The warlike impulse in Athens did not long remain unknown to the Macedonian king. He concealed his anger so long as the Thracian War was still in progress; but when he had destroyed the once powerful Odrysian kingdom and secured the Thracian districts by means of colonies and garrisons, when he had led his army across the Hæmus to the Getæ and had won over the colonies on the western shore of the Pontus by conciliation or force, he proceeded to send the Athenians a defiant letter, full of complaints and accusations, and added to them such insults by marching into their possessions on the Chersonesus and seizing Athenian merchantmen, that the assembly of the people declared the peace to have been violated, threw down the peace column, and took measures to furnish substantial aid to the Byzantines whom Philip was even then threatening with a siege.
There was no delusion in Athens as to the importance of the step. When Hegesippus recommended the refusal of Philip’s last proposals, there was a cry “Thou art bringing war upon us,” whereupon he answered: “Not war alone, but early death and mourning garments and public burials and funeral orations if ye will give yourselves in earnest to free the Hellenes and win back the hegemony which your fathers maintained.”
Thus ended the hollow Peace of Philocrates which had lasted seven years, and although from the aspect of affairs and the previous course of events there could be no hope of a successful struggle of divided Hellas against the advancing power of the Macedonian kingdom, now in the youthful vigour of its military strength; yet we cannot but feel the deepest respect for the manly impulse, the resolution which defied death, and preferred to fall gloriously and honourably under the feet of hostile armies, rather than be any longer a prey to the deceitful trickery of the king and his purchased satellites, or hover any longer in the undignified and ruinous state between war and peace. It was not a question of preserving “a piece of finery which had grown old-fashioned,” but of saving liberty and the popular government handed down from their forefathers, of passing on unimpaired to their successors the institutions and political forms for which former generations had staked their property and their blood, and of avoiding the break with the great historical past as long as possible.
SIEGE OF PERINTHUS AND BYZANTIUM
[340-339 B.C.]
And that there was still strength and courage in the Greek people, Philip to his great chagrin soon received sensible evidence before Perinthus, a maritime city, built in terrace fashion on the high ridge of a tongue of land on the Propontis, with rows of houses crowded thickly together and which he failed to take after a long siege by land and sea. Supported by the Byzantines and the Persian governor, the brave citizens repelled storm and attack with spirit. And now encouraged by the example of the Perinthians, and with the co-operation of the Athenians who sent first Chares, then Phocion, with ships and men to the aid of their hard-pressed ally, the Byzantines offered a manful resistance; so that here too Philip had to raise the siege and it was only by a stratagem that he succeeded in bringing off his fleet from the Black Sea through the Bosporus and the Hellespont.
The feeble Byzantines would hardly have held out so long against the siege which Philip conducted in similar fashion with battering-rams, machines for flinging projectiles and saps, but Chares, the Athenian, and his squadron drove the Macedonian fleet to the Pontus in a victorious combat, and from his advantageous position at Chrysopolis protected the entrance to the sea, while the valiant Phocion did his utmost to aid in the defensive measures of the Byzantine commander Leon, whom he had previously known in Plato’s school. So here too Philip failed to attain his object, in spite of the skill of his engineers and the bravery of his troops, who once even won an entrance into the town on a rainy, moonless night, but were beaten back in a hot fight by the citizens, who ran up hastily, considerably aided by the appearance of an aurora borealis.
DECLINE OF PHILIP’S PRESTIGE; THE SCYTHIAN EXPEDITION
The golden wreath and votes of gratitude with which the rescued Perinthians and Byzantines and the Attic cleruchs on the Chersonesus expressed their thanks to the Athenian state, were especially due to the orator Demosthenes, who by his disinterested and patriotic activity had been mainly instrumental in bringing about this revival of energy. On the news of Philip’s failures at Perinthus and Byzantium, the national party reared its head more proudly. Relying on Athens—whose ships again ruled the Pontus as far as Thessaly, barred the coasts and impeded Macedonian trade and maritime commerce—the patriotic party, in which the spirit of independence, freedom, and national honour was not yet extinct, again bestirred itself in all the Hellenic cities. Even at Thebes evidences appeared which showed how great was the indignation and suspicion against Philip. The partisans of Macedon and the supporters of the peace were thrust into the background; the Hellenic alliance received new members and adherents. Philip’s consideration was manifestly on the wane, the more as during this time he was with his army in the distant regions of the Danube. For in order to compensate his troops for their fruitless toil by means of a raiding expedition and restore his military reputation by a brilliant feat, Philip led his army from Byzantium against the Scythians on the Lower Danube. Here he did indeed win the victory in a great pitched battle, took many prisoners, and made spoil of a number of valuable horses and live stock; but on the return march through the country of the Triballi the greater part of this booty was lost; it was only with great difficulty, and when he himself had been sorely wounded, that he led back the army through the pass of Hæmus to his own country.