Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Biography and Mythology (1870) - Volume 3.djvu/289

Rh PHILIPPUS. an ineffectual attempt to gain an ascendancy in Me- gara, through the traitors Ptoeodorus and Perilaus (Dem. de Cor. pp. 242, 324, de Fals. Leg. p. 435 ; Plut. Fhoc. 15) ; and in the same year he marched into Epeinis, and compelled three refractory towns in the Cassopian district, — Pandosia, Bucheta, and Elateia, — to submit themselves to his brother-in- law Alexander (Pseudo-Dem. de Hal. p, 84). From this quarter he meditated an attack on Am- bracia and Acarnania, the success of which would have enabled liim to effect an union with the Aeto- lians, whose favour he had secured by a promise of taking Naupactus for them from the Achaeans, and so to open a way for himself into the Pelopon- nesus. But the Athenians, roused to activity by Demosthenes, sent ambassadors to the Pelopon- nesians and Acarnanians, and succeeded in forming a strong league against Philip, who was obliged in consequence to abandon his design. (Dem. Phil, iii. pp. 120, 129 ; Aesch. c. Cies. pp. 65, 67.) It was now becoming moi'e and more evident that actual war between the parties could not be much longer avoided, and the negotiations conse- quent on Philip's offer to modify the terms of the treaty of 346 served only to show the elements of discord which were smouldering. The matters in dispute related mainly : 1. to the island of Halon- nesus, which the Athenians regarded as their own, and which Philip had seized after expelling from it a band of pirates ; 2. to the required restitution by Philip of the property of those Athenians who were residing at Potidaea at the time of its capture by him in 356 ; 3. to Amphipolis ; 4. to the Thracian cities which Philip had taken after the peace of 346 had been ratified at Athens ; 5. to the support given by him to the Cardians in their quarrel about their boundaries with the Athenian settlers in the Chersonesus [Diopeithes] ; and of these questions not one was satisfactorily adjusted, as we may see from the speech (Trepl 'KXovvr(Tov) which was delivered in answer to a letter from Philip to the Athenians on the subject of their complaints. Early in b. c. 342 Philip marched into Thrace against Teres and Cersobleptes, and esta- blished colonies in the conquered territory. Hosti- lities ensued between the Macedonians and Dio- peithes, the Athenian commander in the Cherso- nesus, and the remonstrance sent to Athens by Philip called forth the speech of Demosthenes {ir^pi X€pl>ovri(Tov), in which the conduct of Diopeithes was defended, as also the third Philippic, in conse- quence of which the Athenians appear to have en- tered into a successful negotiation with the Persian king for an alliance against Macedonia (Phil. Ep. ad Ath. ap. Dem. p. 160 ; Diod. xvi. 75 ; Pans. i. 29 ; Arr. Anab. ii. 14). The operations in Euboea in B.C. 342 and 341 [Callias ; Cleitarchus ; Parmenion ; Phocion], as well as the attack of Callias, sanctioned by Athens, against the towns on the bay of Pagasae, brought matters nearer to a crisis, and Philip sent to the Athenians a letter, yet extant, defending his own conduct and arraign- ing theirs. But the siege of Perinthus and By- zantium, in which he was engaged, had increased the feelings of alarm and anger at Athens, and a decree was passed, on the motion of Demosthenes, for succouring the endangered cities. Chares, to whom the armament was at iirst entrusted, effected nothing, or rather worse than nothing ; but Phocion, who superseded him, compelled Philip to raise the Biege of both the townt (B. c. 31^9). (With respect PHILIPPUS. 277 to Selymbria, see Newman, in the Classical Museum, vol. i. pp. 153, 154.) This gleam, however, of Athenian prosperity was destined to be as short as it was glorious. Philip, baffled in Thrace, carried his arms against Atheas, a Scythian prince, from whom he had re- ceived insult and injury. The campaign was a successful one ; but on his return from the Danube his march was opposed by the Triballi, and in a battle which he fought with them he received a severe wound. This expedition he would seem to have undertaken partly in the hope of deluding the Greeks into the belief that Grecian politics occupied his attention less than heretofore ; and meanwhile Aeschines and his party were blindly or treache- rously promoting his designs against the liberties of their country. For the way in which they did so, and for the events which ensued down to the fatal battle of Chaeroneia, in B. c. 338, the reader is referred to the article Demosthene.s. The effect of this last decisive victory was to lay Greece at the feet of Philip ; and, if we may believe the several statements of Theopompus, Dio- dorus, and Plutarch, he gave vent to his exultation in a most unseemly manner, and celebrated his triumph with drunken orgies, reeling forth from the banquet to visit the field of battle, and singing de- risively the commencement of the decrees of De- mosthenes, falling as it does into a comic Iambic verse, — ArjixoffdeuTjs ArifxoaOeuovs Ilaiavieiis rdS' eiirev. (Theopomp. ap. Ath. x. p. 435 ; Diod. xvi. 87 ; Plut. De7n. 20.) Yet he extended to the Athe- nians treatment far more favourable than they could have hoped to have received from him. Their citizens who had been taken prisoners were sent home without ransom, due funeral rites were paid to their dead, whose bones Philip commissioned Antipater to bear to Athens ; their constitution was left untouched ; and their territory was even increased by the restoration of Oropus, which was taken from the Thebans. On Thebes the con- queror's vengeance fell more heavilj% Besides the loss of Oropus, he deprived her of her supremacy in Boeotia, placed her government in the hands of a faction devoted to his interests, and garrisoned the Cadmeia with Macedonian troops. The weak- ness to which he thus reduced her made it safe for him to deal leniently Avith Athens, a course to which he would be inclined by his predilection for a city so rich in science and art and literature, no less than by the wish of increasing his popularity and his character for moderation throughout Greece. And now he seemed to have indeed within his reach the accomplishment of the great object of his ambition, the invasion and conquest of the Persian empire. In a congress held at Corinth, which wa» attended, according to his invitation, by deputies from every Grecian state with the exception of Sparta, war with Persia was determined on, and the king of Macedonia was appointed to command the forces of the national confederacy. He then advanced into the Peloponnesus, where he invaded and ravaged Laconia, and compelled the Lacedae- monians to surrender a portion of their territory to Argos, Tegea, Megalopolis, and Messenia ; and, having thus weakened and humbled Sparta and established his power through the whole of Greece, he returned home in the latter end of B. c. 338. In the following year his marriage with Cleo-