024 - The Second Macedonian War

Hello, and welcome to the History of Rome, episode 24, the Second Macedonian War. Last time, we ended with the Roman victory over Carthage in 202 BC, leaving Rome as the undisputed master of the Western Mediterranean. After nearly 20 years locked in a massively destructive conflict, one might assume that the Romans would take some time off. After all, the demise of Carthage left no real challenge to the Roman hegemony in the West, and there was an abundance of new trading opportunities, lands to settle, farms to rebuild, and families to grow. Why not enjoy the fruits of their newfound dominance, and retire peacefully to country estates to grow olives and sip wine? Beat the swords into plowshares, as it were, and leave the battlefield unstained with Roman blood, at least for a little while, a generation, maybe? Not likely.

Immediately after winning the West, the Romans wasted no time leveraging their newfound big boy status and embroiling themselves in the cutthroat world of Greek power politics. The rationale behind an intervention in the East is obscure, and at first blush doesn't seem to make a whole lot of sense. The Romans had no long-standing ties in Greece, and no true investment in the region. As I've mentioned a few times, the Atriatic divided the Mediterranean into two worlds. The Romans had finally won control of their half. It seemed strange that they would risk what they had just achieved by suddenly launching themselves into the middle of a game they'd never before competed in or stood any real chance of winning without immense effort. But history is what it is, and rather than taking a breath, the Romans moved East as a first step towards capturing the whole of the Mediterranean, a feat never before accomplished, and since the fall of Rome, a feat never again repeated.

Roman intervention in Greece was precipitated by a fateful pact between two men who would command the armies opposite the legions in the coming decades, Philip V of Macedon and Antiochus the Great of the Seleucid Empire. The eastern Mediterranean was still very much living in a post-Alexandrian world, and the dominant kingdoms jockeying for position had grown from the satrapies established by Alexander's generals. Egypt was ruled by the descendants of Ptolemy, Syria and Persia were ruled by the descendants of Seleucus, and Macedon, the birthplace of the great general, was re-rising to a position of power under Philip V after years caught up in dynastic struggles.

In 204 BC, as Scipio was launching his expedition against Carthage, Ptolemy IV of Egypt died, leaving his six-year-old son as heir. Seizing quickly on the leadership vacuum in Egypt, Philip and Antiochus agreed to jointly exploit the situation and move against Egyptian holdings in Asia Minor and Syria. The idea was simple, attack quickly on two fronts and conquer what territory they could. Around the same time Scipio was dictating terms to the Carthaginians, Antiochus moved south towards the Red Sea, and Philip moved east, attacking Thrace, the territory west of the narrow sea lane that links the Aegean and Black Seas, called the Hellespont in ancient times and today called the Dardanelles.

This joint action immediately upset the apple cart of Greek power sharing and sent the kingdom of Pergamum, which lay on the east side of the Hellespont, into a tizzy. Atollus I, king of Pergamum, smelled absolutely nothing good coming from an alliance between Philip and Antiochus. Atollus' kingdom in Asia Minor bordered both rival powers. It was not hard to divine where the two allied kings would look next when they were done stripping young Ptolemy of his inheritance. But luckily, Atollus had built up invaluable goodwill from the ascendant Romans, who were just coming off their big win over Carthage. Atollus had been amongst those allied with Rome against Macedon during the First Macedonian War. Along with the Atollians, Atollus had helped keep Philip's attention firmly in Greece, and the Romans understood the role this played in their ultimate victory over Carthage. Or at least Atollus hoped they understood, because it was time for them to repay the favor.

Pergamum, allied with the island kingdom of Rhodes, was, for the time being, holding its own against Macedonian encroachment. But in 201 BC, official envoys were sent to Rome to plead for aid. The Roman Senate, while not forgetting their friendship with Atollus, still sent the Greek envoys away without the promise of aid. They had just come off a costly war with Carthage, now was not the time to go plunging headlong into Greece. But elements within the Senate argued for immediate action. Philip had been moving for years against Rome, and if his ambition was allowed to proceed unchecked, when his attention inevitably turned back to the west, he would come knocking that much richer and that much stronger. If Rome was worried about the cost of a war today, think of what the cost would be tomorrow.

It was agreed then that envoys should be sent to Greece to take the temperature of the locals and reassess whether the Romans needed to take a stand now or whether they could afford to wait. On the road to Athens, the Roman envoys were fast concluding that a war with Macedon was the last thing anyone wanted. But coinciding with their arrival in Athens, the Athenians declared war against Macedon and Philip ordered a force to pacify Attica. Meeting with Atollus and ambassadors from Rhodes and Athens, the Romans decided to issue an ultimatum to Macedon, clear out of Greece and come to terms with Pergamum and Rhodes or deal with the consequences. The Macedonian force in Attica retreated and the message was taken to Philip.

The Macedonian king rejected the ultimatum, ordering his forces to attack Athens again, and moved himself back east to the Hellespont, where he launched a campaign to wrest control of the eastern bank from Pergamum. In 200 BC, Roman envoys found Philip still directing his troops along Pergamum's border and issued him a second ultimatum. Withdraw from all Greek cities and confine himself back to traditional Macedonian territory or he would be looking at war with Rome. Philip protested that nothing he had done was in violation of the treaty he had signed with the Romans at the end of the First Macedonian War and they were reaching well beyond their authority if they thought they could dictate policy so far from Italy.

The second ultimatum, however, was a mere formality. At the same time Roman envoys were explaining what they would do if Philip rejected peace, they were already launching an army, knowing Philip would never accept Roman terms. Confident after securing allies in Greece, the Senate had changed its tune and decided that war now was preferable to war later. Philip had to be stopped before he acquired more strength. Romans under the command of Publius Galba were sent across the Adriatic into Illyria, the Roman beachhead in the east.

What followed was a year of indeterminate skirmishing with neither side doing much to risk their armies. Philip was still trying to get a handle on whether the Romans were truly committed to a war and Galba had no real interest in a full on attack. The next year saw changing consuls but the continuation of the same policy. Roman war was not being courted and the entire affair seemed destined for countermaneuvers until the two sides made concessions to one another and reached an amenable peace. However, in the third year, 198 BC, things would change.

Titus Flaminius was elected consul and given command of Greek operations. He fully embraced the notion that Philip had to be brought low or Macedon would forever pose a threat to Rome. Given these immediate strategic interests, Flaminius himself was a great lover of Greek culture and saw Roman exposure to and power over Greece to be inherently beneficial and well worth fighting for. Flaminius took a bold stand against Philip and, hoping to win over the mostly neutral Greek cities, recast Roman policy as a defense of Greek liberty. In this conception, Rome was not another power looking for new territory but a shield against Macedonian tyranny. This recasting of the struggle won over the elites of the Greek city states and momentum began to shift towards Rome.

His diplomatic coup while underway, Flaminius matched word with action and went looking for Philip's army, intent on breaking the Macedonians. Later in the year, a short battle was fought between the two armies with the upshot being the withdrawal of Philip and the stage being set for a larger, decisive confrontation the next year. The Greeks were flocking to Rome and away from Macedon.

Sensing that the ballgame had changed and the Romans were now serious about the fight, Philip made peace overtures to Flaminius. The Roman consul opened negotiations but was himself unsure of how he wanted to proceed. The consular elections were coming up and Flaminius, like so many of his predecessors, was worried about some newbie sweeping in and stealing all his glory. He intentionally dragged out the talks, waiting to hear from his allies in the Senate whether his command in Greece would be renewed or given to someone else. If the Senate ordered the new consul for the year to take over, Flaminius planned to cut a quick peace with Philip and return a hero. If he was kept on as proconsul, however, he would end talks and plan for a new campaign the next year. He made all kinds of excuses to explain the slow pace of negotiations and even advised Philip to send envoys directly to Rome to speed things along. But it was all to buy time and soon enough Flaminius got word that the Senate had decided to allow him to continue to lead the war against Philip.

With that, peace talks were cut off and Flaminius readied his army for more fighting. Philip, nonplussed at the whole affair, acquired 25,000 mercenaries in an attempt to match the growing Roman allied force, which now included the full-throated support of the Aetolian League, with a collection of cities that had proved so troublesome to Philip during the First Macedonian War. Numbering somewhere north of 30,000, the Romans met Philip and his army at Cynoscephala in 197 BC.

What followed was not just the decisive battle of the war, but one of the most important turning points in the history of the Western world. The waxing of Rome and the waning of Greece was confirmed that day as the maniple system of the Roman legions decimated the Macedonian phalanx. It was one thing for Rome to defeat other Italians and Gauls or Spaniards and North Africans, but Greece had been the home of the premier military powers of the ancient world, Alexander the Great, Sparta, the Navy of Athens. All were ahead of their time and irresistible forces on the battlefield. It was unthinkable for the Greeks to lose in battle to foreigners, and yet, at the end of the day, Rome stood triumphant and Greek liberty, despite Flaminius' clever propaganda, was snuffed out once and for all.

As I mentioned in episode 14, the Romans had taken the phalanx and modified it to be more maneuverable, more versatile, and allow for independent lines of attack. All of these advantages would come into play at Cynoscephalae. The battle itself came about by accident. In 197, Flaminius marched north from Thebes into Macedonian territory looking for Philip. The two armies encountered each other and fought a brief skirmish, but each pulled out to re-provision and find better ground to fight on. By sheer luck, both armies headed in the same direction looking for provisions, however the Cynoscephalae hills divided the two and they were unaware of each other.

The next morning, some of Philip's troops became disoriented in an early fog and marched over the hills. The Romans noticed this sudden appearance of the enemy and Flaminius ordered some of his cavalry, Numidians now fighting on the side of Rome, to pursue the Macedonians. The cavalry stumbled across Philip's main force and Flaminius ordered 2,000 troops to press an attack on Philip's camp, forcing the Macedonians to pull up into the hills en masse. After driving off the Roman expeditionary force, Philip ordered his troops to come down a ways from the hills and form in the rigid line of a phalanx for battle.

Flaminius had by this time lined up his own troops and led the Roman left personally against the Macedonian right, which was led by Philip. The Macedonian right, with the high ground in their favor, was proving more than a match for Flaminius, but the Macedonian left was having a difficult time lining up on the broken ground and the Roman right was able to smash through the line before it was formed. At this point, an unnamed Roman officer, on his own initiative, ordered a group of maniples under his command to wheel around and attack the rear of Philip's army. Trapped in their phalanx, the Macedonians were unable to turn to face this new threat and as soon as the new Roman force hit, the battle turned from a fair fight into a slaughter. Philip was able to swipe away, but his army was decimated.

The Roman maniples, which formed quicker on rough terrain and were capable of independent action, proved superior to the Greek phalanx, which was only effective on the right terrain and even then only if given enough time to form properly. And of course, once a phalanx was flanked, that's all she wrote. The structural advantage of the Roman maniple system was the decisive element of the battle, which in time would come to symbolize more than just a tactical victory, but mark a critical turning point in history.

In a clever move born out of necessity, Flaminius announced that the Roman legions would not garrison Greece. Greece was free, he declared, much to the relieved ears of the Greeks. The truth was that the Romans had not the men nor the money to occupy Greece, but of course the Romans sold the absence of an occupying army in the loftiest moral terms. The Greeks, proud of their historical liberty, were more than happy to go along with the Roman story and thanked Flaminius for setting them free.

It would prove to be a peculiar form of freedom, as the Romans had no intention of just allowing the Greeks to go off and do whatever they wanted. To the Romans, a freed slave still had obligations to his former master. The Greeks, who thought they really were free, began to chafe under the demands from Rome for tribute. The tension between the allegedly free Greeks and the Romans would boil over soon enough, and after fifty years of sporadic fighting, all pretenses would be lifted and Greece would be incorporated as a collection of provinces.

The honeymoon period did not last long, and next week the bitter Aetolian League, denied territorial concessions during the peace negotiations with Philip, would call upon the last best defender of Hellenistic power, Antiochus the Great, to enter Greece and free them from their not yet official bondage. The war with Antiochus would draw the Romans further east, where they would run smack into an enemy they thought they had driven off forever, Hannibal the Great and Terrible.