About this time the Romans, who had just come out victorious from a second war with Carthage, in which they had had to contend with Hannibal, found an occasion to interfere in the affairs of Greece. Philip V of Macedon had allied himself during this war with Hannibal, and, accordingly as soon as the war was con cluded, the Romans sent over Flamininus to punish him for so doing, and in this war with Philip the Romans were joined by the Acita•an League. Philip was defeated at the battle of Cynoscephake in 197 B.c, and was in conse quence obliged to agree to a peace, in which he recognized the independence of Greece. To gratify the Greek vanity Flamininus proclaimed the deliverance of Greece from the Macedon ian yoke at a celebration of the Isthmian games in 196 B.c.; but the Greeks soon felt that they had only exchanged masters, that they were in reality, although not in name, as much in sub jection to them as they had ever been to the Macedonians. On this account the dEtolians, who had formed a league similar to that of the Achxans, appealed for assistance against the Romans to Antiochus the Great, king of Syria, one of the 'kingdoms which had been formed out of the empire of Alexander. The appeal was listened to; but the help afforded was useless, for Antiochus was defeated in a bloody battle at Magnesia in Asia Minor in 190 B.C. The /Etolians were compelled to pay a money indemnity, and to sacrifice some of their art treasures.
By this time the Achwan League was un questionably supreme over all other powers within Greece, having been joined by all the states of the i'eloponnesus. But the league it self was in reality subject to Rome, the sen ate of which assumed the right of regulating its proceedings; and on one occasion, in 168 B.c., on the conclusion of a war waged by the Romans against Macedonia, the former carried off into Italy 1,000 of the noblest Achxans, on the pretext that they had furnished assistance to the Macedonians. Such was the condition of affairs until 147 B.c., when the league openly resisted a demand made by the Roman senate, that Sparta, Corinth, Argos, and other cities, should be separated from it, in consequence of which a war ensued, which was concluded in 146 B.c by the capture of Corinth by the consul Mummius.
The independence of Greece was virtually gone with the fall of Corinth. From this date the prosperity of her cities rapidly declined, and the last sparks of the ancient Greek pa triotism and love of independence became extin guished. The various cities still retained, how ever, something of the qualities for which they had been remarkable at the height of their glory. Athens was still one of the centres of culture, and the cradle of all kinds of new speculations. Many Athenians left their na tive city and made a livelihood, although they gained little esteem, among the Romans, as artists and scholars, actors and dancers, poets and wits. The citizens of Sparta continued to gratify their thirst for warfare as well as their covetousness by serving as mercenaries in for eign armies. Corinth was still the home of luxury and vice.
From the date above mentioned Greece re mained attached to the Roman empire. On the division of the Roman empire it fell of course to the eastern or Byzantine half. From 1204 to 1261 it formed a part of the Latin Empire of the East, and was divided into a number of feu dal principalities. In the latter year it was re annexed to the Byzantine empire (q.v.) with which it remained till it was conquered by the Turks between 1460 and 1473. In 1699 the Morea was ceded to the Venetians, but was recovered by the Turks in 1715. (For the his tory of the present kingdom of Greece, see GrazoE, Montaut).
Cosmogony.— Nowhere did polytheism de velop itself into a brighter and more beautiful system than among the ancient Greeks. It was this circumstance no doubt that led the Romans, when they became acquainted with the literature and religion of the Greeks, to blend the Greek system with that of the ancient Italians, iden tifying the Greek deities with those of their own pantheon. In this way the Greek and
Italian deities came to be confounded.
According to the view of the origin of all things which in course of time grew up among the Greeks, the universe was in the beginning a formless mass, Chaos (confusion), from which arose the °broad-bosomed° Earth (Greek, Gala, Ge; Latin, Tellus), the Lower World (Tar tarus), the darkness of Night (Greek, Nux; Latin, Nox), the parent of Light, and the formative principle of Love (Greek, Eros; Latin, Amor), all of which were regarded as independent divinities. From the womb of the Earth proceeded the Heaven (Greek Ouranos; Latin, Ccelum) and the Ocean, and afterward the Titans, creatures of superhuman size and strength, who formed the first dynasty of gods. The Titans were succeeded by a more genial race of divinities endowed with intellectual as well as physical qualities, who subdued the Titans, and subsequently the Giants, another race whom the Earth produced after the loss of her first brood. In this second dynasty ofods J the supreme ruler was Zeus (Jupiter or up piter), the son of Kronos (Saturn), who after the subjugation of the Titans and Giants ruled in Olympus over °the middle while his brother Pluto reigned over the dark kingdom of the lower world (Hades, Tartarus, Orcus), and Poseid8n (Neptune), armed with his tri dent, ruled in the sea. Like reverence was paid to Hera (Juno), the sister and wife of Zeus, and the queen of Heaven, the virgin Pallas Athene (Minerva), a goddess armed with hel met and shield, and worshipped as the patroness of all intellectual employments and useful inven tions, to the two children of Leto (Latona), Apollo, the leader of the Muses (hence called Musagetes) and the protector of the fine arts, and his sister, the chaste huntress Artemis (Diana), the goddess of the moon, to the daughter of Zeus, Aphrodite (Venus), the god dess of love, Ares (Mars), the god of war, Hermes (Mercury), the herald of the gods, and others besides. In addition to these there was an innumerable host of inferior deities (Nymphs, Nereids, Tritons, Horai, Sirens, Dryads and Hamadryads, etc.), who presided over woods and mountains, fields and meadows, rivers and lakes, the seasons, etc. There was also a race of heroes or demigods (Heracles or Hercules, Perseus, etc.) tracing their origin from Zeus, and forming a connecting link between gods and men, while on the other hand the Satyrs formed a connecting link between the race of men and the lower animals. According to a plausible theory, now less generally held than formerly, these gods and demigods are nothing else than the personified objects of nature (the Sky or Upper Air, the Sun, the Ocean, the Air in Motion, etc.), and were originally not con ceived as personified, in the strict sense of the term, that is, as clothed in a human form, but simply as the objects themselves, to which the earliest races everywhere attributed a conscious existence like their own, and that the mytholog.
ical tales relating to these deities and heroes were in their simplest form the natural expres sion of what human beings in their infancy be lieved to be done and felt by the very things which they saw. Such is the theory of Max Muller, Mr. Cox, and others.
With regard to the inculcation of religious beliefs and the practice of religious duties among the Greeks, the most striking thing to remember is that they had no separate class ap pointed to perform these functions. The priests were in no sense preachers of doctrines, but merely hierophants or exhibitors of sacred things, of rites, symbols and images. They showed how the gods were to be worshipped, or more usually how a particular god was to be worshipped; but it was not their office to teach theological doctrine. See GREEK RELIGION ;