upon: he was to send ambassadors to Rome, and in the meanwhile to furnish supplies to the Roman army, and to pay a contribution. The Romans were inclined to peace, as there had begun to be much ill-blood between them and the Ætolians. These had plundered the Macedonian camp after the battle of Cynoscephalæ, and in consequence dissension had arisen. The Romans were in much greater numbers in that fight than the Ætolians; but the cavalry of the Ætolians had indeed decided the victory, and moreover, in the beginning these had stood the brunt of the battle on the heights, by which the Romans were enabled to make an orderly retreat. As there was no blinking these arguments, the Ætolians, even if they had not been a vain people, might very well have taken to themselves the honour of the victory; and this indeed they did in a way which gave great offence to the sensitive Flamininus, who therefore, immediately after the day was won, tried to cut them out of all its advantages. Throughout the whole of Greece, the Ætolians were sung of as conquerors, and the Romans with their consul looked upon only as auxiliaries: there came out at that time a fine epigram still extant of Alcæus of Messene on the victory of Cynoscephalæ, full of scorn against Philip, in which it is said in plain words that the Ætolians, and with them the Latins under T. Quinctius, had beaten the Macedonians, and that thirty thousand Macedonians had been slain. This insolence the Greeks had dearly to pay for, as Flamininus was provoked by it; yet it would have done them still greater mischief, had any other than he been general. It is difficult to form an idea of the blind infatuation of the Ætolians,--a people, whose territory was not larger than the canton of Berne, and who yet could have been mad enough to think themselves the equals of the Romans: one of their generals, who had a quarrel with Flamininus, told him, that arms would decide it on the banks of the Tiber. The only clue for this is in the character of the southern nations, who, though unable to do anything, fancy that they can do everything. Even so it was with the Spaniards in their relations with the English: they are always talking of the immortal day of Salamanca, on which they beat the French, whereas they did not lose more than one man in that battle. And thus did the Ætolians, without any substantial cause, become at variance with the Romans. It is true that Flamininus was too irritable: he ought to have treated this with contempt, as his mission to give freedom to Greece was such a fine one. Nor were the Romans by any means just to the Ætolians: by the original conditions, these had a right to claim the restoration of all the places which had been taken from them by Philip; but the Romans decided against them, and they either kept the places themselves, or embodied them with other states, or else they left them independent. This would not have happened, unless there had been indeed some provocation; but