become a wilderness, and the more prosperous
cities had fallen into decay. From the effects of these ravages southern
Italy never recovered.

CHAPTER IX

ROMAN DOMINATION IN THE MEDITERRANEAN

THE SECOND PHASE: ROME AND THE GREEK EAST, 200-167 B. C.

I. THE SECOND MACEDONIAN WAR: 200-196 B. C.

*The eastern crisis: 202 B. C.* The Roman senate had been eager to
conclude a satisfactory peace with Carthage as soon as possible in order
to devote its undivided attention to a crisis which had arisen in the
eastern Mediterranean. There Ptolemy IV of Egypt had died in 203 B. C.,
leaving the kingdom to an infant son who was in the hands of corrupt and
dissolute advisors. Egypt had lost her command of the eastern
Mediterranean at the time of Rome's First Carthaginian War, and later (217
B. C.) had only saved herself in a war against Syria by calling to arms a
portion of the native population. This step had led to internal racial
difficulties which weakened the position of the dynasty. At this juncture
Philip V of Macedon, who had emerged with credit from his recent struggle
with Rome and his foes in Greece, and Antiochus III of Syria, who had just
returned from a series of successful campaigns (212-204 B. C.) which had
recovered for his kingdom its eastern provinces as far as the Indus and
had won for him the surname of "the Great," judged the moment favorable
for the realization of long-cherished ambitions at the expense of their
rival, Egypt. They formed an alliance for the conquest of the outlying
possessions of the Ptolemies, whereby Philip was to occupy those in the
Aegean, while Antiochus was to seize Phoenicia and Palestine. In 202 B. C.
they opened hostilities.

*The appeal for Roman intervention: 201 B. C.* But the operations of the
forces of Philip in the Aegean brought him into war with Rhodes and with
Attalus, King of Pergamon, while in Greece a quarrel, which developed
between some of his allies and the Athenians, involved him in hostilities
with the latter. From these three states and from Egypt, which, having
been unable to prevent Antiochus from occupying her Syrian possessions,
was now threatened with invasion, envoys were sent to Rome, to request
Roman intervention on their behalf, on the ground that they were friends
(_amici_) of Rome.

*The status of amicitia.* The Romans had adopted the idea of international
frien