Thus the cities lost their people.  At the same time families became smaller, many men preferring not to marry or raise children, others having but one or two.  “Is not this,” says Polybius, “the root of the evil, that of these two children war or sickness removes one, then the home becomes deserted and the city enfeebled?” A time came when there were no longer enough citizens in the towns to resist a conqueror.

THE ROMAN CONQUEST

=The Greek Leagues.=—­The most discerning of the Greeks commenced to see the danger during the second war of Rome with Carthage.  In an assembly held at Naupactus in 207 B.C. a Greek orator said, “Turn your eyes to the Occident; the Romans and Carthaginians are disputing something else than the possession of Italy.  A cloud is forming on that coast, it increases, and impends over Greece."[103]

The Greek cities at this time grouped themselves in two leagues hostile to each other.  Two little peoples, the AEtolians and Achaeans, had the direction of them; they commanded the armies and determined on peace and war, just as Athens and Sparta once did.  Each league supported in the Greek states one of the two political parties—­the AEtolian League the democratic, the Achaean League[104] the oligarchical.

=The Roman Allies.=—­Neither of the two leagues was strong enough to unite all the Greek states.  The Romans then appeared.  Philip, the king of Macedon (197), and later Antiochus,[105] the king of Syria (193-169), made war on them.  Both were beaten.  Rome destroyed their armies and made them surrender their fleets.

Perseus, the new king of Macedon, was conquered, made prisoner, and his kingdom overthrown (167).[106] The Greeks made no effort to unite for the common defence; rich and poor persisted in their strife, and each hated the other more than the foreigner.  The democratic party allied itself with Macedon, the oligarchical party called in the Romans.[107] While the Theban democrats were fighting in the army of Philip, the Theban oligarchs opened the town to the Roman general.  At Rhodes all were condemned to death who had acted or spoken against Rome.  Even among the Achaeans, Callicrates, a partisan of the Romans, prepared a list of a thousand citizens whom he accused of having been favorable to Perseus; these suspects were sent to Rome where they were held twenty years without trial.

=The Last Fight.=—­The Romans were not at first introduced as enemies.  In 197 the consul Flamininus, after conquering the king of Macedon, betook himself to the Isthmus of Corinth and before the Greeks assembled to celebrate the games, proclaimed that “all the Greek peoples were free.”  The crowd in transports of joy approached Flamininus to thank him; they wished to salute their liberator, see his form, touch his hand; crowns and garlands were cast upon him.  The pressure upon him was so great that he was nearly suffocated.