nounce 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 of the fleet against the Acarnanians, who were besieged in
Leucas; in Greece proper he became by stratagem master of Thebes,
the capital of Boeotia, in consequence of which the Boeotians were
compelled to join at least nominally the alliance against Macedonia.
Content with having thus interrupted the communication between Corinth
and Chalcis, he proceeded to the north, where alone a decisive blow
could be struck. The great difficulties of provisioning the army in
a hostile and for the most part desolate country, which had often
hampered its operations, were now to be obviated by the fleet
accompanying the army along the coast and carrying after it supplies
sent from Africa, Sicily, and Sardinia. The decisive blow came,
however, earlier than Flamininus had hoped. Philip, impatient and
confident as he was, could not endure to await the enemy on the
Macedonian frontier: after assembling his army at Dium, he advanced
through the pass of Tempe into Thessaly, and encountered the army of
the enemy advancing to meet him in the district of Scotussa.

The Macedonian and Roman armies--the latter of which had been
reinforced by contingents of the Apolloniates and the Athamanes,
by the Cretans sent by Nabis, and especially by a strong band of
Aetolians--contained nearly equal numbers of combatan