Before and After Alexander

by Richard A. Billows

  Philip had no notion of giving up, however. He had learned a hard lesson, but he withdrew from Thessaly, as he said, like a ram, only to butt harder the next time. Philip realized that he had underestimated the Phocians and their Pheraean allies, and had not committed sufficient forces to the campaign. He spent the winter of 353 to 352 building up a larger army and reassuring his allies in Thessaly. In spring 352 he entered Thessaly again at the head of a fully restored army, ready to take up the fight again. At a meeting with his allies in the Thessalian League, they elected Philip, in order to bolster his position, Archon (ruler) of the Thessalian koinon, a title he held for the rest of his life. Together with the Thessalian forces, he now had an army of more than twenty thousand infantry and three thousand cavalry. To boost morale, Philip formally declared that he was fighting in defense of the god Apollo and his oracle against the sacrilege of the Phocians, and had his men wear crowns of laurel leaves (Apollo’s sacred plant) to symbolize this. Alerted by Lycophron of Pherae, Onomarchus too re-entered Thessaly with his mercenary army, and his allies the Athenians sent a substantial fleet into the Thessalian Gulf of Pagasae to co-operate with Onomarchus. Moving fast, Philip bypassed Pherae and attacked its port city of Pagasae, capturing it before Onomarchus could reach the scene. He then moved south to confront Onomarchus, entering the broad coastal plain to the south of Pherae known as the Field of Crocuses, where he could deploy his cavalry to full effect.

  It was on the Field of Crocuses, then, that the two armies confronted each other. Onomarchus’ army likely matched Philip’s in infantry, but had far fewer cavalry. The exact course of the battle is not preserved in any source, but Diodorus does report that Philip’s superiority in cavalry was decisive (16.35.5). Most likely Philip used his pike phalanx to pin Onomarchus’ mercenary phalanx in place, while his cavalry carried out a flanking maneuver and attacked Onomarchus from behind. That the bulk of the cavalry was stationed on Philip’s right, attacking thus from the west, is made likely by the fact that Onomarchus’ fleeing soldiers ran east, towards the beaches of the Gulf of Pagasae. There the Athenian fleet under the general Chares was patrolling: thousands of fleeing Phocian troops stripped off their armor and tried to swim to the safety of the Athenian ships. By no means all succeeded: reportedly six thousand Phocians and mercenaries died in the fighting and three thousand more drowned afterwards, among them the commander Onomarchus himself. Philip’s victory was total. Left without allies, the Pheraean tyrant Lycophron offered to surrender his city in return for a safe-conduct for himself, his family, and two thousand mercenaries. Philip accepted, and Lycophron and his two thousand men fled south to Phocis to join the surviving Phocian commander Phayllus. With Pherae in his power, Philip’s control of Thessaly was complete, and he spent some time regularizing that control.

  Philip’s position as Archon of the Thessalian League gave a legal basis to his rule over Thessaly, making Thessaly as it were a second kingdom of his besides Macedonia. He kept Pagasae, the harbor of Thessaly, for himself, having captured it that summer. The harbor and market dues from the Thessalian grain trade were a large addition to his revenues. The border region of Perrhaebia between Macedonia and Thessaly, traditionally a dependency of the Thessalians, was annexed to Macedonia, as was Magnesia, the mountainous region between Thessaly and the Aegean Sea, dominated by Mounts Ossa and Pelium. Philip was married for the fifth time this summer, to a lady from a prominent Pheraean family named Nicesipolis: he sought to make friends of the leading families of Pherae. Finally, he established Macedonian colonies at Gonni, at the Thessalian end of the Vale of Tempe, and at Oloosson, commanding the Thessalian end of the route into Macedonia via the western flank of Olympus. His control over Thessaly was only briefly interrupted twice hereafter: in the winter of 349, between his two Chalcidian campaigns, he had to re-enter Thessaly to drive out the Pheraean tyrant family which had returned; and in 344 he had to put down a further revolt at Pherae, finally despairing of gaining Pherae’s friendship and garrisoning the place. Late in 352, Philip marched south to Thermopylae, it seems with the aim of entering central Greece to end the Sacred War, but he found the pass there strongly held by Athenian forces, and turned back north. He was not ready for war in southern Greece: the Sacred War could wait.

  In principle, indeed, Philip could have ignored the Third Sacred War entirely. With Thessaly safely in his power, and Epirus tied to a firm alliance, Macedonia looked fairly secure from the south, and as of 351 he had the Chalcidice still to deal with. But there were reasons for him still to be concerned about southern Greece. Within living memory three southern Greek states had intervened militarily in Macedonia—the Spartans, the Athenians, and the Thebans—and there was no guarantee they might not do so again. Sparta indeed, since her defeat at Leuctra in 371 and Epaminondas’ campaign in the Peloponnesos, was greatly weakened and seemed unlikely to pose a threat in the foreseeable future. Epaminondas had ringed Sparta with three intrinsically hostile states, each holding territory once controlled by the Spartans: Messene, Megalopolis, and Argos. These states made it their business to keep Sparta weak and occupied at home. As for the Thebans, they had hugely miscalculated in starting the Third Sacred War against Phocis, and had suffered greatly in the course of that war. But if they should find a way to win it, they could recover their position as the dominant power in central Greece and pose a threat to Philip’s hold over Thessaly, if nothing more. The Athenians, too, had suffered serious losses as Philip had taken control of their former allies, the north Aegean port cities, and the Macedonian seizure of Amphipolis in particular rankled. Though the Athenians had suffered a significant diminishment of their power in the Social War fought between the Athenians and disaffected allies from 357 to 355, the Athenians had been down before and recovered their Aegean sea power. Athens still had to be seen as a possible threat.

  The truth was that these southern Greek city-states regarded the Macedonians with disdain, as semi-barbarous if not outright barbarians. Southern Greek citizens had for centuries cultivated a refined urban culture built around exercising at the gymnasium, meeting each other for political debates in the agora (town square), attending plays and musical performances at the theater, entertaining each other with songs and talk at symposia (drinking parties) where the wine was well watered and drunkenness looked down on, and conducting homoerotic love affairs in which an older man (in principle at least) mentored a younger beloved as much as enjoying sex with him. The Macedonian delight in riding, hunting, and fighting struck southern Greeks as old fashioned and uncouth; though they too held symposia, the Macedonians’ insistence on drinking their wine unwatered, with consequent boisterousness and drunkenness, seemed positively uncivilized; and even their homoerotic adventures seemed barbarous, as fully grown bearded men engaged each other in amorous sport. As the historian Theopompus, who spent years at Philip’s court, complained, the Macedonians at their parties behaved more like hetairai (high-class prostitutes) than hetairoi (upper-class companions) in their erotic grapplings with each other (according to Polybius 8.9, purporting to quote Theopompus’ actual words). All of this made it hard for southern Greeks such as the Athenians to take the Macedonians seriously. In truth, Philip would have liked nothing better, it seems, than to reach an accord with Athens: he had no fleet worth mentioning and no ambition to seek sea power, and did not see why Macedonian land power and Athenian sea power could not co-operate. He admired Athenian culture and was busy importing it to Macedonia. He invited actors and playwrights to perform in Macedonia; he found room at his court for the philosopher Aristotle and the historian Theopompus; he cultivated good relations with Speusippus, Plato’s successor at the Academy, and the great rhetorician Isocrates; he patronized the best Greek artists and musicians.

  For several years after 352, Philip was preoccupied with matters elsewhere, but after 347 he was ready to turn his attention back to southern Greece, with two basic aims: to secure, if possible, a mutually beneficial peace treaty with the Athenians, since as he saw i
t their interests no longer clashed; and to bring an end to the Sacred War in a way that would not restore Boeotian power and dominance in central Greece. This is the part of Philip’s career on which we are best informed, thanks to the surviving speeches of the anti-Macedonian Athenian orator and politician Demosthenes, especially his three Olynthiac and four Philippic orations, and his speeches “On the False Embassy” and “On the Crown.” It needs, of course, to be borne in mind that Demosthenes was anything but an impartial witness in his assessment of Philip and his policies. In 347 and 346 there were extensive negotiations between Philip and the Athenians, including two embassies despatched by the Athenians to Philip. These resulted in the peace agreement known as the Peace of Philocrates, after the Athenian politician who most strongly advocated it. The peace involved Athenian acceptance of Philip’s control over Amphipolis and the other north Aegean ports, while Philip guaranteed Athenian control over the Thracian Chersonnese, vital to Athens’ grain supply route from the Crimea. The two sides agreed to mutual friendship and co-operation; and Philip had succeeded in persuading important Athenian leaders such as Philocrates and Aeschines of his genuine good will. Demosthenes, however, though initially favoring peace, was not fully persuaded, and did what he could to undermine the implementation of the peace from the moment it was formally agreed.

  Meanwhile, Philip had received pleas from various states in central Greece, including the Thebans, to intervene once more as Apollo’s champion in the seemingly interminable Third Sacred War. Thanks to the support of the Thebans and eastern Locrians, and to the preoccupation of the Athenians with debating and voting on the peace agreement, Philip and his army were able to march through the Pass of Thermopylae unopposed in the summer of 346. The pass was nominally fortified by a Phocian mercenary force commanded by Phalaecus, son of Onomarchus; but he decided that discretion was the better part of valor and handed over control of the pass to Philip in return for a guarantee of freedom to go where they pleased for himself and his mercenaries. Phalaecus turned to a career as a roving mercenary captain for hire, and Philip proceeded into central Greece to end the Sacred War once and for all. He sent messages to the Athenians to send allied forces to co-operate with him and join him in establishing peace in central Greece and a new and better management of the Oracle at Delphi, but the Athenians declined to act. Not in the least troubled, Philip then settled the Sacred War himself. The Phocians surrendered without a fight, realizing they had no hope of holding out in the face of Philip’s forces. At a meeting of the Amphictyonic Council, which formally oversaw the Delphic Oracle, the Phocians were stripped of their votes in the council and these were given to Philip instead. Since he also controlled the votes of the Thessalians, he now had a powerful say in the affairs of the Oracle. In the fall, he was able to preside over a successful Pythian Games festival, with the Athenians staying away. Under pressure from the Amphictyons, however, the Athenians finally assented to Philip’s reorganization of the Oracle’s management, and Greece seemed at peace.

  The roots of further conflict were, however, present in the situation. Though formally allied to the Thebans, Philip had deeply angered them by rejecting their demands that the Phocians be brutally punished for despoiling the Oracle of Apollo. At Philip’s insistence, the Phocians were granted humane terms in the peace settlement. They had to destroy the fortifications around their towns, and they had to pay reparations to the Oracle; but Philip guaranteed their safety and the reparations were set at a reasonable level to be paid in affordable annual installments. Thus relations between Philip and the Thebans were soured from the start, and neither side trusted the other. Prompted by Demosthenes and others, moreover, the Athenians dragged their feet in implementing the Peace of Philocrates, and in fact showed more hostility than friendship towards Philip. Again, neither side really trusted the other. This was a pity, since Philip really had no further designs on subjecting the southern Greek states. Prompted by several open letters from the Athenian intellectual Isocrates, who had for decades been calling for a united Greek war against the Persians to punish the Persians for their interventions in Greece and, more importantly, to open up western Asia to Greek colonization as a way of relieving overpopulation and social problems in Greece, Philip had now turned his thoughts to war with Persia. He would much rather have had the Athenians, and especially their fleet, as allies in this effort than as continued opponents.

  Nevertheless, tensions continued to rise. The pro-Macedonian Athenian politician Philocrates was attacked and driven into exile. Philip’s campaigns in eastern Thrace were portrayed as a threat to Athenian control of the Thracian Chersonnese, and used as an excuse to justify naval operations against Philip. An offer of a Common Peace settlement by Philip in 343, with all disagreements to be fairly settled, was rejected by Athens. In the end, tensions were ratcheted up to the point that, in 340, the Athenians declared war on Philip. In 339 at a meeting of the Amphictyonic Council the people of Amphissa in western Locris were accused of sacrilege in cultivating land sacred to Apollo. This resulted, in autumn 339, in a declaration of Sacred War against Amphissa and, with the Athenians refusing to act, the council turned to Philip and elected him Hegemon (leader) for the war. Philip was ready to oblige, and once again led his army through the Pass of Thermopylae and into central Greece. Instead of moving against Amphissa at once, however, he occupied the Phocian town of Elatea, on the main road from central Greece into Boeotia and on to Attica, and began to fortify it. News of Philip’s presence at Elatea, not much more than a day’s march from the frontier of Attica, caused a panic at Athens. Prompted by Demosthenes, again, the Athenians decided to seek an alliance with the Thebans with the purpose of fighting against Philip. Despite protestations of friendship by Philip’s envoys, the Thebans were persuaded by Demosthenes and allied with the Athenians, preparing for war against Philip.

  This is the war that culminated in the Battle of Chaeroneia in 338, described in detail in Chapter 4 section 7 below, at which Philip decisively defeated the combined armies of the Athenians and the Thebans, and established himself as the leader of all the Greeks. In the aftermath of his great victory, Philip held a raucous celebration which included a festive dance around the assembled Athenian captives. At the height of this dance, the Athenian orator Demades, one of the captives, reportedly called out: “Philip, are you not ashamed, when fate has cast you in the role of Agamemnon, to appear instead in the guise of Thersites!” This was a reference to the famous Trojan War, in which Agamemnon was the leader of the pan-Greek expedition, while Thersites was remembered as the buffoon of the Greek army. Demades’ point was that Philip was now in a position to unite all of the Greeks behind him for an expedition into Asia against the Persian Empire, and he should act the part. Philip at once ended the celebration, called Demades into a meeting, and initiated negotiations for a peace with the Athenians. Athens was treated leniently: her democracy was respected, the Athenian prisoners from the battle were released, and the Athenians merely had to tie themselves to a treaty with Philip in which they agreed to follow his lead. The Thebans were dealt with more harshly: prisoners had to be ransomed, and a Macedonian garrison was installed on the acropolis of Thebes, the Cadmeia.

  In the fall of 338, Philip summoned representatives from all Greek states to a meeting at Corinth, symbolically chosen as the place where Greek representatives had met to debate and agree on Greek resistance to the Persian invasion in 481. At this meeting a Common Peace for all Greek states was agreed upon, with Philip as its overseer and guarantor. At a follow-up meeting in spring 337 a common alliance to go to war against Persia was agreed, and Philip was, inevitably, selected as the Hegemon of the alliance. All Greek states agreed, at Philip’s demand, to send allied contingents to join Philip’s Macedonian forces in an invasion of the Persian Empire, to take place in summer 336. Only the Spartans held aloof, insisting that only they could properly lead the Greeks in such an undertaking. Philip left them to their own devices, deeming them insufficiently importan
t to bother with. With this agreement, Philip had arrived at the summit of his power, and had achieved all he set out to achieve as a young man taking over the rule of his country. Macedonia was the dominant power in the Greek and Balkan world and he himself was the acknowledged leader of the Greeks. In the next chapter we shall look in detail at the military reforms by which Philip accomplished all this.

  CHAPTER 4

  Philip’s New Model Army and New Model State

  “Prussia is not a state with an army, but an army with a state.”

  —COMTE DE MIRABEAU

  “Prussia is not a country with an army, but an army with a country.”

  —FREIHERR VON SCHROETTER

  “Whereas some states possess an army, the Prussian army possesses a state.”