The exasperation of the proud and in many respects chivalrous king was natural; it was not chicane, however, but an unavoidable political necessity that induced the Romans to take this course.

Macedonia suffered for having once been a power of the first rank, and for having waged war on equal terms with Rome; there was much better reason in her case than in that of Carthage for guarding against the revival of her old powerful position.
The Achaeans It was otherwise with the Achaeans.

They had, in the course of the war with Antiochus, gratified their long-cherished wish to bring the whole Peloponnesus into their confederacy; for first Sparta, and then, after the expulsion of the Asiatics from Greece, Elis and Messene had more or less reluctantly joined it.

The Romans had allowed this to take place, and had even tolerated the intentional disregard of Rome which marked their proceedings.

When Messene declared that she wished to submit to the Romans but not to enter the confederacy, and the latter thereupon employed force, Flamininus had not failed to remind the Achaeans that such separate arrangements as to the disposal of a part of the spoil were in themselves unjust, and were, in the relation in which the Achaeans stood to the Romans, more than unseemly; and yet in his very impolitic complaisance towards the Hellenes he had substantially done what the Achaeans willed.