went so far as to beg vessels of war from his ally Prusias of Bithynia, and even from Hannibal.  It was only towards the close of the war that he resolved—­as he should have done at first—­to order the construction of 100 ships of war; of these however no use was made, if the order was executed at all.  All who understood the position of Greece and sympathized with it lamented the unhappy war, in which the last energies of Greece preyed upon themselves and the prosperity of the land was destroyed; repeatedly the commercial states, Rhodes, Chios, Mitylene, Byzantium, Athens, and even Egypt itself had attempted a mediation.  In fact both parties had an interest in coming to terms.  The Aetolians, to whom their Roman allies attached the chief importance, had, like the Macedonians, much to suffer from the war; especially after the petty king of the Athamanes had been gained by Philip, and the interior of Aetolia had thus been laid open to Macedonian incursions.  Many Aetolians too had their eyes gradually opened to the dishonourable and pernicious part which the Roman alliance condemned them to play; a cry of horror pervaded the whole Greek nation when the Aetolians in concert with the Romans sold whole bodies of Hellenic citizens, such as those of Anticyra, Oreus, Dyme, and Aegina, into slavery.  But the Aetolians were no longer free; they ran a great risk if of their own accord they concluded peace with Philip, and they found the Romans by no means disposed, especially after the favourable turn which matters were taking in Spain and in Italy, to desist from a war, which on their part was carried on with merely a few ships, and the burden and injury of which fell mainly on the Aetolians.  At length however the Aetolians resolved to listen to the mediating cities:  and, notwithstanding the counter-efforts of the Romans, a peace was arranged in the winter of 548-9 between the Greek powers.  Aetolia had converted an over-powerful ally into a dangerous enemy; but the Roman senate, which just at that time was summoning all the resources of the exhausted state for the decisive expedition to Africa, did not deem it a fitting moment to resent the breach of the alliance.  The war with Philip could not, after the withdrawal of the Aetolians, have been carried on by the Romans without considerable exertions of their own; and it appeared to them more convenient to terminate it also by a peace, whereby the state of things before the war was substantially restored and Rome in particular retained all her possessions on the coast of Epirus except the worthless territory of the Atintanes.  Under the circumstances Philip had to deem himself fortunate in obtaining such terms; but the fact proclaimed—­what could not indeed be longer concealed—­that all the unspeakable misery which ten years of a warfare waged with revolting inhumanity had brought upon Greece had been endured in vain, and that the grand and just combination, which Hannibal had projected and all Greece had for a moment joined, was shattered irretrievably.