 Chapter 16 Part 6 of A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great Volume 2 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Morgan Scorpion A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great Volume 2 by John Bagnell Bury Chapter 16 Part 6 Section 6 The Peace of Philocrates Her recent military efforts had exhausted the revenue of Athens. There was not enough money in the treasury to pay the judges their daily wage. Peace was clearly a necessity, and this must have been fully recognised by Ubulus. But there was great indignation at the fall of Olinsus, and the feeling that a disaster had been sustained was augmented by the fact that there were a considerable number of Athenians among the captives. Accordingly, the pressure of popular opinion, which was for the moment strongly aroused against Philip, induced Ubulus to countenance the dispatch of envoys to the cities of the Peloponnesus for the purpose of organising a national resistance in Hellas against the man who had destroyed Olinsus. It is probable that this measure was advocated by Demosthenes. In later years, a national resistance to Philip was his favourite idea. It was an effort foredoomed to failure, as Ubulus knew perfectly well, yet it served his purpose, for it protected him against suspicions of being secretly friendly to Philip. On this occasion the orator Escinis, famous as the antagonist of Demosthenes, first came prominently forward. He had begun life as an usher in a school kept by his father. He had then been a tragic actor, and finally a public clerk. He was now sent to rouse the Greeks of the Peloponnesus against Macedonia, and he used such strong language in his disparagement of Philip, especially at Megalopolis, that no one could accuse him of filipizing. The mere fact that envoys were sent to Megalopolis, whose application for help had so recently been rejected by Athens, is enough to cast suspicion on the whole round of embassies as a farce, got up to satisfy public opinion at home. Demosthenes, like other politicians, saw the necessity of peace and worked towards it. Philip desired two things, to conclude peace with Athens, and to become a member of the Amphicteonic Council. Towards this second end a path was prepared by the Thebans, who along with the Thessalians addressed an appeal to Philip that he would undertake the championship of the Amphicteonic League and crush the Fokians. In Fokus itself, there had recently been domestic strife. Palaecus had been disposed from the generalship, but he had a party of his own and held some a palae with the strong places in its neighbourhood. When it was noise abroad that Philip was about to march southward in answer to the Theban prayer, the Fokians invited Athens and Sparta to help them once again to hold the gates of Greece. Both Athens and Sparta again responded to the call, but the call had come from the political opponents of Palaecus, and he refused to admit either Spartan or Athenian into the pass. Palaecus seems to have previously assisted the enemies of Athens in Ubea, and statesmen at Athens might now feel some uneasiness. Whether he would not turn traitor and surrender the pass to Philip, it was another reason for acquiescing in the necessity of making peace. The first overtures came from Athens. Ten Athenian envoys, and one representative of the Cenedrion of Athenian allies, were sent to Palae to negotiate terms of peace with the Macedonian king. Among the envoys were Philocrates, who had proposed the embassy, Estines and Demosthenes. The terms to which Philip agreed were that Athens and Macedon should each retain the territories of which they were actually in possession at the time the peace was concluded. The peace would be concluded when both signs had sworn to it. Both the allies of Macedonia and those of Athens were to be included with two exceptions. Philip refused to treat with Halus in Thessaly, a place which he had recently attacked, or with the Fokians, whom he was determined to crush. By these terms, which were perfectly explicit, Athens would surrender her old claim to Amphipolis, and on the other hand Philip would recognise Athens as mistress of the Chersonees. The two exceptions which Philip made were inevitable. Halus indeed was a trifle which no one heeded, but it was an essential part of the Macedonian policy to proceed against focus. To the envoys, whom the king charmed by his courteous hospitality at Pelae, he privately intimated that he was far from being ill-disposed to the Fokians, and perhaps a few of them hoped that there was something in the assurance. But in truth the Athenian statesmen troubled themselves little about focus. Some of them, like the Theban and Foksones Demosthenes, were more disposed to lean towards Thebes. It would be necessary to keep up the appearance of protecting an ally, though relations with that ally had recently grown somewhat strained, but neither Ubulus nor Demosthenes would for a moment have dreamed of foregoing the peace for the sake of supporting focus against her enemies. There were a few Thracian forts, belonging to Curse of Leptis, which Philip was anxious to capture before the peace was made, and when the envoys left Pelae, he set out for Thraces, having given them an undertaking to respect the Chersonees. The envoys returned home bearing with them a friendly letter from Philip to the Athenian people, and they were followed in a few days by three Macedonian delegates, appointed to receive the oaths from the Athenians and their allies. How important this negotiation was for Philip is proved by the fact that two of these deputies were the two greatest of his subjects, Parmenio and Antipater. On the motion of Philokrates, the peace was accepted by Athens on the terms which Philip offered, though there were dissentient voices against the exclusion of focus and halus. But the murmurs of the opposition were silenced by the plain speaking of Ubulus, who showed that if the terms were rejected, the war must be continued. And some of the ambassadors disseminated the unofficial utterances of Philip, that he would not ruin the Fokians, and that he would help Athens to win back Ubea and Oropus. The upshot was that focus was not mentioned in the treaty, she was tacitly, not expressly, excluded. The peace was now concluded on one side, and it remained for the envoys of Athens to administer the oaths to Philip and his allies. It was to the interest of Athens that this act should be accomplished as speedily as possible, for Philip was entitled to make new conquests until he swore to the peace, and he was actually engaged in making new conquests in Thrace. The same ambassadors who had visited Macedonia to arrange the terms of a treaty now set forth a second time to administer the oaths. Meanwhile Philip had taken the Thracian Fortresses which he had gone to take, and had reduced Curse Obleptes to be a vassal of Macedonia. When he returned to Pilla, he found not only the embassy from Athens, but envoys from many other Greek states also, awaiting his arrival with various hopes and fears. He was beginning to be recognised as the arbiter of northern Hellas. So far as the formal conclusion of the peace went, there was no difficulty. But the Athenian ambassadors had received general powers to negotiate further with Philip, with a view to some common decision on the settlement of the Folkin question and northern Greece. The treaty was a treaty of peace and alliance, and if Philip could have his way, the alliance would have become a bond of close friendship and cooperation, and it was in this direction that Ubulus and his party were inclined cautiously to move. Athens might now have taken her position as joint arbiter with Philip in the settlement of the Amphithionic states. Both Philip and Athens had a common interest in reducing the power of Thebes, and if it was in the interest of Athens that focus should not be utterly destroyed, Philip had no special enmity against focus, whose strength was now exhausted. The Folkin sacrilege was a convenient pretext to interfere and step into the place of focus in the Delphin Amphithionic. A common programme was discussed, and might easily have been concerted between Philip and the ambassadors. To treat the Folkians with clemency and to force Thebes to acknowledge the independence of the Boetian cities would have been the basis of common action. The restoration of Platea was mentioned, and while Philip promised to secure the restitution to Athens of Euboea and Oropus, Athens would have supported the admission of Macedonia into the Amphithionic council. Estinnes was the chief mouthpiece of the councils of Ubulus. But the project of an active alliance was opposed strenuously by Demosthenes, and as Demosthenes had great and daily increasing influence with the Athenian assembly, it would have been unsafe for Philip to conclude any definite agreement with the majority of the embassy. The policy of Demosthenes was to abandon the Folkians to their fate and to draw closer to Thebes, so that when his city had recovered from her financial exhaustion, Thebes and Athens together might form a joint resistance to the aggrandizement of Macedonia. In consequence of this irreconcilable division, which broke out in most unseemly quarrels among the ambassadors, nothing more was done than the administration of the oath. The envoys accompanied the king into Thessaly, and at Ferai the oath was administered to the Thessalians, his allies. A peace was then arranged with Hellenesus, and the envoys returned to Athens, leaving Philip to proceed on his own way. It now remains to be seen whether Ubulus would carry the assembly with him in favour of a rational policy of cooperation with Macedon, or would be defeated by the brilliant oratory of his younger rival. Philip's course of action would depend upon the decision of the assembly. It was a calamity for Athens that at this critical moment there was no strongman at the helm of the state. The assembly was swayed between the opposite councils of Demosthenes, whose oratory was irresistible, and Ubulus, whose influence had been paramount for the past eight years. When the ambassadors returned, Demosthenes lost no time in denouncing his colleagues, as having treacherously intrigued with Philip against the interests of the city. His denunciation was successful for a moment, and the usual vote of thanks to the embassy was withheld. But the success was only for a moment, as Tynes and his colleagues defended their policy triumphantly before the assembly, and it was clear that the programme which they had discussed with Philip would have been satisfactory to the people. The assembly decreed that the Treaty of Peace and Alliance should be extended to the posterity of Philip. It further decreed that Athens should formally call upon the Fokians to surrender Delphi to the Amphicteons, and should threaten them with armed intervention if they declined. Demosthenes appears to have made no opposition to this measure against the Fokians, and it seemed that the policy of cooperation with Philip was about to be realised. Philip in the meantime advanced southward. The pass of Thermopylae was held by Phalaecus, who had been reinforced by some Lachodemonian troops. But Phalaecus had opened secret negotiations with Pella some months before, and the hostile vote of the Athenians decided him to capitulate on condition of departing unhindered where he would. Before he reached Thermopylae, Philip had addressed two friendly letters to Athens, inviting her to send an army to arrange the affairs of Fokus and Boesha. Indisposed as the Athenian citizens were to leave Athens on military service, they lent ready ears to the absurd terrors which Demosthenes conjured up, suggesting that Philip would detain their army as hostages. Accordingly, they contented themselves with sending an embassy, on which Demosthenes declined to serve, to convey to Philip an announcement of the decree which they had passed against the Fokians. Thus swayed between Ubulus and Demosthenes, the Athenians had done too much or too little. They had abandoned the Fokians, and at the same time they resigned the voice which they should and could have had in this political settlement of northern Greece. As it was clear that Philip could not trust Athens, owing to the attitude of Demosthenes, he was constrained to act in conjunction with her enemy Thebes. The cities of western Boesha, which had been held by the Fokians, were restored to the Boesian Confederacy. The doom of the Fokians was decided by the Amphictheonic Council which was now convoked. If some of the members had had their way, all the men of military age would have been cast down a precipice. But Philip would not have permitted this, and the sentence was as mild as could have been expected. The Fokians were deprived of their place in the Amphictheonic body, and all their cities, with the exception of Abai, were broken up into villages so that they might not again be a danger to Delphi. They were obliged to undertake to pay back, by instalments of sixty talents a year, the value of the treasures which they had taken from the sanctuary. The Lachodemonians were also punished for the support which they had given to Fokis by being disqualified to return either of the members who represented the Dorian vote. The place which Fokis vacated in the Council was transferred to Macedonia in recognition of Philip's services in expelling the desecrators of the temple. The Athenian declaration against Fokis exempted Athens from the penalty which was inflicted on Sparta at this Amphictheonic meeting. But this was small comfort, and when the Athenians realised that they had gained nothing and that Thebes had gained all she wanted, they felt with indignation that the statesmanship of their city had been unskillful. The futility of their policy had been mainly due to Demosthenes, who had done all in his power to thwart Ubolus, and he now seized the occasion to discredit that statesman and his party. He encouraged his fellow countrymen in the unreasonable fear that Philip would invade Attica, and the panic was so great that they brought their families and movable property from the country into the city. The fear was soon dispelled by a letter from Philip himself, but Demosthenes had succeeded in creating a profound distrust of Philip, and there was soon an opportunity of expressing his feeling. An occasion offered itself to Philip almost immediately to display publicly to the assembled Greek world the position of leadership which he had thus won. It so happened that the celebration of the Pythian games fell in the year of the peace. It will be remembered how the despot of Ferai, when he had made himself ruler of Thessaly, was about to come down to Delphi and assume the presidency of the Pythian Feast when he was cut down by assassins. The ambitions and plans of Ferai had passed to Pella, and Greece, which had dreaded the claims of the Thessalian tyrant, had now to bend the knee before the Macedonian king. Athens sulked. She sent no deputy to the unfictionic meeting which elected Philip president for the festival, no delegates to the festival itself. This marked a mission was a protest against the admission of Macedonia to the unfictionic league, and Philip understood it as such. But he did not wish to quarrel with Athens. He hoped ultimately to gain her good will, and instead of marching into Attica, whether his Thessalian and Theban friends would have only too gladly followed him, he contented himself with sending an embassy to notify to the Athenian people the vote which made him a member of the unfictioni, and to invite them to concur. The invitation was in fact an ultimatum. Eubulus and his party had lost their influence in the outburst of anti-Macedonian feeling which Demosthenes had succeeded in stirring up. But the current had gone too far, and Demosthenes had some difficulty in allaying the spirits which he had conjured up. The assembly was ready, on the slightest encouragement, to refuse its concurrence to the unfictionic decree, and Demosthenes was forced to save the city from the results of his own agitation by showing that it would be foolish and absurd to go to war now for the shadow at Delphi. Rarely had Athens been placed in such an undignified posture, a plight for which he had to thank the brilliant orator whom a malignant fate had sent to guide her on a futile path. From this time forward Demosthenes was the most influential of her councillors. Neither Demosthenes, the eloquent speaker, nor Eubulus, the able financier, saw far into the future. The only man of the day perhaps who grasped the situation in its ecumenical aspect who described, as it were, from without, the place of Macedonia in Greece and the place of Greece in the world was the nonogenarian isocrates. He had never ventured to raise his voice in the din of party politics. He had kept his garments unspotted from the defilement of public life. And when he condescended to give political advice to Greece, it was easy for the second-rate statesman as well as the party hat to laugh at a mere man of study stepping into a field where he had no practical experience. But asocrates discerned the drift of events, where the orators whom Adi declined in the panics were at fault, and the view which he took of the situation after the conclusion of the piece of philocrates simply anticipated the decrees of history. He explained his view in an open letter to King Philip. He had long since seen the endless futility of perpetuating that international system of Greece which existed within the memory of men, and number of small sovereign states, which ought by virtue of all they had in common to form a single nation, divided and constantly at feud. The time had come, he thought, to unite Greece, now that there had arisen a man who had the brains, the power, and the gold to become the central pivot of the Union. Sovereign and independent the city-states would of course remain, but they might be drawn together into one fold by a common hope and allegiance to a common leader. And under such a leader as Philip there was a great program for Greece, and not a mere program of ambition undertaken for the sake of something to do, but an enterprise which was urgently needed to meet oppressing social danger. We have already seen how Greece was flooded for many years past with a superfluous population who went about as armed rovers, attached to no city, showing themselves out to any state that needed fighting men, a constant menace to society. A new country to colonise was the only remedy for this overflow of Greece, as Isocrates recognised, and the new country must be won from the barbarian. The time had come for Hellas to take the offensive against Persia, and the task appointed for Philip was to lead forth the hosts of Hellas on the splendid enterprise. If he did not destroy the whole empire of the great king, he might at least annex Asia Minor from Cilicia to Sinope, to the Hellenic world and appropriate it to the needs of the Hellenic folk. Ten years later the fulfilment of this task which Isocrates laid upon Philip was begun, not indeed by Philip himself, but by his successor. We shall see in due time how the fulfilments are past the utmost hopes of the Athenian speculator. But it is fair to note how justly Isocrates had discerned the signs of the times and the tendency of history. He saw that the inveterate quarrel between Europe and Asia, which had existed since the Trojan War, was the great abiding fact. He foresaw that it must soon come to an issue, and throughout the later part of his long life he was always watching for the inevitable day. The expedition of Cyrus and the campaign of Agheseleus were foreshadowings of that day, and it had seemed for a moment that Jason of Ferai was chosen to be the successor of Agamemnon and Simon. Now the day had come at last. The choice of destiny had fallen upon the man of Macedonia, and Isocrates knew that this expansion of Greece would meet Greece's chief practical need. It is instructive to contrast his sane and practical view of the situation of Greece with the chimerical conservatism of some of his contemporaries. This conservatism, to which the orator Demosthenes gave a most noble expression, was founded on the delusion that the Athens of his day could be converted by his own eloquence and influence into the form and feature of the Periclean city. This was a delusion which took no account of the change which advance had wrought in the Athenian character. It was a noble delusion which could have misled no great statesman or hard-headed thinker. It did not mislead Isocrates. He appreciated the trend of history and saw the expansion of Greece to which the world was moving. End of chapter 16 part 6 Chapter 16 part 7 of a history of Greece to the death of Alexander the Great volume 2 This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer please visit LibriVox.org Recording by Morgan Scorpion A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great volume 2 by John Bagnell Bury Chapter 16 part 7 Section 7 Interval of Peace and Preparations for War 346-1 BC Having gained from Macedonia the coveted place in the religious league of Greece Philip spent the next year or two in improving his small navy, in settling the administration of Thessaly and in acquiring influence in the Peloponnesus. It may fairly be said that Thessaly was now joined to Macedonia by a personal union. The Thessalian cities elected the Macedonian king as their archon. The old name of Tagus with its Perian associates was avoided. And he set four governors over the four great divisions of the country. South of the Corinthian Ismus, Philip adopted the old policy of Thebes, offering friendship to those states which needed a friend to stand by them against Sparta. His negotiations gained him the adhesion of Messinia and Megalopolis, Elis and Argos. In Megalopolis they set up a bronze statue of Philip, while Argos had a special tie with Macedon, since she claimed to be the original home of the Macedonian kings. Nor did Philip yet despair of achieving his chief aim, the conciliation of Athens. No one knew how to bribe better than he, and we may be sure that he gave gold without stint to his Athenian supporters. The Athenians naturally preferred peace to war, and the political party which was favourable to friendly relations with Philip was still strong and might at any moment regain its power. The influence of the veteran Ubulus, who seems to have withdrawn somewhat from public affairs, was on that side. There were Estinnes and fellow Cretes who had been active in the negotiation of the peace, and there was the incorruptible soldier Fockeon, who was a remarkable figure at Athens, although he had no pretensions to eminence either as a soldier or as a statesman. He was marked among his contemporaries as an honest man, superior to all temptations of money, and as the Athenians always priced his superhuman integrity which few of them attempted to practice, they elected him forty-five times as strategos, though in military capacity he was no more than a respectable sergeant. But his strong common sense, which was impervious to Oratory, and his exceptional probity made him a useful member of his party. There was one man in Athens who was firmly resolved that the peace should be no abiding peace, but a mere interval for parotery to war. Demosthenes, supported by her parodies, Lycurgus and others, spent the time in inflaming the wrath of his countrymen against Philip and in seeking to ruin his political antagonists. These years are therefore marked by a great struggle between the parties of war and peace. The influence of Demosthenes being most often in the ascendancy, and ultimately emerging victorious. After Philip's installation in the Amphictheonic Council, Demosthenes lost no time in striking a blow at his opponents. He brought an impeachment against Ashenes for receiving bribe from the Macedonian king and betraying the interests of Athens in the negotiations which preceded the peace. Men's minds were irritated by the triumph of Thebes, and Demosthenes might have succeeded in inducing them to make Ashenes a scapegoat if he had not committed a fatal mistake. He associated with himself in the prosecution a certain Timarchus, whose early life had been devoted to vices which disqualified him from the rights of a citizen, and thus Ashenes easily parried the stroke by bringing an action against Timarchus and submitting his private life to an annihilating exposure. The case of Demosthenes was thereby discredited, and he was obliged to let it drop for the time. A year or so later we find Demosthenes going forth on a mission to the cities of the Peloponnesus to counteract by his oratory the influence of Philip. But his oratory roused no echoes, and Philip had good reason to complain of invectives which could hardly be justified from the lips of the representative of a power which was at peace and in alliance with Macedonia. An embassy came from Pella to remonstrate with the Athenians on their obstinate misconstruction of Macedonian motives, and Demosthenes seized the occasion to deliver one of his uncompromising anti-Macedonian harangs. The basis of his reasoning in this Philippic, and in the political speeches which followed it during the next few years, is the proposition that Philip desired and proposed to destroy Athens. It was a proposition of which he had no valid proof, and it was actually untrue, as the sequel showed. We are not told what answer Athens sent to Pella, but it would seem that she complained of the terms of the recent pieces unfair, and specially mentioned her right to Helaus. This island off the coast of Thessaly, a place of no value whatever, had belonged to the Athenian Confederacy, but it had been seized by pirates, and the pirates had been expelled by Philip's soldiers. Philip sent an embassy with a courteous message, requesting Athens to propose emmendations in the terms of the peace, and offering to give her Halanessis. But the place was of so little consequence to Athens or anyone, that it served as an excellent pretext for diplomatic wrangling, and Demosthenes could persuade the people to refuse Halanessis as it was offered, and demand that it should not be given, but given back. Besides the restoration of this worthless island, Athens made the proposal that the basis of the peace should be altered, and that each party should retain, not the territories which were actually in its possession when the treaty was concluded, but the territories which lawfully belonged to it. This proposal was preposterous. No peace can be made on a basis that leaves open all the debated questions, which it is the object of the treaty to settle. Athens also complained of the Thracian fortresses which Philip captured and retained after the negotiation had begun. On this question Philip was legally in the right, but he offered to submit the matter to arbitration. Athens refused the offer on the plea that suitable arbiters could not be found. She thus showed that she was not in earnest. Her objection was as frivolous as her proposal. Demosthenes was responsible for the attitude of the city, and his intention was to keep up the friction with Macedonia and prevent any conciliation. The ascendancy which Demosthenes and his fellows had now won emboldened them to make a grand attack upon their political opponents, and thereby deal Philip a sensible blow. Hyperides brought an accusation of treachery against Philokrates, whose name was especially associated with the peace, and so formidable did the prospect of the trial seem, in the present state of popular opinion, that Philokrates fled, and he was condemned to death for contempt of court. Encouraged by this success, Demosthenes again took up his indictment against Ashenes, but Ashenes stood his ground, and one of the most famous political trials of antiquity was witnessed by the Athenian public. We can still hear the two rivals scarcely reviling each other and vying to deceive the judges, for they published their speeches after the trial to instruct and perplexed posterity. It is in these documents, burning with the passions of political hatred, that the modern historian, picking his doubtful way through lies and distortions of fact, has to discover the course of the negotiations which led to the peace of Philokrates. The speech of Demosthenes, in particular, is a triumph in the art of sophistry. No politician ever knew better than he how short is the memory of ordinary men for the political events which they have themselves watched and even helped to shape by their votes and opinions, and none ever traded more audaciously on this weakness of human nature. Hardly four years had passed since the peace was made, and Demosthenes, confident that his audience will remember nothing accurately, ventures likely to falsify facts which had so lately been notorious in the streets of Athens. Disclaiming all responsibility for a peace which he had himself worked hard to bring about but now seeks to discredit, he discovers that the Fokians were basely abandoned and impute their fate to Ashenes. Against Ashenes there was in fact no case. The charge of receiving bribes from Philip was not supported by any actual evidence. The reply of Ashenes, which, as an oratorial achievement is not inferior to that of his accuser, rings less falsely. Ubulus and Fokion, men of the highest character, supported Ashenes, but the public feeling was so hostile to Philip at this junction that the defendant barely escaped. That Ashenes and many others of his party received money from Philip we may well believe, though the reiterations of Demosthenes are no evidence. But to receive money from Philip was one thing and to betray the interests of Athens was another. It must be proved that a politician has sacrificed the manifest good of his country or deserted his own political convictions for a sackful of silver or gold before he could be considered unconditionally a traitor. Public opinion in Greece thought no worse of a man for accepting a few talents from foreigners who were pleased with his policy, although those few public men, Demosthenes was not among them who made it a rule never to accept an obel in connection with any political transaction were respected as beings of superhuman virtue. Philip, who unlocked many a city by golden keys, was doubtless generous to the party whose programme was identical with its own interests, and it may be that Ashenes and others, who were not in affluent circumstances, would have been unable to devote themselves to public affairs if the king had not lined their wallets with gold. Meanwhile Philip was seeking influence and intriguing in the countries which lay on either side of Attica, in Megara on the west and Ubia on the northeast. An attempt at a revolution in Megara was defeated, and the city allied itself with its neighbour and old enemy Athens. But in Ubia the movement supported by Macedonia were more successful. Both in Eritrea and in Aureus oligarchies were established, really dependent on Philip, but in Chalcis, which from its strategic position was of greater importance, the democracy held its ground and sought an equal alliance with Athens, to which Athens gladly consented. Events in another quarter of Greece now caused a number of lesser Greek states to rally round Athens, and so bring within the field of near possibilities a league such as it was the dream of Demosthenes to form against Macedonia. By his marriage with an epyrot princess, it naturally devolved upon Philip to intervene in the struggles for the epyrot throne which followed her father's death. He espoused the cause of her brother Alexander against her uncle Aribas, marched into the country and established Alexander in the sovereignty. Epirus would now become dependent on Macedonia, and Philip saw in it a road to the Corinthian Gulf and a means of reaching Greece on the western side. His first step was to annex the region of Cassopia between the rivers Acheron and Oropus, to the epyrot league of which his brother-in-law was head. And his eyes were then cast upon Ambrachia, which stood as a barrier to the southward expansion of Epirus. But the place which he desired above all was downlose Norpactus, the key to the Corinthian Gulf, now in the hands of the Achaeans. For encompassing his schemes in this quarter his natural allies were the Aetolians. They too coveted Norpactus and would have held it for him, and they were the enemies of the Ambrachia and Achaeans whom he hoped to render dependent upon Epirus. The evident designs of Philip alarmed all these peoples, and not only Ambrachia, Acania and Achaea, but Corcyria also sought the alliance of Athens. Philip, however, judged that the time had not come for further advances on this side, and some recent movements of Cursobleptis decided him to turn now to one of the greatest tasks which were imposed upon the expander of Macedonia, the subjugation of Thrace. Since the Persians had been beaten out of Europe, Thrace had been subject to native princes, some of whom, Therese, Cetalkes, Cotis, we have seen ruling the whole land from the Strymon's to the Danube's mouth. It was now to pass again under the rule of a foreigner, but its new lords were Europeans who would lead Thracian soldiers to avenge upon Asia the Oriental yoke which had been laid upon their ancestors. Of the Thracian expedition of Philip we know as little as of the Thracian expedition of Darius. Unlike Darius, he did not cross the rivers of the north or penetrate into any part of Scythia, but his campaign lasted ten months, and he spent a winter in the field in that wintry land, suffering from sickness as well as from the cold. In war Philip never spared himself either hardship or danger. Demosthenes, in later years, described his reckless energy, ruthless to himself, in a famous passage. To gain empire and power he had an eye knocked out, his collarbone broken, his arm and his leg maimed. He abandoned to fortune any part of his body she cared to take, so that honour and glory might be the portion of the rest. The Thracian king was dethroned, and his kingdom became a tributary province of Macedon. There is still in the land a city which bears Philip's name, and is the most conspicuous memorial of that great and obscure campaign. Philipopolis on the Hebrews was the chief of the cities, which the conqueror built to maintain Macedonian influence in Thrace. This conquest was not an infringement of the peace, for Curse of Leptis had not been admitted to the treaty as an ally of Athens, but it affected nearly and seriously the position of Athens at the gates of the Black Sea. The Macedonian frontier was now advanced to the immediate neighbourhood of the Thracianese, and Athens had no longer Thracian princes to wield against Philip. The prospect did not escape Demosthenes, and he resolved to force on a war, though both his own country and Philip were averse to hostilities. Accordingly he induced Athens to send a few ships and mercenaries under a swashbuckler named Diopithes to protect her interest in the Chersonees. There had been some disputes with Cardia touching the lands of the Athenian out-settlers, and Diopithes lost no time in attacking Cardia. Now Cardia had been expressly recognised as an ally of Philip in the peace, and thus the action of Diopithes was a violation of the peace. The admiral followed up this aggression by invading some of Philip's Thracian possessions, and Philip then remonstrated at Athens. The admiral was so manifestly in the wrong that the Athenians were prepared to disown his conduct, but Demosthenes saved his tool and persuaded the people to sustain Diopithes. He followed up his speech on the Chersonees question, which scored this success by a loud call to war, the harangue known as the Third Philippic. The artist's thesis is that Philip, inveterately hostile to Athens and aiming at her destruction, is talking peace but acting war, and when all the king's acts have been construed in this light, the perfectly sound conclusion is drawn that Athens should act at once. The proposals of Demosthenes are to make military preparations, to send forces to the Chersonees and to organise an Hellenic League against the Macedonian wretch. Enrhoys were sent here and there to raise the alarm. Demosthenes himself proceeded to the Phrapontis and succeeded in detaching Byzantium and Perintus from the Macedonian alliance. At the same time Athenian troops were sent into Ubea. The governments on Aureus and Eritrea were overthrown, and these cities joined an independent Ubeic League of which the Synod met at Chulchis. The island was thus liberated from Macedon without becoming dependent on Athens. All these acts of hostility were committed without an overt breach of the peace between Athens and Philip, but the succession of Perintus and Byzantium was a blow which Philip was not prepared to take with equanimity. When he had settled his Thracian province, he began the siege of Perintus by land and sea. There was an Athenian squadron in the Hellespont which barred the passage of the Macedonian fleet, but Philip caused a diversion by sending land troops into the Chersenes and by this stratagem got his ships successfully through. The siege of Perintus marks, for Eastern Greece, the beginning of those new developments of the art of besieging, which in Sicily had long since been practised with success. But all the engines and rams, the towers and the mines of Philip failed to take Perintus on its steep, peninsular cliff. His blockade on the seaside was inefficient, and the siege was furnished with stores and men from Byzantium. The Athenians were still holding aloof. They had addressed a remonstrance to Philip for violating the Chersenes and capturing some of their cruisers. Philip replied by a letter in which he rehearsed numerous acts of Athenian hostility to himself. But the decisive moment came when the king suddenly raised the siege of Perintus and marched against Byzantium, hoping to capture it by the unexpectedness of his attack. Athens could no longer hold aloof when the key of the Bosporus was in peril. The marble tablet on which the piece was inscribed was pulled down. It was openly wore at last. A squadron under Cary's was sent to help Byzantium, and Foccheon presently followed with the second fleet. Other help had come from Rhodes and Chios, and Philip was compelled to withdraw into Thrace, baffled in both his undertakings. It was the first triumph of Demosthenes over the archfow, and he received a public vote of thanks from the Athenian people. But one wonders that the naval power of Athens had not made itself more immediately and effectively felt. The Macedonian fleet was insignificant. It could inflict damage on merchant vessels or radar coasts, but it had no hold on the sea. The Athenian navy was 300 strong and controlled the northern Aegean, and yet it seems that in these critical years there was no permanent squadron of any strength stationed in the Hellespont. Naval affairs had been by no means neglected. Eubulus had seen to the building of new shipsheds and had begun the construction of a magnificent arsenal close to the harbour of Zia for the storage of the sails and rigging and tackle of the ships of war. But these luxuries were vain if the ships themselves were not efficient, and the group system on which the ships were furnished worked badly. Demosthenes had long ago desired to reform this system, which had been enforced for 17 years. The 1,200 richest citizens were liable to the triarchy, each trireme being charged on a small group of which each member contributed the same proportion of the expense. If a large number of ships were required, this group might consist of five persons. If a small of fifteen. This system bore hardly on the poorer members of the partnership, who had to pay the same amount as the richer, and some were ruined by the burden. But the great mischief was that these poorer members were often unable to pay their quota in time and consequently the completion of the triremes was delayed. The influence of Demosthenes was now so enormous that he was able, in the face of bitter opposition from the wealthy class, to introduce a new law by which the cost of furnishing the ships should fall on each citizen in proportion to his property. Thus a citizen whose property was rated as exceeding thirty talents would hence-forward, instead of having to pay one-fifth or perhaps one-fifteenth of the cost of a single trireme, be obliged to furnish three triremes and a boat. So popular was Demosthenes, by the success of Ubea and Byzantium, that he was able to accomplish a still greater feat. Years before he had cautiously hinted at the expediency of devoting the festival funds to military purposes. He now persuaded the Athenians to adopt this highly disagreeable measure. The building of the arsenal and shipsheds was interrupted also, in order to save the expenses. Philip, in the meantime, had again withdrawn into the wilds of Thrace. The Scythians near the mouth of the Danube had rebelled, and he crossed the Balkan range to crush them. In returning to Macedon through the lands of the Trebali, in the centre of the peninsula, he had some sore mountain warfare and was severely wounded in the leg. But Thrace was now safe, and he was free to deal with Greece. This is a Librivox recording. All Librivox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit Librivox.org. Philip had no longer the slightest prospect of realising the hope, which he had cherished both before and after the peace of Philokrates, of establishing friendly relations with Athens. The influence of the irreconcilable Orator was now triumphant. Through the persistent agitation of Demosthenes, coldness and quarrelling had issued in war, and Macedonia had received a distinct check. There was nothing for it now but to accept the war and bring the Macedonian cavalry into play. There were two points where Athens could be attacked effectively, at the gates of her own city, and at the gates of her granary in the Uxini. But a land power like Macedonia could not operate effectively in the propontis, unless aided by allies which possessed an effective navy, and Philip had experienced the truth of this when he laid siege to the Parinsus and Byzantium. And in that quarter he had now to reckon not only with the Athenian sea power, but with the small navies of the Asiatic islands, Rhodes, Kos, and Kios, which had recently come to the rescue of the menaced cities. For these island states calculated that, if Philip won control of the passage between the two continents, he would not only tax their trade, but would soon cross over to the conquest of Asia Minor, and their fleets would then be appropriated to form the nucleus of a Macedonian navy. Now that Athens had been awakened from her slumbers, it was abundantly evident that the only place where Macedonia could inflict upon her decisive blow was Attica. On her side, Athens had lightly engaged in a war for which she had not either fully counted the cost or meditated an adequate program. In truth, the Athenians had no craving for the war, and they were not driven to it by imperious necessity, or urged by an irresistible instinct, or persuaded by a rational conviction of its expediency. The persistent and crafty agitation of Timosthenes and his party had drawn them on step by step. Their natural feeling of irritation at the rise of a new great power in the north had been sedulously fed and fostered by that eloquent orator and his friends, till it had grown into an unreasoning hatred of the Macedonian king, whose character, aims, and resources were totally misrepresented. But now that war was declared, what was to be the plan of action? Athens had not even enabled general who could make an effective combination. She controlled the sea, and it was something that Ubea had shaken off the Macedonian influence. In Chulchis, Athens had a point of vantage against Boeisha, and from Aureus she could raise the Thessalian coast and operate in the bay of Pagasae. But when Philip advanced southward and passed Thermopilae, which was in his hands, the Athenian superiority at sea was of no use, where his communications were independent of the sea. There was no means of offering serious opposition if he marched on Attica, and the citizens were hardly likely at the bidding of Timosthenes to ascend their ships as they had done at the bidding of Themistocles. If events fell out according to the only probable forecast which could be made, on the assumption of Timosthenes that the invasion of Attica and the ruin of Athens were the supreme objects of Philip, the Athenians had to look forward to the devastation of their country and the siege of their city. How was this peril to be met? They were practically isolated, for they had no strong continental power to support them. What could Megarians or Corinthians and Brachios or Achaeans do for them against the host of Philip and his allies? Ah, if we were only islanders, many an Athenian must have murmured in these critical years. It was the calamity of Athens, as it had been the calamity of Holland, that she was solidly attached to the continent. Now that the crisis approaches nearer, it is born in upon us more and more how improvident the policy of Athens had been. If she had accepted Macedonian friendship and kept a strong naval force permanently in the Propontis, assuring herself of undisputed control of her own element, she would have been perfectly safe. The constant presence of a powerful fleet belonging to a predominant naval state may be in itself a strategic success equivalent to a series of victories. But though we have almost no notices of the movements of the Athenian galleys at this time, we cannot help suspecting that the naval power of Athens was inefficiently handled. Demosthenes had never had a free hand until the siege of Byzantium, till then he could do little more than agitate. When at length he became in the full sense of the word the director of Athenian policy, his energy and skill were amazing. But we cannot help asking with what hopes he was prepared to undertake the responsibility of bringing an invader into his country and a procedure to the walls of his city. The answer is that he rested his hope on a single chance. From the beginning of his public career Demosthenes had a strong leaning to Thebes, and it had been already mentioned that he was Theban Proxenos at Athens. This was a predilection which it behoved him to be very careful of airing, for the general feeling in his city was unfriendly to Thebes. The rhetorical tears which Demosthenes shed over the fate of the Focians were not inconsistent with his attachment to the enemies of Focus. For he never raced his voice for the victims of Theban hatred until their doom was accomplished. The aim of his policy was to unite Athens in alliance with Thebes. It was a difficult and doubtful game. Could Thebes be induced to turn against a Macedonian ally who had recently secured for her the full supremacy of Borisha and who, she might reasonably reckon, would continue to support her as an useful neighbour to Attica? On this chance, and a poor chance it seemed, rested the desperate policy of Demosthenes. If Thebes joined Philip or even gave him a free passage through Borisha the fate of Attica was sealed. But if she could be brought to desert him her well-trained troops joined with those of Athens might successfully oppose his invasion. The invasion was not long delayed and it came about in a curious way. During the recent Sacred War the Athenians had burnished anew and set up again in the sanctuary of Delphi the Donative which they had dedicated after the victory of Plataea being gold shields with the inscription from the spoils of Persians and Thebans who fought together against the Greeks. Such a rededication while Delphi was in the hands of the Fokians who had been condemned as sacrilegious robbers might be regarded as an offence against religion. At all events the Thebans and their friends had an excellent pretext to avenge themselves on Athens for that most offensive inscription which had perpetrated the shame of Thebes for a century and a half. The Thebans themselves did not come forward but their friends of the Locrian Amphissa arranged to accuse the Athenians at the autumn session of the Amphictheonic Council and propose a fine of fifty talents. At this session Ashenes was one of the Athenian deputies and he discovered the movement which was afoot against his city. He was an able man and he forestalled the blow by dealing another. The men who had been incited to charge Athens with sacrilege had been themselves guilty of a sacrilege far more enormous. They had cultivated part of the accursed field which had once been the land of Cresa. Ashenes arose in the assembly and in an impressive and convincing speech which carried his audience with him called upon the Amphictheons to punish the men who had wrought this impious act. On the morrow at the break of day the Amphictheons and the Delphians armed with pickaxes marched down the hill to lay waste to places which had been unlawfully cultivated and as they did so were assaulted by the Amphictheons whose city is visible from the plain. The council then resolved to hold a special meeting at Tomapile in order to consult on measures for the punishment of the Locrians who, to their former crime had added the offence of violating the persons of the Amphictheonic deputies. By his promptness and eloquence the Athenian Arta had secured a great triumph. He had completely turned the tables on the enemies Amphissa and Thebes who must have been prepared to declare an Amphictheonic war against Athens in case she declined as she certainly would have done to pay the fine. They calculated of course on the support of Philip of Macedon but it was now for Athens to take the lead in a sacred war against Amphissa and it was a favourable opportunity for her to make peace with Philip so that the combination should be Philip and Athens against Thebes instead of Philip and Thebes against Athens. It was not to be expected that this advantage which Estynnis had gained would be welcomed to Demosthenes for it was the object of Demosthenes to avoid an embroilment with Thebes. Accordingly he persuaded the people to send no deputies to the special Amphictheonic meeting and take no part in the proceedings against Amphissa. He upgraded Estynnis with trying to bring an Amphictheonic war into Attica, a strange taunt to the man who had prevented the declaration of an Amphictheonic war against Athens. Thus although the attack upon Athens must have been prepared at Theban instigation the incident was converted through the policy of Demosthenes into a means of bringing Athens and Thebes closer together. Athens and Thebes alike abstained from attending the special meeting. The Amphictheons in accordance with the decisions of that meeting marched against the Amphictheons but were not strong enough to impose the penalties which had been decreed. Accordingly at the next autumn session they determined to invite Philip to come down once more to be leader in a sacred war. Philip did not delay a moment. An Amphictheonic war from which both Athens and Thebes held a loop was a matter which needed prompt attention. When he reached Thermopylae he probably sent on by the mountain road which passes through Doris to Amphissa a small force to occupy Cetinion, the chief town on that road. Advancing himself through the defile of Thermopylae into northern focus he seized and refortified the dismantled city of Eletia. The purpose of this action was to protect himself in the rear against Boricia and preserve his communications with Thermopylae while he was operating against Amphissa. But while he halted at Eletia he sent ambassadors to explore the intentions of Thebes. He declared that he intended to invade Attica and called upon Thebes to join him in the invasion or if they would not do this to give his army a free passage through Boricia. This was a diplomatic method of forcing Thebes to declare herself. It does not prove that Philip had any serious intention of marching against Attica and his later conduct seems to show that he did not contemplate such a step. But in Athens when the news came that the Macedonian army was at Eletia the folk fell into extreme panic and alarm. It would seem that Philip's rapid movements had brought him into central Greece far sooner than was expected and the news of his arrival, which must have been transmitted by way of Thebes, was accompanied by the rumour that he was about to march on Athens. And thus the Athenians in their fright connected the seizure of Eletia with the supposed design against themselves although Eletia had no closer connection than the pass of Thermopylae with an attack on Athens. For a night and a day the city was and hours have been famous in history through the genius of the Orator Demosthenes who in later years recalled to the people the scene and their own emotions by a picturesque description which no Orator has surpassed. On the advice of Demosthenes the Athenians dispatched ten envoys to Thebes. Everything depended upon detaching Thebes from the Macedonian alliance and it seemed at least possible that this might be affected. For though there were probably few in Thebes to attend to Athens, there was a party of some weight which was distinctly hostile to Macedonia. Moreover there was a feeling of soreness against Philip for having seized Nicaea close to Thermopylae and replaced its Theban garrison by Thessalians. The envoys, of whom Demosthenes was one, were instructed to make concessions and exact none. The ambassadors of Athens and Macedon met in the Boetian capital and the messages were heard in turn by the Theban assembly. It would be too much to say that the fate of Greece depended on the deliberations of this assembly. But it is the mere truth that the Theban vote not only decided the doom of Thebes itself but determined the shape of the great event to which Greece had been irresistibly moving. In considering the situation which the rise of Macedon had created we have hitherto stood in Pella or in Athens. We must now for a moment take our point of view at Thebes. The inveterate rivalry and ever smouldering which existed between Thebes and Athens was a strong motive inducing Thebes to embrace an opportunity for rendering Athens harmless. But it would require no great foresight to see that by weakening her old rival Thebes would gravely endanger her own position. So long as Philip had a strong Athens to reckon with it behoved him to treat Thebes with respect. But if Athens were reduced to nothingness, Thebes would be absolutely in his power and probably his first step would be to free the cities from her domination. To put it shortly, the independent attitude which Thebes had hitherto been able to maintain towards her friend Macedonia depended on the integrity of Athens. Thus the positions of Thebes and Athens were remarkably different. While Athens could with impunity stand alone as Philip's enemy when Thebes was Philip's friend Thebes could not safely be Philip's friend unless Athens were his enemy. The reason for this difference was that Athens was a sea power. To Athenian statesmen then, possessing any foresight, the subjugation of Athens would have been feared as the prelude to the depression of Thebes and it would have seemed wiser to join in a common resistance to Philip. This sound reasoning was quickened by the eloquence of Demosthenes and the offers of Athens. The Athenians were ready to pay two-thirds of the expenses of the war. They abandoned their claim to Oropus and they recognized the Boetian dominion of Thebes, a dominion for as an outrage on the rights of free communities. But professing now, through the mouth of Demosthenes, to be the champion of Hellenic liberty, Athens scrupled little to sacrifice the liberties of a few Boetian cities. By these concessions she secured the alliance of Thebes and Demosthenes won the greatest diplomatic success that he had yet achieved. The consummation to which his policy had been directed for many years. The first concern of Philip was to do the work which the Amphiptions had summoned him to perform, but that he is completely lost to our sight in this campaign. We only know that the allies followed him into focus and gained some advantages in two engagements, but that he ultimately captured not only Amphissa, cutting up a force of mercenaries that Athens had sent thither, but also Norpactus, thus gaining a point of vantage against the Peloponnesus. He then turned back to carry the war into Croatia, and when he entered the great western gate of that country close to Caronea, he found the army of the allies guarding the way to Thebes and prepared to give him battle. He had 30,000 foot soldiers and 2,000 horse, perhaps slightly outnumbering his foes. Their line extended over about three and a half miles, the left wing resting on Caronea and the right on the river Cephesus. The Theban hoplites with the sacred band in front under the command of the Agonies did not occupy the left wing as when Epaminondus led them to Vitiate Lugtra and Atmantania but were assigned the right which was esteemed the post of honour. In the centre were ranged the troops of the lesser allies, Achaeans, Corinthians, Focans and others, whom Demosthenes boasted of having rallied to the cause of Hellenic liberty. On the left stood the Athenians under three generals, Cares, Lycicles and Stratocles, of whom Cares was a respectable soldier with considerable experience and no talent while the other two were incompetent. Demosthenes himself was serving as a hoplite in the ranks. Of the battle we know less perhaps than of any other equally important engagement in the history of Greece but we can form a general notion of the tactics of Philip. The most formidable part of the adverse array was the Theban infantry and accordingly he posted on his own with its more open order and long pikes to try its strength against the most efficient of the old fashioned hoplites of Greece. On the flank of this wing he placed his heavy cavalry to ride down upon the Thebans when the phalanx had worn them out. The cavalry was commanded by Alexander now a lad of eighteen and many hundred years after the oak of Alexander was shown on the bank of the river. The right wing was comparatively weak and Philip planned that it should go away before the attack of the Athenians and draw them on so as to divide them from their allies. This plan of holding back the right wing reminds us of the tactics of Epaminondas but the use of cavalry to decide the combat is the characteristic feature of Philip's battles. The Athenians pressed forward fondly fancying that they were pressing to victory and strategically in the flush of success cried on to Macedonia but in the meantime the Thebans found as horsemen. Their leader had fallen and the comrades of the sacred Lochos were making a last hopeless stand. Philip could now spare some of his Macedonian footmen and he moved them so as to take the Athenians in flank and rear. Against the assault of these trained troops the Athenians were helpless. One thousand were slain, two thousand captured and the rest ran Demosthenes were running with the fleetist. But the sacred band did not flee. They fought until they fell and it is their heroism which has won for the battle of Caronea its glory as a struggle for liberty. When the traveller journeying on the highway from focus to Thebes has passed the town of Caronea he sees at the roadside the tomb where those heroes were laid and the fragments of the lion which was set up to keep a long ward over their bones. An epitaph which was composed in honour of the Athenian dead suggests the consolation that God alone is sure of success. The battle must be prepared to fail. It is true but in this case the failure cannot be imputed to the chances of war. When the allies opened the campaign the outlook was not hopeless. If they had been led by a competent general they might have reduced the Macedonian army to serious straits amid the valleys of focus and the hills of Locris. But to oppose to a Philip the best they had was a Carys. The war was really decided in Locris by the strategical inferiority of the Athenian and Theuan generals and the inevitable sequel of the Blunders. There was the catastrophe and Boesha. The advantage in numerical strength with which the allies started had been lost. And when they stood face to face with the advancing fort Caronea all the chances were adverse to any issue saved to feet in a battle in the open against the general of such preeminent ability. Men must be prepared to fail when they have no competent leader. The chances of another issue to the battle of Caronea have been exaggerated. The significance of that event has been often misrepresented. The battle of Caronea belongs to the same historical series of the battles of Aegos or Potomai and Lugtra. As the Hegemony or first place among Greek states had been passed successively from Athens to Sparta and to Thebes so now it passed to Macedon. The statement that Greek liberty perished on the plain of Caronea was as true or as false as that it perished on the field of Lugtra or the strand of the Goats River. Whenever a Greek state became supreme that supremacy entailed the depression of some states and the dependency or subjection of others. Athens was reduced to a secondary place by Macedon and Thebes fared still worse but we must not forget what Sparta in the day of her triumph did to Athens or the more evil things which Thebes proposed. There were however in the case of Macedonia special circumstances which seemed to give her victory a more fatal character than those previous victories which had initiated new supremacies for Macedon was regarded in Hellas as an outsider. This was a feeling which the southern Greeks entertained even in regard to Thessaly when Jason threatened them with a Thessalian Hegemony and Macedonia politically and historically as well as geographically was some steps further away than Thessaly. If Thessaly was hardly inside the inner circle of Hellenic politics Macedonia was distinctly outside it. To Athens and Sparta to Corinth and Argos and Thebes the old powers who as we might say had known each other all their lives as foes or friends and had a common international history the supremacy of Macedonia seemed the intrusion of an upstart and in second place this supremacy was the triumph of an absolute monarchy over free common worlds until that the submission of the Greek states to Macedon's king might be rhetorically branded as an enslavement to a tyrant in a sense in which the subjection to a sovereign Athens or a sovereign Sparta could not be so described. For these reasons the tidings of Keronea sent a new kind of thrill through Greece and the impression that there was something unique in Philip's victory might be said to have been confirmed by subsequent history which showed that the old Greek common worlds had had their day and might never again to be first-rate powers. Section 9 The Cenedrion of the Greeks Philip's Death Isocrates just lived to hear the tidings of Keronea and died consoled for the fate of his fallen fellow citizens by the thought that the unity of Hellas was now assured. But a Greek unity such as he dreamed of was by no means assured. The hegemony of Macedonia did as little to unite the Greek states or abolish the separatist tendency as the hegemony of Athens or of Sparta but we must see how Philip used his victory. He treated Thebes just as Sparta had treated it when Phobidas surprised the Citadel. He punished by death or confiscation his leading opponents. He established a Macedonian garrison in the Cadmira and broke up the Boetian League giving all the cities their independence and restoring the dismantled towns of Plataea. But if his dealings with Thebes did not go beyond the usual dealing of one Greek state with its vanquished rival, his dealing with Athens was unusually lenient. The truth was that Athens did not lie defenceless at his feet. He might invade in ravage Attica but when he came to invest Athens and Piraeus he might find himself confronted by a task more arduous than that which had thwarted him at Perintas and Byzantium. The sea power of Athens saved her and not less perhaps the respect which Philip always felt for her intellectual eminence. Now at last by unexpected leniency he might win what he had always striven for, the moral and material support of Athens. And in Athens men were now ready to listen to the voices which were raised for peace. The policy of Demosthenes had failed and all desired to recover the 2000 captives and avert an invasion of the Attic soil. There was little disposition to hearken to the advice of her parodies who proposed to enfranchise an armed 150,000 slaves. Among the captives was an orator of consummate's talents named Dimades who belonged to the peace party and saw that this supremacy of Macedon was inevitable. An anecdote was noise devout that Philip, who spent the night after the battle in world revelry, came reeling drunk to the place where his prisoners were and making merry too over the flight of the great Demosthenes. But Dimades stood forth and ventured to rebuke him. O king, fortune has given you the role of Agamemnon and you play the part of their cites. The words stung and sobered the drunken victor. He flung away his garlands and all the gear of his revel and set the boldspeaker free. But whether this story be true or not, Dimades was politically sympathetic with Philip and sent by him to negotiate peace at Athens. Philip offered to restore all the prisoners without ransom and not to march into Attica. The Athenians on their side were to dissolve what remained of their confederacy and joined the new Hellenic Union which Philip proposed to organize. In regard to territory Oropus was to be given to Athens but the Cursonesus was to be surrendered to Macedonia. On these terms peace was concluded and the Athenian people thought that they had come off well. Philip sent his son and two of his chief officers to Athens with the bodies of the Athenians who had been slain. They were received with great honour and a statue of the Macedonian king was set up in the marketplace a token of gratitude which was probably genuine. Demosthenes himself afterwards confessed with a snarl that Philip had been kind. It was now necessary for Macedonia to win the recognition of her supremacy on the Peloponnesian states. Philip marched himself into Peloponnesus and met with no resistance. Sparta alone refused to submit and the conqueror bore down upon her with the purpose of forcing on her a reform of the constitution and the abolition of her peculiar kingship which seemed to him like a relic of the dark ages. But something mysterious happened which induced him to desist from his purpose and a poet of Epidaurus a boy told in later years how the god Asclepius had intervened to save the Spartan state. What time King Philip under Sparta came bent on abolishing the royal name. But Sparta, though her kings were saved had to suffer at the hands of Philip what she had before suffered at the hands of Epaminondas, the devastation of Laconia and the diminution of her territory. The frontier districts on the three sides were given to her neighbours Sos, Tegea, Megalopolis and Messinio. Having thus displayed his arms and power in the south, the Macedonian king invited all the Greek states within Somapile to send delegates to a Congress at Corinth and with the sole exception of Sparta all the states obeyed. It was a federal Congress the first assembly of a Hellenic Confederacy of which the place of meeting was to be Corinth and Macedonia the head. The Confederacy was understood from the first but it would seem that it was not till the second meeting a year later that Philip announced his resolve to make war upon Persia in behalf of Greece and her gods to liberate the Greek cities of Asia and to punish the barbarians for the acts of sacrilege which their forefathers had wrought in the days of Xerxes. It was the formal announcement that a new act in the eternal struggle between Europe and Asia was about to begin and Europe, having found a leader might now have her revenge for many a deed of insolence. The Federal Gathering voted for the war and elected Philip General with supreme powers. It was arranged what contingents in men or ships each city should contribute to the Pan-Hellenic army. The Athenians undertook to send a considerable fleet. The League which was thus organised under the hegemony of Macedon had the advantage of placing before its members a definite object to be accomplished and it might be the best. But if Themistocles found it hard to unite the Greek states by a common fear it was harder still for Philip to unite them by a common hope and the idea which Macedon promulgated produced no Pan-Hellenic effort and awakened but small enthusiasm. Yet the Congress of Corinth has its significance. It is the counterpart of that earlier Congress which met at the Isthmus when Greece was trembling at the thought of the barbarian host towards her from the east. She had so long ceased to tremble that she had almost forgotten to remember before the day of vengeance came. But with the revolution of fortune's wheel that day came duly round and Greece met once more on the Isthmus to concert how her ancient tremors might be amply avenged. The new League did not unite the Greeks in the sense which Isocrates had hoped for their union. There was a common dependency on Macedon but there was no zeal for the aims of power, no faith in her as the guide and leader of Greece. Each state went its own private way and the interests of the Greek communities remained as isolated and particular as ever. A League of such members could not be held together the peace which the League stipulated could not be maintained without some military stations in the midst of the country and Philip established three Macedonian garrisons at important points. At Amrachia to watch the west to hold the Peloponnesus in check and at Chalcus to control north-eastern Greece. The designs of Philip probably did not extend beyond the conquest of western Asia Minor but it was not fated that he should achieve this himself. In the spring after the Congress his preparations for war were nearly complete and he sent forward an advanced force under Parmenia and other generals to secure the passage of the Helispont and win a footing in the Troid and Bithynia. The rest of the army was soon to follow under his own command. But Philip, as a Frank Carinthian friend told him had filled his own house with division and bitterness. A Macedonian king was not expected to be faithful to his wife but the proud and stormy princess whom he had wedded was impatient of his open infidelities. Nor was her own virtue deemed above suspicion and it was even whispered that Alexander was not Philip's son. The crisis came when Philip fell in love with a Macedonian maiden of too high a station to become his concubine. Cleopatra, the niece of his general Attalus yielding to his passion he put Olympius away and celebrated his second marriage. At the wedding feast Attalus, bold with wine invited the nobles to pray the gods for a legitimate heir to the throne. Alexander flung his drinking cup in the face of the man who had insulted his mother. And Philip started up drawing his sword to transcease his son. But he reeled and fell and Alexander jeered. Behold the man who would pass from Europe to Asia and trips in passing from couch to couch. Pella was no longer the place for Alexander. He took the divorced queen to Epirus and withdrew himself to the hills of Lincestis until Philip invited him to return. Lincestis' intrigues of the injured mother soon created new debates and when a son was born to Cleopatra it was easy to arouse the fears of Alexander that his own succession to the throne was imperiled. Philip's most urgent desire was to avoid a breach with the powerful king of Epirus the brother of the injured woman. To this end he offered him his daughter in wedlock and the marriage was to be celebrated with great pomp in Pella on the eve of Philip's departure for Asia. He did not depart. Olympias was made of the stuff which does not hesitate at crime and a tool was easily found to avenge the wrongs of the wife and assure the succession of the son. A certain Pausanias, an obscure man of no merit, had been grossly wronged by Attalus and was madly incensed against the king who refused to do him justice. On the wedding day as Philip in solemn procession entered the theater a little in advance of his guards Pausanias rushed forward with a Celtic dagger and laid him a corpse at the gate. The assassin was caught and killed but the true assassin was Olympias and it was Alexander who reaped the fruits of the crime. Willingly would we believe that he knew nothing of the plot and that a man of such a generous nature never stooped to thoughts of parasite. Beyond dark whispers there is no evidence against him yet it would be rash to say his innocence is certain. To none of the world's greatest rulers has history done less justice than to Philip. The failure in appreciation has been due to two or perhaps three causes. The overwhelming greatness of a son greater than himself has overshadowed him and drawn men's eyes to achievements which could never have been wrought but for Philip's lifetime of toil. In the second place we depend for our knowledge of Philip's work almost entirely on the Athenian Orators and especially on Demosthenes whose main object was to misrepresent the king. And we may add thirdly that we possess no account of one of the greatest and most difficult of his exploits the conquest of Thrace. Thus through chance through the malignant eloquence of his opponent who has held the ears of posterity and through the very results of his own deeds the maker and expander of Macedonia the conqueror of Thrace and Greece has hardly held his due place in the history of the world. The importance of his work cannot be fully restored until the consequences which it devolved upon his son to carry out have been studied. The work of Alexander is the most authentic testimony to the work of Philip. But there was one notable man of the day whose imagination grasped the ecumenical importance of the king of Macedon. A pupil of Isocrates Theopompus of Chios who played some part in the politics of his own island was inspired by the deeds of Philip to write a history of his own time with Philip as its central figure. In that elaborate work the loss of which is irreparable Theopompus exposed candidly and impartially the king's weaknesses and misdeeds but he declared his judgment that Europe had never produced as greater man as the son of Amintus. It is part of the injustice to Philip that the history of Greece during his reign has so often been treated as little more than a biography of Demosthenes. Only his political opponents would deny that Demosthenes was the most eloquent of orators and the most patriotic of citizens. But that oratory in which he excelled was one of the curses of Greek politics. The art of persuasive speech is indispensable in the free Commonwealth and, when it is wielded by a statesman or a general a Pericles, a Cleon or a Xenophon is a noble as well as useful instrument. But once it seizes to be a merely auxiliary art it becomes dangerous and hurtful. This is what had happened at Athens. rhetoric had been carried to such perfection that the best years of a man's youth were absorbed in learning it and when he entered upon public life he was a finished speaker but a poor politician. Briefly, orators took the place of statesmen and Demosthenes was the most eminent of the class. They could all formulate striking phrases of profound political wisdom but their school-taught law did not carry them far against the craft of the Macedonian statesmen. The men of mighty words were as children in the hands of the man of mighty deeds. The Athenians took pleasure in hearing and criticising the elaborate speeches of their orators and the eloquence of Demosthenes, though it was thoroughly appreciated imposed far less on such connoisseurs than it has imposed upon posterity. The common sense of a plain man could easily expose his sophistries. He said himself that the blunt focian was the chopper of his periods. Demosthenes used his brilliant speech in the service of his country. He used it unscrupulously according to his light, the light of pearl-blind patriotism. He could take a lofty tone. He professed to regard Philip as a barbarian threatening Hellas and her gods. There is no need to show that judged from the point of view of the history of the world, his policy was retrograde and retarding. We cannot fairly criticise him either for not having seen, even as fully as isocrates, that the day for the expansion of Greece had come and that no existing Greek Commonwealth had to conduct that expansion, or if he did vaguely see it, for having looked the other way. All he saw, or at least all he cared, was that the increase of Macedonia meant the curtailment of Athens, and his political life was one long agitation against Macedonia's restless advance. But it was nothing more than a busy and often brilliant agitation, carried on from day to day and from month to month without any comprehensive plan. That does not make a great statesman. Demosthenes could devise reforms in special departments of the administration. He could admonish his fellow citizens to be up and doing, but he did not grapple seriously with any of the new problems of his day. He did not originate one fertile political idea. A statesman of genius might conceivably have infused fresh life into Athens by affecting some radical change in her constitution and finding for her new parts to play. This statement arose as perhaps merely another side of the fact that her part as a chief actor was over. It has often been said that the Demosthenic Athenians were irreclaimable. They certainly could not have been reclaimed by Demosthenes. For Demosthenes, when all is said, was a typical Demosthenic Athenian. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org The History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great Vol. 2 by John Bagnell Burry Chapter 17 The Conquest of Persia Parts 1 through 3 Section 1 Alexander's First Descent on Greece On his accession to the throne of Macedon Alexander found himself menaced by enemies on all sides. The members of the Confederacy of Corinth, the tributary peoples of the province of Thrace, the inveterally hostile Illyrians all saw in the death of Philip an opportunity not to be missed for undoing his work. And in Asia, Atlas, the father of Cleopatra expows the claim of Cleopatra's infant son. Thus Alexander stood within a belt of dangers like that by which his father at the same crisis in his life had been encompassed. The difference of the means which Sire and son adopted to deal with the Jeopardy showed the difference in temperament between the two men. If Alexander had followed the slow and sure methods of his father he would have bought off the Barbarians of the North, affected a reconciliation with Atlas and deferred the Greek that thoroughly established his power in Macedonia. Then by degrees he could have recovered in a few years the dominion which Philip had won and undertaken the expedition against Persia which Philip had planned. But such cautious calculation did not suit the bolder genius of Philip's son. He refused to yield to any of his foes. He encountered the perils one after another and overcame them all. First of all he turned to Greece serious enough. Athens had hailed the news of Philip's death with undisguised joy and the instance of Demosthenes had passed a decree in honour of his murderer's memory. Trumpets were sounded for war. Messengers were flying to Atlas and to Persia. And Greece was incited to throw off the Macedonian yoke. Ambrachia expelled her garrison and Thebes attempted to expel hers. But the insurrection of Thessaly had more importance than the hostile agitations in the southern states. The Thessalian cavalry was an invaluable adjunct to the Macedonian army. And it was a more material consequence to a Macedonian king to be the archon of the Thessalian Federation than to be acknowledged as general of the Confederacy of Corinth. Yet it was hardly altogether the need of quickly securing Thessaly that urged Alexander to deal with Greece before he dealt with any other portion of his empire. He wished above all things to save Greece from herself. His timely appearance before the agitation could develop into a fully declared rebellion might prevent the cities from committing any irreparable action which would necessitate a condyne punishment or even harsh measures. He would march south not to chastise or judge the Greeks but to conciliate them and obtain recognition as successor to his father's place in the Amficdiani of Delphi and the League of Corinth. He advanced the defile of Tempe but found it strongly held by the Thessalians. Instead of attempting to carry a position which was perhaps impregnable he led his army further south along the coast and cutting steps up the steep side of Asa he made a new path for himself over the mountain ascended into the plain of the Peneus behind his enemy. Not a drop of blood was shed at this Allian assembly elected Alexander to the archonship and he guaranteed to the communities of the land the same rights and privileges which they had enjoyed under his father. The conciliation of Thessaly led to the adhesion of its southern neighbors, Malus and Delopia. At Thermopylae the young king was recognized by the Amficdiani and as he marched southward not a hand was raised against him. He had swooped down so quickly that nothing was ready to resist. The Athenians sent a repentant embassy which the king received kindly without any reference to the public jubilations over his father's murder. And the Congress of the Confederacy met at Corinth to elect Alexander general in his father's place. Alexander was chosen Supreme General of the Greeks for the invasion of Asia and it was as head of Hellas descendant and successor of Achilles rather than as Macedonian king that he desired to go forth against Persia. But his election by the Greek Confederacy at Corinth had more of historical fitness than political significance. The contingents which the Greek states furnished as members of the League were small and the idea of the expedition failed to arouse the national feeling. Yet the welcome though half-hearted and hypocritical which was given to Alexander at Corinth and the vote however pre-functury which elected him leader of the Greeks were the fitting prelude to the expansion of Hellas and the diffusion of Hellenic civilization which destiny had chosen him to accomplish. He was thus formally recognized as what he in fullest verity was, the representative of Greece. Of all those who thronged at Corinth round the royal youth to observe him with curious gaze or flatter him with pleasant words some may have foreseen that he would be a conqueror of many lands but none could have suspected how his conquests would transform the world for few realized that the world was waiting to be transformed. Outside the gates of Corinth according to a famous story he found the eccentric philosopher Diogenes sitting in the barrel which served him as a home and asked him to name Ebon. Stand Out of the Sun was the brief reply of the philosopher. Where I am not Alexander said the king to his retinue I should like to be Diogenes. The incident may never have happened but the anecdote happily brings face to face the enthusiast who carried individual liberty and the vast verge of independence and the enthusiast who dreamed of making his empire contaminious with the globe for the individualism which Diogenes caricatured was the sister to the spirit of cosmopolitanism which Alexander's empire was to promote. Meanwhile some domestic dangers had been cleared violently out of his path. His stepmother her father and her child had all been done away with. She had been murdered in Asia in accordance with the king's commands but Alexander was not responsible for the death of Cleopatra and her infant. This was said to be the work of Olympias who thirsty for revenge caused the child to be slaughtered in its mother's lap and forced Cleopatra to hang herself by her own belt. Section 2 Alexander's campaigns in Thrace and Illyria were disquieted in Thrace. There were signs of a storm brewing in the Illyrian quarter and it would have been impossible for the young king to invade Asia with Thrace ready to revolt in his rear and Macedonia exposed to attack from the west. It was indispensable to teach the Thracians a lesson and especially the Trebali who had never been chastised for the Czech which they had inflicted on Philip. The Trebali lived beyond the Hymus and then Alexander having crossed Mount Rodope reached the foot of one of the western passes of Mount Hymus he found the steep defile defended by mountaineers. They had hauled up a multitude of their war chariots to the top of the pass in order to roll them upon the Macedonians and then rushing down themselves to fall upon the disordered army. There was no other way of crossing the mountain and the mountain must be crossed. Here again the same temper and the same resource which he had shown at Tempe when he had made up his mind that an object must be attained he never hesitated to employ the boldest or most novel means. He ordered the infantry to advance up the path opening the ranks when possible to let the chariots roll through but when that was impossible he directed them to fall on their knees and holding their shields locked together to form a roof on which the chariots would then roll harmlessly away. The device was successful. The volley of the carts rattled over the locked shields and notwithstanding the shock not a man was killed. When the barbarians had exhausted these ponderous missiles the pass was easily taken and the Macedonians descended into the country of the Trebali. At the news of Alexander's approach the Trebali had sent their wives and children to an island and then, waiting until he advanced into their land, stole behind him to seize the mountain passes in his rear. Learning of this movement Alexander marched rapidly back forced the enemy to fight and disbursed them with great loss. He then proceeded on his way to the bank of the Danube. He had foreseen that it might be necessary to operate on that river perhaps to make a demonstration in the country of the Getai and prepared for this emergency by adopting the same plan as Darius in his famous Thracian expedition. He instructed his ally Byzantium to dispatch ships to sail up the river. The garrison in the island of Peusi was supported by a host of Scythian friends on the left bank of the stream and Alexander saw that with his few Byzantine galleys it would be hopeless to attack the island until he had secured the Scythian shore. The problem was to throw its troops across the river without the enemy's knowledge and this must be done in the darkness of one night. The ships were too few in number but all the fishing boats in the neighborhood were collected and the tent skins filled with hay were tied firmly together and strung across the stream. Landing on the other bank led by the king himself a large band of horse and foot advanced under the cover of the long corn at dawn of day and the barbarian host arose and the Macedonian phalanx unfolded before them. Startled as much as by the terrible promptitude of their foe as by the formidable array which faced them they withdrew into their poorly fortified town and when Alexander followed them at the head of his cavalry they fled with all their horses could carry into the wilds of the north. Empire beyond the Danube was not salt by Alexander and he did not pursue. He marked the term of his northern conquest sacrificing solemnly on the banks to Zeus Sotur Heracles and the river god himself. This exploit led to the surrender of the tribale in the island and all the neighboring tribes south of the river hastened to assure the king of their submission. There came also from unknown homes far up the river or perhaps in the Dalmatian mountains an embassy of Celts huge limbed self-confident men who had heard Alexander's deeds and were feigned to be his friends. Curious to know what impression the Macedonian name had made upon that distant folk Alexander asked him what they feared most we fear nothing they said if it be not let's the sky fall Braggarts said Alexander afterwards but before two generations had passed away these men of mighty limbs and mighty words were destined to roll down an atorant upon Greece and Asia and to rest for their own habitation a part of Alexander's conquests. Alexander's work was done in Thrace but as he marched homeward he learned that the Illyrians were already in the gate of Macedonia and that not a moment must be lost if the country was to be saved from an invasion. Philip had secured the Macedonian frontier on the Illyrian side by a number of fortresses near the sources of the Haleachman Epsis and Pelion which was the strongest of those strongholds the key fortress of the mountain gate had now fallen into the hands of Klytus the Illyrian chief. To reach Pelion as quickly as possible before the arrival of the talentines a folk in alliance with Klytus was the object of Alexander. His march was threatened by the Ariatis another hostile folk whom Klytus had engaged to waylay him but this danger was prevented by the friendly king of the Agrianes who invaded the Altaria territory and fully occupied the fighting men. Marching rapidly up the river of the Ariatis Alexander encamped near Pelion the heights around were covered with Illyrians and Klytus as was the custom of his people before a battle sacrificed three boys three maidens and three black rams but before they came to the actual attack the hearts of the Illyrians failed them and deserting all their points of vantage and leaving their sacrifice incomplete they retired into the fastness. Alexander intended to blockade the place next day by a circumvalation but the talentines arrived in a large force and he saw that his men were too few to deal at once with the foes within and the foes without the walls nor were his provisions sufficient for a protracted siege. It was absolutely necessary to withdraw from his present position but it was a task of extreme peril to retreat in these defiles with hostile Pelion in the rear and talentine troops occupying the slopes and heights. This task however was carried out successfully through the amazingly swift and skillful maneuvering of the highly drilled Macedonian soldiers. The enemy were driven from their flanking positions the river was crossed with much trouble yet without the loss of a man. At the other side of the river Alexander's communications were safe he could obtain provisions and reinforcements as he chose and might wait at his ease for an opportunity to strike. The moment soon came the enemy seeing in Alexander's retreat a confession of fear neglected all precautions and formed a camp without rampart or outpost before the gates of the fortress meeting a portion of his army and bidding the rest follow Alexander set out at night and surprised the slumbering camp of the barbarians. A carnage followed and a wild flight and the Macedonians pursued to the Taratine Mountains. At the first alarm Clitus rushed to the gates of Pelion and set the town on fire before he joined the flight. This discomfort of the Illyrians was a no less striking proof these months of incessant toil had earned him a rest but there was to be no rest yet for the young monarch even as the tidings of the Illyrian danger had reached him before he left Thrace so now while he was still at Pelion the news came that Thebes had rebelled he must now speed to Greece as swiftly as seven days had gone he had sped to the Illyrian hills no need was more pressing than to crush this revolt before it spread. In section three Alexander's second dissent on Greece the agitation against Macedon had not ceased during the past year in the cities of Greece and it was now formanted by the gold and the encouragement of Persia. Five years before at the outbreak of the war Athens had sent ambassadors to Sousa begging for subsidies from Artaxerxes but the great king would not break with Philip then and sent them away with a fruity and barbarous letter of refusal. The Phrygian satrap however perhaps on his own responsibility sent useful help to Prynthys in its peril and Persia gradually awoke to the fact that Macedonia was a dangerous neighbor. The new king Darius saw the necessity of embarrassing Alexander in Europe so as to keep him as long as possible from crossing into Asia where the Macedonian forces under Parmenio were holding their own for this purpose he stirred up thoughts of war in Greece and sent subsidies to the Greek states to many cities these overtures were welcome but especially to Thebes under the shadow of the Macedonian garrison 300 talents were offered to Athens and publicly declined but Demosthenes privately accepted them to be expended in the interests of the great king. It is not probable that any city entered into a formal contract with Persia but the basis of the negotiations was the king's peace of 50 years ago the Greeks admitting the rights of the Persian empire over their brethren in Asia who on their part were awaiting with various feelings the approach of the Macedonian deliverer as the patriots had often prayed for the death of Philip so now they longed for the death of his youthful son an event that might have hurled back Macedon into nothingness forever rumors soon spread that the wish was fulfilled. Alexander was reported to have been slain in Thrace Demosthenes produced a man who had seen him fall and the Theban fugitives in Athens hastened to return to their native city to incite it to shake off the Macedonian yoke two captains of the garrison were caught outside the Cadmia and murdered and the Thebans then proceeded to blockade the citadel by a double rampart on the south side where there was no city wall outside the wall of the citadel Thebes responded to the Theban leading which Demosthenes, Lycurgus and the other Athenian patriots had prompted and encouraged there were movements against Macedon in Elis and Itholia the Arcadians marched forth to the Itthmus and the Athenians sent arms to Thebes though they sent no men the hopes of the patriots ran high the fall of the Cadmia seemed inevitable suddenly a report was whispered in Thebes that a Macedonian army was encamped a few miles away at Onchestus as Alexander was dead it could only be Antipater so the Theban leaders assured the alarmed people but messengers soon came affirming that it was certainly Alexander Ney then said the leaders since King Alexander is dead it can only be Alexander of Lincestus but it was indeed the king Alexander in less than two weeks he had marched from Pelion to Onchestus and on the next day he stood before the walls of Thebes he halted first on the northeastern side of the city near the sanctuary of the Theban hero Iolaus he would give the citizens time to make their submission but they were in no mind to submit and some of their light armed troops rushing out of the gates attacked the outskirts of the Macedonian camp on the morrow Alexander moved his whole army to the south side of the city and encamped close to the Cadmia without making any attack on the walls still hoping that the city would surrender but the fate of Thebes was precipitated by one of his captains by name Predicus who was in charge of the troops which guarded the camp on the side of the Cadmia stationed within a few yards of the Theban earthworks Predicus without waiting for orders dashed through the outer rampart and fell upon the Theban guards he was supported by a fellow officer and Alexander when he observed what had happened sent archers and light troops to their aid the Thebans who manned the rampart were driven along the gully which running along the east side of the Cadmia passes the temple of Heracles outside the walls when they reached this temple they rallied and turned on their assailants and routed them back along the hollow road but as they pursued their own ranks were broken and Alexander watching for the moment brought his phalanx into action and drove them within the electron gate they had no time to shut the gate before some Macedonians pushed in along with the fugitives and there were no men on the walls to shoot the enemy down for the men who should have defended the walls had been sent to the blockade of the Citadel some of the Macedonians who thus entered made their way to the Cadmia and joining with the garrison they sallied out close to the Amphion where the main part of the Theban forces were drawn up others having mounted the bastions helped their friends without to climb the walls and the troops thus admitted rushed to the marketplace but the gate was now in the possession of the Macedonians the city was full of them and the king himself was everywhere the Theban cavalry was broken up and fled through the streets and the open gates into the plain the foot soldiers saved themselves as they could and then a merciless butchery began it was not the Macedonians who were zealous in the work of slaughter but the old enemies of the Thebans the Platians and other Boeotian peoples who now wrecked upon the proud city of the Seven Gates vengeance for the wrongs and insults of many generations 6000 lives were taken before Alexander stayed the slaughter on the next day he summoned the confederates of Corinth to decide the fate of the rebellious city the judges met it out to Thebes the same measure which Thebes would have once met it out to Athens the sentence was that the city should be leveled with the dust and her land divided among the confederates that the remnant of the inhabitants with the women and children should be sold into bondage except the priests and priestesses of the gods and those burgers who had bonds of guest right with the Macedonians and that the cadmium citadel should be occupied by a garrison the severe doom showing how deeply the masterful city was aboard was carried out and among the ruined habitations on which the Macedonian waters looked down from the fortress walls only one solitary house stood making the desolation seem more desolate the house of Pindar whom Alexander expressly spared the Boeotian cities were at last delivered from the yoke of their impetuous mistress Plataea and Orchomenos re arose from their ruins the fall of Thebes promptly checked all the other movements in Greece the Arcadian forces withdrew from the itthmus Elis and Aetolia hastened to retrieve their hostile attitude the news reached Athens during the festival of the mysteries the solemnity was interrupted and in a hurried meeting of the assembly it was resolved on the proposal of Demides to send an embassy to welcome Alexander on a safe return from his northern campaign and to congratulate him on the just chastisement which he had inflicted upon Thebes the same people passed this decree who a few days before on the proposal of Demosthenes had resolved to send troops to the aid of that luckless city Alexander demanded and it was a fair demand that Demosthenes and Lycurgus and the other agitators who kept the hostility to Macedonia alive and were largely responsible for the disaster at Thebes should be delivered to him for so long as they were at large there was no security that Athens would not entangle herself in further follies when the demand was laid before the assembly Demosthenes epigramatically expressed his own view of the situation by advising the people not to hand over the sheepdogs to the wolf Fokian said in downright words that Alexander must be conciliated at any cost let the men who surrender he demanded show their patriotism by sacrificing themselves but it was finally decided that Demides who had ingratiated himself with the Macedonian king should accompany another embassy and beg that the offenders might be left to the justice of the Athenian people Alexander still anxious to show every consideration to Athens withdrew his demand insisting only on the banishment of the adventurer Caridemus of Thracian notoriety with the fall of Thebes Alexander's campaign in Europe came to an end the rest of his life was spent in Asia the European campaigns though they filled little more than a year and though they seemed of small account by the side of his triumphs in the east were brilliant and important enough to have won historical fame for any general in his two dissents and degrees first to conciliate and afterwards to punish in his expedition to the Danube and in his Illyrian campaign he had given tokens of the rare strategic capacity the originality of conception the boldness of resolution the rapidity of action the power qualities which served Alexander's genius and soon found a more specious fear for their manifestation when they bore him towards the unknown limits of the eastern world End of chapter 19 parts 1 through 3