Only twenty-eight years separated Cynoscephalae from Pydna, yet in that time Rome advanced from a reluctantly self-assertive role in Balkan affairs to a position where—reluctant still—she was the absolute arbiter of nations throughout the eastern Mediterranean. Philip V, Antiochus III, and Perseus all tried conclusions with the legions on the battlefield, and all three went down in defeat. From the very beginning, while Greeks were talking airily about Roman barbarians, the Senate in Rome or the proconsul on the spot had displayed not only an irritated unconcern with Greek affairs, but, when pressed, an arrogant indifference to Greek sensibilities. Flamininus might proclaim Greek freedom and autonomy; but he and those like him were more than ready, as the occasion might require, to make and break alliances or rewrite frontiers, not only for the warring mainland states of Greece (e.g., Aetolia), but for the Attalids and Seleucids as well. Each victory accentuated their confidence: after Pydna in 168 Rome simply abolished the Antigonid monarchy altogether, and split Macedonia up into four small independent republics (below, p. 430).1
But, equally, Rome’s prestige, her ultimate de facto authority, had been acknowledged very early on—if not in so many words—by the increasing recourse had to her as arbitrator by the eternally quarreling Greek powers. Envoys flocked to Rome from every minor capital to ensure their own loyal status and to lay long complaints about their rivals.2 The Senate encouraged this tattling: divide and rule (divide et impera) was already a well-tried device of Roman diplomacy, and the more the Greek cities complained about the Successor monarchs, the easier it was to keep the latter in order, or at least to have a ready-made excuse for moving against them. What is significant is the fact that, from Cynoscephalae onwards, it was Rome to which these factions naturally turned. Just how sincere or cynical Flamininus was in his proclamation of freedom for the Greeks is impossible to determine; but using the principle of autonomy to break up hostile federations was already a time-honored device, and there is no reason to suppose that Flamininus was not well aware of it.3 Ironically enough, as a well-read soi-disant philhellene he probably picked it up while briefing himself on earlier Greek history: he would have found the Great King’s peace of 387/6 particularly instructive.4
It was now, too, that the great senatorial families and equestrian businessmen began to realize the untapped potential for large-scale exploitation that lay in the East. If they had not understood this before, Aemilius Paullus’s lavish triumph, in celebration of his victory over Perseus at Pydna, can have left them in no doubt. Romans stared, in wide-eyed amazement, at the fantastic treasures looted wholesale from the Macedonian palace at Pella: the gold, the tapestries, the slaves, the works of art. The conquering Roman general sailed up the Tiber to Rome in the royal Macedonian barge, and the last Antigonid king was paraded before him in his triumphal procession.5 The keynote to this victory was loot on the grand scale, a foretaste of further depredations to come. The troops, who had seen too much hard fighting for too little return, grumbled: but the speculators and predators had smelled a richer scent than that of blood. The total value of official booty taken in Rome’s eastern wars down to 167 (the gross total must have been many times greater) reached the staggering sum of seventy million denarii; and after Pydna alone, Plutarch tells us, such a vast quantity of money was turned in to the public treasury that it replaced all extraordinary taxes until the first conflict between Antony and Octavian (43 B.C.: in Cisalpine Gaul).6
Two or possibly five years later Perseus, like Demetrius the Besieger, died in captivity, at Alba Fucens (165/2). Apparently he starved himself to death. One of his sons, an expert in embossing and calligraphy, survived to become secretary to the magistrates in Rome. On a small scale he had learned the lesson propounded by Polybius: be realistic, learn the language, adapt yourself to the new regime. His father and brothers chose otherwise.7
But this is to anticipate. After Cynoscephalae Flamininus’s behavior made it quite clear that the Greek liberation he proclaimed at the Isthmus was very much conditional upon Rome’s convenience, and indeed that the arbitrator, though as yet unwilling to move in as more than a very temporary caretaker, was quite ready to rearrange the chessboard without consulting the supposedly free-to-move pieces, black or white. His public letter to the city of Chyretiae in Perrhaebia protests noble and honorable intentions a little too stridently, refers to slanders against him and Rome by less-than-scrupulous men unnamed, angrily denies charges of avarice. The implications of this text are revealing.8 On the Senate’s instructions Flamininus removed Demetrias, Acrocorinth, and Chalcis—the Fetters—from Philip’s control, and garrisoned them with Roman troops:9 those garrisons were withdrawn in 194, when Flamininus evacuated Greece,10 but a point had been made. A chorus of complaints against Nabis of Sparta, who was steadily strengthening his position in the Peloponnese once more,11 did get action of a kind out of Flamininus. Helped by fifteen hundred Macedonians from Philip, a contingent of Spartan exiles led by the Agiad Agesipolis, and the all-too-willing levies of Rhodes, Pergamon, Thessaly, Messenia, and the Achaean League,12 he captured the port of Gytheion, drove Nabis back to Sparta, and forced him to negotiate13—but then, instead of finishing the Spartan ruler off once and for all, he merely made him give up Argos, surrender his fleet, and pay an indemnity over the next eight years, probably calculating that Nabis was a useful counterweight to the Achaean League. He was also in a hurry, uneasily aware that to prolong the siege of Sparta might well mean surrendering credit for the campaign to some ambitious replacement from Rome.14 It is noteworthy that he did not restore Agesipolis, as he so easily could have done.
In general, Flamininus treated his Greek allies with cavalier indifference. He did make some concessions to the Aetolians, returning Phocis and part of Thessaly to them, but not (in the Aetolians’ view) nearly enough, a fact that dictated their subsequent actions.15 Instead, with that arrogant Roman partiality for redrawing other men’s maps, which also affected Aemilius Paullus, he created four artificial federal cantons from what remained of Thessaly, and set up the poleis of Euboea as an independent league. Like almost all proconsuls he tended to favor the local plutocrats—one more reason for doubting that Nabis was any kind of true revolutionary—and took steps to ensure that only men of means should be eligible for public office.
All this time Flamininus was dealing with (or, to be more accurate, rebuffing) embassies from Antiochus III, now campaigning aggressively in Asia Minor and showing an untoward interest in the Hellespont.16 Eumenes II, since 197 king of Pergamon, was joined by representatives from the cities of Smyrna and Lampsacus in making loud complaints about Antiochus’s activities. The diminished kingdom that Eumenes inherited had suffered a good deal from Antiochus’s inordinate ambitions, and the new Pergamene monarch was not one to forget a grudge.17 He spent much of his reign working to harness the power of Rome against his enemies (as his father, Attalus I, had done against Philip V), and with remarkable success. His propaganda was as unscrupulous as it was unrelenting: in a very real sense he was the nemesis both of Antiochus and, later, of Perseus (below, p. 427). In 193 we find him working tirelessly to present Antiochus as a dangerous and ambitious imperialist, against whom Rome’s only safe course was a preemptive war.18 He was also very busy behind the scenes, coaching other complainants from Asia Minor—with some skill—in how best to impress Roman officials.19 Antiochus offered Eumenes marriage with one of his daughters: dynastic diplomacy was as endemic to the Seleucids as, later, to the Hapsburgs. Eumenes, however, refused the proffered douceur: he was playing for higher stakes.20
Flamininus, acting very much de haut en bas, had already (196/5) sent envoys to Antiochus at Lysimacheia, in Thrace, telling him to leave the newly autonomous Greek cities alone, to keep out of Europe, to give up the towns he had taken from Ptolemy. Antiochus, nothing fazed, pointed out, correctly, that Flamininus had no overriding authority to speak for the Greek poleis, reiterated his claim on the cities he held by right of prior conquest and possession—his argument throughout being that he was simply recovering his ancestral domains, even in Thrace—and announced his forthcoming (195) peace treaty with Ptolemy V, leaving the latter Cyprus, Thera, and a few towns in eastern Greece. Ptolemy may well have been only too glad to settle on these terms.21 Antiochus was emboldened by his successes to square off for a showdown with Rome. He told Flamininus’s envoys that it was solely due to his, Antiochus’s, magnanimity, not to Rome, that the Greek cities enjoyed what liberty they had; he also snubbed the Romans when they attempted to arbitrate his differences with the cities of Smyrna and Lampsacus. At this point, says Polybius, they “broke up the conference, by no means pleased with each other.”22
The Senate, understandably, feared that Antiochus meant to invade the Greek mainland. This fear was further exacerbated when, in the fall of 195, the exiled Hannibal found asylum with the Seleucid monarch at Ephesus, another former Ptolemaic possession.23 Hannibal was said to be urging Antiochus to set his aim not on Greece but on Italy.24 What effect this rumor had on senatorial policy is debatable. Scipio Africanus and a sizable senatorial group called for the retention of an occupation force in Greece, precisely because of Antiochus’s unpredictable ambitions. But they were voted down, and the Senate recalled Flamininus: not even the Acrocorinth garrison was left behind.25 The evacuation took place late in 194. The philhellene Flamininus carried off numerous works of Greek art and considerable treasure to adorn his triumph.26 He also kept Armenes and Demetrius, the sons, respectively, of Nabis and Philip V, in his retinue as hostages. Obsequious Greeks, of the kind who could afford such gestures (and were thus likely to do well out of collaboration with Rome) dedicated cults and monuments to him. Antiochus, meanwhile, cemented his alliance with Ptolemy V by giving the young king of Egypt his daughter Cleopatra in marriage, an act with interesting consequences, since it later enabled Ptolemy VI’s ministers to claim that Coele-Syria had been promised to Egypt as part of the queen mother’s dowry.
Flamininus, before he pulled out, neither set up a general federal league of Greek states, nor arranged for any kind of Roman liaison team during the transition. The result was inevitable: the Greeks “celebrated their liberty by falling out with each other, and with their liberator.”27 The Aetolians, still smarting from what they regarded as their unjust deal at Flamininus’s hands, went shopping round for supporters in a putative crusade against Rome (193). The excuse was ill timed and improbable: it is far more likely that with the Roman evacuation the Aetolians, opportunistic as always, sensed a chance for expansion in Greece. A meeting at Naupactus came up with the three obvious names to approach: Philip, Nabis, Antiochus.28 Philip, who had been offered alliance by the Senate as a condition of retaining the throne from which the Aetolians (not unnaturally) wanted him removed, turned the latter’s invitation down flat.29 This was not surprising. Rome at this point had no wish to antagonize Philip, and was, indeed, encouraging him to retake, and keep, cities he had earlier lost to the Aetolians. So much, as Gruen says, for the “freedom of the Greeks and the sloganeering of the Second Macedonian War.”30
Nabis of Sparta, on the other hand, who at this point would take any alliance he could get, and had not forgotten his charitable humiliation at Flamininus’s hands, proved as enthusiastic as Philip was recalcitrant. Indeed, he promptly went off and got himself embroiled with Philopoemen and a Roman naval squadron while attacking some of the newly autonomous cities of Laconia:31 defeated and put under siege yet again, he once more cut a deal with Flamininus, on the basis of their earlier treaty, that left him still in power at Sparta.32 Even a Spartan king of his stamp was, clearly, preferable in Roman eyes to an Achaean monopoly of power in the Peloponnese. The Aetolians next applied to Antiochus, openly inviting him—only four years after Cynoscephalae!—to liberate Greece. Antiochus was in an ambivalent position. Despite the urgings of Hannibal, he clearly wanted to treat with Rome if he could.33 Indeed, in 193 he had made another formal attempt to negotiate through Flamininus, now back in Rome.34 Flamininus, speaking on behalf of the Senate, made him a very fair offer: he would be left at full liberty in Asia Minor if he abandoned his claim to Thrace, and conceded Rome’s right to act as diplomatic arbiter in Europe. If, however, he insisted on maintaining dynastic claims beyond the Hellespont, then Rome would similarly maintain—indeed, increase—her alliances in Asia, with rights of patronage (patrocinium) over the Greek cities.
At this point Antiochus, through his representative, made the first of two fatal mistakes. He held out for Thrace. Why, it is hard to see, unless he was driven by an irrational and chauvinistic determination to recover every inch of territory ever held, however briefly, by Seleucus Nicator (and that may be no more than the simple truth). Thrace, beyond the Hellespont, could be nothing but a territorial liability to him. But he was intransigent, and the negotiations (the so-called Conference of Ephesus) broke down. Thus when the Aetolians, having severed their relationship with Rome,35 applied to Antiochus, he was (they must have reasoned) in a potentially receptive mood. He was certainly ready enough to pose as the defender of Greek freedom, a preferable patron in that role to Rome.36 But did this necessarily mean committing himself to a direct armed confrontation with Roman power? Not even the Aetolians seem to have wanted this at first. Besides officially inviting Antiochus to liberate Greece (which may have meant no more in fact than to support them in their own expansionist activities), they expressed a hope that he would arbitrate between them and Rome.37 Yet Antiochus was still understandably cautious. It seems clear that he did not seek a confrontation with Rome; he certainly had no interest in Italy or the West. It took him until the autumn of 192 to make up his mind, and, by accepting the Aetolians’ invitation, to commit his second fatal error.
The Aetolians had certainly shown willing. At Chalcis their surprise attack failed, but they had little trouble in winning control of Demetrias (summer 192),38 which meant that Antiochus would have a good, safe base on arrival. They also descended on Nabis, who received them cheerfully as friends and allies; they then proceeded—pirates first and last—to have him assassinated during a parade, and to pillage the city of Sparta (fall 192).39 Neither short nor long term did this do them much good. Far from welcoming them as tyrannicides, the Spartans, once over their surprise, proceeded to slaughter the looters. At this point Philopoemen and the Achaeans, seeing their chance, marched on Sparta and without much effort talked her now-leaderless citizens into joining the Achaean League, a move that marked the end of Sparta as an independent power.40 Not long afterwards Messene and Elis, Aetolia’s only remaining Peloponnesian allies, were also to be coerced into the Achaean camp, which would then, at last, control the whole of the Peloponnese (fall 191).
Thus when Antiochus landed at Demetrias in the fall of 192 he was putting his trust in an isolated and dangerously weak ally.41 What was worse, he himself brought no more than ten thousand men—and only six of his famous elephants. The Aetolians, who had been touting him as the conqueror of the East, a second Alexander, now found potential supporters reassessing the situation and giving Aetolian envoys the polite brush-off. It is hard to decide where, if anywhere, Antiochus’s real support in Greece lay, beyond Aetolia. Livy identifies it as coming from the Unterschicht of the population, the masses as opposed to the wealthier element, which was firmly pro-Roman.42 There may be some truth in this, though it would be unwise to press it too far: Livy, notoriously, overschematizes the distinction,43 and in any case Antiochus was not the man to make demagogic concessions even for short-term advantage.44 If the anti-Roman sought a champion, this was not he. Antiochus’s Aetolian allies had an appalling reputation, and his campaign in Greece was clearly doomed before it even began. The Achaean League joined Rome in declaring war on Antiochus; so did Rome’s new ally Philip, little more than a decade after the treaty of friendship he and Antiochus had signed (203); but in the world of Hellenistic politics ten years was a very long time.45
Antiochus started well enough. He took Chalcis, and married a young Chalcidian girl on the strength of it; he renamed her “Euboea,” a clear hint of his European ambitions.46 He got support from the Boeotians.47 Then, however, the combined forces of Philip and the Roman consul Manius Acilius Glabrio routed him, with severe losses, at Thermopylae, and he reembarked, in some ignominy, for Asia Minor.48 The Romans made a separate truce with the Aetolians in the fall of 191, and in 190 set about running Antiochus down beyond the Hellespont:49 the first time that a Republican army had crossed into Asia, and a move that the Seleucid king did not foresee.50 Ptolemy V, realizing which way the wind was now blowing, twice sent envoys to Rome offering help (of whatever sort might be needed) and, latterly, congratulations. The Senate treated these turncoat overtures with understandable contempt; they could manage very well without Ptolemy’s opportunistic support.51
By now Rome had, not surprisingly, the alliance of both Rhodes and Pergamon (common commercial interests made this almost inevitable), and their combined naval squadrons proved a formidable fighting force:52 Rhodes had resurrected the old Cycladic League of Islanders under her leadership, with its base on Tenos.53 On land, Antiochus scored some further successes, in particular against Eumenes, laying siege to Pergamon and ravaging the king’s territories with a horde of Galatian mercenaries—perhaps a deliberate affront to Attalus I’s much-publicized victories (above, p. 150). The arrival of the Roman and Rhodian fleets, however, combined with the knowledge that a consular army was ready to cross the Hellespont from Macedonia, led him to try for a peace settlement. Both the Roman and the Rhodian delegates were ready to treat; only Eumenes, his royal capital blockaded, would have none of it.54 His obduracy paid off. The siege was raised with the help of a contingent from the Achaean League; soon afterwards the Roman and Rhodian naval squadrons went into action.55 Antiochus’s admiral was beaten by them off Cape Corycos; Antiochus rebuilt his fleet, putting one squadron under Hannibal’s command, only to be beaten again, first off Side and then at Myonnesos (Aug.–Sept. 190), with the Rhodians earning most of the credit for both victories.56
Meanwhile the Roman legions, led by Lucius Cornelius Scipio, with his more famous brother, Scipio Africanus, as legate, crossed the Hellespont into Asia Minor, aided by Philip, who, as a quid pro quo, had his war indemnity canceled, and also got back his son Demetrius, still a hostage in Rome.57 The Scipios could muster no more than thirty thousand men against Antiochus’s seventy-five thousand; but the Seleucid army was a mixed bag, and by now Antiochus knew the potential of a Roman legion. Once again he offered to negotiate: he would pay a partial war indemnity, and return a number of the towns, in Europe and Asia Minor, that he had occupied. But Scipio would have no truck with this. What he demanded was the complete evacuation of Asia Minor as far as the Taurus range, plus full indemnity for the campaign.58 Antiochus (as Scipio no doubt had calculated) turned this proposal down: a battle he had a chance of winning, whereas this represented total surrender.
So once again in Hellenistic history a desperate commander staked everything on a set engagement. The battle took place at Magnesia-by-Sipylos, near the confluence of the Hermos and Phrygios rivers, late in 190 or early in 189.59 Raphia, and the memory of Demetrius the Besieger at Ipsus, had taught Antiochus nothing. Once again a Seleucid monarch led a massive, and successful, cavalry charge by his right wing; once again he failed to disengage from pursuit in time. Despite a heroic stand by the phalanx of the center, Antiochus’s forces were finally shattered while he was still occupied elsewhere. His elephants stampeded, and contributed materially to the rout. On the Roman side, a key role was played by Antiochus’s enemy Eumenes II of Pergamon, who impacted the Seleucid left wing with a well-timed attack.60 Once the phalanx broke, the Romans began their methodical butchery of the fugitives. It was the bloodiest slaughter since Rome’s defeat at Cannae. When it was finally over, the Scipios marched east, and occupied Sardis.
The battle of Magnesia left no doubt in anyone’s mind—certainly not among the Greek communities of Asia Minor—that from now on their survival or annihilation depended, de facto if not de jure, on Rome’s fiat: this may well be why Ariarathes IV of Cappadocia now decided to make his peace with Eumenes and to bring his country into the Roman alliance.61 By now the slogan of “freedom” had become a decidedly tarnished concept. Rome’s leaders were in competition for rich pickings.62 The Greek states that did best out of Magnesia, and indeed had fought Antiochus with just such a payoff in mind, were Rhodes and, in particular, Pergamon, with both of which, as we have seen, Rome had close commercial ties. After Magnesia (the preliminary agreement was made at Sardis, early in 189) Rome imposed by right of conquest the terms that Antiochus had earlier refused.63 He was to pay a war indemnity of fifteen thousand talents (the highest that had ever been recorded), with a first immediate deposit of five hundred talents, and twenty-five hundred more on the ratification of the treaty in Rome, followed by twelve equal annual installments of a thousand talents each, plus ninety thousand medimnoi of wheat. He also had a sizable debt of four hundred silver talents to pay off to Eumenes.64 In territorial terms, he was effectively barred from Greece and western Asia Minor, though he retained control of Cilicia, Coele-Syria, and Phoenicia.65 He was to renounce all claims on Thrace, and evacuate Asia Minor as far as the Taurus Mountains and the Halys River. These territories were divided between the Rhodians and Eumenes II, along the line of the Maeander, with Rhodes getting all Lycia and much of Caria, while Pergamon at one stroke acquired most of western Asia Minor, including Lydia and Hellespontine Phrygia.66
The two beneficiaries (who were not signatories to the peace) intrigued and fought over the wealthy cities of Ionia that Antiochus had controlled.67 The Rhodians, mainly interested in trade, argued for their autonomy; Eumenes, who was empire-building, had other ideas. The Romans compromised. Any city that Antiochus had captured from Attalus became subject to Eumenes, who thus left the conference table the most powerful dynast in Asia Minor.68 The rest were made autonomous. Antiochus was required, in addition, to surrender hostages—including his son the future Antiochus IV—together with Hannibal and his other anti-Roman advisers (Hannibal sought refuge with Prusias I of Bithynia, a move that staved off his fate for another six or seven years); to give up his elephants and his war fleet, except for ten vessels;69 and to refrain from either recruiting or campaigning in Roman-controlled territory. The rich pickings that went to Eumenes and the Rhodians were perhaps more illusory than their recipients realized at the time. The weakening of Seleucid power meant that henceforth they were far more dependent on Rome’s good will. We have already seen how Rome considered Greek freedom a munus (p. 311), a gift bestowed by a patron on a client: the same, it is clear, was true of the dispensations to Rhodes or Pergamon. These were gifts too, and could, at Rome’s good pleasure, be revoked.70 The Rhodians regarded them as absolute: that was their mistake.
In 189 Scipio’s successor in Asia, Gnaeus Manlius Vulso, with the assistance of Eumenes’ brother Attalus, conducted a successful (and immensely profitable) campaign against the Gauls, largely as a result of Eumenes’ energetic representations to the Senate. Manlius got a cheap triumph, and Eumenes still further strengthened his kingdom: neither could complain.71 Then, as they had done in Macedonia after Cynoscephalae, the Romans also withdrew their troops from Asia Minor, to demonstrate inter alia that they were not mere landgrabbing imperialists.72 The terms of the peace were negotiated through the Senate in Rome, then ratified at Apamea (188). Though once again the Senate kept clear of direct permanent involvement in Asia Minor, leaving Pergamon and Rhodes to keep the peace as the price of their territorial gains,73 it is symptomatic that ambitious Romans were now angling for an Asiatic command. The degree of competition can be gauged from the fact that Lucius Scipio, the victor of Magnesia, was prosecuted, for allegedly skimming off a portion of the public booty that should have found its way to the treasury.74
Seleucid domination in Anatolia had been to all intents and purposes obliterated by the treaty of Apamea, yet at the same time the heartland of the empire remained virtually intact. Syria was still prosperous: Antiochus still held the Fertile Crescent.75 But the mines of Anatolia were lost, and the king was faced with a severe shortage of silver for minting currency.76 Shaken, but gamely determined to recoup his fortunes (or at least pay off the indemnity) in the way he understood best, Antiochus first set up his son the future Seleucus IV as co-regent, and then set off east to plunder and pillage. While stripping a temple in Elam he was murdered (3 or 4 July 187).77 Antiochus never quite achieved the greatness of his public title, and the title itself, as we have seen (above, p. 296), rested at least as much on skillful propaganda as on substantive emulation of Alexander’s Eastern conquests. He was a man of energy and mercurial brilliance rather than solidity, and many of his troubles stemmed from his own erratic estimates of men and affairs. Yet he undoubtedly left his mark on the dynasty. The Seleucids were by no means finished yet, but never again did they come quite so close to recovering the lost glories of their founder as during the reign of Antiochus III.
The elimination of Antiochus apart, the treaty of Apamea changed very little—one reason why it caused so much resentment, not least in mainland Greece. The Aetolians, though granted a permanent alliance by Rome, were forced to renounce their claim to all cities captured by, or surrendered to, the Romans since 192.78 Otherwise things went on much as before. The Romans were fundamentally uninterested in Peloponnesian politics, and the leaders of the Achaean League now deliberately exploited this unconcern to deal their old enemy Sparta a crippling blow. The Spartans, deprived of an outlet to the sea, with all their coastal cities under Achaean control and occupied by their own political exiles, were desperate: desperate enough to assault and capture (if only for a few hours) the little harbor town of Las (fall 189).79 Philopoemen, the hawkish leader of the Achaean League, now in his sixth generalship, pounced on this excuse to destroy the threat of Sparta once at for all. He demanded the surrender of those responsible for the raid on Las; the Spartans not only refused, but instead made formal surrender of themselves (deditio) to the Romans.80 The consul Marcus Fulvius Nobilior played safe by sending Achaean and Spartan missions to argue their case before the Senate.81
The Senate hedged, merely requiring that there should be no change in Spartan circumstances, a phrase capable of wide interpretation.82 Philopoemen, who had already observed Rome’s unwillingness to look after those who sought her protection empty-handed, read this ambiguous message well. In spring 188 he repatriated the Spartan exiles (a long-cherished project of his),83 murdered or executed those responsible for the attack on Las, disenfranchised and banished the citizen helots (some of whom were sold into slavery) and the foreign mercenaries, tore down the new city walls, abolished Sparta’s educational system, the famous agōgē, rewrote the ancient Lycurgan constitution to bring it into line with those of other members of the Achaean League, and stamped out the last vestiges of Nabis’s supposedly revolutionary reforms.84 The Senate expressed its disapproval of Philopoemen’s extreme measures, but took no further action. Megalopolis, on the other hand, understandably voted him heroic honors.85 Traditional Sparta was destroyed for ever. The return en masse of the exiles made the old property laws unworkable. A last attempt at social revolution quickly collapsed (181). The agōgē was only revived as part of the antiquarian tourist trade; the rebuilding of the walls came as an empty gesture, and changed nothing.86 Philopoemen, with characteristic arrogance, claimed that the League was acting within its rights. More to the point was the fact that property owners in the Peloponnese had been, for whatever reason, united in their detestation of Nabis’s activities; and since Rome tended to side with this class in its foreign dealings, the Senate may well have felt that the noninterventionist goals of “peace, stability, and the due recognition of clientela”87 would be better achieved through the Achaean League than by the preservation of a volatile, unpredictable, and by now socially alarming Spartan regime. What Rome felt about the League’s aggressively independent foreign policy at this time is another matter.88
The Romans also had to deal with numerous complaints about the behavior of Philip.89 After 187, with the death of their bugbear Antiochus, they were more disposed to treat Philip as another potential danger. He had not evacuated the Thracian and Thessalian towns of Antiochus, though Rome had promised the former to Eumenes; nor did he do so when ordered to by a senatorial commission, led by Quintus Caecilius Metellus. (In Philip’s favor it must be said that the commissioners seem to have stacked the deck against him ab initio.)90 Further, he had occupied Aenus and Maroneia, left by the Romans as a neutral zone between him and Eumenes.91 The Senate officially reasserted the freedom of both cities: Philip retorted by staging a pogrom in Maroneia (186/5).92 More complaints poured in from interested parties. In 184 Philip sent his younger son, Demetrius, back to Rome to lobby for him: as a hostage the boy had been highly popular, and had made many useful friends.93 He now worked patiently to bring senatorial opinion round. But Eumenes’ ambassador was a stubborn diplomat, and in spring 183 another senatorial commission, led by Flamininus, forced Philip’s evacuation of both Aenus and Maroneia, though Eumenes does not seem to have recovered them.94
The general view of Greece and the Near East at this point from Rome was by no means discouraging. Antiochus III was dead, and his son Seleucus IV—a less feeble monarch than is often supposed—was observing the terms of the treaty of Apamea with scrupulous correctness. In Egypt, after a period of rebellion and anarchy, Ptolemy’s forces were beginning to restore law and order: 187 or 185 saw the recapture of Thebes, and the end of the great rebellion in the south.95 While cynics doubtless argued that this relief of pressure would mean renewed trouble, sooner rather than later, in Coele-Syria, nevertheless Rome always welcomed the stabilization of an acceptable regime. The volatile king of Macedonia was beginning to look a little more like what Rome expected a subordinate ally to be. The problem of Sparta, it is true, produced a series of irritated missions and countermissions to Rome, and some very cool snubs to Roman legates who visited Achaea: both Philopoemen and Lycortas, Polybius’s father, stressed the League’s autonomy, while querying Rome’s right to meddle in Peloponnesian affairs. A Roman commission of arbitration, led once again by Flamininus, worked out a compromise (184): Sparta’s walls would be rebuilt, but the city would remain part of the League.96
In 183 the intractable Philopoemen—well characterized as a bourgeois reactionary, whose wealth made it easy for him to take an incorruptible stance97—was captured and forced to drink hemlock while trying to put down a Messenian revolt,98 and though his party colleagues, such as Lycortas, continued influential, the pro-Roman group inevitably gained ground. In 180 the Achaean embassy to Rome was led by the latter’s spokesman, Callicrates, whom Romans found more to their taste than his opponents (cf. above, p. 275). Narrow xenophobic nationalism of the kind that Philopoemen had represented (and which was shortly to create even more trouble in Judaea: below, p. 517) always left the Senate suspicious and uneasy. What Rome wanted was unstinted, preferably obsequious, collaboration, a proper sense of clientela. This Callicrates provided, even, as we have seen (p. 277), later supplying the Roman authorities with a list of likely deportees (167/6), which included both Polybius and his father, Lycortas.99
Eumenes II of Pergamon was now established as a close ally of Rome’s, and attempts by his neighbors, such as Prusias I of Bithynia, to trim his expanding frontiers got short shrift in settlements approved by Rome100—though Eumenes was left to do his own fighting, on land as at sea, with the added hazard that Hannibal was now Prusias’s military adviser. When the ingenious Carthaginian caused a panic rout of Eumenes’ fleet by the outré device of lobbing jarfuls of poisonous snakes aboard his flagship,101 a Roman delegation forcibly reconciled the two monarchs, and at the same time demanded the surrender of Hannibal (183). The Carthaginian, seeing the net closing on him, and too proud to grace a triumph in Rome, committed suicide that same year.102 Eumenes’ further triumphs over the Gauls, culminating in his acquisition of Galatia, were celebrated in 182 by the establishment of new games, the Nikephoria,103 initial work on the Great Altar (above, p. 351), and the addition of the title Sōtēr (“Savior”) to the monarch’s name. The whole Greek world was invited to Pergamon to participate—and admire. Eumenes was equally successful in his efforts to stall Pharnaces of Pontus, who captured Sinope, on the southern shore of the Black Sea, after which he invaded Cappadocia, Paphlagonia, and (after breaking a truce) Galatia (183–179). Once again a Roman commission ruled in Eumenes’ favor, though it was not concerned to enforce its findings, and returned home, leaving Eumenes to finish the war on his own—which he did, after an invasion of Pontus, in 179.104 Ptolemy V, after finally putting down the last of the insurgents in the Delta (184–183), died in 181/0, while still only twenty-eight. There were, of course, rumors that he had been poisoned.105 He left his wife, Cleopatra I, Antiochus’s daughter, as regent for their young son: a stable but weak regime was exactly what pleased Rome best.
Unfortunately, the weaknesses—and this was true not only of Egypt—always tended to undermine the stability. Cleopatra, too, died prematurely (176), and the boy-king Ptolemy VI Philometor106 was very much under the control, initially at least, of his guardians, Eulaeus and Lenaeus, a eunuch and a Syrian ex-slave,107 who soon began to display territorial ambitions (below, p. 429). However, it was the situation (admittedly an unforeseeable one) of the Macedonian monarchy that now put fatal pressure on an always fragile balance of power. Briefly and disastrously, the Antigonid regime reverted to the kind of lurid, murderous intrigue that characterized the Argead dynasty of Philip II and Alexander at its worst. When Philip V’s younger son, Demetrius, returned from Rome in 183, wearing well-deserved diplomatic laurels, he seems to have driven his elder half-brother, Perseus, into a frenzy of jealous paranoia. Demetrius’s Roman associations, not least with Flamininus, encouraged fantasies—modern no less than ancient108—of senatorial efforts at king-making in Macedonia, of an aggressive Roman foreign policy aiming to place the complaisant Demetrius on the throne at the expense of the legitimate, but uncomfortably independent, heir.
This is highly improbable. While some Romans might well have preferred, other things being equal, to deal with Demetrius, whom they knew and liked, nevertheless “Roman policy towards Macedon in this period is remarkable not for its aggressiveness but its passivity.”109 That there was serious friction between the brothers seems certain:110 Philip was much saddened by it, and at first refused to believe the charges Perseus brought against Demetrius.111 Nor was the mudslinging entirely one-sided: as heir to the throne Perseus now (like Alexander, and with equally slight justification) had to face rumors of his illegitimacy, and was thus highly sensitive to any real or imagined threat of competition. Convinced, partly because of the Senate’s attitude,112 that Demetrius was plotting to oust him from the succession, but unable to prove his suspicions, Perseus finally confronted his father with an alleged letter from Flamininus (probably, as Livy claimed, a forgery)113 that spelled out Demetrius’s treasonable aspirations to the throne. Faced with this evidence, Philip had Demetrius executed (180). He then, when it was too late, became convinced that Perseus had fabricated his testimony.114 Luckily for Perseus, Philip died (179)—of remorse, Livy suggests115—before he could execute a second son as a blood offering to the first. From now on it was Perseus with whom Rome had to deal.
The circumstances of Perseus’s accession could hardly fail to make the Senate suspicious of him from the start, not least since Demetrius had enjoyed considerable popularity in Rome. The new king seems to have been regarded there as fully responsible for his brother’s death—a charge supported, with lurid rhetorical detail, by Polybius and Livy. It is not surprising, then, if our ancient sources assume that Perseus inherited what is now known as the Third Macedonian War from his father.116 Not surprising; but almost certainly, to judge from subsequent events, untrue. To begin with, Perseus lost no time in asking the Romans to ratify him as king, and to renew the friendship (amicitia) they had concluded with Philip.117 Polybius offers a favorable sketch of him at this stage, and confirmation from the Senate, even if faute de mieux, was in fact forthcoming.118 On the other hand it is also true that he soon began to show characteristics that—even if their effect on Rome has been much exaggerated119—were hardly calculated to reassure Roman businessmen on the spot, let alone natural enemies such as Eumenes or the ever-suspicious leaders of the Achaean League. (An attempt by Perseus at achieving reconciliation with the League soon broke down, in part as the result of Roman diplomacy.120) Perseus seemed to be planning wide-ranging alliances, what has been termed a “coalition of kings”: he married (178/7?) Laodice, daughter of Antiochus the Great’s successor Seleucus IV, while Prusias II of Bithynia in turn married Perseus’s half-sister.121 Though such intermarriages were standard Hellenistic practice, in the strained atmosphere then prevailing they could not fail to arouse misgivings.
Indeed, every act of Perseus was interpreted by Eumenes (in this case correctly) as anti-Pergamene, and also reported to Rome—for his own ends—as part of a calculated anti-Roman policy. This included Perseus’s rapprochement with Delphi (174) and his strengthening of the northern Macedonian frontiers against tribal incursions (179/8), things that as evidence of anti-Roman feeling Rome was unlikely to take overseriously.122 But Perseus was, also, disturbingly prone to the kind of pseudo-radical social measures that had got Agis and Cleomenes a bad name. He canceled debts, wrote off taxes, and amnestied exiles, all of which caused considerable public enthusiasm, though not in the right quarters.123 When debtors in Aetolia became embroiled with the pro-Roman landowners, Perseus was blamed for the situation. A Roman embassy sent in 173 to check on his activities (including an alleged approach to Carthage) was refused a hearing, and reported back—mistakenly, but understandably—that Perseus was ready to go to war.124 Eumenes, not now the most popular of monarchs in Greece, came to Rome in 172 to press these and other charges, with all the unscrupulous rhetoric at his command.125 His senatorial audience was predisposed to believe him, and a few days later rejected out of hand the case presented to them by Perseus’s envoys.126 Livy says that in the Greek states “the multitude” was all for Perseus and Macedonia, whereas important citizens were split on the issue, but for the most part favored the prospect of control by Rome.127 Polybius makes a similar claim for the period after war was declared.128 The truth of this claim is at best dubious, though it may have been a belief (whether justified or not) in populist pro-Macedonian feeling that finally helped to nudge the Senate into a declaration of war.129
It was also disastrously true that the complex intrigues of the Greeks, and their even more complex partisan oratory, frequently baffled the self-styled plain, blunt men of Rome. As a result those in authority too often tended to go along with individuals they knew and therefore trusted—Eumenes, for example, or, on the other side of the fence, Philip’s son Demetrius. But Demetrius was no longer around to argue his brother’s case. The Senate decided to trust Eumenes’ word. Just how uneasy Rome was about the justice of this war may be determined from a Delphic inscription listing Macedonia’s alleged offenses.130 This statement of charges, which seems to have been concocted for the Delphic Amphictyony by a Roman official, covers various putative improper acts of Perseus and possibly also—the inscription is badly mutilated—of his father, Philip, going back over a fifteen-year period. The seriousness of these may be gauged by the fact that Perseus was charged, inter alia, with planning to poison the Roman Senate, or, alternatively, the Roman commanders and envoys passing through Brundisium (mod. Brindisi) en route for Greece.131 This was scraping the bottom of the barrel with a vengeance.
Rome’s determination, moreover, was hardened by something that was, almost certainly, an accident. On his journey back to Pergamon from Rome, Eumenes was nearly killed by a rockslide near Delphi. He at once accused Perseus of trying to have him murdered:132 if mass poisoning in Italy, why not well-aimed rocks in Greece? Polybius, uneasily, supported Eumenes’ charge, while Livy presents a circumstantial account (presumably also derived, in the first instance, from Pergamene accusations) of the supposed assassination attempt.133 It also figures in the Delphic inscription, which means that it was made an official issue. (The situation was given a comic twist by the prompt action of Eumenes’ brother Attalus: on hearing of Eumenes’ supposed death, he promptly declared himself king and married his brother’s “widow”—a dynastically prudent act that must have caused, subsequently, a certain amount of familial embarrassment on its reversal.)
What were Eumenes’ motives in bringing these persistent and far-fetched accusations,134 not to mention his edgy reminders of Macedonia’s vast resources, all now, as he insisted, being readied for an invasion of Italy? He felt threatened by Antiochus, perhaps with justice. But what was Perseus to him? Eumenes, more than most, seems to have been alarmed by Perseus’s simultaneous apertura to Bithynia and the Seleucids, above all by his marriage to Laodice. A Macedonian-Seleucid alliance could be seen as a threat to Pergamon’s new Rome-backed expansionism, and Eumenes’ subsequent involvement (p. 429) in winning the throne for Antiochus Epiphanes (if not in the assassination of his predecessor Seleucus IV) makes it very clear that he wanted the Seleucid alliance for himself.135 No single person worked harder to precipitate Rome’s final conflict with Macedonia. Eumenes’ remarkable unpopularity with the Greeks, despite a consistently liberal policy to the cities under his control,136 was surely caused by his open commitment to Rome, at a time when the resurgent hope of Greek independence caused most states to pin their hopes on Perseus.137
The interesting thing about this situation is that Perseus himself had in fact done nothing except try to keep out of trouble, while at the same time securing his own position. The initiative lay elsewhere: in Pergamon, with the Achaean League, at Rome, and even so was far from decisive or clear-cut. For a long while the Senate delayed taking action, and it has been plausibly argued that there was a conflict between old arrogance and new unscrupulous ambitions, between the senatorial aristocracy, which wanted peace (Rome still being entangled in Spain), and the noui homines, who were hot for new action and the prospect of rich pickings.138 It was not until the spring of 171, after the election of two plebeian consuls (18 Feb.), Publius Licinius Crassus and Gaius Cassius Longinus,139 that a conditional declaration of war was made against Perseus,140 and an expedition was mounted, while diplomatic negotiations for peace were still being conducted, in the clear expectation at Rome that Perseus, faced with a strong Graeco-Roman coalition, would capitulate. This was an error of judgment. Perseus’s three embassies show he had no wish for war; but there were clear limits to the terms he would accept. Rome’s self-exculpatory Delphic inscription (see above) was presented to the Greeks as a kind of manifesto. Perhaps the Senate felt it was now or never.141 In the quarter-century since Cynoscephalae Macedonia had made good its manpower losses:142 the official complaints about Perseus’s aggressiveness stress, significantly, what he might do rather than what he had already done. There were signs that he was prepared to fight.143 The war was thus seen as preemptive. The booty motive is suggested by the fact that the campaign lasted four years, with only one consul and a limited force taking part in it annually. It is also relevant, in assessing the Senate’s reluctance to act, that the drawn-out war in Spain and Liguria had drained Rome’s resources and exhausted her veterans.144
Not until June 171, after an unsatisfactory meeting with yet another Macedonian legation, did it become clear that Perseus had no intention of letting himself be either bullied or humiliated, and that nothing but force would shift him. Then, at long last, the expeditionary force that had been placed on standby was dispatched across the Adriatic, and the Third Macedonian War began. Rome had committed herself too far to back out at the eleventh hour. Yet even now for several years the war was limited to minor campaigns (171–168), while Perseus remained on the defensive and put out constant peace feelers. The Rhodians—snubbed by the Senate and alarmed at Eumenes’ evident interest in controlling the Hellespont145—began to waver from their temporary support of Pergamon and Rome. Perseus, one eye on the Rhodian fleet, went out of his way to conciliate them; as a result, despite the lobbying of a group of pro-Roman pragmatists, the general mood was now strongly pro-Macedonian.146 The pragmatists, who simply advocated joining the winning side, were, on their own terms, right: Rhodes’s ambivalence during this Third Macedonian War cost her dearly when the war was over (cf. p. 431).
Eumenes himself, despite his energetic military commitment, seems to have lost some favor with the Romans: he may have fallen victim to the same sort of nasty innuendo with which he blackened his opponents, a case of poetic justice. He was, besides, too successful, too independent, too popular at home.147 That he planned to switch sides and join Perseus, as several sources allege,148 is ludicrous at this juncture; that he even hoped to make a killing as a mediator—Polybius’s explanation149—seems highly implausible. Yet it remains true that from now on the Senate inclined rather toward his brother Attalus (who, with unusual loyalty, would have nothing to do with Rome’s overtures). Rumors of conspiracy had made Eumenes suspect: no smoke without fire.150 Among other improbable charges brought against Eumenes and Perseus was one of trying to raise a royal alliance against Rome that included the Seleucid Antiochus IV151—whom Eumenes and Attalus had helped to the throne in 175 after Seleucus IV’s assassination by one of his ministers.152 But Antiochus, a flamboyant and eccentric character (cf. below, p. 437),153 who had spent time in Rome as a hostage,154 was known to be pro-Roman: he had had a house built for him in Rome at public charge, and later expressed gratitude to the Senate for the kind treatment he had received.155 It has even been suggested that Seleucus’s murder was possibly engineered by Rome in order to get a safe man established in the Near East.156 But if there was, in fact, an external finger in that particular pie (which is by no means certain) it belonged, almost certainly, to Eumenes.
In any case, Antiochus’s overriding interest, like Perseus’s, lay in stabilizing his own kingdom, and at this point he was too busy dealing with yet another confrontation over Coele-Syria (the Sixth Syrian War, 171/0–168) to commit himself in Europe. (He had already, in anticipation of just such a conflict, gone out of his way in 173 to ensure Rome’s diplomatic support.)157 The details of this war remain uncertain. Ptolemy VI Philometor was no more than sixteen when it broke out, and still very much in the hands of his advisers (above, p. 425). Diodorus blames them for forcing Ptolemy to fight;158 Livy and others put the responsibility on Antiochus.159 In fact the long history of this territorial quarrel suggests that both sides must, inevitably, share the blame. The claims and counterclaims went, as we might expect, to Rome, where the Senate, as usual in such cases, prevaricated.160 Ptolemy sensibly proclaimed himself of age (170), thus obviating the need for a regency, married his sister, Cleopatra II, and took as their co-regent their young brother, Ptolemy VIII, not yet of the bulk that would later win him the nickname of Physkōn (“Potbelly,” “Bladder”).161 While Rome was moving in on Perseus, Antiochus drove south against Ptolemy (spring 169).162 He wiped out the Egyptian expeditionary force, captured Pelusium, and became virtual master of Egypt except for Alexandria. Ptolemy VI changed his advisers and decided to negotiate: Antiochus was, after all, his uncle. In Alexandria these events sparked off a revolution. Antiochus’s troops had been looting temples; the Alexandrians decided to wash their hands of Ptolemy VI, and proclaimed Ptolemy VIII Euergetes joint ruler with his sister, Cleopatra. After a half-hearted attempt to besiege Alexandria Antiochus withdrew (169), and left the two rivals to fight it out on their own. This was arguably a mistake, since instead they patched up a reconciliation.163 By 168 Antiochus, resigned now to the exercise of naked Machtpolitik, was back in Egypt, while his fleet invested the Ptolemaic stronghold of Cyprus, which soon fell to him.
Meanwhile, after more than three years of foot-dragging, the war in Macedonia was moving toward its climax. The consul assigned Greece in 168, Aemilius Paullus, having disembarked at Itea, the port of Delphi, marched directly north to confront Perseus. The final encounter took place on the coast of Macedonia at Pydna (22 June), after some casual skirmishing between outposts, and began with a massed advance by the Macedonian phalanx164—no longer Alexander’s loose, flexible unit, but a spear-solid hedgehog formation designed to counter Roman legionary discipline.165 Aemilius Paullus, a veteran commander, declared afterwards that this advance was the most terrifying thing he had ever witnessed. But the charge lost its impetus; the legionaries infiltrated gaps in the ranks, and—just as at Cynoscephalae—the Macedonians were finally slaughtered almost to a man. The legion had, once and for all, proved its superiority over the phalanx. It was the end of Macedonia as an independent nation.166 The monarchy was abolished, the country split into cantons, and Perseus carried off (after an abortive attempt at flight) to adorn Paullus’s treasure-rich triumph (above, p. 415). Before leaving Greece the Roman commander took a cultural tour of the country, picking up choice objets d’art here and there, and in Epirus collecting a little matter of 150,000 slaves after turning his men loose to rape and pillage. At Delphi, his statue was erected on a large base previously designed to accommodate the likeness of Perseus.167 Greek talk about western barbarians was now proved something more than mere idle rhetoric.168 He also lent the Aetolians five hundred troops to pay off a few old scores on their own account: the result was a particularly nasty episode. The gold and silver mines in the area of Mt. Pangaeum were closed, and coining in these metals ceased—a senatorial measure aimed, in part at least, at controlling the politically disruptive exactions of the tax farmers (publicani), and perhaps with an eye to underwriting monopolies elsewhere, for example in Spain.169 Severe restrictions were placed on the trade in salt and naval timber, and about half of the old Macedonian royal tax money was now diverted to Rome. The staggering accumulation of Macedonian wealth revealed by Paullus’s triumph was not to be allowed to recur.170
Rhodes was paid off for her lukewarm support during the war by the loss of Lycia and Caria,171 and the establishment of Delos as an Athenian dependency and free port (Athens had supplied grain to the Romans in 171, and Athenians, anti-Macedonian to the end, not only fought at Pydna, but were specially honored by Council and Assembly for so doing).172 In Greece there was some witch-hunting of pro-Macedonian notables, with the usual reprisals, and some suicides.173 Polybius and his fellow Achaeans were deported to Rome (above, p. 276). Except for the northern frontier of Macedonia, the country was demilitarized. Once again, though, Roman troops did not remain. There was no army of occupation. As Claire Préaux wryly observes, destroying the country sufficed.174 The four new Macedonian republics—in theory autonomous—were left, ungarrisoned, to get on as best they could without a king. Despite the optimism of Polybius, civil strife was soon rampant once more.175
With Pydna behind them, the Romans now turned their attention to Antiochus IV Epiphanes (168), who had been working hard, and with considerable success, to win friends and influence in Greece, the Aegean, and Asia Minor, and whose coinage, markedly improved in both quality and quantity, suggests a powerful resurgence in the Seleucid economy.176 Clearly, though, from a Roman viewpoint the Seleucid had been overreaching himself while Rome was otherwise occupied, and seriously disturbing the balance of power in the process. An official order (senatus consultum) was sent to Antiochus to evacuate not only Egypt, but also Cyprus, where his troops were going on a rampage of looting and destruction.177 The Roman envoy, Popillius Laenas, met the king in the Alexandrian suburb of Eleusis (July 168), and waited in silence while he read the Senate’s message. When Antiochus asked for time to consider the request, Popillius simply drew a ring round the king with his stick in the dust, and told him peremptorily to answer yes or no before he stepped out of the circle.178 Antiochus may have been nicknamed Epimanēs (“Madman”) by his own people, a parody of what he called himself on his coins, Theos Epiphanēs (“God Manifest”),179 but he could be discreet enough when he chose. He bowed to the inevitable, swallowed his pride, answered yes, and surrendered his winnings, well aware that Roman policy had no time for a revived Seleucid empire on the grand scale, that “mediation, reconciliation, and concord continued to be the aim.” It has even been argued—and the argument has something to commend it—that he knew very well he could not win his Egyptian campaign and was only too glad of Popillius’s gesture as an excuse for extricating himself from trouble. Yet the humiliation was real, and palpable.180 Then, after what came to be known as the Day of Eleusis, he went back home, and got revenge of a kind by celebrating those famous games at Daphne that put Aemilius Paullus’s triumph in the shade (cf. p. 438),181 and also—despite his Egyptian setback—sent a message of strength and determination to Antiochus’s rivals in the Greek world, just as Ptolemy Philadelphos’s grand procession had done over a century before (above, p. 158). As a réplique it was quintessentially Hellenistic: it made a vast impression at the time, cost a great deal, and substantially altered nothing.