Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/369

Rh for the adornment of Alexandria, removing among other things the famous library at Pergamus to make up for the partial destruction by fire of the Alexandrian books during Caesar's occupation.

Yet on the whole, during Antony's Eastern imperium (B.C. 42–32) Greece itself enjoyed complete repose. The outlying semi-hellenistic countries—Syria and Coele-Syria, Cyprus, Cilicia, and Cyrene—were treated by him as at his disposal to be parcelled out into kingdoms for his or Cleopatra's children, or his own partisans. It was the Western Hellas of Sicily that suffered most, being held for several years by Sextus Pompeius—half-sovereign, half-pirate—and becoming the scene of many military operations. After the treaty of Misenum (B.C. 39) the Peloponnese was to be handed over to Pompeius, though it seems never to have really passed into his hands; but until his final defeat in B.C. 36 its coasts, like those of Italy itself, were constantly subject to attacks from his piratical fleets.

In the last scene of the civil war, the struggle between Augustus and Antony, which ended at Actium B.C. 31, Greece was again for the most part on the losing side, and again suffered as an enemy's country. Previous to Actium many coast towns had been forcibly occupied by Agrippa; but after the victory of Augustus the Greeks everywhere hastened to pay court to the conqueror. A temple in his honour was erected at Pergamus, statues set up at Olympia and in other places; and there are traces during his residence at Samos in the winter of B.C. 31 and again in B.C. 30