Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/314

284 disturbed state of Greece was—kept up by the fears of the Achaean League (now managed chiefly by Philopoemen) of attacks by the tyrants of Sparta or the hostile Ætolians, and cunningly fomented by Philip of Macedonia. To the Egyptians it was the cause of great financial loss. They had for some time seen the advantage of securing the corn trade with Italy. In B.C. 274, soon after the failure of the invasion of Pyrrhus, Ptolemy the Second had sent an embassy to Rome offering his friendship, which was eagerly accepted, with the result that in the First Punic War the Egyptian Government remained neutral and refused to supply the Carthaginians with corn. So now (B.C. 210–9) the Romans, when the Hannibalian invasion had nearly produced a famine in Italy, applied to the court of Egypt for corn, as being almost the only country in which war was not raging. Thus the eyes of all were turned to the West, and the wise saw that from Italy would come the final decision of all their disputes.

But Greece was not of one mind. As of old, while some