Nevertheless Flamininus in the spring of 560 withdrew all the Roman garrisons from Greece.  This was under the existing circumstances at least a mischievous error, if not a criminal acting in opposition to his own better knowledge; for we cannot dismiss the idea that Flamininus, in order to carry home with him the undiminished glory of having wholly terminated the war and liberated Hellas, contented himself with superficially covering up for the moment the smouldering embers of revolt and war.  The Roman statesman might perhaps be right, when he pronounced any attempt to bring Greece directly under the dominion of the Romans, and any intervention of the Romans in Asiatic affairs, to be a political blunder; but the opposition fermenting in Greece, the feeble arrogance of the Asiatic king, the residence, at the Syrian head-quarters, of the bitter enemy of the Romans who had already raised the west in arms against Rome—­all these were clear signs of the approach of a fresh rising in arms on the part of the Hellenic east, which could not but have for its aim at least to transfer Greece from the clientship of Rome to that of the states opposed to Rome, and, if this object should be attained, would immediately extend the circle of its operations.  It is plain that Rome could not allow this to take place.  When Flamininus, ignoring all these sure indications of war, withdrew the garrisons from Greece, and yet at the same time made demands on the king of Asia which he had no intention of employing his army to support, he overdid his part in words as much as he fell short in action, and forgot his duty as a general and as a citizen in the indulgence of his personal vanity—­a vanity, which wished to confer, and imagined that it had conferred, peace on Rome and freedom on the Greeks of both continents.

Preparations of Antiochus for War with Rome

Antiochus employed the unexpected respite in strengthening his position at home and his relations with his neighbours before beginning the war, on which for his part he was resolved, and became all the more so, the more the enemy appeared to procrastinate.  He now (561) gave his daughter Cleopatra, previously betrothed, in marriage to the young king of Egypt.  That he at the same time promised to restore the provinces wrested from his son-in-law, was afterwards affirmed on the part of Egypt, but probably without warrant; at any rate the land remained actually attached to the Syrian kingdom.(3) He offered to restore to Eumenes, who had in 557 succeeded his father Attalus on the throne of Pergamus, the towns taken from him, and to give him also one of his daughters in marriage, if he would abandon the Roman alliance.  In like manner he bestowed a daughter on Ariarathes, king of Cappadocia, and gained the Galatians by presents, while he reduced by arms the Pisidians who were constantly in revolt, and other small tribes.  Extensive privileges were granted to the Byzantines; respecting the cities in Asia Minor, the king declared that he