The Roman fleet, with Attalus and the Rhodians, lay at Cenchreae, and were preparing to lay siege to Corinth with their whole combined force.

The consul therefore judged it prudent, that, before they entered on that affair, ambassadors should be sent to the Achaean state, with assurances, that if they came over from the king to the side of the Romans, the latter would consign Corinth to them, and annex it to the old confederacy of their nation.

Accordingly, by the consul's direction, ambassadors were sent to the Achaeans, by his brother Lucius Quinctius, by Attalus, and by the Rhodians and Athenians--a general assembly being summoned to meet at Sicyon to give them audience.

Now, the state of feeling of the Achaeans was by no means uniform.

Nabis the Lacedaemonian, their constant and inveterate enemy, was the object of their dread; they dreaded the arms of the Romans; they were under obligations to the Macedonians, for services both of ancient and recent date; but the king himself, on account of his perfidy and cruelty, they looked upon with jealous fear, and not judging from the behaviour which he then assumed for the time, they knew that, on the conclusion of the war, they should find him a more tyrannical master.