e Roman
empire-making was done without a preconceived plan. The average
Roman was a very matter-of-fact citizen. He disliked theories about
government. When someone began to recite "eastward the course of Roman
Empire, etc., etc.," he hastily left the forum. He just continued to
take more and more land because circumstances forced him to do so. He
was not driven by ambition or by greed. Both by nature and inclination
he was a farmer and wanted to stay at home. But when he was attacked he
was obliged to defend himself and when the enemy happened to cross the
sea to ask for aid in a distant country then the patient Roman marched
many dreary miles to defeat this dangerous foe and when this had been
accomplished, he stayed behind to adminster{sic} his newly conquered
provinces lest they fall into the hands of wandering Barbarians and
become themselves a menace to Roman safety. It sounds rather complicated
and yet to the contemporaries it was so very simple, as you shall see in
a moment.

In the year 203 B.C. Scipio had crossed the African Sea and had carried
the war into Africa. Carthage had called Hannibal back. Badly supported
by his mercenaries, Hannibal had been defeated near Zama. The Romans had
asked for his surrender and Hannibal had fled to get aid from the kings
of Macedonia and Syria, as I told you in my last chapter.

The rulers of these two countries (remnants of the Empire of Alexander
the Great) just then were contemplating an expedition against Egypt.
They hoped to divide the rich Nile valley between themselves. The king
of Egypt had heard of this and he had asked Rome to come to his
support. The stage was set for a number of highly interesting plots and
counter-plots. But the Romans, with their lack of imagination, rang
the curtain down before the play had been fairly started. Their legions
completely defeated the heavy Greek phalanx which was still used by the
Macedonians as their battle formation. That happened in the year 197
B.C. at the battle in the plains of Cynoscephalae, or "Dogs' Heads," in
central Thessaly.

The Romans then marched southward to Attica and informed the Greeks that
they had come to "deliver the Hellenes from the Macedonian yoke." The
Greeks, having learned nothing in their years of semi-slavery, used
their new freedom in a most unfortunate way. All the little city-states
once more began to quarrel with each other as they had done in the good
old days. The Romans, who had little un