Hannibal the legions were invincible. Now in charge of half the known world, Rome had become a superpower, without being fully aware of what this might mean.
For many of its citizens, by contrast, the Eastern Mediterranean was terra incognita. Of course, traders traded and from time to time inquirers made the arduous trip to Delphi to learn about the future. In the third century, the Senate entered into friendly but remote relations with Egypt, but otherwise it had little direct experience of the world of Hellenic politics, and little interest in acquiring more. However, this was about to change.
Rome was now more open than ever to foreign, especially Greek, cultural influence. This seemed to some dangerously intoxicating, and to others an irresistible means of civilizing a provincial people. The contradiction in Roman attitudes was a proxy for a deeper uncertainty. Was the Republic to hoard its new power and live within an old, comfortable but limited mindset? And would the outside world allow it to do so? Multiple appeals for political and military assistance from across the known world began to pour into Rome. Cato and his puritans were fighting against human nature when they argued that these things had to be rejected. If a state has power and refuses to use it, it may create a vacuum that other unfriendly interests will seek to fill.
Was the Republic to welcome the prospect of empire and a
Cato and Scipio represented two different responses to Rome’s military successes. The former inherited the native, negative caution of Fabius Maximus the Delayer, of whom he was an admirer: he was a narrow nationalist and had no ambition for a wider empire. Although he knew a good deal more about Greek language and literature than he let on, he wanted nothing to do with Hellenic culture and the East. It was enough to have expelled Hannibal from Italy. By contrast, Scipio was a natural expansionist. The two men embodied the dilemmas facing the Republic—between tradition and innovation, Hellenism and the
MORE THAN A century had passed since the death of Alexander the Great, and his Oriental empire had broken down into three large pieces—the kingdoms of Macedonia, Syria, and Egypt, which jostled among themselves in an uneasy balance of power. To them should be added some smaller fragments—including the mercantile island of Rhodes and the compact but wealthy kingdom of Pergamum, in Asia Minor. The tiny city-states of Greece had long since lost their international importance and dwelled reluctantly in the chilling shadow of Macedon, which kept them under control by garrisoning three strategic fortresses, nicknamed the “fetters of Greece,” at Corinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias. Some of them gathered together into federations—the most important being the Aetolian League, in the northern half of Greece, and the Achaean League, in the Peloponnese. Athens lived off its past glories and had dwindled into a center for the ancient equivalent of postgraduate studies, especially in philosophy.
The intervention of Pyrrhus had been an unpleasant introduction to Hellenic belligerence, but, as already noted, Rome’s first military operation on Greek soil had been against the Illyrians, a half-Hellenized and piratical kingdom along the Dalmatian coastline, which in the mid-third century expanded downward into today’s Albania. No doubt they were alarmed by the establishment, in 244, of a Latin fortress-colony just across the strait at Brundisium, one of the finest harbors on the peninsula’s east coast. During the Second Punic War, the murder of a Roman envoy at the hands of Illyrian privateers led the Senate to authorize a decisive intervention on their home territory.
This annoyed the king of Macedon, Philip V, a ruthless and impulsive ruler with a black sense of humor. He objected to intrusion into what he regarded as his sphere of influence. The Battle of Cannae persuaded him to join what he wrongly guessed would be the winning side, and he concluded a treaty of mutual assistance with Hannibal. Nothing very much happened as a consequence except for some desultory fighting on the Greek mainland. By 205, with Scipio on the point of invading North Africa, the king realized that he had misjudged the situation and negotiated a peace. He was in a strong military position at the time. The Romans usually discussed terms only when they were the victors, but on this occasion they were too busy to pursue Philip and agreed a treaty. However, they had not closed their account with Macedon.
Philip was always on the lookout for an unfair advantage. When a six-year-old boy acceded to the throne of the Ptolemies, he judged that the time was right to grab some of Egypt’s overseas possessions. Not for nothing did the (possibly contemporary) author of Ecclesiastes write: “Woe to you, oh land, where your king is a child.” In the winter of 203–202, the Macedonian monarch reached an understanding with his royal colleague and competitor, Antiochus the Great of Syria, according to which they would share the spoils.
While Syria marched southward, Philip indiscriminately assaulted unoffending cities on the Bosphorus, annexed the Cyclades, and took the island of Samos. Pergamum and Rhodes were outraged, and it was not long before the king went on to attack them, too. This uncalled-for aggression infuriated his victims, but what could they do? Macedon and Syria were in cahoots, and Egypt was impotent. Philip would not have had to answer for his crimes had it not been for the arrival of Rome as a new actor on the geopolitical stage.
Pergamum and Rhodes appealed to the Republic for assistance. The Senate was minded to send out an expeditionary force at once, but the Assembly’s opposition made it hold its hand. The truth was that Philip had acted perfectly properly toward Rome, and none of the complainants were officially allies, requiring or permitting intervention. This was awkward if the law, the
So in 200 the Senate sent Philip an ultimatum so severe that he would be compelled to reject it. The king duly obliged. In a sharp exchange, a senior senatorial envoy blamed him for his aggression, to which the king replied that if there had to be war his Macedonians would give a good account of themselves. The envoy broke off the discussion and reported unfavorably to the Senate in Rome. Philip had to be taught a lesson. When the subject was broached a second time the People gave way and war was declared.
The sequence of events is clear, but no record survives of the Senate’s debates which might explain its motives. So we have to speculate. Some have argued that this was a case of naked imperialism. But there is little evidence that the ruling elite was set on a course of territorial enlargement. It had annexed no Carthaginian land in North Africa, and at present its hands were full dealing with recalcitrant Spaniards and unsettled Celts in northern Italy. Senators were as reluctant to go to war as the rest of the population.
Others have said that the Senate was packed with idealists who wanted to free Greece from its Macedonian despot, that it was willing, for no advantage, to be the known world’s “policeman.” Certainly aristocrats like Scipio Africanus were steeped in Greek culture, but they had no special fondness for modern Greeks and deployed their philhellenism strictly for Rome’s benefit.
We must not exclude the possibility that miscalculation played a part in the slide towards conflict. Neither side knew enough about the other; Rome may have exaggerated the threat Macedon posed, and Philip simply would not take the Senate’s interference in his own internal affairs seriously until it was too late.
In all likelihood, there was one main reason for the outbreak of hostilities, and two subordinate background motives. The Senate took the long view and was anxious to allow no hostile power to gather strength in the Eastern Mediterranean, as Carthage had done in the West. The military partnership between Macedon and Syria might well now be directed against Egypt, but it was easy to imagine Rome becoming a target in the future. It was wise to cut Philip down to size when the opportunity offered. After all, he had already fought a war against Rome, and (here was one of the secondary motives) he had not yet been punished for it.
Finally, there were the individual ambitions of those who governed the Republic. They were essentially a closed group of about two thousand men, a gentlemen’s club, to which only a few “new men” (such as Cato) were admitted. Competition among them was more or less friendly, but at any given time most would be without a public commission. Following the defeat of Hannibal, Rome’s new possessions in the Western Mediterranean (Near Spain and Further Spain, Sicily, Corsica, and Sardinia) all required governors and other officials, opening new opportunities for political action, military adventure, and self-enrichment. And now that the complicated, glamorous polity of the
