The History of Rome, Book III - Theodor Mommsen
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Settlement of Spartan Affairs
At last the obstinate resistance came to an end. Sparta retained its
independence and was neither compelled to receive back the emigrants
nor to join the Achaean league; even the existing monarchical
constitution, and Nabis himself, were left intact. On the other hand
Nabis had to cede his foreign possessions, Argos, Messene, the Cretan
cities, and the whole coast besides; to bind himself neither to
conclude foreign alliances, nor to wage war, nor to keep any other
vessels than two open boats; and lastly to disgorge all his plunder,
to give to the Romans hostages, and to pay to them a war-contribution.
The towns on the Laconian coast were given to the Spartan emigrants,
and this new community, who named themselves the "free Laconians" in
contrast to the monarchically governed Spartans, were directed to
enter the Achaean league. The emigrants did not receive back their
property, as the district assigned to them was regarded as a
compensation for it; it was stipulated, on the other hand, that
their wives and children should not be detained in Sparta against
their will. The Achaeans, although by this arrangement they gained
the accession of the free Laconians as well as Argos, were yet far
from content; they had expected that the dreaded and hated Nabis would
be superseded, that the emigrants would be brought back, and that
the Achaean symmachy would be extended to the whole Peloponnesus.
Unprejudiced persons, however, will not fail to see that Flamininus
managed these difficult affairs as fairly and justly as it was
possible to manage them where two political parties, both chargeable
with unfairness and injustice stood opposed to each other. With the
old and deep hostility subsisting between the Spartans and Achaeans,
the incorporation of Sparta into the Achaean league would have been
equivalent to subjecting Sparta to the Achaeans, a course no less
contrary to equity than to prudence. The restitution of the
emigrants, and the complete restoration of a government that had been
set aside for twenty years, would only have substituted one reign of
terror for another; the expedient adopted by Flamininus was the right
one, just because it failed to satisfy either of the extreme parties.
At length thorough provision appeared to be made that the Spartan
system of robbery by sea and land should cease, and that the
government there, such as it was, should prove troublesome only
to its own subjects. It is possible that Flamininus, who knew
Nabis and could not but be aware how desirable it was that he should
personally be superseded, omitted to take such a step from the mere
desire to have done with the matter and not to mar the clear
impression of his successes by complications that might be prolonged
beyond all calculation; it is possible, moreover, that he sought
to preserve Sparta as a counterpoise to the power of the Achaean
confederacy in the Peloponnesus. But the former objection relates to
a point of secondary importance; and as to the latter view, it is far
from probable that the Romans condescended to fear the Achaeans.
Final Regulation of Greece
Peace was thus established, externally at least, among the petty Greek
states. But the internal condition of the several communities also
furnished employment to the Roman arbiter. The Boeotians openly
displayed their Macedonian tendencies, even after the expulsion of the
Macedonians from Greece; after Flamininus had at their request allowed
their countrymen who were in the service of Philip to return home,
Brachyllas, the most decided partisan of Macedonia, was elected to the
presidency of the Boeotian confederacy, and Flamininus was otherwise
irritated in every way. He bore it with unparalleled patience; but
the Boeotians friendly to Rome, who knew what awaited them after the
departure of the Romans, determined to put Brachyllas to death, and
Flamininus, whose permission they deemed it necessary to ask, at least
did not forbid them. Brachyllas was accordingly killed; upon which
the Boeotians were not only content with prosecuting the murderers,
but lay in wait for the Roman soldiers passing singly or in small
parties through their territories, and killed about 500 of them.
This was too much to be endured; Flamininus imposed on them a fine
of a talent for every soldier; and when they did not pay it, he
collected the nearest troops and besieged Coronea (558). Now they
betook themselves to entreaty; Flamininus in reality desisted on the
intercession of the Achaeans and Athenians, exacting but a very
moderate fine from those who were guilty; and although the Macedonian
party remained continuously at the helm in the petty province, the
Romans met their puerile opposition simply with the forbearance of
superior power. In the rest of Greece Flamininus contented himself
with exerting his influence, so far as he could do so without
violence, over the internal affairs especially of the newly-freed
communities; with placing the council and the courts in the hands of
the more wealthy and bringing the anti-Macedonian party to the helm;
and with attaching as much as possible the civic commonwealths to the
Roman interest, by adding everything, which in each community should
have fallen by martial law to the Romans, to the common property of
the city concerned. The work was finished in the spring of 560;
Flamininus once more assembled the deputies of all the Greek
communities at Corinth, exhorted them to a rational and moderate use
of the freedom conferred on them, and requested as the only return for
the kindness of the Romans, that they would within thirty days send to
him the Italian captives who had been sold into Greece during the
Hannibalic war. Then he evacuated the last fortresses in which Roman
garrisons were still stationed, Demetrias, Chalcis along with the
smaller forts dependent upon it in Euboea, and Acrocorinthus--thus
practically giving the lie to the assertion of the Aetolians that
Rome had inherited from Philip the "fetters" of Greece--and departed
homeward with all the Roman troops and the liberated captives.
Results
It is only contemptible disingenuousness or weakly sentimentality,
which can fail to perceive that the Romans were entirely in earnest
with the liberation of Greece; and the reason why the plan so nobly
projected resulted in so sorry a structure, is to be sought only in
the complete moral and political disorganization of the Hellenic
nation. It was no small matter, that a mighty nation should have
suddenly with its powerful arm brought the land, which it had been
accustomed to regard as its primitive home and as the shrine of
its intellectual and higher interests, into the possession of
full freedom, and should have conferred on every community in it
deliverance from foreign taxation and foreign garrisons and the
unlimited right of self-government; it is mere paltriness that sees
in this nothing save political calculation. Political calculation
made the liberation of Greece a possibility for the Romans; it was
converted into a reality by the Hellenic sympathies that were at that
time indescribably powerful in Rome, and above all in Flamininus
himself. If the Romans are liable to any reproach, it is that all
of them, and in particular Flamininus who overcame the well-founded
scruples of the senate, were hindered by the magic charm of the
Hellenic name from perceiving in all its extent the wretched character
of the Greek states of that period, and so allowed yet further freedom
for the doings of communities which, owing to the impotent antipathies
that prevailed alike in their internal and their mutual relations,
knew neither how to act nor how to keep quiet. As things stood, it
was really necessary at once to put an end to such a freedom, equally
pitiful and pernicious, by means of a superior power permanently
present on the spot; the feeble policy of sentiment, with all its
apparent humanity, was far more cruel than the sternest occupation
would have been. In Boeotia for instance Rome had, if not to
instigate, at least to permit, a political murder, because the Romans
had resolved to withdraw their troops from Greece and, consequently,
could not prevent the Greeks friendly to Rome from seeking their
remedy in the usual manner of the country. But Rome herself also
suffered from the effects of this indecision. The war with Antiochus
would not have arisen but for the political blunder of liberating
Greece, and it would not have been dangerous but tor the military
blunder of withdrawing the garrisons from the principal fortresses on
the European frontier. History has a Nemesis for every sin--for an
impotent craving after freedom, as well as for an injudicious
generosity.
Notes for Chapter VIII
1. III. III. Acquisition of Territory in Illyria
2. III. VI. Stagnation of the War in Italy
3. There are still extant gold staters, with the head of Flamininus
and the inscription "-T. Quincti(us)-," struck in Greece under the
government of the liberator of the Hellenes. The use of the Latin
language is a significant compliment.
4. III. III. Acquisition of Territory in Illyria
Chapter IX
The War with Antiochus of Asia
Antiochus the Great
In the kingdom of Asia the diadem of the Seleucidae had been worn since
531 by king Antiochus the Third, the great-great-grandson of the founder
of the dynasty. He had, like Philip, begun to reign at nineteen years
of age, and had displayed sufficient energy and enterprise, especially
in his first campaigns in the east, to warrant his being without too
ludicrous impropriety addressed in courtly style as "the Great." He
had succeeded--more, however, through the negligence of his opponents
and of the Egyptian Philopator in particular, than through any ability
of his own--in restoring in some degree the integrity of the monarchy,
and in reuniting with his crown first the eastern satrapies of Media
and Parthyene, and then the separate state which Achaeus had founded
on this side of the Taurus in Asia Minor. A first attempt to wrest
from the Egyptians the coast of Syria, the loss of which he sorely
felt, had, in the year of the battle of the Trasimene lake, met with a
bloody repulse from Philopator at Raphia; and Antiochus had taken good
care not to resume the contest with Egypt, so long as a man--even
though he were but an indolent one--occupied the Egyptian throne.
But, after Philopator's death (549), the right moment for crushing
Egypt appeared to have arrived; with that view Antiochus entered into
concert with Philip, and had thrown himself upon Coele-Syria, while
Philip attacked the cities of Asia Minor. When the Romans interposed
in that quarter, it seemed for a moment as if Antiochus would make
common cause with Philip against them--the course suggested by the
position of affairs, as well as by the treaty of alliance. But, not
far-seeing enough to repel at once with all his energy any
interference whatever by the Romans in the affairs of the east,
Antiochus thought that his best course was to take advantage of the
subjugation of Philip by the Romans (which might easily be foreseen),
in order to secure the kingdom of Egypt, which he had previously been
willing to share with Philip, for himself alone. Notwithstanding the
close relations of Rome with the court of Alexandria and her royal
ward, the senate by no means intended to be in reality, what it was in
name, his "protector;" firmly resolved to give itself no concern
about Asiatic affairs except in case of extreme necessity, and to
limit the sphere of the Roman power by the Pillars of Hercules and the
Hellespont, it allowed the great-king to take his course. He himself
was not probably in earnest with the conquest of Egypt proper--which
was more easily talked of than achieved--but he contemplated the
subjugation of the foreign possessions of Egypt one after another, and
at once attacked those in Cilicia as well as in Syria and Palestine.
The great victory, which he gained in 556 over the Egyptian general
Scopas at Mount Panium near the sources of the Jordan, not only gave
him complete possession of that region as far as the frontier of Egypt
proper, but so alarmed the Egyptian guardians of the young king that,
to prevent Antiochus from invading Egypt, they submitted to a peace
and sealed it by the betrothal of their ward to Cleopatra the daughter
of Antiochus. When he had thus achieved his first object, he
proceeded in the following year, that of the battle of Cynoscephalae,
with a strong fleet of 100 decked and 100 open vessels to Asia Minor,
to take possession of the districts that formerly belonged to Egypt on
the south and west coasts of Asia Minor--probably the Egyptian
government had ceded these districts, which were -de facto- in the
hands of Philip, to Antiochus under the peace, and had renounced all
their foreign possessions in his favour--and to recover the Greeks of
Asia Minor generally for his empire. At the same time a strong Syrian
land-army assembled in Sardes.
Difficulties with Rome
This enterprise had an indirect bearing on the Romans who from the
first had laid it down as a condition for Philip that he should
withdraw his garrisons from Asia Minor and should leave to the
Rhodians and Pergamenes their territory and to the free cities their
former constitution unimpaired, and who had now to look on while
Antiochus took possession of them in Philip's place. Attalus and the
Rhodians found themselves now directly threatened by Antiochus with
precisely the same danger as had driven them a few years before into
the war with Philip; and they naturally sought to involve the Romans
in this war as well as in that which had just terminated. Already in
555-6 Attalus had requested from the Romans military aid against
Antiochus, who had occupied his territory while the troops of Attalus
were employed in the Roman war. The more energetic Rhodians even
declared to king Antiochus, when in the spring of 557 his fleet
appeared off the coast of Asia Minor, that they would regard its
passing beyond the Chelidonian islands (off the Lycian coast) as a
declaration of war; and, when Antiochus did not regard the threat,
they, emboldened by the accounts that had just arrived of the battle
at Cynoscephalae, had immediately begun the war and had actually
protected from the king the most important of the Carian cities,
Caunus, Halicarnassus, and Myndus, and the island of Samos. Most of
the half-free cities had submitted to Antiochus, but some of them,
more especially the important cities of Smyrna, Alexandria Troas, and
Lampsacus, had, on learning the discomfiture of Philip, likewise taken
courage to resist the Syrian; and their urgent entreaties were
combined with those of the Rhodians.
It admits of no doubt, that Antiochus, so far as he was at all capable
of forming a resolution and adhering to it, had already made up his
mind not only to attach to his empire the Egyptian possessions in
Asia, but also to make conquests on his own behalf in Europe and, if
not to seek on that account a war with Rome, at any rate to risk it
The Romans had thus every reason to comply with that request of their
allies, and to interfere directly in Asia; but they showed little
inclination to do so. They not only delayed as long as the Macedonian
war lasted, and gave to Attalus nothing but the protection of
diplomatic intercession, which, we may add, proved in the first
instance effective; but even after the victory, while they doubtless
spoke as though the cities which had been in the hands of Ptolemy and
Philip ought not to be taken possession of by Antiochus, and while the
freedom of the Asiatic cities, Myrina, Abydus, Lampsacus,(1) and Cius,
figured in Roman documents, they took not the smallest step to give
effect to it, and allowed king Antiochus to employ the favourable
opportunity presented by the withdrawal of the Macedonian garrisons to
introduce his own. In fact, they even went so far as to submit to his
landing in Europe in the spring of 558 and invading the Thracian
Chersonese, where he occupied Sestus and Madytus and spent a
considerable time in the chastisement of the Thracian barbarians and
the restoration of the destroyed Lysimachia, which he had selected as
his chief place of arms and as the capital of the newly-instituted
satrapy of Thrace. Flamininus indeed, who was entrusted with the
conduct of these affairs, sent to the king at Lysimachia envoys, who
talked of the integrity of the Egyptian territory and of the freedom
of all the Hellenes; but nothing came out of it. The king talked in
turn of his undoubted legal title to the ancient kingdom of Lysimachus
conquered by his ancestor Seleucus, explained that he was employed not
in making territorial acquisitions but only in preserving the
integrity of his hereditary dominions, and declined the intervention
of the Romans in his disputes with the cities subject to him in Asia
Minor. With justice he could add that peace had already been
concluded with Egypt, and that the Romans were thus far deprived of
any formal pretext for interfering.(2) The sudden return of the king
to Asia occasioned by a false report of the death of the young king of
Egypt, and the projects which it suggested of a landing in Cyprus or
even at Alexandria, led to the breaking off of the conferences without
coming to any conclusion, still less producing any result. In the
following year, 559, Antiochus returned to Lysimachia with his fleet
and army reinforced, and employed himself in organizing the new
satrapy which he destined for his son Seleucus. Hannibal, who had
been obliged to flee from Carthage, came to him at Ephesus; and the
singularly honourable reception accorded to the exile was virtually a
declaration of war against Rome. Nevertheless Flamininus in the
spring of 560 withdrew all the Roman garrisons from Greece. This was
under the existing circumstances at least a mischievous error, if not
a criminal acting in opposition to his own better knowledge; for we
cannot dismiss the idea that Flamininus, in order to carry home with
him the undiminished glory of having wholly terminated the war and
liberated Hellas, contented himself with superficially covering up for
the moment the smouldering embers of revolt and war. The Roman
statesman might perhaps be right, when he pronounced any attempt to
bring Greece directly under the dominion of the Romans, and any
intervention of the Romans in Asiatic affairs, to be a political
blunder; but the opposition fermenting in Greece, the feeble arrogance
of the Asiatic king, the residence, at the Syrian head-quarters, of
the bitter enemy of the Romans who had already raised the west in arms
against Rome--all these were clear signs of the approach of a fresh
rising in arms on the part of the Hellenic east, which could not but
have for its aim at least to transfer Greece from the clientship of
Rome to that of the states opposed to Rome, and, if this object should
be attained, would immediately extend the circle of its operations.
It is plain that Rome could not allow this to take place. When
Flamininus, ignoring all these sure indications of war, withdrew the
garrisons from Greece, and yet at the same time made demands on the
king of Asia which he had no intention of employing his army to
support, he overdid his part in words as much as he fell short in
action, and forgot his duty as a general and as a citizen in the
indulgence of his personal vanity--a vanity, which wished to confer,
and imagined that it had conferred, peace on Rome and freedom
on the Greeks of both continents.
Preparations of Antiochus for War with Rome
Antiochus employed the unexpected respite in strengthening his
position at home and his relations with his neighbours before
beginning the war, on which for his part he was resolved, and became
all the more so, the more the enemy appeared to procrastinate. He now
(561) gave his daughter Cleopatra, previously betrothed, in marriage
to the young king of Egypt. That he at the same time promised to
restore the provinces wrested from his son-in-law, was afterwards
affirmed on the part of Egypt, but probably without warrant; at any
rate the land remained actually attached to the Syrian kingdom.(3)
He offered to restore to Eumenes, who had in 557 succeeded his father
Attalus on the throne of Pergamus, the towns taken from him, and to
give him also one of his daughters in marriage, if he would abandon
the Roman alliance. In like manner he bestowed a daughter on
Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, and gained the Galatians by presents,
while he reduced by arms the Pisidians who were constantly in revolt,
and other small tribes. Extensive privileges were granted to the
Byzantines; respecting the cities in Asia Minor, the king declared
that he would permit the independence of the old free cities such as
Rhodes and Cyzicus, and would be content in the case of the others
with a mere formal recognition of his sovereignty; he even gave them
to understand that he was ready to submit to the arbitration of the
Rhodians. In European Greece he could safely count on the Aetolians,
and he hoped to induce Philip again to take up arms. In fact, a plan
of Hannibal obtained the royal approval, according to which he was to
receive from Antiochus a fleet of 100 sail and a land army of 10,000
infantry and 1000 cavalry, and was to employ them in kindling first
a third Punic war in Carthage, and then a second Hannibalic war in
Italy; Tyrian emissaries proceeded to Carthage to pave the way for a
rising in arms there(4) Finally, good results were anticipated from
the Spanish insurrection, which, at the time when Hannibal left
Carthage, was at its height.(5)
Aetolian Intrigues against Rome
While the storm was thus gathering from far and wide against Rome, it
was on this, as on all occasions, the Hellenes implicated in the
enterprise, who were of the least moment, and yet took action of the
greatest importance and with the utmost impatience. The exasperated
and arrogant Aetolians began by degrees to persuade themselves that
Philip had been vanquished by them and not by the Romans, and could
not even wait till Antiochus should advance into Greece. Their policy
is characteristically expressed in the reply, which their -strategus-
gave soon afterwards to Flamininus, when he requested a copy of the
declaration of war against Rome: that he would deliver it to him in
person, when the Aetolian army should encamp on the Tiber. The
Aetolians acted as the agents of the Syrian king in Greece and
deceived both parties, by representing to the king that all the
Hellenes were waiting with open arms to receive him as their true
deliverer, and by telling those in Greece who were disposed to listen
to them that the landing of the king was nearer than it was in
reality. Thus they actually succeeded in inducing the simple
obstinacy of Nabis to break loose and to rekindle in Greece the flame
of war two years after Flamininus's departure, in the spring of 562;
but in doing so they missed their aim. Nabis attacked Gythium, one of
the towns of the free Laconians that by the last treaty had been
annexed to the Achaean league, and took it; but the experienced
-strategus- of the Achaeans, Philopoemen, defeated him at the
Barbosthenian mountains, and the tyrant brought back barely a fourth
part of his army to his capital, in which Philopoemen shut him up. As
such a commencement was no sufficient inducement for Antiochus to come
to Europe, the Aetolians resolved to possess themselves of Sparta,
Chalcis, and Demetrias, and by gaining these important towns to
prevail upon the king to embark. In the first place they thought to
become masters of Sparta, by arranging that the Aetolian Alexamenus
should march with 1000 men into the town under pretext of bringing a
contingent in terms of the alliance, and should embrace the
opportunity of making away with Nabis and of occupying the town. This
was done, and Nabis was killed at a review of the troops; but, when
the Aetolians dispersed to plunder the town, the Lacedaemonians found
time to rally and slew them to the last man. The city was then
induced by Philopoemen to join the Achaean league. After this
laudable project of the Aetolians had thus not only deservedly failed,
but had had precisely the opposite effect of uniting almost the whole
Peloponnesus in the hands of the other party, it fared little better
with them at Chalcis, for the Roman party there called in the citizens
of Eretria and Carystus in Euboea, who were favourable to Rome, to
render seasonable aid against the Aetolians and the Chalcidian exiles.
On the other hand the occupation of Demetrias was successful, for the
Magnetes to whom the city had been assigned were, not without reason,
apprehensive that it had been promised by the Romans to Philip as a
prize in return for his aid against Antiochus; several squadrons of
Aetolian horse moreover managed to steal into the town under the
pretext of forming an escort for Eurylochus, the recalled head of the
opposition to Rome. Thus the Magnetes passed over, partly of their
own accord, partly by compulsion, to the side of the Aetolians, and
the latter did not fail to make use of the fact at the court of the
Seleucid.