Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/333

Rh wealth and warlike stores which his father had accumulated.

Very soon after the accession of Perseus rumours spread through Greece of a change for the better in the government of Macedonia, from which advantages might be hoped. A young and vigorous sovereign had mounted the throne, who, while renewing his father's treaty with Rome, yet let it be understood that he wished to identify himself with Greek interests and Greek ideas. He at once made advances to the Achaeans for the removal of the mutual prohibition of the citizens of the one country visiting the territory of the other. As time went on instances of attempts to assert his power by force or favour in Thessaly and other parts of Greece accumulated. A civil contest broke out in Boeotia, in which the leaders of the Romanising party were killed (B.C. 171); in the previous year (B.C. 172), Eumenes, King of Pergamus, had visited Rome and had reported in strong terms on the progress which Perseus was making in Boeotia, Aetolia, and Thrace, and his life was attempted on his way home. The usual despatch of commissioners followed with irritating frequency, whose presence was resented by Perseus, and whose reports caused great uneasiness at Rome, till at length war was declared in B.C. 175 and was only ended by the battle of Pydna in B.C. 168, the capture of the king and the division of Macedonia into four districts, in which the inhabitants had no right of residence or ownership in any but their own division. And though these districts were nominally independent, they were fettered by so many conditions and prohibitions, as,