ay put an end to, at least for a lengthened period.

Cotys

Cotys in Thrace, who was difficult to be reached and might
conveniently be used against Eumenes, obtained pardon and received
back his captive son.

Thus the affairs of the north were settled, and Macedonia also was at
last released from the yoke of monarchy--in fact Greece was more free
than ever; a king no longer existed anywhere.

Humiliation of the Greeks in General
Course Pursued with Pergamus

But the Romans did not confine themselves to cutting the nerves and
sinews of Macedonia. The senate resolved at once to render all the
Hellenic states, friend and foe, for ever incapable of harm, and to
reduce all of them alike to the same humble clientship. The course
pursued may itself admit of justification; but the mode in which it
was carried out in the case of the more powerful of the Greek client-
states was unworthy of a great power, and showed that the epoch of
the Fabii and the Scipios was at an end.

The state most affected by this change in the position of parties was
the kingdom of the Attalids, which had been created and fostered by
Rome to keep Macedonia in check, and which now, after the destruction
of Macedonia, was forsooth no longer needed. It was not easy to find
a tolerable pretext for depriving the prudent and considerate Eumenes
of his privileged position, and allowing him to fall into disfavour.
All at once, about the time when the Romans were encamped at
Heracleum, strange reports were circulated regarding him--that he was
in secret intercourse with Perseus; that his fleet had been suddenly,
as it were, wafted away; that 500 talents had been offered for his
non-participation in the campaign and 1500 for his mediation to
procure peace, and that the agreement had only broken down through the
avarice of Perseus. As to the Pergamene fleet, the king, after having
paid his respects to the consul, went home with it at the same time
that the Roman fleet went into winter quarters. The story about
corruption was as certainly a fable as any newspaper canard of the
present day; for that the rich, cunning, and consistent Attalid, who
had primarily occasioned the breach between Rome and Macedonia by
his journey in 582 and had been on that account wellnigh assassinated
by the banditti of Perseus, should--at the moment when the real
difficulties of a war, of whose final issue, moreover, he could never
have had any serious doubt, were overcome--