Introduction
The settlement imposed upon Philip V after the end of the Second Macedonian War by T. Quinctius Flamininus significantly reduced the prestige and status of the Antigonid kingdom in the eastern Mediterranean. Although Philip retained his throne, his freedom of action was severely curtailed: he was effectively confined to the ancient boundaries of his kingdom. The Thessalians and other northern Greek states, influence among whom and authority over whom had long been a concern for the Antigonid kings as it had been for the Argead kings before them,Footnote 1 were declared free from Philip V’s authority and garrisons. Philip’s military activity was limited to actions in the north and north-west, against Thracian and Dardanian tribes. Collectively, this meant that Philip could no longer enact his kingship through the display of his martial power on the Greek stage.Footnote 2 The diminishment of his status was further asserted on the international stage by his obligation to pay Rome an annual indemnity and by the surrender of his younger son, Demetrius, as a hostage to Rome.Footnote 3 Philip was, and undoubtedly felt himself to be, constrained.
The terms of Flamininus’ settlement were developed in consultation with Rome’s Greek allies and reflected, to a point, the interests and practices of the Greeks.Footnote 4 Flamininus endorsed arbitration as the appropriate method of resolving disputes between neighbouring states. Arbitration had a long history among the Greeks before the Second Macedonian War, and scholars generally agree that Rome adopted arbitration from the Greek world.Footnote 5 Rome’s use of arbitration is in modern scholarship tied closely to issues of Roman imperialism and conquest, but Kaščeev notes that Rome may have initially misunderstood the Greek expectations and practices of arbitration. Moreover, he stresses that Rome does not often appear as an arbitrator in our surviving evidence, making it dangerous to attribute broad-reaching intentions to those occasions when Rome did involve itself (or allowed itself to be involved) in arbitration between Greek states.Footnote 6 In this article, I offer a reconsideration of Rome’s use of arbitration in Philip V’s disputes with the Thessalians, Perrhaebians, and Pergamum in the mid-180s. I argue that Rome, when called upon by the Greeks, used arbitration as a diplomatic tool not to orchestrate or respond to imminent crises but to encourage its allies and amici to manage relations among themselves without the need for repeated Roman interference, to reiterate, that is, the broad strokes of Flamininus’ settlement after the Second Macedonian War.
That Rome did have a long-term goal of reducing Macedonia in its arbitrations, though, is the position of our ancient sources and contemporary readings of those sources. Moreover, the prevalence of interstate conflict in the ancient Mediterranean has traditionally left little room for detailed consideration of diplomacy between states independent of the beginnings and endings of wars.Footnote 7 Diplomacy, and particularly Roman diplomacy, is taken to have served martial purposes. Eckstein has characterized it as a ‘primitive’ aspect of state interaction, undertaken often as a last resort when relations between states had already begun to break down and war had become virtually inevitable.Footnote 8 Scholars have considered the senatorial processes and fetial rituals that provided diplomatic preliminaries to declarations of war, but rarely the ways in which diplomacy sought to avoid conflict or maintain relations with foreign states.Footnote 9 Arbitration, in modern scholarship, is often seen in a similar light, as a means by which Rome could expand its authority without direct military intervention. Thus, we are told that Rome actively sought to be the arbitrator of all disputes in the Greek world;Footnote 10 that Rome consistently used arbitration to disadvantage Macedonia regardless of the details of the dispute which had elicited the request for arbitration;Footnote 11 that Rome was concerned to avoid offending its Greek allies and Eumenes of Pergamum, again regardless of the justice of the individual cases;Footnote 12 that Rome took a minimalistic approach, pacifying the disputants to maintain the appearance of fides.Footnote 13 Casella and Petraccia present arbitration as one of the more complex diplomatic tools by which Rome sought to maintain its hegemony.Footnote 14 Each of these interpretations places arbitration in service to the expansionistic goals attributed to Rome. Burton’s constructivist, amicitia-based model of Roman behaviour allows some scope for diplomacy beyond periods of crisis, but even here, diplomacy arises in the context of the broader question of Roman imperialism.Footnote 15 Although the diplomatic efforts of Hellenistic states, including Rome, have begun to receive more attention in their own right in the last two decades,Footnote 16 arbitration remains closely connected to Rome’s conflicts and martial activities, reducing it to an hierarchical tool for legitimising hegemonic power.Footnote 17
Arbitration, however, was an established Greek practice and came with expectations of the arbitrating state’s neutrality.Footnote 18 Had Rome blatantly used the process for its own purposes, ignoring the principle of neutrality, it is unclear why the Greek states would have continued to request Roman intervention when local mechanisms existed for dispute resolution.Footnote 19 The disputes between Philip V and his neighbours in the 180s offer an opportunity to consider Rome’s approach to arbitration independent of a looming war. When we consider these disputes within the context of Flamininus’ settlement, the specific complaints, and the eventual decisions of Roman commissioners, it becomes clear that Rome did not display a particular hostility towards or a clear bias against Philip. Instead, Rome took arbitration seriously, using it to maintain the international order established by Flamininus’ settlement (and agreed to by all the disputants) at the end of the Second Macedonian War.
Philip and Roman Hostility
The view that the Romans consistently decided against Philip and were determined to do so regardless of the nature of the dispute derives largely from Polybius’ careful and methodical characterisation of Philip. Nicholson argues that Polybius develops a contrast between Philip and Roman leaders in Greece, employing a Greek–barbarian dichotomy. As Polybius shifts Philip from the eromenos of the Greeks to a tyrannical threat to Greek freedom, the Macedonian king displays behaviour that is more and more barbarian-like; Rome, on the other hand, increasingly displays Greek-like behaviour. Polybius’ portrait of Philip is decidedly exaggerated and manipulated; however, in keeping with this artificial portrait, ‘Hellenic’ Rome had to appear to decide against ‘Barbaric’ Philip at every opportunity. The disputes of the mid-180s constitute one of the turning points in the historian’s characterisation of the Macedonian king, as he shifts Philip from a briefly positive figure in the years following the Second Macedonian War into a tragic figure whose reign devolves into tyranny and irrationality.Footnote 20 Polybius’ ‘Hellenic’ Rome naturally used arbitration to restrain ‘Barbaric’ Philip.
We may, however, challenge Polybius’ declaration that Rome used arbitration against Philip. That Rome turned arbitration to an imperialist agenda may also be challenged. Both views are inconsistent with ancient, and certainly Greek, expectations of arbitration. Rome did not impose itself as an arbitrator but instead responded to Greek initiatives, so that any imperialist agenda could only have been sporadically enacted. Moreover, when Greek states approached the Senate with requests for arbitration, they did so with their own assumptions about the process, perhaps the most important of which was the expectation of a neutral arbitrator.Footnote 21 Rome’s conception of foreign diplomacy in terms of fides and amicitia may have made neutrality in some arbitrations impossible,Footnote 22 but Philip was himself an amicus, as were his accusers in the disputes with which this article is concerned. Were Rome to have displayed a clearly biased stance against Philip’s efforts, or even a stance explicitly favouring one amicus over another, it would have called into question its authority to arbitrate in the first place and so the legitimacy of the eventual decision. At the very least, Rome had to preserve the appearance of impartiality in navigating the disputes between Philip and the Greeks if fides and amicitia were to have lasting value.
Philip, for his part, maintained the appearance of friendship with Rome and repeatedly showed himself ready to support Rome after Cynoscephalae. He provided 1,500 troops to Flamininus in the war against Nabis (Livy 34.25.10). He offered further support against Antiochus III (Livy 36.4.1–5), and when the Senate declined the latter offer, he campaigned alongside the praetor M. Tamphilus Baebius in the Aetolian War, supporting Roman efforts in Aetolia and Thessaly.Footnote 23 He contributed to the Scipios’ advance into Asia in 190 by constructing roads and bridges in Thrace (App. Syr. 23). In none of this was Philip simply ‘playing the dutiful ally of Rome’.Footnote 24 Polybius and Livy report that Cn. Cornelius, in 196, advised Philip to seek an alliance with Rome and that Philip declared an intent to do so (Polyb. 18.48.3–5; Livy 33.35.3–8). We do not hear that an alliance was formed, but even if it had been formed, Philip supported Rome against the Aetolians and Antiochus on an ad hoc basis, under the obligations of amicitia, not under the terms of an alliance.Footnote 25 Philip’s support was not a matter of ‘playing’ the ally, but of being an amicus.
For its part, Rome also acted in accordance with amicitia towards Philip. During the war with the Aetolians, M’. Acilius Glabrio (cos. 191) did prevent Philip from capturing Lamia, but Livy suggests that, in compensation, he permitted the Macedonian king ‘to make war on Aperantia and Amynander and to annex to his kingdom the cities which the Aetolians had taken from the Thessalians’ (Livy 39.23.10). Philip then advanced into Magnesia, recovered Demetrias, and extended his control in Thrace.Footnote 26 In 191, after settling the most recent dispute between Messene and the Achaean League, Flamininus criticised Glabrio for allowing Philip to rebuild his influence in central Greece, but he did not reverse Glabrio’s concessions to Philip (Livy 36.34.6–10; Plut. Flam. 15.4). Quite the opposite: Philip was rewarded for his services during the war against the Aetolians by the return (or the promise of the return) of his son Demetrius, held hostage in Rome since the end of the Second Macedonian War, and a remission of his outstanding indemnity.Footnote 27 By returning Demetrius and waiving the indemnity, Rome relinquished two of the most visible proofs of Philip’s inferiority: he was no longer obligated to deliver fifty talents per year to Rome, and his younger son was no longer a symbol of his loss in Rome to be seen by embassies from across the Mediterranean.Footnote 28 Through both indulgences, Rome displayed a degree of trust that Macedonia now had similar interests and asserted that the Antigonid king had become an object of less suspicion.Footnote 29 Furthermore, Philip retained control of Athamania, Aperantia, and Dolopia until 189, when he was driven out not by Rome but by Amynander and the Aetolians, a loss about which he complained to Rome. He could scarcely have done so if Rome disapproved of his occupation in the first place.Footnote 30
In all of this, Rome was treating Macedonia, not as a subordinate, but as an equally autonomous state whose interests were sufficiently aligned with its own. Flamininus’ refusal to destroy the kingdom of Macedonian as the Aetolians had requested at the end of the Second Macedonian War suggests that he, and Rome, recognised the continuing role of a strong Macedonia.Footnote 31 Philip, too, recognised this, and, while he might (and did) complain of Rome’s harsh words in the 180s,Footnote 32 he must also have realised that Rome was not inveterately opposed to his actions or inordinately concerned to reduce his status. At the same time, Philip was cognisant, as all Hellenistic kings had to be, of the importance of appearances. But appearances were in his favour: the Scipios had sought his support, Rome had forgiven his indemnity, and Demetrius had been returned. These were internationally visible demonstrations of Rome’s recognition of Philip as independent and autonomous. Even if the Greeks had seen, and desired to continue to see, Flamininus’ limitations on Philip’s martial activity as evidence of Roman hostility towards Macedonia, they cannot have remained unaware of the significance of Rome’s actions. If Philip could recognise the difference between Roman words and actions, the Greeks could too. They must have seen Rome and Philip acting on mutual obligations; they must have seen Rome’s gestures in recognition of Philip’s support.
Regardless of whether the Greek states preferred to see a lingering Roman hostility against Philip, Rome itself seems to have been concerned to ‘repay’ Philip for his support, thereby preventing Philip from gaining the upper hand in the amicitia.Footnote 33 Down to the mid-180s, Rome’s treatment of Philip suggests that the Senate agreed with the view ascribed to Flamininus at the end of the Second Macedonian War, namely that a strong Macedonia would be a protective buffer for the Greeks against the barbarians to the north. Flamininus’ settlement was sufficient for regulating interactions between amici who might come into conflict with one another, just as Scipio’s arrangements served as a guide for disputes between Carthage and Numidia after the Second Punic War.Footnote 34
Thessaly and Perrhaebia
Philip’s success in rebuilding Macedonian influence is evident in the series of Greek envoys who travelled to Rome in 186/5. The Thessalians, Athamanians, Perrhaebians, and Magnesians reported Philip’s efforts at their expense, alleging that the Macedonian king was wrongly occupying cities taken during the Aetolian War. A Thracian embassy, consisting of exiled citizens from Aenus and Maronea and supported by Eumenes of Pergamum, also arrived, alleging that Philip had driven many citizens into exile. Philip’s representatives argued that he was occupying regions to which his agreements with Glabrio and Rome entitled him (Livy 39.24.6–12; Polyb. 22.6.1–6).Footnote 35 If the Greeks, Eumenes, and the Thracians had previously understood the limitations imposed on Philip as proof of Roman hostility, they must have been disappointed by the immediate result, for Rome did not resolve the matter in their favour. Instead, the Senate dispatched an embassy consisting of Q. Caecilius Metellus, M. Baebius Tamphilus, and Ti. Claudius Nero to investigate the dispute. The commissioners were to hear the case of the northern Greeks at Tempe and that of the Thracians and Eumenes at Thessalonike (Livy 39.25.13–14; Polyb. 22.6.6). It is not obvious that the Senate desired that these commissioners should undermine Macedonian interests or that they should favour the Greeks; neither is it obvious that these commissioners sought to do so of their own accord. The decision to send a commission at all indicates a Roman desire to assess the situation and respond appropriately within the expectations of arbitration.
The question turned on traditional possession of the disputed towns. This was a standard approach in arbitrations of disputed territory.Footnote 36 Ager has suggested that Roman arbitrators were concerned with the possession of territory at the time of the state’s or states’ coming into amicitia with Rome.Footnote 37 Doing so amounted to a Roman recognition of pre-existing boundaries. After a war in which territory changed hands, that could prove difficult. In the case of the Second Macedonian War, Flamininus, Errington suggests, intended to establish lines that could be recognised as traditional; he was not concerned to delineate precise boundaries.Footnote 38 He created instead a general division which was used as a basis going forward.
At Tempe, the Thessalians, Perrhaebians, and Magnesians argued that, since their cities had been forced to join the Aetolians, they were not subject to Glabrio’s grant of those cities that had entered the war against Rome to Philip:
in controversiam autem veniebant Philippopolis Tricca Phaloria et Eurymenae et cetera circa eas oppida, utrum Thessalorum iuris cum essent, vi ademptae possessaeque ab Aetolis forent – nam Philippum Aetolis ademisse eas constabat – an Aetolica antiquitus ea oppida fuissent: ita enim Acilium regi concessisse, si Aetolorum fuissent, si voluntate non si vi atque armis coacti cum Aetolis essent. eiusdem formulae disceptatio de Perrhaeborum Magnetumque oppidis fuit: omnium enim iura possidendo per occasiones Aetoli miscuerant.
Livy 39.25.3–6
The debate centred on Philippopolis, Tricca, Phaloria, Eurymenae and other towns in the vicinity. Had these been forcibly taken and occupied by the Aetolians at a time when they were under Thessalian control – that Philip had taken them from the Aetolians was not in question – or had the towns belonged to the Aetolians in the distant past? For, it was argued, Acilius had ceded them to the king on the premise that they had belonged to the Aetolians and had joined the Aetolians of their own free will and not through military coercion. The argument over the Perrhaebian and Magnesian towns went along the same lines: by seizing them as the opportunities arose the Aetolians had confused the legal claims to all of them.
The Greeks insisted that only those cities that had chosen to join the Aetolians were given over to Philip; those which the Aetolians had captured, they argued, had not been granted by Glabrio. Philip argued that those which he had captured, regardless of how the Aetolians had come into possession of them, had been given over to him by Glabrio. The question, then, was about the precise meaning of Glabrio’s arrangements with Philip, which had introduced flexibility into Flamininus’ settlement and established a need for interpretation.
The Thessalians added the abduction and maltreatment of 500 aristocratic youths, and alleged that Philip sought to build up Demetrias as part of a scheme to undermine Phthiotic Thebes economically; he had also, they claimed, ambushed ambassadors on their way to Flamininus (Livy 39.25.7–17). Philip’s defence highlighted Thessalian aggression and, again, Glabrio’s grant of territory (Livy 39.26.1–13). The commissioners offered a resolution:Footnote 39
Causa cognita, pronuntiarunt legati placere deduci praesidia Macedonum ex iis urbibus, et antiquis Macedoniae terminis regnum finiri. de iniuriis, quas ultro citroque inlatas querantur, quo modo inter eas gentes et Macedonas disceptetur, formulam iuris exsequendi constituendam esse.
Livy 39.26.14
When the hearing concluded, the Roman commissioners announced their decision: the Macedonian garrisons were to be withdrawn from the cities in question and Philip’s kingdom was to be limited to the old boundaries of Macedonia. Concerning the wrongs forming the basis of the two sides’ complaints against each other, the commissioners declared a legal procedure would need to be established for resolving the contentious issues between the peoples involved and the Macedonians.
Gruen has noted that although Tamphilus might appear to be an ‘eastern expert’ due to his close cooperation with Philip during the Aetolian War, that ‘expertise’ may not have come into play during this investigation, as the commission left the ‘contentious issues’ to be resolved by the Greeks and Macedonians themselves; the arbitration at Tempe, then, becomes an instance of Roman indifference.Footnote 40 However, we cannot be sure how much input Tamphilus had in the decision or if his previous experience with Philip informed that input, since neither Polybius nor Livy detail the deliberations of the commissioners. On the other hand, I believe we can say that the commissioners neither avoided the issue nor displayed clear favouritism for the Greeks to Philip’s detriment: the king was required to withdraw his garrisons and return to ‘the old boundaries of Macedonia’. This was a loss for Philip, to be sure, but the commissioners were effectively reaffirming the terms of the last major settlement, that is, Flamininus’ arrangements. They declined to redraw boundaries. They appear to have considered the situation seriously; they rendered an unbiased decision in a complex problem: it was genuinely unclear whether Philip’s occupation of some of these cities was authorised by his agreements with Glabrio. Indeed, Flamininus and Glabrio had themselves been at odds over Philip’s actions (Livy 36.34.6–10; Plut. Flam. 15.4). Flamininus’ settlement, enshrined in public memory by his performative declaration at the Isthmian games in 196 and preserved in a senatus consultum,Footnote 41 offered a standard division between all the disputants (however ill-defined the frontiers themselves may have been on the ground). If the borders were to change in these regions – regions which had been disputed for centuriesFootnote 42 – that would be, the commissioners appear to say, a matter for Philip and the Greeks to work out, not an issue for themselves or the Senate.
Philip, required to withdraw from cities he believed he had occupied with Roman approval and even permission, no doubt felt the decision was unfair and that Rome was being unduly harsh;Footnote 43 the Greeks may have perceived the commissioners’ affirmation of Flamininus’ principle as a new limitation on Philip. But neither Philip’s feelings nor the Greeks’ perceptions demonstrate Roman intentions. Polybius and Livy do not explain the commissioners’ rationale. It is clear, though, that the decision was not a new restriction imposed by the commissioners; it was a reassertion of the previous settlement. There is no obvious intent to humble or further confine Philip; there is instead a restoration of a division established by a treaty. The commissioners had been dispatched to settle the dispute, and they did so by upholding an arrangement that the Senate had already approved. Whether Metellus and his fellows acted on their own authority or on unrecorded instructions from the Senate, whether Tamphilus provided any expert opinions or not, the result was the same: a declaration that Flamininus’ arrangements were appropriate and could guide the resolution of local disputes. As such, the commissioners reaffirmed the role of local dispute resolution: Philip and the Greeks could work out the contentious issues themselves because, as far as Rome was concerned, Flamininus had already provided a sufficient process.
However, the status quo was not entirely restored, for Philip retained control of Demetrias, some regions of Magnesia, and Dolopia, all of which had been freed from Macedonian control in 196. Burton sees this as an intentionally paradoxical decision by the commissioners which would keep the situation unclear and provide subsequent opportunities for Rome.Footnote 44 As we have seen, though, the question at Tempe concerned the interpretation of Glabrio’s grant to Philip. Philip could make a strong case for Demetrias being an ancient possession of Macedonia – it was a dynastic foundation with a royal palace. Perhaps more importantly, Demetrias had undergone a brief period of stasis in 192, when the Magnetarch Eurylochus, motivated by rumours that Rome was about to return the city to Philip, urged the Council of the Magnesians to join the Aetolians. Flamininus prevailed upon the Magnesians to maintain their support for Rome, and Eurylochus went into exile. Soon after, though, the Magnesians voted to recall Eurylochus, who facilitated the Aetolians’ seizure of the city.Footnote 45 The city welcomed Antiochus III upon his arrival in Greece and served as a base for the Seleucid king’s activities during the war.Footnote 46 After Antiochus’ withdrawal from Greece in 191, Philip sent his agents to Demetrias, offering the citizens forgiveness if they welcomed his authority; he also introduced a garrison to the city with the approval of Glabrio (Livy 36.33.1–6). According to the argument presented by the Thessalians and echoed by the Magnesians, Philip’s claim to Demetrias was justified – or at least justifiable: the Magnetarch Eurylochus had led the city to the Aetolians. Demetrias had not been forced to join the Aetolians but had chosen to do so. The commissioners did not behave paradoxically when they left Philip in possession of the city; nor did they muddy the waters of the dispute.
Dolopia and the rest of Magnesia are less clear, but Livy does not tell us anything about Dolopian complaints. He reports Philip’s recapture of Dolopia immediately after his occupation of Demetrias, which may suggest that his occupation of the region was similarly justifiable on the arguments presented by the disputants (Livy 36.33.7). Nor is Philip’s retention of parts of Magnesia demonstrative of Roman hostility, indifference or inconsistency: if Rome did not require Philip to evacuate the region entirely, it is equally plausible that some of the tribes were supportive of Philip or that the commissioners agreed with Philip as they had in the case of Demetrias. While Livy and Polybius do not provide enough information to show that Philip did in fact win his case here, neither do they show that Philip did not have a legitimate case. Lacking an explanation of the commissioners’ reasoning here, we cannot attribute to them a long-term goal of sowing discord or an abuse of the arbitration process.
At Tempe, then, the commissioners reasserted the general territorial limits established after the Second Macedonian War. They acknowledged the possibility of changes to that settlement but left the details to the Greeks and Macedonians themselves, recommending that a legal process be established by which future disputes could be settled locally without further Roman involvement.Footnote 47 The commissioners reiterated Flamininus’ settlement, accepting changes that accorded with Philip’s agreements with Glabrio. Importantly, though, the commissioners also appear to have been concerned to ensure that Philip was occupying only those cities to which the agreements with Glabrio entitled him. This is not appeasement, but a concern for a reasonable, ‘fair’ decision. When issues arose and were brought to the Senate’s attention, Flamininus’ settlement of Greece was generally sufficient for Rome, not as an expedient but as a principle. It was a legal basis upon which the arbitrations were based.Footnote 48
Aenus and Maronea
The commissioners continued on to Thessalonike to hear the complaints of Eumenes and the exiles of Aenus and Maronea. There, Eumenes argued that if Aenus and Maronea were not to retain the freedom from Macedonia granted by Flamininus and the subsequent freedom from Antiochus III approved by the decemviri in 187 after the Antiochene War, they would better be subject to Pergamum than to Macedonia. The Maronean exiles added that Philip’s supporters unfairly exercised control over the city. The dispute, then, was as much about Eumenes’ ambitions and civil strife in Maronea as it was about Philip and Macedonia.Footnote 49 It was about how the Maroneans, like the citizens of Demetrias, had exercised their freedom. Philip, in response, rehearsed his treatment at the hands of the Romans and contrasted his active support for Rome during the Aetolian and Antiochene wars with Eumenes’ need for Roman support during the latter (Livy 39.27.1–28.14).Footnote 50 The Roman commissioners offered a decision which Livy claims was ambiguous:
medio responso rem suspenderunt: si decem legatorum decreto Eumeni datae civitates eae essent, nihil se mutare; si Philippus bello cepisset eas, praemium victoriae iure belli habiturum; si neutrum eorum foret, cognitionem placere senatui reservari, et ut omnia in integro manerent, praesidia quae in iis urbibus sint deduci.
Livy 39.29.1–3
They made a noncommittal response that left the matter unresolved. If the states in question had been granted to Eumenes by decree of the ten commissioners, they said, they were not altering anything; and if Philip had captured them in war he would have them as the prize of victory under the rules of war. If neither condition obtained, their decision was that judgment of the issue be reserved for the Senate, and so that everything should remain open for discussion the garrisons stationed in the cities involved should be withdrawn.
The ambiguity of this response, though, is overstated. The dispute is again reduced to the basic principle of the condition of the cities at a specified earlier time;Footnote 51 the relevant time is the date of the last major Roman intervention. The commissioners suggested that if the cities had been granted to Eumenes, they would uphold that arrangement; at the same time, if Philip had a claim under the ‘right of conquest’,Footnote 52 they would not deny him his prizes. It is evident, however, that the case was not clear, not least because there was more to this dispute. Philip had seized the region in 200 during his conflict with Athens and in his operations against Ptolemy V (Livy 31.16.4); Flamininus had required him to restore the cities to Ptolemy in 197,Footnote 53 but Antiochus III had asserted his own claim to the two cities soon after. In 189, the praetor Q. Fabius Labeo had required Seleucid garrisons to be withdrawn from the two cities, leaving them free and autonomous (Livy 37.60.7), until Philip subsequently reacquired them.Footnote 54 Moreover, as noted above, the Maronean dispute originated as much in civil strife as it did in Philip’s aggression. Aenus, too, was no stranger to civil strife. Divisions among the citizen bodies of both cities naturally provided opportunities for intervention, especially after 189, by both Philip and Eumenes. The most recent dispute may have been caused when Philip regained the upper hand through royal munificence, but his supporters were challenged by citizens who preferred the support of Eumenes.Footnote 55 The status of these cities and royal claims to them was unclear, to say the least; as in Magnesia and Demetrias, the citizens themselves were divided. The commissioners did not need ulterior motives to defer a decision on this complex issue, but by deferring, they gave themselves (and the Senate) time to sort out the specific and competing claims of Philip, Eumenes, and the citizens themselves under the frameworks established by Flamininus, Labeo, and the decemviri of 187.
The commissioners’ decision, therefore, was less evasive than Livy claims. As at Tempe, the guiding principle was neither to humble Philip nor to favour an amicus, but to maintain the arrangements of the most recent major post-war settlement. Given the competing claims, the commissioners could not do otherwise: the settlements after Cynoscephalae and Magnesia were as good as any and better than most, having come after demonstrations of Roman power. They provided general principles for the Senate’s responses to local disputes. This was not an empowerment of Rome’s friends or a disempowerment of Rome’s erstwhile enemy; it certainly is not an attempt to use arbitration to secure Rome’s voice in local disputes. Instead, it seems to be a genuine arbitration in which the commissioners were concerned to hear the cases and get it right – where ‘right’ was determined by the last major settlement.
Although the Greeks and Thracians may be said to have ‘won’ their disputes, the actual benefits to them from the commission of 185 were evidently unsatisfying and consequently Philip’s humiliation may not have been as complete as has been suggested. At the beginning of 184, the commissioners reported their actions to the Senate, and then representatives from Philip, Eumenes, the Thessalians, and others rehearsed their disputes – again. The Senate dispatched a new commission headed by App. Claudius Pulcher to investigate whether the decisions of the previous year’s commissioners had been implemented.Footnote 56
τοὺς ἐπισκεψομένους πρῶτον μὲν εἰ παρακεχώρηκε τῶν ἐν <Θετταλίᾳ καὶ> Περραιβίᾳ πόλεων κατὰ τὴν τῶν περὶ τὸν Καικίλιον ἀπόκρισιν, εἶτα τοὺς ἐπιτάξοντας αὐτῷ τὰς φρουρὰς ἐξάγειν ἐξ Αἴνου καὶ Μαρωνείας, καὶ συλλήβδην ἀποβαίνειν ἀπὸ τῶν παραθαλαττίων τῆς Θρᾴκης ἐρυμάτων καὶ τόπων καὶ πόλεων.
Polyb. 22.11.4
[The commissioners were] to see in the first place if [Philip] had evacuated the cities in Thessaly and Perrhaebia, as Caecilius had stipulated in his reply to him, and next to order him to withdraw his garrisons from Aenus and Maronea and in general to quit all forts, places, and cities on the sea coast of Thrace.
This, however, is not a decision. These latest commissioners were sent out to confirm Metellus’ earlier (non-)decision to keep the dispute in a holding pattern. The order to withdraw pending a final resolution had already been given. It is understandable that this would have offended Philip further: the Senate agreed with the previous commission in apparently overlooking his earlier services to Rome and requiring his withdrawal (Livy 37.7.8–16; 38.40–1). But this was not new. It points again to a concern to treat the arbitration process seriously.
Polybius and Livy both report that Philip’s response was to orchestrate the massacre of Eumenes’ supporters in Maronea before the arrival of Claudius’ commission. When Claudius did arrive, he refused to hear Philip’s account of the violence in the city. He demanded that the king send the two men suspected, Philip’s governor of Thrace, Onomastus, and a local Maronean, Cassander, to provide an account to the Senate, noting, Livy claims, that Philip’s guilt was apparent (Livy 39.34; cf. Polyb. 22.13.1–6).Footnote 57 Neither Livy nor Claudius appear to have been concerned about the specific causes or details of the massacre. For Livy, the rumour of Philip’s involvement was enough. But Claudius was not sent out to resolve a dispute or investigate new concerns; he was dispatched, not by an intervening or intruding Senate, but in response to Greek requests, to confirm that the earlier decisions had been implemented.Footnote 58 His demand that Philip send Onomastus and Cassander to the Senate suggests that he believed the Senate was the correct place to begin the investigation, perhaps because it exceeded his brief. But, it bears repeating, Philip lost nothing new here. He was informed of the Senate’s receipt of the report of the previous year’s commissioners and reminded of the requirement to withdraw his garrisons. The Senate had dispatched Claudius and his fellow commissioners with a general mandate: confirm that Philip had removed his garrisons from Aenus and Maronea and withdrawn from the Thracian coast, and that is what they did. The question of the massacre at Maronea was a new issue and one on which the commissioners chose not to act.
In 184/3, the same states sent further embassies to the Senate, which would seem to confirm that Claudius’ mission was not to decide and settle, but merely to inform and observe: the embassies continued to come to Rome as long as the disputes remained unresolved. Claudius’ refusal to hear Philip out and the decision of the previous commissioners must have been a concern for the king. It is, then, little surprise that he increased the stature of his representatives, sending his younger son Demetrius and his philoi Apelles and Philocles. Before turning to Demetrius’ role, one point in the complaints levelled against Philip at this stage deserves particular attention. Polybius reports:
παρά τε γὰρ Θετταλῶν καὶ κατὰ κοινὸν ἧκον καὶ κατ᾿ ἰδίαν ἀφ᾿ ἑκάστης πόλεως πρεσβευταί, παρά τε Περραιβῶν, ὁμοίως δὲ καὶ παρ᾿ Ἀθαμάνων καὶ παρ᾿ Ἠπειρωτῶν καὶ παρ᾿ Ἰλλυριῶν· <ὧν> οἱ μὲν περὶ χώρας, οἱ δὲ περὶ σωμάτων, οἱ δὲ περὶ θρεμμάτων ἧκον ἀμφισβητοῦντες, ἔνιοι δὲ περὶ συμβολαίων καὶ τῶν εἰς αὑτοὺς ἀδικημάτων, τινὲς μὲν οὐ φάσκοντες δύνασθαι τυχεῖν τοῦ δικαίου κατὰ τὸ σύμβολον διὰ τὸ τὸν Φίλιππον ἐκκόπτειν τὴν δικαιοδοσίαν, τινὲς δ᾿ ἐγκαλοῦντες τοῖς κρίμασιν ὡς παραβεβραβευμένοι, διαφθείραντος τοῦ Φιλίππου τοὺς δικαστάς.
Polyb. 23.1.10–13
From Thessaly there was one embassy from the Confederacy and particular ones from each town, and there were also embassies from Perrhaebia, Athamania, Epirus, and Illyria, some of them claiming territory, some slaves, and some cattle, and others with complaints about the injustice they had suffered in their actions for the recovery of money, maintaining in some cases that they could not get justice in the authorized tribunals, as Philip quashed the proceedings, and in others finding fault with the decisions on the ground that the rulings were unfair, Philip having bribed the judges.
The existence of tribunals to which the Greek states could and should present their disputes suggests a Roman recognition of arbitration in local tribunals as an institution by which the Greeks and Macedonians could regulate their own relationships without continual interventions from Rome. The process had been endorsed by Flamininus, reaffirmed by the decemviri after the Antiochene War, and reiterated by the commission of Metellus two years earlier:Footnote 59 this was the process for resolving ‘contentious issues’ without recourse to Rome. However, the envoys claimed that these tribunals were insufficient due to Philip’s bribery and predominance. It is, though, little wonder that the tribunals could not provide a satisfying resolution. The cities and regions in question were and had been for decades and even centuries disputed. Macedonian kings had sought to extend their influence among the northern Greek states with a combination of conquest and patronage long before Flamininus’ settlement. Undoubtedly, Philip was expending his resources to gain favour and influence among the Greeks, including those who may have acted as arbitrators in these disputes, but this is what Macedonian kings did: their positions depended in part on being seen by the Greek cities as benefactors, ready and able to support the cities within their domains and their friends within cities.Footnote 60 But one king’s beneficence could easily be represented as another’s bribery or corruption of local citizens. This was, it seems, precisely the issue in Aenus and Maronea. When Philip offered support for parties within a city or state or for citizens exiled from a city, the rivals of those beneficiaries will naturally have construed his influence as corruption. Nevertheless, mechanisms existed within the Greek world for the northern Greek states to seek diplomatic resolution in their disputes with Philip. Only after they believed those mechanisms – mechanisms endorsed by but independent of Rome – had failed did they seek Roman intervention; that they did not seek Roman intervention initially may even suggest that they did not assume that the Senate would automatically support their claims.
To return to the embassies of 184/3, though. Having heard (again) the various and repeated claims of the northern Greeks, the Senate turned to the Macedonian side. Polybius and Livy both present Philip’s son Demetrius as an object of Roman pity due to his youth and perceived inability to respond effectively to the charges of the various complainants – the rehearsal of which had taken three days and had caused significant confusion about the actual conditions (again).Footnote 61
Ὅθεν ἡ σύγκλητος, οὔτ᾿ αὐτὴ δυναμένη διευκρινεῖν οὔτε τὸν Δημήτριον κρίνουσα δεῖν ἑκάστοις τούτων λόγον ὑπέχειν, ἅτε καὶ φιλανθρώπως πρὸς αὐτὸν διακειμένη καὶ θεωροῦσα νέον ὄντα κομιδῇ καὶ πολὺ τῆς τοιαύτης συστροφῆς καὶ ποικιλίας ἀπολειπόμενον, μάλιστα δὲ βουλομένη μὴ τῶν Δημητρίου λόγων ἀκούειν, ἀλλὰ τῆς Φιλίππου γνώμης ἀληθινὴν λαβεῖν πεῖραν, αὐτὸν Δημήτριον παρέλυσε τῆς δικαιολογίας, ἤρετο <δὲ> τὸν νεανίσκον καὶ τοὺς σὺν αὐτῷ φίλους εἴ τινα περὶ τούτων ὑπομνηματισμὸν ἔχουσι παρὰ τοῦ βασιλέως. τοῦ δὲ Δημητρίου φήσαντος ἔχειν καὶ προτείναντός τι βυβλίδιον οὐ μέγα, λέγειν αὐτὸν ἐκέλευσεν ἥνπερ τὰ ὑπομνήματα περιεῖχε πρὸς ἕκαστον τῶν κατηγορουμένων ἀπόφασιν κεφαλαιώδη.
Polyb. 23.2.1–6
Therefore the Senate, unable itself to decide about all these matters, and thinking that Demetrius should not be forced to meet all these charges, as they were well disposed toward him and saw that he was still quite young and very far from being competent to face such a whirl of complications, and wishing particularly not to hear speeches from Demetrius but to obtain some true test of Philip’s views, relieved the young man from pleading in justification himself, but asked him and his friends who were with him if they had any notes on all these matters from the king. On Demetrius replying in the affirmative and presenting a little notebook, they bade him give them the general sense of the suggestions noted therein as a reply to each of the charges.
Polybius strongly emphasises Demetrius’ youth and inexperience here. But, the prince was in his mid-twenties at the time, older than Philip had been when he became king, older than his brother Perseus had been when he took part in the Second Macedonian War. His education in history and rhetoric was not lacking.Footnote 62 As an Antigonid prince, he should have been well equipped to respond; Philip would not have sent him otherwise. His inexperience, then, does not really explain the Senate’s action here. More likely, the Senate excused Demetrius because it was not necessary for him to plead his father’s case, for that had already been done during the commissioners’ investigations. The Senate’s response suggests as much: it declared its belief that ‘strict justice had either been done or would be done’. Philip was trusted and his defence had already been accepted. This was not, in the end, a relitigation of the issues but a final decision from the Senate. If anything, the Senate excused Demetrius from responding to the complaints to avoid having to hear another inevitably long and detailed speech on an issue on which it had already come to a conclusion. That the Senate then decided to send a commission to Macedonia to inform Philip of the decision and that he had gained this result due to Demetrius’ actions is more diplomatic courtesy than it is an intentional insult:Footnote 63 it was for a Roman commission, not Philip’s representatives, to deliver the formal decision of the Senate. Livy’s comment that the Senate insisted on telling Philip that it was because of Demetrius that he had gained his point is, ultimately, little more than a declaration to the king that his son had performed his task, a diplomatic nicety rather than a studied insult.
Philocles then offered a defence of Philip’s actions in Thrace, and the Senate finally provided the decision that Metellus had initially deferred: Philip should withdraw his garrisons, but, importantly, the cities were not granted to Eumenes.Footnote 64 Once again, this is little more than a reiteration of the decision of the previous commission, consistent with the settlement after the war with Antiochus. It is not a new humiliation of Philip. Labeo’s liberation of the two cities was simply reasserted. The Senate had taken the time to investigate and had decided that the cities had been freed in the last major settlement and should not be subject to either Philip or Eumenes. Philip was not intentionally disfavoured, however dissatisfied he may have been, and Eumenes was not enabled. Once again, the last major intervention guided the decision, not a principle of depriving Macedonia.
Conclusion
In responding to the disputes between Philip and his neighbours in the 180s, the Senate does not appear to have followed a general policy of disadvantaging the Macedonian king in favour of its other amici. It took those concerns brought to its attention seriously and sought to provide just and fair decisions according to its own framework. Those decisions do not show a clear bias or favouritism but instead demonstrate a consideration of the arguments and details of the dispute. The Senate and its representatives used the decisions of Flamininus in 196 and Labeo’s liberation of Aenus and Maronea after Magnesia as general arrangements which could, and did, provide the basis for arbitrated decisions. In the face of complaints, the Senate and its commissioners preferred not to renegotiate boundaries. Local tribunals and local arbitration could (and should) do that, as the local ‘contentious issues’ arising from within the framework established by Rome were not the Senate’s concern. When the Greeks requested senatorial arbitration, the result was consistently a reassertion of the general division of the last major settlement. In the absence of complaints, the Senate does not appear to have taken issue with infringements of the status quo. The Greeks and Macedonians were, after all, free. Rome did not use the requests for arbitration in the 180s to secure its own interests or those of certain privileged allies, nor did it use them to further reduce Macedonia.
If Philip saw those decisions as hostile to himself, or if the Greeks saw the decisions as encouragement for further complaints, that was the nature of interstate behaviour, as each state sought its own advantage and perceived insults to itself in the conduct of other states: but neither Philip nor his accusers can have known the Senate’s mind beyond its public gestures. The most visible of those gestures – the waiving of Philip’s indemnity, the return of Demetrius, the acquiescence to his efforts to restore his influence, and the reiteration of the general settlements following the Second Macedonian and Antiochene Wars – collectively suggest that the Senate was neither particularly hostile towards Philip nor concerned to use arbitration against him. Rome’s decisions in the disputes of the 180s suggest that Roman arbitration was not a tool of imperialism or division but rather a tool to maintain the appearance of stability established by the settlements after Cynoscephalae and Magnesia.
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