Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/246

218 Presently he appeared at Thermopylae as though he would subdue Boeotia and Athens. And though the Athenians were at length roused to send a fleet which prevented his coming through the pass, he secured Pagasae and Magnesia, and instigated the Euboeans once more to throw off the rule of Athens (B.C. 350). In the next two years (B.C. 349–348) he turned upon his allies, the Olynthians, who had come to some secret understanding with Athens, and after a lengthened siege took and destroyed the town. The Athenians once more came too late to relieve it, in spite of the vehement exhortations of Demosthenes, who henceforth threw his whole energies into organising an opposition to Philip. But nothing seriously hindered his victorious career or the fulfilment of his ambition to secure supremacy in Greece. In B.C. 346, on the invitation of Thebes, he again interfered in the sacred war, which he brought to an end by overrunning Phocis, and thereby obtained admission to the Amphictyonic league as an Hellenic power. The same year was concluded the peace with Athens, called from the chief of the embassy the Peace of Philocrates. It was on this embassy that Demosthenes and his rival Aeschines served, who afterwards vehemently accused each other of misconducting it.

For seven years (B.C. 345–338) this peace was nominally maintained. But Philip did not rest. lie was busy in strengthening his hold on Thessaly, in aiding the Messenians, Argives and Achaeans to break down the supremacy of Sparta, in establishing his partisans as tyrants in the cities of Euboea, as well as in