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Macedonian Border:
The conflict between Rome and Macedonia began when Rome established a bridgehead on the eastern Adriatic after two wars against Illyrian pirates (229-228; 219 B.C.). It broke out into war (First Macedonian War, 215-205 B.C.) when Philip V (reigned 221-179 B.C.), king of Macedonia, formed an alliance with Carthage, and it resulted in the emergence of Rome as the paramount power in Greece after the Second Macedonian War (200-197 B. c.). As the enemy of Macedonia, Rome was actively supported in the First and Second Macedonian wars by such states as the Aetolian League, Athens, Sparta, and Rhodes.Greece today is linguistically one of the most homogeneous nations of the world. Virtually the entire population speaks Greek. There are, however, various bilingual groups which together make up almost 3% of the population. These include Albanian-speaking people in Epirus and Attica, a few Bulgarian-speaking Slavs on the Macedonian border, and some nomads speaking a dialect of Rumanian called Vlach.
The fact that the Greek city states developed on the basis of an unfree population sharpened the conflict among the various factions of the small citizen body, especially between the aristocratic and democratic groups, and added internal to national disunity'. Violent competition for the hegemony of Greece and for power within the city state led to constant warfare, until the Greek city states succumbed to the Macedonian conquerors (338 B.C.). The weak remnants of local independence granted by the Macedonian kings were finally lost when the Romans defeated the last alliance of Greek states in 146 B.C.
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