ated the intentional disregard of Rome
which marked their proceedings. When Messene declared that she wished
to submit to the Romans but not to enter the confederacy, and the
latter thereupon employed force, Flamininus had not failed to remind
the Achaeans that such separate arrangements as to the disposal of a
part of the spoil were in themselves unjust, and were, in the relation
in which the Achaeans stood to the Romans, more than unseemly; and yet
in his very impolitic complaisance towards the Hellenes he had
substantially done what the Achaeans willed. But the matter did not
end there. The Achaeans, tormented by their dwarfish thirst for
aggrandizement, would not relax their hold on the town of Pleuron in
Aetolia which they had occupied during the war, but on the contrary
made it an involuntary member of their confederacy; they bought
Zacynthus from Amynander the lieutenant of the last possessor, and
would gladly have acquired Aegina also. It was with reluctance that
they gave up the former island to Rome, and they heard with great
displeasure the good advice of Flamininus that they should content
themselves with their Peloponnesus.

The Achaean Patriots

The Achaeans believed it their duty to display the independence of
their state all the more, the less they really had; they talked of the
rights of war, and of the faithful aid of the Achaeans in the wars of
the Romans; they asked the Roman envoys at the Achaean diet why Rome
should concern herself about Messene when Achaia put no questions as
to Capua; and the spirited patriot, who had thus spoken, was applauded
and was sure of votes at the elections. All this would have been very
right and very dignified, had it not been much more ridiculous. There
was a profound justice and a still more profound melancholy in the
fact, that Rome, however earnestly she endeavoured to establish the
freedom and to earn the thanks of the Hellenes, yet gave them nothing
but anarchy and reaped nothing but ingratitude. Undoubtedly very
generous sentiments lay at the bottom of the Hellenic antipathies to
the protecting power, and the personal bravery of some of the men who
took the lead in the movement was unquestionable; but this Achaean
patriotism remained not the less a folly and a genuine historical
caricature. With all that ambition and all that national
susceptibility the whole nation was, from the highest to the lowest,
pervaded by the most thorough sense of impotence.