Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/243

Rh But while Greece was thus squandering her strength in unprofitable quarrels, a power was growing up close by destined to absorb her and permanently destroy independent political life in her divided states. This was Macedonia. The dynasty ruling in Macedonia claimed to be of Hellenic origin, descended from the Temenidae of Argos, and its sovereigns from time to time emphasised this claim by dreaming the right to enter as competitors at Olympia. The country originally included under the name was an inland district between the range of Mount Pindus and the river Axius, with a capital at Pella. The aim of its kings had ever been to extend their dominions to the sea, and enlarge and strengthen their frontiers by conquering the surrounding tribes of barbarians. At the time of the Persian invasion the Macedonian king was obliged to submit to the superior powers of the invaders, but Alexander, “the Philhellene,” who was reigning in B.C. 480, was eager for the success of the Greeks, and, according to Herodotus, risked his life to warn them of the coming attack at Plataea. Later kings, however, had become unfriendly to Athens, because they found her inclined to resist the extension of their empire along the shores of the Thermaic gulf. The Athenian influence in the Chalcidic peninsula was a continual bar to their southward extension, and Athenian jealousy was easily roused at any idea of their advance eastwards towards the Strymon.

In B.C. 359 the eighteenth king of the dynasty, Philip II., son of Amyntas, took possession of the throne in place of an infant nephew. He was