ary cases, Roman support. With this creation dictated by
policy the Romans had as far as possible combined the liberation of
the Asiatic Greeks, which was dictated by republican and national
sympathy and by vanity. About the affairs of the more remote east
beyond the Taurus and Halys they were firmly resolved to give
themselves no concern. This is clearly shown by the terms of the
peace with Antiochus, and still more decidedly by the peremptory
refusal of the senate to guarantee to the town of Soli in Cilicia the
freedom which the Rhodians requested for it. With equal fidelity they
adhered to the fixed principle of acquiring no direct transmarine
possessions. After the Roman fleet had made an expedition to Crete
and had accomplished the release of the Romans sold thither into
slavery, the fleet and land army left Asia towards the end of the
summer of 566; on which occasion the land army, which again marched
through Thrace, in consequence of the negligence of the general
suffered greatly on the route from the attacks of the barbarians.
The Romans brought nothing home from the east but honour and gold,
both of which were already at this period usually conjoined in the
practical shape assumed by the address of thanks--the golden chaplet.

Settlement of Greece
Conflicts and Peace with the Aetolians

European Greece also had been agitated by this Asiatic war, and needed
reorganization. The Aetolians, who had not yet learned to reconcile
themselves to their insignificance, had, after the armistice concluded
with Scipio in the spring of 564, rendered intercourse between Greece
and Italy difficult and unsafe by means of their Cephallenian
corsairs; and not only so, but even perhaps while the armistice yet
lasted, they, deceived by false reports as to the state of things in
Asia, had the folly to place Amynander once more on his Athamanian
throne, and to carry on a desultory warfare with Philip in the
districts occupied by him on the borders of Aetolia and Thessaly, in
the course of which Philip suffered several discomfitures. After
this, as a matter of course, Rome replied to their request for peace
by the landing of the consul Marcus Fulvius Nobilior. He arrived
among the legions in the spring of 565, and after fifteen days' siege
gained possession of Ambracia by a capitulation honourable for the
garrison; while simultaneously the Macedonians, Illyrians, Epirots,
Acarnanians, and Achaeans fell upon the Aetolians. Th