This year (200) the Consul, Publius Sulpicius Galba, was sent with a considerable force across the Adriatic. His campaign, and that of the Consul Villius during the next year, were productive of no decisive results, but in 198 the Consul TITUS QUINCTIUS FLAMINÍNUS, a man of different calibre, conducted the war with vigor. He defeated Philip on the Aóus, drove him back to the pass of Tempe, and the next year utterly defeated him at CYNOSCEPHALAE.
The king had drawn up his forces in two divisions. With the first he broke through the line of the legions, which, however, closed in around him with but little loss. The other division was attacked by the Romans, while it was forming, and thoroughly discomfited. The victory of the Romans was decisive.
About the same time the Achaeans captured CORINTH from Philip, and the Rhodians defeated his troops in Caria.
Further resistance was impossible. Philip was left in possession of Macedonia alone; he was deprived of all his dependencies in Greece, Thrace, and Asia Minor, and was forbidden, as Carthage had been, to wage war without Rome's consent.
The next year (196), at the Isthmian Games, the "freedom of Greece" was proclaimed to the enthusiastic crowds, and two years later Flamininus withdrew his troops from the so called "three fetters of Greece,"--Chalcis, Demetrias, and Corinth,--and, urging the Greeks to show themselves worthy of the gift of the Roman people, he returned home to enjoy a well earned triumph.
The chief result of the second Macedonian war was, therefore, the firm establishment of a ROMAN PROTECTORATE OVER GREECE AND EGYPT. The wedge had been entered and the interference of Rome in Eastern affairs was assured.
Antiochus III. of Syria, who had proposed to share Egypt with Philip, had been engaged for some time in a campaign in the East, and did not hear of his ally's danger until too late to aid him. However, he claimed for himself portions of Asia Minor and Thrace, which Philip had previously held, and which Rome now declared free and independent. He crossed the Hellespont into Thrace in 196, but did not dare to enter Greece, although earnestly urged to do so by the Aetolians, until after Flamininus had withdrawn all his troops (192).