PHILIP’S INTRIGUES AND THE OUTBREAK OF WAR
[344-341 B.C.]
Philip employed the deceitful peace to form alliances for himself by means of bribery and intrigues in all the Hellenic states; and to acquire partisans and supporters and nourish the civil divisions. He took especial pains to make his own profit out of the internal dissensions in the Peloponnesian states and the irreconcilable hatred of Arcadians, Messenians, and Argeians against Sparta; to win a reputation for himself as the protector of the weal and thus gradually to bring the power of chief arbitrator into his own hands. The fact that these intrigues were not completely successful and that the Athenians, forewarned and filled with distrust, rendered the task of the Macedonian negotiators much more difficult, may be considered as an effect of the Second Philippic of Demosthenes. Philip’s ill will was consequently especially directed against the Athenians, in whom he recognised the sole opponents of his thirst for dominion, and he sought to damage them in every way without directly violating the peace.
He expelled the pirates from the Attic island of Halonesus and retained the isle as his own property, and when the Athenians complained, he offered it to them as his personal gift; with his newly created naval power he injured Athenian trade and also brought the dominion of the sea more and more into his own hands, and instead of his restoring Eubœa to the Athenians, as had once been hoped, he strengthened his own power by maintaining a secret understanding with his partisans to secure them the supremacy in Eretria and Oreus; in Thessaly he abolished the office of tagus, or chief of the confederation, and set over the four districts four tetrarchs on whom he could rely, a government which was calculated “to break all efforts at union and make the divided forces of the country completely subservient to his aims.”
Above all a great stir was created among the Athenians when Philip again turned his arms against the princes Cersobleptes and Teres, with whom they were on friendly terms. In this it was evidently his intention to secure himself a passage into Asia by the subjection of the Thracian coast lands and at the same time to cut the main arteries of Athenian maritime trade, namely the entrance to the Pontus. A royal document with some conciliatory proposals and the offer to lay the disputed points before an impartial tribunal, was designed to divert the attention of the Athenians from their possessions on the Chersonesus, but its suggestions and demands were opposed by Demosthenes or, as the newer criticism has convincingly shown, by Hegesippus, in the Speech On Halonesus. And in order to cover their Thracian possessions with the old and new cleruchs, the Athenians sent the general Diopeithes with a squadron and mercenary troops. By two successful campaigns Philip now overcame the Thracians in several encounters after a brave resistance and dethroned their princes; he took one town after another on the Middle Hebrus where his soldiers wintered in earth-holes (in “mud-pits”), and secured his new dominions by planting several colonies (Philippopolis, Berœa, Cabyle, etc.); meantime Diopeithes cruised in the Pontic waters, compelled the cities to purchase a safe voyage for their merchant vessels either by a tribute or, as the commander of the fleet expressed it, of good will, and undertook a military expedition in the Macedonian coasts along the Propontis.
When Philip lodged complaints at Athens at this breach of the peace, and threatened reprisals, the Macedonian party was of opinion that they ought to endeavour to conciliate the king by the recall and punishment of the general. Then Demosthenes demonstrated, in the sublime speech The Affairs of the Chersonesus, that the peace had actually been broken long ago by Philip himself, and that the Athenians, instead of punishing their bold leader, as the corrupt servants of the king and the cowardly advocates of peace demanded, ought to supply him with new troops and munitions of war before Philip could bring all his plans to maturity and fall upon Athens herself.