7.7.6
He also occupied with garrisons three towns to be used as bases against Greece, and in his insolent contempt for the Greek people he called these cities the keys of Greece. To watch Peloponnesus Corinth was fortified with its citadel; to watch Euboea, the Boeotians and the Phocians, Chalcis on the Euripus; against the Thessalians themselves and the Aetolian people Philip occupied Magnesia at the foot of Mount Pelium. The Athenians especially and the Aetolians he harried with continual attacks and raids of bandits.
7.7.7
Already, in my account of Attica note I have described the alliances of Greeks and barbarians with the Athenians against Philip, and how the weakness of their allies urged the Athenians to seek help from Rome. A short time before, the Romans had sent a force ostensibly to help the Aetolians against Philip, but really more to spy on the condition of Macedonia.
7.7.8
At the appeal of Athens the Romans despatched an army under Otilius, to give him the name by which he was best known. For the Romans differ from the Greeks in their being called, not by the names of their fathers, but by three names at least, if not more, given to each man. Otilius had received orders from the Romans to protect Athenians and Aetolians from war with Philip.
7.7.9
Otilius carried out his orders up to a point, but displeased the Romans in certain of his acts. Hestiaea in Euboea and Anticyra in Phocis, which had been compelled to submit to Philip, he utterly destroyed. It was, I think, for this reason that the senate, when they heard the news, sent Flamininus to succeed Otilius in his command.
ch. 8
7.8.1
On his arrival Flamininus sacked Eretria, defeating the Macedonians who were defending it. He then marched against Corinth, which was held by Philip with a garrison, and sat down to besiege it, while at the same time he sent to the Achaeans and bade them come to Corinth with an army, if they desired to be called allies of Rome and at the same time to show their goodwill to Greece.
7.8.2
But the Achaeans greatly blamed Flamininus himself, and Otilius before him, for their savage treatment of ancient Greek cities which had done the Romans no harm, and were subject to the Macedonians against their will. They foresaw too that the Romans were coming to impose their domination both on Achaeans and on the rest of Greece, merely in fact to take the place of Philip and the Macedonians. At the meeting of the League many opposite views were put forward, but at last the Roman party prevailed, and the Achaeans joined Flamininus in besieging Corinth.
7.8.3
On being delivered from the Macedonians the Corinthians at once joined the Achaean League; they had joined it on a previous occasion, when the Sicyonians under Aratus drove all the garrison out of Acrocorinth, killing Persaeus, who had been placed in command of the garrison by Antigonus. Hereafter the Achaeans were called allies of the Romans, and in all respects right zealous allies they proved themselves to be. They followed the Romans to Macedonia against Philip; they took part in the campaign against the Aetolians; thirdly they fought side by side with the Romans against the Syrians under Antiochus.
7.8.4
All that the Achaeans did against the Macedonians or the host of the Syrians they did because of their friendship to the Romans; but against the Aetolians they had a long standing private quarrel to settle. When the tyranny of Nabis in Sparta was put down, a tyranny marked by extreme ferocity, the affairs of Lacedaemon at once caught the attention of the Achaeans.
7.8.5
At this time the Achaeans brought the Lacedaemonians into the Achaean confederacy, exacted from them the strictest justice, and razed the walls of Sparta to the ground. These had been built at haphazard at the time of the invasion of Demetrius, and afterwards of the Epeirots under Pyrrhus, but under the tyranny of Nabis they had been strengthened to the greatest possible degree of safety. So the Achaeans destroyed the walls of Sparta, and also repealed the laws of Lycurgus that dealt with the training of the youths, at the same time ordering the youths to be trained after the Achaean method.
