as 553 with the Sicilian fleet of 38 sail in the eastern waters.  The government, however, were at a loss to discover an ostensible pretext for the war; a pretext which they needed in order to satisfy the people, even although they had not been far too sagacious to undervalue, as was the manner of Philip, the importance of assigning a legitimate ground for hostilities.  The support, which Philip was alleged to have granted to the Carthaginians after the peace with Rome, manifestly could not be proved.  The Roman subjects, indeed, in the province of Illyria had for a considerable time complained of the Macedonian encroachments.  In 551 a Roman envoy at the head of the Illyrian levy had driven Philip’s troops from the Illyrian territory; and the senate had accordingly declared to the king’s envoys in 552, that if he sought war, he would find it sooner than was agreeable to him.  But these encroachments were simply the ordinary outrages which Philip practised towards his neighbours; a negotiation regarding them at the present moment would have led to his humbling himself and offering satisfaction, but not to war.  With all the belligerent powers in the east the Roman community was nominally in friendly relations, and might have granted them aid in repelling Philip’s attack.  But Rhodes and Pergamus, which naturally did not fail to request Roman aid, were formally the aggressors; and although Alexandrian ambassadors besought the Roman senate to undertake the guardianship of the boy king, Egypt appears to have been by no means eager to invoke the direct intervention of the Romans, which would put an end to her difficulties for the moment, but would at the same time open up the eastern sea to the great western power.  Aid to Egypt, moreover, must have been in the first instance rendered in Syria, and would have entangled Rome simultaneously in a war with Asia and with Macedonia; which the Romans were naturally the more desirous to avoid, as they were firmly resolved not to intermeddle at least in Asiatic affairs.  No course was left but to despatch in the meantime an embassy to the east for the purpose, first, of obtaining—­what was not in the circumstances difficult—­the sanction of Egypt to the interference of the Romans in the affairs of Greece; secondly, of pacifying king Antiochus by abandoning Syria to him; and, lastly, of accelerating as much as possible a breach with Philip and promoting a coalition of the minor Graeco-Asiatic states against him (end of 553).  At Alexandria they had no difficulty in accomplishing their object; the court had no choice, and was obliged gratefully to receive Marcus Aemilius Lepidus, whom the senate had despatched as “guardian of the king” to uphold his interests, so far as that could be done without an actual intervention.  Antiochus did not break off his alliance with Philip, nor did he give to the Romans the definite explanations which they desired; in other respects, however—­whether from remissness, or influenced by the declarations of the Romans that they did not wish to interfere in Syria—­he pursued his schemes in that direction and left things in Greece and Asia Minor to take their course.