“THE HISTORY OF A nation is by no means to be regarded solely as a consequence of the natural condition of its local habitations”. So writes one of the latest of Greek historians in the midst of a graphic description of the climate and physical characteristics of the shores of the Aegean. But the stress which he lays on these characteristics, and the inferences which he draws from them, show that he considers them to have been a strongly determining cause of the history of the peoples who dwelt upon those shores. It is indeed impossible to suppose that, had the Greeks been inhabitants of a level inland country, they would have remained so long disunited, or would have shown (as they did) the restless activity characteristic of the seaman; and we shall have evidence in the following pages of the extraordinary endurance of Greeks amid sudden changes of climate, as well as of their superiority to Asiatics in bodily not less than mental vigour. That some part of this vigour was owing to the country in which they lived will hardly be denied.
In its physical characteristics Greece was a land of singular contrasts. A remarkable similarity of conditions between the eastern and western shores of the Aegean was matched by a remarkable difference of conditions between the eastern and western coasts of Greece itself, and still more between its southern and northern provinces. The Aegean was a highway between two halves of one country—a sea exceptionally suitable for commerce. The air is clear. Islands—that is, landmarks—are frequent. Bays and safe anchorages are innumerable. During a great part of the summer there are regular winds which blow daily from the north, so regularly indeed that Demosthenes counted it among Philip’s advantages that he lived at the back of the north wind. On the other hand, while the eastern side of Greece is rich in fertile lowlands and has a deeply indented though accessible coastline, the western side consists of little but rocky ridges skirting a savage shore with few harbors. But the contrast between south and north is yet more striking than this. There is not on the entire surface of the globe, it has been said, any other region in which the different zones of climate and flora meet one another in so rapid a succession. The semi-tropical products of the Cyclades and the Peloponnesus have vanished in Boeotia. The olives of Attica are not seen in Thessaly. Even the myrtle disappears on the northern shores of the Aegean.
If we go farther north, we only heighten the contrast; for the climate and products of Macedon resemble those of central Germany. It is a land of broad rivers and great plains, far superior to Illyria across the mountains in fertility, and boasting a seacoast of great extent. Yet seacoast and inland were strangely cut off the one from the other, so that the inhabitants of the interior until Philip’s time were to a great extent a highland population secluded from the world. The reason of this lay in the peculiar conformation of the mountain system of the country. If we were to use the language of a cultivated Athenian, we should say that the range of the Kambounian (Cambunian) mountains, stretching from the lofty mass of Olympos in the east to Lakmon in the west, formed a natural barrier between Hellenes and Barbarians, between pure-breeds and half-breeds. This range was indeed of no great height, yet it formed, roughly speaking, a sort of division between one kind of country and another, one kind of people and another. The Hellenes to the south reached a high degree of civilization, and emigrating from home and mingling with their neighbors in all directions, powerfully affected the history of surrounding nations. The Macedonians remained for a long while a half-barbarous people, because they were shut off not only from the outside world, but from mutual intercourse by lofty and numerous mountain chains. These mountains, in fact, were so lofty and difficult, that at most points they were higher than the Kambounian range, at many points even higher than Pindos itself. It was easier on the whole to pass from the adjacent lowlands into Thessaly or the valley of the Istros (Danube) than from one Macedonian valley to another. On the other hand, the rivers that rise in these mountain ranges gradually converge before falling into the sea after long and devious wanderings. The first outward expansion of these highland tribes would needs follow the natural line marked out for them by their rivers flowing seaward, and their first natural meeting-points would be Aigai (Egae) and Pella in the valley of the Axios, the successive capitals of Macedonian kings.
In the widest extent of the name, Macedon included five tracts or provinces, singularly different from one another. Three of these were basins of large rivers, while a fourth (Emathia) was almost as directly a ‘gift’ of the united rivers as Egypt was of the Nile, being formed, it would seem, out of the alluvial deposit brought down by them in the course of centuries from the lofty mountains of the interior.
The valley watered by the Haliakmon was a narrow district, enclosed between the Kambounian and Skardos ranges on the south and west, and Mounts Barnos and Bermios on the north and east. Although it was not remarkable for fertility, the possession of this valley was yet a matter of importance to the kings of Macedon. At its northern end there was a remarkable gorge, cleaving the mountains from east to west, the only rent in the great mass of Skardos for more than 200 miles, through which a tributary of the Apsos flows from its source in Mount Barnos on its way to the Adriatic. The Roman road of later days (Via Egnatia) was carried over a pass some thirty miles to the north; but before the Roman conquest of Macedon, this gorge of the Eordaikos must have formed the main line of communication between Illyria and Macedon, whether for commerce or invasion, and lent therefore an exceptional importance to the upper valley of the Haliakmon.
To the north of Orestis lay the fertile uplands, watered by the river Erigon, as it pursues a winding course to join the Axios. Though averaging a height of 1,5oo feet above the sea, the district boasted ‘a fat rich soil’ capable of maintaining a large population.
The Axios was the chief river in Macedon, and its eastern boundary prior to the reign of Philip, a river too of a different character to the preceding. In its upper course it flows through a narrow cultivated plain, receiving the waters of the Erigon from Pelagonia. Presently it abruptly changes its peaceful nature, forming at the so-called Iron Gates rapids for some considerable distance, where its waters begin to slide to the lowlands of Emathia. At the Gates the river cuts through the mountain range which joins Skardos to Orbelos, and having cleft for itself a passage through a precipitous gorge of more than 600 feet in height, gradually descends to the lower level, and so falls at last into the sea, close to the joint mouths of the Haliakmon and Lydias.
In the very centre of the country, and entirely enclosed by mountains, lay the province of Eordaia—an almost circular basin, difficult of access, and with no outlet except a couple of mountain or passes. The water from the hills appears to drain entirely into the Lake Begorritis.
Lastly, there was the irregular strip of alluvial land, stretching from Mount Olympos to the city of Therme (Thessalonica), at first a narrow plain, enclosed between sea and mountains and called and Pieria, but widening out between the Haliakmon and Therme into the fertile province of Emathia, watered by the great river already mentioned, and containing the two capitals of Macedon, Aigai and Pella. Aigai The former lay at the head of a valley of the Lydias, on a plateau 200 feet above the plain, and dominated the whole of Emathia as well as the passes from the seacoast to the interior. It was the ‘portal of the highlands’, the dominant ‘castle of the plain’ and remained to the last, as became its position and associations, the burial-place of the Macedonian kings, the centre and hearth of the Macedonian tribes. Pella was a city of a different type. Archelaos was the first of the Macedonian kings to understand its value as a capital; but it remained comparatively insignificant until it became associated with the glories of Philip’s reign. It had two great merits. It was central and it was strong—as strong as Aigai, far stronger thait Pydna, and more central than either for a monarch whose long arm reached from Amphipolis to Pagasai. It was also in direct communication with the sea (distant about fifteen miles) by the marshes and the Lydias. In short, with no claims to beauty, or grandeur, or healthiness, Pella formed a strong central useful capital thoroughly characteristic of a common-sense monarchy whose right was might.
So far we have been dealing solely with Macedon. But there were large districts and many cities to the east of the Axios which had been founded or colonised by Hellenes, and in which they were the dominant, if not the more numerous part of the population. These colonies fringed the whole coast of the Euxine Sea, the Chersonese, Thrace, and Chalcidice : and as the extension of Macedonian power by Philip brought him into collision with many of them, it will be well to give a short account of the country lying between the Axios and Amphipolis.
The promontory of Chalcidice, with its three fingers or peninsulas, seemed formed by nature to be the maritime province of the inland country behind it. Macedon might seem to have a natural right to it, and we can hardly wonder that Philip was not content until he had won it. As compared with the western shores of the same latitude it had marked advantages. In place of a savage coast and precipitous cliffs, we have a broad mass of land reaching far into the Southern Sea, whose three great spurs abound in harbors, and were studded with flourishing colonies. The easternmost runs forty miles into the sea, with an average breadth of four miles, and ends in the grand limestone cone of Athos, towering more than 6,000 feet above the level of the Aegean, and casting its shadow even as far as Lemnos. The central and western peninsulas (Sithonia and Pallene) are not so mountainous as Akte, but were far more densely populated. Each was fringed with a numerous belt of colonies. Each boasted one city of first-rate importance. On the west coast of Sithonia lay Torone, the first home of the emigrants from Euboean Chalcis, who colonized Chalcidice and gave it their own name : while at the neck of land connecting Pallene with the country to the north was Potidaea, a colony from Dorian Corinth; the near neighbor, rival, and sometime subject of the Chalcidian Olynthos. Nor does the list of Hellenic colonies end here. Besides a host of minor towns, there were Methone, Therme, Olynthos, Akanthos, Amphipolis, all colonized by men of Dorian race, and two of them occupying positions of first-rate importance.
Amphipolis, strongly situated in an angle of the Strymon, commanded the passage of the river and the road from west to east. To be master of Amphipolis was to be master also of Mount Pangaios and its valuable gold and silver mines. Nor did Therme occupy a less important site. The gulf on which it stands is a splendid sheet of water, running inland 100 miles in a general direction from south-east to north-west, and gradually narrowing at its northern end. The town itself was of little consequence till Macedonian times; but the moment that a great state arose on the northern shore of the Aegean, which swallowed up the pettier city-leagues of Chalcidice, Therme at once assumed its natural importance as a great harbor, commanding and guarding the approaches from the eastward. It lay close at hand to the plains of the Axios, and communicated by a pass with the valley of the Strymon.
The difference in the physical features of the countries lying to the north and south of the Kambounian range was not more remarkable than that between the inhabitants of these countries. Epeirots, Macedonians, Illyrians, and Paeonians were not genuine Hellenes. Macedonians indeed were not the mere barbarians which cultivated Greeks like Demosthenes affected to believe them: yet neither were they Hellenes in the highest sense of the word. Their civilization was less developed, their dress and fashion were different, and their language, though similar, was yet not pure Greek. What we know of their government recalls the heroic times of the Iliad. Their national life was not that of the city (polis) but of the tribe. In Italy the kingship died out .In Greece it survived at Sparta alone, and even there was reduced by the Ephorate almost to a mere form. But in Macedon it retained its essential character to historic times, though limited, like the power of Agamemnon himself, by occasional assemblies of the people in arms.
Whatever may have been the precise relations of Macedonians and Hellenes, it is certain that the civilization of Macedon was kept stagnant or even deteriorated by intermixture with Illyrians. Hence Greeks and Macedonians were ever tending to become more and more estranged. The higher the development of Hellenic civilization in the south, the deeper was the contempt felt by the genuine Hellene for the semi-barbarians of the north. “Philip!” cries Demosthenes scornfully, “Philip, who is not only no Hellene, or in any way connected with Hellenes, but not even a barbarian from a creditable country! He is a worthless fellow from Macedon, whence in olden time it was impossible to get even a decent slave!”. This was of course the exaggerated language of pride of birth, deepened by political hatred, and it was hardly true in any sense of the Macedonian royal family : yet it expresses a partial truth, and it was only from Hellas itself that the influence came which made a national life on a large scale possible to these rude highlanders.
Hellenic colonies, it must be remembered, were not confined to the shores of the Aegean. There were also important settlements on the Ionian Sea, on the coasts of which the Dorian Corinthians had founded several colonies, and through them opened up a mercantile connection with the interior. Nor were the Corinthians alone in their adventurous pursuit of fortune north-eastwards. Other Dorians also, exiles from Peloponnesian Argos, followed in their track, and by the end of the eighth century had established themselves in the upper valley of the Haliakmon. Among these wanderers, Herodotus tell us, were three brothers, of the royal family of Argos. After many adventures and hair-breadth escapes, they gradually won a leading position among the Macedonians in the midst of whom they were settled : and from this to kingship and conquest was an easy step. But the youngest brother, Perdiccas, was the most intelligent, or the most favored by fortune. King in Orestis, with a new Argos for his capital, he pushed his victorious arms almost to the mouth of the Haliakmon, and finally transferred the headquarters of his growing power to a more convenient capital in Aigai. Thus was founded the dynasty of the Argeads; and thus were laid the foundations of that Macedonian empire which conquered Greece and overthrew the might of Persia.
Alexander I (498-454)
The first two centuries of the Macedonian monarchy, covered by the reigns of six kings, were a period shrouded in obscurity, during which the rising kingdom had enlarged itself at the expense of its neighbors, and crossing the Axios had even reached the Strymon. This career of conquest had been scarcely arrested by the Persian invasions of Europe. Indeed Alexander I, son of Amyntas, was cunning enough to bow to the storm, and while cautiously doing his utmost to befriend the Greeks, affected to fall in with Persian ideas as to Macedon being the centre of a great vassal state, and thankfully accepted any extension of territory which the Great King might be pleased to give him. By these means he gained a footing among the Thracian tribes as far as Mount Haemus, while he attained an object by which he set even greater store as a true-blooded Hellene; for his claims to that title were publicly acknowledged at Olympia, and his victories in the Stadium celebrated by the Hellenic Pindar. Yet the difficulties of Alexander did not cease, but rather increased when danger no longer threatened Greece from the side of Persia. He had removed his capital from Aigai to Pydna, a step nearer to the Hellenes whom he admired so much. But close to Pydna lay Methone, an independent Greek city; while to the eastward in Chalcidice, and as far as the Strymon, were numerous Hellenic colonies whose sympathies drew them naturally to the south rather than the west—to Hellas, not to Macedon—and which, after the Persian wars, recognized in the maritime Athens their natural leader and protectress.
It was a difficult position; and for a century it tried to the utmost the skill of the Macedonian kings. On the one hand the expansion of the kingdom had outrun its internal consolidation, and there were latent elements of discontent which more than once brought it to the verge of ruin. On the other hand, if the Macedonian monarchs were to be anything more than petty lords of half-barbarous tribes, they could hardly put up with the permanent dependence of what was practically their own seacoast on a far distant and hostile power, any more than with its permanent independence. The kings of Macedon were forced by their position to choose between two alternatives, to make good their claim to Methone and Potidaea, Chalcidice and Amphipolis, and to win their way to the coast, or else to submit to a humiliating exclusion from the political affairs of Hellas. In such a case no able man hesitates in the choice of his alternative; and we thus strike the key-note of the discords and jealousies, which for so many years troubled Northern Greece. Even before the Peloponnesian war, in the time of Perdiccas II (454-413), Athens and Macedon were face to face, conscious of divergent interests.
Perdiccas II (454-413)
The colonization of Amphipolis had been the crowning stroke of the policy by which Pericles sought to keep a firm hold of Chalcidice and the Thracian coast, and so of the Aegean. Perdiccas on the other hand, threatened at once by discontented neighbors’ in the west, by the formidable empire of the Thracian Sitalkes in the east, and by Athenian jealousy in Chalcidice, was forced to pursue a tortuous policy. Adroitly observant of the current of affairs, and quite devoid of scruples, he made treaties and broke them, he waged war or bowed to the storm, with equal facility. In the field of diplomacy he must have been an exceptionally able man; for every neighbor in turn was utilized to serve his purpose, and was neglected or attacked when the object of the moment was attained. Brasidas the Spartan he made use of against his private enemies the Illyrians. He skillfully fomented the revolt of the Chalcidic towns against Athens in 432; while in the next year we find him allied with his old enemies the Athenians, and showing his gratitude by attacking his old friends the Chalcidians. Two years later—once more allied with Chalcidians and at war with Athens—he was attacked by Sitalkes, and was within a little of being ruined. Yet from these and similar perils he escaped with unimpaired strength, or rather the stronger, in that the brilliant campaigns of Brasidas had undermined the power of Athens in the north. Nor was Athens ever again as formidable to Macedon as she had been; for the disastrous issue of the Sicilian expedition (413) paralyzed her influence everywhere, and probably Macedon reaped more advantage from the victory of Syracuse than Syracuse did herself.
Archelaos (413-399)
The policy of Perdiccas was continued with success by his illegitimate son Archelaos. He climbed to power by a series of violent deeds, with which most barbarous societies are only too familiar: for he assassinated his brother, as well as his uncle and his uncle’s son. Such were his crimes. His merits were not less marked as the great civilizer of Macedon. Thucydides goes out of his way to insist that Archelaos benefited his country more than all his eight predecessors put together, not only in his military improvements, but in building roads and founding cities. He transferred the capital from Pydna to Pella, while he pacified Pieria by the foundation of a new city, Dion, dedicated to Zeus and the Muses, and reserved for festival celebrations. He gathered round him some of the most brilliant Greeks of the day—not sorry perhaps to exchange the insecurity of their native cities for the lettered ease and secure patronage of a court. But these efforts, though praiseworthy, were not altogether successful. His clients seem to have been corrupted by the atmosphere around them; and the premature attempt at artistic development was cut short by the forty years of disorder which followed his murder. It is an illustration of the assertion that the history of Macedonia is the history of its kings, that this effort should have been thus fruitless, and that to the last the people should apparently have retained so many characteristics of barbarism. Hard fighters and hard drinkers, they were fine soldiers but indifferent citizens, and seem to have received only faint impressions from the civilization for which they prepared the way in Asia.
Amyntas II (393-369)
The murder of Archelaos was the signal for six years of bloodshed and disorder, until Amyntas, the father of the great Philip, murdered his predecessor and seized the throne. Amyntas was nominal king for twenty-four years, but it was a reign full of romantic reverses of fortune. Ten years of anarchy had given to the native nobility a long-coveted opportunity of revolt, against a culture and ordered peace which in their hearts they disliked, as well as against the tightening reins of despotism. It is a phenomenon often seen in political history, that the substitution of one strong will for a hundred conflicting wills is a slow process, subject to ebb and flow, and often desperately opposed by those who have a personal interest in a time of license. What Normandy suffered in the ninth and tenth centuries AD, and England in the twelfth, and France in the fifteenth, that Macedonia suffered in the fourth century BC, until Philip gained the throne. The nobility were insubordinate. Authority was set at nought. Each man fought for his own hand. Murder was rife; and the anarchy was only temporarily allayed by a politic marriage. The union of Amyntas with Eurydice, a daughter of a leading family among the Lynkestai, was intended, like the marriage of Henry the Fifth of England with Katharine of France, to put an end to a series of exhausting struggles.
But the marriage failed in its object and only secured him a temporary respite from trouble. The Lynkestai were not mollified by the union of a daughter of their house with the royal family; and the neighbors of Amyntas were eager to benefit by his difficulties. Illyrians, Thracians, Thessalians, in turn or in concert, poured into Macedon. He was even obliged to surrender the coast of the Thermaic gulf to the Chalcidians of Olynthos. We might almost say that he was elbowed out of his own country by encroaching friends and powerful enemies, and for nearly two years was a king without a kingdom.
But he was a dexterous diplomatist, who in the school of adversity seems to have learnt the art of playing off one foe against another, and of exciting them to mutual jealousy. If the Olynthians gained from him more than they gave, it would seem that they checked the further advance of the Illyrians. Against Olynthos itself, which was too near and powerful not to be disliked, a happy combination of circumstances gave him an irresistible ally in Sparta. For Olynthos also had enemies, whose enmity had arisen in the following way. Favored by accident, Olynthos had become head of a considerable league of cities in and near Chalcidice. Indeed, the terms of confederation (as described by Xenophon, an unwilling witness) were so fair and generous, that it is hardly strange that the smaller and more exposed Hellenic cities in those parts gladly exchanged precarious independence for safety even if combined with partial dependence; or that Macedonian cities, although as important as Pella, preferred comparative security within the hardly felt restraints of a fairly constituted confederacy to being subjects of a despot who could not protect them from even the attacks of Illyrians. In the year 383 envoys appeared before the Spartan assembly from King Amyntas and the city of Akanthos—men who recounted to a sympathetic audience the political troubles which vexed themselves and their friends. A careful reading of the speech delivered on that occasion by the Akanthian envoy throws a flood of light on the feelings of the day, and the prejudices (to call them by no worse name) which blinded the eyes and tied the hands of free Greeks. For what was it they feared ? Not yet the tyranny of a Macedonian king, not now the inroads of Illyrian savages, but the aggression of a great city, which invited all to combine for self-defence and to agree to adopt such singular notions as common laws and mutual citizenship, and intermarriage, and common rights of property ! To Amyntas it was only natural that such far-sighted justice should seem as dangerous as it was strange—a precedent to be if possible never repeated. But Greek cities also of size and importance, and notably Akanthos, sympathized with the king rather than the free city, and passionately tenacious of their narrow town life, actually joined Amyntas in petitioning Sparta to save them from their friends. For Olynthos by the offer of manifest advantages had gathered into its confederation city after city, until but a few in Chalcidice were left independent. Of these the largest were Akanthos and Apollonia. Being invited to join the league, they declined. Being threatened with compulsion if they persisted in refusal, they appealed to Sparta, and their appeal was backed by Amyntas.
“You seem not to be aware, O Spartans”, said the envoys, “of the great power growing up in Greece. City after city, Greek and Macedonian, has been won over or freed” (the word must have slipped from their lips almost involuntarily), “by Olynthos. We have been invited to join, and unless some help reach us we shall have to do so against our wishes. They are already strong. They are opening negotiations with both Thebes and Athens. If these succeed, think of the strength of such a coalition! Olynthos is strong by sea as well as land, having mines and forests and money. But as yet she is vulnerable, for her allies are not all reconciled to her rule. Therefore strike hard and strike soon”.
This appeal was only too successful. The Spartan Eudamidas was despatched at once with 2,000 men to the scene of action, and his mere presence induced Potidaea to revolt from the league, and relieved Akanthos and Apollonia from all danger of absorption. Eudamidas was to be followed by his brother Phoibidas with the residue of 10,000 men.
It would be alien to the subject of this book to narrate the rash seizure of the citadel of Thebes by Phoibidas on is northward march; though it will be necessary to explain its unexpected effect. Suffice it to say, that Phoibidas never reached Macedon. The reinforcements for Eudamidas, who as yet was only strong enough to maintain the status quo, were led by Teleutias, a brother of King Agesilaos, and comprised a considerable force of Thebans. Amyntas was urged to do his utmost in the way of getting mercenaries and money. And thus the storm broke on the devoted city. The defence was little short of heroic. For at this time (BC 382), Sparta was at the height of her power, and her will was law in almost every part of Greece. The Olynthians at first fully held their own, though with varying fortune. In 381 they even defeated Teleutias in a pitched battle under their own walls, slew him and a large part of his force, and drove the rest to seek safety in Potidaea or whatever nearest city they could reach. For the moment the star of Olynthos was in the ascendant. For the moment Amyntas seemed farther from his throne than ever. But, whatever a city with less prestige might have done, Sparta had far too much at stake to acquiesce quietly in so rude a repulse. A second and more imposing force was despatched at once under King Agesipolis; and once more the hopes of Amyntas rose when he saw the Olynthian territory ravaged, the city itself besieged, and its ally Torone taken by storm. Agesipolis indeed did not live to see the fruits of his vigorous attack, for he was carried off by fever. But his successor succeeded both to his throne and to his tactics. The siege became a blockade, more and more stringent. Corn was not to be obtained either by land or sea. At last, the sufferings of the people constrained a surrender, and the Olynthian confederacy was at an end, sacrificed to the fears of some and the jealousies of others. Each member of the confederacy, Olynthos included, was enrolled as a member of the Spartan league, and sworn to an offensive and defensive alliance. But Olynthos was no longer formidable. The neighboring cities were independent and jealously watchful: while her maritime allies in Macedon were restored by Sparta to Amyntas.
Amyntas indeed was the only one of the confederates who benefited in the long run. Sparta gained little but obloquy. The cities of Chalcidice won a short-lived independence at the price of eventual subjection. To Greece in general the result was little short of ruin. Had Olynthos been allowed to consolidate a confederacy in the north Aegean, it would have formed a natural outwork for the defence of Greece against Macedonian encroachment. There might even have been no Macedon to encroach, confronted, as it would have been, by a compact league of cities, and cut off from all access to the sea. As it was, the same Sparta which had given up the Greeks of Asia to Persia, gave up the Greeks of the Aegean to Macedon—a political blunder repeated afterwards by Athens, when she left Olynthos to the tender mercies of Philip.
Amyntas was once more king in his own country. His difficulties, however, were not removed but only shifted from one quarter to another. If Olynthos was no longer a danger, yet the influence of his good friends the Spartans began t wane, and before long he was so far shut off from communication with them as to be obliged to look for new allies. In Greece the balance of power was perpetually shifting. With the fall of Olynthos Sparta might have seemed supreme; but in fact it was the beginning of the end of her supremacy. Her haughtiness and high-handedness led to a revulsion of feeling which armed Athens and Thebes and their allies against her (378), and made many a good Greek rejoice in the humiliation of this tyrant city, the friend of the Great King, of the despot of Syracuse, and of the King of Macedon. With the defeat of Leuktra (371), her influence in the north was at an end; new combinations brought other powers to the front, and to Amyntas fresh troubles.
The contest of seven years (378 371) between Sparta on the one hand and Athens and Thebes on the other led the field in northern Greece open to adventurers; and it was from Thessaly that Amyntas was next beset with danger. This vast plain—the largest and most fertile in Greece—was from time immemorial as notorious for its political instability as for the excellence of its horses, the luxury of its rich men, and the badness of its coinage. According to the old proverb, “there was no relying upon anything in Thessaly”; and history confirms the proverb. The country was divided into four districts, sometimes united, more often the reverse: but when united truly formidable, being able to place in the field 6,000 cavalry and 10,600 infantry. But this was a rare event. More often the three or four leading cities—Larissa, Krannon, Pharsalos—held their immediate neighbors in subjection, and were at more or less open war with one another, their government being either a close oligarchy or a despotism in the hands of a single man. Towards the end of the Peloponnesian war (about 407), Pherai was added to the list of leading cities by the energy of a man called Lycophron, who made himself Tyrant and did his best, though without success, to subject all Thessaly to himself.
Jason of Pherai (374-370)
Jason succeeded where Lycophron failed. He was strong and active, bold and prudent. He knew how to ensure the discipline and to secure the devotion of soldiers. His head was full of magnificent ideas. With all Thessaly at his back, and elected Tagos or generalissimo in 374, his dreams extended to a wide empire, based upon the subjection of Epirus, Boeotia, Attica, and perhaps Lacedaemon, and lastly of Macedon: and the object of this great power was to be the humiliation of no less a potentate than the Great King himself—a far easier task, as he professed to think, than the subjugation of Greece. These ideas of Jason were no secret: and as might have been expected, his immediate neighbors began to be uneasy. Boeotia, no doubt, had little to fear while Epaminondas and Pelopidas were at the head of affairs at Thebes : and Athens was too far off to be in immediate danger. But with Amyntas the case was very different. Restored only recently to his throne, and that by foreign help, he was too weak to resist much pressure, although he did his best to balance matters and to strengthen himself by keeping up friendly relations with Athens and individual Athenians. Thus in 378 he adopted as his son Iphicrate’s, who was one of the ablest soldiers at Athens, and had great influence in the north Aegean. He sent deputies to the regular meetings of the Confederacy at Athens: and in the extraordinary meeting held at that city in the autumn of 371, he even publicly acknowledged the right of Athens to the possession of Amphipolis, her own colony. The city was not indeed his to give; but however little trouble the Athenians may have taken to secure it, they were always eager that no one else should have it. This public recognition therefore of their right was highly gratifying, and no doubt was regarded as deserving of reward.
All these schemes were, however, cut short by the unexpected deaths (370) of both Amyntas and Jason. The latter had announced his intention of being present at the Pythian games at Delphoi, and had further issued orders to his troops to hold themselves ready for service. The political world of Greece was thoroughly uneasy, for he had recently seized and dismantled Heraclea, a fortified town near Thermopylae, fearing, as he alleged, that it might hereafter bar the pass against him at some time when he was wishing to march into Greece. Was it that he meant to seize the presidency of the games? Could it be that he meditated laying hands on the treasures of Delphoi? And, if so, what next? Immense therefore was the relief universally felt, when (as the Delphic oracle had promised) “the God did take care for himself”. Jason was murdered, while reviewing his troops, by a band of seven youths, two of whom were overtaken and slain; while the remaining five escaped, and were received everywhere with special honor, as those who had relieved the Greek world from a haunting fear. Thessaly was no more a danger to Greece. Of the two brothers who succeeded Jason as Tagos, one was murdered by the other: and the latter in his turn was slain by a third brother, Alexander, a brutal and unscrupulous tyrant. Once more the old proverb had come true, and in Thessaly all was uncertainty.
AMYNTAS DIED IN THE