Philip attacked the Greek city of Perinthus in 340. Perinthus was helped by Byzantium and other Greek communities, including Athens, and even by the Persian satraps (which represents the first collision between the two great powers, Macedon and Persia). Despite all Philip’s efforts (and artillery), Perinthus held out. In 340 an exasperated Philip declared war on Athens. He also switched his siege engines from Perinthus against Byzantium, but he made no easy headway there either. It is possible that the reason for Philip’s abandonment of at least the second of these sieges was not military (siege engines were now virtually irresistible when applied to their target over time) but political. Philip’s gaze was now fixed on Athens, the greater enemy and the greater prize.
The pretext for Philip’s final involvement in Greece was triviaclass="underline" still another (Fourth) Sacred War, declared this time against the petty city of Amphissa. Philip, its designated leader from the first, entered Greece toward the end of 339. This perilous occasion prompted Demosthenes’ famous rallying call to Athens, reported by its author nearly a decade later in the speech “On the Crown.” He urged sending an embassy to Thebes at this moment of danger for Greece as well as for Athens. Thebes responded magnificently, and the joint Greek army took up position at Chaeronea in Boeotia. The battle, fought in August 338, settled the political future of Greece until the second-century Roman conquest. No accurate account survives of the course of the battle, but it ended in a total victory for Philip. Tradition insists (probably rightly) on the valuable contribution of Alexander on the Macedonian left and suggests (perhaps wrongly) that Philip executed a feigned retreat. The Theban Sacred Band had simply ceased to exist. Athens was treated mildly, its prisoners being allowed to return home without ransom.
Philip’s political settlement is illustrated by a speech wrongly attributed to Demosthenes and by an inscription much restored with the help of the speech. The settlement was a masterly construction, the League of Corinth (337). Philip had perhaps waited a little while for the inevitable pro-Macedonian reaction to set in inside the leading Greek cities. Only in Sparta, arrogant but powerless, was there no willingness to adjust. Philip invaded Laconia but did not interfere further than that. Thebes had to receive a garrison. Philip’s overall goal was general acquiescence and cooperation in the war against Persia, which was now a certainty. In fact, he wanted an alliance, and without doubt the arrangements of 337 secured one. To this end most of the great federations of Greece were left intact; only Athens’s naval confederacy was dissolved (though its cleruchy on Samos was retained) and, less certainly, the Aetolian League suppressed in a punitive measure.
Like the King’s Peace and the Second Athenian Confederacy, the new league guaranteed freedom and autonomy. Unlike the Athenian organization, however, the new league put the emphasis on property rights. There were specific bans on “confiscation of property, redistribution of land, cancellation of debts, or freeing of slaves with revolutionary intent.”
The real novelty of the league was the fact that it had a king at its head and garrisons at crucial places, such as Chalcis and Corinth, to maintain the peace. The military requirements made of each state were set out in detail. Philip may have borrowed some of the features of the new arrangement, such as his politic use of titles, from precedents other than the Second Athenian Confederacy. Thus, he may have absorbed a lesson about the politic use of titles in his mother’s kingdom of Epirus; although it had been ruled by kings, the officials in the confederacy over which they presided were given Greek-sounding titles such as secretary. Other examples may have been provided by Dionysius I of Syracuse and Leucon of Bosporus, who took different titles for use in different contexts (indeed, this may have suggested to Philip the expedient of avoiding royal titles when dealing with the Greeks: for them he would be general with full powers).
In fact, the 4th century saw a thorough mixing of political categories, of which Philip’s new league was a sophisticated example. A cruder example is present in a curious decree from Labranda, which begins with the words “It seemed good to Mausolus and Artemisia” (his sister and also his wife). Here, one finds combined a regular formula for a Greek city-state with a highly irregular decision-making body—namely, a Persian satrap and his incestuous wife.
Mixing of political categories, however, was unwelcome at home in Macedon. Perhaps some Macedonian soldiers, who might have preferred Athenian loot to an Athenian alliance, were puzzled about Philip’s motives. Thus, it may have been for the benefit of such doubters that, after planning his Asiatic war and sending an advance force under Attalus and Parmenio, Philip had himself depicted in a domestic Macedonian context (he would surely not have risked such a thing in Greece) as a “13th Olympian god.” (Inscriptional evidence indicates that Philip may have received cult at Philippi, but cult for such founders was well established.) Further speculation about Philip’s motive for this action, which is as remarkable in its way as anything he ever did, is unprofitable. For it was at this moment (336) that he was struck down by an assassin, whose own motives have never been ascertained. Alexander the Great
Unless Alexander was himself ultimately responsible for his father’s assassination (an implausible view, but one already canvassed in antiquity), he cannot have foreseen the moment of his own succession to a father who, though grizzled, was in the prime of life. His reaction to the turn of events was remarkably swift and cool. Two highly placed suspects were killed immediately. Not many actual rivals had to be eliminated, however, because Alexander’s succession was not in serious doubt. A son of Philip’s brother Perdiccas, Amyntas, was still alive, but there was no reason for Alexander to see him as a threat; in any case, he was probably dead by 335.
Alexander the GreatAlexander the Great, marble bust, 2nd–1st century bce; in the British Museum, London.© Tony Baggett/Fotolia
Alexander and the Greeks
Alexander began his career of conquest in 335. He started with lightning campaigns against the Triballi and Illyrians, which took him across the Danube. Thebes was next: the Thebans had risen in the optimistic belief that Alexander had died in Illyria. He reached Thessaly in seven days and was in Boeotia five days later. Then followed the destruction of Thebes. The blame for this act is differently distributed in the two main literary traditions about Alexander, that of Arrian and that of the vulgate. Arrian, a Greek historian and philosopher of the 2nd century ce, relied on the works of two writers nearly contemporary with Alexander, Ptolemy (subsequently king of Egypt) and the historian Aristobulus. Arrian’s tradition, which is regarded as the more “official” of the two, shifts the blame away from the Macedonians. The tradition of the vulgate, which is often fuller than that of Arrian, can be used to supplement or correct his. Although the vulgate tends toward the sensational, the greater reliability of Arrian can never be lightly assumed. For instance, on the Theban question, the vulgate more credibly puts the responsibility firmly on the Macedonians.
Alexander the GreatAlexander the Great as Zeus Ammon on a silver tetradrachm of Lysimachus, 297–281 bce, thought to be a copy of a portrait by Lysippus; in the British Museum. Diameter 30 mm.Reproduced with permission of the trustees of the British Museum; photograph, Ray Gardner for The Hamlyn Publishing Group Limited