wn 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 standard