whom nature had given them, set him upon the throne whom the present conjuncture of affairs required; persuaded that the laws of necessity are superior to all others. *Accordingly Philip, at 24 years of age, ascended the throne the first year of the 105th Olympiad. The new king, with great coolness and presence of mind, used all his endeavors to answer the expectations of the people accordingly he provides for and remedies every thing, revives the desponding courage of the Macedonians, and reinstates and disciplines the army. He was inflexibly rigid in the last point; well knowing that the success of all his enterprises depended on it. A soldier who was thirsty, went out of the ranks to drink, which Philip punished with great severity. Another soldier who ought to have stood to his arms, laid them down : him he immediately ordered to be put to death. It was at this time he established the Macedonian phalanx, which afterwards became so famous, and was the choicest and best disciplined body of an army the world had ever seen, and might dispute precedency in those respects with the Greeks of Marathon and Salamin. He drew up the plan, or at least improved it from the idea suggested by Homert. That poet describes the union of the Grecian commanders under the image of a battalion, the soldiers of which by the assemblage or conjunction of their shields, form a body impenetrable to the enemy's darts. I rather believe that Philip formed the idea of the phalanx from the lessons of Epaminondas, and the sacred battalion of the Thebans. He treated those chosen foot-soldiers with particular distinction, honoured them with the title of his comrades, or companions§; and by such marks of honour and confidence induced them to bear, without any murmuring, the hardest fatigues, and to confront the greatest dangers with intrepidity. Such familiarities as these cost a monarch little, and are of no common advantage to him. I shall insert, at the end of this section, a more particular description of the phalanx, and the use made of it in battles. I shall borrow from Polybius this description, the length of which would too much interrupt the series of our history; yet being placed separately, may probably please, especially by the judicious reflections of a man so well skilled in the art of war as that historian. One of the first things Philip took care of was the negociating a cautious peace with the Athenians, whose power he A. M. 3644. Ant. J. C. 360. Diod. I. xvi. p. 404–413: Alian. 1. xiv. c. 49. Thad. N. v. 130. 、 Pezoteiros signifies verbatim a foot-soldier, comrade, companion. dreaded, and whom he was not willing to make his enemics, in the beginning of a reign hitherto but ill established. He therefore sends ambassadors to Athens, spares neither promises, nor protestations of amity, and at last was so happy as to conclude a treaty, of which he knew how to make all the advantages he had proposed to himself. Immediately after this, he does not seem so much to act like a monarch of but 24 years of age, as like a politician profoundly versed in the art of dissimulation; and who, without the assistance of experience, was already sensible, that to know when to lose at a proper season is to gain. *He had seized upon Amphipolis, a city situated on the frontiers of his kingdom, which consequently stood very convenient for him. He could not keep it, as that would have weakened his army too much, not to mention that the Athenians, whose friendship it was his interest to preserve, would have been exasperated at his holding a place which they claimed as their colony. On the other side, he was determined not to give up to his enemies one of the keys to his dominions. He therefore took the resolution to declare that place free, by permitting the inhabitants to govern themselves as a republic, and in this manner to set them at variance with their ancient masters. At the same time he disarmed the Peonians by dint of promises and presents, resolving to attack them, after he had disunited his enemies, and weakened them by that disunion. This address and subtilty established him more firmly on the throne, and he soon found himself without competitors. Having barred the entrance of his kingdom to Pausanias, he marches against Argæus, comes up with him in the road from Æge to Methone, defeats him, kills a great number of his soldiers, and takes a multitude of prisoners; attacks the Peonians, and subjects them to his power: he afterwards turns his arms against the Illyrians, cuts them to pieces, and obliges them to restore to him all the places possessed by them in Macedonia. +Much about this time the Athenians acted with the greatest generosity in regard to the inhabitants of Euboea. That island, which is separated from Boeotia by the Euripus, was so called from its large and beautiful pasture lands, and is now called Negropont. It had been subject to the Athenians, who had settled colonies in Eretria and Chalcis, the two principal cities of it. Thucydides relates, that in the Polyæn. Stratag, 1, iv, c, 17. + A. M. 3646, Ant. J. C. 358. Vall. Paterc. 1. i, c. 4. Thucyd. 1, vili, p, 613. Demoft. pro Ctesiph, P, 489. Eschin, contra Ctesiph. P, 441. Peloponnesian war, the revolt of the Eubœans dismayed the Athenians very much, because they drew greater revenues from thence than from Attica, From that time Eubœa became a prey to factions; and at the time of which we are now speaking, one of these factions, implored the assistance of Thebes, and the other of Athens. At first the Thebans met with no obstacle, and easily made the faction they cspoused triumphant. However, at the arrival of the Athenians, matters took a very different turn. Though they were very much offended at the Euboeans, who had behaved very injuriously towards them, nevertheless, sensibly affected with the great danger to which they were exposed, and forgetting their private resentments, they immediately gave them such powerful succour both by sea and land, that in a few days they forced the Thebans to retire. And now being absolute masters of the island, they restored the inhabitants their cities and liberty, persuaded, says Aschines in relating this circumstance, that justice requires we should obliterate the remembrance of past injuries when the party offending repose their trust in the offended. The Athenians, after having restored Euboea to its former tranquility, retired, without desiring any other benefit for all their services than the glory of having appeased the troubles of that island. But they did not always behave in this manner with regard to other states; and it was this gave rise to "the "war of the allies," of which I have spoken elsewhere. Hitherto Philip, that is during the first years of his reign, had employed his endeavours to triumph over his competitors for the throne; to pacify domestic divisions, to repel the attacks of his foreign enemies, and to disable them by his frequent victories, from troubling him in the possession of his kingdom. But he is now going to appear in another character. Sparta and Athens, after having long disputed the empire of Greece, had weakened themselves by their reciprocal divisions. This circumstance had given Thebes an opportunity of regaining its former grandeur; but Thebes having weakened itself by the wars in which it had been engaged against Sparta and Athens, gave Philip an occasion of aspiring also in his turn to the sovereignty of Greece. And now, as a politician and a conqueror, he revolves how he may best extend his frontiers, reduce his neighbours, and weaken those whom he was not able to conquer at present: how he may introduce himself into the affairs of Greece, share in its intestine feuds, make himself its arbiter, join with one side to destroy the other; in a word, to obtain the empire over † A. M. 3646. *Ouk egoumenoi dikaion rinai ten orgen apomnenioneuin en to pisteuthenal all. In the execution of this great design, he spared neither artifices, open force, presents, nor promises. He employs for this purpose negociations, treaties, and alliances, and each of them, singly, in such a manner as he judges most conducive to the success of his design; advantage solely determining him in the choice of measures. We shall always see him acting under this second character, in all the steps he takes henceforth, till he assumes a third and last character; which is, preparing to attack the great king of Persia, and endeavouring to become the avenger of Greece, by subverting an empire which before had attempted to subject it, and which had always continued its irreconcileable enemy, either by open invasion or secret intrigue. We have seen that Philip, in the very beginning of his reign, had seized upon Amphipolis, because well situated for his views; but that to avoid restoring it to the Athenians, who claimed it as one of their colonies, he had declared it a free city. But at this time, being no longer under such great apprehensions from the Athenians, he resumed his former design of seizing Amphipolis. *The inhabitants of this city being threatened with a speedy siege, sent ambassadors to the Athenians, offering to put themselves and their city under the protection of Athens, and beseeching them to accept the keys of Amphipolis. But that republic rejected their offer, for fear of breaking the peace they had concluded the preceding year with Philip. However, this monarch was not so delicate in this point; for he besieged and took Amphipolis by means of the intelligence he carried on in the city, and made it one of the strongest barriers of his king, de. Demosthenes, in his orations, frequently reproaches the Athenians with their indolence on this occasion, by representing to them, that had they acted at this time with the expedition they ought, they would have saved a confederate city, and spared themselves a multitude of misfortunes. Philip had promised the Athenians to give up Amphipo. lis into their hands, and by this promise had made them supine and inactive; but he did not value himself upon keeping his word, and sincerity was in no manner the virtue he professed. So far from surrendering this city, he also possessed himself of Pydna and of Potidea. The Athenians Pydna, a city of Macedon, fituated on the gulph anciently called Sinus Thermaicus, and now Golfo di Salonchi. Potidæa, another city of Macedonia, on the borders of ancient Thrace. K was but 60 stadia, or three leagues from Olynthus. kept a garrison in the latter; these he dismissed without do ing them the least injury; and gave up this city to the Olynthians, to engage them in his interest. *From thence he proceeded to seize Crenides, which the Thasians had built two years before, and which he called Philippi from his own name. It was near this city, afterwards famous for the defeat of Brutus and Cassius, that he opened certain gold mines, which every year produced upwards of 1000 talents, that is, about, 144,000l. sterling; a prodigious sum of money in that age. By this means money became more current in Macedon than before; and Philip first caused the golden species to be coined there, which outlived † monarchy. Superiority of finances is of endless advantage to a state; and no prince understood them better than Philip, or neglected them less. By this fund he was enabled to maintain a powerful army of foreigners, and to bribe a number of creatures in most of the cities of Greece. وو $ Demosthenes says that when Greece was in its most flourishing condition "gold and silver were ranked in the "number of prohibited arms." But Philip thought, spoke and acted in a quite different manner. It is said that, consulting the oracle of Delphos, he received the following ans wer: Argureais laykaisi makou kai panta krateseis. The advice of the priestess became his rule, and he ap plied it with great success. He owned that he had carried more places by money than arms, that he never forced a gate till after having attempted to open it with a golden key; and that he did not think any fortress impregnable into which a Hic sunt numerati aurei trecenti nummi, qui vocantur Philippi. Plaut. in Poen. |