Had Antiochus acted with energy when in 192 he landed in Greece, he might have won the day before the Roman legions appeared. As it was, in spite of the warnings of Hannibal, who was now in his camp, and of the Aetolians, he frittered away valuable time between his pleasures at Chalcis and useless attacks on petty Thessalian towns. In 191 Acilius Glabrio landed at the head of an imposing force ; and a single battle at Thermopylae broke the courage of Antiochus, who hastily recrossed the sea to Ephesus, leaving his Aetolian allies to their fate. But Rome could not pause here. The safety of her faithful allies, the Pergamenes and Rhodians, and of the Greek cities in Asia Minor, as well as the necessity of chastising Antiochus, demanded an invasion of Asia. A Roman fleet had already 090 crossed the Aegean, and in concert with the fleets of Pergamum and Rhodes worsted the navy of Antiochus. In 190 the new consul L. Scipio, accompanied by his famous brother, the conqueror of Africa, led the Roman legion for the first time into Asia. At Magnesia ad Sipylum, in Lydia, he met and defeated the motley and ill-disciplined hosts of the great king. For the first time the West, under Roman leadership, successfully encountered the forces of the East, and the struggle began which lasted far on into the days of the emperors. The terms of the peace which followed the victory at Magnesia tell their own story clearly enough. There is no question, any more than in Greece, of annexation; the main object in view is that of securing the predominance of Roman interests and influence throughout the peninsula of Asia Minor, and remov ing to a safe distance the only eastern Power which could be considered dangerous. The line of the Halys and the Taurus range, the natural boundary of the peninsula eastwards, was estab lished as the boundary between Antiochus and the kingdoms, cities and peoples now enrolled as the allies and friends of Rome. This line Antiochus was forbidden to cross; nor was he to send ships of war farther west than Cape Sarpedon in Cilicia. Immediately to the west of this frontier lay Bithynia, Paphlagonia and the immigrant Celtic Galatae, and these frontier states, now the allies of Rome, served as a second line of defence against attacks from the east. The area lying between these "buffer states" and the Aegean was organized by Rome in such a way as should at once reward the fidelity of her allies and secure both her own para mount authority and safety from foreign attack. Pergamum and Rhodes were so strengthened—the former by the gift of the Chersonese, Lycaonia, Phrygia, Mysia and Lydia, the latter by that of Lycia and Caria—as not only amply to reward their loyalty, but to constitute them effective props of Roman interests and effective barriers alike against Thracian and Celtic raids in the north and Syrian aggression in the south. Lastly, the Greek cities on the coast, except those already tributary to Pergamum, were declared free, and established as independent allies of Rome.
In a space of little over I i years (2oo-189) Rome had broken the power of Alexander's successors and established throughout the eastern Mediterranean a Roman protectorate.
His successor, Perseus, his son by a left-handed alliance, con tinued his father's work. He made friends among the Illyrian and Thracian princes, connected himself by marriage with Antiochus IV. of Syria and with Prusias of Bithynia, and, among the Greek peoples, strove, not without success, to revive the memories of the past glories of Greece under the Macedonian leadership of the Great Alexander. The senate could no longer hesitate. They were well aware of the restlessness and discontent in Greece ; and after hearing from Eumenes of Pergamum and from their own officers, all details of Perseus's intrigues and prep arations, they declared war. The struggle, in spite of Perseus's courage and the incapacity at the outset of the Roman command ers, was short and decisive. The sympathy of the Greeks with Perseus, which had been encouraged by the hitherto passive attitude assumed by Rome, instantly evaporated on the news that the Roman legioris were on their way to Greece. No assist ance came from Prusias or Antiochus, and Perseus's only allies were the Thracian king Cotys and the Illyrian Genthius. The victory gained by L. Aemilius Paulus at Pydna (168) ended the war. Perseus became the prisoner of Rome, and as such died in Italy a few years later. Rome had begun the war with the fixed resolution no longer of crippling but of destroying the Mace donian State. Perseus's repeated proposals for peace during the war had been rejected; and his defeat was followed by the final extinction of the kingdom of Philip and Alexander. Macedonia, though it ceased to exist as a single State, was not, however, definitely constituted a Roman province. On the contrary, the mistake was made of introducing some of the main principles of the provincial system—taxation, disarmament and the isolation of the separate communities—without the addition of the element most essential for the maintenance of order—that of a resident Roman governor. The four petty republics now created were each autonomous, and each separated from the rest by the prohibition of commercium and conubium, but no central controlling author ity was substituted for that of the Macedonian king. The inevit able result was confusion and disorder, resulting finally 48) in the attempt of a pretender, Andriscus, who claimed to be a son of Perseus, to resuscitate the ancient monarchy. On his defeat in 148 the senate declared Macedonia a Roman province, and placed a Roman magistrate at its head.
From 189 to the defeat of Perseus in 168 no formal change of importance in the status of the Greek states had been made by Rome. The senate, though forced year after year to listen to the mutual recriminations and complaints of rival communities and factions, contented itself as a rule with intervening just enough to remind the Greeks that their freedom was limited by its own paramount authority, and to prevent any single state or confederacy from raising itself too far above the level of general weakness which it was the interest of Rome to maintain. After the victory at Pydna, however, the sympathy shown for Perseus, exaggerated as it seems to have been by the interested represen tations of the romanizing factions in the various states, was made the pretext for a more emphatic assertion of Roman ascendancy. All those suspected of Macedonian leanings were removed to Italy, as hostages for the loyalty of their several communities, and the real motive for the step was made clear by the exception ally severe treatment of the Achaeans, whose loyalty was not really doubtful, but whose growing power in the Peloponnese and independence of language had awakened alarm at Rome. A thousand of their leading men, among them the historian Polybius, were carried off to Italy (see POLYBIUS). In Aetolia the Romans connived at the massacre by their so-called friends of Soo of the opposite party. Acarnania was weakened by the loss of Leucas, while Athens was rewarded for her unambitious loyalty by the gift of Delos and Samos.