it was this unprecedented and desperate geopolitical situation that led Rhodes to form a military alliance with king attalus I of pergamum – an unprecedented act for rhodian policy , as it was for attalid policy . second , somewhat later , the situation led the rhodians to reverse completely their previous stance of opposition to any large roman intervention in greek affairs , and rome to plead for just such intervention . we can even hazard a guess as to the specific circumstances that forced that rhodian decision to send an embassy to rome : for the initial stage of the war against Philip did not go well , leading to Philip's victory over the rhodian fleet off lade near miletus . long mode the attractive suggestion that was the rhodian defeat at lade , a defeat that appeared to establish Philip's naval dominance throughout the southeast aegeab , that saused the rhodian government in desperation to dispatch envoys to italy for help . the new information from the rhodian inscription from bargylia adds a new element to our understanding of rhodian calculations : for the inscription , which depicts Philip turning over a conquered Ptolemaic town the advancing army of Antiochus , shows that the rhodians knew in summer 201 just how closely phlilip and Antiochus III were now cooperating . it is true that the pergamene – rhodian war effort against Philip went better later on , that even though Philip devastated the pergamene hinterland , by winter 201 / 200 he was blockaded in bargylia by the 200 power – transition crisis in greek Mediterranean having been their ally in the first Macedonian war and then having been vital help to them in procuring the great mothea of pessinus for transport to italy in 205 in older to fulfill an oracle of victory over Hannibal . perhaps it was attalus who encouraged the appeal to Rome . diplomatic revolution in Mediterranean , 203/202 /200 bc 201 combined pergamene and Rhodian fleets and then in the spring of 200 philip left the southeast Aegean entirely and went far to the north ,to the Hellespont.but unified Rhodian – pergamene efforts in the summer of 200 to rescue the strategic town of Abydus on the Asian side of the Gallipoli Straic , besieged by a resurgent Philip,were totally ineffectual and Philip intended to use Adydus ,which he eventually captured ,as abase for new land operations against pergamum
Similarly ,unified Rhodian-pergamene attempts to protect Athens against attack in spring 200 were afailure .Indeed ,the severe pressures upon .Rhodes caused by the war Philip are apparent from the fact that when,despite the eventual Roman decision to intervene Roman military help still had not arrived in the Aegean by the the summer of 200,the Rhodian government seriously considered an Achaean offer to mediate the war against Macedon