lied with two powers that were at war with each other, had in
the meantime arranged an armistice of four months between the
Spartans and Achaeans.

Vain Attempts to Arrange a Peace

Thus winter came on; and Philip once more availed himself of it to
obtain if possible an equitable peace. At a conference held at Nicaea
on the Maliac gulf the king appeared in person, and endeavoured to
come to an understanding with Flamininus. With haughty politeness he
repelled the forward insolence of the petty chiefs, and by marked
deference to the Romans, as the only antagonists on an equality with
him, he sought to obtain from them tolerable terms. Flamininus was
sufficiently refined to feel himself flattered by the urbanity of
the vanquished prince towards himself and his arrogance towards the
allies, whom the Roman as well as the king had learned to despise;
but his powers were not ample enough to meet the king's wishes. He
granted him a two months' armistice in return for the evacuation of
Phocis and Locris, and referred him, as to the main matter, to his
government. The Roman senate had long been at one in the opinion that
Macedonia must give up all her possessions abroad; accordingly, when
the ambassadors of Philip appeared in Rome, they were simply asked
whether they had full powers to renounce all Greece and in particular
Corinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias, and when they said that they had not,
the negotiations were immediately broken off, and it was resolved
that the war should be prosecuted with vigour. With the help of the
tribunes of the people, the senate succeeded in preventing a change
in the chief command--which had often proved so injurious--and in
prolonging the command of Flamininus; he obtained considerable
reinforcements, and the two former commanders-in-chief, Publius Galba
and Publius Villius, were instructed to place themselves at his
disposal. Philip resolved once more to risk a pitched battle.
To secure Greece, where all the states except the Acarnanians and
Boeotians were now in arms against him, the garrison of Corinth was
augmented to 6000 men, while he himself, straining the last energies
of exhausted Macedonia and enrolling children and old men in the ranks
of the phalanx, brought into the field an army of about 26,000 men,
of whom 16,000 were Macedonian -phalangitae-.

Philip Proceed to Thessaly
Battle of Cynoscephalae

Thus the fourth campaign, that of 557, began. Flamininus despatched
a part