1 1 8 The ever-present food-question 



drawn into quarrels not their own, as allies of great foreign powers. 

 It was no longer possible to remain neutral with safety. No League 

 was strong enough to face the risk of compromising itself with a vic- 

 torious great power. Achaean statesmen did their best, but they too 

 could not save their country from ruin, once the League became en- 

 tangled in the diplomacy of Rome. Nor was it the old Hellas alone 

 that thus drifted to its doom. Between Rome and Carthage the western 

 Greeks lost whatever power and freedom their own disunion and 

 quarrels had left them. The Rhodian republic and its maritime League 

 of islanders had to become the subject allies of Rome. 



One point stands out clearly enough. In the Greece of the third 

 century EC the question of food-supply was as pressing as it had 

 ever been in the past. The operations of King Philip were often con- 

 ditioned by the ease or difficulty of getting supplies 1 of corn for his 

 troops: that is, he had to work on an insufficient margin of such 

 resources. In 219, after driving the Dardani out of Macedonia, he had 

 to dismiss his men 2 that they might get in their harvest. In 218, the 

 success of his Peloponnesian campaign was largely dependent 3 on the 

 supplies and booty captured in Elis, in Cephallenia, in Laconia; and 

 on the subsidies of corn and money voted by his Achaean allies. The 

 destruction of crops 4 was as of old a principal means of warfare. And 

 when he had to meet the Roman invasion in 197, the race to secure 

 what corn 5 was to be had was again a leading feature of the war. It 

 is true that the feeding of armies was a difficulty elsewhere 6 , as in 

 Asia, and in all ages and countries: also that difficulties of transport 

 were a considerable part of it. But the war-indemnities 7 fixed by 

 treaties, including great quantities of corn, shew the extreme impor- 

 tance attached to this item. And the gifts of corn 8 to the Rhodian 

 republic after the great earthquake (about 225 BC), and the leave 

 granted them 9 in 169 by the Roman Senate to import a large quantity 

 from Sicily, tell the same story. Another article in great demand, only 

 to be got wholesale from certain countries, such as Macedonia, was 

 timber. It was wanted for domestic purposes and for construction of 

 military engines, which were greatly developed in the wars of the 

 Successors; but above all for shipbuilding, commercial and naval. 

 Rhodes in particular 10 needed a great supply; and the gifts of her 

 friends in 224 BC were largely in the form of timber. There was no 

 doubt a great demand for it at Alexandria, Syracuse, Corinth, and 

 generally in seaport towns. It is evident that in strictly Greek lands 

 the wood grown was chiefly of small size, suitable for fuel. There is 



1 Polyb iv 63. 2 iv 66. IV 75, v i, 3, 19. 4 x 42, etc. 



5 xvni 20. * xvi 24, xxi 6, etc. 7 xxi 34, 36, 43, 45. 



8 v 89. 9 xxvni 2. 10 v 89, cf xxv 4, xxi 6. 



