Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/257

Rh gress at Corinth the Greeks formally adopted that policy. His head was somewhat turned by success; he assumed the airs and designation of a god as Zeus Philippus. Nothing seemed too hard for him to do, and the answer given him by the Pythia at Delphi was regarded as favourable ("The bull is crowned, the end is come: the slayer is at hand"), though the tragedy which soon followed served to give it a different interpretation. For though he was encouraged to push on with this national undertaking, and actually despatched Attalus and Parmenio into Asia with orders to free the Greek cities, he was not destined to fight another campaign. Early the next year (B.C. 336) he was assassinated at a wedding feast by one of his own guards. His work was taken up by his son and successor, Alexander, whose mother, Olympias, was suspected of having been privy to the crime.

Alexander was just twenty years old, and before he could enter upon what was to be his great work he was obliged to secure his power at home against the partisans of his father's second wife, and against the Illyrian tribe of the Triballi. The news of Philip's death had also incited the Greeks, at the instigation of Demosthenes, to strike for freedom. The appearance of Alexander at the head of an army repressed the movement, and he was elected "General with full powers," like his father. Next year, however, he was obliged to go to Amphipolis, and thence to the Danube, to suppress renewed risings of the barbarians; and a false rumour having reached Greece that he had fallen, an insurrection