Ch. III.iii: The Greek City-States
The first Roman war with Macedonia ended in 266 BC and brought most of that kingdom's heartland under Roman control. By defeating Philip IV and capturing the homeland of Alexander the Great, Rome staked its claim as the next great world empire and the heir of Alexander's military legacy. Rome's Pontifex Maximus, Postumus Cornelius Scipio, hailed the victory as a divine omen, signaling that the Hellenic gods had chosen Rome over Greece and blessed the Roman mission to conquer the region. With the gods' favor, he insisted, Rome was to conquer all of Greece.
With the Kingdom of Macedon under its control, the next step was for Rome to campaign south to subjugate the great Greek city-states, homes of ancient democracies and great philosophers. In doing so, Rome could claim all of Greece's legacy for its own. In 233 BC, just three years after the conclusion of the Macedonian campaign, the Consuls Volesus Fabius Victor and Tiberius Claudius Corvus ordered Rome to war.
Southern Greece was at the time divided between two principal leagues of city-states organized roughly along geographical boundaries. In the north, Archon Aphrodisios Alexarchides of Aetolia led the eponymous Aetolian League, which included Amphissa, Boeotia, Elatea, Thebes, Lepreon, Dyme, and Delphi. Southern Greece, meanwhile, was aligned under the Spartan League headed by Basileus Areus I Agiad, and included Azania, Heraia, Tegea, Messenia, and Troizen.
The Aetolian League was Rome's first target, as it bordered both Roman Epirus and Macedonia and thus provided an easy target for an attack on multiple fronts. After the Roman fleet blockaded the straits between the north and south, Roman soldiers flooded down into the city-states, besieging and attacking many of Greece's most prominent cities all at once. These cities were mostly well-defended and heavily fortified; while the Greeks could not oppose the Romans in the field, they did make their sieges long, costly, and difficult.
But fortified as they were, those cities could only hold out for so long, and the Aetolian League was defeated in just two years. Rome took possession of most of the league, extending its reach as far as Delphi in the east and Achaea in the south, seizing the great Temple of Zeus at Olympia in the process. Emboldened by a second victory in Greece, the Romans then set their legions loose against the Spartan League a short two years later. This campaign, however, would not prove as simple as the one in the north.
The first phase of the war proceed well enough, and saw Azania and Heraia subdued with little incident, owing to their small armies and limited defenses. However, while his northern allies were falling to Roman sieges, the Spartan Basileus was preparing his warriors to make a stand against their Roman foes. He gathered a force of nearly 10,000 elite Spartan warriors and took them north, prepared to meet the approaching Romans.
Postumus Cornelius Scipio was elected Consul early in the war, and took command of the Roman legions marching their way through Greece. Postumus was a great and charismatic priest, but he lacked any understanding of military procedure or tactics. After the fall of Heraia, his advisors suggested using Rome's large navy to assault Sparta from the south, bringing legions ashore and marching on multiple cities at once. But Postumus rejected this advice, and instead led his men on a march south through the narrow mountain pass to the Spartan border city of Megalopolis.
There, the 65 year-old Spartan Basileus, Areus I Agiad, had dug his men into the pass to make a stand against the Romans. Outnumbered three-to-one by Roman legionaries, the Spartans blocked the entire pass, daring the Romans to either turn back or overcome the phalanx in a straight-ahead clash. Postumus, believing in his numerical superiority, ordered his men into a head-on charge. More than 30,000 Romans went on the attack, soon joined by another 12,000 coming from the north to reinforce them. Shoulder-to-shoulder, the Spartan warriors held their phalanx and fought viciously as waves of legionaries crashed against their shields and spears. For days, the Romans assaulted the Spartan position, and each night fewer returned to camp, bloody bodies littering the mountain pass at the feet of the Spartans. Appius Claudius Centho, that term's Co-Consul, begged Postumus to withdraw and flank the Spartans from the south by sea, but ego would not allow Postumus to give up his assault. He continued to order his men forward, refusing to permit Areus the satisfaction of repelling the Roman advance.
Ultimately, as fatigue set in, the weight of Rome's numerical superiority gradually wore the Spartans down, and the pass did fall, allowing the legions to advance into Megalopolis and Sparta beyond. Almost 4,500 Spartans perished in the fight, but they allowed Rome its victory only at a great cost of human life. Nearly one quarter of the Roman legionaries present at the battle died -- just shy of 9,000 men, twice as many as the Spartans had lost.
The victory in the pass at Megalopolis was the turning point of the war and led to Rome's ultimate victory against the Spartan League, but such a staggering loss of life in what had been considered a simple campaign left an embarrassing stain on Postumus' legacy. While he would be recognized by history as the man who conquered Sparta, he would also be dogged by the humiliation of his costly victory for the rest of his life. Still, the campaign broke the Spartan league and brought most of southern Greece under Roman occupation, continuing a string of seemingly unstoppable victories by the ever-expanding republic.
With both the Spartan and Aetolian Leagues defeated, Rome spent the next several years subduing what remained of the independent Greek states. Messenia, Megara, Thebes, Eretria, and Boeotia fell to Rome, and by 250 BC the Romans were overrunning the last Greek provinces still ruled by Macedonia.
By the end of 246 BC, Rome had successfully occupied the entire Greek mainland, with just one exception. Macedonia had been expelled into Asia Minor and all of the mainland city-states had been subjugated, but portions of Achaea and Arcadia remained under the protection of a kingdom far more powerful and imposing than Macedonia had ever been: the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt.
Under Kleopatra I Lagis, the kingdom had built up a sizable navy and ruled over a far-reaching kingdom, having taken land in Canaan and Syria from the collapsing Antigonid Kingdom, as well as having pushed southward against Kush and Blemmia. In order to fully secure the Greek Peninsula, Rome would have to go toe-to-toe with the strongest remaining Diadochi kingdom -- which would undoubtedly pose Rome's stiffest challenge yet in its journey for Mediterranean dominance.
The first Roman war with Macedonia ended in 266 BC and brought most of that kingdom's heartland under Roman control. By defeating Philip IV and capturing the homeland of Alexander the Great, Rome staked its claim as the next great world empire and the heir of Alexander's military legacy. Rome's Pontifex Maximus, Postumus Cornelius Scipio, hailed the victory as a divine omen, signaling that the Hellenic gods had chosen Rome over Greece and blessed the Roman mission to conquer the region. With the gods' favor, he insisted, Rome was to conquer all of Greece.
With the Kingdom of Macedon under its control, the next step was for Rome to campaign south to subjugate the great Greek city-states, homes of ancient democracies and great philosophers. In doing so, Rome could claim all of Greece's legacy for its own. In 233 BC, just three years after the conclusion of the Macedonian campaign, the Consuls Volesus Fabius Victor and Tiberius Claudius Corvus ordered Rome to war.
Southern Greece was at the time divided between two principal leagues of city-states organized roughly along geographical boundaries. In the north, Archon Aphrodisios Alexarchides of Aetolia led the eponymous Aetolian League, which included Amphissa, Boeotia, Elatea, Thebes, Lepreon, Dyme, and Delphi. Southern Greece, meanwhile, was aligned under the Spartan League headed by Basileus Areus I Agiad, and included Azania, Heraia, Tegea, Messenia, and Troizen.
The Aetolian League was Rome's first target, as it bordered both Roman Epirus and Macedonia and thus provided an easy target for an attack on multiple fronts. After the Roman fleet blockaded the straits between the north and south, Roman soldiers flooded down into the city-states, besieging and attacking many of Greece's most prominent cities all at once. These cities were mostly well-defended and heavily fortified; while the Greeks could not oppose the Romans in the field, they did make their sieges long, costly, and difficult.
But fortified as they were, those cities could only hold out for so long, and the Aetolian League was defeated in just two years. Rome took possession of most of the league, extending its reach as far as Delphi in the east and Achaea in the south, seizing the great Temple of Zeus at Olympia in the process. Emboldened by a second victory in Greece, the Romans then set their legions loose against the Spartan League a short two years later. This campaign, however, would not prove as simple as the one in the north.
The first phase of the war proceed well enough, and saw Azania and Heraia subdued with little incident, owing to their small armies and limited defenses. However, while his northern allies were falling to Roman sieges, the Spartan Basileus was preparing his warriors to make a stand against their Roman foes. He gathered a force of nearly 10,000 elite Spartan warriors and took them north, prepared to meet the approaching Romans.
Postumus Cornelius Scipio was elected Consul early in the war, and took command of the Roman legions marching their way through Greece. Postumus was a great and charismatic priest, but he lacked any understanding of military procedure or tactics. After the fall of Heraia, his advisors suggested using Rome's large navy to assault Sparta from the south, bringing legions ashore and marching on multiple cities at once. But Postumus rejected this advice, and instead led his men on a march south through the narrow mountain pass to the Spartan border city of Megalopolis.
There, the 65 year-old Spartan Basileus, Areus I Agiad, had dug his men into the pass to make a stand against the Romans. Outnumbered three-to-one by Roman legionaries, the Spartans blocked the entire pass, daring the Romans to either turn back or overcome the phalanx in a straight-ahead clash. Postumus, believing in his numerical superiority, ordered his men into a head-on charge. More than 30,000 Romans went on the attack, soon joined by another 12,000 coming from the north to reinforce them. Shoulder-to-shoulder, the Spartan warriors held their phalanx and fought viciously as waves of legionaries crashed against their shields and spears. For days, the Romans assaulted the Spartan position, and each night fewer returned to camp, bloody bodies littering the mountain pass at the feet of the Spartans. Appius Claudius Centho, that term's Co-Consul, begged Postumus to withdraw and flank the Spartans from the south by sea, but ego would not allow Postumus to give up his assault. He continued to order his men forward, refusing to permit Areus the satisfaction of repelling the Roman advance.
Ultimately, as fatigue set in, the weight of Rome's numerical superiority gradually wore the Spartans down, and the pass did fall, allowing the legions to advance into Megalopolis and Sparta beyond. Almost 4,500 Spartans perished in the fight, but they allowed Rome its victory only at a great cost of human life. Nearly one quarter of the Roman legionaries present at the battle died -- just shy of 9,000 men, twice as many as the Spartans had lost.
The victory in the pass at Megalopolis was the turning point of the war and led to Rome's ultimate victory against the Spartan League, but such a staggering loss of life in what had been considered a simple campaign left an embarrassing stain on Postumus' legacy. While he would be recognized by history as the man who conquered Sparta, he would also be dogged by the humiliation of his costly victory for the rest of his life. Still, the campaign broke the Spartan league and brought most of southern Greece under Roman occupation, continuing a string of seemingly unstoppable victories by the ever-expanding republic.
With both the Spartan and Aetolian Leagues defeated, Rome spent the next several years subduing what remained of the independent Greek states. Messenia, Megara, Thebes, Eretria, and Boeotia fell to Rome, and by 250 BC the Romans were overrunning the last Greek provinces still ruled by Macedonia.
By the end of 246 BC, Rome had successfully occupied the entire Greek mainland, with just one exception. Macedonia had been expelled into Asia Minor and all of the mainland city-states had been subjugated, but portions of Achaea and Arcadia remained under the protection of a kingdom far more powerful and imposing than Macedonia had ever been: the Ptolemaic Kingdom of Egypt.
Under Kleopatra I Lagis, the kingdom had built up a sizable navy and ruled over a far-reaching kingdom, having taken land in Canaan and Syria from the collapsing Antigonid Kingdom, as well as having pushed southward against Kush and Blemmia. In order to fully secure the Greek Peninsula, Rome would have to go toe-to-toe with the strongest remaining Diadochi kingdom -- which would undoubtedly pose Rome's stiffest challenge yet in its journey for Mediterranean dominance.
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