side; but in 198 the consul T. Quinctius Flamininus succeeded in
gaining over the Achaean league to the Roman alliance; and as the
AEtolians had previously deserted Philip, both those powers fought for
a short time on the same side. In 197 the struggle was brought to a
termination by the battle of Cynoscephalae, near Scotussa, in Thessaly,
which decided the fate of the Macedonian monarchy. Philip was obliged
to sue for peace, and in the following year (196) a treaty was ratified
by which the Macedonians were compelled to renounce their supremacy, to
withdraw their garrisons from the Grecian towns, to surrender their
fleet, and to pay 1000 talents for the expenses of the war. At the
ensuing Isthmian games Flamininus solemnly proclaimed the freedom of
the Greeks, and was received by them with overwhelming joy and
gratitude.

The AEtolians, dissatisfied with these arrangements, persuaded
Antiochus III., king of Syria, to enter into a league against the
Romans. He passed over into Greece with a wholly inadequate force, and
was defeated by the Romans at Thermopylae (B.C. 191). The AEtolians
were now compelled to make head against the Romans by themselves.
After some ineffectual attempts at resistance they were reduced to sue
for peace, which they at length obtained, but on the most humiliating
conditions (B.C. 189). They were required to acknowledge the supremacy
of Rome, to renounce all the conquests they had recently made, to pay
an indemnity of 500 talents and to engage in future to aid the Romans
in their wars. The power of the AEtolian league was thus for ever
crushed, though it seems to have existed, in name at least, till a much
later period.

The Achaean league still subsisted but was destined before long to
experience the same fate as its rival. At first, indeed, it enjoyed
the protection of the Romans, and even acquired an extension of members
through their influence, but this protectorate involved a state of
almost absolute dependence. Philopoemen also had succeeded, in the year
192, in adding Sparta to the league, which now embraced the whole of
Peloponnesus. But Sparta having displayed symptoms of insubordination,
Philopoemen marched against it in 188, and captured the city; when he
put to death eighty of the leading men, razed the walls and
fortifications, abolished the institutions of Lycurgus, and compelled
the citizens to adopt the democratic constitution of the Achaeans.
Meanwhile the Romans regar