Page:Greece from the Coming of the Hellenes to AD. 14.djvu/268

238 have been a fatal blow to Spartan power and activity, for Sparta took no part in the rising which followed on the news of Alexander's death.

But nearly all the rest of Greece did join this movement. It was warmly promoted by Demosthenes, who had been living in banishment at Aegina since B.C. 324, for having accepted a bribe from Harpalus, a dishonest officer of Alexander's who had fled to Athens. He was now recalled, and threw himself eagerly into the task of persuading the Greek states to join. They had recently been made still more disaffected by the decree of Alexander for the restoration of exiles, and there seems to have been little hesitation anywhere. A body of men who had served in Alexander's army as mercenaries, and had been sent home by his order, were stationed in Taenarum, and an energetic leader named Leosthenes having been secured, these men, with contingents from all parts of Greece, were mustered at Thermopylae, as though once more to make a stand there for freedom. The war has been called the Lamian War (B.C. 323–322), because it began by a siege of Antipater in Lamia, some twenty-five miles north of Thermopylae. Unfortunately Leosthenes fell during the siege, and his successor, Antiphilus, though he won one battle against the Macedonian Leonnatus, was defeated by the combined forces of Antipater and Craterus at Crannon, in Thessaly (August, B.C. 322). Though the Greeks lost heavily in the battle, the defeat was not so decisive as to account in itself for a complete collapse. But shortly before this a fleet of 170 vessels,