nder,
raised the banner of insurrection on the Nestus (Karasu), and
had in a short time collected 1600 men; but the quaestor Lucius
Tremellius mastered the insurrection without difficulty and pursued
the fugitive pretender as far as Dardania (612). This was the last
movement of the proud national spirit of Macedonia, which two
hundred years before had accomplished so great things in Hellas
and Asia. Henceforward there is scarcely anything else to be told of
the Macedonians, save that they continued to reckon their inglorious
years from the date at which the country received its definitive
provincial organization (608).

Thenceforth the defence of the northern and eastern frontiers
of Macedonia or, in other words, of the frontier of Hellenic
civilization against the barbarians devolved on the Romans. It was
conducted by them with inadequate forces and not, on the whole, with
befitting energy; but with a primary view to this military object
the great Egnatian highway was constructed, which as early as the
time of Polybius ran from Apollonia and Dyrrhachium, the two chief
ports on the west coast, across the interior to Thessalonica, and was
afterwards prolonged to the Hebrus (Maritza).(18) The new province
became the natural basis, on the one hand for the movements against
the turbulent Dalmatians, and on the other hand for the numerous
expeditions against the Illyrian, Celtic, and Thracian tribes settled
to the north of the Grecian peninsula, which we shall afterwards
have to exhibit in their historical connection.

Greece

Greece proper had greater occasion than Macedonia to congratulate
herself on the favour of the ruling power; and the Philhellenes of
Rome might well be of opinion that the calamitous effects of the war
with Perseus were disappearing, and that the state of things in general
was improving there. The bitterest abettors of the now dominant
party, Lyciscus the Aetolian, Mnasippus the Boeotian, Chrematas
the Acarnanian, the infamous Epirot Charops whom honourable Romans
forbade even to enter their houses, descended one after another to
the grave; another generation grew up, in which the old recollections
and the old antagonisms had faded. The Roman senate thought that
the time for general forgiveness and oblivion had come, and in 604
released the survivors of those Achaean patriots who had been
confined for seventeen years in Italy, and whose liberation the
Achaean diet had never ceased to demand.