or were inclined even to promote, the Roman
invasion. Asia, the natural and most important ally of Philip, had
been neglected by him, and was moreover prevented at first from active
interference by being entangled in the quarrel with Egypt and the
Syrian war. Egypt had an urgent interest in keeping the Roman fleet
out of the eastern waters; even now an Egyptian embassy intimated at
Rome very plainly, that the court of Alexandria was ready to relieve
the Romans from the trouble of intervention in Attica. But the treaty
for the partition of Egypt concluded between Asia and Macedonia threw
that important state thoroughly into the arms of Rome, and compelled
the cabinet of Alexandria to declare that it would only intermeddle in
the affairs of European Greece with consent of the Romans. The Greek
commercial cities, with Rhodes, Pergamus, and Byzantium at their head,
were in a position similar, but of still greater perplexity. They
would under other circumstances have beyond doubt done what they
could to close the eastern seas against the Romans; but the cruel and
destructive policy of conquest pursued by Philip had driven them to
an unequal struggle, in which for their self-preservation they were
obliged to use every effort to implicate the great Italian power.
In Greece proper also the Roman envoys, who were commissioned to
organize a second league against Philip there, found the way already
substantially paved for them by the enemy. Of the anti-Macedonian
party--the Spartans, Eleans, Athenians, and Aetolians--Philip might
perhaps have gained the latter, for the peace of 548 had made a deep,
and far from healed, breach in their friendly Alliance with Rome; but
apart from the old differences which subsisted between Aetolia and
Macedonia regarding the Thessalian towns withdrawn by Macedonia from
the Aetolian confederacy--Echinus, Larissa Cremaste, Pharsalus, and
Thebes in Phthiotis--the expulsion of the Aetolian garrisons from
Lysimachia and Cius had produced fresh exasperation against Philip
in the minds of the Aetolians. If they delayed to join the league
against him, the chief reason doubtless was the ill-feeling that
continued to prevail between them and the Romans.

It was a circumstance still more ominous, that even among the Greek
states firmly attached to the interests of Macedonia--the Epirots,
Acarnanians, Boeotians, and Achaeans--the Acarnanians and Boeotians
alone stood steadfastly by Philip. With the Epir