CHAPTER IX .

MACEDONIAN SUPREMACY IN GREECE

I.

YEARS OF NOMINAL PEACE BETWEEN PHILIP AND ATHENS, 346-343 BC

 

AFTER the final ratification of the Peace and the consolidation of his latest conquests in Thrace, Philip devoted his attention to the carrying out of plans for the securing of his frontiers, and, in all probability, for the civilizing of all parts of his kingdom. His coast-line was already secure; but far inland there was always the menace of outbreaks by wild tribes, and, to counter this, he planted colonies in the frontier regions; and at the same time he settled the former inhabitants of Chalcidice and the Thracian coast in various parts of his kingdom, where they might be centres of hellenizing influence. His own court was always such a centre; the most eminent Greek poets and artists were made at home there; Aristotle was appointed as tutor to Alexander; and there is some evidence that Philip made a point of including influential Greeks among his ‘Companions,’ and of otherwise conferring distinction upon them.

His northern and western frontiers, however, continued to give trouble; and in 344 he was obliged to undertake an expedition against the Illyrians who were subject to Pleuratus. The pursuit of this king probably took him nearly to the Adriatic, and cost him a severe wound in the leg.

This done, he turned his attention to Thessaly, where, apparently with the good-will of the Thessalian peoples, he entirely changed the government of the country. In 344 he was appointed ‘archon’, or ruler, of Thessaly for his life; the public revenues of the Thessalian states and regular contingents of Thessalian soldiers were placed at his disposal; the country was divided into four tetrarchies, each with a reliable governor, and the whole province seems to have been united in a personal loyalty to himself, which henceforth remained unshaken, and was sufficient to prevent the revival of the constant quarrels of former days between different regions and princes. Isocrates took occasion at this time to address a letter to Philip, in which he invited him to show the same tact in conciliating Athens as he had shown towards the Thessalians.

But Athens was in no mood for conciliation. Demosthenes had announced in 346 his intention of prosecuting Aeschines for corruption on the Second Embassy to Philip, and had only been caused to postpone the case by a successful counter-stroke of Aeschines, who secured the condemnation of Timarchus, Demosthenes’ associate in the prosecution, for the immoral habits of his youth, and thus brought some reflected discredit upon Demosthenes himself. About the same time the Athenians had tried to re-open the question of the inclusion of Cersobleptes in the Peace, sending Eucleides to Philip for the purpose; and they had rejected Philip’s attempt to win their favour by offering to cut a channel through the Chersonese, and so give them a defensible frontier against the Thracians.

In the Peloponnese an equilibrium seems to have been maintained, for about two years after the Peace of Philocrates, between Sparta and the peoples opposed to her,—the Messenians, the Arcadians of Megalopolis, and the Argives. But in 344 Sparta showed signs once more of a desire to interfere with them, and they appealed to Philip for support. Probably he had for some time been fostering parties favourable to himself in these States, and he now supplied them with money and mercenaries, and ordered Sparta to abstain from troubling them, threatening to march into the Peloponnese in person to their support, if the warning were disregarded. The anti-Macedonian party in Athens were naturally roused, and Demosthenes returned to the policy, which he advocated in 353, of supporting the minor states against Sparta, in the hope of persuading them that Athens, and not Philip, was their friend. He himself, as well as other orators, went to the Peloponnesian towns, and warned them in eloquent language that the fate which awaited them was that of Olynthus or of Thessaly, which they represented as having been subjugated by Philip by means of pretended kindness. But all this eloquence could not do away with the facts, that Athens and Sparta had been closely associated in recent years; that Athens had done nothing to help the Peloponnesian towns when she was appealed to previously; and that Thessaly had actually benefited greatly by the changes made by Philip. Instead, therefore, of breaking with Philip, the Arcadians invited him to be their welcome guest, whenever he wished, and set up his statue in bronze at Megalopolis; Argos voted him a golden crown; and Argos and Messene sent ambassadors to Athens to express their resentment of her attempt to weaken them in their resistance to the encroachments of Sparta. Philip also sent a formal protest against the orator’s allegation that he had been faithless to his promises, and demanded its withdrawal. The Second Philippic of Demosthenes was delivered in one of the debates upon these protests. It was an attempt to prove that Philip, by his friendships with the Peloponnesians and Thebans, was aiming at isolating Athens with a view to her ultimate subjection, and that he was being assisted in Athens itself by the orators whom he had corrupted.

Philip’s party appear to have made the most of the rumours (which would be welcome to the Athenians as a whole) that some coolness was springing up between Thebes and Philip, and that Philip was inclined to be more gracious to the Phocians, about whose overthrow Athens was still feeling very sore; and they may have quoted these rumours (which Demosthenes treats with contempt) as evidence of Philip’s good intentions. It is at least possible that there was a real difference of opinion between Philip and the Thebans in regard to exaction of the repayment on account of the temple-treasures from the Phocians. This repayment had not so far been enforced, and Philip may have stood in the way of the Theban desire to enforce it. (This would not be the only case in history in which victorious allies have differed in regard to the exaction of reparations.) Moreover if Philip, though as yet the friend of the Thebans, intended to be their master in the end, he may not have desired to destroy utterly the Phocian people who might at some time be useful as a counter­poise to Thebes in North Greece. But any difference of opinion between them on this matter was not yet serious; and though the issue of the debate at Athens is not recorded, it is not likely that it was favourable to Philip.

That Philip was genuinely anxious to be on good terms with Athens, in spite of herself, is shown by an incident, small in itself, which occurred about this time. Athens was mistress of the sacred island of Delos, and the islanders appealed to the Amphictyonic Council for liberation from Athenian rule. Despite the fact that the anti-Macedonian Hypereides had been substituted by the Council of Areopagus for Aeschines as the Athenian advocate in the matter, the Amphictyonic Council, in which the influence of Philip was now preponderant, gave its decision in favour of Athens.

The anti-Macedonian party was not to be moved by any such courtesies. Hypereides now indicted Philocrates for corruption and deception of the people, and Philocrates withdrew from Athens before the hearing; he was condemned to death in his absence, and, if any reliance can be placed upon the statements of Demosthenes, he had in fact profited very largely by Philip’s generosity.

Yet once more Philip attempted to conciliate the unwilling people. Early in 343 he sent Python of Byzantium, with some representatives of his allies, to express his good-will to Athens, his regret at the attitude which certain orators had led her to adopt, and his readiness to amend the terms of the Peace if good reason could be shown. Python, himself an eloquent orator, was supported by Aeschines, and the invitation to reconsider the terms of the Peace was accepted; but the alterations actually proposed by Athens were such as Philip could not possibly accept. They desired that instead of the clause which gave to each party to the Peace ‘what they possessed,’ there should be an agreement that each should retain ‘what was their own’—a phrase which scarcely veiled the intention of the Athenians to claim Amphipolis and Potidaea once more, as well as Cardia; they wished also to include in the Peace all the Greek States (and of course Cersobleptes), and to arrange mutual guarantees between the States against aggression. The Athenian envoy Hegesippus who bore these requests to Philip made the situation worse by his violent language and bad manners. The proposals were of course rejected, and Philip must now have seen that all hope of a friendly understanding with Athens was over.

Even so, negotiations continued for some time upon minor points, and particularly in regard to the island of Halonnesus, to the north of Euboea, which the Athenians, who claimed it as their own, had allowed to become infested with pirates. Philip had expelled the pirates, and offered (after the discussion had gone on for about a year) to give it to Athens. The Athenians, on the proposal of Demosthenes, supported in intemperate language by Hegesippus, refused to take it unless he offered to give it back, and also declined to refer the matter to arbitration; and so the negotiations came to an end.

Before this a definite trial of strength had taken place between the two parties in Athens. In the summer of 343 Demosthenes renewed his prosecution of Aeschines for corruption when on the Embassy. But unpopular as the Peace was, disastrous as it had been to the Phocians, towards whom the Athenians seem to have felt a peculiar tenderness, and eloquent and impressive as was the speech which he delivered, Demosthenes failed to make good his case, and Aeschines was acquitted by a majority of 30 votes out of 1501. The support given to him by Eubulus (of whom we now hear for the last time) and by the honest and blunt-spoken general Phocion must have told greatly in his favour; but in fact he was not only able to reply convincingly to many of the charges which were made against him, but was also able to show that it was he, and not Demosthenes, who had been the friend of the Phocians throughout; and the nobility of the principles to which Demosthenes appealed cannot blind us to the grossness of his distortions of the truth. The special emphasis laid by him on the misery of the Phocians may possibly be connected with the fact that now for the first time they were beginning to pay the instalments due to the temple. If Philip had abstained from enforcing these out of consideration for the feelings of Athens, he must have felt that there was no longer anything to be gained by doing so.

But the set-back to the anti-Macedonian party through the loss of this case was only temporary. They continued to direct the policy of Athens for some years from this time; and if we are to treat as typical the story of the arrest by Demosthenes of a certain Antiphon, on the pretext that he was a spy, and of the torture and execution of Antiphon by order of the Council of Areopagus, they even resorted to terrorism to quell opposition.

The behaviour of the Athenians appears to have led Philip to abandon, from 343 onwards, the attempt to conciliate them, and a series of events which occurred about this time, and which were very unwelcome to Athens, was, it cannot be doubted, due to his instigation. In the summer of 343 (probably after the mission of Hegesippus to Philip, but before the trial of Aeschines), the Macedonian party in Elis, aided by the Arcadians, asserted itself and gained the mastery; its opponents were massacred in great numbers. (It was in this affair that the last relics of the army of Phalaecus met their end.) At Megara, Perillus and Ptoeodorus, two of Philip’s friends, aided by mercenaries sent by him, attempted to seize the power, and were only prevented by a hasty expedition from Athens under Phocion, who occupied the port of Megara and so gained control of the town. An alliance between Athens and Megara was then arranged by Demosthenes. It was much more serious that a great part of Euboea fell into the power of Philip’s friends, through the overthrow of the democracy in Eretria by Cleitarchus, and in Oreus by Philistides. It was only a partial compensation for this that Chalcis, led by Callias and Taurosthenes, transferred its friendship from Thebes to Athens.

Philip was also active in Epirus. Late in 343 he expelled Arybbas from the Molossian kingdom, and replaced him by Alexander, the brother of Olympias. He also increased Alexander’s kingdom by conquering and adding to it the region of Cassopia. But when he threatened Ambracia and Leucas, which were colonies of Corinth, and the Corinthians appealed to Athens for help, the Athenians, who had already given a home and citizenship to Arybbas, sent a force to defend Ambracia, and promised also to assist Naupactus, which Philip proposed to take and hand over to the Aetolians, as the price of their friendship; and the move was so far successful that Philip did not think it well to proceed against either place, and returned to Macedonia.

The Athenians, at the same time, were using all the resources of diplomacy to detach from Philip his allies in Thessaly and the Peloponnese. In Thessaly there is no sign that they met with any success, unless the replacement of the Thessalian garrison, which Philip had left in Nicaea in 346, by a Macedonian force may be taken to show that he at any rate preferred to have the command of the Pass of Thermopylae in his own hands. But in the Peloponnese, where most of the leading orators of the anti­Macedonian party were active, they succeeded in renewing the former friendship of Athens with the Messenians, and in securing at least the nominal alliance of the Achaeans (whose colony at Naupactus had been threatened by Philip), the Argives, and the Arcadians of Megalopolis, though none of these peoples can be supposed to have abandoned in consequence their existing alliance with Philip.

 

II.

THE RELATIONS OF PHILIP AND THE GREEK CITIES WITH PERSIA

 

The scene now changes to Thrace; but before pursuing the course of events there, it will be well to notice a somewhat significant event, which happened at about the same time as the mission of Python to Athens in 343. This was the arrival in Greece of an embassy from Artaxerxes Ochus, asking for alliance and friendship from each of the more important States. For many years the Great King had found it difficult to retain his hold upon his outlying dominions. There had been repeated revolts of the satraps of Asia Minor; two attempts made by Ochus to recover Egypt had failed; the revolt of Sidon and the rest of the Phoenician dominions of the King had only been crushed by the help of the gross treachery which led to the surrender of Sidon in 345 or 344; Cyprus, which had also revolted, was reduced about the same time through the assistance given by Phocion and a Greek mercenary force at the request of Idrieus, the satrap of Caria, whom the King had requested to undertake the task. Ochus was now anxious to make another attempt to recover Egypt, and to do so with the help of those Greek troops and generals whose value he well knew; for Nectanebo II, the reigning Pharaoh, had gained his power largely by the help of Agesilaus, and had repelled the second invasion by the army of Ochus mainly owing to the aid of Diophantus of Athens and Lamius of Sparta; and Greek mercenaries had taken an important part on one side or the other in nearly all the conflicts in which the Persians had recently been engaged. In answer to his overtures, the Athenians replied that their friendship with the King would remain, so long as he did not interfere with any Greek cities. This was another way of saying that they did not intend to give him any active help; this abstention from any Persian quarrel which did not involve Hellenic interests was just the policy which Demosthenes had advocated in 354 and 353, and he had evidently not changed his view. Sparta also was unresponsive. But the Thebans, who had received large subsidies from Persia in the Sacred War, as well as the Argives, sent contingents to help the King, when he once more invaded Egypt, after a temporary set-back owing to the missing of the way in crossing the Serbonian marshes, and the consequent loss of many of his troops. This time the invasion was a complete success; in the winter of 343—2 Nectanebo was compelled to flee, and Egypt was re-organized as a Persian province.

At what time the Persian King became aware that Philip was a power to be taken seriously is unknown. At a later date Darius wrote to Alexander the Great, reminding him of Philip’s friendship and alliance with Ochus; and, as early as the First Philippic, Demosthenes speaks of a rumour that Philip had sent ambassadors to the King. It is possible that Philip had wished to secure himself against any interference on the part of Persia with his conquest of Thrace; but the exact period of the negotiations must remain uncertain. That Philip did not long regard any such alliance as important is shown by his reception in Macedonia of the rebel satrap Artabazus; while an incident which occurred in the winter of 342—1 shows that the action of the Persian authorities was not controlled by any special regard for Philip. The latter was on terms of friendship with Hermeias, the ‘tyrant’ of Atarneus (a well-fortified town on the Asiatic coast opposite Mitylene), which he held, as well as Assos and a considerable district, in independence of Persia. Hermeias had been a hearer of Plato and Aristotle at Athens, and had welcomed Aristotle and established him and his school at Assos after Plato’s death. In view of the position of his dominions, his friendship was obviously of some political importance to Philip. But Mentor of Rhodes, to whose generalship the Persian reconquest of Egypt had largely been due, was now, it appears, put in charge of the Great King’s interests in Asia Minor. He first obtained the King’s pardon for Artabazus, and recalled him from Macedonia, and then proceeded to attack Hermeias. Securing his person by treachery, and the towns which he possessed by means of forged instructions, which he sealed with Hermeias’ signet, he sent him to the King, who had him crucified; while Mentor quickly reduced to submission the disaffected parts of Asia Minor. We shall soon find the Persian King and his satraps openly taking steps adverse to Philip.

 

III.

THE STRUGGLE IN THRACE AND THE CHERSONESE, 342-339 BC

 

During the greater part of the year 342 Philip was in Thrace. Cersobleptes had become restive, and he, and the neighbouring prince Teres, had to be subdued. Their kingdoms were now taken from them in name as well as in fact, and were incorporated in the Macedonian Empire; and to secure his hold, Philip planted military colonies in the valley of the Hebrus (the Maritza), the most important of which, Philippopolis, still retains its name. The colonists are said to have been men of violent character, and it was suggested that the colony should rather be called Poneropolis—which may be translated ‘Rogueborough’ or ‘Scoundrelton’. This extension of his kingdom pushed Philip’s frontiers further north and east; and to secure these he made a friendly agreement with Cothelas, king of the Getae (a tribe dwelling between the Maritza and the Danube), as well as with a number of Greek towns on the coast of the Black Sea, two of which were Odessus (now Varna) and Apollonia (near the modern Burgas). The work of conquest was not completed until Philip and his army had passed through the severe hardships of a winter in Thrace. It was soon after this that, through the defection of Aenus to Philip, Athens lost her last ally on the south coast of Thrace.

In the meantime a fresh cause of dispute between Philip and Athens had arisen in the Chersonese. The Athenians had recently strengthened their position in the peninsula by sending a large number of new colonists. These colonists, while favourably received by the towns which were properly within the Athenian alliance, came into collision with the people of Cardia, which was allied to Philip, and which declined to cede lands to them. The Athenian commander in that neighbourhood, Diopeithes, was ordered to support the colonists, and, having no adequate supplies from Athens, paid his mercenaries by plundering ships indiscriminately in the north of the Aegean, and levying contributions from coast-towns and islands, either as blackmail or as the reward for escorting their trading-vessels. The people of Cardia naturally asked Philip to help them, and received a garrison from him; and when Diopeithes not only invaded a district of Thrace which was undoubtedly in Philip’s territory, but actually held Philip’s envoy to ransom, Philip wrote a letter to Athens, early in 341, in which, after a strong protest against the actions of Diopeithes, he stated his intention of defending the Cardians.

Opinion in Athens was sharply divided. Diopeithes’ conduct was undoubtedly a defiance of all international morality, and this point was strongly pressed by the party of Aeschines, who also warned the people that a bellicose policy would endanger the distributions of festival-money. Demosthenes replied that it would be madness to get rid of the one commander who was maintaining the interests of Athens; that Philip was really at war with Athens, and, as a tyrant, was bound to be her enemy so long as she was a democracy; that Athens was destitute of allies— apparently the friendship of the Peloponnesians had already cooled off;—and that so long as the people refused to show any interest in their own affairs, beyond mere acclamation of fine speeches, or to punish the corruption of the politicians who were acting as Philip’s agents in Athens, the position was hopeless.

There is no evidence to show whether any action followed this debate, but probably it was not until a month or two later, and mainly as the result of Demosthenes’ Third Philippic Oration, that the anti-Macedonian party succeeded in inducing the people to take vigorous measures. The pessimistic tone which marks the speech on the Chersonese, particularly in regard to the isolation of Athens and the extent of the power which Philip had gained by corrupting the politicians in the Greek States, is even more marked in the Third Philippic; and he was now successful in alarming or inspiring his fellow-countrymen sufficiently to obtain their sanction for his proposals. Diopeithes was supplied with men and money; Chares was soon afterwards sent north, and made Thasos his headquarters; Proconnesus and Tenedos were garrisoned; and once more the orators undertook a great diplomatic campaign, and achieved extraordinary success. Demosthenes himself persuaded the people of Byzantium, who must by now have realized that Philip’s plans of conquest might affect themselves, to renew the alliance with Athens which had been broken off fifteen years before; Abydos was also won over; the Thracian princes who still remained were assured of Athenian support; even the Illyrian tribes were visited. Hypereides went to Chios and Rhodes: whether or not he secured the actual renewal of their alliances with Athens is uncertain; but at least we find them in the next year fighting with Byzantium against Philip. The friendship made in the previous year with Callias of Chaicis now became a formal alliance; and the Athenian generals, Cephisophon and Phocion, crossed to Euboea, drove out Philistides and Cleitarchus, and restored the democracies of Oreus and Eretria. A Euboean confederacy was formed, which was politically and financially independent of the Athenian League, but was in alliance with it; and though the enemies of Demosthenes made it a charge against him that he had sacrificed the contributions which the Euboean towns might have made to the Athenian League, there is no doubt that he was wise, as well as generous, in refusing to place the Euboeans in any kind of subordination to Athens.

Demosthenes and Callias now attempted to organize a Panhellenic league. In the Peloponnese their success was only partial. Corinth, Megara and the Achaeans promised men and funds; but other States, though they may not have been unfriendly to Athens, were not prepared to break with Philip. On the other hand, the Acarnanians were won over by Demosthenes; the fact that their neighbours, the Aetolians, were friendly to Philip probably helped his arguments. Ambracia, Leucas and Corcyra had already been brought in; and early in 340 a congress met at Athens, to arrange the details of the alliance. Still there was no formal declaration of war, though many acts of hostility were committed. Callias captured the towns on the Bay of Pagasae, which were in the Macedonian alliance, and also seized some Macedonian merchant-ships and sold the crews as slaves. The Athenians not only lent him the ships which he used for these purposes, but passed decrees in commendation of his action. The island of Halonnesus was raided by the inhabitants of Peparethus, who were allied with Athens, and this led to a series of reprisals and counter-reprisals. Athenian officers arrested a Macedonian herald, carrying despatches, on Macedonian territory, and held him in custody for nearly a year; the despatches were read aloud in the Assembly at Athens. A certain Anaxinus of Oreus came to Athens on an errand from Olympias, and Demosthenes had him arrested as a spy, tortured and executed. The feeling of the Athenian people was unmistakably shown when, in March 340, Demosthenes was publicly crowned at the Dionysiac festival, in recognition of his services.

Events in Thrace at last led to open war. Byzantium and Perinthus were still nominally allies of Philip, and he demanded their aid against the Athenians in the Chersonese. They refused, on the ground that the terms of their agreement with him did not justify the demand; and in the summer of 340 his fleet sailed up the Hellespont. The Athenians, for whom the safety of the Hellespontine corn-route was vital, ordered their commanders to oppose his voyage, and he was forced to land troops on the Chersonese, which marched parallel with the fleet and so held any opposition in check. He at once besieged Perinthus. Athens does not seem to have helped directly in the defence, but the Byzantines gave all possible assistance, and a large force of Greek mercenaries, under the command of the Athenian Apollodorus, was sent by the Great King’s satraps in Asia Minor to aid the beleaguered town.

Thus Persia declared openly against Philip. Already, in the Third Philippic, Demosthenes had proposed to send ambassadors to the Great King, though it is evident (from the Fourth Philippic) that some argument was still needed to justify a step which, even when its object was to secure Hellenic freedom, was yet discordant with the traditional feeling of the Athenians towards Persia. It is uncertain when the ambassadors went; but at first the King appears to have rejected their overtures openly, while covertly sending funds to Diopeithes, and perhaps (though this is quite uncertain) not long afterwards to Demosthenes himself. But at the siege of Perinthus the King’s attitude was declared.

The siege proved to be a very difficult task. The town stood on a promontory, and could not be taken from the seaward side, on account of the steepness of the cliffs; but it was joined to the land by an isthmus about 200 yards wide and strongly fortified, while the houses rose steeply in terraces up to the highest point of the town, overhanging the sea. Philip gave the besieged no rest day or night. His engines constantly assailed the outer wall, and his sharp-shooters worked great havoc among the defenders of it. At last, after weeks of assault with battering rams, mines, siege­towers a hundred and twenty feet high, and every device of ancient warfare, the wall was taken, but to no purpose; for the Perinthians had joined up the first line of houses so as to form a defence as strong as the wall itself; the fear that they might be starved out was removed by the ample supplies sent by the Persian satraps; and there was every prospect that, since a new line of defence could be prepared at each terrace, the siege would be interminable. Accordingly, after it had been prolonged for perhaps three months, Philip suddenly called off half his troops from Perinthus, and laid siege to Byzantium, hoping to take it by surprise; and very shortly afterwards war was formally declared between him and Athens.

The immediate occasion was the seizure by Philip’s ships of 230 Athenian merchant-vessels, which were waiting with cargoes of corn and hides in order that Chares with his warships might escort them safely towards Athens. But when Chares left the ships to confer with the Persian commander, Philip took the opportunity to capture them, with their cargoes and a great sum of money; the timber of the ships was used for his siege-works. In reply to a protest from Athens, he sent a letter which was in fact a declaration of war, and was so taken by the Athenians, who now destroyed the monument upon which the Peace of Philocrates had been engraved, and determined to exert all their strength. Demosthenes carried the reform of the trierarchic system which he had long had in mind; the liability of the members of the Boards by which the ships were maintained was made strictly proportionate to their wealth, and evasions were no longer possible. He was himself appointed to an extraordinary office to supervise the equipment of the fleet, and Chares was ordered to relieve Byzantium.

The siege nevertheless lasted through the winter. The Byzantines were suspicious of Chares, and he seems to have effected little; it was not until Phocion and Cephisophon were sent out that there was any satisfactory cooperation between the Byzantines and the Athenian forces. But Phocion was a personal friend of Leon, who directed the defence of the town; and together they organized a successful resistance, which was further aided by the arrival of ships from Chios, Cos and Rhodes. Phocion also secured the trade-route for the merchantmen of Athens, and corn was now actually cheaper and more plentiful in Athens than it had been during the Peace. Philip made a last great assault on a moonlight night of early spring in 339; but the barking of dogs betrayed the attack, and he soon afterwards resolved to retire. But his ships had been driven back into the Black Sea, and confined there by the Athenian fleet which held the Bosporus; and in order to release them, he wrote a letter to his general Antipater, giving instructions which, if known to the Athenian commanders, would certainly cause them to call off their ships from this vital point. It was arranged that the letter should fall into Athenian hands; the ruse succeeded; Philip’s ships got safely through the Hellespont, and they, or their land-escort, did some damage on the way to the Athenian colonies in the Chersonese, though Phocion afterwards made some successful raids, by way of reprisal, upon Philip’s towns on the coast of Thrace. Philip’s failures at Perinthus and Byzantium were the more remarkable, because the great Thessalian military engineer Polyeidus, who was employed by him, had used all the most ingenious resources of siege-craft, and the defence had proved equal to them.

Nothing daunted, however, by this reverse, Philip withdrew his forces, and started upon a long expedition against Ateas, king of the Scythian tribes who lived in what is now the Dobrudja, to take his revenge for the refusal of Ateas to help him with men or money against Byzantium, and for previous contumelious behaviour on his part. The expedition gave him vast numbers of slaves and live-stock, and Ateas himself, now in his ninetieth year, fell in battle with the Macedonians. But Philip’s return to Macedonia was fraught with disaster. The Triballi, a wild Balkan race, attacked him and inflicted great loss, taking from him all his Scythian booty, he himself was severely wounded and he and his army fought their way home with difficulty.

 

IV.

THE AMPHISSEAN WAR: CHAERONEA (338 BC)

 

On his arrival at Pella, probably in the spring of 339, Philip found that affairs in Greece were once more in a condition which he could turn to his advantage, and once more the train of events had started at Delphi. The Athenians had erected there in a new treasury, or chapel in which offerings were dedicated, some shields which they had captured in the Second Persian War, bearing an inscription (which they now regilded) in which they were described as ‘taken from the Persians and Thebans, when they fought against the Greeks’. The new chapel had not been formally consecrated, and the action of the Athenians was therefore irregular, as well as offensive to the Thebans; and at the meeting of the Amphictyonic Council, late in the autumn of 340, a councillor who represented the Locrians of Amphissa demanded that Athens should be fined fifty talents, while another denounced the Athenians as the accomplices of the accursed and sacrilegious Phocians. The Amphisseans had been allied with the Thebans in the Sacred War, and the Thebans were doubtless at the back of the Locrian proposal. Aeschines, who was the Athenian envoy to the Council, and was no lover of Thebes, replied in great wrath by charging the Amphisseans with cultivating the plain about the harbour of Cirrha, which was sacred to Apollo, and exacting harbour-dues for their own profit; and by the eloquence of his indignation he so roused the councillors—men unused to oratory, as Demosthenes contemptuously termed them—that they descended with the whole population of Delphi to the harbour and destroyed it, at the same time burning some of the houses in the place. The Amphisseans, however, retaliated in force, and drove the assailants back to Delphi. Next morning a meeting of all good worshippers of Apollo who were at Delphi was summoned by Cottyphus of Pharsalus, the president of the Council, and it was resolved to convene an extraordinary meeting of the Council at Thermopylae to pass sentence on the Amphisseans for their sacrilege, both in cultivating the plain, and in attacking the coun­cillors, whose persons were sacred.

There can be no doubt that the adroitness of Aeschines had averted a resolution of the Council, which might have led to an Amphictyonic war against Athens, and his report was warmly acclaimed by the city. He was eager that the Athenians should themselves take the field against Amphissa, but there is no evidence for his having conceived the design, sometimes attributed to him, of a united war by Athens and Philip against Thebes. Philip was still in Scythia. But from the point of view of Demosthenes the breach with Thebes which was actually threatened was disastrous, since he relied in the last resort upon an alliance with Thebes as the best hope of defeating Philip; he saw plainly that if either Athens or Thebes should succumb to Philip, the other would have little chance of effective resistance; and (by whatever arguments, for his partiality to Thebes was still certain to be unpopular) he succeeded in persuading the Council and the Assembly to send no representative to the meeting at Thermopylae. Thebes also was unrepresented; it would have been difficult for the Thebans either to join in a sentence against their friends, or to appear to condone their sacrilege. So when the Council met early in 339, war was declared against the Amphisseans; Cottyphus was appointed to conduct it, and messages were sent to the Amphictyonic powers, bidding them send troops. The response was slight. Cottyphus appears, indeed, to have inflicted a defeat upon the Amphisseans, in consequence of which a fine was imposed upon them, and they were ordered to banish their leading politicians and recall their opponents; but evidently they did not comply, and as Cottyphus could not obtain troops, the Council, at its meeting in May or June, decided to invite Philip to under­take the conduct of the war. The invitation, which was proposed by Cottyphus, may well have been prompted by Philip himself; it gave him exactly the opportunity which he wanted, and it was at once accepted.

Having marched southwards, Philip first occupied Cytinium in Doris, which lay on the direct route from Thessaly to Amphissa; and if he had had no other object than the punishment of Amphissa, he could have marched there without delay. But if, as appears certain, he intended now to make good his supremacy in Greece, it was necessary to make sure of Thebes; and it is probable that the attitude of Thebes towards him was less satisfactory than it had been. For the Thebans were the friends of the Amphisseans, and they had taken Nicaea, which commanded the Pass of Thermopylae, from the Macedonian garrison left there by Philip, and had garrisoned it themselves. (Whether this was really a sign of disaffection towards Philip, who at the time was in Scythia, is uncertain: it may have been prompted by a desire to help the Amphisseans indirectly, by securing that so vital a point should be in friendly hands). Further, the friendly relations between Thebes and Persia may have rendered her a less trustworthy ally in the eyes of Philip, who had been opposed by Persian troops on the Hellespont, and possibly by Persian gold in Athens. Therefore instead of going straight to his ostensible goal, Philip suddenly diverged from Cytinium and marched to Elatea and fortified it, probably at the beginning of September.

The occupation of Elatea, which lay on the road to Thebes and Athens and was but three days’ march from Athens itself, at first produced consternation in the minds of the Athenians, who expected an immediate invasion by the Macedonian and Theban armies. When, after a night of excitement, of which Demosthenes has left an incomparable picture, the Assembly met, the politicians at first appeared to be paralysed; but Demosthenes saw that the moment had come for carrying out the policy which had long been in his mind. Philip, he argued, would not have rested at Elatea, if Athens had been his immediate aim: his object was rather to turn the scale by his presence, as between the two parties in Thebes, and to force the Thebans to join him. The one chance, therefore, for Athens, was to frustrate Philip’s intentions by herself making an alliance instantly with Thebes, and, as a proof of sincerity, sending a force into Boeotia without delay. His advice was accepted, and he went at once to Thebes, with other envoys, while a citizen-force marched as far as Eleusis, which was on the road to Boeotia.

But Philip also had sent ambassadors to Thebes, representing himself and his Thessalian allies, offering to treat the Thebans as neutrals in the war against Amphissa, but demanding in return that they should either march with him into Attica, or at least give him a free passage through Boeotia. Nicaea he proposed to restore to the Locrians of Opus, to whom it had originally belonged, and who were on terms of friendship with Thebes. He held out before the Thebans the prospect of bringing home with them once more, as in the Decelean War, the slaves and flocks and herds of Attica; but if they refused, he threatened to plunder their own territory in the same manner.

Having heard Philip’s proposals, the Theban Assembly gave audience to Demosthenes, who, in order to secure his aim, took the risk of offering terms more generous than the Athenians would even have considered a very short while before. The supremacy of Thebes over Boeotia was to be acknowledged, and, if necessary, supported by Athenian forces, even though this meant the abandonment of Plataea and Thespiae, and the loss of Oropus; in the war with Philip, Thebes was to command by land, Athens by sea; and two-thirds of the expenses of the war were to be met by Athens. The eloquence and generosity of Demosthenes carried the day, and both sides now tried to secure allies for the forthcoming struggle, the Athenians and Thebans doubtless emphasizing the peril to Greece as a whole, while Philip was studiously careful to describe, his aims as entirely those of the Amphictyonic Council. Neither side, however, appears to have gained more support than was already assured. Nearly all the Peloponnesian States, having alliances with both Athens and Philip, remained neutral; Athens and Thebes were supported by the people of Euboea, Achaea, Megara, Acarnania, Leucas and Corcyra; Philip by the Thessalians and some smaller Amphictyonic tribes.

In Athens itself Demosthenes was now all-powerful. The measure which he had advocated in vain at the time of the Olynthian crisis, the transference of the festival-money to the warchest, was carried without difficulty; the repairs of the dockyards and arsenal at the Piraeus, which had been begun after the Peace of Philocrates, were suspended; the financial administration passed under the control of Lycurgus, a very able man of business, and himself a distinguished orator; and despite adverse omens and deterrent oracles, the movement of troops into Boeotia was pushed forward with all speed.

The allies occupied all the passes by which Philip might attempt to cross from Phocis into Boeotia, the chief of these being the Pass of Parapotamii, north-west of the plain of Chaeronea; and 10,000 mercenaries were sent with Chares to defend the road which led from Cytinium to Amphissa and to the Gulf of Corinth, across which Philip might wish to communicate with his Peloponnesian friends. In this region the Theban Proxenus was in command. Some minor engagements—which Demosthenes speaks of as the ‘winter-battle’ and the ‘battle by the river’—took place during the following months, probably in consequence of tentative efforts on the part of Philip to dislodge the occupants of the passes. In these the allies were victorious, and there was great jubilation in Athens; Demosthenes was once more crowned at the Dionysia (in March, 338).

Philip’s long postponement of more active operations is to be explained partly by a desire to wait for reinforcements from Macedonia and Thessaly, but partly, and more significantly, by political motives. There can be no doubt that at this time he was engaged in forwarding the restoration of the Phocian towns (which was wrongly ascribed by Pausanias to Athens and Thebes), and in the renewal of their federal government. No better move against the interests of Thebes could have been devised. And so we find the Phocian community once more mentioned in the Delphic records, and their compulsory payment to the temple of sixty talents a year reduced to ten talents. These measures were doubtless ratified by the Amphictyonic Council at their spring meeting, at which Philip and his Thessalian friends had the preponderant influence. Inscriptions show that the Thessalian representatives on the Council were no longer Cottyphus and Colosimus, who had sat on it for seven years, but Daochus and Thrasydaeus, who had accompanied the Macedonian envoys to Thebes in 339, and who appear on Demosthenes’ list of traitors in the Speech on the Crown. Moreover, the Council itself was reduced in importance by the appointment for the first time in the winter of 339 (probably at the November meeting) of a College of Treasurers of the temple-funds, in which also Philip’s friends carried most weight. On the other hand, the Council appears to have acquired a new political status, and its coinage, as issued first in the spring of 338, bears the superscription not, as heretofore, ‘Of the Delphians,’ but ‘Of the Amphictyons’. Finally, Philip gained in moral influence through being proclaimed by the Council as the champion of the god of Delphi. All these arrange­ments must have occupied a considerable time.

At last, however, Philip was ready for action, and he prepared the way by a ruse not unlike that which had enabled him to get his ships away from the Bosporus over a year before. He addressed a letter to Antipater, announcing his hurried return to Thrace, to crush a revolt there; the letter fell, according to plan, into the hands of Proxenus and Chares, who relaxed their vigilance, as Philip expected them to do. Then, without warning, he came through the pass from Cytinium by night with a great force, inflicted a severe defeat upon Proxenus and Chares, and took Amphissa without difficulty. Its walls were destroyed under an order of the Amphictyonic Council, and its leading statesmen banished. He also secured his communications with the sea and the Peloponnese by marching rapidly to Naupactus, and handing it over to his allies, the Aetolians. Then he returned to Elatea.

The position of the Athenian and Theban forces in Parapotamii and the parallel passes was no longer tenable, since Philip’s troops could now cross the mountains by roads in their rear and threaten their retreat, and from this time onwards they executed many harassing movements, and ravaged the lands of Western Boeotia. Consequently the allied line was withdrawn to the plain of Chaeronea, and Philip was free to cross the Pass of Parapotamii and force a final battle.

Yet even now (unless indeed these negotiations belong to an earlier date, before the conclusion of the alliance between Athens and Thebes) he showed his desire for a bloodless settlement by messages sent both to Athens and to Thebes. In both cities there were those who were ready to listen—at Athens, Phocion, who was as fearless of unpopularity as of the enemy, and whose honesty and experience carried great weight, and at Thebes, the principal magistrates, the Boeotarchs, whom Philip may have attempted to corrupt. But both were met with violent language, as well as by argument, from Demosthenes, whose sarcastic request to the Thebans for a free passage for the army fighting against Philip shamed them into a renewed readiness for the conflict; while the Athenians were easily persuaded that it was better that the final struggle should take place as far away as possible from Athens.

On the seventh day of the month Metageitnion—probably 2 August, possibly 1 September 338—the battle of Chaeronea was fought. The great mound in which the Macedonian dead were buried determines approximately the site of the conflict. The opposing lines must have been drawn from the banks of the Cephisus, about 200 yards from the mound, in a south-westerly direction across the plain, to the opening in the hill of Thurium, where the stream called Molos runs down into the plain, the allied left wing resting against the mountain-promontory which bounds this opening on the east. On each side between thirty and thirty-five thousand men were engaged. The allied front was composed of the Thebans, under Theagenes, on the right; the mercenaries and troops from smaller allied States in the centre; the Athenians, under Stratocles, Lysicles and Chares, on the left, on ground rising slightly above the plain. On the Macedonian side Alexander, now eighteen years old, and eager to display his prowess in the presence of his father, commanded on the left, where the best troops were placed, Philip himself on the right. On the left wing there was a fierce struggle from the first; but in the end, largely by force of his personal example, Alexander’s men broke through the Theban ranks; the famous ‘Sacred Band’ of the Thebans, true to their tradition, stood their ground till all had fallen. Philip, on the other hand, at first gave way of set purpose before the Athenian onset, until he had drawn the Athenians, jubilant at their supposed victory, from their favourable position on to lower ground, while he himself probably brought his men up to a slightly higher level. Then he suddenly turned upon the Athenians and broke their line. Those who could, Demosthenes among them, escaped over the pass which led to Lebadea; but a thousand citizens of Athens were killed and two thousand captured; and the centre of the allied force was hopelessly cut up between the two victorious Macedonian wings which now converged upon them, the losses of the Achaean contingent being especially terrible.

The main cause of the defeat was undoubtedly the superior generalship of Philip, and the greater efficiency of his highly trained army. The Thebans alone were equal in any degree to the Macedonians in the necessary military qualities, and for that reason Philip had opposed to them his best troops under Alexander. It is plain that, throughout the campaign and in the battle, the allies were not directed by one commanding mind. Phocion, who was probably the ablest Athenian general, was away in command of the fleet in the Aegean. Stratocles evidently lost his head at the apparent success of his men at the outset, and shouted hysterical exhortations to them to pursue the enemy to Macedonia. Stratocles may have fallen in the battle. Of the doings of Chares, in the battle and afterwards, nothing is reported. Lysicles returned to Athens, and was prosecuted by Lycurgus and condemned to death. The battle was a crowning proof of the inability of amateur soldiers and citizen-levies to cope with a well-trained professional army, combining units of all descriptions under a centralized direction. We do not indeed hear what part Philip’s cavalry took in this particular battle, but they doubtless helped to complete the defeat of the enemy.

The battle also marked the fact that the independent city-states had had their day as disconnected units. Whether with or without their good-will, some other form of political existence must needs be found for them, if they were to play any but a small part in the world. To the experiments of combining them which were made under Macedonian leadership in the years which followed the battle of Chaeronea we shall shortly return.

 

V.

AFTER CHAERONEA

 

The news of the battle came to Athens first by rumour, and then in its full gravity through the return of the fugitives. The city was at once prepared for defence against siege by land; the inhabitants of Attica were brought within the walls, and all citizens under sixty years old were enrolled to man the defences. Hypereides, who until the return of Demosthenes took charge of the preparations, even proposed the complete enfranchisement of all resident aliens, and the liberation of all slaves who would enlist; but these proposals were afterwards indicted as illegal, and their operation was thereby suspended. When, some time later, the indictment came to trial, Hypereides defended the admitted illegality on the ground that the danger had darkened his vision—‘It was not I who made the proposals, but the battle of Chaeronea’—and the jury acquitted him; but the time for carrying out any such decrees had then gone by. Charidemus was given the chief military command; his long-standing hostility to Philip seemed to point him out as the man for the work. The details of the defensive operations and the financial provision for them were worked out on his return by Demosthenes, and his supporters proposed the decrees which ratified them.

But to the astonishment of the Athenians, their anxiety proved to be unfounded. Philip had, indeed, in the first orgy of triumph, refused even to give up the allies’ dead for burial; but as an outspoken word from the orator Demades, who was one of his Athenian prisoners, caused him to break off his drunken revel, so he rapidly returned to the mood of far-sighted generosity which was both characteristic of his temper and conducive to the fulfilment of his plans.

For Thebes, indeed, the false friend, as for the Olynthians ten years before, there could be no mercy. The leaders of the anti-Macedonian party were executed or banished, and their property confiscated; an oligarchy of three hundred, whom Philip could trust, was appointed to govern; a Macedonian force occupied the citadel; the power of Thebes over the Boeotian League was taken away; Plataea, Thespiae and Orchomenus were restored. The Theban prisoners were sold as slaves, and it was only with difficulty that the Thebans obtained leave to bury their dead at the spot where the marble lion, which was erected in their honour, has once more been set up. In all this Philip only acted towards the Thebans as they would have acted to any city which they had conquered.

But towards Athens he showed himself in another light. His reasons were no doubt in part strictly practical. His experiences at Byzantium and Perinthus had shown him the difficulty of capturing a strongly defended maritime city, without the command of the sea; and if the project of a great campaign against Persia was now clearly in his mind, as it must have been, he would need both the ships and the goodwill of Athens. Further, Athens had not, like Thebes, pretended to be his friend (despite the alliance of 346) and then deserted him; nor was she, like Thebes, a likely centre of Persian influence in Greece. But to these reasons it must be added that Athens was the home of the highest artistic and literary culture of the Greek world; and if Philip’s plans included not only the hellenizing of his own country, but also (as those of Alexander certainly contemplated) the spread of Hellenic civilization over the Eastern world, he would need the co-operation of Athens for higher purposes than those of conquest. And even if the ascription of such aims to him is no more than a very probable conjecture, there is no doubt of his own admiration for Athens and all that she stood for in the Greek world.

Be that as it may, the arrival of Demades from Philip’s camp, and the account which he gave of the king’s mood, quickly changed the plans of the Athenians. They no longer talked of resistance to the death, but, Phocion having been placed by the Council of Areopagus at the head of the forces instead of Charidemus, they sent him with Demades and Aeschines to treat with Philip. The terms which Philip dictated were far better than they could have dreamed possible. He guaranteed to Athens freedom from Macedonian invasion by land or sea, and left her in possession of the chief of the islands of the Aegean,—Lemnos, Imbros, Delos, Scyros and Samos. The Chersonese he took from her, but he restored Oropus, her former possession on the Boeotian frontier. The Athenian League, of course, was dissolved, and Athens became his ally. There was to be freedom of traffic by sea, and Athens was to unite with Philip in the suppression of piracy. Philip sent Alexander to Athens, with two of his principal commanders, bearing the bones of the Athenians who had fallen at Chaeronea and had been burned there; and the Athenians in return gave their citizenship to both Philip and Alexander, and erected Philip’s statue in their market-place. Demosthenes, to whom this reversal of the fighting-spirit which he had animated must have been more than painful, had accepted a mission to procure corn and funds from abroad, and was doubtless absent when these things were done.

Yet the heart of the people was with Demosthenes, and his own zeal for the public service, as he understood it, was unabated. It was he who was appointed to deliver the Funeral Oration on those who had died at Chaeronea; and it was he who, aided by the great financial ability of Lycurgus, superintended the con­tinued repair of the fortifications and other public works; for these purposes he contributed largely of his own substance.

For some years a bitter war of prosecutions was waged between the party of Demosthenes and that of Philip. Success seems almost always to have fallen to the former. Lycurgus, in particular, was relentless in his pursuit of his opponents, and even of those who had so far despaired of the future as to leave Athens, with their families and their resources, when Philip’s vengeance was supposed to be imminent and all the help that every citizen could give might well be needed. Hypereides, who was attacked, as has been narrated, for the illegality of his decrees, retaliated by indicting Demades for his proposal to confer honours upon Euthycrates, who had betrayed Olynthus to Philip. Demosthenes himself was, he tells us, ‘brought to trial every day.’ But the administration of Demosthenes and Lycurgus was both successful and popular. The theoric distributions, which had probably been suspended only for the duration of the war, were naturally resumed; great public works, among them the rebuilding of the Dionysiac theatre, were worthily carried out; and there is no doubt that the decree proposed by Ctesiphon, that at the Great Dionysia in 336 Demosthenes should receive a golden crown, because he always did and advised what was best for Athens, would have been enthusiastically passed, had not Aeschines taken advantage of a technical irregularity in the proposal to bring an indictment against its mover. The trial of the issue was destined to be delayed for six years; but the feeling of Athens as a whole at the time of the proposal cannot be mistaken.

In the meantime Philip was taking steps to make his supremacy in Greece secure. To retain Northern Greece, he placed garrisons in Chalcis and Ambracia, as well as at Thebes, and he had the leaders who had favoured Athens expelled from Acarnania. The Aetolians and Phocians, and of course the Thessalians, were already his friends; Epirus was, as we have seen, virtually a dependency of Macedonia. Byzantium also made its peace with Philip about this time; but, like Perinthus and Selymbria, it must have preserved a certain amount of independence, since it continued to issue its own coinage.

The turn of the Peloponnese came next. Philip was welcomed on his way there at Megara, and also at Corinth, where he left a garrison to control the Isthmus. The Arcadian Confederacy, the centre of which was at Megalopolis, was re-organized; Mantinea and the neighbouring towns were brought within it; and Philip assigned to the Arcadians, the Argives and the Messenians, districts which had until now been in the hands of Sparta. For the Spartans, who had held aloof from the recent struggle, now declined to receive Philip, and preferred to suffer not only these losses of territory, but also the plundering of Laconia by the Macedonian army. Whether he really threatened to suppress the dual monarchy, as some have thought to be indicated by an expression in the paean of Isyllus, remains uncertain; in the end he left Sparta itself and its constitution intact, but greatly reduced in power and influence. The territorial arrangements which he had made proved, as a whole, to be lasting.

Philip had now dealt with the Greek States in detail. It remained to sum up his achievements by the creation of a single organization which should embrace them all. This was done at the Congress which met, on his summons, at Corinth, late in 338. The Greek States (with the exception of Sparta, which obstinately refused to send representatives) were united in a common league, and the terms which Philip laid down for the union show a broadminded statesmanship, and a grasp of the condition of the Hellenic world, which had been greatly lacking in the politicians of the city-states.

The League was to be in alliance, offensive and defensive, with himself, and was to be represented by a council to which each State was to send delegates whose number varied with the importance of the State. The contingents which each was to provide for the common forces were settled. The Athenians, indeed, made a show of opposition when called upon to provide ships and cavalry; but the good sense of Phocion once more saved them from putting themselves in an impossible position. Any citizen of an allied State who took service with a foreign power against Philip or against the League was to be banished as a traitor, and his goods confiscated. But of far greater significance was the attempt to give internal peace and unity to Greece. The autonomy of the several States was guaranteed, as it had been nominally by the Peace of Antalcidas, which the Treaty of Corinth virtually superseded, with better hope of good results. The forces of the League were to protect the independence of each member; the existing constitutions of the States were to be undisturbed, and there were to be no violent interferences with private property. No tribute was to be exacted, and no garrisons planted in the cities, except (we must suppose) in so far as the military organization of the League demanded definite military centres. The seas were to be open for trade to all. The military command was, of course, to be in the hands of the Macedonian king, as well as the right to summon the Congress of the League, though doubtless it was to have its periodical meetings. The Amphictyonic Council was to be the supreme judicial Court in matters affecting the States which were included in the League.

Such was the first great attempt to combine the Hellenic States in an effectual political and military union. The chapters which follow will show how far it was successful. In fact the two States in which the spirit of the independent city was strongest, Athens and Sparta, do not appear ever to have entered wholeheartedly into any form of federal union, and they stood apart from the federations of the next century. But for the rest there can be no doubt that the work which Philip did was well done and was fruitful in good results.

The League was also given an immediate object for its activity —the same which had so often been advocated by Isocrates, who died, after inditing a warm letter to Philip, just at the moment when the king was giving substance to the old man’s vision. This was the united campaign against Persia, which must long have been in Philip’s mind. We do not know whether (as some historians assert) he himself represented it as an act of vengeance for the Persian invasion of Greece, a century and a half before; even if he was not of the romantic temper of Alexander, such an appeal to sentiment may well have been adopted by him as no less convenient than the appeal which he had twice made to religious feeling by professing to be the champion of the God of Delphi. Nor (as has already been said) do we know whether his own plans were confined to the liberation of the Greek peoples in Asia Minor from Persian rule, or whether, like Alexander, he entertained the vaster vision of the conquest and hellenization of the East. But the campaign was announced, and the needful forces requisitioned, at the Congress of Corinth, and arrange­ments were made to send the generals Attalus and Parmenion into Asia Minor with a Macedonian army to prepare the way for the great host which was to follow. The recent murder of Artaxerxes Ochus made the moment a peculiarly favourable one for the projected invasion.

 

VI.

THE DEATH OF PHILIP. CHARACTERS OF PHILIP AND DEMOSTHENES

 

But Philip was not destined to see the fulfilment of his design. For a long time there had been little love lost between himself and his wife Olympias, the mother of Alexander. Monogamy, indeed, was not demanded by Macedonian ethics and six or seven wives of Philip are known by name, most of whom he had married since his wedding with Olympias; but Philip’s wedding in 337 with Cleopatra, the niece of his general Attalus, was marked by an incident which led to an open rupture. Attalus, in proposing a toast at the wedding-feast, expressed the hope that Cleopatra would bear Philip a legitimate heir to the throne. Such an insult was more than Alexander could brook; a furious quarrel broke out on the spot between him and his father; Alexander threw his cup in Attalus’ face; Philip dashed from his place, sword in hand, and would have tried to slay his son, had he not stumbled and fallen. After a jeer at the man ‘who wanted to cross from Europe to Asia, and could not cross from one couch to another’,’ Alexander left the court, and his friends were sent into exile. He himself repaired to the country of the Illyrians, on whom he had the year before inflicted a defeat, which had been followed by an even more crushing one at the hands of Philip; but it may well have been Alexander’s object to rouse the warlike tribes once more against his father. Olympias was already with her brother, Alexander of Epirus; but as it was undesirable for Philip to leave that prince disaffected when he went to the East, a reconciliation was arranged, and Philip’s daughter by Olympias, another Cleopatra, was offered in marriage to her uncle, the king of Epirus.

The reconciliation with Alexander, though he returned to the court, proved to be very hollow. The prince was disposed to marry the daughter of Pixodarus, satrap of Caria. Philip refused his consent, nominally because the alliance was not worthy of Alexander, really (we may suspect) because an alliance between his son and a nominal vassal of Persia might not be convenient on the eve of his Persian campaign.

However this may be, preparations were made to celebrate the wedding of Cleopatra with Alexander of Epirus with unheard-of magnificence. In July, 336, the festivities began. The statue of Philip was borne into the theatre with those of the twelve greatest gods; and he himself was walking alone, somewhat ahead of his guards, to display his confidence in the position which he held, when he was struck down by Pausanias, one of his guardsmen, in revenge, it was said, for his refusal to punish a gross insult which had been inflicted years before upon Pausanias by Attalus. There were, however, some who had no doubt that Olympias encouraged or even instigated Pausanias to do the deed. Her own fierce nature, and the subsequent murder by her order of Cleopatra (the niece of Attalus) with her infant son and many of her supporters, and that of Attalus himself at the bidding of Alexander, lend colour to the darkest suspicions; but the evidence is contradictory, and no definite conclusion is possible.

Such was the end of the strongest of the few strong men who had appeared on the stage of Greek history since the end of the Peloponnesian War. With his private life history is not much concerned; he had his vices, and indulged in them freely; yet he was always master of himself, and could pass in a moment from extreme indulgence to the coolest and most calculating sobriety. His morality in public affairs was doubtless of a kind of which few statesmen would care to boast at the present day, though it may be suspected that the gap which separates him from many modern politicians is not so great as the picture drawn by Demosthenes might lead us to suppose. He was ready to use any means which was likely to effect his purpose, and he seldom miscalculated. If bribery or liberality would secure him agents, he would use bribery or liberality to secure them. If he could keep a city or an individual under the delusion that he was their friend, until he was ready to fall upon them, he would do so. If it served his purpose to inflict final and crushing disaster, he did not shrink from it; but he was equally ready to be generous and forgiving, if some larger purpose was served thereby, and his natural instinct probably inclined him towards such a course. Whether he was dealing with politicians or generals or masses, he had an unusual power of divining the way in which the minds of others would work, and he acted upon his conjectures with conspicuous success. If on some particular occasion he was beaten, he accepted the situation without hesitation, in the full confidence that he would win in the end. Whether he chose to strike suddenly or to wait patiently for the maturing of his design, his plans were laid on a great scale, and based on an unerring and comprehensive view of the facts. His personal courage was remarkable, and it seems to have been accompanied by a certain light-heartedness, which is reflected in a number of anecdotes, and which, with his fondness for good-fellowship, his natural eloquence and his love of artistic and literary culture, helps to account for the attraction which he exercised both upon his own people and companions, and also upon the representatives of the Greek States who came in contact with him.

Of his great opponent, Demosthenes, it is difficult to speak impartially. There has been a tendency in recent historical writings to minimize his importance and to decry his personal and political character. His importance was at least fully recognized by Philip himself, and it was not without reason that in his revel on the night of Chaeronea the king constantly declaimed words of triumph over Demosthenes. That Demosthenes’ greatest title to fame rests upon his oratory, which at its highest level remains unsurpassed and unsurpassable, may be admitted. It must also be admitted that in regard to the worst practice of democratic orators, modern as well as ancient—that of adapting the facts to suit the impression which it is desired to create—Demosthenes was as unscrupulous as any Greek; and that a natural unsociableness, perhaps due originally to physical causes, was reflected in a lack of generosity towards his opponents, and the consequent misinterpretation, at times, of their motives. Yet he stood unflinchingly, and without counting the cost, for a great ideal,—that of the free city-state; and it must be added that in this he was truly representative of the Athenian people. It was upon the triumphant vindication of their freedom against Persia, and its maintenance, despite the issue of the Peloponnesian War,  against all rivals in Greece, that their national pride was founded; and nothing proved the fundamental genuineness of their faith so conclusively as their constancy to Demosthenes after the battle of Chaeronea had occurred. To modern readers of ancient history, twenty-two centuries after the events, it may be clear that the ideal of Demosthenes and of Athens was a narrow one; that it was in the interests of humanity that it should be superseded by wider political and ethical conceptions; and that the Macedonian kings, whether by design or not, did a work for the world which the city-states, in their detachment and irreconcilability, could never have done. But no such considerations were or could be before the mind of Demosthenes. Despite all his faults, his noble championship of the losing cause must always command ad­miration; nor, when he is criticized for blindness to the signs of the times, should it be forgotten how near he came to success.

 

 

CHAPTER X

SICILY, 367 TO 330b.c.