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Please note that Mommsen uses the AUC chronology (Ab Urbe Condita), i.e. from the founding of the City of Rome. You can use this reference table to have the B.C. dates

THE HISTORY OF OLD ROME

III. From the Union of Italy to the Subjugation of Carthage and the Greek States

From: The History of Rome, by Theodor Mommsen
Translated with the sanction of the author by William Purdie Dickson

Chapter VIII - The Eastern States and the Second Macedonian War

» Contents of this Chapter

The Greek East - The Great States - Macedonia ||| Asia ||| Egypt ||| The Kingdoms of Asia Minor ||| The Celts of Asia Minor ||| Pergamus ||| Greece - Epirots, Acarnanians, Boeotians ||| The Athenians - The Aetolians ||| The Achaeans ||| Sparta, Elis, Messene ||| League of the Greek Cities - Rhodes ||| Philip, King of Macedonia ||| Macedonia and Asia Attack Egypt ||| The Rhodian Hansa and Pergamus Oppose Philip ||| Diplomatic Intervention of Rome ||| Preparations and Pretexts for Second Macedonian War ||| Progress of the War ||| Declaration of War by Rome ||| The Roman League ||| Landing of the Romans in Macedonia ||| Attempt of the Romans to Invade Macedonia ||| Return of the Romans ||| Philip Encamps on the Aous - Flaminius - Philip Driven Back to Tempe - Greece in the Power of the Romans ||| The Achaeans Enter into Alliance with Rome ||| Vain Attempts to Arrange a Peace ||| Philip Proceed to Thessaly - Battle of Cynoscephalae ||| Preliminaries of Peace ||| Peace with Macedonia ||| Greece Free ||| Scodra - The Achaean League Enlarged - The Aetolians ||| War against Nabis of Sparta ||| Settlement of Spartan Affairs ||| Final Regulation of Greece ||| Results

The Greek East

The work, which Alexander king of Macedonia had begun a century before the Romans acquired their first footing in the territory which he had called his own, had in the course of time--while adhering substantially to the great fundamental idea of Hellenizing the east --changed and expanded into the construction of a system of Graeco-Asiatic states.

The unconquerable propensity of the Greeks for migration and colonizing, which had formerly carried their traders to Massilia and Cyrene, to the Nile and to the Black Sea, now firmly held what the king had won; and under the protection of the σάρισσαι, Greek civilization peacefully domiciled itself everywhere throughout the ancient empire of the Achaemenidae.

The officers, who divided the heritage of the great general, gradually settled their differences, and a system of equilibrium was established, of which the very Oscillations manifest some sort of regularity.

The Great States - Macedonia

Of the three states of the first rank belonging to this system --Macedonia, Asia, and Egypt--Macedonia under Philip the Fifth, who had occupied the throne since 534, was externally at least very much what it had been under Philip the Second the father of Alexander --a compact military state with its finances in good order. On its northern frontier matters had resumed their former footing, after the waves of the Gallic inundation had rolled away; the guard of the frontier kept the Illyrian barbarians in check without difficulty, at least in ordinary times.

In the south, not only was Greece in general dependent on Macedonia, but a large portion of it--including all Thessaly in its widest sense from Olympus to the Spercheius and the peninsula of Magnesia, the large and important island of Euboea, the provinces of Locris, Phocis, and Doris, and lastly, a number of isolated positions in Attica and in the Peloponnesus, such as the promontory of Sunium, Corinth, Orchomenus, Heraea, the Triphylian territory--was directly subject to Macedonia and received Macedonian garrisons; more especially the three important fortresses of Demetrias in Magnesia, Chalcis in Euboea, and Corinth, "the three fetters of the Greeks."

But the strength of the state lay above all in its hereditary soil, the province of Macedonia. The population, indeed, of that extensive territory was remarkably scanty; Macedonia, putting forth all her energies, was scarcely able to bring into the field as many men as were contained in an ordinary consular army of two legions; and it was unmistakeably evident that the land had not yet recovered from the depopulation occasioned by the campaigns of Alexander and by the Gallic invasion.

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