table was the condition--intermediate between formal
sovereignty and actual subjection--of the African, Greek, and Asiatic
states which were brought within the sphere of Roman hegemony through
the wars of Rome with Carthage, Macedonia, and Syria, and their
consequences. An independent state does not pay too dear a price
for its independence in accepting the sufferings of war when it
cannot avoid them; a state which has lost its independence may find
at least some compensation in the fact that its protector procures
for it peace with its neighbours. But these client states of Rome
had neither independence nor peace. In Africa there practically
subsisted a perpetual border-war between Carthage and Numidia.
In Egypt Roman arbitration had settled the dispute as to the
succession between the two brothers Ptolemy Philometor and Ptolemy
the Fat; nevertheless the new rulers of Egypt and Cyrene waged war
for the possession of Cyprus. In Asia not only were most of the
kingdoms--Bithynia, Cappadocia, Syria--likewise torn by internal
quarrels as to the succession and by the interventions of
neighbouring states to which these quarrels gave rise, but various
and severe wars were carried on between the Attalids and the
Galatians, between the Attalids and the kings of Bithynia, and even
between Rhodes and Crete. In Hellas proper, in like manner, the
pigmy feuds which were customary there continued to smoulder; and
even Macedonia, formerly so tranquil, consumed its strength in the
intestine strife that arose out of its new democratic constitutions.
It was the fault of the rulers as well as the ruled, that the last
vital energies and the last prosperity of the nations were expended
in these aimless feuds. The client states ought to have perceived
that a state which cannot wage war against every one cannot wage war
at all, and that, as the possessions and power enjoyed by all these
states were practically under Roman guarantee, they had in the event
of any difference no alternative but to settle the matter amicably
with their neighbours or to call in the Romans as arbiters. When the
Achaean diet was urged by the Rhodians and Cretans to grant them the
aid of the league, and seriously deliberated as to sending it (601),
it was simply a political farce; the principle which the leader of the
party friendly to Rome then laid down--that the Achaeans were no
longer at liberty to wage war without the permission of the Romans--
expressed, d