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120 take the field in winter as well as in summer. His troops were never disbanded, and they were under his sole direction. He was, in fact, to the Greeks what Napoleon was to the Austrians. An able and restless despot, at the head of a well-trained standing army, will often, for a time at least, have a decided advantage in war over a free and constitutional state.

The next year, 340 B.C., events occurred which completely justified the warnings of Demosthenes. Philip attempted the conquest of the cities on the Propontis, Perinthus and Byzantium. He was foiled by prompt intervention from Athens. There was for a brief space a doubt whether Byzantium would accept Athenian aid, so thoroughly had the city become estranged from Athens in consequence of the Social War. Demosthenes went thither at the head of an embassy, and the result was, that an alliance was concluded. Shortly afterwards, the conscientious and much-respected Phocion, though he differed politically from Demosthenes, sailed thither with a powerful armament and a force of Athenian citizens. Through the influence of Leon, one of the leading citizens of Byzantium, who had been Phocion's fellow-student at Athens in the Academy, they were admitted into the city, and charmed the Byzantines by their quiet and admirable behaviour. Succours also arrived from some of the islands of the Ægean—from Cos, Chios, Rhodes. Byzantium was now all but impregnable, and Philip was obliged to abandon the siege both of it and of Perinthus. Even his own territory was invaded by Phocion, and many of the Macedonian cruisers were captured. For Philip