Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/250

222 over the Greeks near Chaeroneia, in which the Theban sacred band was cut to pieces, a thousand Athenians were killed, and two thousand made prisoners.

All resistance to Philip was at end. He henceforth took a greater position in Greece than had hitherto been occupied by any supreme ruler or state. Macedonian garrisons were placed in Thebes and other cities, territories were assigned to or taken from certain states at the king's pleasure, and each state was compelled to be satisfied with its own territory without exercising any control over others. Thus all her maritime possessions were taken from Athens, while, on the other hand, her own frontiers were rectified so as to include Oropus, of which the Thebans had deprived her; and as a special mark of the king's favour the 2,000 prisoners were restored without ransom. Philip then marched into the Peloponnese, where every state submitted but Sparta. The Spartans stood sullenly aloof, but their supremacy in the Peloponnese was gone ; they were independent but isolated, with a territory cur- tailed in every direction, and impoverished by the ravages of the Macedonian troops. Philip, indeed, gave a certain air of legalty to the new arrangements by summoning a conference at Corinth at which they were confirmed, and he himself was elected General of all Greece. But the prosaic fact was that all combinations were dissolved, garrisons were placed in all important towns, and his word was law. This was a state of things in which Greece seemed unable to thrive, and a period of general decadence soon set in—industry, population, literature, all alike