attempt also
to recover Demetrias; and the Magnetes wavered. Though some towns in
Asia Minor, which Antiochus had proposed to subdue before beginning
the great war, still held out, he could now no longer delay his
landing, unless he was willing to let the Romans recover all the
advantages which they had surrendered two years before by withdrawing
their garrisons from Greece. He collected the vessels and troops
which were at hand--he had but 40 decked vessels and 10,000 infantry,
along with 500 horse and 6 elephants--and started from the Thracian
Chersonese for Greece, where he landed in the autumn of 562 at
Pteleum on the Pagasaean gulf, and immediately occupied the adjoining
Demetrias. Nearly about the same time a Roman army of some 25,000 men
under the praetor Marcus Baebius landed at Apollonia. The war was
thus begun on both sides.

Attitude of the Minor Powers
Carthage and Hannibal

Everything depended on the extent to which that comprehensively-
planned coalition against Rome, of which Antiochus came forward as the
head, might be realized. As to the plan, first of all, of stirring
up enemies to the Romans in Carthage and Italy, it was the fate of
Hannibal at the court of Ephesus, as through his whole career, to have
projected his noble and high-spirited plans for the behoof of people
pedantic and mean. Nothing was done towards their execution, except
that some Carthaginian patriots were compromised; no choice was left
to the Carthaginians but to show unconditional submission to Rome.
The camarilla would have nothing to do with Hannibal--such a man was
too inconveniently great for court cabals; and, after having tried all
sorts of absurd expedients, such as accusing the general, with whose
name the Romans frightened their children, of concert with the Roman
envoys, they succeeded in persuading Antiochus the Great, who like all
insignificant monarchs plumed himself greatly on his independence and
was influenced by nothing so easily as by the fear of being ruled,
into the wise belief that he ought not to allow himself to be thrown
into the shade by so celebrated a man. Accordingly it was in solemn
council resolved that the Phoenician should be employed in future
only for subordinate enterprises and for giving advice--with the
reservation, of course, that the advice should never be followed.
Hannibal revenged himself on the rabble, by accepting every commission
and brilliantly executing all.

States of Asi