CHAPTER VIII

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Flaminius on his arrival immediately defeated the Macedonian garrison at Eretria and plundered the town, and next marched to Corinth which was occupied by Philip’s garrison, and sat down to a regular siege, and sent to the Achæans urging them to come to Corinth with an army, so as to be reckoned the allies of the Romans, and in friendship to the Greeks generally. But the Achæans took it ill that Flaminius and still earlier Otilius had handled so savagely old Greek cities, that had committed no offence against Rome, and were under the Macedonians against their wish. They foresaw also that instead of Philip and the Macedonians they would merely have the Romans as dictators in Greece. But after many speeches from different points of view had been delivered in the council, at last the party friendly to the Romans prevailed, and the Achæans joined Flaminius in the siege of Corinth. And the Corinthians, being thus freed from the Macedonian yoke, at once joined the Achæan League, which indeed they had formerly joined, when Aratus and the Sicyonians drove out the garrison from the citadel of Corinth and slew Persæus, who had been put in command of the garrison by Antigonus. And from that time forward the Achæans were called the allies of the Romans, and were devoted to them at all times, and followed them into Macedonia against Philip, and joined them in an expedition against the Ætolians, and fought on their side against Antiochus and the Syrians.

In fighting against the Macedonians and Syrians the Achæans were animated only by friendship to the Romans: but in fighting against the Ætolians they were satisfying a long-standing grudge. And when the power at Sparta of Nabis, a man of the most unrelenting cruelty, had been overthrown, the Lacedæmonians became their own masters again, and as time went on the Achæans got them into their League, and were very severe with them, and rased to the ground the fortifications of Sparta, which had been formerly run up hastily at the time of the invasion of Demetrius and afterwards of Pyrrhus and the Epirotes, but during the power of Nabis had been very strongly fortified. And not only did the Achæans rase the walls of Sparta, but they prevented their youths from training as Lycurgus had ordained, and made them train in the Achæan way. I shall enter into all this in more detail in my account about Arcadia. And the Lacedæmonians, being sorely vexed with these harassing decrees of the Achæans, threw themselves into the arms of Metellus and his colleagues, who had come on an embassy from Rome, not to try and stir up war against Philip and the Macedonians, for a peace had been previously solemnly concluded between Philip and the Romans, but to try the charges made against Philip either by the Thessalians or the Epirotes. Philip himself indeed and the Macedonian supremacy had actually received a fatal blow from the Romans. For fighting against Flaminius and the Romans on the range of hills called Cynoscephalæ Philip got the worst of it, and having put forth all his strength in the battle got so badly beaten that he lost the greater part of his army, and was obliged by the Roman terms to remove his garrisons from all the Greek towns which he had seized and reduced during the war. The peace indeed with the Romans which he obtained sounded specious, but was only procured by various entreaties and at great expenditure of money. The Sibyl had indeed foretold not without the god the power which the Macedonians would attain to in the days of Philip the son of Amyntas, and how all this would crumble away in the days of another Philip. These are the very words of her oracle--

“Ye Macedonians, that boast in the Argeadæ as your kings, to you Philip as ruler shall be both a blessing and a curse. The first Philip shall make you ruler over cities and people, the last shall lose you all your honour, conquered by men both from the West and East.”

The Romans that overthrew the Macedonian Empire lived in the West of Europe, and Attalus and the Mysian force that cooperated with them may be said to have been Eastern Nations.

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