In 202 the Romans defeated the Carthaginians at the Battle of Zama in northern Africa; peace followed, on Rome’s terms, in 201. That freed the Romans to settle with Philip V. They had not forgotten his treaty with Hannibal in 215 and its implied threat. Moreover, Rhodes and Pergamum were doing everything they could to persuade the Romans to act against Philip V. In 200 BC, the Romans, claiming to be protecting allied Greek cities, declared war on Philip V (Liv. XXXI 5-8). The slowness with which the Greeks joined the war against Macedonia suggests a genuine lack of enthusiasm for the war on their part. Many presumably would have preferred for the Peace of Phoenice to remain intact. Roman actions in Greece during the First Macedonian War had not pleased everyone (Pol. IX 37-39; Liv. XXXI 29), and some of the Romans’ practices in waging war gave even the Greeks, no strangers to brutality, pause (Pol. X 15).
Philip rejected a Roman ultimatum in 200 and continued his conquests in the northern Aegean and the Hellespont (Pol. XVI 29-34). Philip also laid siege to Athens which, bizarrely, had declared war on him (Liv. XXXI 14-18). When late in the campaigning season a Roman army arrived at Apollonia in Illyria, Philip was forced to abandon these minor campaigns (Liv. XXXI 22). Thereafter the Aetolians threw in their lot with the Romans (Liv. XXXI 41).
In 199, in the north, the Roman army pushed forwards through the mountains towards Macedonia. Philip V fought them to a standstill on the marches of Upper Macedonia, and the Roman army returned to Apollonia (Liv. XXXI 33-40). The Roman fleet in the Aegean carried out several sea-borne attacks, but achieved nothing of significance (Liv. XXXI 44-46).
In 198 a new Roman commander, T. Quinctius Flamininus, took charge and led his troops down the valley of the River Aous into Thessaly. Philip V attempted to block Flamininus’ advance with some success, but eventually a local shepherd showed Flamininus a path around the blockade (Liv. XXXII 10-11). Philip V retreated to Macedonia and left Thessaly to the Romans and Aetolians, and Flamininus refrained from invading Macedonia just yet. Meanwhile, the Achaian League, after much hand-wringing, voted to break with Macedonia and to join the Romans (Liv. XXXII 23). Philip V, however, was able to hold on to Corinth and Argos (Liv. XXXII 25). Yet Flamininus was tightening a ring of enemies around Philip - Rhodes, Pergamum, Aetolia, Achaia. The Lacedaemonian king Nabis, to whom Philip handed over Argos, shortly thereafter deserted Philip as well (Liv. XXXII 38-39).
The next year Boeotia too joined the Romans (Liv. XXXIII 2). Philip V by now had realized that time was not on his side and decided to risk all in battle. He advanced into Thessaly with some 25,000 troops; Flamininus had about the same number (Liv. XXXIII 4). The two armies met at Cynoscephalae (“Dogs’ heads” - a ridge that looked like two dogs’ heads). For the first time in a pitched battle, a Macedonian phalanx confronted a Roman legion.
Roman soldiers used swords, not long thrusting spears, as their chief offensive weapon. The individual units, so-called maniples, into which the legion was divided up, could arrange themselves in an unbroken line (like a Macedonian phalanx). In addition, since the maniples were arranged in three staggered lines, the maniples behind the front line could, if a gap opened up in it, move forward to plug this gap. Finally, since the sword did not require absolute cohesion straight across the line (unlike the sarissa, which was useless except when wielded in formation), the maniples of a legion could move independently of each other. In particular they could spread out over broken ground (Pol. XVIII 31-32). The manipular legion’s flexibility gave it a clear advantage over the Macedonian phalanx.
All the same, Philip V came within an ace of winning. The right of his line reached the ridge before the Romans did, drew up in formation, and immediately attacked the Roman left downhill. The Macedonian phalanx swept the Roman left before it, but Flamininus led his right wing up the ridge and attacked the Macedonian left which was still coming up the ridge from the other side. Flamininus caught it out of formation and easily defeated it. An unnamed officer with Flamininus’ right then led the twenty maniples under his command to attack the hitherto victorious Macedonian right from behind. The Macedonians could not wheel about quickly enough, and by the end of the day Philip V’s army had been defeated (Pol. XVIII 24-26). The Romans were in a position to dictate the terms of peace.
In these terms they coldly manipulated Greek public opinion in their favor for the Senate’s decree began by stating that the Greeks should be “free and use their own laws” (i. e., be “autonomous”) (Pol. XVIII 44). Later on in 196, at the Isthmian Games, Flamininus announced to a thunderous ovation from the Greeks there assembled that they were to have their “freedom” (Pol. XVIII 46). Events, of course, would show what the Romans meant by “freedom.” Meanwhile they allowed Philip to continue to rule in Macedonia, but imposed an indemnity of 500 talents immediately and 500 additional talents in installments over ten years (Pol. XVIII 44).
Flamininus remained in Greece for two years to see to it that Philip V kept his word and to deal with mopping-up operations - most significantly Nabis, the King of Sparta, who also held Argos. The Argives themselves managed to expel the Lacedaemonian garrison, and Nabis, when Flamininus besieged him in Sparta, was compelled to surrender (195). Thereafter Flamininus was content to allow Nabis to continue ruling in Sparta (Liv. XXXIV 23-41). In 192, however, Nabis was assassinated under unclear circumstances, and Philopoe-men, then the chief statesman of the Achaian League, presided over Sparta’s entrance into it (Liv. XXXV 35-37; cf. Pol. XX 12; Plut. Phil. 15).
By 194, all Roman troops had left Greece (Liv. XXXIV 52). One should not suppose that they did so out of any respect for Hellenic civilization, even if they were happy to derive any benefits which came from the Greeks’ believing in that. This is not the place for a discussion of the nature and dynamic of Roman imperialism, but it may be appropriate to list briefly three exterior characteristics: first, an often displayed tendency to avoid direct administration of the territory of a conquered enemy (for example, in Numidia in northern Africa after the Jugurthine War); second, a tendency to weaken any local government (e. g., with a financial indemnity); third, a tendency to high-handed or offensive actions which encouraged anti-Roman sentiment. Discussion of the complex reasons for these tendencies is better left to works dedicated to the subject; it suffices here to state simply that all three tendencies frequently made an additional war not necessarily inevitable, but highly probable.
Roman imperialism, moreover, was a very different phenomenon from anything which the Hellenistic world had known. Up until now a battle of the magnitude of Cynoscephalae had usually led to the victor’s simple assumption of the loser’s kingdom or division thereof if there had been several victors (Ipsus, Cyrupedium), or to the loser’s cession of a large amount of territory (Panium). What Flamininus did after Cynoscephalae does not fit any Hellenistic pattern.
World History
