The Western World and Rome 263 power was laying a heavy hand on the old Greek cities and the Rome ad- entire Hellenistic world of the eastern Mediterranean. Imme- Macedonia, diately after the close of the war with Hannibal the Senate Greece, and determined to punish Macedonia for its attempt to support Hannibal (p. 260). At last the long-irresistible phalanx of the Greeks was confronted by the Roman legion. Before the vic- torious legion Macedonia and Greece fell under Roman control, though the Roman Senate proclaimed the Greek cities free. The object of Rome was not the conquest of the East, but such a control of the eastern states as would prevent the rise of a great power dangerous to Rome. Such a control, however, unavoidably developed into more, and finally became Roman sovereignty. When the Seleucids (p. 230) interfered in Greek affairs a Roman army marched for the first time into Asia, and the Seleucid army received a crushing defeat. The last great power that confronted Rome was thus perma- nently crippled, and, although they did not yet take possession of it all, the Romans were masters of the civilized world (190 B.C.). A generation later the helpless Greeks were given a vivid exam- ple of what revolt would bring upon them, as they beheld the Roman destruction of Corinth in the same year (146 B.C.) which saw the annihilation of Carthage. The Rome which thus gained the dominion of the world had Rise of large hitherto been a republic of farmers, led by a body of aristocrats gj-eat pro- making up the majority of the Roman Senate. The long wars P^etors and the resulting vast conquests inevitably produced great changes as the wealth of the conquered states flowed into the Roman treasury, and Roman officials were enriched at the expense of the provinces. In these changes the farmer was the sufferer. He had kept his post in the legion for years, in Spain, in Africa, in Macedonia, or in Italy facing Hannibal. There had been no one to work his lands in his absence. When he returned he found that his neighbors all around him had disappeared, and their lands had been bought up by the wealthy men of Rome, who had combined them into huge estates.
