Second Macedonian-Roman War

2. Macedonian-Roman War

date	Autumn 200 BC Chr. - Winter 197/6 BC Chr.
place	Balkan Peninsula
Casus Belli	Expansion of the Kingdom of Macedonia to the possessions of the Hellenistic states in mainland Greece, on the Bosporus and in Asia Minor.
output	Victory of a coalition of Hellenistic States under the leadership of the Roman Republic over the Macedonian Kingdom under the reign of Felipe V .
Territorial changes	The Kingdom of Macedonia has to cede all conquered areas and cities and the Macedonian national territory is reduced to the approximate limits at the time of Philip II .
Peace treaty	Winter 197/6 BC In Rome between the coalition under Roman leadership and the Kingdom of Macedonia.

Parties to the conflict
Roman Republic Pergamene Empire Rhodes Achaean League Aetolian League Boeotian League Athens	Kingdom of Macedonia

The Second Macedonian-Roman War was a clash between King Philip V of Macedon and the Roman Empire . The fighting took place between 200 and 197 BC. Instead of.

Prehistory and outbreak of the war

prehistory

The first confrontation between Rome and Macedonia occurred at the time of the Second Punic War in the First Macedonian-Roman War . After the Roman defeats made it look as if Carthage would emerge victorious from the war, Philip turned his interest from Greece to the Illyrian coast. With a Macedonian fleet he began to threaten the Illyrian coast, was able to seize some properties and concluded an alliance with Hannibal. After changeful alliances and battles in the Adriatic Sea as well as in Greece it came in 205 BC. In the peace of Phoinike to an end of the fighting.

Events leading up to the outbreak of war

Rome had not forgotten the fact that Philip V of Macedonia took part in Carthage's favor. Philip then had with the Seleucid king Antiochus III. 203/2 concluded a "robbery treaty" in which they the territory of the 205/4 BC. The death of King Ptolemy IV. Philopator and the resulting minority government of Ptolemy V. Epiphanes divided politically weakened Ptolemies among themselves.

While Antiochus III. set about annexing the Syrian territories of the Ptolemaic Empire and finally southern Syria with the battle of the Jordan Springs in 200 BC. B.C. was able to incorporate his empire, Philip expanded at high speed to the east into the Aegean region. At the beginning the Macedonians achieved several successes on Hellespont and Propontis and took the cities of Lysimacheia , Sestos and Perinth as well as Chios . After these initial successes, however, the Macedonian advance stalled. In response to the eastward Macedonian expansion, the Pergamene Empire, the Rhodians, and the cities of Kyzikos and Byzantion had formed a coalition against Philip and suffered heavy losses to the Macedonian Navy in the battle of Chios in 201 But the Macedonian king did not let these setbacks dissuade him from his plans of conquest. In response to the coalition's resistance, he besieged Pergamon in vain and, after the siege was broken, devastated the Pergamene area and the large temples. He then moved on to Caria with the plan to annex the Rhodian and Ptolemaic areas there.

In the autumn of 201 BC BC Pergamon and Rhodes , after realizing, due to Philip's policy of annexation, that their coalition would not withstand the Macedonian expansion for long, asked Rome for help. The Central Powers Pergamon and Rhodes feared, rightly, that they would not be able to assert themselves in the face of these opponents without outside help.

After the request for help had arrived, in the spring of 200 BC In Rome the Macedonia expert Publius Sulpicius Galba Maximus was elected consul in Rome . He was able to persuade the population, still tired from the Second Punic War, to accept the declaration in a second vote after they had previously rejected a declaration of war on Philip in the Centuria Assembly . As a result, a Senate Commission was sent to Egypt to ensure the neutrality of the Ptolemies, with whom Rome had been with since 273 BC. BC, i.e. since the time of Ptolemy II , was in an Amicitia relationship. An embassy was also sent to Greece to exert diplomatic pressure on Philip. This met only a Macedonian army besieging Athens under the leadership of the Macedonian general Nikanor, which could be moved to withdraw. Athens also joined the ranks of Philip's opponents.

In the summer of the same year Philip, who had just besieged Abydos , was visited by the Roman ambassador Marcus Aemilius Lepidus , who had traveled from Rhodes . The latter brought before the king the now stricter Roman demands and presented Philip with an ultimatum. Rome forbade him to wage war in Greece, demanded the surrender of his conquests and submission to a Rhodian-Pergamene court of arbitration. Philip rejected the demands as undue interference in his sphere of power and broke the Roman ultimatum by bloodily conquering Abydos. The embassy, to which Aemilius Lepidus belonged, then moved over Syria, where the Fifth Syrian War was just in full swing, without any with Antiochus III. to meet, on to Egypt. There Lepidus assumed a kind of "guardianship" over the Ptolemaic child king and Ptolemaic Egypt.

The Diadochian empires before the beginning of the fighting with Rome around 200 BC Chr.

Rome's reasons for war

The motives of Rome for the Second Macedonian-Roman War were first of all to make up for the bad impression made against the Greeks from the last war, and secondly to prevent Macedonia from gaining power, among other things at the expense of the Ptolemaic Empire on the basis of the "robbery treaty", third, in fear of a large enemy coalition similar to the Second Punic War, and fourth, in taking revenge for Philip's alliance with Hannibal.

Course of war

In the autumn of 200 BC Sulpicius Galba landed with two legions in the Greek Apollonia and started the war. The troops advanced towards Macedonia. Despite the entry of the Aitolians into the war against Philip in 199 BC. BC and the capture of Chalkis could initially, even under the new commander of the year 199 BC. BC, Publius Villius Tappulus , little successes are recorded. The Romans were held in place by the Macedonian barriers to the north of Epirus and Philip continued to make military advances. After the legions were reinforced by troops from Africa, mutinies even broke out.

It was not until the thirty-year-old Roman general Titus Quinctius Flamininus took over command in 198 BC. BC led to an increasing improvement in the course of the war from the Roman point of view. The fluent Greek-speaking Flamininus and his troops bypassed the Macedonian barriers on the Aoos - near today's Këlcyra - and captured them. Thereupon he led a disciplined advance of the Roman troops through to Thessaly. The diplomatic work of the general led to a turn in the Greek public in favor of Rome, so that in 198 the Achaeans also followed on the side of the Roman coalition. The Achaeans had previously been Philip's most important allies, but could no longer see any further use in the alliance and were also targeting the city of Corinth , which belonged to Philip . In addition, the Pergamene ruler Attalus I personally campaigned for the coalition against Macedonia in the Federal Assembly of the Boeotian League, where he later succumbed to a stroke, and was thus able to pull the Boeotians to the Roman side. So Flamininus managed to get most of the Greeks on the Roman side before the decisive battle against the Macedonian troops.

First attempts at rapprochement and peace negotiations between the two warring parties in Rome in the winter of 198/7 BC. BC failed because of the steadily increasing demands of the Greek states allied against Macedonia and the desire of Flamininus for a spectacular end to the war after his mandate had been extended. After the failure of the first negotiations, Flamininus pushed the Roman troops further and conquered the Boeotian Thebes . The final decision of the war was made in the early summer of 197 BC. BC in the Thessalian plain in the battle of Kynoskephalai west of the city of Pherai , where the Macedonian phalanx fighting with sarissi suffered a crushing defeat against the legions armed with the "Spanish sword" (gladius) fighting in loose formation .

After the defeat of Macedonia, it was now important for Flamininus to successfully conclude the peace negotiations, which first took place in the Tempe Valley , as quickly as possible. Because Antiochus III. had begun an offensive by sea and land against western Asia Minor during the fighting in Macedonia, and Rome was not yet clear about Antiochus' longer-term goals. But despite the precarious situation, controversies arose during the negotiations over the question of how to deal with the cities and landscapes that Philip had ceded, what political order and what borders they should be preserved. In addition, the Aetolians demanded that Macedonia be completely removed from the political map of the Balkan Peninsula. However, the action against Macedonia called for by the Aetolians was not in the Roman sense. The Romans saw the future of Macedonia more in a territorially restricted buffer state against the tribes of the north than in political elimination. A peace agreement, which ended the Macedonian hegemony over Greece, was not finally reached until 197/6 BC. In Rome.

The peace treaty initially regulated dealings with Macedonia, war compensation and constitutional dealings between Rome and Macedonia. The question of how to deal with the Liberated Areas had still not been sufficiently clarified. So the public, especially the Aitolian propaganda, came to the conviction that the formerly Macedonian occupied territories would only change from Macedonian to Roman possession. So there would be no "real freedom" of the Greeks. At the opening of the Istmic Games , Flamininus was finally able to allay these fears by declaring freedom in the Greek cities and regions , in which a herald listed all the liberated peoples.

The Greek gratitude was then shown in the honor of Flamininus as Sotér ( old Greek Σοτέρ “savior”) and as Prómachos ( old Greek Πρόμαχος “champion”). In addition, the general was celebrated in a cultic form and the Greeks coined gold staters with his portrait. The last Roman legion moved in 194 BC. BC, under the leadership of Flamininus' brother Lucius from Greece.

Impact of the war

Macedonia

Philip lost the "three fetters of Greece" Demetrias , Eretria and Corinth as well as the rule over Thessaly . He also had to give up his holdings in Asia Minor and Europe outside Macedonia, and the Macedonian territory was reduced to the approximate limits at the time of Philip II . In addition, he had to hand over his fleet to six ships, raise compensation of 1,000 talents of silver within ten years and provide military support to the Romans. He had to send his son Demetrios to Rome as a political hostage.

The Greek states

Flamininus declared at the Isthmian Games in 196 BC The freedom of the Greek states. The Greeks then celebrated Rome as their savior and in Smyrna the city of Rome (urbs Roma) was consecrated the first temple cult. The victorious general Titus Quinctius Flamininus was also honored with elements and in the form of the Hellenistic ruler cult. Another consequence of the war and the liberation of the Greek states was that the individual interests of the Greek states, which had previously been concentrated externally or against Macedonia, now broke through and led to increased tensions in the Greek mother country. This is illustrated by the example of 195 BC. To see Argos annexed by the Spartan tyrant Nabis , which had to be liberated by Roman troops.

Rome

By defeating Macedonia, Rome created a political power vacuum in Greece. The remaining Hellenistic great power, the Seleucid empire Antiochus III. , then tried to win this supposedly empty space for himself and to integrate it into his own sphere of influence. Due to the previous engagement in Greece, through which Rome itself had become a power factor in the Hellenistic East, Rome had to deal with the newly appeared rival. This confrontation eventually culminated in the Roman-Syrian War .

swell

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literature

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