Page:A General Sketch of Political History from the Earlist Times.djvu/72

 60 THE GLORY OF GREECE AND RISE OF ROME method of hurling his troops in force against a particular point in the enemies' position so as to pierce the line and roll it up. From this time no single city claimed supremacy among the Greeks, but a new power appeared upon the scene which 7. Rise of secured the leadership. On the north of Thessaly Macedon. i av the kingdom of Macedon, whose princes claimed that they were of Dorian descent, though the Hellenes of the south did not recognise the people of Macedonia as pure Hellenes. They had lacked the high political organisation which characterised the city states, but Macedonia was a large country; and when a king should arise who had the skill to organise it for military purposes, and should enter the arena of Greek politics, Macedon was assured of predominance after the failure of any large group of Greek states to combine in forming a united nation. After the death of Epaminondas, Thebes could not succeed where Athens and Sparta had failed. It was at this juncture that Macedon fell under the sway of a man who was precisely fitted to achieve for Macedon the leadership Philip of of the Greeks. There had been kings of capacity Macedon. i n Macedon before Philip, and for building up an army Philip had the foundations already provided. He per- fected that army as an instrument of war, and he was himself a general of the highest ability; an ability inherited in an even higher degree by his son Alexander. But Philip was also an extremely shrewd diplomatist, who could conceal his own designs while penetrating those of his neighbours. He was unscrupulous, but was quite alive to the advantages of making a show of moral virtue which would cloak his unscrupulousness; and he had no hesitation in playing upon the moral weakness of others, and in employing bribery to avoid an unnecessary expenditure of physical force. The feuds of the Greek states gave him leisure to organise his power, and to bring under his own sway the Greek colonies on the coast of Macedonia and the peninsula of Chalcidice. Without deliberately setting him- self to conquer the Greeks at first, he succeeded in impressing on them the fact that his power was exceedingly formidable; in inducing them to recognise Macedon as one of the states of Hellas; and finally, in persuading the Greek states in general