Upon The Same Event

Composed (probably) 1810.--Published 1815

When, far and wide, swift as the beams of morn The tidings passed of servitude repealed, And of that joy which shook the Isthmian Field, The rough Ætolians smiled with bitter scorn. "'Tis known," cried they, "that he, who would adorn His envied temples with the Isthmian crown, Must either win, through effort of his own, The prize, or be content to see it worn By more deserving brows.--Yet so ye prop, Sons of the brave who fought at Marathon, Your feeble spirits! Greece her head hath bowed, As if the wreath of liberty thereon Would fix itself as smoothly as a cloud, Which, at Jove's will, descends on Pelion's top."

The Ætolians were the only Greeks that entertained suspicion of the Roman designs from the first. When Flamininus was wintering in Phocis in 196, and an insurrection broke out at Opus, some of the citizens had called in the aid of the Ætolians against the Macedonian garrison; but the gates of the city were not opened to admit the Ætolian volunteers till Flamininus arrived. Then in the battle at the heights of Cynoscephalæ, where the Macedonian army was routed, the Ætolian contingent, which had helped Flamininus, claimed the sole credit of the victory; and wished no truce made with Philip, as they were bent on the destruction of the Macedonian power. The Ætolians aimed subsequently at exciting suspicion against the sincerity of Flamininus. In the second sonnet, Wordsworth's sympathy seems to have been with the Ætolians, as much as it was with the Swiss and the Tyrolese in their attitude to Buonaparte. But Flamininus was not a Napoleon.--ED.