After the Second Punic War, Rome began to see itself as a major Mediterranean power and looked to the Greek East for places to expand. One could actually argue this desire for expansion began after victory in the First Punic War, in which Rome acquired the Greek island of Sicily from the Carthaginians. Only three years after the second war with Carthage had concluded in 201 BC, the Roman Senate sent the consul Flaminius to Macedon to deal with Philip V, who the Romans regarded as overly ambitious and expansionist. Flaminius defeated Philip at Cynoscephalae in an utterly crushing defeat, losing only 700 men compared with 8,000 deaths and 5,000 more captured on the Macedonian side. While most historians regard victory over Carthage in the Second Punic War as the decisive turning point on the road to empire, perhaps a greater case can be made for this decisive defeat of Macedon. As the kingdom of Alexander the Great, Macedon held symbolic importance as the lynchpin of the Greek world, even if the Seleucids of Syria or Ptolemies of Egypt were more powerful.

Pictured above is the Macedonian king Philip V, whose ambition was perceived as a threat to Roman interests. This rare tetradrachm was sold by Leu for over $1,500.
 
Roman involvement in the Hellenistic East continued later in the decade with Scipio’s even more staggering victory over Seleucid king Antiochus the Great at Magnesia in December 190 BC; the Romans were reported to have lost less than 400 men compared with 53,000 Seleucid dead. After Magnesia, Rome was probably the most powerful state in the world, though still with limited territorial involvement in the eastern Mediterranean.


 
Philip’s son Perseus was not content with the subordinate status he had inherited from his father’s defeat in 197 and war broke out between Macedon and Rome in 171 BC. Roman consul Paullus decisively defeated Perseus at Pydna in 168 BC and celebrated a grand triumph in Rome, immortalized by French painter Charles Vernet’s 1789 painting, which hangs in the Met in New York today. After Pydna, Macedon became a Roman protectorate for two decades, during which a great quantity of the so-called “First Meris” tetradrachms (see main photo at top) were struck. A Macedonian rebel named Andriscus rose against Roman rule in 148 BC and was defeated at Pydna again, after which Rome directly annexed Macedon and then Greece itself two years later.