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Accordingly the king, with a thousand foot, who had followed him from Demetrias, took his route through Phocis; and the Aetolian chiefs, going by another road, met at Cheronaea a small number of their young men whom they had called to arms, and thence, in ten decked ships, proceeded after him.
He embarked in haste for Ephesus; Europe was lost to him all but his possessions in Thrace, and even the fortresses could be no longer defended Chalcis surrendered to the Romans, and Demetrias to Philip, who received permission as a compensation for the conquest of the town of Lamia in Achaia Phthiotis, which he was on the point of accomplishing and had then abandoned by orders of the consul to make himself master of all the communities that had gone over to Antiochus in Thessaly proper, and even of the territories bordering on Aetolia, the districts of Dolopia and Aperantia.
At a small distance from the town he landed his forces, which consisted of ten thousand foot, five hundred horse, and six elephants; a force scarcely sufficient to take possession of Greece alone, much less to sustain a war with Rome. The Aetolians, as soon as they were informed of Antiochus's arrival at Demetrias, convened a general council, and passed a decree, inviting him into their country.
The Roman senate had long been at one in the opinion that Macedonia must give up all her possessions abroad; accordingly, when the ambassadors of Philip appeared in Rome, they were simply asked whether they had full powers to renounce all Greece and in particular Corinth, Chalcis, and Demetrias, and when they said that they had not, the negotiations were immediately broken off, and it was resolved that the war should be prosecuted with vigour.
Then he evacuated the last fortresses in which Roman garrisons were still stationed, Demetrias, Chalcis along with the smaller forts dependent upon it in Euboea, and Acrocorinthus thus practically giving the lie to the assertion of the Aetolians that Rome had inherited from Philip the "fetters" of Greece and departed homeward with all the Roman troops and the liberated captives. Results
The whole land was for ever disarmed, and the fortress of Demetrias was razed; on the northern frontier alone a chain of posts was to be retained to guard against the incursions of the barbarians. Of the arms given up, the copper shields were sent to Rome, and the rest were burnt. The Romans gained their object.
Philip therefore, going from Demetrias to Scotussa, and setting out thence at the third watch, dislodged the guard, put to flight the Aetolians who kept the pass of Thermopylae, and drove the enemy in confusion to Heraclea, marching in one day to Elatia in Phocis, a distance of above sixty miles. Almost on the same day the town of Opus was taken and plundered by Attalus.
Desisting from the Achaean war, therefore, but still leaving two thousand five hundred armed troops of every description under the generals Menippus and Polyphantas for the protection of his allies, he set out from Dymae, and passing through Achaea, Boeotia, and Euboea, arrived on the tenth day at Demetrias in Thessaly.
The whole land was for ever disarmed, and the fortress of Demetrias was razed; on the northern frontier alone a chain of posts was to be retained to guard against the incursions of the barbarians. Of the arms given up, the copper shields were sent to Rome, and the rest were burnt. The Romans gained their object.
Philip learned, when it was too late, the intrigues which Perseus had concocted; and death overtook him, as he was meditating the punishment of the fratricide and his exclusion from the throne. He died in 575 at Demetrias, in his fifty-ninth year.
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