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MACEDON AND PHILIP.

name of Macedon, though it is heard of from time to time in Greek history, can hardly be said to have become really famous till the fourth century B.C. and the reign of Philip. It could never have occurred to the mind of a Greek that this outlying northern kingdom might possibly one day be formidable to Greece and its freedom. There were no signs pointing in this direction; and it may be fairly assumed that no political sagacity could have foreseen such a result. The Macedonians were always looked upon by the Greeks as barbarians, although their royal family—Temenids, as they were called, from their legendary ancestor, Temenus—came from Argos, and the people themselves perhaps had some distant affinity to the Hellenic race. For a long period they were nothing better than a collection of rude tribes, with scarcely any cohesion or organisation, and before the disciplined army of a Greek state they would have been utterly powerless. They were surrounded, too, by fierce and unquiet neighbours—Illyrians to the west, Pæonians to the north, Thracians to the east,—all savage, warlike peoples, whom they could