(MACEDONIA, if we count from Caranus, was the youngest son of Amyntas
II. and Eurydice, and was born in s. v.
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 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 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 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 (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; l.--a sum,
however, which doubtless falls far short of what they yielded annually on the whole. (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 (Philipp. iii. p. 117; Clint. F.
H. vol. ii. sub annis 353, 341.) In 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
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. (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 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.
Olynth. i. p. 13; comp. ad loc.). About the same time
also he showed at least one symptom of his designs 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" (
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 (
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 (in Plal. Ep. p. 153; Pseudo-Dem. de Hal. p. 84). It
appears to have been in de Cor. pp. 242, 324, dc Fals. Leg.
p. 435 ; 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 (Ep ad Ath. ap. Dem. p. 160; 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 (
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 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 τάδʼ
εἶπεν.
(Theopomp. apud Ath. x. p. 435;
In the following year his marriage with Cleopatra, 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
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.
(de Fat. 3 ;
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. (
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 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; de Off. 2.14, 15,
Tusc. Quaest. 5.14, ad Att. 1.16; 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.)