There were several other reasons which led to the SECOND MACEDONIAN WAR (200-197). Philip had agreed with ANTIOCHUS III., king of Syria, to attempt with him the division of Egypt, since it seemed probable that the young king, Epiphanes (Ptolemy V.), who was only four years old, would not be able to make an effectual resistance. The ministers of Egypt sought the protection of Rome. On their journey, the Roman envoys sent to assume the office of protectorship remonstrated with Philip.
In Asia Minor Philip had conducted himself with such barbarity that the people rose against him; and from a similar cause Greece was driven to seek alliances which would protect her against him.
Rome was unwilling to undertake a new war, but the people were induced to vote for one, on the representation that the only means of preventing an invasion of Italy was to carry the war abroad.
This year (200) the Consul, Publius Sulpicius Galba, was sent with a considerable force across the Adriatic. His campaign, and that of the Consul Villius during the next year, were productive of no decisive results, but in 198 the Consul TITUS QUINCTIUS FLAMINÍNUS, a man of different calibre, conducted the war with vigor. He defeated Philip on the Aóus, drove him back to the pass of Tempe, and the next year utterly defeated him at CYNOSCEPHALAE.
The king had drawn up his forces in two divisions. With the first he broke through the line of the legions, which, however, closed in around him with but little loss. The other division was attacked by the Romans, while it was forming, and thoroughly discomfited. The victory of the Romans was decisive.
About the same time the Achaeans captured CORINTH from Philip, and the Rhodians defeated his troops in Caria.
Further resistance was impossible. Philip was left in possession of Macedonia alone; he was deprived of all his dependencies in Greece, Thrace, and Asia Minor, and was forbidden, as Carthage had been, to wage war without Rome's consent.
The next year (196), at the Isthmian Games, the "freedom of Greece" was proclaimed to the enthusiastic crowds, and two years later Flamininus withdrew his troops from the so called "three fetters of Greece,"—Chalcis, Demetrias, and Corinth,—and, urging the Greeks to show themselves worthy of the gift of the Roman people, he returned home to enjoy a well earned triumph.
The chief result of the second Macedonian war was, therefore, the firm establishment of a ROMAN PROTECTORATE OVER GREECE AND EGYPT. The wedge had been entered and the interference of Rome in Eastern affairs was assured.