Under These Circumstances, They, In Conjunction With Prusias,
King Of Bythinia, Declared War Against The Byzantines; And While Their Ally
Took Hieron, which seems to have been a great mart of the Byzantines, and
the resort of most of the
Merchants trading to these parts, the Rhodians,
with a powerful fleet, ravaged their coasts, and seized all their ships
trading to the Euxine. The war was at length terminated under the mediation
of the king of the Thracian Gauls; the Byzantines agreeing to take off the
toll.
Their success in this war was counterbalanced by a dreadful earthquake,
which threw down the Colossus, destroyed the arsenal, and damaged part of
the walls and city. As the Rhodians, however, were much esteemed by most of
their neighbours, who found their prosperity intimately connected with the
prosperity of Rhodes, they soon recovered from these calamities and losses.
Hiero, king of Syracuse, gave them 100 talents, and exempted them from all
duties and taxes. Ptolemy gave them also the like sum, besides one million
measures of wheat, and timber, etc. requisite for building fifty ships.
Antiochus exempted all their vessels, which traded to his ports, from every
kind of tax and duty. They received from other princes presents or
privileges of equal importance and value; so that, in a very short time,
they recovered their former opulence and trade, and rebuilt their walls,
etc.
Their alliance with Attalus, king of Pergamus, involved them in a war with
Philip king of Macedonia, and was the cause of their forming an alliance
with the Romans. In this war the Rhodian fleet, in conjunction with the
fleets of their allies, gained several victories over the fleet of Philip.
The latter was at length obliged to sue to the Romans for peace, and they,
in fixing the terms, included the Rhodians, to whom were ceded Stratonice,
and the greater part of Caria. In the meantime Antiochus and the Romans had
commenced hostilities, and the Rhodians were again involved in them: almost
at their very commencement, their fleet was surprized by a stratagem of
Antiochus's admiral, and of thirty ships of war of which it consisted, only
seven escaped.
They soon, however, repaired their losses, and fitted out another fleet,
with which they put to sea, for the purpose of preventing the junction of
Hannibal with Antiochus's ships: the former had thirty-seven large ships;
the Rhodian fleet was nearly equal in numbers, but inferior in size. The
hostile fleets met off the coast of Pamphilia. The battle was obstinate: at
first, by an oversight of the Rhodian admiral, some disorder occurred in
part of his fleet; but this was soon repaired, and a decisive victory
obtained. Part of Hannibal's fleet was captured, and the rest blocked up in
the harbours of Pamphilia. The defeat of Antiochus, both at sea and land,
by the Romans, to which we have already adverted, obliged this monarch to
sue for peace, in which the Rhodians were included.
We have now arrived at that period of the history of Rhodes when the first
difference arose between that city and the Romans:
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