Alexander the Great Failure

by John D Grainger

  and Sparta present. Philip had gathered into his hands all the strings needed to contrive a settlement of both wars. The negotiations took time, not least because the ten Athenians all insisted on making long speeches to Philip, who then replied at similar length. Then the envoys had to travel back and forth to Athens to get the terms agreed.

  While they did so Philip went off to Thrace to coerce Kersobleptes. During

  this expedition he took over the forts near the Chersonese that the Athenians

  had set up the year before and which were in Kersobleptes’ control.45 When he

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  returned to Macedon, the Athenian envoys were waiting for him at Pella. It had taken the Athenians a month to decide to accept the peace terms more or less

  as negotiated, and they had given their ratifying oaths. 46 But the Phokians were excluded, and so were Halos and Kersobleptes.

  Athens thus abandoned friends and allies, and Philip abandoned his Theban

  ally. That relationship was based on mutual enmity towards the Phokians, but

  no other mutual interests existed. Philip had helped Pammenes reach Asia with

  his soldiers, but this was a personal matter, and he was no doubt quite happy

  to see Thebes giving away 5,000 soldiers. Thebes’ policy towards Phokis was

  purely destructive; if Thebes had its way, the result of the war would be the total destruction of the Phokians. This only made Phokians fi ght the harder; it also gave Philip the entry he needed by offering milder terms. The peace agreed in

  346 between Philip and Athens was therefore the fi rst of a series of agreements between the various parties, which loosened and destroyed the existing alliances.

  Thebes fully understood what was happening; as Philip travelled south, the

  Thebans mobilized their forces. 47

  Part of the treaty, called by the Athenians the Peace of Philokrates,48 was an

  alliance of Philip and Athens, an arrangement which Philip must have hoped

  would smooth affairs all round. The joint authority of the greatest naval and

  military powers in Greece would surely dominate Greece effectively and calm

  affairs down everywhere else. This was not much to the liking of many Athenians, notably the orator Demosthenes, but it was part of the price for peace. In Athens’

  view, the war was being lost; their ally Phokis was failing. Peace was necessary, and Philip insisted on an alliance to go with it. 49 Philip might be keen, but Athens was not. While Athens deliberated, Philip dealt with Kersobleptes, and it seems also reached a fi nal agreement with Phalaikos.

  As the Athenians were returning home with Philip’s own ratifi cation, his army was marching through Thessaly to take control of Phokis and of Thermopylai. 50

  He owed it to his allies, the Thessalians and the Boiotians and the Delphic

  Amphiktyony, to see that Phokis was punished, if possible without forcing

  Phalaikos and his army to go to extremes; he also had to prevent the Athenians from intervening on behalf of their allies, without annoying them so much that they broke the peace terms. He was balancing all these confl icting interests, and the most interesting aspect of it all is that he was being careful to do so, whereas it would have been all too easy to impose a military settlement.

  Phalaikos had garrisoned Thermopylai, and had 8,000 mercenaries under his

  command. These men understood that they could be beaten by the Macedonian

  army, which was reinforced by the Thessalian levy, and if they fought, the

  Boiotians would join in. They also understood that they were liable to exemplary punishment for the sacrilege at Delphi, so any terms Phalaikos could extract

  which would let the men go free would be acceptable to them. That this would

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  leave Phokis prostrate before its enemies was not their concern.

  The terms were that the men could go free, with only what they could carry,

  without weapons or horses. This might have made them vulnerable to killing as

  outcasts, but these were tough men, and no doubt they would arm themselves

  again quickly enough. The men accepted these terms; the Phokians, no doubt

  by prearrangement through Phalaikos, then surrendered to Philip, who now

  occupied Thermopylai.51

  Philip handed over to his allies, the Amphiktyons, who had been the aggrieved

  party over Delphi, the decision over Phokis’ punishment. The Boiotians dealt with three cities of their league which had fallen to the Phokians, and had effectively seceded: Orchomenos, Koronai and Korsiai were destroyed, their inhabitants

  sold. 52 The Amphiktyons voted to expel Phokis from their organization, giving the seats thus left vacant to Philip. They then voted for the elimination of all the Phokian cities and the imposition of a great fi ne. 53 The Athenians did not send representatives to the meeting, but it seems that Philip argued for leniency. The agreed punishment was harsh enough, but the original proposal had been for

  all the Phokian men to be killed. Philip’s pressure was thus effective, but then he was all-powerful at that meeting anyway. 54 He presided at the Pythian festival in the autumn, the fi rst of the new era of Delphian freedom; then returned home.

  He had achieved a remarkable diplomatic triumph, settling a ten-year war which had ravaged all central Greece and at the same time ending an even longer war

  with Athens. The Athenians were not happy about the fate of Phokis, but they

  learned to live with it. They agreed that the alliance with Philip should continue, though with a similar lack of enthusiasm.

  Philip had been king of the Macedonians for just 13 years. His achievements

  had been considerable, but it will not do to exaggerate them. His fi rst six or so years had been spent in recovering what had been lost to Macedon in the

  previous generation. Beyond that he had made three major conquests: Thessaly,

  Chalkidike and the Amphipolis-Philippi area.

  The kingdom was still in a developing stage. The several measures Philip had

  taken had not yet consolidated fully into a well-developed state system. His one major institutional innovation had been his army, the necessary instrument

  of defence, and then of aggression. But he had been careful. His long war with Athens had been conspicuously unfought, and one reason for this caution was an understanding of the kingdom’s weakness. He picked his enemies very carefully, and had not yet fought a really major enemy. After the necessary defeat of Bardylis and his Illyrians in 358, Philip had fought only one large battle – the Crocus Fields – and otherwise had concentrated on sieges, small captures and well-placed marches, all combined with careful and inventive diplomacy. He had established Macedon as one of the great powers of Greece, alongside the traditional great

  powers, Athens, Thebes and Sparta, but only as one of the group.

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  Cold war, 346–340 bc

  Having hoisted himself and his kingdom to the position of a great power in the Greek world, Philip found that there was no problem in that region which did

  not concern him. Athens was the only other Greek state in this situation. None of the other Greek states could stand beside these two: Sparta had been reduced by Thebes’ victory in 362, Thebes damaged by the Phokian war. The conclusion

  of peace in 346 had not solved the problems between Macedon and Athens, any

  more than the Common Peace of 360 had solved the problems of Greece, and the

  alliance of the two did not hide the tensions. The six years following the peace were a time of diplomatic contest and manoeuvring for advantage, the sort of

  situation we have come to call a cold war.

  The contest resumed even as Philip was about to rati
fy the peace agreement,

  when Athens refused to assist Philip in his move against the Phokians. 1 This gave Philip a free hand, and no doubt the Athenians refused for the very good reason that they had deserted their ally and scarcely wished to be in at the kill, but it showed the alliance of the two great powers as no more than a paper agreement.

  In addition Athens gave shelter to refugees fl eeing from destroyed Phokian and Boiotian cities.

  Philip was absent from Macedon, fi rst in Thrace and then in Thessaly and

  Greece, for much of 346, returning only in the autumn. There was, no doubt, an accumulation of local problems at home for him to deal with; it may also be that his absence alerted his Balkan enemies to sniff out a possible prey. The following year, for no known immediate reason, Philip went on a campaign into Illyria,

  probably against the Ardaei and the Dardani. It seems that they were allied;

  and the potential power of the pair attracted Philip’s attention. Until now he fought the Illyrians when they attacked; now he was pre-empting any attack. The campaign was largely successful: both kingdoms were defeated, and the Dardani

  reduced to dependence on Macedon. The Ardaei were certainly beaten in battle,

  but seem not to have been made subjects. 2

  The removal of the threat of a Phokian invasion, meanwhile, had its effect

  on Thessaly. Pherai’s rulers had been attempting for three decades to make

  themselves lords of all Thessaly, and the city was still ruled by men who resented the restrictions Philip’s control brought. The city twice refused to supply troops to the archon – Philip – fi rst for the Phokian campaign, then for the Illyrian. In

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  the fi rst case they would, like Athens, have been fi ghting against their friends and allies, and were thus perhaps excused; in the second case they could argue that an Illyrian war had nothing to do with Pherai. There was trouble also in Larissa, where a tyrant seized power and issued his own coins, a mark of independence. 3

  The basic reason for these problems was resentment at Philip’s control, and a wish to be independent of him, now that Philip’s protection was not needed.

  Philip had gone into Thessaly to prevent its use as a source to attack Macedon.

  He tried defeating its lords, then defeating its enemies, then accepting the

  position as archon, but each step forward had not brought security. It was time to try another move. In 344 he conducted a campaign into Thessaly during

  which Pherai was assaulted and taken; ‘tyrants and dynasts’ were removed

  from other places; probably for the fi rst time, garrisons of Macedonian soldiers were imposed, at least at Pherai and Larissa, and maybe elsewhere; Pagasai and Magnesia were already his. 4

  This was still not enough. Two years later, in 342, after more thought and

  discussion, he revived an older division of the land into ‘quarters’ ( tetrads) and placed men of his own as the tetrarchs, probably the men who would command

  the levies when the army was called out. This would stop the local city rulers from simply failing to obey a summons. The removal of tyrants had perhaps

  quietened the party strife, and Philip’s display of the mailed fi st and the presence of garrisons had their effect. He had been intervening now for 15 years: his

  determination to reach a durable settlement was surely realized by now. Thessaly remained a separate state. It was not united to Macedon, and its league continued with Philip as archon. This seems fi nally to have done the trick; major trouble in Thessaly ceased. 5

  It is worth noting that the tetrarchs of Thessaly, appointed by Philip as

  archon, were similar in many ways to the epimeletai he appointed to various respon sibil ities in Macedon. We know of none by name, but the appointment

  of Macedonians would only draw attention to his overlordship, so it may be

  presumed that it was Thessalians who were the tetrarchs (as in Perrhaibia). The Thessalian cities were self-governing, just as those in Macedon. Thessaly was, by 340, well on the way to being organized in the same way as Macedon; the two

  lands were approaching integration as a single state.

  Philip intervened again in Epiros, in the winter of 343/342. He deposed King

  Arybbas, and in his place installed Alexander, his brother-in-law, whom he had removed out of Arybbas’ reach in 350. 6 He then turned south to mop up a small set of Greek cities south of Molossia, which he gave to Alexander. His action

  alarmed Ambrakia, locally the most important city, which went to war to preserve

  her local position.7

  Ambrakia was not alone. To the south the Akarnanians, another league of

  cities, were equally bothered by Philip’s sudden appearance so close to them. Both

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  states appealed for help, and the Athenians sent a force to Akarnania; probably Ambrakia also received assistance – the city had strong ties to Corinth. 8 Philip discovered that his fairly gentle probe had stirred up a formidable set of enemies; both the Akarnanians and Ambrakia were tough customers, and Athens’ help had

  been disturbingly prompt. Philip retired, but did not abandon the cities he had captured, and made an agreement with the nascent Aitolian league to hand over

  the city of Naupaktos to the league when he got it. The Aitolians were enemies of the Akarnanians, and this promise of future favour served neatly to neutralize Ambrakia and Akarnania.9

  The appearance of Athenian forces in Philip’s path in Akarnania and Ambrakia

  will not have come as a surprise. The peace of 346 had never been satisfactory from Athens’ point of view. A substantial body of opinion in the city did not want it, and any action by Philip was liable to be interpreted as a threat. The alliance with Philip had only been accepted as a means to get the peace treaty. Athens’

  interests extended to every part of Greece, and wherever Philip went he impinged on those interests. The Athenians who disliked the peace were making progress

  in their propaganda that Philip was a threat to all Greece.

  In the Peloponnese a new crisis between Sparta and Messene blew up in 344.

  Argos was somehow also involved – a traditional Spartan enemy, of course, and it was the traditional origin of Philip’s dynasty. He intervened to warn Sparta, and may well have sent money and mercenaries to help those who had been attacked.

  He may also have made preparations, no doubt very ostentatiously, to go to the Peloponnese himself with a Macedonian army.10

  The Spartans withdrew, and the recipients of Philip’s favour had good reason to be grateful. It is an example of how his infl uence spread, but it was also something his Athenian enemies could use to turn opinion against him. Some time before

  Philip’s intervention, the Athenian politician Demosthenes had visited Messene, which had also asked for Athenian help against Sparta. Demosthenes quoted

  what he had said to the Messenians in the speech at Athens known as the ‘Second Philippic’: beware masterful friends, he said, they became only masters. Philip, he was saying to the Messenians, is a greater danger even than Sparta. In Athens this might have sounded good; in Messenia, with Sparta next door, it made no

  sense. Demosthenes by then was not really talking to the Messenians, but the

  Ambrakians, Akarnanians and Corinthians all took the point.

  Philip replied to these verbal attacks with a protest, to which was added the

  suggestion that, if necessary, he would consider amending the terms of the

  peace treaty. The Athenians then heard another denunciation of Philip from

  Demosthenes, who said that the only reason Philip could have for amending the

  treaty was to subdue Athens, and was followed by Hegesippos, who proposed

  that the one amendment needed was that Philip should hand Amphipolis
‘back’

  to Athens.11

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  Nobody in Athens can have believed this would happen; but it did annoy

  Philip, which to the anti-Macedonian group was pleasing, since Philip angry

  was Philip menacing. This played towards their goal, which, as they must have

  realized, was another war. Philip ignored the suggestion, or perhaps he replied with a cool negative – it was hardly an issue to get worked up about from his

  viewpoint. Combined with the swift Athenian (and Corinthian) response to his

  probe against Ambrakia, this told him that his policy of peace and alliance with Athens was not working.

  In developing a policy which would lead to war with Philip, his Athenian

  enemies were hampered by geography. Philip’s direct control reached as far as

  the southern boundary of Thessaly; and south of that was Phokis, where the

  cities had been demolished and the people disarmed and scattered into villages, through which Philip could march with no barrier. Beyond Phokis was Boiotia,

  technically still Philip’s ally, but now less than enthusiastic about it, though no friend of Athens. There was little to stop Philip marching all the way to

  Attika if he chose to. In searching for allies, therefore, Athens had to look to the Peloponnese, which made Philip’s intervention there to deter Sparta all the more disturbing.

  Philip surely understood this, and it was in his interests to try to prevent

  Athens acquiring any allies there. He could be fairly sure of Messenia, and

  perhaps of Argos, and of some of the Arkadians. He could be fairly sure that

  Sparta would stay neutral, balanced by Messenia. So Athens had to look to the

  northern Peloponnese for friends. This was exactly where two crises blew up

  during 343. In Elis an oligarchic counter-revolution overthrew the democracy;

  the oligarchs who seized power had been funded by Macedonian money, a fact

  rapidly known. In Megara, Athens’ immediate neighbour, an internal dispute

  led to rival appeals being made to Philip (for money again), to Boiotia, and to Athens. This time the Athenians were quickest off the mark, and their supporters were installed in power.12