The immediate cause, or at least the pretext for the second Macedonian war, was afforded to the Romans by the distress of Athens. That city was utterly impoverished and decayed; but it kept up a sort of independence, and as early as about twenty-five years after the first Illyrian war, it had made an alliance with the Romans, and had granted them isopolity.[32] Perhaps the Romans received the gift with a smile; yet such bright rays of her old departed glory still lingered upon Athens, that on her side at least, there was nothing ridiculous in the proffer. Pausanias tells us, that among the cenotaphs for those who had been slain, there were also some for the men belonging to three triremes, who had fallen in battle abroad as allies of the Romans; but he does not give the date. It is not likely that this was a figment of the Athenians; the time may have been that of the second Illyrian war, as they were keen enough to see that they might gain the Romans by sending them a few ships. During the first Macedonian war, they very wisely kept neutral; but in the last years of the war of Hannibal they got involved in hostilities with Philip. The murder of two young Acarnanians who had intruded when the Eleusinian mysteries were celebrated, led their countrymen to call upon Philip for help. He had long wished to get possession of Athens, and he now savagely devastated the whole of Attica to the very walls of the city: all the temples in the Athenian territory were pulled down, and even the tombs were demolished. The Athenians betook themselves to the Rhodians, to Attalus, and in general to all the allies of that suddenly decayed Alexandrine empire, which had once been so highly blooming under Euergetes; yet their hopes were chiefly bent upon the Romans. In Rome there was much consultation what to do. The senate and the leading men, who already had unbounded views of extending the Roman power, would not have hesitated for a moment to declare war, and the more so, as they were likewise eager to make up for what they had lost by the unfortunate issue of the former one: but the people, who were most wretchedly off, and longed for rest, threw out the first motion for a war.