Hannibal was startled, when he saw the state of the Syrian troops. He found a host, of which the great mass were barbarians, which though apparently trained in some measure to the Macedonian way of fighting, was unsound to the core, and quite as cowardly as under the Persian rule: it was only from single divisions of such an army that he could expect anything. But his plan was worthy of him. He advised Antiochus to bestow his greatest exertions on the fleet, and by means of it to carry the war into Italy; the picked troops and those which he himself still hoped to train, might then be embarked on it and landed in southern Italy, which was so exasperated against Rome on account of the revenge which she had taken. Greece he should not touch; for that would irritate Philip, to whom he should rather leave it, and seek to aggrandize himself in Egypt. But it was natural that men of small minds should reject this plan; and it was resolved to transfer the war to Greece, where the Ætolians were their allies, and to try and gain over Philip. The latter plan was the more hazardous, and in fact quite impracticable, owing to the folly which the advisers of Antiochus displayed in all that they did: they wished to work upon Philip, not by fair means only, but also by fear. Thus at the very moment, when everything turned upon Philip’s goodwill being won, a pretender, who gave himself out to be a descendant of Alexander the Great, and who had been with the Acarnanians in Epirus, was received at Ephesus as the rightful sovereign of Macedon: they even fostered the fond hope of bringing about a revolution there. This was childish folly. As matters now stood, Hannibal gave his advice against war; and this was accounted to him as treachery, and the wretched king with his wretched councillors so thoroughly misunderstood this great man as to think him capable of playing into the hands of Rome. In this belief they were confirmed by a stratagem of the Romans by which bad men only could have been taken in. Scipio was sent over to Asia for a last negotiation with Antiochus. He and Hannibal were personally acquainted, and two such great men passed lightly over the circumstance of their having faced each other as enemies. They were not mere tools of the state; but they were as two great moral powers arrayed against each other, which after a mighty struggle had made peace, and not as ordinary men. In such cases, there is kindled in truly great souls a mutual love. They met familiarly, and Hannibal was thus led to offer hospitality to Scipio, which the latter said that he would have accepted, had not Hannibal been dependent on an enemy of Rome. Scipio was perhaps less frank in this conversation than Hannibal, and he may have taken advantage of him: this may have contributed to make Hannibal suspected.