They did not look in vain. It is likely that Antiochus did not realise how great Rome had become. She was a long way off. But a few years ago she was scarcely known. We may imagine that he had very little idea of the might of the nation whose allies he had dared to attack. Perhaps the Romans themselves did not realise their own strength or the weakness of the enemy, for they tried their best to come to terms with him. It was all to no purpose. Antiochus actually ventured into Greece itself with an army; but before he achieved anything of importance the Romans had {185} come to the help of the Greeks, and the Syrian force broke up and melted away after the very first battle. [Sidenote: The Legions in Asia] But the Romans had not finished with them yet. They had seen, perhaps, that the Syrians were less formidable than they had thought. The Syrian navy was beaten heavily by the combined navies of Rome, Rhodes, and Pergamus. The following year, that is, 190 B.C., saw a sight new to our story--Roman legions in Asia Minor. They were under the leadership of one of the Scipios, who was consul for the year and brother of that Scipio who had led the Roman legions in Africa in the last years of the Second Punic War, and for his victories had been given the surname of Scipio "Africanus." Scipio Africanus accompanied his brother, the consul, with the legions in Asia Minor. There West met East, and there was no doubt, after the first clash of arms, with which the victory must be. The Roman legionaries under this Scipio, who assumed the title of "Asiaticus," as his brother took that of "Africanus," had a discipline and a battle formation against which the impetuous attacks of the more lightly armed Syrians broke and wasted themselves. Just so far as the Romans chose to advance must those others recede before them. They had all Asia behind them for their retreat. Rome at her strongest could not utterly destroy the power of the East as she had destroyed the power of Carthage; but she could drive it back and back at her pleasure, so long and so far as she chose to put out her power. The East would come on again after each driving back, like flies at some great creature which has whisked them away for a moment, but they could not really get through the great creature's hide; certainly they could not get to any vital part, {186} to any centre of his body where they could do him real hurt. Rome had perpetual trouble with these buzzing swarms in the East all through her days of world-power; but it was this kind of trouble--vexatious, and costing her much money and many lives of her soldiers, but never threatening her own life or power, as the Gauls from the north had threatened it once, and were to threaten it, and worse than threaten it, again.