Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 20.djvu/778

Rh 754 K O M E [HISTORY. was made the pretext for a more emphatic assertion of Roman ascendency. All those suspected of Macedonian leanings were removed to Italy, as hostages for the loyalty of their several communities, 1 and the real motive for the step was made clear by the exceptionally severe treatment of the Achaeans, whose loyalty was not really doubtful, but whose growing power in the Peloponnese and growing independence of language had awakened alarm at Rome. A thousand of their leading men, among them the historian Polybius, were carried off to Italy (see POLYBIUS). In ^Etolia the Romans connived at the massacre by their so- called friends of 500 of the opposite party. Acarnania was weakened by the loss of Leucas, while Athens was rewarded for her unambitious loyalty by the gift of Delos and Samos. sttle- But this somewhat violent experiment only answered entof for a time. In 148 the Achaeans rashly persisted, in reece, spite of warnings, in attempting to compel Sparta by force of arms to submit to the league. When threatened by Rome with the loss of all that they had gained since Cynoscephalae, they madly rushed into war. 2 They were easily defeated, and a "commission of ten," under the presidency of L. Mummius, was appointed by the senate thoroughly to resettle the affairs of Greece. 3 Corinth, by orders of the senate, was burnt to the ground, and its territory confiscated. Thebes and Chalcis were destroyed, and the walls of all towns which had shared in the last desperate outbreak were razed to the ground. All the existing cpnfederacies were dissolved ; no " commercium " was allowed between one community and another. Every- where an aristocratic type of constitution, according to the invariable Roman practice, was established, and the pay- ment of a tribute imposed. Into Greece, as into Macedonia 7. in 167, the now familiar features of the provincial system were introduced disarmament, isolation, and taxation. The Greeks were still nominally free, and no separate province with a governor of its own 4 was established, but the needed central control was provided by assigning to the neighbouring governor of Macedonia a general super- vision over the affairs of Greece. From the Adriatic to the yEgean, and as far north as the river Drilo and Mount Scardus, the whole peninsula was now under direct Roman rule. 5 ie Beyond the ^Egean the Roman protectorate worked no ' man better than in Macedonia and Greece, and the demoraliz- r " ing recriminations, quarrels, and disorders which flourished i a> under its shadow were aggravated by its longer duration, 9-146= and by the still more selfish view taken by Rome of the 5-608. responsibilities connected with it. 6 At one period indeed, after the battle of -Pydna, it seemed as if the more vigorous, if harsh, system then initiated in Macedon and Greece was to be adopted farther east also. The level- ling policy pursued towards Macedon and the Achseans was applied with less justice to Rome's two faithful and favoured allies, Rhodes and Pergamum. The former had rendered themselves obnoxious to Rome by their inde- pendent tone, and still more by their power and commer- cial prosperity. On a charge of complicity with Perseus they were threatened with war, and though this danger was averted 7 they were forced to exchange their equal alliance with Rome for one which placed them in close 1 Livy, xlv. 31. a Livy, Ejv't., Ii., lii. 8 Livy, Epit., Hi.; Polyb., xl. 9 sq. ; Pausanias, vii. 16 ; Momm- sen, R. O., ii. 47 sq. sq. ; A. W. Zumpt, Commentt. Epigraph., ii. 153. 8 North of the Drilo, the former kingdom of Perseus's ally Genthius had been treated as Macedon was in 167 (Livy, xlv., 26) ; cf. Zippel, Rfim. Herrschaft in 7Wyrie,.Leipsic, 1877. Epirus, which had been desolated after Pydna (Livy, xlv. 34), went with Greece ; Marquardt, i. 164. Mommsen, R. O., i. 771-780, ii. 50-67. 7 Livy, xlv. 20 ; Polyb., xxx. 5. dependence upon her, and to resign the lucrative posses- sions in Lycia and Caria given them in 189. Finally, 555. their commercial prosperity was ruined by the establish- ment of a free port at Delos, 8 and by the short-sighted acquiescence of Rome in the raids of the Cretan pirates. With Eumenes of Pergamum no other fault could be found than that he was strong and successful; but this was enough. His brother Attalus was invited, but in vain, to - become his rival. His turbulent neighbours, the Galatae, were encouraged to harass him by raids. Pamphylia was declared independent, and favours were heaped upon Prusias of Bithynia. These and other annoyances and humiliations had the desired effect. Eumenes and his two successors his brother and son, Attalus II. and Attalus III.' contrived indeed by studious humility and dexterous flattery to retain their thrones, but Pergamum ceased to be a powerful state, and its weakness, added to that of Rhodes, increased the prevalent disorder in Asia Minor. During the same period we have other indica- tions of a temporary activity on the part of Rome. The frontier of the protectorate was pushed forward to the confines of Armenia and to the upper Euphrates by alliances with the kings of Pontus and Cappadocia beyond the Halys. In Syria, on the death of Antiochus Epiphanes (164), Rome intervened to place a minor, Antiochus 590. Eupator, on the throne, under Roman guardianship. 9 In 168 Egypt formally acknowledged the suzerainty of 586. Rome, 10 and in 163 the senate, in the exercise of this new 591. authority, restored Ptolemy Philometor to his throne, but at the same time weakened his position by handing over Gyrene and Cyprus to his brother Euergetes. 11 But this display of energy was short-lived. From the death of Eumenes in 159 down to 133 Rome, secure 595.^ in the absence of any formidable power in the East, and busy with affairs in Macedonia, Africa, and Spain, relapsed into an inactivity the disastrous results of which revealed themselves in the next period, in the rise of Mithradates of Pontus, the spread of Cretan and Cilician piracy, and the advance of Parthia. To the next period also belongs the conversion, on the death of Attalus III., of the kingdom of Pergamum into the Roman province of Asia. Both the western and eastern Mediterranean now acknowledged the suzerainty of Rome, but her relations with the two were from the first different. The West fell to her as the prize of victory over Carthage, and, the Carthaginian power broken, there was no hindrance to the immediate establishment in Sicily, Sardinia, Spain, and finally in Africa, of direct Roman rule. To the majority, moreover, of her Western subjects she brought a civilization as well as a government of a higher type than any before known to them. And so in the West she not only formed provinces but created a new and wider Roman world. To the east, on the contrary, she came as the liberator of the Greeks ; and it was only slowly that in this part of the empire her provincial system made way. In the East, moreover, the older civilization she found there obstinately held its ground. Her proconsuls governed and her legions protected the Greek communities, but to the last the East remained in language, manners, and thought Greek and not Roman. PERIOD III.: THE PERIOD OF THE REVOLUTION (146-49 608- B.C.). In the course of little more than a century, Rome had become the supreme power in the civilized world. By all men, says Polybius, it was taken for granted that nothing remained but to obey the commands of the Romans. 12 For 8 Polyb. , xxxi. 7. The Rhodian harbour dues suffered severely. 9 Rome had already intervened between Syria and Egypt ; Livy, xlv. 12; Polyb., xxix. 11, xxxi. 12. 10 Livy, xiv. 13, "Regui maximum praesidium in fide populi Romani." u Livy, Epit., xlvi., xlvii. 18 Polyb.. iii. 4.
 * Mommsen, loc. cit. f note; Marquardt, Rom. Staatsverw., i. 164