The origins of the Achaean War

Abstract

The Achaean war against Rome in 146 continues to provoke befuddlement and perplexity. Few problems in antiquity have proved so intractable to solution. The event was of major import: the last futile outburst of Greek resistance to Roman power, calling forth a new era, an enforced reorganisation of Greece and its subjugation, for all practical purposes, to the Roman governor of Macedon. Greek independence was thereafter chimerical. Yet the origins and motivations for that fateful struggle remain as puzzling as ever. Understandably so. A half century earlier, the Achaean League had thrown off allegiance to Macedon and opted for collaboration with Rome. A formal alliance followed in subsequent years. Relations between the two powers were sometimes rocky, but never issued in overt conflict during that half-century. In the three great eastern wars of the second century, against Philip V, Antiochus III, and Perseus, Rome and Achaea were on the same side. Yet in 146, when Rome's military might should have been incontestable, the Achaeans engaged her in a suicidal and ruinous war that brought the dissolution of the old League and the overlordship of Rome. Small wonder that the episode causes bafflement.