Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/316

286 islands of the Ægean Sea. He went in person to the Chersonese and Asia, while he sent Dicaearchus with a fleet to seize the Cyclades, and an agent, named Heracleides, to prevent the interference of the Rhodians by inciting the Cretans to make war on them, and by treacherously setting fire to their arsenal and ships. These proceedings brought on him the enmity of Attalus of Pergamus, Rhodes, and Athens, and enraged the Ætolians, with whom he had shortly before come to some understanding, because three of the towns he first seized—Lysimacheia, at the head of the Chersonese, Chalcedon, and Cius, in Bithynia—were members of their league. Rhodes had vainly tried to save Cius, and Attalus had watched the movement with great apprehension, and in B.C. 201, as he was extending his conquests southward, both proclaimed war with Philip. Though he promptly invaded Pergamene territory, and his ships were partly successful off Chios and Lade, and he himself penetrated to Caria, thus threatening the Rhodian Peraea, yet the repaired fleets of Attalus, Byzantium, and Rhodes were able to shut him off from returning to Macedonia during the ensuing winter, as the news of dangers at home made him anxious to do. He managed, however, to evade the hostile ships in the spring of B.C. 200.

But the Nemesis was at hand. Attalus from Ægina went to Athens, where he was received with the greatest enthusiasm; an alliance with him and Rhodes was voted by acclamation, and certain Roman commissioners who happened to be at Athens took advantage of the popular feeling to