The history of Rome. Book IV

foreign yoke to come now from Pergamus as formerly from Macedonia. Social disorganization more especially was visibly on the increase among the petty states of Hellas now left to themselves. The country became desolate not through war and pestilence, but through the daily increasing disinclination of the higher classes to trouble themselves with wife and children; on the other hand the criminal or the thoughtless flocked as hitherto chiefly to Greece, there to await the recruiting officer.

The communities sank into daily deeper debt, and into financial dishonour and a corresponding want of credit: some cities, more especially Athens and Thebes, resorted in their financial distress to direct robbery, and plundered the neighbouring communities. The internal dissensions in the leagues also - e. g. between the voluntary and the compulsory members of the Achaean confederacy - were by no means composed. If the Romans, as seems to have been the case, believed what they wished and confided in the calm which for the moment prevailed, they were soon to learn that the younger generation in Hellas was in no respect better or wiser than the older. The Greeks directly sought an opportunity of picking a quarrel with the Romans.

Achaean War

In order to screen a foul transaction, Diaeus, the president of the Achaean league for the time being, about 605 threw out in the diet the assertion that the special privileges conceded by the Achaean league to the Lacedaemonians as members - viz. their exemption from the Achaean criminal jurisdiction, and the right to send separate embassies to Rome - were not at all guaranteed to them by the Romans.

It was an audacious falsehood; but the diet naturally believed what it wished, and, when the Achaeans showed themselves ready to make good their assertions with arms in hand, the weaker Spartans yielded for the time, or, to speak more correctly, those whose surrender was demanded by the Achaeans left the city to appear as complainants before the Roman senate. The senate answered as usual that it would send a commission to investigate the matter; but instead of reporting this reply the envoys stated in Achaia as well as in Sparta, and in both cases falsely, that the senate had decided in their favour. The Achaeans, who felt more than ever their equality with Rome as allies and their political importance on account of the aid which the league had just rendered in Thessaly against the pseudo-Philip, advanced in 606 under their strategus Damocritus into Laconia: in vain a Roman embassy on its way to Asia, at the suggestion of Metellus, admonished them to keep the peace and to await the commissioners of the senate. A battle took place, in which nearly 1000 Spartans fell, and Sparta might have been taken if Damocritus had not been equally incapable as an officer and as a statesman. He was superseded, and his successor Diaeus, the instigator of all this mischief, zealously continued the war, while at the same time he gave to the dreaded commandant of Macedonia assurances of the full loyalty of the Achaean league. Thereupon the long-expected Roman commission made its appearance, with Aurelius Orestes at its head; hostilities were now suspended, and the Achaean diet assembled at Corinth to receive its communications. They were of an unexpected and far from agreeable character. The Romans had resolved to cancel the unnatural and forced[20] inclusion of Sparta among the Achaean states, and generally to act with vigour against the Achaeans. Some years before (591) these had been obliged to release from their league the Aetolian town of Pleuron[21]; now they were directed to renounce all the acquisitions which they had made since the second Macedonian war - viz. Corinth, Orchomenus, Argos, Sparta in the Peloponnesus, and Heraclea near to Oeta - and to reduce their league to the condition in which it stood at the end of the Hannibalic war. When the Achaean deputies learned this, they rushed immediately to the market-place without even hearing the Romans to an end, and communicated the Roman demands to the multitude; whereupon the governing and the governed rabble with one voice resolved to arrest at once the whole Lacedaemonians present in Corinth, because Sparta forsooth had brought on them this misfortune.

The arrest accordingly took place in the most tumultuary fashion, so that the possession of Laconian names or Laconian shoes appeared sufficient ground for imprisonment: in fact they even entered the dwellings of the Roman envoys to seize the Lacedaemonians who had taken shelter there, and hard words were uttered against the Romans, although they did not lay hands on their persons. The envoys returned home in indignation, and made bitter and even exaggerated complaints in the senate; but the latter, with the same moderation which marked all its measures against the Greeks, confined itself at first to representations. In the mildest form, and hardly mentioning satisfaction for the insults which they had endured, Sextus Julius Caesar repeated the commands of the Romans at the diet in Aegium (spring of 607). But the leaders of affairs in Achaia with the new strategus Critolaus at their head strategus (from May 607 to May 608), as men versed in state affairs and familiar with political arts, merely drew from that fact the inference that the position of Rome with reference to Carthage and Viriathus could not but be very unfavourable, and continued at once to cheat and to affront the Romans. Caesar was requested to arrange a conference of deputies of the contending parties at Tegea for the settlement of the question. He did so; but, after Caesar and the Lacedaemonian envoys had waited there long in vain for the Achaeans, Critolaus at last appeared alone and informed them that the general assembly of the Achaeans was solely competent in this matter, and that it could only be settled at the diet or, in other words, in six months. Caesar thereupon returned to Rome; and the next national assembly of the Achaeans on the proposal of Critolaus formally declared war against Sparta.

Even now Metellus made an attempt amicably to settle the quarrel, and sent envoys to Corinth; but the noisy ecclesia, consisting mostly of the populace of that wealthy commercial and manufacturing city, drowned the voice of the Roman envoys and compelled them to leave the platform. The declaration of Critolaus, that they wished the Romans to be their friends but not their masters, was received with inexpressible delight; and, when the members of the diet wished to interpose, the mob protected the man after its own heart, and applauded the sarcasms as to the high treason of the rich and the need of a military dictatorship as well as the mysterious hints regarding an impending insurrection of countless peoples and kings against Rome. The spirit animating the movement is shown by the two resolutions, that all clubs should be permanent and all actions for debt should be suspended till the restoration of peace.

The Achaeans thus had war; and they had even actual allies, namely the Thebans and Boeotians and also the Chalcidians. At the beginning of 608 the Achaeans advanced into Thessaly to reduce to obedience Heraclea near to Oeta, which, in accordance with the decree of the senate, had detached itself from the Achaean league. The consul Lucius Mummius, whom the senate had resolved to send to Greece, had not yet arrived; accordingly Metellus undertook to protect Heraclea with the Macedonian legions. When the advance of the Romans was announced to the Achaeo-Theban army, there was no more talk of fighting; they deliberated only how they might best succeed in reaching once more the secure Peloponnesus; in all haste the army made off, and did not even attempt to hold the position at Thermopylae. But Metellus quickened the pursuit, and overtook and defeated the Greek army near Scarpheia in Locris. The loss in prisoners and dead was considerable; Critolaus was never heard of after the battle.

The remains of the defeated army wandered about Greece in single troops, and everywhere sought admission in vain; the division of Patrae was destroyed in Phocis, the Arcadian select corps at Chaeronea; all northern Greece was evacuated, and only a small portion of the Achaean army and of the citizens of Thebes, who fled in a body, reached the Peloponnesus. Metellus sought by the utmost moderation to induce the Greeks to abandon their senseless resistance, and gave orders, for example, that all the Thebans with a single exception, should be allowed their liberty; his well-meant endeavours were thwarted not by the energy of the people, but by the desperation of the leaders apprehensive for their own safety. Diaeus, who after the fall of Critolaus had resumed the chief command, summoned all men capable of bearing arms to the isthmus, and ordered 12,000 slaves, natives of Greece, to be enrolled in the army; the rich were applied to for advances, and the ranks of the friends of peace, so far as they did not purchase their lives by bribing the ruling agents in this reign of terror, were thinned by bloody prosecutions. The war accordingly was continued, and after the same style. The Achaean vanguard, which, 4000 strong, was stationed under Alcamenes at Megara, dispersed as soon as it saw the Roman standards. Metellus was just about to order an attack upon the main force on the isthmus, when the consul Lucius Mummius with a few attendants arrived at the Roman head-quarters and took the command. Meanwhile the Achaeans, emboldened by a successful attack on the too incautious Roman outposts, offered battle to the Roman army, which was about twice as strong, at Leucopetra on the isthmus. The Romans were not slow to accept it. At the very first the Achaean horsemen broke off en masse before the Roman cavalry of six times their strength; the hoplites withstood the enemy till a flank attack by the Roman select corps brought confusion also into their ranks.