Livy wrote this History of Rome in the late first century BC. This is Book 36. In Book 35, Antiochus III, king of the Seleucid empire in the Near East, was invited into Greece by the Aetolians, a Greek people, and marched toward Europe.

Romans take Thermopylae, the famous pass in Greece, and force Antiochus out. The Aetolians pay for inviting him. A naval war over sea crossings and grain stirs the eastern Mediterranean. Livy sets Roman army discipline against court luxury and royal miscalculation. The Greek phase of the Syrian war ends as the king retreats toward Asia. Peace talks leave open money, elephants, and a border at the Taurus mountains in southern Turkey. Rome claims again to protect Greece on Roman terms. A western republic, a city run by a senate and elected officials rather than a king, has thrown an eastern great king out of Europe and is not finished with him.