Here was an important change of policy on the part of the Olynthians. Though they probably intended it, not as a measure of hostility against Philip, but simply as a precaution to ensure to themselves recourse elsewhere in case of becoming exposed to his attack, it was not likely that he would either draw or recognize any such distinction. He would probably consider that by the cession of Potidæa, he had purchased their coöperation against Athens, and would treat their secession as at least making an end to all amicable relations.
A few months afterwards (at the date of the first Philippic[690]) we find that he, or his soldiers, had attacked, and made sudden excursions into their territory, close adjoining to his own.
In this state of partial hostility, yet without proclaimed or vigorous war, matters seem to have remained throughout the year 351 B. C. Philip was engaged during that year in his Thracian expedition, where he fell sick, so that aggressive enterprise was for the time suspended. Meanwhile the Athenians seem to have proposed to Olynthus a scheme of decided alliance against Philip.[691] But the Olynthians had too much to fear from him, to become themselves the aggressors. They still probably hoped that he might find sufficient enemies and occupation elsewhere, among Thracians, Illyrians, Pæonians, Arymbas and the Epirots, and Athenians;[692] at any rate, they would not be the first to provoke a contest. This state of reciprocal mistrust[693] continued for several months, until at length Philip began serious operations against them; not very long after his recovery from the sickness in Thrace, and seemingly towards the middle of 350 B. C.;[694] a little before the beginning of Olympiad 107, 3.
It was probably during the continuance of such semi-hostile relations that two half-brothers of Philip, sons of his father Amyntas by another mother, sought and obtained shelter at Olynthus. They came as his enemies; for he had put to death already one of their brothers, and they themselves only escaped the same fate by flight. Whether they had committed any positive act to provoke his wrath, we are not informed; but such tragedies were not unfrequent in the Macedonian regal family. While Olynthus was friendly and grateful to Philip, these exiles would not have resorted thither; but they were now favorably received, and may perhaps have held out hopes that in case of war they could raise a Macedonian party against Philip. To that prince, the reception of his fugitive enemies served as a plausible pretence for war—which he doubtless would under all circumstances have prosecuted—against Olynthus; and it seems to have been so put forward in his public declarations.[695]
But Philip, in accomplishing his conquests, knew well how to blend the influences of deceit and seduction with those of arms, and to divide or corrupt those whom he intended to subdue. To such insidious approaches Olynthus was in many ways open. The power of that city consisted, in great part, in her position as chief of a numerous confederacy, including a large proportion, though probably not all, of the Grecian cities in the peninsula of Chalkidikê. Among the different members of such a confederacy, there was more or less of dissentient interest or sentiment, which accidental circumstances might inflame so as to induce a wish for separation. In each city moreover, and in Olynthus itself, there were ambitious citizens competing for power, and not scrupulous as to the means whereby it was to be acquired or retained. In each of them, Philip could open intrigues, and enlist partisans; in some, he would probably receive invitations to do so; for the greatness of his exploits, while it inspired alarm in some quarters, raised hopes among disappointed and jealous minorities. If, through such predisposing circumstances, he either made or found partisans and traitors in the distant cities of Peloponnesus, much more was this practicable for him in the neighboring peninsula of Chalkidikê. Olynthus and the other cities were nearly all conterminous with the Macedonian territory, some probably with boundaries not clearly settled. Perdikkas II. had given to the Olynthians (at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war[696]) a portion of his territory near the Lake Bolbê: Philip himself had given to them the district of Anthemus. Possessed of so much neighboring land, he had the means, with little loss to himself, of materially favoring or enriching such individual citizens, of Olynthus or other cities, as chose to promote his designs. Besides direct bribes, where that mode of proceeding was most effective, he could grant the right of gratuitous pasture to the flocks and herds of one, and furnish abundant supplies of timber to another. Master as he now was of Amphipolis and Philippi, he could at pleasure open or close to them the speculations of the gold mines of Mount Pangæus, for which they had always hankered.[697] If his privateers harassed even the powerful Athens, and the islands under her protection, much more vexatious would they be to his neighbors in the Chalkidic peninsula, which they as it were encircled, from the Thermaic Gulf on one side to the Strymonic Gulf on the other. Lastly, we cannot doubt that some individuals in these cities had found it profitable to take service, civil or military, under Philip, which would supply him with correspondents and adherents among their friends and relatives.
It will thus be easily seen, that with reference to Olynthus and her confederate cities, Philip had at his command means of private benefit and annoyance to such an extent, as would ensure to him the coöperation of a venal and traitorous minority in each; such minority of course blending its proceedings, and concealing its purposes, among the standing political feuds of the place. These means however were only preliminary to the direct use of the sword. His seductions and presents commenced the work, but his excellent generalship and soldiers—the phalanx, the hypaspistæ, and the cavalry, all now brought into admirable training during the ten years of his reign—completed it.
Though Demosthenes in one passage goes so far as to say that Philip rated his established influence so high as to expect to incorporate the Chalkidic confederacy in his empire without serious difficulty and without even real war[698]—there is ground for believing that he encountered strenuous resistance, avenged by unmeasured rigors after the victory. The two years and a half between Midsummer 350 B. C., and the commencement of 347 B. C. (the two last years of Olympiad 107 and the nine first months of Olympiad 108), were productive of phænomena more terror-striking than anything in the recent annals of Greece. No less than thirty-two free Grecian cities in Chalkidikê were taken and destroyed, the inhabitants being reduced to slavery, by Philip. Among them was Olynthus, one of the most powerful, flourishing, and energetic members of the Hellenic brotherhood; Apollonia, whose inhabitants would now repent the untoward obstinacy of their fathers (thirty-two years before) in repudiating a generous and equal confederacy with Olynthus, and invoking Spartan aid to revive the falling power of Philip’s father, Amyntas; and Stageira, the birth-place of Aristotle. The destruction of thirty-two free Hellenic communities in two years by a foreign prince, was a calamity the like of which had never occurred since the suppression of the Ionic revolt and the invasion of Xerxes. I have already recounted in a previous chapter[699] the manifestation of wrath at the festival of the ninety-ninth Olympiad (394 B. C.) against the envoys of the elder Dionysius of Syracuse, who had captured and subverted five or six free Hellenic communities in Italy and Sicily. Far more vehement would be the sentiment of awe and terror, after the Olynthian war, against the Macedonian destroyer of thirty-two Chalkidic cities. We shall find this plainly indicated in the phænomena immediately succeeding. We shall see Athens terrified into a peace alike dishonorable and improvident, which even Demosthenes does not venture to oppose; we shall see Æschines passing out of a free spoken Athenian citizen into a servile worshipper, if not a paid agent, of Philip: we shall observe Isokrates, once the champion of Pan-hellenic freedom and integrity, ostentatiously proclaiming Philip as the master and arbiter of Greece, while persuading him at the same time to use his power well for the purpose of conquering Persia. These were terrible times; suitably illustrated in their cruel details by the gangs of enslaved Chalkidic Greeks of both sexes, seen passing even into Peloponnesus[700] as the property of new grantees who extolled the munificence of the donor Philip; and suitably ushered in by awful celestial signs, showers of fire and blood falling from the heavens to the earth, in testimony of the wrath of the gods.[701]
While, however, we make out with tolerable clearness the general result of Philip’s Olynthian war, and the terror which it struck into the Grecian mind—we are not only left without information as to its details, but are even perplexed by its chronology. I have already remarked, that though the Olynthians had contracted such suspicions of Philip, even before the beginning of 351 B. C., as to induce them to make peace with his enemy Athens—they had nevertheless, declined the overtures of Athens for a closer alliance, not wishing to bring upon themselves decided hostility from so powerful a neighbor, until his aggressions should become such as to leave them no choice. We have no precise information as to Philip’s movements after his operations in Thrace and his sickness in 351 B. C. But we know that it was not in his nature to remain inactive; that he was incessantly pushing his conquests; and that no conquest could be so important to him as that of Olynthus and the Chalkidic peninsula. Accordingly, we are not surprised to find, that the Olynthian and Chalkidian confederates became the object of his direct hostility in 350 B. C. He raised pretences for attack against one or other of these cities separately; avoiding to deal with the confederacy as a whole, and disclaiming, by special envoys,[702] all purposes injurious to Olynthus.
Probably the philippizing party in that city may have dwelt upon this disclaimer as satisfactory, and given as many false assurances about the purposes of Philip, as we shall find Æschines hereafter uttering at Athens. But the general body of citizens were not so deceived. Feeling that the time had come when it was prudent to close with the previous Athenian overtures, they sent envoys to Athens to propose alliance and invite coöperation against Philip. Their first propositions were doubtless not couched in the language of urgency and distress. They were not as yet in any actual danger; their power was great in reality, and estimated at its full value abroad; moreover, as prudent diplomatists, they would naturally overstate their own dignity and the magnitude of what they were offering. Of course they would ask for Athenian aid to be sent to Chalkidikê—since it was there that the war was being carried on; but they would ask for aid in order to act energetically against the common enemy, and repress the growth of his power—not to avert immediate danger menacing Olynthus.
There needed no discussion to induce the Athenians to accept this alliance. It was what they had long been seeking, and they willingly closed with the proposition. Of course they also promised—what indeed was almost involved in the acceptance—to send a force to coöperate against Philip in Chalkidikê. On this first recognition of Olynthus as an ally—or perhaps shortly afterwards, but before circumstances had at all changed—Demosthenes delivered his earliest Olynthiac harangue. Of the three memorable compositions so denominated, the earliest is, in my judgment, that which stands second in the edited order. Their true chronological order has long been, and still is, matter of controversy; the best conclusion which I can form, is that the first and the second are erroneously placed, but that the third is really the latest;[703] all of them being delivered during the six or seven last months of 350 B. C.