s. Metellus was just about to order an
attack upon the main force on the isthmus, when the consul Lucius
Mummius with a few attendants arrived at the Roman head-quarters
and took the command. Meanwhile the Achaeans, emboldened by a
successful attack on the too incautious Roman outposts, offered
battle to the Roman army, which was about twice as strong, at
Leucopetra on the isthmus. The Romans were not slow to accept it.
At the very first the Achaean horsemen broke off en masse before the
Roman cavalry of six times their strength; the hoplites withstood the
enemy till a flank attack by the Roman select corps brought confusion
also into their ranks. This terminated the resistance. Diaeus fled
to his home, put his wife to death, and took poison himself. All the
cities submitted without opposition; and even the impregnable Corinth,
into which Mummius for three days hesitated to enter because he
feared an ambush, was occupied by the Romans without a blow.

Province of Achaia

The renewed regulation of the affairs of Greece was entrusted to
a commission of ten senators in concert with the consul Mummius,
who left behind him on the whole a blessed memory in the conquered
country. Doubtless it was, to say the least, a foolish thing in him
to assume the name of "Achaicus" on account of his feats of war and
victory, and to build in the fulness of his gratitude a temple to
Hercules Victor; but, as he had not been reared in aristocratic
luxury and aristocratic corruption but was a "new man" and
comparatively without means, he showed himself an upright and
indulgent administrator. The statement, that none of the Achaeans
perished but Diaeus and none of the Boeotians but Pytheas, is a
rhetorical exaggeration: in Chalcis especially sad outrages occurred;
but yet on the whole moderation was observed in the infliction of
penalties. Mummius rejected the proposal to throw down the statues
of Philopoemen, the founder of the Achaean patriotic party; the
fines imposed on the communities were destined not for the Roman
exchequer, but for the injured Greek cities, and were mostly
remitted afterwards; and the property of those traitors who had
parents or children was not sold on public account, but handed over
to their relatives. The works of art alone were carried away from
Corinth, Thespiae, and other cities and were erected partly in the
capital, partly in the country towns of Italy:(22) several pieces were
also presented to the