† A. G. Becker, Demosthenes as a Statesman and an Orator. An historico-critical introduction to his works: 1815. A very useful work, both as a history and as an introduction to the political orations of Demosthenes.
is thwarted by Phocion;
14. New conquests of Philip in Illyria and Thrace. The Adriatic sea and the Danube appear to have been the boundaries of his empire on this side. But the views of the Macedonian king were directed less against the Thracians, than against the Grecian settlements on the Hellespont; and the attack of the Athenian Diopithes furnished him a pretext for making war against them. The siege, however, of Perinthus and Byzantium, was frustrated by Phocion, to the great vexation of Philip; an event which aroused the Athenians, and even the Persians, from their lethargy.
but obtains the command in the second sacred war;
15. Policy of Philip after this check.—At the very time that, engaged in a war against the barbarians on the Danube, he appears to have wholly lost sight of the affairs of Greece, his agents redouble their activity. Æschines, richly paid for his services, proposes in the Amphictyonic council, that, to punish the sacrilegious insults of the Locrians to the Delphian oracle, he should be elected leader of the Greeks in this new sacred war. Following his usual maxim, Philip suffers himself to be entreated.
and falls upon Greece.
16. Second expedition of Philip into Greece. His appropriation of the important frontier town of Elatea soon showed that, for this time at least, he was not contending merely for the honour of Apollo.—Alliance between Athens and Thebes brought about by Demosthenes.—But the defeat of Chæronea in the same year decided the dependence of Greece. Philip now found it easy to play the magnanimous character towards Athens.
Philip's designs against Persia.
17. Preparations for the execution of his plan against Persia, not as his own undertaking, but as a national war of the Hellenes against the barbarians. Thus, while Philip, by obtaining from the Amphictyons the appointment of generalissimo of Greece against the Persians, secured in an honourable manner the dependence of the country, the splendour of the expedition flattered the nation at whose expense it was to be conducted. It is a question, indeed, whether Philip's own private views extended much further!
Internal state of Macedonia under Philip.