IV. THE ACHÆ'AN LEAGUE.—PHILIP V. OF MACEDON.
The Achæan League at first comprised twelve towns of Acha'ia, which were associated together for mutual safety, forming a little federal republic. But about twenty years after the death of Pyrrhus other cities gave in their adherence, until the confederacy embraced nearly the whole of the Peloponnesus. Athens had been reduced to great misery by Antigonus, and was in no condition to aid the League, while Sparta vigorously opposed it, and finally succeeded in inducing Corinth and Argos to withdraw from it. Sparta subsequently made war against the Achæans, and by her successes compelled them to call in the aid of the Macedonians, their former enemies. Antigonus readily embraced this opportunity to restore the influence of his family in southern Greece, and, marching against the Lacedæmonians, he obtained a decisive victory which placed Sparta at his mercy; but he used his victory moderately, and granted the Spartans peace on liberal terms (221 B.C.). Antigonus died soon after this success, and was succeeded by his nephew and adopted son, Philip V., a youth of only seventeen. The Æto'lians, a confederacy of rude Grecian tribes, aided by the Spartans, now began a series of unprovoked aggressions on some of the Peloponnesian states. The Messenians, whose territory they had invaded by way of the western coast of Peloponnesus, called upon the Achæans for assistance; and the youthful Philip having been placed at the head of the Achæan League, a general war began between the Macedonians and Achæans on the one side, and the Ætolians and their allies on the other, that continued with great severity and obstinacy for four years. Philip was on the whole successful, but new and more ambitious designs led him to put an end to the unprofitable contest. The great struggle going on between Rome and Carthage attracted his attention, and he thought that an alliance with the latter would open to himself prospects of future conquest and glory. So a treaty was concluded with the Ætolians, which left all the parties to the war in the enjoyment of their respective possessions (217 B.C.), and Philip prepared to enter the field against Rome.
After the battle between Carthage and Rome at Can'næ (216 B.C.), which seemed to have extinguished the last hopes of Rome, Philip sent envoys to Hannibal, the Carthaginian general, and concluded with him a treaty of strict alliance. He next sailed with a fleet up the Adriatic, to assist Deme'trius of Pharos, who had been driven from his Illyrian dominions by the Romans; but while besieging Apollo'nia, a small town in Illyria, he was met and defeated by the Roman prætor M. Vale'rius Lævi'nus, and was forced to burn his ships and retreat overland to Macedon. Such was the issue of his first encounter with the Romans. The latter now turned their attention to Greece (211 B.C.), and contrived to keep Philip busy at home by inciting a violation of the recent treaty with the Ætolians, and by inducing Sparta and Elis to unite in a war against Macedon. Philip was for a time supported by the Achæans, under their renowned leader Philopoe'men; but Athens, which Philip had besieged, called in the aid of a Roman fleet (199 B.C.), and finally the Achæans themselves, being divided into factions, accepted terms of peace with the Romans. Philip continued to struggle against his increasing enemies until his defeat in the great battle of Cynoceph'alæ (197 B.C.), by the Roman consul Titus Flamin'ius, when he purchased peace by the sacrifice of his navy, the payment of a tribute, and the resignation of his supremacy over the Grecian states.
At this time there was a Grecian epigrammatic poet, ALCÆ'US, of Messe'ne, who was an ardent partisan of the Roman consul Flaminius, and who celebrated the defeat of Philip in some of his epigrams. He wrote the following on the expedition of Flaminius:
Xerxes from Persia led his mighty host,
And Titus his from fair Italia's coast.
Both warred with Greece; but here the difference see:
That brought a yoke—this gives us liberty.
He also wrote the following sarcastic epigram on the Macedonians of Philip's army who were slain at Cynocephalæ:
Unmourned, unburied, passenger, we lie,
Three myriad sons of fruitful Thessaly,
In this wide field of monumental clay.
Ætolian Mars had marked us for his prey;
Or he who, bursting from the Ausonian fold,
In Titus' form the waves of battle rolled;
And taught Æma'thia's boastful lord to run
So swift that swiftest stags were by his speed outdone.
Philip is said to have retorted this insult by the following inscription on a tree, in which he pretty plainly states the chastisement Alcæus would receive were he to fall into the hands of his enemy:
Unbarked, and leafless, passenger, you see,
Fixed in this mound Alcæus' gallows-tree.
—Trans. by J. H. MERIVALE.