“The games ended, the people rush towards the Roman general; everybody is anxious to greet him, to take his hand, to cast before him crowns of flowers and of ribbons, and the crowd was so great that he was almost suffocated. He was but thirty-three years of age, and the vigour of life, joined with the intoxication of a glory so dazzling, gave him strength to bear up against such a trial. The joy of the peoples was not confined to the enthusiasm of the moment: the impression was kept up long afterwards in their thoughts and speech. ‘There was then,’ they said, ‘one nation upon earth, which, at its own cost, at the price of fatigues and perils, made war for the liberty of peoples even though removed from their frontiers and continent: this nation crossed the seas, in order that there should not be in the whole world one single unjust government, and that right, equity, and law should be everywhere dominant. The voice of a herald had been sufficient to restore freedom to all the cities of Greece and Asia. The idea alone of such a design supposed a rare greatness of soul; but to execute it needed as much courage as fortune.’”[563]
There was, however, a shadow on the picture. All Peloponnesus was not freed, and Flamininus, after having taken several of his possessions from Nabis, king of Sparta, had concluded peace with him, without continuing the siege of Lacedæmon, of which he dreaded the length. He feared also the arrival of a more dangerous enemy, Antiochus III., who had already reached Thrace, and threatened to go over into Greece with a considerable army. For this the allied Greeks, occupied only with their own interests, reproached the Roman consul with having concluded peace too hastily with Philip, whom, in their opinion, he could have annihilated.[564] But Flamininus replied that he was not commissioned to dethrone Philip, and that the existence of the kingdom of Macedonia was necessary as a barrier against the barbarians of Thrace, Illyria, and Gaul.[565] Meanwhile, accompanied even to their ships by the acclamations of the people, the Roman troops evacuated the cities restored to liberty (560), and Flamininus returned to a triumph at Rome, bringing with him that glorious protectorate of Greece, so long an object of envy to the successors of Alexander.