Macedonian Wars
; Macedonian Wars |
The Macedonian Wars were a series of conflicts fought by the Roman Republic and its Greek allies in the eastern Mediterranean against several different major Greek kingdoms. They resulted in Roman control or influence over Greece and the rest of the eastern Mediterranean basin, in addition to their hegemony in the western Mediterranean after the Punic Wars. Traditionally, the "Macedonian Wars" include the four wars with Macedonia, in addition to one war with the Seleucid Empire, and a final minor war with the Achaean League. The most significant war was fought with the Seleucid Empire, and both this and the wars with Macedonia effectively marked the end of these empires as major world powers, even though neither of them led immediately to overt Roman domination. Four separate wars were fought against the weaker power, Macedonia, due to its geographic proximity to Rome, though the last two of these wars were against haphazard insurrections rather than powerful armies. Roman influence gradually dissolved Macedonian independence and digested it into what was becoming a leading empire. The outcome of the war with the now-deteriorating Seleucid Empire was ultimately fatal to it as well, though the growing influence of Parthia and Pontus prevented any additional conflicts between it and Rome.
From the close of the Macedonian Wars until the early Roman Empire, the eastern Mediterranean remained an ever shifting network of polities with varying levels of independence from, dependence on, or outright military control by, Rome. According to Polybius, who sought to trace how Rome came to dominate the Greek east in less than a century, Rome's wars with Greece were set in motion after several Greek city-states sought Roman protection against the Macedonian Kingdom and Seleucid Empire in the face of a destabilizing situation created by the weakening of Ptolemaic Egypt.
In contrast to the west, the Greek east had been dominated by major empires for centuries, and Roman influence and alliance-seeking led to wars with these empires that further weakened them and therefore created an unstable power vacuum that only Rome was capable of pacifying. This had some important similarities to what had occurred in Italy centuries earlier, but was this time on a continental scale. Historians see the growing Roman influence over the east, as with the west, not as a matter of intentional empire-building, but constant crisis management narrowly focused on accomplishing short-term goals within a highly unstable, unpredictable, and inter-dependent network of alliances and dependencies. With some major exceptions of outright military rule, the eastern Mediterranean world remained an alliance of independent city-states and kingdoms until it transitioned into the Roman Empire. It wasn't until the time of the Roman Empire that the eastern Mediterranean, along with the entire Roman world, was organized into provinces under explicit Roman control.
First Macedonian War (214 to 205 BC)
During the Second Punic War, Philip V of Macedon allied himself with Hannibal. Fearing possible reinforcement of Hannibal by Macedon, the senate dispatched Marcus Valerius Laevinus with forces across the Adriatic. Roman maniples did little more than skirmish with Macedonian forces and seize minor territory along the Adriatic coastline in order to "combat piracy". Rome's interest was not in conquest, but in keeping Macedon busy while Rome was fighting Hannibal. The war ended indecisively in 205 BC with the Treaty of Phoenice. While a minor conflict, it opened the way for Roman military intervention in Macedon. This conflict, though fought between Rome and Macedon, was largely independent of the Roman-Macedon wars that followed in the next century.Second Macedonian War (200 to 196 BC)
The past century had seen the Greek world dominated by the three primary successor kingdoms of Alexander the Great's empire: Ptolemaic kingdom, Antigonid Macedon and the Seleucid Empire. The imperial ambitions of the Seleucids after 230 BC were particularly destabilizing. The Seleucids set out to conquer Egypt, and Ptolemies responded with a major mobilization campaign. This campaign led to military victory against Seleucid incursions, but in 205 BC when Ptolemy IV was succeeded by the five-year-old Ptolemy V, revolts broke out in Egypt itself leading to seccession of Upper Egypt. Seeing that all of the Ptolemaic realm could now be conquered easily, the Macedonians and Seleucids forged an alliance to conquer and divide the Ptolemaic empire between themselves.This pact represented the most significant threat to the century-old political order that had kept the Greek world in relative stability, and in particular represented a major threat to the smaller Greek kingdoms which had remained independent. As Macedonia and the Seleucid Empire were the source of the threat, and Egypt was in turmoil, the minor Greek states turned to Rome for assistance. This diplomatic development represented a major change, as the Greeks had recently shown little more than contempt towards Rome, and Rome little more than apathy towards Greece. Ambassadors from Pergamon and Rhodes brought evidence before the Roman Senate that Philip V of Macedon and Antiochus III of the Seleucid Empire had signed the non-aggression pact. Although it is unclear what was the exact nature of this treaty and the exact Roman reason for getting involved despite decades of apathy towards Greece, the Greek delegation was successful in eliciting Roman aid. Initially, Rome did not intend to fight a war against Macedon, but rather to intervene on their behalf diplomatically.
Rome gave Philip an ultimatum that he must cease in his campaigns against Rome's new Greek allies. Doubting Rome's strength Philip ignored the request, which surprised the Romans. Believing their honor and reputation on the line, Rome escalated the conflict by sending an army of Romans and Greek allies to force the issue, beginning the Second Macedonian War. Surprisingly, Philip's army buckled under the pressure from the Roman-Greek army. Roman troops led by then consul Titus Quinctius Flamininus reached the plain of Thessaly by 198 BC. In 197 BC the Romans decisively defeated Philip at the Battle of Cynoscephalae, and he ordered for peace. In the resulting Treaty of Tempea, Philip V was forbidden from interfering with affairs outside his borders, and was required to relinquish his recent Greek conquests. At the Olympiad in 196 BC Rome proclaimed the "Freedom of the Greeks", which constituted Rome's new policy towards Greece. This was that Greece was now stable and Rome could completely remove itself from Greek affairs without risking more instability. It seemed that Rome had no further interest in the region, as they withdrew all military forces without even attempting to consolidate any gains, and subsequently returned to their prior apathy even when their Greek allies ignored later Roman requests.