In the meanwhile, Flamininus called upon the Bœotians to enter into the league with Rome; yet they showed themselves wavering, as after a hundred and forty years of the Macedonian yoke, it seemed impossible that that power should have been suddenly broken. It was only by what was almost a stratagem, that Flamininus managed to bring them to that alliance (555). The proconsul (Flamininus’ consular year had expired, but his imperium had been prolonged) appeared before Thebes, and demanded to be let in, that he might negotiate; now he had brought soldiers with him, who came forward whilst he was before the town, and so he marched in without asking leave. The decree which the Bœotians still made, was now but a mere form: there was, however, also a Macedonian garrison in the place.
One hundred and twenty-five years had passed away since the death of Alexander; the proud waves had gone down, and the Greeks no longer deemed themselves to be the people which alone had been called to rule the world. They no longer thought Macedonians upstarts, but they beheld in them their protectors against the Gauls, Scordiscans, Thracians, and other Northern peoples; they looked up to the Macedonian court; Macedonian money also did its work; in short, they acknowledged their leadership. Nor did they indeed any more reckon them to be barbarians. At Pella, Greek was no doubt as much spoken as Macedonian; at court, and among all the educated classes, it was the language in vogue; so that the difference between Hellenes and Macedonians had by this time been effaced.
Before the new campaign had begun, but when the Achæans had already declared against him, Philip sought to negotiate. He would not, however, yield to the demand of the Romans that he should evacuate the whole of Greece; and so determined again to try his luck in war, as he had become much more spirited in the course of his reign. These negotiations failed, and the hostile armies marched against each other in the year 555. Thessaly was the natural scene of the campaign of this year, in which Philip had put forth all his strength. If what Livy tells us of his levy be true, and he was indeed able to raise but so small an army, then must the Gauls have dreadfully visited his country. But the statement does not seem to be correct; for if Macedon had any thing of a population, it must easily have furnished a hundred thousand men. The Romans took the field, reinforced by the Ætolians; no other allies are spoken of, and the Ætolians themselves are said not to have been more than a few thousand foot and four or five hundred horse, unless this be another mistake; altogether, we are told, the army of Flamininus consisted of twenty-six thousand men and a small body of horse. The struggle began rather early in the year. The harvest in Thessaly is gathered in about the middle of June, and by that time the battle of Cynoscephalæ must have taken place; for the corn was ripe, but not yet cut, so that the soldiers, when foraging, had only to reap it. The Romans and Macedonians, who were each advancing, fell in with each other at a spot where they were separated only by a range of low hills. This was on the borders of the Thessalian plain, at which the Phthiotic hills gently slope away into Thessaly proper. Here the two armies were marching in the same direction, without knowing it, each believing the other to be far behind: the object on both sides, was to take up their quarters wherever they might find provisions, and they wished to avail themselves of the ripe corn. Both were on their way to Scotussa. It had rained the day before, and in the morning there arose a thick fog; so that they scarcely saw the hills along which they were marching to the right and left, and the Romans chanced to hit upon one which the Macedonians were about to ascend. Philip had no wish whatever to fight; the Roman general also would rather have chosen another battle-field, as the country thereabouts was still too open: the force of circumstances, however, compelled them to engage. The Romans were already on the height when the Macedonians came up; but their number was small, and at first they were driven back, until they got reinforced. This took place on the left of the Macedonian army, and thus both generals became aware of the nearness of the enemy, and quickly sent troops to the help of their own men. With the support of the Ætolians, the Romans gained the upperhand on the hill; but this led the foe to make a grand attack upon them, and they were pushed down again by the whole of the Macedonian left wing. The Macedonians now thought themselves sure of victory, and Philip was obliged to risk a battle, lest he should damp the spirit of his soldiers. He therefore had only to choose the best line for their advance; and, what was bad for the Macedonian phalanx, he had to take up his position on the hill, where the moveable array of the Romans was much more efficient. The description of this battle in Polybius’ fragments is masterly. The whole of the left wing had pressed forward, and had driven the Romans down the hill on the other side; but when the right wing had with great exertion ascended thither, the Roman left wing was already there before it, and thus was this part of the Macedonian army soon defeated. The Ætolian cavalry, to whom this success was owing, went in pursuit of the fugitives. On the left wing of the Romans, which had to encounter the phalanx, the struggle was undecided; at first, they had even the worst of it: the phalanx, which was once sixteen deep, and now fourteen, charged heavily with its immense masses and its terrible sarissæ, the rear ranks pushing those in front with almost irresistible force against the enemy. But the Romans wheeled half round to the right, and drove the Macedonians on the other side up the heights from which they had come down; and in this position, in which the phalanx was not able to move, the battle was won. There is no denying that the Romans owed their victory mainly to the Ætolian cavalry: the rout of the phalanx was the work of these alone. Philip had a narrow escape. The Macedonians lifted up their lances in token of submission; but the Romans, who did not understand this signal, fell upon them, and thus most of them were killed, and the rest taken prisoners. After this overthrow, in which the loss of the Macedonians, according to the lowest estimates, those which Polybius gives, was eight thousand killed, and five thousand prisoners, Philip fled to Larissa, and from thence to Tempe. He had led the whole of his forces into the field, so that he had no reserve left: this was his fatal mistake. He therefore began to negotiate, and after two vain attempts, a truce was agreed upon: he was to send ambassadors to Rome, and in the meanwhile to furnish supplies to the Roman army, and to pay a contribution.
The Romans were inclined to peace, as there had begun to be much ill-blood between them and the Ætolians. These had plundered the Macedonian camp after the battle of Cynoscephalæ, and in consequence dissension had arisen. The Romans were in much greater numbers in that fight than the Ætolians; but the cavalry of the Ætolians had indeed decided the victory, and moreover, in the beginning these had stood the brunt of the battle on the heights, by which the Romans were enabled to make an orderly retreat. As there was no blinking these arguments, the Ætolians, even if they had not been a vain people, might very well have taken to themselves the honour of the victory; and this indeed they did in a way which gave great offence to the sensitive Flamininus, who therefore, immediately after the day was won, tried to cut them out of all its advantages. Throughout the whole of Greece, the Ætolians were sung of as conquerors, and the Romans with their consul looked upon only as auxiliaries: there came out at that time a fine epigram still extant of Alcæus of Messene on the victory of Cynoscephalæ, full of scorn against Philip, in which it is said in plain words that the Ætolians, and with them the Latins under T. Quinctius, had beaten the Macedonians, and that thirty thousand Macedonians had been slain. This insolence the Greeks had dearly to pay for, as Flamininus was provoked by it; yet it would have done them still greater mischief, had any other than he been general. It is difficult to form an idea of the blind infatuation of the Ætolians,—a people, whose territory was not larger than the canton of Berne, and who yet could have been mad enough to think themselves the equals of the Romans: one of their generals, who had a quarrel with Flamininus, told him, that arms would decide it on the banks of the Tiber. The only clue for this is in the character of the southern nations, who, though unable to do anything, fancy that they can do everything. Even so it was with the Spaniards in their relations with the English: they are always talking of the immortal day of Salamanca, on which they beat the French, whereas they did not lose more than one man in that battle. And thus did the Ætolians, without any substantial cause, become at variance with the Romans. It is true that Flamininus was too irritable: he ought to have treated this with contempt, as his mission to give freedom to Greece was such a fine one. Nor were the Romans by any means just to the Ætolians: by the original conditions, these had a right to claim the restoration of all the places which had been taken from them by Philip; but the Romans decided against them, and they either kept the places themselves, or embodied them with other states, or else they left them independent. This would not have happened, unless there had been indeed some provocation; but it made the Ætolians quite furious.
It was, of course, the policy of the Romans, to restore Greece in such a manner, that the separate nations should balance each other. The peace was concluded in 556, and a most mortifying one for Philip it was. By its terms he was limited to the kingdom of Macedon, which, however, was larger than the old one of that name, as it reached as far as the Nestus, taking in part of Thrace, and many Illyrian and Dardanian tribes, and he had to give up all his places in Greece and on the Thracian coast, and all his conquests in Asia Minor and Caria: these last ought to have been restored to Ptolemy; yet, for appearance’s sake, they got their freedom. Moreover, he had to bind himself to keep no more than five thousand men as a standing army, and only five galleys, and his royal ship; to pay a thousand talents in ten years; and also to give hostages, among whom was his own son Demetrius.
Of this peace the Romans made a generous use. It would be hardly fair to search keenly into their reasons for it; yet it was perhaps that they might leave no vantage ground to Antiochus. Flamininus himself seems to have had very pure motives. The whole of Thessaly, the countries south of Thermopylæ, and the three fortresses, Acrocorinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias, were in the occupation of the Romans, and it was now a question what was to be done with them. Men were not wanting, who never would have sacrificed the positive advantage of the moment for the sake of a fair fame, and who strongly urged that these three places, with some others besides, should still be retained, so as to ensure the dependence of Greece; but Flamininus declared himself against this, and so effectually, that Corinth, the citadel of which had as yet been provisionally held by the Romans, was now already restored to the Achæans. This was the more nobly done, as not only the Ætolians, but also the Achæans, with Philopœmen at their head, claimed to be equal with the Romans; so that it certainly cost Flamininus a struggle with himself to follow his generous impulse. It was lucky for the Greeks, that, in spirit and education, he was a Greek, to which the epigrams on his votive gifts also bear witness.
On the day of the Isthmian games, the decision of the senate was to be made known, from which people expected different things according to their different dispositions. An immense throng was gathered together at Corinth; and there, in the theatre, Flamininus had the decree of the senate proclaimed, by which freedom was granted to all the Greeks. This beautiful moment of enthusiasm gave Greece fifty years of happiness. In the history of the world, fifty years are a long period,—not long enough indeed for a man to go down to his grave without having lived to see evil times; yet to many the sad experience of early youth was requited by a cheerful old age.
The Ætolians did not rejoice with the rest, neither did Nabis of Lacedæmon. The alliance with the latter was a disgrace to Rome. He had made it a condition that he should keep Argos, which he had got Philip to sell to him, and Flamininus was afterwards glad indeed to lay hold of an opportunity of setting aside the treaty, and of waging war against him. Livy is here very explicit, as he copies from Polybius, to whom these events had a peculiar interest. In this war, the tyrant showed himself to be not without ability; but he would have been crushed and Sparta taken, had not Flamininus, guided no doubt by his instructions, followed the baneful policy of not wishing to rid Greece of this source of apprehension, in order that the Achæans might be obliged to make great efforts, and thus want the help of Rome. A large part of Laconia, the district which is now called Maina, was wrested from the grasp of the tyrant, and formed into an independent state, inhabited by the former periœcians; the Achæans got Argos; and Nabis had to pay a war-contribution of a hundred talents down, and of four hundred more within eight years, and also to give his son as a hostage. This did not last long. When Flamininus was absent, the Achæans took advantage of a riot in which Nabis was slain, to unite Sparta with the rest of the Peloponnesus; which was very disagreeable to the Romans, but at that time could not be helped.
The two fortresses, Chalcis and Demetrius, the Romans bound themselves to evacuate, as soon as their affairs with Antiochus stood on a firm footing. Thessaly was made much larger than it had hitherto been; joined with Phthiotis, it formed the Thessalian republic: on the other hand, Perrhæbia and some other districts were detached from it. Orestis, which had fallen away from Macedon, was proclaimed free, and probably united with Thessaly, as I conclude from the list of the Thessalian generals. Magnesia became independent. Eubœa, Locris, Acarnania, Bœotia, Phocis, Athens, Elis, Messene, and Lacedæmon became separate states; the rest of the Peloponnesus and Megara were Achæan. Whilst, however, the Romans called themselves the liberators of Greece, they, in spite of principles which they had publicly professed, yielded up Ægina to Eumenes, the son of Attalus. Athens, down to the times of Sylla, was treated by Rome with peculiar favour: never were the Muses so beneficial to any people. The Romans gave them Scyros, Delos, Imbros, Paros.