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Updated: June 19, 2025
It seemed almost as if they might cut off the retreat of the king and compel him to take up winter quarters in Caria, while the state of affairs at home, particularly the threatened intervention of the Aetolians and Romans, urgently demanded his return.
The Macedonian and Roman armies the latter of which had been reinforced by contingents of the Apolloniates and the Athamanes, by the Cretans sent by Nabis, and especially by a strong band of Aetolians contained nearly equal numbers of combatants, each about 26,000 men; the Romans, however, had the superiority in cavalry.
After the conclusion of the peace with the AEtolians Philip prepared a large fleet, which he employed to watch the movements of the Romans, and in the following year he concluded a treaty with Hannibal, which, among other clauses, provided that the Romans should not be allowed to retain their conquests on the eastern side of the Adriatic.
The address of the Aetolians was more harsh; for after a few introductory observations on the justice and propriety of the Roman general's conduct, in communicating his plans of peace to those who had acted with him as allies in the war, they insisted, "that he was utterly mistaken, if he supposed that he could leave the peace with the Romans, or the liberty of Greece, on a permanent footing, unless Philip was either put to death or banished from his kingdom; both which he could easily accomplish, if he chose to pursue his present success."
During these transactions, Antiochus was at Chalcis; and now, perceiving that he had gained nothing from Greece agreeable, except winter quarters and a disgraceful marriage at Chalcis, he warmly blamed Thoas, and the fallacious promises of the Aetolians; while he admired Hannibal, not only as a prudent man, but as the predicter of all those events which were then transpiring.
On occasion of the quarrel with the Aetolians it was reported of the Roman commander-in-chief that during battle he was solely occupied in praying and sacrificing like a priest; whereas Polybius with his somewhat stale moralizing calls the attention of his countrymen to the political usefulness of this piety, and admonishes them that a state cannot consist of wise men alone, and that such ceremonies are very convenient for the sake of the multitude.
The contest with Philip, which had begun about ten years before, had been intermitted for the three last years; the Aetolians having been the occasion both of the war and the peace.
That, as became common friends, they should wish for peace to both parties, and not intermeddle in the war." Archidamus, ambassador of the Aetolians, made nearly the same request: that, as was their easiest and safest way, they should stand neuter; and, as mere spectators of the war, wait for the decision of the fortunes of others, without any hazard to their own interests.
Philip had been allowed by the Romans to retain what he had taken from the Aetolians; but in Thessaly the confederacy of the Magnetes alone had formally joined the Aetolians, while those towns which Philip had wrested from the Aetolians in other two of the Thessalian confederacies the Thessalian in its narrower sense, and the Perrhaebian were demanded back by their leagues on the ground that Philip had only liberated these towns, not conquered them.
After this, Titus made peace with Nabis, and Nabis was circumvented and slain by the Aetolians. Things being then in confusion at Sparta, Philopoemen laid hold of the occasion, and coming upon them with an army, prevailed with some by persuasion, with others by fear, till he brought the whole city over to the Achaeans.
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