The legions met the Macedonians in several battles in Greece itself; a force sent from Rhodes defeated an army that Philip had sent into Asia Minor, where his ally Antiochus, who had troubles in his own kingdom, seems to have given him very little help. Another of his armies was broken up by the Greeks themselves at Corinth. In fact he suffered disaster in all directions. Within two years the war was over. The power of Macedon was crushed. Philip was allowed, by the treaty of peace which followed, to keep his kingdom of Macedonia, but he lost all that he had claimed to hold in Asia Minor, and Greece was set free from the sovereignty of the Macedonians which had weighed over them ever since the conquests of Alexander. At the end of the Punic War Rome had claimed, and had annexed as her own by right of conquest, both Sicily and Spain, from which she had expelled the Carthaginians, but she did not at first, after the defeat of Philip, claim any of the territory which he lost in the war. She left Greece to enjoy the freedom she had won for her. But she had, of course, increased her reputation and her power towards the east of Italy enormously. The Greeks looked on Rome as their liberator and champion. About Antiochus they perhaps would not have troubled themselves, since he had proved such a feeble ally to Philip, but Antiochus began to stir up trouble for himself by his own imprudence and ambition. He had given such feeble help to his ally, Philip, partly because he was engaged in an attack on Egypt. Already, nearly twenty years before, he had attempted to gain possession of the Egyptian provinces Phœnicia {184} and Palestine, but had been heavily defeated near Gaza. Now, just at the time that Philip was being finally beaten off the field in Greece, Antiochus was completely successful against Egypt. The reigning Ptolemy was a child, the government was in weak hands, Antiochus had little trouble. Amongst other consequences of his victories, one was that Palestine and Jerusalem passed from the hands of Egypt into the control of Syria, and it seems that the Jews resented the manner in which the later Ptolemies had ruled them, and welcomed the change. The Egyptian garrison was driven out. Philip, conquered by the Romans, had lost his hold of the Greek cities in Asia Minor, and Antiochus seems to have thought it was the moment to take advantage of the misfortunes of his ally and seized those cities for his own. Both the Egyptian enterprise and also this in Asia Minor were a direct offence to the Romans, seeing that both Egyptians and Greeks were their allies and looked to Rome for protection.