chapter 10._

See, also, HELLENIC GENIUS AND INFLUENCE.

GREECE: B. C. 280-146. The Achaian League. Its rise and fall. Destruction of Sparta. Supremacy of Rome.

The Achaian League, which bore a leading part in the affairs of Greece during the last half of the third and first half of the second century before Christ, was in some sense the revival of a more ancient confederacy among the cities of Achaia in Peloponnesus. The older League, however, was confined to twelve cities of Achaia and had little weight, apparently, in general Hellenic politics. The revived League grew beyond the territorial boundaries which were indicated by its name, and embraced the larger part of Peloponnesus. It began about 280 B. C. by the forming of a union between the two Achaian cities of Patrai and Dyme. One by one their neighbors joined them, until ten cities were confederated and acting as one. "The first years of the growth of the Achaian League are contemporary with the invasion of Macedonia and Greece by the Gauls and with the wars between Pyrrhos and Antigonos Gonatas.

See MACEDONIA, &c.: B. C. 277-244.

Pyrrhos, for a moment, expelled Antigonos from the Macedonian throne, which Antigonos recovered while' Pyrrhos was warring in Peloponnesos. By the time that Pyrrhos was dead, and Antigonos again firmly fixed in Macedonia, the League had grown up to maturity as far as regarded the cities of the old Achaia. … Thus far, then, circumstances had favoured the quiet and peaceful growth of the League." It had had the opportunity to grow firm enough and strong enough, on the small scale, to offer some lessons to its disunited and tyrannized neighbors and to exercise an attractive influence upon them. One of the nearest of these neighbors was Sikyon, which groaned under a tyranny that had been fastened upon it by Macedonian influence. Among the exiles from Sikyon was a remarkable young man named Aratos, or Aratus, to whom the successful working of the small Achaian League suggested some broader extension of the same political organism. In B. C. 251, Aratos succeeded in delivering his native city from its tyrant and in bringing about the annexation of Sikyon to the Achaian League. Eight years later, having meantime been elected to the chief office of the League, Aratos accomplished the expulsion of the Macedonians and their agents from Corinth, Megara, Troizen and Epidauros, and persuaded those four cities to unite themselves with the Achaians. During the next ten years he made similar progress in Arkadia, winning town after town to the federation, until the Arkadian federal capital, Megalopolis, was enrolled in the list of members, and gave to the League its greatest acquisition of energy and brain. In 229 B. C. the skill of Aratos and the prestige of the League, taking advantage of disturbances in Macedonia, effected the withdrawal of the Macedonian garrisons from Athens and the liberation of that city, which did not become confederated with its liberators, but entered into alliance with them. Argos was emancipated and annexed, B. C. 228, and "the League was now the greatest power of Greece. {1603} A Federation of equal cities, democratically governed, embraced the whole of old Achaia, the whole of the Argolic peninsula, the greater part of Arkadia, together with Phlious, Sikyon, Corinth, Megara, and the island of Aigina." The one rival of the Achaian League in Peloponnesus was Sparta, which looked with jealousy upon its growing power, and would not be confederated with it. The consequences of that jealous rivalry were fatal to the hopes for Greece which the Achaian union had seemed to revive. Unfortunately, rather than otherwise, the Lacedæmonian throne came to be occupied at this time by the last of the hero-kings of the Herakleid race—Kleomenes. When the inevitable collision of war between Sparta and the League occurred (B. C. 227-221), the personal figure of Kleomenes loomed so large in the conflict that it took the name of the Kleomenic War. Aratos was the worst of generals, Kleomenes one of the greatest, and the Achaians were steadily beaten in the field. Driven to sore straits at last, they abandoned the whole original purpose of their federation, by inviting the king of Macedonia to help them crush the independence of Sparta. To win his aid they gave up Corinth to him, and under his leadership they achieved the shameful victory of Sellasia (B. C. 221), where all that is worthy in Lacedæmonian history came to an end. The League was now scarcely more than a dependency of the Macedonian kingdom, and figured as such in the so-called Social War with the Ætolian League, B. C. 219-217. The wars of Rome with Macedonia which followed renewed its political importance considerably for a time. Becoming the ally of Rome, it was able to maintain a certain dignity and influence until the supremacy of the Roman arms had been securely proved, and then it sank to the helpless insignificance which all Roman alliances led to in the end. It was in that state when, on some complaint from Rome (B. C. 167), a thousand of the chief citizens of Achaia were sent as prisoners to Italy and detained there until less than 300 survived to return to their homes. Among them was the historian Polybios. A little later (B. C. 146) there was a wild revolt from the Roman yoke, in which Corinth took the lead. A few months of war ensued, ending in a decisive battle at Leukopetra. Then Corinth was sacked and destroyed by the Roman army and the Achaian League disappeared from history.

_E. A. Freeman, History of Federal Government, chapters 5-9._

ALSO IN: _C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapters 61-66 (volume 8)._

_Polybius, History._

GREECE: B. C. 214-146. The Roman conquest.

The series of wars in which the Romans made themselves masters of Greece were known in their annals as the Macedonian Wars. At the beginning, they were innocent of aggression. A young and ambitious but unprincipled king of Macedonia—Philip, who succeeded the able Antigonos Doson—had put himself in alliance with the Carthaginians and assailed the Romans in the midst of their desperate conflict with Hannibal. For the time they were unable to do more than trouble Philip so far as to prevent his bringing effective reinforcements to the enemy at their doors, and this they accomplished in part by a treaty with the Ætolians, which enlisted that unscrupulous league upon their side. The first Macedonian war, which began B. C. 214, was terminated by the Peace of Dyrrachium, B. C. 205. The Peace was of five years duration, and Philip employed it in reckless undertakings against Pergamus, against Rhodes, against Athens, everyone of which carried complaints to Rome, the rising arbiter of the Mediterranean world, whose hostility Philip lost no opportunity to provoke. On the Ides of March, B. C. 200, the Roman senate declared war. In the spring of B. C. 197 this second Macedonian War was ended at the battle of Cynoscephalæ—so called from the name of a range of hills known as the Dog-heads—where the Macedonian army was annihilated by the consul T. Quinctius Flamininus. At the next assembly of the Greeks for the Isthmian Games, a crier made proclamation in the arena that the Roman Senate and T. Quinctius the General, having conquered King Philip and the Macedonians, declared all the Greeks who had been subject to the king free and independent. Henceforth, whatever freedom and independence the states of Greece enjoyed were according to the will of Rome. An interval of twenty-five years, broken by the invasion of Antiochus and his defeat by the Romans at Thermopylæ (see SELEUCIDÆ: B. C. 224-187), was followed by a third Macedonian War. Philip was now dead and succeeded by his son Perseus, known to be hostile to Rome and accused of intrigues with her enemies. The Roman Senate forestalled his intentions by declaring war. The war which opened B. C. 171 was closed by the battle of Pydna, fought June 22, B. C. 168, where 20,000 Macedonians were slain and 11,000 taken prisoners, while the Romans lost scarcely 100 men. Perseus attempted flight, but was soon driven to give himself up and was sent to Rome. The Macedonian kingdom was then extinguished and its territory divided between four nominal republics, tributary to Rome. Twenty years after, there was an attempt made by a pretender to re-establish the Macedonian throne, and a fourth Macedonian War occurred; but it was soon finished (B. C. 146—see above, B. C. 280-146). The four republics then gave way, to form a Roman province of Macedonia and Epirus, while the remainder of Greece, in turn, became the Roman province of Achaia.

_C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapters 64-66 (volume 8)._

ALSO IN: _H. G. Liddell, History of Rome, chapters 39, 43 and 45._

_E. A. Freeman, History of Federal Government, chapters 8-9._

_Polybius, General History._

GREECE: B. C. 191. War of Antiochus of Syria and the Romans.

See SELEUCIDÆ: B. C. 224-187.

GREECE: B. C. 146-A. D. 180. Under the Romans, to the reign of Marcus Aurelius. Sufferings in the Mithridatic war and revolt, and in the Roman civil wars. Treatment by the emperors. Munificence of Herodes Atticus.

"It was some time [after the Roman conquest] before the Greeks had great reason to regret their fortune. A combination of causes, which could hardly have entered into the calculations of any politician, enabled them to preserve their national institutions, and to exercise all their former social influence, even after the annihilation of their political existence. Their vanity was flattered by their admitted superiority in arts and literature, and by the respect paid to their usages and prejudices by the Romans. Their political subjection was at first not very burdensome; and a considerable portion of the nation was allowed to retain the appearance of independence. {1604} Athens and Sparta were honoured with the title of allies of Rome. [Athens retained this independent existence, partaking something of the position of Hamburg in the Germanic body, until the time of Caracalla, when its citizens were absorbed into the Roman empire.—Footnote.] The nationality of the Greeks was so interwoven with their municipal institutions, that the Romans found it impossible to abolish the local administration; and an imperfect attempt made at the time of the conquest of Achaia was soon abandoned. … The Roman senate was evidently not without great jealousy and some fear of the Greeks; and great prudence was displayed in adopting a number of measures by which they were gradually weakened, and cautiously broken to the yoke of their conquerors. … It was not until after the time of Augustus, when the conquest of every portion of the Greek nation had been completed, that the Romans began to view the Greeks in the contemptible light in which they are represented by the writers of the capital. Crete was not reduced into the form of a province until about eight years after the subjection of Achaia, and its conquest was not effected without difficulty, after a war of three years, by the presence of a consular army. The resistance it offered was so obstinate that it was almost depopulated ere the Romans could complete its conquest. … The Roman government … soon adopted measures tending to diminish the resources of the Greek states when received as allies of the republic. … If we could place implicit faith in the testimony of so firm and partial an adherent of the Romans as Polybius, we must believe that the Roman administration was at first characterised by a love of justice, and that the Roman magistrates were far less venal than the Greeks. … Less than a century of irresponsible power effected a wonderful change in the conduct of the Roman magistrates. Cicero declares that the senate made a traffic of justice to the provincials. … But as the government of Rome grew more oppressive, and the amount of the taxes levied on the provinces was more severely exacted, the increased power of the republic rendered any rebellion of the Greeks utterly hopeless. … For sixty years after the conquest of Achaia, the Greeks remained docile subjects of Rome. … The number of Roman usurers increased, and the exactions of Roman publicans in collecting the taxes became more oppressive, so that when the army of Mithridates invaded Greece, B. C. 86, while Rome appeared plunged in anarchy by the civil broils of the partisans of Marius and Sylla, the Greeks in office conceived the vain hope of recovering their independence. …

See MITHRIDATIC WARS; and ATHENS: B. C. 87-86.

Both parties, during the Mithridatic war, inflicted severe injuries on Greece. … Many of the losses were never repaired. The foundations of national prosperity were undermined, and it henceforward became impossible to save from the annual consumption of the inhabitants the sums necessary to replace the accumulated capital of ages, which this short war had annihilated."

_G. Finlay, Greece under the Romans,