Plutarch: Romans did not fight against Greeks but for the Greeks against Macedonians

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 Macedonia fought three bitter long wars against the Romans, who set out to conquer the area.

In the second Macedonian-Roman War, Titus Quinctius Flamininus fought against the Macedonians, who were led by King Philip V of Macedon into the battlefield.

The ancient writer Plutarch wrote a work on Flamininus. In one passage we read an interesting detail.

According to Plutarch, the Romans did not come to fight against the Greeks, but against the Macedonians for the Greeks.


Philip V ruled over the Greeks, and so the Romans acted as the liberators of the Greeks.

We read in Plutarch, Flaminius:

It is told of Pyrrhus, that when first, from an adjacent hill or watchtower which gave him a prospect of the Roman army, he descried them drawn up in order, he observed, that he saw nothing barbarian-like in this barbarian line of battle, And all who came near Titus could not choose but say as much of him, at their first view. For they who had been told by the Macedonians of an invader, at the head of a barbarian army, carrying everywhere slavery and destruction on his sword's point; when, in lieu of such an one, they met a man, in the flower of his age, of a gentle and humane aspect, a Greek in his voice and language, and a lover of honour, were wonderfully pleased and attracted; and when they left him, they filled the cities, wherever they went, with favourable feelings for him, and with the belief that in him they might find the protector and assertor of their liberties. And when afterwards, on Philip's professing a desire for peace, Titus made a tender to him of peace and friendship, upon the condition that the Greeks he left to their own laws, and that he should withdraw his garrisons, which he refused to comply with, now after these proposals the universal belief even of the favourers and partisans of Philip was, that the Romans came not to fight against the Greeks, but for the Greeks against the Macedonians.

Source: Flamininus By Plutarch, written 75 AD, Translated by John Dryden

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