that he would excuse what the envoy had said because he was
young, handsome, and a Roman.

Meanwhile, however, the occasion for declaring war, which Rome
desired, had been furnished from another quarter. The Athenians
in their silly and cruel vanity had put to death two unfortunate
Acarnanians, because these had accidentally strayed into their
mysteries. When the Acarnanians, who were naturally indignant, asked
Philip to procure them satisfaction, he could not refuse the just
request of his most faithful allies, and he allowed them to levy men
in Macedonia and, with these and their own troops, to invade Attica
without a formal declaration of war. This, it is true, was no war
in the proper sense of the term; and, besides, the leader of the
Macedonian band, Nicanor, immediately gave orders to his troops to
retreat, when the Roman envoys, who were at Athens at the time, used
threatening language (in the end of 553). But it was too late. An
Athenian embassy was sent to Rome to report the attack made by Philip
on an ancient ally of the Romans; and, from the way in which the
senate received it, Philip saw clearly what awaited him; so that he
at once, in the very spring of 554, directed Philocles, his general
in Greece, to lay waste the Attic territory and to reduce the city
to extremities.

Declaration of War by Rome

The senate now had what they wanted; and in the summer of 554 they
were able to propose to the comitia a declaration of war "on account
of an attack on a state in alliance with Rome." It was rejected on the
first occasion almost unanimously: foolish or evil-disposed tribunes
of the people complained of the senate, which would allow the citizens
no rest; but the war was necessary and, in strictness, was already
begun, so that the senate could not possibly recede. The burgesses
were induced to yield by representations and concessions. It is
remarkable that these concessions were made mainly at the expense of
the allies. The garrisons of Gaul, Lower Italy, Sicily, and Sardinia,
amounting in all to 20,000 men, were exclusively taken from the allied
contingents that were in active service--quite contrary to the former
principles of the Romans. All the burgess troops, on the other hand,
that had continued under arms from the Hannibalic war, were
discharged; volunteers alone, it was alleged, were to be enrolled for
the Macedonian war, but they were, as was afterwards found, for the
most part forced volunt