itary kingdom or to cede to him the crown
of Syria; whereupon Demetrius, to put an end to the foolish proceedings,
arrested the pretender and sent him to the Romans. But the senate
attached so little importance to the man, that it confined him in an
Italian town without taking steps to have him even seriously guarded.
Thus he had escaped to Miletus, where the civic authorities once more
seized him and asked the Roman commissioners what they should do with
the prisoner. The latter advised them to let him go; and they did
so. He now tried his fortune further in Thrace; and, singularly
enough, he obtained recognition and support there not only from
Teres the chief of the Thracian barbarians, the husband of his
father's sister, and Barsabas, but also from the prudent Byzantines.
With Thracian support the so-called Philip invaded Macedonia, and,
although he was defeated at first, he soon gained one victory over
the Macedonian militia in the district of Odomantice beyond the Strymon,
followed by a second on the west side of the river, which gave him
possession of all Macedonia. Apocryphal as his story sounded, and
decidedly as it was established that the real Philip, the son of
Perseus, had died when eighteen years of age at Alba, and that this
man, so far from being a Macedonian prince, was Andriscus a fuller of
Adramytium, yet the Macedonians were too much accustomed to the rule
of a king not to be readily satisfied on the point of legitimacy and
to return with pleasure into the old track. Messengers arrived
from the Thessalians, announcing that the pretender had advanced
into their territory; the Roman commissioner Nasica, who, in the
expectation that a word of earnest remonstrance would put an end
to the foolish enterprise, had been sent by the senate to Macedonia
without soldiers, was obliged to call out the Achaean and Pergamene
troops and to protect Thessaly against the superior force by
means of the Achaeans, as far as was practicable, till (605?)
the praetor Juventius appeared with a legion. The latter attacked
the Macedonians with his small force; but he himself fell, his army
was almost wholly destroyed, and the greater part of Thessaly fell into
the power of the pseudo-Philip, who conducted his government there and
in Macedonia with cruelty and arrogance. At length a stronger Roman
army under Quintus Caecilius Metellus appeared on the scene of
conflict, and, supported by the Pergamene fleet, advanced into
M