Central Greece resumed

My last preceding chapters have followed the history of the Sicilian Greeks through long years of despotism, suffering, and impoverishment, into a period of renovated freedom and comparative happiness, accomplished under the beneficent auspices of Timoleon, between 344—336 b.c. It will now be proper to resume the thread of events in Central Greece, at the point where they were left at the close of the preceding volume—the accession of Philip of Macedon in 360—359 b.c. The death of Philip took place in 336 b.c.; and the closing years of his life will bring before us the last struggles of full Hellenic freedom; a result standing in mournful contrast with the achievements of the contemporary liberator Timoleon in Sicily.

No such struggles could have appeared within the limits of possibility, even to the most far-sighted politician either of Greece or of Macedon—at the time when Philip mounted the throne. Among the hopes and fears of most Grecian cities, Macedonia then passed wholly unnoticed; in Athens, Olynthus, Thasus, Thessaly, and a few others, it formed an item not without moment, yet by no means of first-rate magnitude.

State of Central Greece in 360–359 b.c. Degradation of Sparta

The Hellenic world was now in a state different from anything which had been seen since the repulse of Xerxes in 480—479 b.c. The defeat and degradation of Sparta had set free the inland states from the only presiding city whom they had ever learned to look up to.

It has been recounted in the preceding chapter, how Philip, during the continuance of the Social War, aggrandised himself in Macedonia and Thrace at the expense of Athens, by the acquisition of Amphipolis, Pydna, and Potidæa—the two last actually taken from her, the first captured only under false assurances held out to her while he was besieging it: how he had farther strengthened himself by enlisting Olynthus both as an ally of his own, and as an enemy of the Athenians. He had thus begun the war against Athens, usually spoken of as the war about Amphipolis, which lasted without any formal peace for twelve years. The resistance opposed by Athens to these his first aggressions had been faint and ineffective—partly owing to embarrassments. But the Social War had not yet terminated, when new embarrassments and complications, of a far more formidable nature, sprang up elsewhere—known by the name of the Sacred War, rending the very entrails of the Hellenic world, and profitable only to the indefatigable aggressor in Macedonia.

Causes of the Sacred War—the Amphiktyonic assembly

The Amphiktyonic assembly, which we shall now find exalted into an inauspicious notoriety, was an Hellenic institution ancient and venerable, but rarely invested with, practical efficiency. Though political by occasion, it was religious in its main purpose, associated with the worship of Apollo at Delphi and of Dêmêtêr at Thermopylæ.