In achieving the submission of this last province, Rome had put an end to other less important wars. In 577 she reduced the Istrians; in 579, the Sardinians and the Corsicans; finally, from 569 to 573, she extended her conquests into Spain, where she met the same enemies as Carthage had encountered. [Sidenote: War against Persia (583).] X. For twenty-six years had peace been maintained with Philip, the Ætolians vanquished, the peoples of Asia subdued, and the greater part of Greece restored to liberty. Profiting by its co-operation with the Romans against Antiochus, the Achæan league had largely increased, and Philopœmen had brought into it Sparta, Messene, and the island of Zacynthus; but these countries, impatient of the Achæan rule, soon sought to free themselves from it. Thus was realised the prediction of Philip, who told the Thessalian envoys, after the battle of Cynoscephalæ, that the Romans would soon repent of having given liberty to peoples incapable of enjoying it, and whose dissensions and jealousies would always keep up a dangerous agitation.[573] In fact, Sparta and Messene rebelled, and sued for help from Rome. Philopœmen, after having cruelly punished the first of these cities, perished in his struggle with the second. Thessaly and Ætolia were torn by anarchy and civil war. Whilst the Republic was occupied in restoring tranquillity to these countries, a new adversary came to imprudently attract its wrath. One would say that Fortune, while raising up so many enemies against Rome, took pleasure in delivering them, one after the other, into her hands. The old legend of Horatius killing the three Curiatii in succession was a lesson which the Senate had never forgotten.