It was with the accession of Philip II in either 360 or 359 bc that ruler and resources became combined in a formidable expansionist force that was to transform the Greek world in less than fifty years. In the nineteenth century Philip was only known through Greek sources, above all the speeches of Demosthenes, and was often portrayed—by British liberals, for instance—as a tyrant who destroyed the liberty of Greece. The career of his son Alexander also tended to place Philip in the shadows. German historians, however, were more sympathetic to him, casting him in the role of a strong man bringing order to surrounding scattered and weak states, as Bismarck had done in Germany. In recent years Philip has been recognized as a major historical figure who laid the foundations without which his son would probably never have succeeded in his own right. (See Ian Worthington, Philip II of Macedonia, New Haven and London, 2008, as an excellent biography.)
Philip had the advantage of being the legitimate ruler within a long-established monarchy. This set him apart from the other Greek despots. He also had access, within Macedonia, to the resources to build up a mercenary army. One advantage of using mercenaries was that they could be forged into a fighting force with little reference to the conventions of the past. Here Philip proved a brilliant commander, able both to inspire and to innovate. The main weapon of his men, both infantry and cavalry, was the sarissa, a long pike. It enabled them to fight at long range and there was no way that hoplites could engage with it. Because the sarissa gave the infantry comparative invulnerability, it could dispense with the heavy and expensive armour that burdened the hoplite. Men could march fast and manoeuvre easily. Once infantry had made a gap in the hoplite ranks, cavalry was used to break through. The highly disciplined and flexible army that had emerged by 350 was to set the scene for thirty years of Macedonian conquest both by Philip and by his son Alexander. Philip also made important advances in siege warfare. It was he who was responsible for the development of the siege catapult, for instance.
The range and variety of Philip’s enemies were such that military prowess could never be enough. His first task when he succeeded to the throne was to define the borders of his state. This inevitably brought him into contact with a range of different peoples and cultures, including sophisticated Greeks and rough baron kings of the north. Philip’s methods were a clever mix of military might and diplomacy. He realized that land to the north and west of traditional Macedonia would be difficult to hold and he never extended boundaries there further than his predecessors had done. To maintain relationships with their rulers, he embarked on a series of marriages, one each with an Illyrian, Molossian (the formidable Olympias, mother of his son, Alexander), and Thracian, and two with Thessalians. In the east, however, he was more adventurous, adding the Stry-mon valley to his kingdom after taking the city of Amphipolis in 357. (Excavations of the city suggest a Macedonian elite moved in to preside over the Greek inhabitants.) This gave him access to the rich mines of southern Thrace. Their wealth, exploited now for the first time to the full, helped him to finance his mercenaries.
It can be argued, in fact, that the continual demand for the resources with which to sustain his armies underlay the policy of expansion that followed. Amphipolis had never been regained by the Athenians after its loss in the Peloponnesian War, but in 357 and 354 Philip added two Athenian cities, Pydna and Methone on the Thermaic Gulf, to his conquests. (At Methone he lost an eye when struck by an arrow.) The Athenians reacted by declaring war in 357, but Philip was only one of their adversaries at the time and they could do nothing to save their cities. He now controlled the coastlines either side of the Chalcidice peninsula. In 348 he was to move into the peninsula itself. The great city of Olynthos, the most important in the Greek north, was sacked in the same year. Athens promised it help but only a small force arrived. It was so successfully razed to the ground that it was never reoccupied, and provides the best examples of Greek house plans to have survived. Among the finds have been arrowheads evocatively bearing the name of Philip. There was now no possible source of Greek resistance to Philip in the north-eastern Aegean.
In these same years there had been Macedonian infiltration into Thessaly, her southern neighbour. By 352 Thessaly was under Philip’s control, and he had exploited alliances with Thessalian aristocrats to build up his cavalry and to become, in effect, Tagos. Luck as much as opportunism played a part in Philip’s next expansion south. The shrine of Delphi, oracle to the Greek world (see p. 242), was controlled by the Amphityonic League, an ancient association of central Greek peoples. In 356 a dispute broke out between the members and one of them, Phocis, seized control of the shrine itself. Thebes opposed her, as did the Thessalians. Philip was inexorably drawn into the conflict. He now chose to act diplomatically, using those opposed to Phocis to dislodge her from Delphi. In the settlement that followed he was admitted to membership of the Amphityonic League. At the next Pythian Games it was Philip who presided.
It was Athens that felt most uneasy about the peace that followed. She had faced the humiliation of the loss of her outposts in the northern Aegean, and the logic of Macedonian expansionism to the east suggested that the Hellespont, channel for her grain supplies, would be threatened next. From 352 one of the greatest orators the city ever produced, Demosthenes, was warning of the danger of Philip and the need to resist. Yet what could Athens do? The Second Athenian League had collapsed by 355 and the city’s finances were stretched. There was no way she could effectively fight in the north against such a formidable opponent as Philip. When the dispute over Delphi was ongoing, Athens had supported Phocis, largely to spite Thebes. In 346 she had to abandon Phocis, and when Philip offered the city an alliance she hesitatingly accepted it, though fully aware of how much she had compromised her position.
Philip may genuinely have wanted to maintain peace with Athens, not least to be able to use her fleet in one of his new plans, an invasion of Asia. In the city, however, there was increasing shame over what appeared to be capitulation to his growing power. It was exploited by Demosthenes (384-322 Bc). Demosthenes had learnt his trade the hard way. His father had died when he was 7 and the family resources had been frittered away by his unscrupulous guardians. He mastered rhetoric in order to retrieve what little remained and his early, faltering attempts show just how difficult it was to dominate an Athenian audience. However, he succeeded. His speeches urging resistance to the barbarian invader are among the finest pieces of Greek rhetoric to have survived. Yet they are rhetoric. Demosthenes was leader of a democratic faction and was carrying out his own political struggles within the city. He used all the tricks necessary to command the attention and support of a volatile Athenian assembly, and the events described in his speeches are now discounted as accurate accounts. However distorted, the speeches remain majestic defences of liberty and democracy against the forces of tyranny. (One can, perhaps, compare his use of rhetoric with that of Winston Churchill.)
It is hard to apportion blame for the showdown between Philip and the Greeks that followed. Philip was steadily moving towards Athens’s interests in the Hellespont, tightening his grip on Thrace, for instance. So Demosthenes had some excuse for continuing to make the issue of a Macedonian threat to Athens the central one of his oratory. However, Demosthenes’ determination to prove that Philip was an aggressor and had betrayed the alliance was equally provocative, and Philip may have lost any faith he had that peace with Athens was possible. By 340 Philip was indeed threatening Byzantium, the key port on the Hellespont, and this was enough for Demosthenes to persuade Athens to declare war in the same year. The seizure of an Athenian grain fleet by Philip soon followed. Then Philip moved into Greece itself. Athenian hoplites with Theban support faced the new-style Macedonian army at the Battle of Chaeroneia in Boeotia. The outcome was to reshape the future of the Greek world.
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