Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/368

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338
GREECE UNDER THE RULE OF ROME

province, and from which he drew many recruits. But when, after the battles of Philippi (B.C. 42, November) Antony took over the eastern part of the Empire, he visited Greece without apparently inflicting any punishment. He affected the fashionable philhellenism, attended Greek games and literary competitions, was initiated in the Eleusinian mysteries, singled Athens out for special bounties, as well as restoring to her Aegina and other islands, and contributed liberally to the temple at Delphi. Greece as a province was reunited to Macedonia and placed under the government of L. Censorinus. When Antony crossed from Greece to Asia he was received with extravagant compliments and every kind of adulation and entertainment, the Greek states once more trying to excuse themselves for the assistance which they had rendered to the beaten party. Though the states now suffered severely in money, for Antony exacted a second tributum for the year, Brutus and Cassius having already collected one, he seems to have been willing to listen to remonstrances and not to have been harsh in exacting the tax. Nor did his rearrangements in Asia show any jealousy of Greek nationalities. The Lycian confederacy was relieved of tribute; Rhodes was strengthened by the attribution of Andros, Tenos, and Naxos, and some territory in Caria; Laodicea and Tarsus were made free cities. Later on, however, when his infatuation with Cleopatra and his quarrel with Octavian had turned his thoughts to the establishment of an Eastern Empire, with Alexandria as its Rome, he began the practice of robbing Greek towns and temples in Asia