A sideshow of the Punic war is the indecisive First Macedonian War in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Ionian Sea, during which conflict Philip V of Macedon again defeats the Aetolian League and Rome after the two ally against him in 211.

The war ends with two different peace treaties; one with the Aetolian League in 206 and one with Rome in 205 called the "Peace of Phoenice," which allows Philip to keep the land he had taken in Illyria.

This war is essentially a renewal of the Social War and ends in the same way, with the Aetolian League losing a second war to Philip V and Macedonia.

Philip, seeing his chance to defeat Rhodes, forms an alliance with Aetolian and Spartan pirates who begin raiding Rhodian ships.

Philip also forms an alliance with several important Cretan cities, such as Hierapynta and Olous.

With the Rhodian fleet and economy suffering from the depredations of the pirates, Philip believes his chance to crush Rhodes is at hand.

To help achieve his goal, he forms an alliance with the King of the Seleucid Empire, Antiochus the Great, against Ptolemy V of Egypt (the Seleucid Empire and Egypt are the other two Diadochi states).

Philip begins attacking the lands of Ptolemy and Rhodes's allies in Thrace and around the Sea of Marmara.

Rhodes and her allies Pergamon, Cyzicus, and Byzantium combine their fleets in 202 BCE and defeat Philip at the Battle of Chios.

Rome's first major military expedition into the Greek world meets with brilliant success, disrupting Hellenistic hegemony in the eastern Mediterranean.

Philip V loses all his territory outside Macedonia, and the victorious commander Flamininus establishes a Roman protectorate over the "liberated" Greek city-states.

Flamininus develops the policy of turning the cities, leagues, and kingdoms of the Hellenistic world into clients of Rome and of himself, a policy that will become the basis of Roman hegemony of the Mediterranean.

The fortunes of Greece and Rome for about the next five hundred years will henceforth be intertwined.