Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/320

290 a Roman squadron from taking the Piraeus and city), and passed into the Peloponnese to secure the loyalty of the Achaean League; and next year surprised and defeated an ^Etolian force which was invading Thessaly under Roman auspices. Among the islands of the Aegean, however, the presence of the combined Roman and Pergamene fleet, stationed at Aegina, did give substantial protection, and forced the expulsion of many Macedonian garrisons. Still, there seemed some paralysing influence upon the Roman force in Epirus. A second consul succeeded the first, and ambassadors from various states crowded the Roman camp with complaints and anxious questions.

It was not until the arrival of T. Quinctius Flamininus, in the spring of B.C. 198, that the king's position on the Aous was turned, and the Roman army was marching on the heels of Philip as he fled through Thessaly to Tempe. Flamininus, however, presently turned south, and marched through Boeotia, receiving or taking town after town, and expelling Macedonian garrisons. As he lay before Elateia he received the adhesion of the Achaean League, and by the time he went into winter quarters Argos and Corinth were almost the only places of importance in the south that still held by Philip and retained their Macedonian garrisons, while Nabis, the tyrant of Sparta, was waiting to see which side it would serve him best to join. But in Central Greece Demetrias and Chalcis were still in the king's hands. All these, however, were lost to him next year (B.C. 197), when, after long conferences and