ecting no
mercy from Rome, prepared for war and they were joined by the Boeotians
and other peoples of central Greece. The next year they resolved to attack
Sparta, whereupon the Romans sent a fleet and an army against them under
the consul Lucius Mummius. Metellus, the conqueror of Macedonia, subdued
central Greece and Mummius routed the forces of the Confederacy at
Leucopetra on the Isthmus (146 B. C.). Corinth was sacked and burnt; its
treasures were carried off to Rome; and its inhabitants sold into slavery.
Its land, like that of Carthage, was added to the Roman public domain.
Like Alexander's destruction of Thebes this was a warning which the other
cities of Greece could not misinterpret. A senatorial commission dissolved
the Achaean Confederacy as well as the similar political combinations of
the Boeotians and Phocians, The cities of Greece entered into individual
relations with Rome. Those which had stood on the side of Rome, as Athens
and Sparta, retained their previous status as Roman allies; the rest were
made subject and tributary. Greece was not organized as a province, but
was put under the supervision of the governor of Macedonia.

IV. THE ACQUISITION OF ASIA

*The province of Asia.* In 133 B. C. died Attalus III, King of Pergamon,
the last of his line. In his will he made the Roman people the heir to his
kingdom, probably with the feeling that otherwise disputes over the
succession would end in Roman interference and conquest. The Romans
accepted the inheritance but before they took possession a claimant
appeared in the person of an illegitimate son of Eumenes II, one
Aristonicus. He occupied part of the kingdom, defeated and killed the
consul Crassus in 131, but was himself beaten and captured by the latter's
successor Perpena in 129.

Out of the kingdom of Pergamon there was then formed the Roman province of
Asia (129 B. C.). The occupation of this country made Rome mistress of
both shores of the Aegean and gave her a convenient bridgehead for an
advance further eastward. The question of the financial administration of
Asia and its relation to Roman politics will be discussed in a subsequent
chapter.

CHAPTER XI

THE ROMAN STATE AND THE EMPIRE: 265-133 B. C.

The conquest of the hegemony of the Mediterranean world entailed the most
serious consequences for the Roman state itself. Indeed, the wars which
form the s