CHAPTER XXXI.

THE MACEDONIAN AND ASIATIC WARS.

Scarcely was Rome left to recover from the exhaustion of the long and
desperate war with Hannibal, before she was involved in a new war with
Macedonia, which led to very important consequences.

The Greeks had retained the sovereignty which Alexander had won, and their
civilization extended rapidly into the East. There were three great
monarchies which arose, however, from the dismemberment of the empire
which Alexander had founded--Macedonia, Asia, and Egypt--and each of them,
in turn, was destined to become provinces of Rome.

(M879) Macedonia was then ruled by Philip V., and was much such a monarchy
as the first Philip had consolidated. The Macedonian rule embraced Greece
and Thessaly, and strong garrisons were maintained at Demetrias in
Maguesia, Calchis in the island of Euboea, and in Corinth, "the three
fetters of the Hellenes." But the strength of the kingdom lay in
Macedonia. In Greece proper all moral and political energy had fled, and
the degenerate, but still intellectual inhabitants spent their time in
bacchanalian pleasures, in fencing, and in study of the midnight lamp. The
Greeks, diffused over the East, disseminated their culture, but were only
in sufficient numbers to supply officers, statesmen, and schoolmasters.
All the real warlike vigor remained among the nations of the North, where
Philip reigned, a genuine king, proud of his purple, and proud of his
accomplishments, lawless and ungodly, indifferent to the lives and
sufferings of others, stubborn and tyrannical. He saw with regret the
subjugation of Carthage, but did not come to her relief when his aid might
have turned the scale, ten years before. His eyes were turned to another
quarter, to possess himself of part of the territories of Egypt, assisted
by Antiochus of Asia. In this attempt he arrayed against himself all the
Greek mercantile cities whose interests were identified with Alexandria,
now, on the fall of Carthage, the greatest commercial city of the world.
He was opposed by Pergamus and the Rhodian league, while the Romans gave
serious attention to their Eastern complications, not so much with a view
of conquering the East, as to protect their newly-acquired possessions. A
Macedonian war, then, became inevitable, but was entered into reluctantly,
and was one of the most righteous, according to Mommsen, which Rome ever
waged.

(M880) The pretext for war--the _casus belli