralyze the exertions of Philip, which of course were not unknown to the Romans and had selected as its head, and perhaps as the future king of Macedonia, the younger prince who was passionately attached to Rome. With this purpose view they gave clearly to be understood that the senate forgave the father for the sake of the son the natural effect of which was, that dissensions arose in the royal household itself, and that the king's elder son, Perseus, who, although the offspring of an unequal marriage, was destined by his father for the succession, sought to ruin his brother as his future rival. does not appear that Demetrius was party to the Roman intrigues was only
when he was falsely suspected that he was forced to become guilty, and even then he intended, apparently, nothing more than flight to Rome. But Perseus took care that his father should be duly informed of this design; an intercepted letter from Flamininus to Deme trius did the rest, and induced the father to give orders that his son should be put to death. Philip learned, when was too late, the intrigues which Perseus had concocted; and death overtook him, as he was medi tating the punishment of the fratricide and his exclusion
178. from the throne. He died in 575 at Demetrias, his
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;
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;
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chap, x THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR
489
fifty-ninth year. He left behind him a shattered kingdom and a distracted household, and with a broken heart confessed to himself that all his toils and all his crimes had been in vain.
His son Perseus then entered on the government, with- King
out encountering opposition either in Macedonia or in the Roman senate. He was a man of stately aspect, expert in all bodily exercises, reared in the camp and accustomed to command, imperious like his father and unscrupulous in the choice of his means. Wine and women, which too often led Philip to forget the duties of government, had no charm for Perseus ; he was as steady and persevering as his father had been fickle and impulsive. Philip, a king while still a boy, and attended by good fortune during the first twenty years of his reign, had been spoiled and ruined by destiny ; Perseus ascended the throne in his thirty-first year, and, as he had while yet a boy borne a part in the unhappy war with Rome and had grown up under the pressure of humiliation and under the idea that a revival of the state was at hand, so he inherited along with the kingdom of his father his troubles, resentments, and hopes. In fact he entered with the utmost determination on the continuance of his father's work, and prepared more zealously than ever for war against Rome ; he was stimulated, moreover, by the reflection, that he was by no means indebted to the goodwill of the Romans for his wearing the diadem of Macedonia. The proud Macedonian nation looked with pride upon the prince whom they had been accustomed to see marching and fighting at the head of their youth ; his countrymen, and many Hellenes of every variety of lineage, conceived that in him they had found the right general for the impending war of liberation. But he was not what he seemed. He wanted Philip's geniality and Philip's elasticity —those truly royal qualities, which success obscured and tarnished, but which under the purifying power of adversity
erseu""
Resource!
recovered their lustre. Philip was self-indulgent, and allowed things to take their course ; but, when there was occasion, he found within himself the vigour necessary for rapid and earnest action. Perseus devised comprehensive and subtle plans, and prosecuted them with unwearied perseverance; but, when the moment arrived for action and his plans and preparations confronted him in living reality, he was frightened at his own work. As is the wont of narrow minds, the means became to him the end; he heaped up treasures on treasures for war with the Romans, and, when the Romans were in the land, he was unable to part with his golden pieces. It is a significant indication of character that after defeat the father first hastened to destroy the papers in his cabinet that might compromise him, whereas the son took his treasure-chests and embarked. In ordinary times he might have made an average king, as good as or better than many another; but he was not adapted for the conduct of an enterprise, which was from the first a hopeless one unless some extraordinary man should become the soul of the movement
The power of Macedonia was far from inconsiderable. The devotion of the land to the house of the Antigonids was unimpaired; in this one respect the national feeling was not paralyzed by the dissensions of political parties. A monarchical constitution has the great advantage, that every change of sovereign supersedes old resentments and quarrels and introduces a new era of other men and fresh hopes. The king had judiciously availed himself of this, and had begun his reign with a general amnesty, with the recall of fugitive bankrupts, and with the remission of arrears of taxes. The hateful severity of the father thus not only yielded benefit, but conciliated affection, to the son. Twenty-six years of peace had partly of themselves
filled up the blanks in the Macedonian population, partly given opportunity to the government to take serious steps
490
THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR book til
chap, X THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR
491
towards rectifying this which was really the weak point of the land. Philip urged the Macedonians to marry and raise up children ; he occupied the coast towns, whose inhabitants he carried into the interior, with Thracian colonists of trusty valour and fidelity. He formed a barrier on the north to check once for all the desolating incursions of the Dardani, by converting the space intervening between the Macedonian frontier and the barbarian territory into a desert, and by founding new towns in the northern pro vinces. In short he took step by step the same course in Macedonia, as Augustus afterwards took when he laid afresh the foundations of the Roman empire. The army was numerous —30,000 men without reckoning contingents and hired troops —and the younger men were well exercised in the constant border warfare with the Thracian barbarians. It is strange that Philip did not try, like Hannibal, to organize his army after the Roman fashion; but we can understand it when we recollect the value which the Mace donians set upon their phalanx, often conquered, but still withal believed to be invincible. Through the new sources of revenue which Philip had created in mines, customs, and tenths, and through the flourishing state of agriculture and commerce, he had succeeded in replenishing his treasury, granaries, and arsenals. When the war began, there was in the Macedonian treasury money enough to pay the existing army and 10,000 hired troops for ten years, and there were in the public magazines stores of grain for as long a period (18,000,000 medimni or 27,000,000 bushels), and arms for an army of three times the strength of the existing one. In fact, Macedonia had become a very different state from what it was when surprised by the outbreak of the second war with Rome. The power of the kingdom was in all respects at least doubled : with a power in every point of view far inferior Hannibal had been able to shake Rome to its foundations.
Attempted coalition against Roma.
Its external relations were not in so favourable a posi tion. The nature of the case required that Macedonia should now take up the plans of Hannibal and Antiochus, and should try to place herself at the head of a coalition of all oppressed states against the supremacy of Rome; and certainly threads of intrigue ramified in all directions from the court of Pydna. But their success was slight It was indeed asserted that the allegiance of the Italians was wavering ; but neither friend nor foe could fail to see
that an immediate resumption of the Samnite wars was not at all probable. The nocturnal conferences likewise be tween Macedonian deputies and the Carthaginian senate, which Massinissa denounced at Rome, could occasion no alarm to serious and sagacious men, even if they were not, as is very possible, an utter fiction. The Macedonian court sought to attach the kings of Syria and Bithynia to its interests by intermarriages ; but nothing further came
of except that the immortal simplicity of the diplomacy which seeks to gain political ends by matrimonial means once more exposed itself to derision. Eumenes, whom
would have been ridiculous to attempt to gain, the agents of Perseus would have gladly put out of the way he was to have been murdered at Delphi on his way homeward from Rome, where he had been active against Macedonia but the pretty project miscarried.
Of greater moment were the efforts made to stir up the northern barbarians and the Hellenes to rebellion
492
THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR BOOK in
Bastaraae.
barous horde of Germanic descent brought from the left bank of the Danube, the Bastarnae, and of then marching in person with these and with the whole avalanche peoples thus set in motion by the land-route to Italy and invading Lombardy, the Alpine passes leading to
Rome. Philip had conceived the project crushing the old enemies of Macedonia, the Dardani what now Servia, by means of another still more bar
against
of
in of
:
is
;
it
it,
chap, x THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR
493
which he had already sent spies to reconnoitre —a grand project, worthy of Hannibal, and doubtless immediately
suggested by Hannibal's passage of the Alps. It is more than probable that this gave occasion to the founding
of the Roman fortress of Aquileia (p. 372), which was formed towards the end of the reign of Philip (573), and 181 did not harmonize with the system followed elsewhere by
the Romans in the establishment of fortresses in Italy. The plan, however, was thwarted by the desperate resist
ance of the Dardani and of the adjoining tribes concerned ; the Bastarnae were obliged to retreat, and the whole horde were drowned in returning home by the giving way of the ice on the Danube. The king now sought at least to extend his clientship among the chieftains of the Illyrian land, the modern Dalmatia and northern Albania. One of these who faithfully adhered to Rome, Arthetaurus, perished, not without the cognizance of Perseus, by the hand of an assassin. The most considerable of the whole, Genthius the son and heir of Pleuratus, was, like his father, nominally in alliance with Rome ; but the ambassadors of Issa, a Greek town on one of the Dalmatian islands, in formed the senate, that Perseus had a secret understanding
with the young, weak, and drunken prince, and that the envoys of Genthius served as spies for Perseus in Rome.
Genthfas,
In the regions on the east of Macedonia towards the Cotjt lower Danube the most powerful of the Thracian chieftains,
the brave and sagacious Cotys, prince of the Odrysians
and ruler of all eastern Thrace from the Macedonian frontier on the Hebrus (Maritza) down to the fringe of coast covered with Greek towns, was in the closest alliance with Perseus. Of the other minor chiefs who in
that quarter took part with Rome, one, Abrupolis prince of the Sagaei, was, in consequence of a predatory ex pedition directed against Amphipolis on the Strymon, defeated by Perseus and driven out of the country. From
Greek _„,_
these regions Philip had drawn numerous colonists, and mercenaries were to be had there at any time and in any number.
Among the unhappy nation of the Hellenes Philip and Perseus had, long before declaring war against Rome, carried on a lively double system of proselytizing, attempt ing to gain over to the side of Macedonia on the one
hand the national, and on the other—if we may be per mitted the expression — the communistic, party. As a matter of course, the whole national party among the Asiatic as well as the European Greeks was now at heart Macedonian; not on account of isolated unrighteous acts on the part of the Roman deliverers, but because the restoration of Hellenic nationality by a foreign
494
THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR book, iii
power involved a contradiction in terms, and now, when it was
in truth too late, every one perceived that the most de testable form of Macedonian rule was less fraught with evil for Greece than a free constitution springing from the noblest intentions of honourable foreigners. That the most able and upright men throughout Greece should be opposed to Rome was to be expected ; the venal aristo cracy alone was favourable to the Romans, and here and there an isolated man of worth, who, unlike the great majority, was under no delusion as to the circumstances and the future of the nation. This was most painfully felt by Eumenes of Pergamus, the main upholder of that extraneous freedom among the Greeks. In vain he treated
the cities subject to him with every sort of consideration ; in vain he sued for the favour of the communities and diets by fair-sounding words and still better-sounding gold ; he had to learn that his presents were declined, and that all the statues that had formerly been erected to him were broken in pieces and the honorary tablets were melted down, in accordance with a decree of the diet, simultane-
170. ously throughout the Peloponnesus (5 84). The name 0/
chap, x THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR
495
Perseus was on all lips; even the states that formerly were most decidedly anti- Macedonian, such as the Achaeans, deliberated as to the cancelling of the laws directed against Macedonia; Byzantium, although situated within the kingdom of Pergamus, sought and obtained protection and a garrison against the Thracians not from Eumenes, but from Perseus, and in like manner Lampsacus on the Hellespont joined the Macedonian : the powerful and prudent Rhodians escorted the Syrian bride of king Perseus from Antioch with their whole magnificent war- fleet —for the Syrian war-vessels were not allowed to appear in the Aegean—and returned home highly honoured and furnished with rich presents, more especially with wood for shipbuilding ; commissioners from the Asiatic cities,
and consequently subjects of Eumenes, held secret con ferences with Macedonian deputies in Samothrace. That sending of the Rhodian war-fleet had at least the aspect of a demonstration; and such, certainly, was the object of king Perseus, when he exhibited himself and all his army before the eyes of the Hellenes under pretext of performing a religious ceremony at Delphi. That the king should appeal to the support of this national partisanship in the impending war, was only natural. But it was wrong in him to take advantage of the fearful economic disorganiza tion of Greece for the purpose of attaching to Macedonia all those who desired a revolution in matters of property and of debt It is difficult to form any adequate idea of the unparalleled extent to which the commonwealths as well as individuals in European Greece — excepting the Peloponnesus, which was in a somewhat better position in
this respect — were involved in debt. Instances occurred of one city attacking and pillaging another merely to get money—the Athenians, for example, thus attacked Oropus —and among the Aetolians, Perrhaebians, and Thessalians formal battles took place between those that had property
Rupture Perseus.
and those that had none. Under such circumstances the worst outrages were perpetrated as a matter of course; among the Aetolians, for instance, a general amnesty was proclaimed and a new public peace was made up solely for the purpose of entrapping and putting to death a number of emigrants. The Romans attempted to mediate ; but their envoys returned without success, and announced that both parties were equally bad and that their animosities were not to be restrained. In this case there was, in fact, no longer other help than the officer and the executioner ; sentimental Hellenism began to be as repulsive as from the first it had been ridiculous. Yet king Perseus sought to gain the support of this party, if it deserve to be called such — of people who had nothing, and least of all an honourable name, to lose—and not only issued edicts in favour of Macedonian bankrupts, but also caused placards
to be put up at Larisa, Delphi, and Delos, which summoned all Greeks that were exiled on account of political or other offences or on account of their debts to come to Mace donia and to look for full restitution of their former honours and estates. As may easily be supposed, they came; the social revolution smouldering throughout northern Greece now broke out into open flame, and the national-social party there sent to Perseus for help. If Hellenic nationality was to be saved only by such means, the question might well be asked, with all respect for Sophocles and Phidias, whether the object was worth the cost.
The senate saw that it had delayed too long already, and tnat it was «me t0 pu* an end to such proceedings. The expulsion of the Thracian chieftain Abrupolis who was in alliance with the Romans, and the alliances of Macedonia
496
THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR book hi
with the Byzantines, Aetolians, and part of the Boeotian 197. cities, were equally violations of the peace of 557, and suf ficed for the official war-manifesto : the real ground of wax
chap, x THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR
497
was that Macedonia was seeking to convert her formal sovereignty into a real one, and to supplant Rome in the protectorate of the Hellenes. As early as 581 the Roman 17« envoys at the Achaean diet stated pretty plainly, that an alliance with Perseus was equivalent to casting off the alliance of Rome. In 582 king Eumenes came in person 172. to Rome with a long list of grievances and laid open to the senate the whole situation of affairs ; upon which the senate unexpectedly in a secret sitting resolved on an immediate declaration of war, and furnished the landing-places in Epirus
with garrisons. For the sake of form an embassy was sent
to Macedonia, but its message was of such a nature that Perseus, perceiving that he could not recede, replied that he
was ready to conclude with Rome a new alliance on really equal terms, but that he looked upon the treaty of 557 as 197. cancelled ; and he bade the envoys leave the kingdom within three days. Thus war was practically declared.
This was in the autumn of 582. Perseus, had he wished, 172. might have occupied all Greece and brought the Mace donian party everywhere to the helm, and he might perhaps have crushed the Roman division of 5000 men stationed under Gnaeus Sicinius at Apollonia and have disputed the landing of the Romans. But the king, who already began
to tremble at the serious aspect of affairs, entered into
discussions with his guest- friend the consular
Marcius Philippus, as to the frivolousness of the Roman declaration of war, and allowed himself to be thereby induced to postpone the attack and once more to make an effort for peace with Rome : to which the senate, as might have been expected, only replied by the dismissal of all Macedonians from Italy and the embarkation of the legions. Senators of the older school no doubt censured the " new wisdom " of their colleague, and his un-Roman artifice ; but the object was gained and the winter passed awav ^'tb out any movement on the part of Perseus. The Roman
vol. 11
64
Quintus
498
THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR book III
diplomatists made all the more zealous use of the interval to deprive Perseus of any support in Greece. They were sure of the Achaeans. Even the patriotic party among them—who had neither agreed with those social movements, nor had soared higher than the longing after a prudent neutrality — had no idea of throwing themselves into the arms of Perseus; and, besides, the opposition party there had now been brought by Roman influence to the helm, and attached itself absolutely to Rome. The Aetolian league had doubtless asked aid from Perseus in its internal troubles ; but the new strategus, Lyciscus, chosen under the eyes of the Roman ambassadors, was more of a Roman partisan than the Romans themselves. Among the Thessalians also the Roman party retained the ascendency. Even the Boeotians, old partisans as they were of Macedonia, and sunk in the utmost financial disorder, had not in their collective capacity declared openly for Perseus ; nevertheless at least three of their cities, Thisbae, Haliartus and Coronea, had of their own accord entered into engagements with him. When on the complaint of the Roman envoy the govern ment of the Boeotian confederacy communicated to him the position of things, he declared that it would best appear which cities adhered to Rome, and which did not, if they would severally pronounce their decision in his presence ; and thereupon the Boeotian confederacy fell at once to pieces. It is not true that the great structure of Epami- nondas was destroyed by the Romans ; it actually collapsed before they touched and thus indeed became the prelude to the dissolution of the other still more firmly consolidated leagues of Greek cities. 1 With the forces of the Boeotian towns friendly to Rome the Roman envoy Publius Lentulus laid siege to Haliartus, even before the Roman fleet appeared in the Aegean.
The legal dissolution of the Boeotian confederacy, however, took place not at this time, but only after the destruction of Corinth (Pausan. vii. 14, xvi. 6).
1 4;
it,
chap, x THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR
499
Chalcis was occupied with Achaean, and the province of Prepara- Orestis with Epirot, forces : the fortresses of the Dassa- „^ " retae and Illyrians on the west frontier of Macedonia were occupied by the troops of Gnaeus Sicinius ; and as soon as
the navigation was resumed, Larisa received a garrison of
2000 men. Perseus during all this remained inactive and
had not a foot's breadth of land beyond his own territory, when in the spring, or according to the official calendar in June, of 583, the Roman legions landed on the west coast 171. It is doubtful whether Perseus would have found allies of
any mark, even had he shown as much energy as he dis played remissness ; but, as circumstances stood, he remained of course completely isolated, and those prolonged attempts at proselytism led, for the time at least, to no result. Carthage, Genthius of Illyria, Rhodes and the free cities of Asia Minor, and even Byzantium hitherto so very friendly with Perseus, offered to the Romans vessels of war ; which these, how ever, declined. Eumenes put his land army and his ships on a war footing. Ariarathes king of Cappadocia sent hostages, unsolicited, to Rome. The brother-in-law of
Perseus, Prusias II. king of Bithynia, remained neutral. No one stirred in all Greece. Antiochus IV. king of Syria, designated in court style "the god, the brilliant bringer of victory," to distinguish him from his father the " Great," bestirred himself, but only to wrest the Syrian coast during this war from the entirely impotent Egypt
But, though Perseus stood almost alone, he was no con- Beginning temptible antagonist His army numbered 43,000 men; ofthew*» of these 21,000 were phalangites, and 4000 Macedonian
and Thracian cavalry ; the rest were chiefly mercenaries.
The whole force of the Romans in Greece amounted to
between 30,000 and 40,000 Italian troops, besides more
than 10,000 men belonging to Numidian, Ligurian, Greek,
Cretan, and especially Pergamene contingents. To these
added the fleet, which numbered only 40 decked
The Romans invade Thessaly.
vessels, as there was no fleet of the enemy to oppose it— Perseus, who had been prohibited from building ships of war by the treaty with Rome, was only now erecting docks at Thessalonica —but it had on board 10,000 troops, as it was destined chiefly to co-operate in sieges. The fleet was commanded by Gaius Lucretius, the land army by the consul Publius Licinius Crassus.
The consul left a strong division in Illyria to harass Ma cedonia from the west, while with the main force he started, as usual, from Apollonia for Thessaly. Perseus did not think of disturbing their arduous march, but contented him self with advancing into Perrhaebia and occupying the nearest fortresses. He awaited the enemy at Ossa, and not far from Larisa the first conflict took place between the cavalry and light troops on both sides. The Romans were decidedly beaten. Cotys with the Thracian horse had de feated and broken the Italian, and Perseus with his Mace donian horse the Greek, cavalry ; the Romans had 2000 foot and 200 horsemen killed, and 600 horsemen made prisoners, and had to deem themselves fortunate in being allowed to cross the Peneius without hindrance. Perseus employed the victory to ask peace on the same terms which Philip had obtained : he was ready even to pay the same sum. The Romans refused his request : they never concluded peace after a defeat, and in this case the conclusion of peace would certainly have involved as a consequence the loss of Greece.
The wretched Roman commander, however, knew not how or where to attack ; the army marched to and fro in Thessaly, without accomplishing anything of importance. Perseus might have assumed the offensive ; he saw that the Romans were badly led and dilatory ; the news had passed like wildfire through Greece, that the Greek army had been brilliantly victorious in the first engagement ; a second victory might lead to a general rising of the patriot party,
500
THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR BOOK III
Their lax cessfuTSUC"
chap, x THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR
501
and, by commencing a guerilla warfare, might produce incalculable results. But Perseus, while a good soldier, was not a general like his father ; he had made his preparations for a defensive war, and, when things took a different turn, he felt himself as it were paralyzed. He made an unimport ant success, which the Romans obtained in a second cavalry
combat near Phalanna, a pretext for reverting, as is the habit of narrow and obstinate minds, to his first plan and evacuating Thessaly. This was of course equivalent to re nouncing all idea of a Hellenic insurrection : what might have been attained by a different course was shown by the
fact that, notwithstanding what had occurred, the Epirots changed sides. Thenceforth nothing serious was accom plished on either side. Perseus subdued king Genthius, chastised the Dardani, and, by means of Cotys, expelled from Thrace the Thracians friendly to Rome and the Per- gamene troops. On the other hand the western Roman army took some Illyrian towns, and the consul busied himself
in clearing Thessaly of the Macedonian garrisons and making sure of the turbulent Aetolians and Acarnanians by occupying Ambracia. But the heroic courage of the Romans
was most severely felt by the unfortunate Boeotian towns which took part with Perseus ; the inhabitants as well of Thisbae, which surrendered without resistance as soon as
the Roman admiral Gaius Lucretius appeared before the city,
as of Haliartus, which closed its gates against him and had
to be taken by storm, were sold by him into slavery; Corcnea was treated in the same manner by the consul Crassus in spite even of its capitulation Never had a Roman army exhibited such wretched discipline as the force under these commanders. They had so disorganized the army that, even in the next campaign of 584, the new consul Aulus Hostilius could not think of undertaking anything 170. serious, especially as the new admiral Lucius Hortensius showed himself to be as incapable and unprincipled as his
Sea
THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR book in
predecessor. The fleet visited the towns on the Thracian
coast without result The western army under
Claudius, whose head-quarters were at Lychnidus in the territory of the Dassaretae, sustained one defeat after another : after an expedition to Macedonia had been utterly unsuccessful, the king in turn towards the beginning of winter assumed the aggressive with the troops which were no longer needed on the south frontier in consequence of the deep snow blocking up all the passes, took from Appius numerous townships and a multitude of prisoners, and entered into connections with king Genthius ; he was able in fact to attempt an invasion of Aetolia, while Appius allowed himself to be once more defeated in Epirus by the garrison of a fortress which he had vainly besieged. The Roman main army made two attempts to penetrate into Macedonia : first, ovei the Cambunian mountains, and then through the Thessalian passes ; but they were negligently planned, and both were repulsed by Perseus.
The consul employed himself chiefly in the reorganization of the army—a work which was above all things needful, but which required a sterner man and an officer of greater mark. Discharges and furloughs might be bought, and therefore the divisions were never up to their full numbers; the men were put into quarters in summer, and, as the officers plundered on a large, the common soldiers plundered on a small, scale. Friendly peoples were subjected to the most shameful suspicions: for instance, the blame of the disgraceful defeat at Larisa was imputed to the pretended treachery of the Aetolian cavalry, and, what was hitherto unprecedented, its officers were sent to be criminally tried at Rome ; and the Molossians in Epirus were forced false suspicions into actual revolt The allied states had war-contributions imposed upon them as if they had been conquered, and if they appealed to the Roman senate, their citizens were executed or sold into slavery : this was done,
Appius
Abases in the army.
by
chap, x THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR
503
for instance, at Abdera, and similar outrages were committed at Chalcis. The senate interfered very earnestly : * it enjoined the liberation of the unfortunate Coroneans and Abderites, and forbade the Roman magistrates to ask contributions from the allies without its leave. Gaius Lucretius was unanimously condemned by the burgesses. But such steps could not alter the fact, that the military result of these first two campaigns had been null, while the political result had been a foul stain on the Romans, whose extraordinary successes in the east were based in no small degree on their reputation for moral purity and solidity as compared with the scandals of Hellenic administration. Had Philip commanded instead of Perseus, the war would
presumably have begun with the destruction of the Roman army and the defection of most of the Hellenes ; but Rome was fortunate enough to be constantly outstripped in blunders by her antagonists. Perseus was content with entrenching himself in Macedonia—which towards the south and west is a true mountain-fortress —as in a beleaguered town.
The third commander-in-chief also, whom Rome sent to Macedonia in 585, Quintus Marcius Philippus, that already- mentioned upright guest-friend of the king, was not at all equal to his far from easy task. He was ambitious and enterprising, but a bad officer. His hazardous venture of crossing Olympus by the pass of Lapathus westward of Tempe, leaving behind one division to face the garrison of the pass, and making his way with his main force through impracticable defiles to Heracleum, is not excused by the fact of its success. Not only might a handful of resolute men have blocked the route, in which case retreat was out of the question ; but even after the passage, when he stood
Marcius SSgS1 through JhePftSSO'
1 The recently discovered decree of the senate of 9th Oct 584, which 170. regulates the legal relations of Thisbae (Ephemeris tpigraphica, 187a, p.
978, fig. ; Milth. d. arch. Inst, in Athen, iv. 335, fig. ), gives a clear insight into these relations.
The armies Eipiuj
advance of the Romans. So the Roman
during the rest of the summer and the winter, hemmed in in the farthest corner of Thessaly ; and, while the crossing of the passes was certainly a success and the first substantial one in the war, it was due not to the ability of the Roman, but to the blundering of the Macedonian, general. The Roman fleet in vain attempted the capture of Demetrias, and performed no exploit whatever. The light ships of
504
THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR book hi
with the Macedonian main force in front and the strongly- fortified mountain -fortresses of Tempe and Lapathus behind him, wedged into a narrow plain on the shore and without supplies or the possibility of foraging for them, his position was no less desperate than when, in his first con sulate, he had allowed himself to be similarly surrounded in the Ligurian defiles which thenceforth bore his name. But as an accident saved him then, so the incapacity of Perseus saved him now. As if he could not comprehend the idea of defending himself against the Romans other wise than by blocking the passes, he strangely gave himself over as lost as soon as he saw the Romans on the Mace donian side of them, fled in all haste to Pydna, and ordered his ships to be burnt and his treasures to be sunk. But even this voluntary retreat of the Macedonian army did not rescue the consul from his painful position. He advanced indeed without hindrance, but was obliged after four days' march to turn back for want of provisions ; and, when the king came to his senses and returned in all haste to resume the position which he had abandoned, the Roman army would have been in great danger, had not the impregnable Tempe surrendered at the right moment and handed over its rich stores to the enemy. The com munication with the south was by this means secured to the Roman army ; but Perseus had strongly barricaded
himself in his former well-chosen position on the bank of the little river Elpius, and there checked the farther
army remained,
chap, X THE THIRD MACEDONIAN "WAR
504
Perseus boldly cruised between the Cyclades, protected the corn-vessels destined for Macedonia, and attacked the transports of the enemy. With the western army matters were still worse : Appius Claudius could do nothing with his weakened division, and the contingent which he asked from Achaia was prevented from coming to him by the
jealousy of the consul. Moreover, Genthius had allowed himself to be bribed by Perseus with the promise of a great sum of money to break with Rome, and to imprison the Roman envoys ; whereupon the frugal king deemed it superfluous to pay the money which he had promised, since Genthius was now forsooth compelled, independently of
to substitute an attitude of decided hostility to Rome for the ambiguous position which he had hitherto maintained. Accordingly the Romans had further petty war the side of the great one, which had already lasted three years. In fact had Perseus been able to part with his money, he might easily have aroused enemies still more dangerous to the Romans. Celtic host under Clondicus — 10,000 horsemen and as many infantry —offered to take service with him in Macedonia itself but they could not agree as to the pay. In Hellas too there was such ferment that guerilla warfare might easily have been kindled with little dexterity and full exchequer but, as Perseus had no desire to give and the Greeks did nothing gratuitously, the land remained quiet
At length the Romans resolved to send the right man Pauilus. to Greece. This was Lucius Aemilius Paullus, son of the
consul of the same name that fell at Cannae man of the
old nobility but of humble means, and therefore not so successful the comitia as on the battle- field, where he had remarkably distinguished himself in Spain and still more
so in Liguria. The people elected him for the second time consul the year 586 on account of his merits— 168.
course which was at that time rare and exceptional. He
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;
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back to Pydna.
was in all respects the right man : an excellent general of the old school, strict as respected both himself and his troops, and, notwithstanding his sixty years, still hale and vigorous; an incorruptible magistrate — "one of the few Romans of that age, to whom one could not offer money," as a contemporary says of him — and a man of Hellenic culture, who, even when commander-in-chief, embraced the opportunity of travelling through Greece to inspect its works of art
As soon as the new general arrived in the camp at Hera- cleum, he gave orders for the ill-guarded pass at Pythium j0 De surprised by Publius Nasica, while skirmishes between the outposts in the channel of the river Elpius occupied the attention of the Macedonians; the enemy was thus
506
THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR book hi
Battle of turned, and was obliged to retreat to Pydna. There on Pydna-lg8 the Roman 4th of September, 586, or on the 22nd of
June of the Julian calendar — an eclipse of the moon, which a scientific Roman officer announced beforehand to the army that it might not be regarded as a bad omen, affords in this case the means of determining the date— the outposts accidentally fell into conflict as they were
their horses after midday ; and both sides determined at once to give the battle, which it was originally intended to postpone till the following day. Passing through the ranks in person, without helmet or shield, the grey-headed Roman general arranged his men. Scarce were they in position, when the formidable phalanx assailed them; the general himself, who had witnessed many a hard fight, afterwards acknowledged that he had trembled. The Roman vanguard dispersed ; a Paelignian cohort was overthrown and almost annihilated ; the legions themselves hurriedly retreated till they reached a hill close upon the Roman camp. Here the fortune of the day changed. The uneven ground and the hurried pursuit had disordered the ranks of the phalanx; the Romans
watering
chap, X THE THIRD MACEDONIAN WAR
507
in single cohorts entered at every gap, and attacked it on
the flanks and in rear ; the Macedonian cavalry which
alone could have rendered aid looked calmly on, and
soon fled in a body, the king among the foremost ; and
thus the fate of Macedonia was decided in less than an
hour. The 3000 select phalangites allowed themselves
to be cut down to the last man ; it was as if the phalanx,
which fought its last great battle at Pydna, had itself
wished to perish there. The overthrow was fearful ;
20,000 Macedonians lay on the field of battle, 11,000 were prisoners. The war was at an end, on the fifteenth day
after Paullus had assumed the command; all Macedonia submitted in two days. The king fled with his gold
—he still had more than 6000 talents (;£i,460,000)
in his chest — to Samothrace, accompanied by a few
faithful attendants. But he himself put to death one of
these, Evander of Crete, who was to be called to account as instigator of the attempted assassination of Eumenes ; and
then the king's pages and his last comrades also deserted
him. For a moment he hoped that the right of asylum
would protect him ; but he himself perceived that he was clinging to a straw. An attempt to take flight to Cotys
failed. So he wrote to the consul ; but the letter was
not received, because he had designated himself in it as
king. He recognized his fate, and surrendered to the Perseus Romans at discretion with his children and his treasures. ' ! ^en„
pusillanimous and weeping so as to disgust even his con querors. With a grave satisfaction, and with thoughts turning rather on the mutability of fortune than on his own present success, the consul received the most illustrious captive whom Roman general had ever brought home. Perseus died a few years after, as a state prisoner, at Alba on the Fucine lake ; * his son in after years
1 The story, that the Romans, in order at once to keep the promise which had guaranteed his life and to take vengeance on him, put him to death by depriving him of sleep, is certainly a fable.
prisoner.