sh
the hated Attalids, before Roman aid appeared. The Roman fleet went
to Elaea and the port of Adramytium to help their ally; but, as the
admiral wanted troops, he accomplished nothing. Pergamus seemed lost;
but the laxity and negligence with which the siege was conducted
allowed Eumenes to throw into the city Achaean auxiliaries under
Diophanes, whose bold and successful sallies compelled the Gallic
mercenaries, whom Antiochus had entrusted with the siege, to raise it.

In the southern waters too the projects of Antiochus were frustrated.
The fleet equipped and led by Hannibal, after having been long
detained by the constant westerly winds, attempted at length to reach
the Aegean; but at the mouth of the Eurymedon, off Aspendus in
Pamphylia, it encountered a Rhodian squadron under Eudamus; and in the
battle, which ensued between the two fleets, the excellence of the
Rhodian ships and naval officers carried the victory over Hannibal's
tactics and his numerical superiority. It was the first naval battle,
and the last battle against Rome, fought by the great Carthaginian.
The victorious Rhodian fleet then took its station at Patara, and
there prevented the intended junction of the two Asiatic fleets. In
the Aegean Sea the Romano-Rhodian fleet at Samos, after being weakened
by detaching the Pergamene ships to the Hellespont to support the land
army which had arrived there, was in its turn attacked by that of
Polyxenidas, who now numbered nine sail more than his opponents. On
December 23 of the uncorrected calendar, according to the corrected
calendar about the end of August, in 564, a battle took place at the
promontory of Myonnesus between Teos and Colophon; the Romans broke
through the line of the enemy, and totally surrounded the left wing,
so that they took or sank 42 ships. An inscription in Saturnian verse
over the temple of the Lares Permarini, which was built in the Campus
Martius in memory of this victory, for many centuries thereafter
proclaimed to the Romans how the fleet of the Asiatics had been
defeated before the eyes of king Antiochus and of all his land army,
and how the Romans thus "settled the mighty strife and subdued the
kings." Thenceforth the enemy's ships no longer ventured to show
themselves on the open sea, and made no further attempt to obstruct
the crossing of the Roman land army.

Expedition to Asia

The conqueror of Zama had been selected at Rome to conduct the war on
the Asiatic