Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/313

Rh Hellenic world. Philip, up to the end of the social war, though receiving his own interests, had kept the confidence of the Greeks generally, or at any rate of the Achaean League. But after that time he had lost that confidence, was believed to have got rid of Aratus by poison, and had committed various out- rages in Messenia and Elis. However, when it came to be a question of siding with Macedonia or Rome, as it did in B.C. 211, when the Ætolians made a treaty of alliance with the Romans, the Achaean League stood by Macedonia, and were followed by the Boeotians, Phocians, Locrians, and Euboeans, and by the Western peoples of Epirus and Acarnania, and certain Illyrian princes. So in the East, Prusias of Bithynia stood by his relative, Philip, while Attalus of Pergamus joined the Roman alliance (B.C. 211).

In the years that followed this arrangement Philip was not by any means always unsuccessful. He more than once defeated the Ætolians; once even repulsed a detachment of Roman troops near Sicyon; foiled Attalus, King of Pergamus, in an attack upon Euboea; and by instigating Prusias to attack Pergamene territory, forced Attalus to abstain from the naval operations which he was carrying on in conjunction with Roman ships, using Ægina, which he had purchased, as his base. The details of the next two years of fighting (B.C. 207–6) are obscure. We find the sea-powers, Rhodes, Byzantium and Chios, more than once vainly attempting to intervene and make peace, in which they were sometimes joined with Egypt. These offered mediations are an indication of how annoying and ruinous to peaceful trade the