But though Philip was thus kept out of Southern Greece, and the Phokians enabled to reorganize themselves against Thebes, yet in Thessaly and without the straits of Thermopylæ, Macedonian ascendency was henceforward an uncontested fact. Before we follow his subsequent proceedings, however, it will be convenient to turn to events both in Phokis and in Peloponnesus.
In the depressed condition of the Phokians after the defeat of Onomarchus, they obtained reinforcement not only from Athens, but also from Sparta (one thousand men), and from the Peloponnesian Achæans (two thousand men[635]). Phayllus, the successor (by some called brother) of Onomarchus, put himself again in a condition of defence. He had recourse a third time to that yet unexhausted store—the Delphian treasures and valuables. He despoiled the temple to a greater extent than Philomelus, and not less than Onomarchus; incurring aggravated odium from the fact, that he could not now supply himself without laying hands on offerings of conspicuous magnificence and antiquity, which his two predecessors had spared. It was thus that the splendid golden donatives of the Lydian king Krœsus were now melted down and turned into money; one hundred and seventeen bricks or ingots of gold, most of them weighing two talents each; three hundred and sixty golden goblets, together with a female statue three cubits high, and a lion, of the same metal—said to have weighed in the aggregate thirty talents.[636] The abstraction of such ornaments, striking and venerable in the eyes of the numerous visitors of the temple, was doubtless deeply felt among the Grecian public. And the indignation was aggravated by the fact that beautiful youths or women, favorites of Onomarchus or Phayllus, received some of the most precious gifts, and wore the most noted ornaments, which had decorated the temple—even the necklaces of Helen and Eriphylê. One woman, a flute-player named Bromias, not only received from Phayllus a silver cup and a golden wreath (the former dedicated in the temple by the Phokæans, the latter by the Peparethians), but was also introduced by him, in his capacity of superintendent of the Pythian festival, to contend for the prize in playing the sacred Hymn. As the competitors for such prize had always been men, the assembled crowd so loudly resented the novelty, that Bromias was obliged to withdraw.[637] Moreover profuse largesses, and flagrant malversation, became more notorious than ever.[638] The Phokian leaders displayed with ostentation their newly-acquired wealth, and either imported for the first time bought slaves, or at least greatly multiplied the pre-existing number. It had before been the practice in Phokis, we are told, for the wealthy men to be served by the poor youthful freemen of the country; and complaints arose among the latter class that their daily bread was thus taken away.[639]
Notwithstanding the indignation excited by these proceedings not only throughout Greece, but even in Phokis itself,—Phayllus carried his point of levying a fresh army of mercenaries, and of purchasing new alliances among the smaller cities. Both Athens and Sparta profited more or less by the distribution; though the cost of the Athenian expedition to Thermopylæ, which rescued the Phokians from destruction, seems clearly to have been paid by the Athenians themselves.[640] Phayllus carried on war for some time against both the Bœotians and Lokrians. He is represented by Diodorus to have lost several battles. But it is certain that the general result was not unfavorable to him; that he kept possession of Orchomenus in Bœotia; and that his power remained without substantial diminution.[641]
The stress of war seems, for the time, to have been transferred to Peloponnesus, whither a portion both of the Phokian and Theban troops went to coöperate. The Lacedæmonians had at length opened their campaign against Megalopolis, of which I have already spoken as having been debated before the Athenian public assembly. Their plan seems to have been formed some months before, when Onomarchus was at the maximum of his power, and when Thebes was supposed to be in danger; but it was not executed until after his defeat and death, when the Phokians, depressed for the time, were rescued only by the prompt interference of Athens,—and when the Thebans had their hands comparatively free. Moreover, the Theban division which had been sent into Asia under Pammenes a year or two before, to assist Artabazus, may now be presumed to have returned; especially as we know that no very long time afterwards, Artabazus appears as completely defeated by the Persian troops,—expelled from Asia, and constrained to take refuge, together with his brother-in-law Memnon, under the protection of Philip.[642] The Megalopolitans had sent envoys to entreat aid from Athens, under the apprehension that Thebes would not be in a condition to assist them. It may be doubted whether Athens would have granted their prayer, in spite of the advice of Demosthenes,—but the Thebans had now again become strong enough to uphold with their own force their natural allies in Peloponnesus.
Accordingly, when the Lacedæmonian army under king Archidamus invaded the Megalopolitan territory, a competent force was soon brought together to oppose them; furnished partly by the Argeians,—who had been engaged during the preceding year in a border warfare with Sparta, and had experienced a partial defeat at Orneæ,[643]—partly by the Sikyonians and Messenians, who came in full muster. Besides this, the forces on both sides from Bœotia and Phokis were transferred to Peloponnesus. The Thebans sent four thousand foot, and five hundred horse, under Kephision, to the aid of Megalopolis; while the Spartans not only recalled their own troops from Phokis, but also procured three thousand of the mercenaries in the service of Phayllus, and one hundred and fifty Thessalian horse from Likophron, the expelled despot of Pheræ. Archidamus received his reinforcements, and got together his aggregate forces earlier than the enemy. He advanced first into Arcadia, where he posted himself near Mantinea, thus cutting off the Argeians from Megalopolis; he next invaded the territory of Argos, attacked Orneæ, and defeated the Argeians in a partial action. Presently the Thebans arrived, and effected a junction with their Argeian and Arcadian allies. The united force was greatly superior in number to the Lacedæmonians; but such superiority was counterbalanced by the bad discipline of the Thebans, who had sadly declined on this point during the interval of ten years since the death of Epaminondas. A battle ensued, partially advantageous to the Lacedæmonians; while the Argeians and Arcadians chose to go home to their neighboring cities. The Lacedæmonians also, having ravaged a portion of Arcadia, and stormed the Arcadian town of Helissus, presently recrossed their own frontier and returned to Sparta. They left, however, a division in Arcadia under Anaxander, who, engaging with the Thebans near Telphusa, was worsted with great loss and made prisoner. In two other battles, also, the Thebans were successively victorious; in a third, they were vanquished by the Lacedæmonians. With such balanced and undecided success was the war carried on until, at length, the Lacedæmonians proposed and concluded peace with Megalopolis. Either formally, or by implication, they were forced to recognize the autonomy of that city; thus abandoning, for the time at least, their aggressive purposes, which Demosthenes had combated and sought to frustrate before the Athenian assembly. The Thebans on their side returned home, having accomplished their object of protecting Megalopolis and Messênê; and we may presume that the Phokian allies of Sparta were sent home also.[644]
The war between the Bœotians and Phokians had doubtless slackened during this episode in Peloponnesus; but it still went on in a series of partial actions, on the river Kephissus, at Koroneia, at Abæ in Phokis, and near the Lokrian town of Naryx. For the most part, the Phokians are said to have been worsted; and their commander, Phayllus, presently died of a painful disease,—the suitable punishment (in the point of view of a Grecian historian[645]) for his sacrilegious deeds. He left as his successor Phalækus, a young man, son of Onomarchus, under the guardianship and advice of an experienced friend named Mnaseas. But Mnaseas was soon surprised at night, defeated, and slain, by the Thebans while Phalækus, left to his own resources, was defeated in two battles near Chæroneia, and was unable to hinder his enemies from ravaging a large part of the Phokian territory.[646]
We know the successive incidents of this ten years’ Sacred War only from the meagre annals of Diodorus,—whose warm sympathy in favor of the religious side of the question seems to betray him into exaggeration of the victories of the Thebans, or at least into some omission of counterbalancing reverses. For in spite of these successive victories, the Phokians were noway put down, but remained in possession of the Bœotian town of Orchomenus; moreover, the Thebans became so tired out and impoverished by the war, that they confined themselves presently to desultory incursions and skirmishes.[647] Their losses fell wholly upon their own citizens and their own funds; while the Phokians fought with foreign mercenaries and with the treasures of the temple.[648] The increasing poverty of the Thebans even induced them to send an embassy to the Persian king, entreating pecuniary aid; which drew from him a present of three hundred talents. As he was at this time organizing a fresh expedition on an immense scale, for the reconquest of Phenicia and Egypt, after more than one preceding failure, he required Grecian soldiers as much as the Greeks required his money. Hence we shall see presently that the Thebans were able to send him an equivalent.
In the war just recounted on the Laconian and Arcadian frontier, the Athenians had taken no part. Their struggle with Philip had been becoming from month to month more serious and embarrassing. By occupying in time the defensible pass of Thermopylæ, they had indeed prevented him both from crushing the Phokians and from meddling with the Southern states of Greece. But the final battle wherein he had defeated Onomarchus, had materially increased both his power and his military reputation. The numbers on both sides were very great; the result was decisive, and ruinous to the vanquished; moreover, we cannot doubt that the Macedonian phalanx, with the other military improvements and manœuvres which Philip had been gradually organizing since his accession, was now exhibited in formidable efficiency. The King of Macedon had become the ascendent soldier and potentate, hanging on the skirts of the Grecian world, exciting fears or hopes, or both at once, in every city throughout its limits. In the first Philippic of Demosthenes, and in his oration against Aristokrates, (delivered between midsummer 352 B. C. and midsummer 351 B. C.), we discern evident marks of the terrors which Philip had come to inspire, within a year after his repulse from Thermopylæ, to reflecting Grecian politicians. “It is impossible for Athens (says the orator[649]) to provide any land-force competent to contend in the field against that of Philip.”
The reputation of his generalship and his indefatigable activity was already everywhere felt; as well as that of the officers and soldiers, partly native Macedonians, partly chosen Greeks, whom he had assembled round him,[650]—especially the lochages or front-rank men of the phalanx and the hypaspistæ. Moreover, the excellent cavalry of Thessaly became embodied from henceforward as an element in the Macedonian army; since Philip had acquired unbounded ascendency in that country, from his expulsion of the Pheræan despots and their auxiliaries the Phokians. The philo-Macedonian party in the Thessalian cities had constituted him federal chief (or in some sort Tagus) of the country, not only enrolling their cavalry in his armies, but also placing at his disposal the customs and market-dues, which formed a standing common fund for supporting the Thessalian collective administration.[651] The financial means of Philip, for payment of his foreign troops, and prosecution of his military enterprises, were thus materially increased.
But besides his irresistible land-force, Philip had now become master of no inconsiderable naval power also. During the early years of the war, though he had taken not only Amphipolis, but also all the Athenian possessions on the Macedonian coast, yet the exports from his territory had been interrupted by the naval force of Athens, so as to lessen seriously the produce of his export duties.[652] But he had now contrived to get together a sufficient number of armed ships and privateers, if not to ward off such damage from himself, at least to retaliate it upon Athens. Her navy, indeed, was still incomparably superior, but the languor and remissness of her citizens refused to bring it out with efficiency; while Philip had opened for himself a new avenue to maritime power by his acquisition of Pheræ and Pagasæ, and by establishing his ascendency over the Magnêtes and their territory, round the eastern border of the Pagasæan Gulf. That gulf (now known by the name of Volo), is still the great inlet and outlet for Thessalian trade; the eastern coast of Thessaly, along the line of Mount Pelion, being craggy and harborless.[653] The naval force belonging to Pheræ and its seaport Pagasæ, was very considerable, and had been so even from the times of the despots, Jason and Alexander;[654] at one moment painfully felt even by Athens. All these ships now passed into the service of Philip, together with the dues on export and import levied round the Pagasæan Gulf; the command of which he farther secured by erecting suitable fortifications on the Magnesian shore, and by placing a garrison in Pagasæ.[655] Such additional naval means, combined with what he already possessed at Amphipolis and elsewhere, made him speedily annoying, if not formidable, to Athens, even at sea. His triremes showed themselves everywhere, probably in small and rapidly moving squadrons. He levied large contributions on the insular allies of Athens, and paid the costs of war greatly out of the capture of merchant vessels in the Ægean. His squadrons made incursions on the Athenian islands of Lemnos and Imbros, carrying off several Athenian citizens as prisoners. They even stretched southward as far as Geræstus, the southern promontory of Eubœa, where they not only fell in with and captured a lucrative squadron of corn-ships, but also insulted the coast of Attica itself in the opposite bay of Marathon, towing off as a prize one of the sacred triremes.[656] Such was the mischief successfully inflicted by the flying squadrons of Philip, though Athens had probably a considerable number of cruisers at sea, and certainly a far superior number of ships at home in Peiræus. Her commerce, and even her coasts, were disturbed and endangered; her insular allies suffered yet more. Eubœa especially, the nearest and most important of all her allies, separated only by a narrow strait from the Pagasæan Gulf and the southern coast of Phthiotis, was now within the immediate reach not only of Philip’s marauding vessels, but also of his political intrigues.