But the advance made by Archelaus, who died 399 b,c., was almost all lost before Philip II. came to the throne, and the kingdom was reduced to a narrow district round Edessa, shut out from the sea by Greek cities. Olynthus, the chief of these cities, had in the reign of Philip’s father, Amyntas II., induced many places to make themselves independent of the king, but the jealousy of Sparta proved fatal to the Olynthian confederacy, and destroyed what would have been a bulwark against the barbarians of the north (379).
Philip himself had the best of all trainings, that of adversity. During the reign of his eldest brother Alexander II., Pelopidas took hostages for the fidelity of Macedonia, and among them was Philip, then about fifteen years old. He remained two or three years at Thebes, profiting by literary training, and above all by the living example of Epaminondas, the ablest organizer and most scientific tactician of the age, who had trained the soldiers that broke through the Spartan line at Leuctra. When Philip returned home, his brother Perdiccas III. entrusted him with the government of a district, where he organized a force on the Theban model. On the death of Perdiccas, though he left an infant son Amyntas, Philip was called to the throne (359), for the reign of a child in an early state of society means anarchy. Philip’s energy soon made itself felt. He fortified a new capital, Pella, safe amidst its lake-like marshes, from which he could act against the coast. Greece was at the moment completely disorganized. Sparta had lost, not only her supremacy over the other Greek states, but the control over Messenia and Arcadia, which leant on Thebes for defence against her revenge. Thebes had incurred odium from her conduct towards the free cities of Boeotia, was at feud with Athens, and had but a precarious hold over Phocis and Thessaly; while Thessaly itself, after the fall of the tyrants of Pherae, was a prey to internal feuds. Athens was the first to come into collision with Philip, owing to her holding possessions on the coast of Macedonia and Thrace, whence she procured ship timber and naval stores. Philip had conciliated her for the time by withdrawing his troops from Amphipolis, her old colony in the bend of the river Strymon, while he was driving off the Illyrians and reducing the tribes to the west as far as the Lake Lychnitis. But Athens was at this moment threatened by the revolt of her allies which led to the Social War, and so lost the chance of reoccupying Amphipolis while Philip was busied in the interior. The moment his hands were free, he retook the place, which was all-important to him, as it was not only the most convenient maritime station in Thrace, but also threw open to him all the country east of the Strymon, and especially the gold region near Mount Pangaeus, the productive country facing the island of Thasos; and to secure his conquests he founded a new city in the interior called Philippi. His gold coins, struck on the Attic standard, soon became well known, and even the early gold coins of distant Britain copied the types of the Macedonian money. He also took Pydna and Potidaea, thus depriving Athens of her hold on the Thermaic Gulf, while the occupation of Methone opened the way into Thessaly. Moreover, the Social War had not yet ended when the disastrous Sacred War began, which added religious to political enmity, and benefited only the aggressor from the north. The Amphictyonie League was called into activity to crush the Phocians, w ho in their despair seized Delphi, and by the use of its treasures collected troops enough to hold Thebes in check for some years. It was the misfortune of Greece that there had arisen mercenary bands, like the condottieri of mediaeval Italy, who hired themselves out to any one that would employ them. The citizens became more averse to service as civilization increased, and the work of war was now done by alien hands. Only a standing army could face the standing army of Macedonia, but the industrious and refined citizens naturally disliked continuous service, and it was long before even Demosthenes could arouse Athens to the necessity of the struggle. He was opposed by the old statesmen, by honest men such as Phocion (whose peace policy, however expedient after Chaeronea, was impolitic during most of Philip’s reign), and by others whom Philip had bribed—for he loved to “plough with a silver ploughshare.” The Sacred War gave Philip a pretence for interfering on behalf of the Delphic god. He drove the Phocian mercenaries from Thessaly, incorporated the excellent Thessalian cavalry in his army, and gained a good naval position on the Gulf of Pagasae (Volo), the great inlet and outlet for the trade of the country. This also opened the way to Euboea, for the possession of which, however, Athens struggled hard. It was on the Gulf of Pagasae that Demetrias was afterwards founded, which, with Chalcis and Corinth, became the “fetters of Greece.” Philip also laid a strong hand on Epirus, occupied Acarnania, won over the Aetolians by the gift of Naupactus, and thus hemmed in Athens on the land side. It is true that, when he marched on Thermopylae, b.c. 352, a sudden effort of the Athenians enabled them to reach the pass in time to arrest his progress, and save the Phocians for a while; but Philip had now a large seaboard, and he proceeded to increase his fleet, to extend his dominion in Thrace on both sides of the Hebrus, and secure it by the foundation of Philippopolis, Calybe, Beroea, and Alexandropolis, while the Greek colonies along the Euxine up to Odessus sought his alliance. There was worse to come, for Philip by the year 347 had destroyed Olynthus and thirty-one other free cities in Chalcidice, and sold their inhabitants as slaves, a calamity such as had not happened since the invasion of Xerxes. This struck terror into all the south country, and we find Isocrates, once the champion of Panhellenic freedom, proclaiming Philip the arbiter of Greece, and advising him to use his power for the purpose of conquering Persia. He found himself bitterly deceived, and “that dishonest victory at Chaeronea, fatal to liberty, killed with report that old man eloquent.” The Thebans were still unwilling to combine with Athens, and even called in Philip to end the Sacred War. This gave him the command of Thermopylae, and the means of marching into Boeotia and Attica, while the destruction of the Phocians spread the terror still more widely. Philip now became the recognized religious leader of the Amphictyonie League, and began to interfere authoritatively in the Peloponnese. He was also preparing to master the Bosphorus and the Hellespont, the outlets from the Euxine into the Aegean, through which the main supplies of corn came from the country north of the Euxine to Athens, which therefore laid great stress on the possession of the Chersonese. Once again Athens gained a success when she sent Phocion to relieve Byzantium from his attack (339). The Greek cities began again to lean on her, and her trade increased owing to the destruction of Olynthus by Philip, and of Sidon by the Persian king Ochus. The Greeks too began to see that Philip’s allies were being swallowed up one by one. Philip himself, when returning through the passes of Haemus from an attack on the Scythian king, who ruled between the mountains and the Danube, suffered heavily from a surprise by the Triballi. But a second Sacred War against the Locrians of Amphissa, caused by Aeschines’s troublesome activity, again brought Philip into the heart of Greece. He fortified Elatea in Phocis, and demanded a passage through Boeotia to attack Athens. On this Demosthenes won his greatest triumph, when he induced Thebes to join in the struggle for freedom and independence; and, though the patriots were defeated at Chaeronea, 338 B.C., yet their blood was not shed in vain; their example has told on all future time. Philip used his victory moderately, for he wished to leave Greece quiet behind him when he crossed into Asia to assail the great king. He garrisoned the citadel of Thebes, and demanded from Athens an acknowledgment of his leadership in the national war against Darius; and a congress at Corinth recognized him as its chief, and arranged what contingents were to be sent from each state. His assassination in 336, at the early age of forty-seven, hardly delayed the execution of the plan, for he was succeeded by Alexander, who combined the qualities cf a king of the heroic ages with all that Greek training could give. Though the Macedonians had a dialect of their own, yet they had neither language for communicating with others nor any literature except what they derived from Greeks, and Philip had taken care to give his son even a better training than he had received himself. Alexander was also as prompt and cruel as his father. He at once rid himself of his cousin and brother-in-law Amyntas and other kinsmen and possible competitors for the throne, or persons otherwise dangerous. Then he dealt some heavy blows against the barbarians east, north, and west, some of whose chiefs he took for further security with him into Asia. He was just south of Lake Lychnitis, on the western side of the range of Scardus or Pindus, when the news reached him that the exiles had roused Thebes to arms, and were besieging his garrison in the Cadmeia or citadel. Striking through a cleft in the main range of mountains, through which the Devol flows, and marching south along the Haliacmon and over the Cambunian ridge, which joins Pindus to Olympus, he reached Boeotia in less than a fortnight, stormed Thebes, sold the citizens as slaves, and destroyed the place. The citadel alone remained as a Macedonian fortress, until Cassander rebuilt the city. Amidst the general terror, Alexander thought it wisest to follow his father’s policy here also, and be content with his election as captaingeneral by the congress of Corinth.
He left Antipater as regent, and at once crossed the Hellespont to Sestus in the spring of 334, before the Persian fleet was ready to intercept him, or the main Persian army had been embodied. What information had he as to the regions beyond the Taurus and beyond the Tigris, and still more as to the great table-land of Asia extending from Persia to the Indus? He had the Anabasis of Xenophon, and perhaps the Persian history of Ctesias, but he must have relied mainly on information derived from Greeks who had been in the Persian service, or who had traded in the interior. But he knew one thing for certain, that no force in Asia could resist Philip’s veteran army. Philip had formed the local battalions of militia into the phalanx, arrayed sixteen deep, and armed with Jong two-handed pikes (sarissae); and this steady body of pikemen, with the veterans in the front ranks, had borne down on the open plain of Chaeronea the resistance of the Greek hoplites, who were only armed with a much shorter spear. The phalanx was supported on the flanks by the light infantry of the guard (fypaspists ∖ by targeteers (jpeltasts) trained after the plan of Iphicrates, by light lancers, and by a strong body of heavy cavalry, headed by the king’s companions, and fighting with the short thrusting pike. It was the charge of the cavalry led by Alexander in person, at the head of the “agema” or royal squadron, that decided all his battles. It seems strange, however, to us to hear that the men had neither saddles nor stirrups, nor were the horses shod. The fine native army was largely reinforced by barbarian archers, darters, and slingers, and by regiments of Greek mercenaries; and this systematic combination of different arms and kinds of troops was supported by field and siege artillery of an improved type. Later on, when the main Persian army was broken up, Alexander added to the number of light troops, and made the regiments smaller and more flexible. Philip had moulded his country into a military monarchy, and turned the nobles into a caste of officers. All its strength was devoted to the one object of war, and it became for the time an overmateh for all its neighbours. On the other hand, Persia had deprived the subject peoples of national life and spirit; the retreat of the Ten Thousand had shown how useless her native levies were, and now her defence rested almost entirely on a force of Greek troops under the able Rhodian general Memnon. The Orientals fought mainly with missiles, and were little suited for close combat hand to hand. The Persian satraps, however, had around them some choice horsemen, armed with missile javelins and with scimitars; and they insisted, against Memnon’s advice, on fighting at the Granicus, which flows northward from Ida into the Propontis, but is everywhere fordable. A sharp cavalry action at the passage of the river (334 b.c.) gave Alexander all Asia Minor, and the completeness of his victory might seem to justify Livy’s saying that he “did but dare to despise an empty show,” and the words attributed to his uncle, Alexander of Epirus, that he himself had found the men’s chamber in Italy while his nephew had found the women’s in Asia. The Greeks had: long been conscious of their superiority. ·“They might,’* said Aristotle, “govern the world, could they but combina in one political society.” Agesilaus of Sparta and Jason of Pherae had already planned the attack on Persia, and the liberation of the Asiatic Greeks; and Alexander acted in the full consciousness that he was extending Greék rule and civilization over the East. At the news of the battle on the Granicus, Sardis surrendered. It was the centre to which all the routes converged, but Alexander did not (like Cyrus the younger) at once push on into the heart of the empire along the great road that led from Sardis to Susa.. His object was to secure a firm base of operations, by occupying the line of coast round the Aegean, and forcing the Phoenician fleet in the Persian service to retire. The Greek colonization of Asia Minor had prepared the way for him; the Greek cities along the western and southern coast threw open their gates, and Alexander restored their popular constitutions. He even recognized the Lycian confederation. Memnon was only able to organize a resistance at Miletus and Halicarnassus. But his real plan was to put troops on board his ships and raise Greece against the Macedonian yoke, especially as the Athenian fleet was-still more than a match for that of Alexander. But when, Memnon died there was no one left to carry out this able plan, and Darius threw away his best chance by recalling, the troops. Then Alexander marched up northwards from Lycia through Pisidia and Phrygia to Gordion on the Sangarius, whence the main road led east across the Halys and through Cappadocia to Cilicia, between the passes of Mount Taurus and those of Mount Amanus. Here Darius tried to throw his army across the Greek line of communication with their supplies, but his host, crowded together in the narrow ground on the river Pinarus near Issus, was hopelessly defeated. The modern name of the Gulf of Issus, “Iskenderun,” still preserves the memory of Alexander. Then Parmenio, Alexander’s second in command, pushed on and took Darius’s treasures and stores at Damascus. Again, however, Alexander deferred his march inland till he had mastered Phoenicia and Egypt, and so gained the command of the sea in the eastern basin of the Mediterranean. Only the brave freemen of two fortified cities, Tyre and Gaza, held out; and when the Phoenician and Cyprian fleet transferred its allegiance to the invader their only effective weapon was wrested from the hands of the Persians. The occupation of Cyprus and Egypt had been one of the boldest conceptions of the age of Pericles and Cimon, and its success would have secured the supremacy of Greek commerce. As the Persians had persecuted the Egyptians for their worship of animals, Egypt welcomed the deliverer, and recognized him as the son of Ammon; while the Greek colonies of Cyrene and its Pentapolis sent to tender submission. Alexandria was founded on the seaboard as a new centre of commerce,, from which it was easy to communicate with the Government and with all parts of the empire. The protecting island of Pharos gave the means of forming two good harbours on a. coast elsewhere harbourless; while Lake Mareotis, communicating by canals with the Nile, enabled produce to be easily brought down from the interior.
At last the time was come for delivering the final blow to Persia. Alexander passed the Euphrates at Thapsacus (“the passage ”), and then marched north-east through the hilly country by Nisibis, to avoid the hot desert of Mesopotamia. He crossed the Tigris unopposed, and defeated Darius’s hosts at Gaugamela. The long struggle of two hundred years between Greece and Persia was at an end. The victory converted Alexander into the great king, and Darius into a fugitive pretender; and Babylon and Susa submitted. At Babylon Alexander sacrificed to the native gods, as he had done elsewhere, and this admixture of the religions of all countries largely influenced the later phases of heathenism. The priests recognized the Greek kings, and the later cuneiform inscriptions commemorate Seleucus and Antiochus. When Euemerus’s view spread, that the gods were only deified men, a fusion of religions became still easier. The worship of the Sungod and of Osiris, the god of the dead (especially under his Grecized form at Sinope as Serapis), extended far and wide. In administering these countries, Alexander separated the civil, military, and financial functions, and, where natives were left in office, entrusted taxation and military command to. Macedonians. The great power of the satraps had weakened the central government of Persia, and Alexander adopted a wiser plan, but his generals restored the old system after his death. The Persian treasures, dispersed by the conquest, gave a fresh stimulus to commerce, especially as Persia was rich in gold, which was scarce...
