Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/267

 SACKED VVAK 24] came, after no long time, repulsive and even alarming to Philip But in the year 356 B. c. she bore to him a son, afterwards re- nowned as Alexander the Great. It was in the summer of this year, not long after the taking of Potida^a, that Philip received nearly at the same time, three messages with good news tho birth of his son ; the defeat of the Illyrians by Parmenio ; and the success of one of his running horses at the Olympic games. 1 CHAPTER LXXXVII. r POM THE COMMENCEMENT OF THE SACKED WAR TO THAT OK THE OLYNTHIAN WAR. IT has been recounted in the preceding chapter, how Philij daring the continuance of the Social War, aggrandized himself ' Macedonia and Thrace at the expense of Athens, by the acquisi tion of Amphipolis, Pydna, and Potidaea the two last actually taken from her, the first captured only under false assurances held out to her while he was besieging it : how he had farther strengthened himself by enlisting Olynthus both as an ally of his own, and as an enemy of the Athenians. lie had thus begun the war against Athens, usually spoken of as the war about Amphipo- lis, which lasted without any formal peace for twelve years. The resistance opposed by Athens to these his first aggressions had been faint and ineffective partly owing to embarrassments. But the Social War had not yet terminated, when new embarrassment? and complications, of a far more formidable nature, sprang up elsewhere known by the name of the Sacred War, rending the very entrails of the Hellenic world, and profitable only to the in- defatigable aggressor in Macedonia. The Amphiktyonic assembly, which we shall now find exalted into an inauspicious notoriety, was an Hellenic institution ancient 1 Plutarch, Alexand. c. 3; Justin, xii. 10. 21