'Second', and so on). There was no war with Egypt, the third of the great kingdoms that had emerged
after Alexander's death, but she too almost became a protectorate, as was dramatically shown when a
Roman envoy drew a circle with his staff around the person of the invading Antiochus IV and told him
to order retreat before he stepped out of it. It is up to this point, from 220 B.C., that Polybius' fifty-three
years run. The fact that Rome had annexed little territory did not make him doubt that she had an
Empire; the Greeks were used to seeing these based on alliances or leagues.
Gold Coin (Stater) Of T. Quinctius Flamininus, issued after the Roman general had defeated Philip V of
Macedon at Cynoscephalae in 197 B.C. On the obverse the head of Flamininus, rendered in romantic
Hellenistic manner; on the reverse a figure of Victory. The occasion of the issue was probably the
famous proclamation of 'freedom' for Greece in 196.
Polybius lived on to recount the anti-Roman movements in Macedon and Greece in 148, which were
brutally put down, the city of Corinth being utterly destroyed. Macedon became a province and its
governor was made responsible for Greece. Almost simultaneously Carthage, harassed by Rome's ally
the King of Numidia, revolted, and was wiped from the face of the earth by the younger Scipio; her
territory became the province of Africa. In 133 the last king of Pergamum died without a legitimate heir,
leaving his kingdom to Rome (his motives are to some extent disputed), and part of it became the
province of Asia. The need to safeguard the route to Spain, and obligations to Rome's old ally Massilia,
led to fighting in Transalpine Gaul, and finally the establishment of a province in the area still called
Provence.