The battle of Leuktra (July 371 B.C.) tended to knit more closely the connection between Amyntas and the Athenians, who were now the auxiliaries most likely to sustain him against the ascendency of Jason. It produced at the same time the more important effect of stimulating the ambition of Athens in every direction. Not only her ancient rival, Sparta, beaten in the field and driven from one humiliation to another, was disabled from opposing her, and even compelled to solicit her aid,—but new rivals, the Thebans, were suddenly lifted into an ascendency inspiring her with mingled jealousy and apprehension. Hence fresh hopes as well as fresh jealousies conspired to push Athens in a career of aspiration such as had never appeared open to her since the disasters of 404 B.C. Such enlargement of her views was manifested conspicuously by the step taken two or three months after the battle of Leuktra (mentioned in my preceding chapter),—of causing the peace, which had already been sworn at Sparta in the preceding month of June, to be resworn under the presidency and guarantee of Athens, by cities binding themselves mutually to each other as defensive allies of Athens;[526] thus silently disenthroning Sparta and taking her place.
On land, however, Athens had never held, and could hardly expect to hold, anything above the second rank, serving as a bulwark against Theban aggrandizement. At sea she already occupied the first place, at the head of an extensive confederacy; and it was to farther maritime aggrandizement that her present chances, as well as her past traditions, pointed. Such is the new path upon which we now find her entering. At the first formation of her new confederacy, in 378 B.C., she had distinctly renounced all idea of resuming the large amount of possessions, public and private, which had been snatched from her along with her empire at the close of the Peloponnesian war; and had formally proclaimed that no Athenian citizen should for the future possess or cultivate land out of Attica—a guarantee against renovation of the previous kleruchies or out-possessions. This prudent self-restraint, which had contributed so much during the last seven years to raise her again into naval preëminence, is now gradually thrown aside, under the tempting circumstances of the moment. Henceforward, the Athenian maritime force becomes employed for the recovery of lost possessions as well as for protection or enlargement of the confederacy. The prohibition against kleruchies out of Attica will soon appear to be forgotten. Offence is given to the prominent members of the maritime confederacy; so that the force of Athens, misemployed and broken into fragments, is found twelve or thirteen years afterwards unable to repel a new aggressor, who starts up, alike able and unexpected, in the Macedonian prince Philip, son of Amyntas.
Very different was the position of Amyntas himself towards Athens, in 371 B.C. He was an unpretending ally, looking for help in case of need against Jason, and sending his envoy to the meeting at Athens about September or October 371 B.C., when the general peace was resworn under Athenian auspices. It was at this meeting that Athens seems to have first put forth her new maritime pretensions. While guaranteeing to every Grecian city, great and small, the enjoyment of autonomy, she made exception of some cities which she claimed as belonging to herself. Among these was certainly Amphipolis; probably also the towns in the Thracian Chersonesus and Potidæa; all which we find, a few years afterwards, occupied by Athenians.[527] How much of their lost possessions the Athenians thought it prudent now to reclaim, we cannot distinctly make out. But we know that their aspirations grasped much more than Amphipolis;[528] and the moment was probably thought propitious for making other demands besides. Amyntas through his envoy, together with the rest of the assembled envoys, recognized without opposition the right of the Athenians to Amphipolis.[529]
Such recognition was not indeed in itself either any loss to Amyntas, or any gain to Athens; for Amphipolis, though bordering on his kingdom, had never belonged to him, nor had he any power of transferring it. Originally an Athenian colony,[530] next taken from Athens in 424-423 B.C. by Brasidas, through the improvidence of the Athenian officers Euklês and Thucydides, then recolonized under Lacedæmonian auspices,—it had ever since remained an independent city; though Sparta had covenanted to restore it by the peace of Nikias (421 B.C.), but had never performed her covenant. Its unparalleled situation, near to both the bridge and mouth of the Strymon, in the midst of a fertile territory, within reach of the mining district of Pangæus,—rendered it a tempting prize; and the right of Athens to it was indisputable; so far as original colonization before the capture by Brasidas, and formal treaty of cession by Sparta after the capture, could confer a right. But this treaty, not fulfilled at the time, was now fifty years old. The repugnance of the Amphipolitan population, which had originally prevented its fulfilment, was strengthened by all the sanction of a long prescription; while the tomb and chapel of Brasidas their second founder, consecrated in the agora, served as an imperishable admonition to repel all pretensions on the part of Athens. Such pretensions, whatever might be the right, were deplorably impolitic unless Athens was prepared to back them by strenuous efforts of men and money; from which we shall find her shrinking now as she had done (under the unwise advice of Nikias) in 421 B.C., and the years immediately succeeding. In fact, the large renovated pretensions of Athens both to Amphipolis and to other places on the Macedonian and Chalkidic coast, combined with her languor and inertness in military action,—will be found henceforward among the greatest mischiefs to the general cause of Hellenic independence, and among the most effective helps to the well-conducted aggressions of Philip of Macedon.
Though the claim of Athens to the recovery of a portion of her lost transmarine possessions was thus advanced and recognized in the congress of autumn 371 B.C., she does not seem to have been able to take any immediate steps for prosecuting it. Six months afterwards, the state of northern Greece was again completely altered by the death, nearly at the same time, of Jason in Thessaly, and of Amyntas in Macedonia.[531] The former was cut off (as has been mentioned in the preceding chapter) by assassination, while in the plenitude of his vigor; and his great power could not be held together by an inferior hand. His two brothers, Polyphron and Polydorus, succeeded him in the post of tagus of Thessaly. Polyphron, having put to death his brother, enjoyed the dignity for a short time; after which he too was slain by a third brother, Alexander of Pheræ; but not before he had committed gross enormities by killing and banishing many of the most eminent citizens of Larissa and Pharsalus; among them the estimable Polydamas.[532] The Larissæan exiles, many belonging to the great family of the Aleuadæ, took refuge in Macedonia, where Amyntas (having died in 370 B.C.) had been succeeded in the throne by his youthful son Alexander. The latter, being persuaded to invade Thessaly for the purpose of restoring them, succeeded in getting possession of Larissa and Krannon; both which cities he kept under his own garrisons, in spite of unavailing resistance from Polyphron and Alexander of Pheræ.[533]
This Alexander, who succeeded to Jason’s despotism in Pheræ, and to a considerable portion of his military power, was nevertheless unable to keep together the whole of it, or to retain Thessaly and its circumjacent tributaries in one united dominion. The Thessalian cities hostile to him invited assistance, not merely from Alexander of Macedon, but also from the Thebans; who despatched Pelopidas into the country, seemingly in 369 B.C., soon after the return of the army under Epaminondas from its victorious progress in Laconia and Arcadia. Pelopidas entered Thessaly at the head of an army, and took Larissa with various other cities into Theban protection; apparently under the acquiescence of Alexander of Macedon, with whom he contracted an alliance.[534] A large portion of Thessaly thus came under the protection of Thebes in hostility to the dynasty of Pheræ, and to the brutal tyrant Alexander who now ruled in that city.
Alexander of Macedon found that he had difficulty enough in maintaining his own dominion at home, without holding Thessalian towns in garrison. He was harassed by intestine dissensions, and after a reign of scarcely two years, was assassinated (368 B.C.) by some conspirators of Alôrus and Pydna, two cities (half Macedonian, half Hellenic) near the western coast of the Thermaic Gulf. Ptolemæus (or Ptolemy) of Alôrus is mentioned as leader of the enterprise, and Apollophanês of Pydna as one of the agents.[535] But besides these conspirators, there was also another enemy, Pausanias,—a man of the royal lineage and a pretender to the throne;[536] who, having been hitherto in banishment, was now returning at the head of a considerable body of Greeks, supported by numerous partisans in Macedonia,—and was already master of Anthemus, Thermê, Strepsa, and other places in or near the Thermaic Gulf. He was making war both against Ptolemy and against the remaining family of Amyntas. Eurydikê, the widow of that prince, was now left with her two younger children, Perdikkas, a young man, and Philip, yet a youth. She was in the same interest with Ptolemy, the successful conspirator against her son Alexander, and there was even a tale which represented her as his accomplice in the deed. Ptolemy was regent, administering her affairs and those of her minor children, against Pausanias.[537]
Deserted by many of their most powerful friends, Eurydikê and Ptolemy would have been forced to yield the country to Pausanias, had they not found by accident a foreign auxiliary near at hand. The Athenian admiral Iphikrates, with a squadron of moderate force, was then on the coast of Macedonia. He had been sent thither by his countrymen (369 B.C.) (soon after his partial conflict near Corinth with the retreating army of Epaminondas, on its way from Peloponnesus to Bœotia), for the purpose of generally surveying the maritime region of Macedonia and Thrace, opening negotiations with parties in the country, and laying his plans for future military operations. At the period when Alexander was slain, and when Pausanias was carrying on his invasion, Iphikrates happened to be on the Macedonian coast. He was there visited by Eurydikê with her two sons Perdikkas and Philip; the latter seemingly about thirteen or fourteen years of age, the former somewhat older. She urgently implored him to assist the family in their present emergency, reminding him that Amyntas had not only throughout his life been a faithful ally of Athens, but had also adopted him (Iphikrates) as his son, and had thus constituted him brother to the two young princes. Placing Perdikkas in his hands, and causing Philip to embrace his knees, she appealed to his generous sympathies, and invoked his aid as the only chance of restoration, or even of personal safety, to the family. Iphikrates, moved by this affecting supplication, declared in her favor, acted so vigorously against Pausanias as to expel him from Macedonia, and secured the sceptre to the family of Amyntas; under Ptolemy of Alôrus as regent for the time.
This striking incident is described by the orator Æschines[538] in an oration delivered many years afterwards at Athens. The boy, who then clasped the knees of Iphikrates, lived afterwards to overthrow the independence, not of Athens alone, but of Greece generally. The Athenian general had not been sent to meddle in the disputes of succession to the Macedonian crown. Nevertheless, looking at the circumstances of the time, his interference may really have promised beneficial consequences to Athens; so that we have no right to blame him for the unforeseen ruin which it was afterwards found to occasion.
Though the interference of Iphikrates maintained the family of Amyntas, and established Ptolemy of Alôrus as regent, it did not procure to Athens the possession of Amphipolis; which was not in the power of the Macedonian kings to bestow. Amphipolis was at that time a free Greek city, inhabited by a population in the main seemingly Chalkidic, and in confederacy with Olynthus.[539] Iphikrates prosecuted his naval operations on the coast of Thrace and Macedonia for a period of three years (368-365 B.C.). We make out very imperfectly what he achieved. He took into his service a general named Charidemus, a native of Oreus in Eubœa; one of those Condottieri (to use an Italian word familiar in the fourteenth century), who, having a band of mercenaries under his command, hired himself to the best bidder and to the most promising cause. These mercenaries served under Iphikrates for three years,[540] until he was dismissed by the Athenians from his command and superseded by Timotheus. What successes they enabled him to obtain for Athens, is not clear; but it is certain that he did not succeed in taking Amphipolis. He seems to have directed one or two attempts against the town by other officers, which proved abortive; but he got possession of some Amphipolitan prisoners or hostages,[541] which opened a prospect of accomplishing the surrender of the town.