Page:Dictionary of Greek and Roman Geography Volume II.djvu/251

 MACEDONIA. Alorus, one of the murderers of Alexander, was rei,'ent, and administered the affairs of the widowed queen, and those of her children, against Pausanias, a man of the royal lineage and a pretender to the throne. (Diod. xvi. 2 ; Aeschin. Fals. Legat. pp. 249, 250; Justin, vii. 6.) Iphicrates declared in favour of Eurydice, who would have been forced to yield the country to Pausanias, and acted so vigorously against him as to expel him from Macedonia and secure the sceptre to the family of Amyntas. (Corn. Nep. Iphicrat. 3.) When Philip succeeded his brother Perdiccas, slain in battle with the Illyrians, B. c. 360 — 359, no one could have foreseen the future conqueror of Chaeroneia, and the destroyer of Grecian liberties. In the very first year of his reign, though only 24 years old, he laid the foundations of the future greatness of a state which was then almost annihilated. His history, together with that of the otlier JIacedonian kings, is given in the Dictionary of Biography. At his death Macedonia had already become a compact empire; its boundaries had been extended into Thrace as far as Perinthus ; and the Greek coast and towns belonged to it, while Mace- donian ascendancy was established from the coasts of the Propontis to those of the Ionian sea, and the Ambracian, Jlessenian, and Saronic gulfs. The empire of Alexander became a world-dominion. Ma- cedonian settlements were planted almost every- where, and Grecian manners diffused over the im- mense region extending from the Temple of Ammon in the Libyan Oasis, and from Alexandria on the western Delta of the Nile to the northern Alexandria on the Jaxartes. III. Later History till the Fall of the Empire. At the death of Alexander a new Macedonian kingdom arose with the dynasty of Antipater ; after the murder of the king Philippus III. (Arrhidaeus) and Eurydice by the queen Olympias, Cassander the son of Antipater, after having murdered the king Alexander Aegus, and his mother, ascended the throne of Macedon ; at his death his three sons, Phi- lip, Antipater, and Alexander, successively occupied the throne, but their reigns were of short duration. Philip was carried off by sickness, Alexander was put to death by Demetrius Poliorcetes, and Antipater, who had fled for refuge to Lysimachus, was mur- dered by that prince. When the line of Cassander became extinct, the crown of IMacedon was the prize for which the neighbouring sovereigns struggled, Ly- simachus and Pyrrhus, kings of Thrace and Epeirus, with Demetrius, who still retained Athens and Thessuly, in turns, dispossessed each other of this disputed throne. Demetrius, however, at last over- came the other competitors ; and at his death trans- mitted the kingdom to his son Antigonus, and the dynasty of the Antigonidae, after many vicissitudes, finally established their power. The three great irruptions of the Gauls, who made themselves masters of the N. parts, and were established in Thrace and Upper Macedonia, fell within this period. Antigonus Gonatas recovered the throne of desolated Macedonia; and now secured from the irruptions of the Gauls, and from foreign rivals, directed his policy against Greece, when the formation of the Aetolian, and yet more important Achaean league, gave rise to entirely new relations. Antigonus, in the latter part of his reign, had recourse to various means, and more espe- cially to an alliance with the Aetohans, for the pur- pose of counterpoising the Achaeans. He died in his eightieth year, and was succeeded by his son MACEDONIA. 235 Demetrius II., who waged war upon the Aetolians, now, however, supported by the Achaeans ; and tried to suppress the growth of the latter, by favouring the tyrants of particular cities. The remainder of the reign of this prince is little more than a gap in hi;;tory. Demetrius' son, Philip, was passed over, and his brother's son, Antigonus II. surnamed Doson, was laised to the throne. This king was occupied most of his time by the events in Greece, when a very remarkable revolution in Sparta, raised up a formidable enemy against the Achaeans ; and so completely altered the relative position of affairs, that the Macedonians from having been opponents be- came allies of the Achaeans. Philippus V., a young, warlike, and popular prince, was the first to come into collision with Rome, — the war with the im- perial city (B.C. 200 — 197), suddenly hurled the Macedonian power from its lofty pitch, and by lay- ing the foundation of Roman dominion in the East, worked a change in almost all the political relations there. T. Quinctius Flaminius, by offering the magic spell of freedom, stripped Pliilip of his allies, and the battle of Cynoscephalae decided everything. Soon after, the freedom of Greece was solemnly proclaimed at the Isthmian games ; but loud as the Greeks were in their triumph, this measure served only to transfer the supremacy of their country from Macedonia to Rome. On the 22nd of June, b. c. 168, the fate of Macedon was decided on the field of Pydna by her last king Perseus. According to the system then pursued at Rome, the conquered kingdom of Macedonia, was not im- mediately converted into a province, but, by the famous edicts of Amphipolis issued by the authority of the Roman senate, the year after the conquest, was divided into four districts. By this decree (Liv. xlv. 29), the Macedonians were called free, — each city was to govern itself by magistrates annu- ally chosen, and the Romans were to receive half the amount of tribute formerly paid to the kings, the distribution and collection of which was prubably the principal business of the councils of the four regions. None but the people of the extreme fron- tiers towards the barbarians were allowed to defend themselves by arms, so that the military power was entirely Roman. In order to break up more effec- tually the national union, no person was allowed to contract marriage, or to purchase land or buildings but within his own region. They were permitted to smelt copper and iron, on paying half the tax which the kings had received ; but the Romans resen-ed to themselves the right of working the mines of gold and silver, and of felling naval timber, as well as the importation of salt, which, as the Third Region only was to have the right of selling it to the bardani, was probably made for the profits of the conquerors on the Thermaic gulf. No wonder, that after such a division, which tore the race in pieces, the Macedonians should compare their seve- rance to the laceration and disjointing of an animal. (Liv. xlv. 30.) This division into four districts did not last longer than eighteen years, but many tetradrachms of the first division of the tetrarchy coined at its capital, Amphipolis, are still extant, n. c. 149 Andriscus, calling himself Philip son of Perseus, reconquered all Macedonia (Liv. Epit. xlix), but was defeated and taken in the following year, by Q. Caecilius Me- tellus; after which the Macedonians were made tri- butary (Porphyr. ap. Euseh. Chron. p. 178), and the country was probably governed by a " praetor,"