How Rome Trounced the Greeks

A History of Mankind (184)

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The so-called Syrian War (192–188 BC) decided by the Battle of Magnesia had ended with Antiochus III greatly weakened, but still in control of much of his Asiatic empire, which he passed on to his descendants.

The brave and shrewd Hannibal wasn’t available to give those any advice. The greatest enemy Rome ever had and perhaps the most brilliant military commander of all time didn’t live much longer: he bounced from one anti-Roman court to another until he probably killed himself, in murky circumstances, to avoid Roman capture sometime between 183 and 181 BC.

None of this was lost on the Greeks. Lampsacus, a polis on the Asiatic side of the Hellespont, sent a citizen named Hegesias as ambassador and lobbyist with the Romans, and a decree later published in honor of his zealous efforts indicates just how hard a small-time Greek ambassador had to work to even find an important Roman to talk to.

After Lampsacus contacted the grandiose Flamininus in Greece, the decree goes, all he managed was to talk to a quaestor – an auditor/treasurer, the lowest ranking position in the cursus honorum; Hegesias later took a long and dangerous sea journey to Massilia so that these fellow Hellenes would help Lampsacus with an introduction to the Roman senate; only then he travelled to Rome.