The legates from Antiochus are sent back with the final answer that, unless the king abstains from entering Europe in arms, the Romans will free the Asiatic Greek cities from him. Roman legates, P. Sulpicius, P. Villius, P. Aelius, are sent to him. Hannibal arrives at the court of Antiochus, and urges him to resist; and the Aetolians urge the same course, trying also to stir up Nabis and Philip of Macedon. Antiochus accordingly will give the Roman envoys no satisfactory answer.
| B.C. 192. | ||
| L. Quintius Flamininus, |
| Coss. |
| Cn. Domitius Ahenobarbus, | ||
The Romans therefore prepare for war. A fleet under the praetor Atilius is sent against Nabis: commissioners are sent into Greece—T. Quintius Flamininus, C. Octavius, Cn. Servilius, P. Villius—early in the year: M. Baebius is ordered to hold his army in readiness at Brundisium. Then news is brought to Rome by Attalus of Pergamum (brother of king Eumenes) that Antiochus has crossed the Hellespont, and the Aetolians on the point of joining him. Therefore Baebius is ordered to transport his army to Apollonia.
Meanwhile Nabis takes advantage of the alarm caused by Antiochus to move. He besieges Gythium, and ravages the Achaean territory. The league, under Philopoemen, proclaim war against him, and, after losing an unimportant naval battle, decisively defeat him on land and shut him up in Sparta.
The Aetolians now formally vote to call in Antiochus, “to liberate Greece and arbitrate between them and Rome.” They occupy Demetrias; and kill Nabis by a stratagem. “Whereupon Philopoemen annexes Sparta to the Achaean league. Later in the year Antiochus meets the assembly of the Aetolians at Lamia in Thessaly, is proclaimed “Strategus”; and after a vain attempt to conciliate the Achaeans seizes Chalcis, where he winters, and marries a young wife.
| B.C. 191. | ||
| P. Cornelius Scipio Nasica, |
| Coss. |
| M. Acilius Glabrio, | ||
The Romans declare war with Antiochus. Manius Acilius is selected to go to Greece, where he takes over the army of Baebius, and after taking many towns in Thessaly meets and defeats Antiochus at Thermopylae; where the Aetolian league did after all little service to the king, who retires to Ephesus.
See Livy, 34, 43——36, 21. See also Plutarch, Philopoemen, and Flamininus; Appian, Syriacae, 6-21.