ing
throughout northern Greece now broke out into open flame, and the
national-social party there sent to Perseus for help. If Hellenic
nationality was to be saved only by such means, the question might
well be asked, with all respect for Sophocles and Phidias, whether
the object was worth the cost.

Rupture with Perseus

The senate saw that it had delayed too long already, and that it was
time to put an end to such proceedings. The expulsion of the Thracian
chieftain Abrupolis who was in alliance with the Romans, and the
alliances of Macedonia with the Byzantines, Aetolians, and part of the
Boeotian cities, were equally violations of the peace of 557, and
sufficed for the official war-manifesto: the real ground of war was
that Macedonia was seeking to convert her formal sovereignty into a
real one, and to supplant Rome in the protectorate of the Hellenes.
As early as 581 the Roman envoys at the Achaean diet stated pretty
plainly, that an alliance with Perseus was equivalent to casting off
the alliance of Rome. In 582 king Eumenes came in person to Rome with
a long list of grievances and laid open to the senate the whole
situation of affairs; upon which the senate unexpectedly in a secret
sitting resolved on an immediate declaration of war, and furnished the
landing-places in Epirus with garrisons. For the sake of form an
embassy was sent to Macedonia, but its message was of such a nature
that Perseus, perceiving that he could not recede, replied that he
was ready to conclude with Rome a new alliance on really equal terms,
but that he looked upon the treaty of 557 as cancelled; and he bade
the envoys leave the kingdom within three days. Thus war was
practically declared.

This was in the autumn of 582. Perseus, had he wished, might have
occupied all Greece and brought the Macedonian party everywhere to the
helm, and he might perhaps have crushed the Roman division of 5000 men
stationed under Gnaeus Sicinius at Apollonia and have disputed the
landing of the Romans. But the king, who already began to tremble at
the serious aspect of affairs, entered into discussions with his
guest-friend the consular Quintus Marcius Philippus, as to the
frivolousness of the Roman declaration of war, and allowed himself to
be thereby induced to postpone the attack and once more to make an
effort for peace with Rome: to which the senate, as might have been
expected, only replied by the dismissal of all Macedonians from Italy
and