A History of the Roman World (35 page)

The balance of the three eastern powers was upset by the death of Ptolemy Philopator and by the accession of a child to the throne of Egypt. In the winter of 203–202 Philip of Macedon and Antiochus of Syria formed a disgraceful alliance to share between themselves Egypt’s possessions in Europe and Asia, although neither party probably intended to remain loyal to the terms of partition. As the lion’s share was to fall to Antiochus, he was probably the moving spirit.
²
In the spring of 202 he invaded southern Syria, while Philip, at first avoiding a direct breach with Egypt, attacked with a newly built fleet some cities along the Bosphorus, some being free and independent while others were allied with or dependent on other communities: Lysimacheia, Chalcedon, and Cius were allies of Aetolia; Perinthus was a dependency of Byzantium; Thasos at this date was a free island. Philip’s capture of Cius with the help of Prusias of Bithynia angered the Aetolians, displeased Antiochus, and led the Rhodians to decide to oppose Philip; their ambassadors had appealed in vain for the town and were forced to see it sacked. Then in 201 Philip annexed the Cyclades and occupied Samos. The
precise order of subsequent events is uncertain, but Philip probably first suffered considerable losses in an indecisive naval engagement off Chios, then attacked Pergamum by land and ravaged its territory, next defeated the Rhodian fleet at Lade (near Miletus) and finally operated in South Caria where he was forced to winter.
³

Philip’s wanton atrocities against unoffending cities in peacetime had indeed stirred up a hornets’ nest. The violence of his actions, which made war inevitable, may have been due to a desire to settle his accounts while Rome was still engaged with Hannibal. In that case he miscalculated, for Zama was being fought and the Romans would soon be free. But he may have derived some encouragement from the fact that in 202 (autumn) they had coldly rebuffed an Aetolian embassy, which had come to appeal on behalf of their wronged allies; Rome had not forgiven Aetolia for making peace with Philip in 206.
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In the following autumn Attalus and the Rhodians also sent ambassadors to Rome to seek help. Rhodes’ relations with Rome were somewhat strained: while remaining neutral in the First Macedonian War she had denounced Rome’s interference. Attalus, however, was on good terms with Rome, but as he was not technically an ‘ally’ or perhaps even a ‘friend’, there was no legal ground for Rome to intervene. The Senate took no immediate open action but it suddenly reversed its earlier policy towards the eastern situation. One of the consuls elected for 200 was P. Sulpicius Galba, who had campaigned as proconsul in Macedon from 210 to 206; and when the new consuls entered office in March 200 Macedonia was allotted as a consular province to Sulpicius.

Why the Senate wanted war must be considered later, for it is a matter of conjecture rather than of proved fact. How the Senate precipitated war is the present question, for it had apparently to drive two unwilling parties into conflict: the Roman people and Philip. Towards Rome Philip’s conduct had been legally correct and offered no formal ground for reproach; and the Roman people unanimously rejected the consuls’ proposal, made in March 200, that war should be proclaimed.
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It was then decided to present Philip with an ultimatum, so strongly worded that he would be unlikely to accept its terms; these were that he should make reparation to Attalus (as if he, Philip, were the aggressor) and should not make war on any Greek state (as if Rome was allied to any Greeks and could demand their protection). Three ambassadors were sent, probably in the spring of 200, to carry this ultimatum through Greece to Philip who had returned to Macedonia; at the same time they were to stir up pro-Roman feeling in Greece itself, to confer with Attalus and Rhodes, and to visit Syria and Egypt with the object of mediating between the two countries and sounding Antiochus’ real intentions.
⁶

In Greece the ambassadors were received none too cordially until they reached Athens, where events played into their hands. By a selfish neutrality
the Athenians had kept out of the national movements of Greece but had recently been forced to face the question of friendship or enmity towards Philip. They had put to death two Acarnanian citizens who had forced their way into the Eleusinian Mysteries (autumn 201), and in the following spring the Acarnanians responded by devastating Attica with help from their ally Philip. Athens did not reply by an immediate declaration of war on Philip, but received help from Rhodes and Attalus when a Macedonian squadron seized four of her warships. Thus when the Roman ambassadors reached the Piraeus they met Attalus who, with the help of Rome’s promise to assist, persuaded Athens to declare war on Philip (about May 200); however much Rome may have contributed to this decision the responsibility must ultimately rest on Athens herself. When Nicanor, a Macedonian commander, attacked the suburbs of Athens, the Romans intervened and gave him Rome’s ultimatum to take to Philip. Then, as their anti-Macedonian appeals found little favour with the Aetolians and Achaeans, the Roman embassy went to Rhodes.

When the Athenians sent a certain Cephisodorus to Egypt, Rhodes, Pergamum, Crete and Aetolia, he obtained little direct help and proceeded to Rome which he reached in July, about the time when the Senate again appealed to the Roman people to declare war on Philip, this time with success.
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Meanwhile Philip sent a general to ravage Attica, and he himself after campaigning in Thrace besieged Abydos. Here he received a formal
indictio belli
from Aemilius Lepidus, one of the Roman ambassadors from Rhodes. In order to leave Philip no loophole, further demands were added to the previous ultimatum, namely, that he should make reparation to Rhodes as well as Attalus, and should respect all Egyptian dependencies. Philip accepted the challenge, stormed Abydos and returned home where he learnt that Sulpicius had landed near Apollonia with two legions. The Roman ambassadors meanwhile proceeded to Antiochus in the hope of securing his neutrality, and were met with cordiality and evasion. On their way back to Rome they called at Alexandria to report their failure to mediate with Antiochus.

Events show that the Senate decided to fight Philip, but no authoritative statement supplies the reason. Thus the ground has been left free for modern historians to suggest the motives of Roman policy, which has been expounded as varying between the extremes of pure altruism and unscrupulous Machiavellianism. Two fundamental points are clear. First, the people did not want war. Their objection was natural enough: their numbers were depleted, agriculture was almost ruined, taxes were high, and they needed rest after the Hannibalic War. Secondly, there was little, if any, legal sanction for the war. The
ius fetiale
only allowed wars in defence of the state or of her oathbound allies
(
socii
), while now the appellant peoples – Rhodes, Pergamum, Aetolia, and perhaps Egypt and Athens – were probably only
amici
, and some not even that, on whose behalf Rome was not bound to intervene. Rome had bound herself to her Italian
socii
by permanent
foedera
by which the ally supplied an annual military contingent and was not allowed to maintain neutrality. But in Greece and the east she found a different type of alliance: temporary alliance for a definite purpose and friendship in peacetime with the right to maintain neutrality. So Rome had adapted herself to her environment and had entered into relations of friendship (
φιλία amicitia
) with various states (e.g. with Egypt in 273
BC
). Neither party was to fight the other; neutrality, if desired, must be respected; mutual help was not obligatory; such help, if supplied, would not be subordinate to Roman commanders, as were the contingents from
socii; amici
were formally enrolled but not by treaty. Now that Rome had adapted herself to Greek customs in dealing with Greek states, the question was raised: What was the position of
amici
in fetial law? When this was referred to the fetial priests it was decided to disregard the distinction between
amici
and
socii
, and for the occasion to extend the provisions of the
ius fetiale
over the
amici
. A phrase which had no legal standing was coined –
socius et amicus
– and the law was stretched a point to meet a present need.
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But though perhaps by the Senate’s wish the legal and religious difficulties were met, Rome did not in fact need to intervene on behalf of her ‘friends’ unless she so willed. Why then did she intervene?

The first and most obvious explanation is that Rome started a policy of systematic conquest: aggressive imperialism and militarism were the keynotes of the day. This theory, particularly in so far as it envisages desire for territory as Rome’s object, must be rejected. After the Hannibalic War Rome annexed no Carthaginian territory in Africa; after this war with Philip she took no land and did not even claim Illyricum. If land was needed, the West offered better and richer ground for expansion. Spain, the Eldorado of the ancient world, had been left on her hands, while the colonization of the Po valley was uncompleted. But in fact the devastated land of Italy itself needed all her attention. There is little evidence to show that the spirit of military imperialism affected Rome’s policy during the first decade of the second century – whatever its influence later. It was too soon after a life-and-death struggle, of which the issue had been uncertain almost to the end, for such a sense of power and superiority to arise which would drive on a people when they most needed rest. The day when Rome could justly be called ‘that old unquestioned pirate of the land’ was not yet. With militarism, commerce may also be rejected as an important cause of the war: the bulk of Roman trade was too small to influence her policy. Trade may have followed the flag, but it hardly pointed the way for it.
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To turn to the other extreme, the motive may have been an altruistic love of the Greeks, which led Rome to adopt what Tenney Frank has called
‘sentimental polities’. The glory of the Greek world which was capturing the imagination of men, as it did again at the Renaissance, may have inspired the Romans to strike a blow in defence of the liberty of Greek states and thus gain for the ‘barbarians’ of the west the respect of the civilized world. A more cynical view, which rejects ‘an over-romantic ardent sympathy for the Greeks’, suggests that such a motive was used by Rome as a mere pretext. ‘The Roman nobility had steeped itself in Hellenic culture, but had no tenderness for Greeks, as the late war had shown plainly enough. … Their philhellenism confined itself to the things of the spirit … they were going to use a philhellenic policy against Philip … because it suited their purpose, not through love of Greece.’
¹⁰

But between the extremes of militarism and philhellenism a middle course can be traced. Rome may have adopted a policy of defensive, rather than offensive imperialism. With the balance of powers upset in the east and with Philip launched on a career of conquest and trampling on his neighbours’ rights, what guarantee had Rome that he would not turn against Italy when he was sufficiently strong, even if an immediate attack was improbable? May not Rome, through fear of ultimately being forced to fight in self-defence, have tried to forestall Philip? Livy at any rate describes how the consuls tried to stir the people to war by painting in lurid colours the dangers to be expected from Philip’s aggression. The objection to this theory is that the Senate can hardly have had much real anxiety about Philip; it may explain how the Senate drove the people to war, but it hardly explains the Senate’s own policy. To counter this difficulty it has been proposed to substitute Antiochus for Philip in the role of chief villain: it was fear of Antiochus that was the deciding factor with the Senate, who were suddenly converted to a warlike policy by the appeal of Rhodes and Attalus.
¹¹
What these ambassadors brought home to the Senate was the danger of Antiochus’ attitude: they were too skilful to emphasize their own grievances against Philip, which would hardly move the Senate, but having got wind of the coalition between Philip and Antiochus they used this information to scare Rome. Antiochus, the conqueror of the east, who had just returned from following the victorious route of Alexander to India, loomed large amid the mist of fears and rumours. What if he combined with Philip and concentrated in Greece as a base of operations against Italy? Now was the moment to intervene in Greece; not to subjugate it, which would have allowed the monarchs to pose as liberators, but to free it and then throw over it the aegis of permanent protection. If the Senate in appealing to the people harped on danger from Philip it was perhaps less because they themselves feared much from that quarter, than because they wished to use Philip’s name as a handle where the more illusive and shadowy Antiochus would fail to touch a practical people. To this appeal to self-protection and self-interest the Senate may have added the claims of
Attalus and Greek civilization and even perhaps of Athens. The idea of defensive imperialism, of establishing a protectorate over Greece for the mutual benefit of Rome and Greece (for it is unnecessary to deny any genuine feeling of interest in the welfare of Greece) was probably the determining cause of the Second Macedonian War.
¹²

But it is perhaps a mistake to seek too cut and dried an explanation of the policy of a people who, like the British, proverbially had a genius for muddling through. Rome had sought to avoid interfering with the balance of powers: a policy which though selfish was reasonable and pacific. But circumstances were too strong. The desire to safeguard her future, possibly to punish Philip for his past conduct, possibly also to pose as the patron of the Greeks whose past glories she so admired, all swept her into the vortex of the eastern disturbance. Her actions were not the result of aggressive imperialism, commercial exploitation or territorial covetousness.