<head>Ptolemy Epiphanes and the Achaeans</head><head>Troubles in Boeotia. Action of <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a> and of the Achaeans</head>In Boeotia, after the peace between the Romans and Antiochus had been signed, the hopes of all those who had revolutionary aims were cut short, and there was a radical change of character in the various states.
The course of justice had been at a standstill there for nearly twenty-five years, and now it was common matter of talk in the different cities that a final end must be put to all the disputes between the citizens.
The matter, however, continued to be keenly disputed, as the indigent were much more numerous than those in affluent circumstances, when chance intervened as follows to support the better disposed party.
Flamininus had long been working in <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a> to secure the return of Zeuxippus to Boeotia, as he had been of much assistance to him at the time of the wars with Philip and Antiochus,
and at this juncture he managed to get the senate to write to the Boeotians that they must allow the return of Zeuxippus and the others exiled together with him.
When this message reached them, the Boeotians, fearing lest the return of these exiles might lead to the rupture of their alliance with <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Macedonia&groupId=723&placeId=428">Macedonia</a>, established a tribunal with the object of having judgement pronounced on the indictments against Zeuxippus that they had previously lodged,
and in this way he was condemned on one charge of sacrilege for having stripped the holy table of Zeus of its silver plating and on another capital charge for the murder of Brachylles.
Having managed matters so, they paid no further attention to the senate\'s letter, but sent Callicritus on an embassy to <a class="linkToPlace" target="_blank" href="/place?placename=Rome&groupId=935&placeId=1669">Rome</a> to say that they could not set aside the legal decisions of their courts.
At the same time Zeuxippus himself came to lay his case before the senate, and the Romans, informing the Aetolians and Achaeans by letter what was the policy of the Boeotians, bade them restore Zeuxippus to his home.
The Achaeans refrained from proceeding to do so by armed force, but decided to send envoys to exhort the Boeotians to comply with the request of the Romans, and also to beg them, as they had done in the case of their own legal proceedings, to bring to a conclusion also those to which Achaeans were parties;
for a decision in suits between Boeotians and Achaeans had likewise been delayed for very long past.
The Boeotians, on hearing these requests — Hippias was now their strategus — at once promised to accede to them, but in a very short time entirely neglected them;
and owing to this Philopoemen, when Alcetas had succeeded Hippias in office, granted to all applicants right of seizure of Boeotian property,
which produced a by no means insignificant quarrel between the two nations.
For . . . seized on the cattle of Myrrichus and Simon, and this leading to an armed conflict, proved to be the beginning and prelude not of a difference between private citizens, but of hostility and hatred between nations.
Had the senate at this juncture followed up its order to restore Zeuxippus, war would soon have been set alight; but now the senate kept silence, and the Megarians put a stop owing to the seizures, the Boeotians (?) having applied to them through envoys, and having met the Achaean demand about the law suits.
Walbank Commentary