(7.5.27).
The Road to Chaeronea (362–338)
The indecisive result of the Battle of Mantinea left a power vacuum in Greece, exploited by a new player on the scene, Philip II of Macedon, hailing from a region that was traditionally considered a backwater on the periphery of the Greek world. Upon his sudden accession to the throne in 360/359, Philip energetically began to transform Macedonia into a major power. After centralizing his kingdom and reorganizing the Macedonian army, Philip began to expand, both in the northern Aegean, where the Athenians soon became concerned about maintaining control of their grain supply, and in Thessaly, where he was invited to settle the perennial rivalry between powerful elite families. This Thessalian connection offered Philip an opportunity to intervene in central Greece, in the so-called Third Sacred War (356–346), instigated by the Thebans and the Amphictyonic League that controlled Delphi against the Phocians, who seized the sanctuary and used its resources to hire a mercenary army. A string of victories by the Phocians and their mercenaries resulted in the Thessalian summoning of Philip, who experienced a rare defeat in a first engagement in 353. The following year, however, Philip returned to Thessaly with a larger army and was victorious against the Phocian army in the Battle of the Crocus Field, which established both his control of Thessaly and his reputation as a pious defender of Apollo.44 Nevertheless, the war dragged on for another six years while Philip consolidated his gains in the north, leaving the Athenians little choice but to reluctantly sign a peace with him in 346. The same year, Philip was invited by the Thebans to march south and settle the Sacred War; the Phocians abruptly surrendered (Buckler 2003, 443–452).
The uneasy peace between Philip and Athens did not last long. The orator Demosthenes inflamed emotions in Athens against Philip,45 who responded by laying siege to two of Athens’ allies in the Chersonese and seizing an Athenian grain fleet; the Athenians thereupon renounced the peace.46 When Philip used the outbreak of the Fourth Sacred War to advance to central Greece,47 Demosthenes persuaded the panicked Athenians to forge an alliance with the Thebans.48 The combined armies of the Athenians and the Thebans attempted to bar Philip’s passage south in 338 at Chaeronea in Boeotia. The result was a resounding victory for Philip, whose 18-year-old son Alexander annihilated the Theban Sacred Band (Diod. Sic. 16.85.5–86; Justin 9.3.9–11; Polyaen. 4.2.7). The Battle of Chaeronea left Philip in control of the Greek city-states, ending their long-cherished autonomy.
Conclusion
Their victory in the Persian Wars ushered in a series of internal wars that plagued the Greek city-states for the next century and a half, rendering them unstable and ultimately unable to mount an effective defense against a new external invader. For much of the fifth century, the division of the Greek world into two power blocs, with Sparta the acknowledged military leader by land and Athens by sea, provided a modus vivendi. Eventually, however, Athens’ openly imperialistic behavior and territorial aspirations began to cause alarm among Sparta’s allies, leading inexorably to the outbreak of the Peloponnesian War. The 27-year length of the war not only left both Athens and Sparta in considerably weaker positions but permanently altered the balance of power in the Greek world. In the fourth century, no individual state had the resources to achieve long-lasting hegemony, and Greece became increasingly fragmented and subject to short-lived alliances of convenience. An ongoing series of inconclusive internal wars ensued, fostered by the Persians (whose goal was to keep the Greeks disunited and therefore unable to recover the Greek cities of Asia Minor), which left the Greeks vulnerable to conquest in 338 by the capable and ambitious Philip of Macedon. Ironically, it was Philip who united the fractious Greek city-states under his leadership, forcing them to come full circle in his planned campaign against Persia (eventually carried out by his son Alexander the Great), where they would be revenged for their suffering during the Persian wars.
Notes
1 1 This “traditional” view of early intra-Greek conflicts (see e.g. Ober 1996; Hanson 2000 and 2009, 27–39; Schwartz 2009, 102–146 and 226–230; cf. Thuc. 1.15) has been challenged, on the grounds that the hoplite phalanx did not develop fully until the Classical period (van Wees 2000), its origins possibly retrojected into the Archaic Period as a nostalgic response to the destructive nature of contemporary warfare (Krentz 2002, 25). For a succinct overview of the controversy, see Lee 2006, 484–486; cf. Chapter 6 in this volume.
2 2 As Hornblower (2011, 12) observes, Thucydides (1.95.1) offers both a negative and a positive motive for the Ionian approach to the Athenians: resentment of the oppressive behavior of the Spartan regent Pausanias and recognition of the Athenians’ traditional status as mother city of the Ionians.
3 3 As Thucydides implies (1.75.2, 1.95.7; see also Xen. Hell. 6.5.34), but cf. 1.92.1 and evidence from other authors suggests otherwise: Hdt. 8.3.2 (on this passage, see Munson 2001, 214–217); [Arist.] Ath. Pol. 23.2; Plut. Arist. 23.2. Diodorus (11.50) may be correct that the Spartans themselves were divided on this point; see Hornblower 2011, 8–10.
4 4 Thuc. 1.96.1, who states that the League was founded in order to get revenge on the Persians by ravaging their land; it is generally assumed that the League had a defensive purpose as well as an offensive one (Rhodes 2010, 19), and that it offered the Athenians a pretext (proschema) for leadership over the Greeks (Hornblower 2011, 12–13).
5 5 Herodotos’ reference (9.35.2) to Spartan battles in the 470s and 460s at Tegea and Dipaea suggests the presence of anti-Spartan movements in the Peloponnese (cf. Thuc. 1.118.2); see Lewis 1992a, 104–108.
6 6 On the tension created by the rebuilding of the walls, see Thuc. 1.89.3–93. The tradition that the Spartans were prevented from coming to the Thasians’ aid by a devastating earthquake and ensuing helot revolt is probably a later invention designed to explain why they did not seize the opportunity to nip nascent Athenian imperialism in the bud; Rhodes 2018, 47; cf. Rhodes 2010, 31.
7 7 Lewis 1997; Hornblower 2011, 25–26.
8 8 Harrison 2006: 518. Hornblower (2011, 26–29) observes that the Spartans were also jostling for position with the Athenians for influence at Delphi.
9 9 So Lewis 1997, 75–76.
10 10 An Athenian casualty list (IG I3 1147) records the campaigns of Halieis, Aegina, and Megara as occurring in a single year, either 460 or 459 (on the date, see ML no. 33 and Rhodes 2010, 50).
11 11 The original impetus for the outbreak of hostilities was rivalry between Athens and Corinth, rather than Spartan hostility toward Athens; so Holladay 1977 and Lewis 1997 contra De Ste. Croix 1972, esp. 187–190.
12 12 Hornblower (2011, 28–29, 32) is almost certainly correct that the object of the Spartan intervention was to restore their influence at Delphi.
13 13 So Diodorus 11.81.2–3, supported by Justin 3.6.10; see Badian 1993, 213 and Hornblower 2011, 32–33.
14 14 Probably in 457; on the date, see Rhodes 2010, 50.
15 15 On the problems associated with the dating of this truce, see Green 2006, 165 n. 351.
16 16 The so-called Second Sacred War; cf. Pownall 1998, 36–38 and Hornblower 2011, 28–29, 35.
17 17 The date can be calculated from Thucydides 2.2.1, 2.21.1; cf. Rhodes 2010, 57.
18 18 Thuc. 1.35.2, 1.40.2, 1.44.2; cf. Hornblower 2011, 36.
19 19 On the Samian Revolt, see Thuc. 1.115.2–117; Diod. Sic. 12.27–29; Plut. Per. 24.1–2, 25–28; cf. Shipley 1987, 113–122 and Hornblower 2011, 36–37. For the war atrocities
