There was, however, a shadow on the picture. All Peloponnesus was not freed, and Flamininus, after having taken several of his possessions from Nabis, king of Sparta, had concluded peace with him, without continuing the siege of Lacedæmon, of which he dreaded the length. He feared also the arrival of a more dangerous enemy, Antiochus III., who had already reached Thrace, and threatened to go over into Greece with a considerable army. For this the allied Greeks, occupied only with their own interests, reproached the Roman consul with having concluded peace too hastily with Philip, whom, in their opinion, he could have annihilated.[564] But Flamininus replied that he was not commissioned to dethrone Philip, and that the existence of the kingdom of Macedonia was necessary as a barrier against the barbarians of Thrace, Illyria, and Gaul.[565] Meanwhile, accompanied even to their ships by the acclamations of the people, the Roman troops evacuated the cities restored to liberty (560), and Flamininus returned to a triumph at Rome, bringing with him that glorious protectorate of Greece, so long an object of envy to the successors of Alexander.
War against Antiochus (563).
VIII. The policy of the Senate had been to make Macedonia a rampart against the Thracians, and Greece herself a rampart against Macedonia. But, though the Romans had freed the Achæan league, they did not intend to create a formidable power or confederation. Then, as formerly, the Athenians, the Spartans, the Bœotians, the Ætolians, and, finally, the Achæans, each endeavoured to constitute an Hellenic league for their own advantage; and each aspiring to dominate over the others, turned alternately to those from whom it hoped the most efficient support at the time. In the Hellenic peninsula, properly so called, the Ætolians, to whose territory the Senate had promised to join Phocis and Locris, coveted the cities of Thessaly, which the Romans obstinately refused them.
Thus, although reinstated in the possession of their independence, neither the Ætolians, the Achæans, nor yet the Spartans, were satisfied: they all dreamt of aggrandisement. The Ætolians, more impatient, made, in 562, three simultaneous attempts against Thessaly, the island of Eubœa, and Peloponnesus. Having only succeeded in seizing Demetrias, they called Antiochus III. to Greece, that they might place him at the head of the hegemony, which they sought in vain to obtain from the Romans.
The better part of the immense heritage left by Alexander the Great had fallen to this prince. Already, some years before, Flamininus had given him notice that it belonged to the honour of the Republic not to abandon Greece, of which the Roman people had loudly proclaimed itself the liberator; and that after having delivered it from the yoke of Philip, the Senate now wished to free from the dominion of Antiochus all the Asian cities of Hellenic origin.[566] Hannibal, who had taken refuge with the King of Syria, encouraged him to resist, by engaging him to carry the struggle into Italy, as he himself had done. War was then declared by the Romans. To maintain the independence of Greece against an Asiatic prince was at once to fulfil treaties and undertake the defence of civilisation against barbarism. Thus, in proclaiming the most generous ideas, the Republic justified its ambition.
The services rendered by Rome were already forgotten.[567] Antiochus thus found numerous allies in Greece, secret or declared. He organised a formidable confederacy, into which entered the Ætolians, the Athamanes, the Elians, and the Bœotians, and, having landed at Chalcis, conquered Eubœa and Thessaly. The Romans opposed to him the King of Macedonia and the Achæans. Beaten at Thermopylæ, in 563, by the consul Acilius Glabrio, aided by Philip, the King of Syria withdrew to Asia, and the Ætolians, left to themselves, demanded peace, which was granted them in 563.
It was not enough to have compelled Antiochus to abandon Greece. L. Scipio, having his brother, the vanquisher of Carthage, for his lieutenant, went in 564 to seek him out in his own territory. Philip favoured the passage of the Roman army, which crossed Macedonia, Thrace, and the Hellespont without difficulty. The victories gained at Myonnesus by sea, and at Magnesia by land, terminated the campaign, and compelled Antiochus to yield up all his provinces on this side Mount Taurus, and pay 15,000 talents—a third more than the tax imposed on Carthage after the second Punic war. The Senate, far from reducing Asia then to a province, exacted only just and moderate conditions.[568] All the Greek towns of that country were declared free, and the Romans only occupied certain important points, and enriched their allies at the expense of Syria. The King of Pergamus and the Rhodian fleet had seconded the Roman army. Eumenes II., the successor of Attalus I., saw his kingdom increased; Rhodes obtained Lycia and Caria; Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, who had given aid to Antiochus, paid two hundred talents.[569]
The War in the Cisalpine (558-579).
IX. The prompt submission of the East was a fortunate occurrence for the Republic, for near at home, enemies, always eager and watchful, might at any moment, supported or excited by their brethren on the other side of the Alps, attack her in the very centre of her empire.
Indeed, since the time of Hannibal, war had been perpetuated in the Cisalpine, the bellicose tribes of which, though often beaten, engaged continually in new insurrections. The settlement of the affairs of Macedonia left the Senate free to act with more vigour, and in 558 the defeat of the Ligures, of the Boii, of the Insubres, and of the Cenomani, damped the ardour of these barbarous peoples. The Ligures and the Boii, however, continued the strife; but the bloody battle of 561, fought near Modena, and, later, the ravages committed by L. Flamininus, brother of the conqueror of Cynoscephalæ, and Scipio Nasica, during the following years, obliged the Boii to treat. Compelled to yield the half of their territory, they retired towards the Danube in 564, and three years afterwards Cisalpine Gaul was formed into a Roman province.