He knew that the possession of Amphipolis was the great purpose for which they had been carrying on war against Macedonia for some years, and for which they now espoused the cause of Argæus. Accordingly he professed his readiness at once to give up to them this important place, withdrawing the Macedonian garrison whereby Perdikkas had held it against them, and leaving the town to its own citizens. This act was probably construed by the Athenians as tantamount to an actual cession; for even if Amphipolis should still hold out against them, they doubted not of their power to reduce it when unaided. Philip farther despatched letters to Athens, expressing an anxious desire to be received into her alliance, on the same friendly terms as his father Amyntas before him.[442] These proceedings seem to have had the effect of making the Athenians lukewarm in the cause of Argæus. For Mantias the Athenian admiral, though he conveyed that prince by sea to Methônê, yet stayed in the seaport himself, while Argæus marched inland—with some returning exiles, a body of mercenaries, and a few Athenian volunteers—to Ægæ or Edessa;[443] hoping to procure admission into that ancient capital of the Macedonian kings. But the inhabitants refused to receive him; and in his march back, to Methônê, he was attacked and completely defeated by Philip. His fugitive troops found shelter on a neighboring eminence, but were speedily obliged to surrender. Philip suffered the greater part of them to depart on terms, requiring only that Argæus and the Macedonian exiles should be delivered up to him. He treated the Athenian citizens with especial courtesy, preserved to them all their property, and sent them home full of gratitude, with conciliatory messages to the people of Athens. The exiles, Argæus among them, having become his prisoners, were probably put to death.[444]
The prudent lenity exhibited by Philip towards the Athenian prisoners, combined with his evacuation of Amphipolis, produced the most favorable effect upon the temper of the Athenian public, and disposed them to accept his pacific offers. Peace was accordingly concluded. Philip renounced all claim to Amphipolis, acknowledging that town as a possession rightfully belonging to Athens.[445] By such renunciation he really abandoned no rightful possession; for Amphipolis had never belonged to the Macedonian kings; nor had any Macedonian soldiers ever entered it until three or four years before, when the citizens had invoked aid from Perdikkas to share in the defence against Athens. But the Athenians appeared to have gained the chief prize for which they had been so long struggling. They congratulated themselves in the hope, probably set forth with confidence by the speakers who supported the peace, that the Amphipolitans alone would never think of resisting the acknowledged claims of Athens.
Philip was thus relieved from enemies on the coast, and had his hands free to deal with the Illyrians and Pæonians of the interior. He marched into the territory of the Pæonians (seemingly along the upper course of the river Axius), whom he found weakened by the recent death of their king Agis. He defeated their troops, and reduced them to submit to Macedonian supremacy. From thence he proceeded to attack the Illyrians—a more serious and formidable undertaking. The names Illyrians, Pæonians, Thracians, etc., did not designate any united national masses, but were applied to a great number of kindred tribes or clans, each distinct, separately governed, and having its particular name and customs. The Illyrian and Pæonian tribes occupied a wide space of territory to the north and north-west of Macedonia, over the modern Bosnia nearly to the Julian Alps and the river Save. But during the middle of the fourth century before Christ, it seems that a large immigration of Gallic tribes from the westward was taking place, invading the territory of the more northerly Illyrians and Pæonians, circumscribing their occupancy and security, and driving them farther southward; sometimes impelling them to find subsistence and plunder by invasions of Macedonia or by maritime piracies against Grecian commerce in the Adriatic.[446] The Illyrians had become more dangerous neighbors to Macedonia than they were in the time of Thucydides; and it seems that a recent coalition of their warriors, for purposes of invasion and plunder, was now in the zenith of its force. It was under a chief named Bardylis, who had raised himself to command from the humble occupation of a charcoal burner; a man renowned for his bravery, but yet more renowned for dealings rigidly just towards his soldiers, especially in the distribution of plunder.[447] Bardylis and his Illyrians had possessed themselves of a considerable portion of Western Macedonia (west of Mount Bermius), occupying for the most part the towns, villages, and plains,[448] and restricting the native Macedonians to the defensible, yet barren hills. Philip marched to attack them, at the head of a force which he had now contrived to increase to the number of ten thousand foot and six hundred horse. The numbers of Bardylis were about equal; yet on hearing of Philip’s approach, he sent a proposition tendering peace, on the condition that each party should retain what it actually possessed. His proposition being rejected, the two armies speedily met. Philip had collected around him on the right wing his chosen Macedonian troops, with whom he made his most vigorous onset: manœuvring at the same time with a body of cavalry so as to attack the left flank of the Illyrians. The battle, contested with the utmost obstinacy on both sides, was for some time undecided; nor could the king of Macedon break the oblong square into which his enemies had formed themselves. But at length his cavalry were enabled to charge them so effectively in flank and rear, that victory declared in his favor. The Illyrians fled, were vigorously pursued with the loss of seven thousand men, and never again rallied. Bardylis presently sued for peace, and consented to purchase it by renouncing all his conquests in Macedonia; while Philip pushed his victory so strenuously, as to reduce to subjection all the tribes eastward of Lake Lychnidus.[449]
These operations against the inland neighbors of Macedonia must have occupied a year or two. During that interval, Philip left Amphipolis to itself, having withdrawn from it the Macedonian garrison as a means of conciliating the Athenians. We might have expected that they would forthwith have availed themselves of the opening and taken active measures for regaining Amphipolis. They knew the value of that city: they considered it as of right theirs; they had long been anxious for its repossession, and had even besieged it five years before, though seemingly only with a mercenary force, which was repelled mainly by the aid of Philip’s predecessor Perdikkas. Amphipolis was not likely to surrender to them voluntarily; but when thrown upon its own resources, it might perhaps have been assailed with success. Yet they remained without making any attempt on the region at the mouth of the river Strymon. We must recollect (as has been narrated in my last preceding volume[450]), that during 359 B. C., and the first part of 358 B. C., they were carrying on operations in the Thracian Chersonese, against Charidemus and Kersobleptes, with small success and disgraceful embarrassment. These vexatious operations in the Chersonese—in which peninsula many Athenians were interested as private proprietors, besides the public claims of the city—may perhaps have absorbed wholly the attention of Athens, so as to induce her to postpone the acquisition of Amphipolis until they were concluded; a conclusion which did not arrive (as we shall presently see) until immediately before she became plunged in the dangerous crisis of the Social War. I know no better explanation of the singular circumstance, that Athens, though so anxious, both before and after, for the possession of Amphipolis, made no attempt to acquire it during more than a year after its evacuation by Philip; unless indeed we are to rank this opportunity among the many which she lost (according to Demosthenes[451]) from pure negligence; little suspecting how speedily such opportunity would disappear.
In 358 B. C., an opening was afforded to the Athenians for regaining their influence in Eubœa; and for this island, so near their own shores, they struck a more vigorous blow than for the distant possessions of Amphipolis. At the revival of the maritime confederacy under Athens (immediately after 378 B. C.), most of the cities in Eubœa had joined it voluntarily; but after the battle of Leuktra (in 371 B. C.), the island passed under Theban supremacy. Accordingly Eubœans from all the cities served in the army of Epaminondas, both in his first and his last expedition into Peloponnesus (369-362 B. C.).[452] Moreover, Orôpus, the frontier town of Attica and Bœotia—immediately opposite to Eubœa, having been wrested from Athens[453] in 366 B. C. by a body of exiles crossing the strait from Eretria, through the management of the Eretrian despot Themison—had been placed in the keeping of the Thebans, with whom it still remained. But in the year 358 B. C., discontent began in the Eubœan cities, from what cause we know not, against the supremacy of Thebes; whereupon a powerful Theban force was sent into the island to keep them down. A severe contest ensued, in which if Thebes had succeeded, Chalkis and Eretria might possibly have shared the fate of Orchomenus.[454] These cities sent urgent messages entreating aid from the Athenians, who were powerfully moved by the apprehension of seeing their hated neighbor Thebes reinforced by so large an acquisition close to their borders. The public assembly, already disposed to sympathize with the petitioners, was kindled into enthusiasm by the abrupt and emphatic appeal of Timotheus son of Konon.[455] “How! Athenians (said he), when you have the Thebans actually in the island, are you still here debating what is to be done, or how you shall deal with the case? Will you not fill the sea with triremes? Will you not start up at once, hasten down to Peiræus, and haul the triremes down to the water?” This animated apostrophe, reported and doubtless heard by Demosthenes himself, was cordially responded to by the people. The force of Athens, military as well as naval, was equipped with an eagerness, and sent forth with a celerity, seldom paralleled. Such was the general enthusiasm, that the costly office of trierarchy was for the first time undertaken by volunteers, instead of awaiting the more tardy process of singling out those rich men whose turn it was to serve, with the chance of still farther delay from the legal process called Antidosis or Exchange of property,[456] instituted by any one of the persons so chosen who might think himself hardly used by the requisition. Demosthenes himself was among the volunteer trierarchs; he and a person named Philinus being co-trierarchs of the same ship. We are told that in three or in five days the Athenian fleet and army, under the command of Timotheus,[457] were landed in full force on Eubœa; and that in the course of thirty days the Thebans were so completely worsted, as to be forced to evacuate it under capitulation. A body of mercenaries under Chares contributed to the Athenian success. Yet it seems not clear that the success was so easy and rapid as the orators are fond of asserting.[458] However, their boast, often afterwards repeated, is so far well-founded, that Athens fully accomplished her object, rescued the Eubœans from Thebes, and received the testimonial of their gratitude in the form of a golden wreath dedicated in the Athenian acropolis.[459] The Eubœan cities, while acknowledged as autonomous, continued at the same time to be enrolled as members of the Athenian confederacy, sending deputies to the synod at Athens; towards the general purposes of which they paid an annual tribute, assessed at five talents each for Oreus (or Histiæa) and Eretria.[460]
On the conclusion of this Eubœan enterprise, Chares with his mercenaries was sent forward to the Chersonese, where he at length extorted from Charidemus and Kersobleptes the evacuation of that peninsula and its cession to Athens, after a long train of dilatory manœuvres and bad faith on their part. I have in my last preceding volume, described these events, remarking at the same time that Athens attained at this moment the maximum of her renewed foreign power and second confederacy, which had begun in 378 B. C.[461] But this period of exaltation was very short. It was speedily overthrown by two important events—the Social war and the conquests of Philip in Thrace.
The Athenian confederacy, recently strengthened by the rescue of Eubœa, numbered among its members a large proportion of the islands in the Ægean as well as the Grecian seaports in Thrace. The list included the islands Lesbos, Chios, Samos (this last now partially occupied by a body of Athenian Kleruchs or settlers), Kos and Rhodes; together with the important city of Byzantium. It was shortly after the recent success in Eubœa, that Chios, Kos, Rhodes, and Byzantium revolted from Athens by concert, raising a serious war against her, known by the name of the Social War.
Respecting the proximate causes of this outbreak, we find, unfortunately, little information. There was now, and had always been since 378 B. C., a synod of deputies from all the confederate cities habitually assembling at Athens; such as had not subsisted under the first Athenian empire in its full maturity. How far the Synod worked efficiently, we do not know. At least it must have afforded to the allies, if aggrieved, a full opportunity of making their complaints heard; and of criticising the application of the common fund, to which each of them contributed. But I have remarked in the preceding volume, that the Athenian confederacy, which had begun (378 B. C.) in a generous and equal spirit of common maritime defence,[462] had gradually become perverted, since the humiliation of the great enemy Sparta at Leuktra, towards purposes and interests more exclusively Athenian. Athens had been conquering the island of Samos—Pydna, Potidæa, and Methônê, on the coast of Macedonia and Thrace—and the Thracian Chersonese; all of them acquisitions made for herself alone, without any advantage to the confederate synod—and made, too, in great part, to become the private property of her own citizens as kleruchs, in direct breach of her public resolution, passed in 378 B. C., not to permit any appropriation of lands by Athenian citizens out of Attica.
In proportion as Athens came to act more for her own separate aggrandizement, and less for interests common to the whole confederacy, the adherence of the larger confederate states grew more and more reluctant. But what contributed yet farther to detach them from Athens, was, the behavior of her armaments on service, consisting in great proportion of mercenaries, scantily and irregularly paid; whose disorderly and rapacious exaction, especially at the cost of the confederates of Athens, are characterized in strong terms by all the contemporary orators—Demosthenes, Æschines, Isokrates, etc. The commander, having no means of paying his soldiers, was often compelled to obey their predatory impulses, and conduct them to the easiest place from whence money could be obtained; indeed, some of the commanders, especially Chares, were themselves not less ready than their soldiers to profit by such depredations.[463] Hence the armaments sent out by Athens sometimes saw little of the enemy whom they were sent to combat, preferring the easier and more lucrative proceeding of levying contributions from friends, and of plundering the trading-vessels met with at sea. Nor was it practicable for Athens to prevent such misconduct, when her own citizens refused to serve personally, and when she employed foreigners, hired for the occasion, but seldom regularly paid.[464] The suffering, alarm, and alienation arising from hence among the confederates, was not less mischievous than discreditable to Athens. We cannot doubt that complaints in abundance were raised in the confederate synod; but they must have been unavailing, since the abuse continued until the period shortly preceding the battle of Chæroneia.
Amidst such apparent dispositions on the part of Athens to neglect the interests of the confederacy for purposes of her own and to tolerate or encourage the continued positive depredations of unpaid armaments—discontent naturally grew up, manifesting itself most powerfully among some of the larger dependencies near the Asiatic coast. The islands of Chios, Kos, and Rhodes, together with the important city of Byzantium on the Thracian Bosphorus, took counsel together, and declared themselves detached from Athens and her confederacy. According to the spirit of the convention, sworn at Sparta, immediately before the battle of Leuktra, and of the subsequent alliance, sworn at Athens, a few months afterwards[465]—obligatory and indefeasible confederacies stood generally condemned among the Greeks, so that these islands were justified in simply seceding when they thought fit. But their secession, which probably Athens would, under all circumstances, have resisted, was proclaimed in a hostile manner, accompanied with accusations of treacherous purposes on her part against them. It was moreover fomented by the intrigues, as well as aided by the arms, of the Karian prince Mausôlus.[466] Since the peace of Antalkidas, the whole Asiatic coast had been under the unresisted dominion either of satraps or subordinate princes dependent upon Persia, who were watching for opportunities of extending their conquests in the neighboring islands. Mausôlus appears to have occupied both Rhodes and Kos; provoking in the former island a revolution which placed it under an oligarchy, not only devoted to him, but farther sustained by the presence of a considerable force of his mercenary troops.[467] The government of Chios appears to have been always oligarchical; which fact was one ground for want of sympathy between the Chians and Athens. Lastly, the Byzantines had also a special ground for discontent; since they assumed the privilege of detaining and taxing the corn-ships from the Euxine in their passage through the Bosphorus[468]—while Athens, as chief of the insular confederacy, claimed that right for herself, and at any rate protested against the use of such power by any other city for its own separate profit.