erous in Africa and in Greece; and Macedonia
was not really dangerous to Rome. Its power certainly was far from
small, and it is evident that the Roman senate only consented with
reluctance to the peace of 548-9, which left it in all its integrity;
but how little any serious apprehensions of Macedonia were or could be
entertained in Rome, is best shown by the small number of troops--who
yet were never compelled to fight against a superior force--with which
Rome carried on the next war. The senate doubtless would have gladly
seen Macedonia humbled; but that humiliation would be too dearly
purchased at the cost of a land war carried on in Macedonia with Roman
troops; and accordingly, after the withdrawal of the Aetolians, the
senate voluntarily concluded peace at once on the basis of the -status
quo-. It is therefore far from made out, that the Roman government
concluded this peace with the definite design of beginning the war at
a more convenient season; and it is very certain that, at the moment,
from the thorough exhaustion of the state and the extreme
unwillingness of the citizens to enter into a second transmarine
struggle, the Macedonian war was in a high degree unwelcome to the
Romans. But now it was inevitable. They might have acquiesced in
the Macedonian state as a neighbour, such as it stood in 549; but it
was impossible that they could permit it to acquire the best part of
Asiatic Greece and the important Cyrene, to crush the neutral
commercial states, and thereby to double its power. Further, the fall
of Egypt and the humiliation, perhaps the subjugation, of Rhodes would
have inflicted deep wounds on the trade of Sicily and Italy; and could
Rome remain a quiet spectator, while Italian commerce with the east
was made dependent on the two great continental powers? Rome had,
moreover, an obligation of honour to fulfil towards Attalus her
faithful ally since the first Macedonian war, and had to prevent
Philip, who had already besieged him in his capital, from expelling
him from his dominions. Lastly, the claim of Rome to extend her
protecting arm over all the Hellenes was by no means an empty phrase:
the citizens of Neapolis, Rhegium, Massilia, and Emporiae could
testify that that protection was meant in earnest, and there is no
question at all that at this time the Romans stood in a closer
relation to the Greeks than any other nation--one little more remote
than that of the Hellenized Macedonians. It is s