Flamininus

Titus Quinctius Flamininus defeated Macedon and then declared the Greeks free, in one of the most theatrical acts of Roman diplomacy. Born around 229 BC into a patrician family, he served under Marcellus in the Hannibalic war, governed Tarentum, and founded colonies before standing directly for the consulship of 198 BC at about thirty — below the customary age and without having held the intermediate offices, which the tribunes challenged unsuccessfully. He was given the command against Philip V of Macedon in the Second Macedonian War. He was unusually well suited to it: he spoke Greek, admired Greek culture, and understood that the Greek cities' fear of Macedonian domination could be turned into support. He manoeuvred Philip out of the Aous gorge, detached the Achaean League from him, and in 197 BC destroyed the Macedonian phalanx at Cynoscephalae in Thessaly, where broken ground prevented the phalanx from holding its formation and Roman maniples took it in the rear. At the Isthmian Games at Corinth in 196 BC he had a herald proclaim that Rome restored the freedom of the Greek cities, without garrisons or tribute. Polybius records that the crowd's shouting was so loud that birds fell from the sky, and that the announcement had to be repeated because nobody believed it the first time. He withdrew Roman troops from Greece in 194 BC, which was genuine, and the freedom nonetheless meant that Greek states were expected to follow Roman wishes. He later pressed Prusias of Bithynia to surrender Hannibal, who took poison in 183 BC. He died around 174 BC.

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