Philip V of Macedon

“ Mac ́e-don, Philip's country, was north of Greece, and its rulers spoke Greek and were of Greek descent; but, as the people of Macedon were not of the same race, the Greeks did not like them, and never allowed them to send any one to the Amphictyonic Council.
Two years after the battle of Mantinea, when Philip was eighteen years old, he suddenly learned that the king, his brother, was dead, and had left an infant to take his place. Philip knew that a child could not govern: so he escaped from Thebes, where he was not very closely watched, and made his way to Macedon. ”

“ He was defeated with heavy loss by the Illyrians, and died soon afterwards. And so Philip, now twenty-three years of age, became king of Macedon in 359 B.C., there being only an infant son of Perdiccas whose claim to the throne it was not difficult, under the circumstances, to set aside with the national approval.
No prince could have begun his reign with gloomier prospects than the future conqueror of Greece. He was encompassed by enemies. There were other claimants of the throne—one of these being Argæus who was supported by Athens. ”

“ Poor Demosthenes, who had never been in a battle before, and could only fight with his tongue, fled in such a fright that when a bramble caught his tunic, he screamed out, “Oh, spare my life!” The battle of Chæronea was a most terrible overthrow, and neither Athens nor Thebes ever recovered it. Macedon entirely gained the chief power over Greece, and Philip was the chief man in it, though Demosthenes never ceased to try to stir up opposition to him. Philip was a very able man, and had a good deal of nobleness in his nature. ”

“ There was now a kind of balance of power between the three leading States, Sparta, Athens, and Thebes, no one of which was greatly stronger than the others; and such a balance could easily be worked upon by any great power from without. Thus when Macedon came into the range of Greek politics, under a man of great diplomatic as well as military capacity, who, like a Czar of to-day, wished to secure a firm footing on the sea-board of the Ægean [see GREECE: B. C. 359-358] , she found her work comparatively easy. The strong imperial policy of Philip found no real antagonist except at Athens. ”

“ Philip of Macedon, not the father of Alexander the Great, but he who was conquered by Titus Quintius, had not much territory compared to the greatness of the Romans and of Greece who attacked him, yet being a warlike man who knew how to attract the people and secure the nobles, he sustained the war against his enemies for many years, and if in the end he lost the dominion of some cities, nevertheless he retained the kingdom. ”

“ Philip, King of Macedon, determined to subvert the liberties of all the Grecian republics. To him, as to European sovereigns of to-day, a representative form of government was hateful, as would have been the liberty of the press, had there been a press in those days. It was one of his favorite maxims that "no fortification was impregnable into which a mule could make its way with a bag of money!" as it was a maxim with the first Napoleon that "every man has his price?" In pursuance of this policy, Philip had his bribed emissaries in Thebes, as he had at Athens and Sparta. ”

“ The national kingdoms founded by the Northern races, after the fall of the Roman Empire, under the influence of the classical tradition, are the beginnings of the modern European system; Philip of Macedon foreshadows Theodoric, Charlemagne and William the Conqueror. But this first national kingdom within the sphere of Greek culture could not ultimately live between the surge of the Northern barbarians and the Roman power.
See the authorities under Greece History A vivid and masterly sketch of Philip's personality and work is given in D. G. Hogarth's Philip and Alexander (1897) . ”

“ A very short time after the marriage, Ptolemy was born. Philip treated the child with the same consideration and favor that he had evinced toward the mother. The boy was called the son of Lagus, but his position in the royal court of Macedon was as high and honorable, and the attentions which he received were as great, as he could have expected to enjoy if he had been in reality a son of the king. As he grew up, he attained to official stations of considerable responsibility and power. ”

“ 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. ”

“ The war against Philip and the Macedonians fell to Titus by lot, and some kind fortune, propitious at that time to the Romans, seems to have so determined it; as neither the people nor the state of things which were now to be dealt with, were such as to require a general who would always be upon the point of force and mere blows, but rather were accessible to persuasion and gentle usage. It is true that the kingdom of Macedon furnished supplies enough to Philip for actual battle with the Romans; but to maintain a long and lingering war, he must call in aid from Greece ”

“ The Macedonian monarchy clung to Greece like the shirt of Nessus. Though they had been compelled to renounce Alexander’s heritage the kings of Macedon were still the heirs of Philip and determined to continue his work of subjugating Greece. This policy was persistently followed by Antigonus Gonatas, who bequeathed it to his successors. After the death of Pyrrhus he had no competitors for the throne of Macedon. The greater part of the army of the king of Epirus was composed of Macedonians and Galatæ who passed without difficulty into Antigonus’ service. ”

“ The course of events in other parts of Greece and in the barbarian kingdom of Macedon seemed all to be converging to one inevitable result,—the extinction of Hellenic freedom. When a nation or a race becomes unfit to possess longer the most precious of heritages, a free and honorable place among nations, then the time and the occasion and the man will not be long wanting to co-operate with the internal subversive force in consummating the final catastrophe. "If Philip should die," said Demosthenes, "the Athenians would quickly make themselves another Philip." ”

“ Why should we be his only enemies? Although I might make this assertion, that so great have been our obligations to the former kings of Macedon, that the ill usage, suffered from a single prince of their line, if any has really been suffered from Philip, * * * especially after his death. When a Roman fleet was lying at Cenchreæ, and the consul, with his army, was at Elatia, we were three days in council, deliberating whether we should follow the Romans or Philip. ”

“ I know what the Emperor told me, and how much fear he felt afterwards for the King and for all Spaniards."
He ridiculed the effrontery of men like Philip and Granvelle; in charging "distrust" upon others, when it was the very atmosphere of their own existence. He proclaimed that sentiment to be the only salvation for the country. He reminded Philip of the words which his namesake of Macedon—a schoolboy in tyranny, compared to himself—had heard from the lips of Demosthenes—that the strongest fortress of a free people against a tyrant was distrust. ”

“ Thus at the very moment, when everything turned upon Philip’s goodwill being won, a pretender, who gave himself out to be a descendant of Alexander the Great, and who had been with the Acarnanians in Epirus, was received at Ephesus as the rightful sovereign of Macedon: they even fostered the fond hope of bringing about a revolution there. ”

“ Of all the cities, Athens had the ablest men, and Sparta the most hardy; and these two had been the foremost in beating and turning back the great Persian armies of Darius and Xerxes; but since that time there had been quarrels between these two powers, and they grew weak, so that Philip, King of Macedon, who had a kingdom to the north of them, and was but half a real Greek, contrived to conquer them all, and make them his subjects.
The ensign of Macedon was a he-goat, the rough goat that Daniel had seen in his vision ”

“ There is nothing in the character of Alexander of Macedon who "conquered the world, and wept that he had no more to conquer," to compare with the noble qualities of king Philip of Mt. Hope, and among his warriors are a long list of brave men unrivalled in deeds of heroism, by any of ancient or modern story. But in what country, and by whom were they hunted, tortured, and slain, and who was it that met together to rejoice and give thanks at every species of cruelty inflicted upon those who were fighting for their wives, their children, their homes, their altars and their God. ”

“ When one or more of these great powers had a party purpose to accomplish against others—when Philip of Macedon wished to extrude one of the members in order to procure admission for himself—it became convenient to turn this ancient form into a serious reality; and we shall see the Athenian Æschines providing a pretext for Philip to meddle in favor of the minor Boeotian cities against Thebes, by alleging that these cities were under the protection of the old Amphictyonic oath. ”

“ XVII. This reasoning, which is taken almost literally from Plutarch, is well adapted, not only to that ambitious Prince, but may be also properly applied to an infinite number of other men; who accumulate riches upon riches, at the expence of dangers and fatigues, and who, without knowing what they are in pursuit of, run a vicious and an erroneous course, in search of the very thing they possess. The pride of Philip King of Macedon, was mortified with great address by Archidamus the IIId, King of Sparta, whom Philip had overcome in a battle ”

“ After subduing Thermopylæ and the Phocians, Philip quickly apprehended that you could not be induced by any selfish considerations to abandon other Greek states to him. The Thebans, Messenians, and Argives he lured by bribes. But he knew how, in the past, your predecessors scorned the overtures of his ancestor, Alexander of Macedon, sent by Mardonius the Persian to induce the Athenians to betray the rest of the Greeks. It was not so with the Argives and the Thebans, and thus Philip calculates that their successors will care nothing for the interests of the Greeks generally. ”

“ The Achæans soon experienced, as often happens, that a victorious and powerful ally is but another name for a master. All that their most abject compliances could obtain from him was a toleration of the exercise of their laws. Philip, who was now on the throne of Macedon, soon provoked, by his tyrannies, fresh combinations among the Greeks. The Achæans, though weakened by internal dissensions and by the revolt of Messene, one of its members, being joined by the Ætolians and Athenians, erected the standard of opposition. ”

“ It was not only independent, but was also the head of a small confederacy, consisting of the Greek colonies in Thrace and on the shores of the Propontis. Among these were Selymbria and Perinthus, both of which were unsuccessfully attacked by Philip about 340 B.C. The king of Macedon understood how to besiege a city better than any man of his time. ”

“ He was a man of pre-eminent ability, of wonderful address in diplomacy, and possessed rare genius as an organizer and military chieftain. The art of war he had learned in youth as a hostage-pupil of Epaminondas of Thebes. He was the originator of the "Macedonian phalanx" a body as renowned in the military history of Macedonia as is the "legion" in that of Rome.
With his kingdom settled and consolidated at home, Philip's ambition led him to seek the leadership of the Grecian states. He sought to gain his purpose rather by artful diplomacy and intrigue than by open force. ”

“ After the battle of Cheronea, Philip, contrary to expectation, did not prosecute hostilities against Athens; on the contrary, he used his best endeavors to conciliate the affections of the people, but without success. The party hostile to Macedon soon regained the superiority, and Demosthenes was proceeding with his usual vigor in the prosecution of his political schemes, when news arrived of the murder of Philip, in July, 336. ”

“ He pitched his camp in a plain, and sent his son Perseus with a small party to attack the city from the higher ground. The townsmen, when danger pressed them on all sides, gave hostages, and for the present surrendered themselves; but as soon as the army retired, regardless of the hostages, they deserted the city, and fled into fastnesses and mountains. Philip returned to Macedon, after having exhausted his troops by every kind of fatigue, without effecting any purpose, and with his suspicions of his son augmented through the treachery of the governor Didas. ”

“ A few years before his death, however, he brought his two sons, Wamsutta and Pometacom, to Plymouth, and requested the governor, in token of friendship, to give them English names. They were very bright, attractive young men, of the finest physical development. The governor related to Massasoit the history of the renowned kings of Macedon, Philip and Alexander, and gave to Wamsutta, the oldest, the name of Alexander, the great warrior of Asia, and to Pometacom, the younger, the less renowned name of Philip. These two young men had married sisters, the daughters of the sachem of Pocasset. ”