True to his infantine oath, Hannibal did his utmost to excite hostility against the Romans; and asked Antiochus to lend him a trifle, in the shape of 10,000 men, as if they were so many counters, that the game of war required. Antiochus, however, like a boy jealous of his toys, refused to hand over the 10,000 men, whose lives might be required as playthings for himself; and he was not long in making use of them.
Hannibal leads the Ambassadors rather a fatiguing Walk round Carthage.
The Greeks, being unable to appreciate the sort of independence they had received at the hands of Rome, sent an invitation to Antiochus; for it is the characteristic of slavery, as a moral disease, to seek relief from the existing cause of oppression by the introduction of some more violent form of the same malady.[55]
As the interference of strangers will usually lead to family quarrels, so the effect of foreign influence on Greece was to keep the people continually involved in disputes with each other. Part of the population would have welcomed Antiochus warmly, while others received him coldly; and the king, who had penetrated into Thessaly, had sufficient penetration to see that he had better go a considerable part of the way back again.
By way of narrowing the ground of dispute, he took his position in the Pass of Thermopylæ, and had, for some time, maintained an advantage over the Romans, when M. Porcius Cato, ascending the heights, ran round to the rear, and, by a decisive blow on the enemy's back, changed the whole face of the engagement. Antiochus fled in dismay, and never stopped to look behind him, until he reached Asia Minor, when he sat down, and took a gloomy retrospect of all that had happened. While he met with reverses on land, he heard of the reverse, or rather the same thing, that had happened to his fleet at sea; and he fairly gave up, not only his cause, but the Chersonesus, Lysimachia, Sestos, and Abydos, with all their contents and non-contents; the latter of which included the inhabitants.
Antiochus, though subdued in spirit, was not quite beaten in form; and a large army was sent to Asia, under the command of the two consuls, L. Cornelius Scipio and C. Lælius. L. C. Scipio, though without any acknowledged merit of his own, had the good fortune to be the brother of the celebrated Scipio Africanus, who got him the place; but it is manifest that such an illegitimate step to an appointment will often end in a grievous disappointment of one kind or another. To provide against the ill consequences of this flagrant job, the celebrated Scipio went out in the capacity of legate, to counteract the consequences of his brother's general incapacity in the capacity of general. The Romans had 20,000 men, who, having arrived in Asia, met 70,000 soldiers of Antiochus, at Magnesia, where the latter received a dose from which they never recovered. Peace was granted to them on very humiliating terms; but, however bitter the cup prescribed for Antiochus, so disagreeable was the recollection of Magnesia, that he was obliged to swallow almost anything that came after it.
Rome continued her system of giving independence to various places and people, many of whom seemed so little to appreciate the proffered boon, that in some cases money was tendered and accepted as the price of exemption from the proposed advantages. The Cappadocians were so alarmed at the prospect of their new freedom, that, being still free to confess their dislike to it, they sent 200 talents to the Romans, who, no doubt, mentally impressed with the proverbial baseness of the "slave who pays," quietly pocketed the money.
While the principles of independence were being promulgated in the East, the Romans were also employed in carrying their notions of emancipation into the North, where several tribes were cut to pieces, in order that they might feel the interest which Rome condescended to take in them. In some places the old inhabitants were rooted up like old trees, while the younger branches were transplanted to other soils; and a large quantity of Ligurian offshoots were carried off from their parent stems to fill some vacant ground at Samnium. Many places were thoroughly destroyed; and among others, Cremona was so unmercifully played upon, that it was utterly broken up, and the lamentations of its inhabitants were regarded no more than the moanings of a set of old fiddle-strings.