Results

It is only contemptible disingenuousness or weakly sentimentality, which can fail to perceive that the Romans were entirely in earnest with the liberation of Greece; and the reason why the plan so nobly projected resulted in so sorry a structure, is to be sought only in the complete moral and political disorganization of the Hellenic nation.  It was no small matter, that a mighty nation should have suddenly with its powerful arm brought the land, which it had been accustomed to regard as its primitive home and as the shrine of its intellectual and higher interests, into the possession of full freedom, and should have conferred on every community in it deliverance from foreign taxation and foreign garrisons and the unlimited right of self-government; it is mere paltriness that sees in this nothing save political calculation.  Political calculation made the liberation of Greece a possibility for the Romans; it was converted into a reality by the Hellenic sympathies that were at that time indescribably powerful in Rome, and above all in Flamininus himself.  If the Romans are liable to any reproach, it is that all of them, and in particular Flamininus who overcame the well-founded scruples of the senate, were hindered by the magic charm of the Hellenic name from perceiving in all its extent the wretched character of the Greek states of that period, and so allowed yet further freedom for the doings of communities which, owing to the impotent antipathies that prevailed alike in their internal and their mutual relations, knew neither how to act nor how to keep quiet.  As things stood, it was really necessary at once to put an end to such a freedom, equally pitiful and pernicious, by means of a superior power permanently present on the spot; the feeble policy of sentiment, with all its apparent humanity, was far more cruel than the sternest occupation would have been.  In Boeotia for instance Rome had, if not to instigate, at least to permit, a political murder, because the Romans had resolved to withdraw their troops from Greece and, consequently, could not prevent the Greeks friendly to Rome from seeking their remedy in the usual manner of the country.  But Rome herself also suffered from the effects of this indecision.  The war with Antiochus would not have arisen but for the political blunder of liberating Greece, and it would not have been dangerous but tor the military blunder of withdrawing the garrisons from the principal fortresses on the European frontier.  History has a Nemesis for every sin—­for an impotent craving after freedom, as well as for an injudicious generosity.

Notes for Chapter viii

1.  III.  III.  Acquisition of Territory in Illyria

2.  III.  Vi.  Stagnation of the War in Italy

3.  There are still extant gold staters, with the head of Flamininus and the inscription “-T.  Quincti(us)-,” struck in Greece under the government of the liberator of the Hellenes.  The use of the Latin language is a significant compliment.