Philippus Ii.
（
*Fi/lippos), the 18th king of MACEDONIA, if we count from Caranus, was the youngest son of Amyntas II. and Eurydice, and was born in B. C. 382.
According to one account, which Suidas mentions (
s. v. Κάπανος), but for which there is no foundation, he and his two elder brothers, Alexander II. and Perdiccas III., were supposititious children, imposed by Eurydice on Amyntas.
The fact of Philip's early residence at Thebes is too well supported to admit of doubt, though the circumstances which led to his being placed there are differently related. In Diodorus (
16.2), we read that Amyntas, being overcome in war by the Illyrians, delivered Philip to them as a hostage for the payment of some stipulated tribute, and that by them he was sent to Thebes, where he sojourned in the house of the father of Epaminondas, and was educated with the latter in the Pythagorean discipline.
The same author, however, tells us, in another passage (15.67), that he was one of those whom Pelopidas brought away with him as hostages for the continuance of tranquillity in Macedonia, when he had gone thither to mediate between Alexander II. and Ptolemy of Alorus, in B. C. 368; and with this statement Plutarch agrees (
Pelop. 26); while Justin says (7.5), that Alexander, Philip's brother, gave him as a hostage, first to the Illyrians, and again a second time to the Thebans. Of these accounts, the last-mentioned looks like an awkward attempt to combine conflicting stories; while none of them are easily reconcileable with the statement of Aeschines (
de Fals. Leg. pp. 31, 32 ; comnp. Nep.
Iph. 3), that, shortly after the death of Alexander II., Philip was in Macedonia, and, together with his elder brother Perdiccas, was presented by Eurydice to Iphicrates, in order to move his pity and obtain his protection against the pretender Pausanias. On the whole, the supposition of Thirlwall is far from improbable (
Greece, vol. v. p. 163), viz. that when Pelopidas, subsequently to the visit of Iphicrates to Macedonia, marched a second time into the country, and compelled Ptolemy of Alorus to enter into an engagement to keep the throne for the younger sons of Amyntas. he carried Philip back with him to Thebes, as thinking him hardly safe with his mother and her paramour.
As for that part of the account of Diodorus, which represents Philip as pursuing his studies in company with Epaminondas, it is sufficiently refuted by chronology (see Wesseling,
ad Diod. 16.2); nor would it seem that his attention at Thebes was directed to speculative philosophy so much as to those more practical points, the knowledge of which he afterwards found so useful for his purposes,--military tactics, the language and politics of Greece, and the characters of its people.
He was still at Thebes, according to Diodorus, when his brother Perdiccas III. was slain in battle against the Illyrians, in B. C. 360; and, on hearing of that event, he made his escape and returned to Macedonia.
But this statement is contradicted by the evidence of Speusippus (apud
Ath. xi. p. 506f.), from whom we learn that Plato, conveying the recommendation through Euphraeus of Oreus, had induced Perdiccas to invest Philip with a principality, which he was in possession of when his brother's death placed him in the supreme government of the kingdom. On this he appears to have entered at first merely as regent and guardian to his infant nephew Amyntas [AMYNTAS, No. 3.]; but after no long time, probably in B. C. 359, he was enabled to set aside the claims of the young prince, and to assume for himself the title of king, -- aided doubtless by the dangers which thickened round Macedonia at that crisis, and which obviously demanded a vigorous hand to deal with them. The Illyrians, flushed with their recent victory over Perdiccas, threatened the Macedonian territory on the west,--the Paeonians were ravaging it on the north,--while PAUSANIAS and ARGAEUS took advantage of the crisis to put forward their pretensions to the throne. Philip was fully equal to the emergency.
By his tact and eloquence he sustained the failing spirits of the Macedonians, while at the same time he introduced among them a stricter military discipline, and organized their army on the plan of the phalanx; and he purchased by bribes and promises the forbearance of the Paeonians, as well as of Cotys, the king of Thrace, and the chief ally of Pausanias.
But the claims of Argaeus to the crown were favoured by a more formidable power,--the Athenians, who, with the view of recovering Amphipolis as the price of their aid, sent a force under Mantias to support him. Under these circumstances, according to Diodorus, Philip withdrew his garrison from Amphipolis, and declared the town independent,--a measure, which, if he really resorted to it, may account for the lukewarmness of the Athenians in the cause of Argaeus. Soon after he defeated the pretender, and having made prisoners of some Athenian citizens in the battle, he not only released them, but supplied with valuable presents the losses which each had sustained ; and this conciliatory step was followed by an embassy offering to renew the alliance which had existed between Macedonia and Athens in the time of his father.
The politic generosity thus displayed by Philip, produced a most favourable impression on the Athenians, and peace was concluded between the parties after midsummer of B. C. 359, no express mention, as far as appears, being made of Amphipolis in the treaty. Being thus delivered from his most powerful enemy, Philip turned his arms against the Paeonians, taking advantage of the death of their king, Agis, just at this juncture, and reduced them to subjection.
He then attacked the Illyrians with a large army, and having defeated them in a decisive battle, he granted them peace on condition of their accepting the lake of Lychnus as their eastern boundary towards Macedonia. [BARDYLIS.]
Thus in the short period of one year, and at the age of four-and-twenty, had Philip delivered himself from his dangerous and embarrassing position, and provided for the security of his kingdom.
But energy and talents such as his could not, of course, be satisfied with mere security, and henceforth his views were directed, not to defence, but to aggrandisement.
The recovery of the important town of Amphipolis, which he could never have meant seriously to abandon, was his first step in this direction, and the way in which he accomplished it (B. C. 358) is one of the most striking specimens of his consummate craft. Having found pretexts for war with the Amphipolitans, his policy was to prevent interference with his proceedings on the part of Athens and of Olynthus (both of which states had an interest in resisting his attempt), and, at any rate, to keep them from uniting against him. Accordingly, in a secret negotiation with the Athenians, he led them to believe that he was willing to restore Amphipolis to them when he had taken it, and would do so on condition of their making him master of Pydna [CHARIDEMUS, No. 2]. When therefore the Olynthians sent an embassy to Athens to propose an alliance for the defence of Amphipolis, their overtures were rejected (Dem.
Olynth. ii. p. 19), and while their ardour for the contest would be thus damped by the prospect of engaging in it single-handed, Philip still more effectually secured their forbearance by surrendering to them the town of Anthemus (Dem.
Phil. ii. p. 70).
He then pressed the siege of Amphipolis, in the course of which an embassy, under Hierax and Stratocles, was sent by the Amphipolitans to Athens, to ask for aid; but Philip rendered the application fruitless by a letter to the Athenians, in which he repeated his former assurances that he would place the city in their hands. Freed thus from the opposition of the only two parties whom he had to dread, he gained possession of Amphipolis, either by force, as Diodorus tells us, or by treachery from within, according to the statement of Demosthenes.
He then proceeded at once to Pydna, which seems to have yielded to him without a struggle, and the acquisition of which, by his own arms, and not through the Athenians, gave him a pretext for declining to stand by his secret engagement with them. (Dem.
Olynth. p. 11,
de Halonn. p. 83,
c. Aristocr. p. 659,
c. Lept. p. 476;
Diod. 16.8.)
The hostile feeling which such conduct necessarily excited against him at Athens, made it of course still more important for him to pursue his policy of dividing those whose union might be formidable, and of detaching Olynthus from the Athenians. Accordingly, we find him next engaged in the siege of Potidaea, together with the Olynthians, to whom he delivered up the town on its capture, while at the same time he took care to treat the Athenian garrison with the most conciliatory kindness, and sent them home in safety.
According to Plutarch (
Plut. Alex. 3), Philip had just taken Potidaea when tidings of three prosperous events reached him at once ;--these were, a victory in a horse-race at the Olympic games, -- the defeat by Parmenion of the Illyrians, who were leagued with the Paeonians and Thracians against the Macedonian power,--and the birth of
Alexander; and, if we combine Plutarch's statement with the chronology of Diodorus (
16.22), we must place the capture of Potidaea in B. C. 356. Soon after this success, whenever it may have occurred, he attacked and took a settlement of the Thasians, called Crenides from the springs (
Κρῆναι) with which it abounded, and, having introduced into the place a number of new colonists, he named it Philippi after himself. One great advantage of this acquisition was, that it put him in possession of the gold mines of the district, the mode of working which he so improved as to derive from them, so Diodorus tells us, a revenue of 1000 talents, or 243,750
l.--a sum, however, which doubtless falls far short of what they yielded annually on the whole. (
Diod. 16.8; comp.
Strab. vii. p.323; Dem.
Olynth. i. p. ll,
Philipp. i. p. 50.) effort.
From this point there is for some time a pause in the active operations of Philip.
He employed it, no doubt, in carefully watching events, the course of which, as for instance the Social war (B. C. 357-355), was of itself tending towards the accomplishment of his ambitious designs. And so well had he disguised these, that although exasperation against him had been excited at Athens, no suspicion of them, no apprehension of real danger appears to have been felt there; and even Demosthenes, in his speech against war with Persi (
περὶ συμμοριῶν), delivered in B. C. 354, as also in that for the Megalopolitans (B. C. 353), makes no mention at all of the Macedonian power or projects (comp. Dem.
Philipp. iii. p. 117; Clint.
F. H. vol. ii. sub annis 353, 341.) In B. C. 354, the application made to Philip by Callias, the Chalcidian, for aid against Plutarchus, tyrant of Eretria, gave him an opportunity, which he did not neglect, of interposing in the affairs of Euboea, and quietly laying the foundation of a Macedonian party in the island. [CALLIAS, No. 4.]
But there was another and a nearer object to which the views of Philip were directed,--viz. ascendancy in Thrace, and especially the mastery of the Chersonesus, which had been ceded to the Athenians by CERSOBLEPTES, and the possession of which would be of the utmost importance to the Macedonian king in his struggle with Athens, even if we doubt whether he had yet looked beyond to a wider field of conquest in Asia.
It was then perhaps in B. C. 353, that he marched as far westward as Maroneia, where Cersobleptes opened a negotiation with him for a joint invasion of the Chersonesus,--a design which was stopped only by the refusal of Amadocus to allow Philip a passage through his territory. No attempt was made to force one; and, if we are right in the conjectural date assigned to the event, Philip would naturally be unwilling to waste time in such a contest, when the circumstances of the Sacred War promised to afford him an opportunity of gaining a sure and permanent footing in the very heart of Greece. (Dem.
c. Arist. p. 631.)
The capture of Methone, however, was a necessary preliminary to any movement towards the south, lying as it did between him and the Thessalian border, and serving as a shelter to his enemies, and as a station from which they could annoy him.
He did not take it till after a lengthened siege, in the course of which he himself lost an eve.
The inhabitants were permitted to depart with one garment, but the town was utterly destroked and the land apportioned to Macedonian colonists. (
Diod. 16.31. 34; Dem.
Olynth. i. p. 12,
Philipp. i. p. 41, iii. p. 117; Plut.
Par. 8; Luc.
de Scrib. Hist. 38.)
He was now able to take advantage of the invitation of the Aleuadae to aid then against Lycophron, the tyrant of Pherae, and advanced into Thessaly, B. C. 352. To support Lycophron, the Phocians sent Phayllus, with a force of 7000 men, but he was defeated and driven out of Thessaly by Philip, who followed up this success with the capture of Pagasae, the port of Pherae. Soon,however,Philip was himselfobliged to retreat into Macedonia, after two battles with Onomarchus, who had marched into Thessaly against him with a more numerous army; but his retreat was only a preliminary to a more vigorous He shortly returned with augmented forces, ostentatiously assuming the character of champion of the Delphic god and avenger of sacrilege, and making his soldiers wear crowns of laurel. One battle, in which the Phocians were defeated and Onomarchus himself was slain, gave Philip the ascendancy in Thessaly.
He established at Pherae what he wished the Greeks to consider a free government, but he took and garrisoned Magnesia, and then advanced southward to Thermopylae.
The pass, however, he found guarded by a strong Athenian force, and he was compelled, or at least thought it expedient to retire, a step by which indeed he had nothing to lose and much to gain, since the Greek states were unconsciously playing into his hands by a war in which they were weakening one another, and he had other plans to prosecute in the North.
But while he withdrew his army from Greece, he took care that the Athenians should suffer annoyance from his fleet.
With this Lemnos and Imbros were attacked, and some of the inhabitants were carried off as prisoners, several Athesnian ships with valuable cargoes were taken near Geraestus, and the Paralus was captured in the bay of Marathon.
These events are mentioned by Demosthenes, in his first Philippic (p. 49, ad fin.), delivered in B. C. 352, but are referred to the period immediately following the fall of Olynthus, B. C. 347, by those who consider the latter portion of the speech in question as a distinct oration of later date [DEMOSTHENES].
It was to the affairs of Thrace that Philip now directed his operations.
As the ally of Amadocus against Cersobleptes (Theopomp. apud
Harpocr. s. v. Ἀμάδοκος), he marched into the country, established his ascendancy there, and brought away one of the sons of the Thracian king as a hostage [see Vol. I. p. 674]. Meanwhile, his movements in Thessaly had opened the eyes of Demosthenes to the real danger of Athens and Greece, and his first Philippic (delivered, as we have remarked, about this time) was his earliest attempt to rouse his countrymen to energetic efforts against their enemy.
But the half-century, which had elapsed since the Peloponnesian war, had worked a sad change in the Athenians, and energy was no longer their characteristic. Reports of Philip's illness and death in Thrace amused and soothed the people, and furnished them with a welcome excuse for inaction; and, though the intelligence of his having attacked Heraeum on the Propontis excited their alarm and a momentary show of vigour, still nothing effectual was done, and throughout the greater part of B. C. 351 feebleness and irresolution prevailed.
At some period in the course of the two following years Philip would seem to have interposed in the affairs of Epeirus, dethroning Arymbas (if we may depend on the statement of Justin, which is in some measure borne out by Demosthenes), and transferring the crown to Alexander, the brother of Olympias (
Just. 7.6,
8.6; Dem.
Olynth. i. p. 13; comp.
Diod. 16.72; Wess.
ad loc.). About the same time also he showed at least one symptom of his designs against the Persian king, by receiving and sheltering the rebels, Artabazus and Memnon. In B. C. 349 he commenced his attacks on the Chalcidian cities. Olynthus, in alarm, applied to Athens for aid, and Demosthenes, in his three Olynthiac orations, roused the people to efforts against the common enemy, not very vigorous at first and fritless in the end.
But it was not from Athens only that Philip might expect opposition. The Thessalians had for some time been murmuring at his retention of Pagasae and Magnesia, and his diversion to his own purposes of the revenues of the country arising from harbour and market dues.
These complaints he had hitherto endeavoured to still by assurances and promises; but just at this crisis the recovery of Pherae by Peitholaus gave him an opportunity of marching again into Thessaly.
He expelled the tyrant, and the discontent among his allies was calmed or silenced by the appearance of the necessity for his interference, and their experience of its efficacy. Returning to the north, he prosecuted the Olynthian war. Town after town fell before him, for in all of them there were traitors, and his course was marked by wholesale bribery. In B. C. 348 he laid siege to Olynthus itself, and, having taken it in the following year through the treachery of Lasthenes and Euthycrates, he razed it to the ground and sold the inhabitants for slaves.
The conquest made him master of the threefold peninsula of Pallene, Sithonia, and Acta, and he celebrated his triumph at Dium with a magnificent festival and games. [LASTHENES; ARCHELAUS.]
After the fill of Olynthus the Athenians had every reason to expect the utmost hostility from Philip, and they endeavoured, therefore, to bring about a coalition of Greek states against him.
The attempt issued in failure; but the course of events in Greece, and in particular the turn which affairs in Phocis had taken, and the symptoms which Athens had given of a conciliatory policy towards Thebes, seemed to Philip to point to such a league as by no means improbable; and he took care accordingly that the Athenians should become aware of his willingness to make peace.
This disposition on his part was more than they had ventured to hope for, and, on the motion of Philocrates, tell ambassadors were appointed to treat with him, Aeschines and Demosthenes being among the number. Philip received the embassy at Pella, and both then and in the subsequent negotiations employed effectually his usual craft. Thus, while he seems to have been explicit in requiring the surrender of the Athenian claim to Amphipolis and the recognition of the independence of Cardia, he kept the envoys in the dark as to his intentions with regard to the Thebans and Phocians,--a point of the highest interest to Athens, which still cast a jealous eye upon Thebes and her influence in Boeotia. Nor were his purposes with respect to these matters revealed even when the terms of peace and alliance with him were settled at Athens, as the Phocians were neither included in the treaty nor expressly shut out from it.
The same course was adopted with reference to Cersobleptes, king of Thrace, and the town of Halus in Thessaly, which, acting on behalf of the Pharsalians, Philip had sent Parmenion to besiege.
As for Thrace,--since the dominions of Cersobleptes formed a barrier between Macedonia and the Athenian possessions in the Chersonesus,--it was of the greatest importance to Philip to establish his power there before the final ratification of the treaty, in which the Athenians night have insisted on a guarantee for its safety. Accordingly, when the second embassy,consisting probably of the same members as the former one, arrived in Macedonia to receive the king's oath to the compact of alliance, they found that he was absent in Thrace, nor did he return to give them an audience till he had entirely conquered Cersobleptes. Even then he delayed taking the oath, unwilling clearly that the Athenian ambassadors should return home before he was quite prepared for the invasion of Phocis. Having induced them to accompany hint on his march into Thessaly, he at length swore to the treaty at Pherae, and now expressly excluded the Phocians from it. Deserted by Phalaecus, who had made conditions forhimself and his mercenaries, the Phocians offered no resistance to Philip. Their cities were destroyed, and their place in the Amphictyonic council was made over to the king of Macedonia, who was appointed also, jointly with the Thebans and Thessalians, to the presidency of the Pythian games. Ruling as he did over a barbaric nation, such a recognition of his Hellenic character was of the greatest value to him, especially as he looked forward to an invasion of the Persian empire in the name of Greece, united under him in a great national confederacy.
That his own ambition should point to this was natural enough; but the "Philip" of Isocrates, which was composed at this period, and which urged the king to the enterprise in question, is perhaps one of the most striking instances of the blindness of an amiable visionary.
The delusion of the rhetorician was at any rate not shared by his fellow-citizens. The Athenians, indignant at having been out-witted and at the disappointment of their hopes from the treaty, showed their resentment by omitting to send their ordinary deputation to the Pythian games, at which Philip presided, and were disposed to withhold their recognition of him as a member of the Amphictyonic league. They were dissuaded, however, by Demosthenes, in his oration "on the Peace" (B. C. 346), from an exhibition of anger so perilous at once and impotent.
Philip now began to spread his snares for the establishment of his influence in the Peloponnesus, by holding himself out to the Messenians, Megalopolitans, and Argives, as their protector against Sparta. To counteract these attempts, and to awaken the states in question to the true view of Philip's character and designs, Demosthenes went into the Peloponnesus at the head of an embassy ; but his eloquence and representations met with no success, and Philip sent ambassadors to Athens to complain of the step which had been taken against him and of the accusations with which he had been assailed.
These circumstances (B. C. 344) gave occasion to the second Philippic of Demosthenes, but, though the jealousy of the Athenians was fully roused, and the answer which they returned to Philip does not appear to have thoroughly satisfied him, still no infringement of the peace took place.
The same year (344) was marked also by a successful expedition of Philip into Illyria, and by his expulsion for the third time of the party of the tyrants from Pherae, a circumstance which furnished him with an excuse and an opportunity for reducing the whole of Thessaly to a more thorough dependence on himself (
Diod. 16.69; Dem.
in Plal. Ep. p. 153; Pseudo-Dem.
de Hal. p. 84).
It appears to have been in B. C. 343 that he made an ineffectual attempt to gain an ascendancy in Megara, through the traitors Ptoeodorus and Perilaus (Dem.
de Cor. pp. 242, 324,
dc Fals. Leg. p. 435 ;
Plut. Phoc. 15); and in the same year he marched into Epeirus, and compelled three refractory towns in the Cassopian district,--Pandosia, Bucheta, and Elateia,--to submit themselves to his brother-in-law Alexander (Pseudo-Dem.
de Hal. p. 84). From this quarter he meditated an attack on Ambracia and Acarnania, the success of which would have enabled him to effect an union with the Aetolians, whose favour he had secured by a promise of taking Naupactus for them from the Achaeans, and so to open a way for himself into the Peloponnesus.
But the Athenians, roused to activity by Demosthenes, sent ambassadors to the Peloponnesians and Acarnanians, and succeeded in forming a strong league against Philip, who was obliged in consequence to abandon his design. (Dem.
I'hil. iii. pp. 120, 129; Aesch.
c. Cles. pp. 65, 67.)
It was now becoming more and more evident that actual war between the parties could not be much longer avoided, and the negotiations consequent on Philip's offer to modify the terms of the treaty of 346 served only to show the elements of discord which were smouldering.
The matters in dispute related mainly : 1. to the island of Halonnesus, which the Athenians regarded as their own, and which Philip had seized after expelling from it aband of pirates; 2. to the required restitution by Philip of the property of those Athenians who were residing at Potidaea at the time of its capture by him in 356; 3. to Amphipolis; 4. to the Thracian cities which Philip had taken after the peace of 346 had been ratified at Athens; 5. to the support given by him to the Cardians in their quarrel about their boundaries with the Athenian settlers in the Chersonesus [DIOPEITHES]; and of these questions not one was satisfactorily adjusted, as we may see from the speech (
περὶ Ἁλοννήσου) which was delivered in answer to a letter from Philip to the Athenians on the subject of their complaints. Early in B. C. 342 Philip marched into Thrace against Teres and Cersobleptes, and established colonies in the conquered territory. Hostilities ensued between the Macedonians and Diopeithes, the Athenian commander in the Chersonesus, and the remonstrance sent to Athens by Philip called forth the speech of Demosthenes (
Περὶ Χερ̀ῥονήσου), in which the conduct of Diopeithes was defended, as also the third Philippic, in consequence of which the Athenians appear to have entered into a successful negotiation with the Persian king, for an alliance against Macedonia (Phil.
Ep ad Ath. ap. Dem. p. 160;
Diod. 16.7.;
Paus. 1.29;
Arr. Anab. 2.14).
The operations in Euboea in B. C. 342 and 341 [CALLIAS; CLEITARCHUS; PARMENION ; PHOCION], as well as the attack of Callias, sanctioned by Athens, against the towns on the bay of Pagasae, brought matters nearer to a crisis, and Philip sent to the Athlenians a letter, yet extant, defending his own conduct and arraigning theirs.
But the siege of Perinthus and Byzantium, in which he was engaged, had increased the feelings of alarm and anger at Athens, and a decree was passed, on the motion of Demosthenes, for succouring the endangered cities. Chares, to whom the armament was at first entrusted, effected nothing, or rather worse than nothing : but Phocion. who superseded him, compelled Philip to raise the siege of both the towns (B. C. 329). (With respect to Selymbria, see Newman, in the
Classical Museum, vol. i. pp. 153, 154.)
This gleam, however, of Athenian prosperity was destined to be as short as it was glorious. Philip, baffled in Thrace, carried his arms against Atheas, a Scythian prince, from whom he had received insult and injury.
The campaign was a successful one; but on his return from the Danube his march was opposed by the Triballi, and in a battle which he fought with them he received a severe wound.
This expedition he would seem to have undertaken partly in the hope of deluding the Greeks into the belief that Grecian politics occupied his attention less than heretofore; and meanwhile Aeschines and his party were blindly or treacherously promoting his designs against the liberties of their country. For the way in which they did so, and for the events which ensued down to the fatal battle of Chaeroneia, in B. C. 338, the reader is referred to the article DEMOSTHENES.
The effect of this last decisive victory was to lay Greece at the feet of Philip; and, if we may believe the several statements of Theopompus, Diodorus, and Plutarch, he gave vent to his exultation in a most unseemly manner, and celebrated his triumph with drunken orgies, reeling forth from the banquet to visit the field of battle, and singing derisively the commencement of the decrees of Demosthenes, falling as it does into a comic Iambic verse,--
Δημοσθένης Δημοσθένους Παιανιεὺς τάδ᾽ εἶπεν.
(Theopomp. apud
Ath. x. p. 435;
Diod. 16.87 ;
Plut. Dem. 20.) Yet he extended to the Athenians treatment far more favourable than they could have hoped to have received from him. Their citizens who had been taken prisoners were sent home without ransom, due funeral rites were paid to their dead, whose bones Philip commissioned Antipater to hear to Athens; their constitution was left untouched; and their territory was even increased by the restoration of Oropus, which was taken from the Thebans. On Thebes the conqueror's vengeance fell more heavily. Besides the loss of Oropus, he deprived her of her supremacy in Boeotia, placed her government in the hands of a faction devoted to his interests, and garrisoned the Cadmeia with Macedonian troops.
The weakness to which he thus reduced her made it safe for him to deal leniently with Athens, a course to which he would be inclined by his predilection for a city so rich in science and art and literature, no less than by the wish of increasing his popularity and his character for moderation throughout Greece. And now he seemed to have indeed within his reach the accomplishment of the great object of his ambition, the invasion and conquest of the Persian empire.
In a congress held at Corinth, which was attended, according to his invitation, by deputies from every Grecian state with the exception of Sparta, war with Persia was determined on, and the king of Macedonia was appointed to command the forces of the national confederacy.
He then advanced into the Peloponnesus, where he invaded and ravaged Laconia, and compelled the Lacedaemonians monians to surrender a portion of their territory to Argos, Tegea, Megalopolis, and Messenia; and having thus weakened and humbled Sparta and established his power through the whole of Greece, he returned home in the latter end of B. C. 338.
In the following year his marriage with Cleopatra, the daughter of Attalus, one of his generals [CLEOPATRA, No. 1], led to the most serious disturbances in his family. Olympias and
Alexander withdrew in great indignation from Macedonia, the young prince taking refuge in Illyria, which seems in consequence to have been involved in war with Philip, while Olympias fled to Epeirus and incited her brother
Alexander to take vengeance on her husband.
But this danger Philip averted by prorising his daughter Cleopatra in marriage to his brother-in-law [CLEOPATRA, No. 2], and Olympias son and her son returned home, still however masking resentment under a show of reconciliation.
The breach between Philip and
Alexander appears to have been further widened by the suspicion which the latter entertained that his father meant to exclude him from the succession.
This feeling was strengthened in
Alexander's mind by the proposed marriage of his half-brother Arrhidaeus with the daughter of Pixodarus, the Carian satrap, to whom accordingly he sent to negotiate for the hand of the lady for himself. Philip discovered the intrigue, and. being highly exasperated, punished those who had been the chief instruments of it with imprisonment and exile. Meanwhile, his preparations for his Asiatic expedition were not neglected, and early in B. C. 336 he sent forces into Asia, under Parmenion, Amyntas, and Attalus, to draw over the Greek cities to his cause.
But the great enterprise was reserved for a higher genius and a more vigorous hand.
In the summer of the last-mentioned year Philip held a grand festival at Aegae, to solemnise the nuptials of his daughter with Alexander of Epeirus.
It was attended by deputies from the chief states of Greece, bringing golden crowns as presents to the Macedonian king, while from the Athenians there came also a decree, declaring that any conspirator against Philip who might flee for refuge to Athens, should be delivered up.
The solemnities of the second day of the festival commenced with a splendid procession, in which an image of Philip was presumptuously borne along amongst those of the twelve Olympian gods.
He himself advanced in a white robe between his son and the bridegroom, having given orders to his guards to keep ata distance from him, as he had sufficient protection in the goodwill of the whole of Greece.
As he drew near to the theatre, a youth of noble blood, named Pausanias, rushed forward and plunged into his side with fatal effect a Celtic sword, which he had hidden under his dress.
The assassin was immediately pursued and slain by some of the royal guards. His motive for the deed is stated by Aristotle (
Aristot. Pol. 5.10, ed. Bekk.) to have been private resentment against Philip, to whom he had complained in vain of a gross outrage offered to him by Attalus. Olympias and
Alexander, however, were suspected of being implicated in the plot, and the suspicion seems only too well-grounded as far as Olympias is concerned.
The murder, it is said, had been preceded by omens and warnings. Philip had consulted the Delphic oracle about his projected expedition to Asia, and had received the ambiguous answer,--
ἔστεπται μὲν ὁ ταῦρος, ἔχει τέλος, ἔστιν ὁ θύσων.
Again, the oracle of Trophonius had desired him to beware of a chariot, in consequence of which he never entered one; but the sword with which Pausanias slew him had the figure of a chariot carved in ivory on its hilt. Lastly, at the banquet which closed the first day's festivities at Aegae, the tragedian Neoptolemus recited, at Philip's desire, a piece of lyrical poetry, which was intended to apply to the approaching downfal of the Persian king, and spoke of the vanity of human prosperity and of far-reaching hopes cut short by death. (
Diod. 16.91,
92;
Ael. VH 3.45; Cic.
de Fat. 3 ;
Paus. 8.7.)
Philip died in the forty-seventh year of his age and the twenty-fourth of his reign, leaving for his a great work indeed to do, but also a great help for its accomplishment in the condition of Greece and of Macedonia; Greece so far subject as to be incapable of impeding his enterprise,--Macedonia with an organized army and a military discipline unknown before, and with a body of nobles bound closely to the throne, chiefly through the plan introduced or extended by Philip, of gathering round the king the sons of the great families, and providing for their education at court, while he emplayed them in attendance on his person, like the pages in the feudal times. (
Ael. VH 14.49 ;
Arr. Anab. 4.13;
Curt. 8.6,
8;
V. Max. 3.3, ext. 1.)
Philip had a great number of wives and concubines. Besides Olympias and Cleopatra, we may mention, 1. his first wife Audata, an Illyrian princess, and the mother of Cynane; 2. Phila, sister of Derdas and Machatas, a princess of Elymiotis ; 3. Nicesipolis of Pherae, the mother of Thessalonica; 4. Philinna of Larissa, the mother of Arrhidaeus; 5. Meda, daughter of Cithelas, king of Thrace; 6. Arsinoe, the mother of Ptolemy I., king of Egypt, with whom she was pregnant when she married Lagus. To these numerous connections temperament as well as policy seems to have inlined him.
He was strongly addicted, indeed, to sensual enjoyment of every kind, with which (not unlike Louis XI. of France, in some of the lighter parts of his character) he combined a turn for humour, not always over nice, and a sort of easy, genial good-nature, which, as it costs nothing and calls for no sacrifice, is often found in connection with the propensity to self-indulgence. Yet his passions, however strong, were always kept in subsection to his interests and ambitious views, and, in the words of bishop Thirlwall, "it was something great, that one who enjoyed the pleasures of animal existence so keenly, should have encountered so much toil and danger for glory and empire" (
Greece, vol. vi. p. 86).
He was fond of science and literature, in the patronage of which he appears to have been liberal; and his appreciation of great minds is shown, if not by his presumed intimacy with Plato, at any rate by his undoubted connection with Aristotle. His own physical and mental qualifications for the station which he filled and the career of conquest which he followed, were of the highest order ;--a robust frame and a noble and commanding presence; "ready eloquence, to which art only applied the cultivation requisite to satisfy the fastidious demands of a rhetorical age; quickness of observation, acuteness of discernment, presence of mind, fertility of invention, and dexterity in the mnangaement of msen and things" (Thirlwall, vol. v. p. 169).
In the pursuit of his political objects he was, as we have seen, unscrupulous, and ever ready to resort to duplicity and corruption. Yet, when we consider the humanity and generous clemency which have gained for him from Cicero (
de Off. 1.26) the praise of having been "always great," and which he seems to have practised quite as much from choice as from policy, we may well admit that he does not appear to disadvantage, even morally speaking, by the side of his fellowconquerors of mankind. (Demosth.
Olynth., Phil., de Fals. Leg., de Cor., de Chers., de Pac.; Aesch.
de Fals. Leg., c. Ctes.; Isocr.
Phil., Ep. ad Phil.; Diod. xvi.; Just. vii.--ix.; Plut.
Demosth., Phoc., Alex., Reg. et Imp. Apoph.; Ath. xi. p. 476, xiii. p. 557, xiv. p. 614; Strab. vii. pp. 307, 320, 323, viii. pp. 361, 374, ix. p. 437;
Ael. VH 4.19,
6.1,
8.12,
15,
12.53,
54,
13.7,
11;
Gel. 9.3; Cic.
de Off. 2.14, 15,
Tusc. Quaest. 5.14,
ad Att. 1.16;
Plb. 2.48,
3.6,
5.10,
8.11-
13,
9.28, &100.17.14; Leland,
Life of Philip ; Winiewski,
Comm. Hist. et Chronol. in Dem. Orat. de Cor.; Drumann,
Gesch. des Verfalls der Griechischen Staaten ; Wachsmuth,
Hist. Ant. vol. ii. Eng. transl.; Weiske,
de Hyperb. Errorum in Hist. Phil. Genitrice ; Thirlwall's
History of Greece, vol. v. vi.)
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