without cause but even without pretext, "just as the large fishes
devour the small." The allies, moreover, had made their calculations
correctly, especially Philip. Egypt had enough to do in defending
herself against the nearer enemy in Syria, and was obliged to leave
her possessions in Asia Minor and the Cyclades undefended when Philip
threw himself upon these as his share of the spoil. In the year in
which Carthage concluded peace with Rome (553), Philip ordered a fleet
equipped by the towns subject to him to take on board troops, and to
sail along the coast of Thrace. There Lysimachia was taken from the
Aetolian garrison, and Perinthus, which stood in the relation of
clientship to Byzantium, was likewise occupied. Thus the peace was
broken as respected the Byzantines; and as respected the Aetolians,
who had just made peace with Philip, the good understanding was
at least disturbed. The crossing to Asia was attended with no
difficulties, for Prusias king of Bithynia was in alliance with
Macedonia. By way of recompense, Philip helped him to subdue the
Greek mercantile cities in his territory. Chalcedon submitted.
Cius, which resisted, was taken by storm and levelled with the ground,
and its inhabitants were reduced to slavery--a meaningless barbarity,
which annoyed Prusias himself who wished to get possession of the town
uninjured, and which excited profound indignation throughout the
Hellenic world. The Aetolians, whose -strategus- had commanded
in Cius, and the Rhodians, whose attempts at mediation had been
contemptuously and craftily frustrated by the king, were
especially offended.

The Rhodian Hansa and Pergamus Oppose Philip

But even had this not been so, the interests of all Greek commercial
cities were at stake. They could not possibly allow the mild and
almost purely nominal Egyptian rule to be supplanted by the Macedonian
despotism, with which urban self-government and freedom of commercial
intercourse were not at all compatible; and the fearful treatment
of the Cians showed that the matter at stake was not the right of
confirming the charters of the towns, but the life or death of one and
all. Lampsacus had already fallen, and Thasos had been treated like
Cius; no time was to be lost. Theophiliscus, the vigilant -strategus-
of Rhodes, exhorted his citizens to meet the common danger by common
resistance, and not to suffer the towns and islands to become one by
one a prey to the enemy. Rhodes r