Page:History of Greece Vol XI.djvu/545

 CHARACTER OF PHILIP. 519 less many who welcomed it with silent satisfaction, as seeming to reopen for them the door of freedom. One person alone dared to manifest satisfaction ; and that one was Olympias. 1 Thus perished the destroyer of freedom and independence in the Hellenic world, at the age of forty-six or forty-seven, after a reign of twenty-three years. 2 Our information about him is sig- nally defective. Neither his means, nor his plans, nor the diffi- culties which he overcame, nor his interior government, are known to us with exactness or upon contemporary historical authority. But the great results of hid reign, and the main lines of his char- acter, stand out incontestably. At his accession, the Macedonian kingdom was a narrow territory round Pella, excluded partially, by independent and powerful Grecian cities, even from the neigh- boring sea-coast. At his death, Macedonian ascendency was estab- lished from the coasts of the Propontis to those of the Ionian Sea, and the Ambrakian, Messenian, and Saronic Gulfs. Within these boundaries, all the cities recognized the supremacy of Philip ; except only Sparta, and mountaineers like the -ZEtolians and oth- ers, defended by a rugged home. Good fortune had waited on Philip's steps, with a few rare interruptions ; 3 but it was good fortune crowning the efforts of a rare talent, political and military. Indeed the restless ambition, the indefatigable personal activity and endurance, and the adventurous courage, of Philip, were such as, in a king, suffice almost of themselves to guarantee success, even with abilities much inferior to his. That among the causes of Philip's conquests, one was corruption, employed abundantly to foment discord and purchase partisans among neighbors and enemies that with winning and agreeable manners, he com- bined recklessness in false promises, deceit and extortion even towards allies, and unscrupulous perjury when it suited his pur- 1 After the solemn funeral of Philip, Olympias took down and burned the body of Pausanias (which had been crucified), providing for him a sepulchral monument and an annual ceremony of commemoration. Justin. a.. 7. 2 Justin (ix. 3) calls Philip forty-seven years of age; Pausanias (viii. 7 4) speaks cf him as forty-six. See Mr. Clinton's Past. Hellen. Appen. 4 p. 227. 3 Theopompus, Frag. 265. ap. Athenae. ; iii. p. 77. KOI hmrov. Compare Dcmosth, Olynth. ii. p. 24-