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Published online by Cambridge University Press: 20 December 2011
The action of the Roman government in 201 B.C. has probably attracted the notice of every student of ancient history. Within a few months of the treaty of peace with Carthage, the Senate decided that a new war was necessary, a war overseas in the East against an enemy who was not dangerous to Rome at that moment, and who, as is clear to us now, could hardly have become dangerous in the future. Such is the bare statement of the event; and if we knew everything that happened both at Rome and in the East in this critical year the event, no doubt, would no longer be surprising. But, as it is, our knowledge is defective, and perhaps fatally so. One knows that at Rome the charges of the new war made it impossible for the Treasury to pay the interest on the public debt, and that the Roman people was anxious for peace and voted against the first proposal for a war with Macedonia, facts which are in no way surprising when they are regarded as natural consequences of the long war against Carthage; but when they are considered in relation to the new war against Macedonia, they increase our bewilderment rather than diminish it. And the difficulty that is felt by modern historians is not one of modern creation.
2 Livy, 31, 13.
3 Livy, 31, 6, 3 ff.
4 Livy, 31, 1, 9 f.
5 Sallust, Epistula Mithridatis, 5. Cf. U. von Wilamowitz-Moellendorff, Staat und Gesellschaft der Griechen und Römer, p. 146: “Der stärkere nahm dem Schwächeren das Seine weg, weil er der Stärkere war. Das war Rom in der Tat”; and G. De Sanctis, S[toria] d[ei] R[omani], IV, 1, especially pp. 24 ff.
6 E.g. Mommsen, Tenney Frank, and others.
7 M. Holleaux, Rome [la Grèce, et les monarchies hellénistiques], and in C[ambridge] A[ncient] H[istory], VIII.
8 For a summary of Holleaux' conclusions, cf. his Rome, pp. 332 ff.
9 Cf. Holleaux, Rome, pp. 220 ff., summarised pp. 271 ff.: Holleaux here effectively disposes of the theory that Rome was pursuing a “machiavellian” policy in Greece, wishing to be free of the eastern war until Carthage should be crushed, but intending to renew it at a favourable opportunity.
10 Holleaux, Rome, pp. 293 ff.
11 Polybius, XVI, 24, 3 and 27.
12 Holleaux, Rome, p. 320.
13 Polybius, XV, 20; XVI, 1, 8 f.; 24, 6.
14 For the Roman navy in 218, Polybius,. III, 42, 2; Livy, 21, 17, 3 ff.: for the Macedonian navy, Holleaux, in Bulletin de correspondence hellénique, 1907, p. 107.
15 Polybius, V, 108, 4–110.
16 Livy, 24, 40.
17 Livy, 26, 24, 10.
18 Livy, 27, 30, 16; cf. 27, 15, 7; 28, 7, 17 f.
19 Livy, 28, 8, 14; cf. 27, 30, 16.
20 Livy, 28, 8, 14; cf. Holleaux, Rome, p. 246.
21 Polybius, XVIII, 54. 8; Diodorus, XXVIII, 1; cf. Holleaux, in Revue des études grecques, XXXIII (1920), p p. 223 ff.
22 Polybius, XIII, 4.
23 Polybius, XVI, 2, 9; cf. Holleaux, in C.A.H. VIII, p. 145, note 2.
24 De Sanctis, S.d.R. IV, 1, p. 10, note 27, best explains the chronology of the two battles.
25 Polybius, XVI, 10, 1; 14, 5; 15, 1 f.
26 Polybius, XVI, 2–8; XVIII, 2, 2; cf. De Sanctis, S.d.R. IV, 1, pp. 9 and 23, for the Rhodian sources of Polybius, which may have exaggerated Philip's losses.
27 Polybius, XVIII, 2, 3.
28 Polybius, XVI, 10, 1.
29 Alcaeus of Messene (Anthologia Palatina, IX, 518).
30 Holleaux Rome, p. 319.
31 Polybius, XVI, 24, 1 ff.
32 Holleaux, Rome, p. 294, note.
33 A. Piganiol, La conquête romaine, p. 214.
34 Polybius, XV, 18, 3; Livy, 30, 37, 3; Appian, Libyca, 54.
35 Polybius, XVIII, 44, 6; Livy, 33, 30, 5; Appian, Macedonica, 9, 3.
36 Polybius, XXI, 43, 13; Livy, 38, 38, 8; Appian, Syriaca, 39.
37 It is possible that the severe treatment of Rhodes in 168 was due to something more than irritation and outraged dignity. Rhodes and Pergamum still possessed small navies, and the behaviour of both these powers in the Third Macedonian War had been equivocal. The Roman action in 168 was in effect a warning and a threat to Pergamum, and to Rhodes much more than this: as a power on the sea Rhodes was crippled. Cf. De Sanctis, S.d.R. IV, 1, pp. 352 ff., for an excellent treatment of these events, with bibliography.
38 The story of Hannibal at the court of Antiochus (Livy 34, 60). Hannibal's plan for the revival of Carthage and the invasion of Italy is probably a fiction, and it would not be surprising if it was a contemporary fiction—the sort of story that went about Rome at the time of the panic, to be preserved in the pages of Roman annalists.
39 For a different interpretation of these events, see E. Bickermann, Les préliminaires de la seconde guerre de Macédoine in Revue de philologie, 1935, which I was able to obtain only when these pages were already in the press. M. Bickermann's interpretation is novel and acute, but I am not yet convinced by it.