forests and the elephants delivered up by Antiochus, but not the ships of war, which were burnt:  the Romans tolerated no naval power by the side of their own.  By these means the kingdom of the Attalids became in the east of Europe and Asia what Numidia was in Africa, a powerful state with an absolute constitution dependent on Rome, destined and able to keep in check both Macedonia and Syria without needing, except in extraordinary cases, Roman support.  With this creation dictated by policy the Romans had as far as possible combined the liberation of the Asiatic Greeks, which was dictated by republican and national sympathy and by vanity.  About the affairs of the more remote east beyond the Taurus and Halys they were firmly resolved to give themselves no concern.  This is clearly shown by the terms of the peace with Antiochus, and still more decidedly by the peremptory refusal of the senate to guarantee to the town of Soli in Cilicia the freedom which the Rhodians requested for it.  With equal fidelity they adhered to the fixed principle of acquiring no direct transmarine possessions.  After the Roman fleet had made an expedition to Crete and had accomplished the release of the Romans sold thither into slavery, the fleet and land army left Asia towards the end of the summer of 566; on which occasion the land army, which again marched through Thrace, in consequence of the negligence of the general suffered greatly on the route from the attacks of the barbarians.  The Romans brought nothing home from the east but honour and gold, both of which were already at this period usually conjoined in the practical shape assumed by the address of thanks—­the golden chaplet.

Settlement of Greece
Conflicts and Peace with the Aetolians

European Greece also had been agitated by this Asiatic war, and needed reorganization.  The Aetolians, who had not yet learned to reconcile themselves to their insignificance, had, after the armistice concluded with Scipio in the spring of 564, rendered intercourse between Greece and Italy difficult and unsafe by means of their Cephallenian corsairs; and not only so, but even perhaps while the armistice yet lasted, they, deceived by false reports as to the state of things in Asia, had the folly to place Amynander once more on his Athamanian throne, and to carry on a desultory warfare with Philip in the districts occupied by him on the borders of Aetolia and Thessaly, in the course of which Philip suffered several discomfitures.  After this, as a matter of course, Rome replied to their request for peace by the landing of the consul Marcus Fulvius Nobilior.  He arrived among the legions in the spring of 565, and after fifteen days’ siege gained possession of Ambracia by a capitulation honourable for the garrison; while simultaneously the Macedonians, Illyrians, Epirots, Acarnanians, and Achaeans fell upon the Aetolians.  There was no such thing as resistance in the strict sense; after repeated entreaties of the Aetolians for peace the