But while the Athenians were thus tasked for the maintenance of Eubœa, they found it necessary to undertake more effective measures for the relief of Olynthus, and they thus had upon their hands at the same time the burthen of two wars. We know that they had to provide force for both Eubœa and Olynthus at once;[743] and that the occasion which called for these simultaneous efforts was one of stringent urgency. The Olynthian requisition and communications made themselves so strongly felt, as to induce Athens to do, what Demosthenes in his three Olynthiacs had vainly insisted on during the preceding summer and autumn—to send thither a force of native Athenians, in the first half of 349 B. C. Of the horsemen who had gone from Athens to Eubœa, under Meidias, to serve under Phokion, either all, or a part, crossed by sea from Eubœa to Olynthus, during that half-year.[744] Meidias did not cross with them, but came back as trierarch in his trireme to Athens. Now the Athenian horsemen were not merely citizens, but citizens of wealth and consequence; moreover the transport of them by sea was troublesome as well as costly. The sending of such troops implies a strenuous effort and sense of urgency on the part of Athens. We may farther conclude that a more numerous body of hoplites were sent along with the horsemen at the same time; for horsemen would hardly under any circumstances be sent across sea alone; moreover Olynthus stood most in need of auxiliary hoplites, since her native force consisted chiefly of horsemen and peltasts.[745]
The evidence derived from the speech against Neæra being thus corroborated by the still better evidence of the speech against Meidias, we are made certain of the important fact, that the first half of the year 349 B. C. was one in which Athens was driven to great public exertions—even to armaments of native citizens—for the support of Olynthus as well as for the maintenance of Eubœa. What the Athenians achieved, indeed, or helped to achieve, by these expeditions to Olynthus—or how long they stayed there—we have no information. But we may reasonably presume—though Philip during this year 349 B. C., probably conquered a certain number of the thirty-two Chalkidic towns—that the allied forces, Olynthian, Chalkidic and Athenian, contended against him with no inconsiderable effect, and threw back his conquest of Chalkidikê into the following year. After a summer’s campaign in that peninsula, the Athenian citizens would probably come home. We learn that the Olynthians made prisoner a Macedonian of rank named Derdas, with other Macedonians attached to him.[746]
So extraordinary a military effort, however, made by the Athenians in the first half of 349 B. C.—to recover Eubœa and to protect Olynthus at once—naturally placed them in a state of financial embarrassment. Of this, one proof is to be found in the fact, that for some time there was not sufficient money to pay the Dikasteries, which accordingly sat little; so that few causes were tried for some time—for how long we do not know.[747]
To meet in part the pecuniary wants of the moment, a courageous effort was made by the senator Apollodorus. He moved a decree in the Senate, that it should be submitted to the vote of the public assembly, whether the surplus of revenue, over and above the ordinary and permanent peace establishment of the city, should be paid to the Theôric Fund for the various religious festivals—or should be devoted to the pay, outfit, and transport of soldiers for the actual war. The Senate approved the motion of Apollodorus, and adopted a (probouleuma) preliminary resolution authorizing him to submit it to the public assembly. Under such authority, Apollodorus made the motion in the assembly, where also he was fully successful. The assembly (without a single dissentient voice, we are told) passed a decree enjoining that the surplus of revenue should under the actual pressure of war be devoted to the pay and other wants of soldiers. Notwithstanding such unanimity, however, a citizen named Stephanus impeached both the decree and its mover on the score of illegality, under the Graphê Paranomon. Apollodorus was brought before the Dikastery, and there found guilty; mainly (according to his friend and relative the prosecutor of Neæra) through suborned witnesses and false allegations foreign to the substance of the impeachment. When the verdict of guilty had been pronounced, Stephanus as accuser assessed the measure of punishment at the large fine of fifteen talents, refusing to listen to any supplications from the friends of Apollodorus, when they entreated him to name a lower sum. The Dikasts however, more lenient than Stephanus, were satisfied to adopt the measure of fine assessed by Apollodorus upon himself—one talent—which he actually paid.[748]
There can hardly be a stronger evidence both of the urgency and poverty of the moment, than the fact, that both Senate and people passed this decree of Apollodorus. That fact there is no room for doubting. But the additional statement—that there was not a single dissentient, and that every one, both at the time and afterwards, always pronounced the motion to have been an excellent one[749]—is probably an exaggeration. For it is not to be imagined that the powerful party, who habitually resisted the diversion of money from the Theôric Fund to war purposes, should have been wholly silent or actually concurrent on this occasion, though they may have been outvoted. The motion of Apollodorus was one which could not be made without distinctly breaking the law, and rendering the mover liable to those penal consequences which afterwards actually fell upon him. Now, that even a majority, both of senate and assembly, should have overleaped this illegality, is a proof sufficiently remarkable how strongly the crisis pressed upon their minds.
The expedition of Athenian citizens, sent to Olynthus before Midsummer 349 B. C., would probably return after a campaign of two or three months, and after having rendered some service against the Macedonian army. The warlike operations of Philip against the Chalkidians and Olynthians were noway relaxed. He pressed the Chalkidians more and more closely throughout all the ensuing eighteen months (from Midsummer 349 B. C. to the early spring of 347 B. C.). During the year Olymp. 407, 4, if the citation from Philochorus[750] is to be trusted, the Athenians despatched to their aid three expeditions; one, at the request of the Olynthians, who sent envoys to pray for it—consisting of two thousand peltasts under Chares, in thirty ships partly manned by Athenian seamen. A second under Charidemus, at the earnest entreaty of the suffering Chalkidians; consisting of eighteen triremes, four thousand peltasts and one hundred and fifty horsemen. Charidemus, in conjunction with the Olynthians, marched over Bottiæa and the peninsula of Pallênê, laying waste the country; whether he achieved any important success, we do not know. Respecting both Chares and Charidemus, the anecdotes descending to us are of insolence, extortion, and amorous indulgences, rather than of military exploits.[751] It is clear that neither the one nor the other achieved anything effectual against Philip, whose arms and corruption made terrible progress in Chalkidikê. So grievously did the strength of the Olynthians fail, that they transmitted a last and most urgent appeal to Athens; imploring the Athenians not to abandon them to ruin, but to send them a force of citizens in addition to the mercenaries already there. The Athenians complied, despatching thither seventeen triremes, two thousand hoplites, and three hundred horsemen, all under the command of Chares.
To make out anything of the successive steps of this important war is impossible; but we discern that during this latter portion of the Olynthian war, the efforts made by Athens were considerable. Demosthenes (in a speech six years afterwards) affirms that the Athenians had sent to the aid of Olynthus four thousand citizens, ten thousand mercenaries, and fifty triremes.[752] He represents the Chalkidic cities as having been betrayed successively to Philip by corrupt and traitorous citizens. That the conquest was achieved greatly by the aid of corruption, we cannot doubt; but the orator’s language carries no accurate information. Mekyberna and Torônê are said to have been among the towns betrayed without resistance.[753] After Philip had captured the thirty-two Chalkidic cities, he marched against Olynthus itself, with its confederate neighbors,—the Thracian Methônê and Apollonia. In forcing the passage of the river Sardon, he encountered such resistance that his troops were at first repulsed; and he was himself obliged to seek safety by swimming back across the river. He was moreover wounded in the eye by an Olynthian archer, named Aster, and lost the sight of that eye completely, notwithstanding the skill of his Greek surgeon, Kritobulus.[754] On arriving within forty furlongs of Olynthus, he sent to the inhabitants a peremptory summons, intimating that either they must evacuate the city, or he must leave Macedonia.[755] Rejecting this notice, they determined to defend their town to the last. A considerable portion of the last Athenian citizen-armament was still in the town to aid in the defence;[756] so that the Olynthians might reasonably calculate that Athens would strain every nerve to guard her own citizens against captivity. But their hopes were disappointed. How long the siege lasted,—or whether there was time for Athens to send farther reinforcement, we cannot say. The Olynthians are said to have repulsed several assaults of Philip with loss; but according to Demosthenes, the philippizing party, headed by the venal Euthykrates and Lasthenes, brought about the banishment of their chief opponent Apollonides, nullified all measures for energetic defence, and treasonably surrendered the city. Two defeats were sustained near its walls, and one of the generals of this party, having five hundred cavalry under his command, betrayed them designedly into the hands of the invader.[757] Olynthus, with all its inhabitants and property, at length fell into the hands of Philip. His mastery of the Chalkidic peninsula thus became complete towards the end of winter, 348-347 B. C.
Miserable was the ruin which fell upon this flourishing peninsula. The persons of the Olynthians,—men, women and children,—were sold into slavery. The wealth of the city gave to Philip the means of recompensing his soldiers for the toils of the war; the city itself he is said to have destroyed, together with Apollonia, Methônê, Stageira, etc.,—in all, thirty-two Chalkidic cities. Demosthenes, speaking about five years afterwards, says that they were so thoroughly and cruelly ruined as to leave their very sites scarcely discernible.[758] Making every allowance for exaggeration, we may fairly believe that they were dismantled, and bereft of all citizen proprietors; that the buildings and visible marks of Hellenic city-life were broken up or left to decay; that the remaining houses, as well as the villages around, were tenanted by dependent cultivators or slaves,—now working for the benefit of new Macedonian proprietors, in great part nonresident, and probably of favored Grecian grantees also.[759] Though various Greeks thus received their recompense for services rendered to Philip, yet Demosthenes affirms that Euthykrates and Lasthenes, the traitors who had sold Olynthus, were not among the number; or at least that, not long afterwards, they were dismissed with dishonor and contempt.[760]
In this Olynthian war,—ruinous to the Chalkidic Greeks, terrific to all other Greeks, and doubling the power of Philip,—Athens too must have incurred a serious amount of expense. We find it stated loosely, that in her entire war against Philip,—from the time of his capture of Amphipolis in 358-357 B. C. down to the peace of 346 B. C. or shortly afterwards,—she had expended not less than fifteen hundred talents.[761] On these computations no great stress is to be laid; but we may well believe that her outlay was considerable. In spite of all reluctance, she was obliged to do something; what she did was both too little, and too intermittent,—done behind time so as to produce no satisfactory result; but nevertheless, the aggregate cost, in a series of years, was a large one. During the latter portion of the Olynthian war, as far as we can judge, she really seems to have made efforts, though she had done little in the beginning. We may presume that the cost must have been defrayed, in part at least, by a direct property-tax; for the condemnation of Apollodorus put an end to the proposition of taking from the Theôric Fund.[762] Means may also have been found of economizing from the other expenses of the state.
Though the appropriation of the Theôric Fund to other purposes continued to be thus interdicted to any formal motion, yet, in the way of suggestion and insinuation it was from time to time glanced at by Demosthenes, and others;—and whenever money was wanted for war, the question whether it should be taken from this source or from direct property-tax, was indirectly revived. The appropriation of the Theôric Fund, however, remained unchanged until the very eve of the battle of Chæroneia. Just before that Dies Iræ, when Philip was actually fortifying Elateia, the fund was made applicable to war-purposes; the views of Demosthenes were realized,—twelve years after he had begun to enforce them.