Thus Livy described the reaction to the Roman commander T.Q. Flaminius's proclamation of the freedom of Greece at the Isthmian games near Corinth in 196 B.C. Half a century later, Greece was annexed as a province of the Romans who burned the ancient city of Corinth to the ground.

Books 31 to 40 of Livy's history chart Rome's emergence as an imperial nation and the Romans' tempestuous involvement with Greece, Macedonia, and the near East in the opening decades of the second century B.C.; they are our most important source for Greco-Roman relations in that century. Livy's dramatic narrative includes the Roman campaigns in Spain and against the Gallic tribes of Northern Italy; the flight of Hannibal from Carthage and his death in the East; the debate on Oppian law; and the "Bacchanalian" Episode.