party, and to counteract as far as possible the evil effects of the ill-timed evacuation of the country.  The Aetolians had already gone so far as formally to declare war in their diet against Rome.  But Flamininus succeeded In saving Chalcis for the Romans by throwing into it a garrison of 500 Achaeans and 500 Pergamenes.  He made an attempt also to recover Demetrias; and the Magnetes wavered.  Though some towns in Asia Minor, which Antiochus had proposed to subdue before beginning the great war, still held out, he could now no longer delay his landing, unless he was willing to let the Romans recover all the advantages which they had surrendered two years before by withdrawing their garrisons from Greece.  He collected the vessels and troops which were at hand—­he had but 40 decked vessels and 10,000 infantry, along with 500 horse and 6 elephants—­and started from the Thracian Chersonese for Greece, where he landed in the autumn of 562 at Pteleum on the Pagasaean gulf, and immediately occupied the adjoining Demetrias.  Nearly about the same time a Roman army of some 25,000 men under the praetor Marcus Baebius landed at Apollonia.  The war was thus begun on both sides.

Attitude of the Minor Powers
Carthage and Hannibal

Everything depended on the extent to which that comprehensively-planned coalition against Rome, of which Antiochus came forward as the head, might be realized.  As to the plan, first of all, of stirring up enemies to the Romans in Carthage and Italy, it was the fate of Hannibal at the court of Ephesus, as through his whole career, to have projected his noble and high-spirited plans for the behoof of people pedantic and mean.  Nothing was done towards their execution, except that some Carthaginian patriots were compromised; no choice was left to the Carthaginians but to show unconditional submission to Rome.  The camarilla would have nothing to do with Hannibal—­such a man was too inconveniently great for court cabals; and, after having tried all sorts of absurd expedients, such as accusing the general, with whose name the Romans frightened their children, of concert with the Roman envoys, they succeeded in persuading Antiochus the Great, who like all insignificant monarchs plumed himself greatly on his independence and was influenced by nothing so easily as by the fear of being ruled, into the wise belief that he ought not to allow himself to be thrown into the shade by so celebrated a man.  Accordingly it was in solemn council resolved that the Phoenician should be employed in future only for subordinate enterprises and for giving advice—­with the reservation, of course, that the advice should never be followed.  Hannibal revenged himself on the rabble, by accepting every commission and brilliantly executing all.

States of Asia Minor