The Historians' History of the World 04 [Greece to the Roman Conquest]

When he attacked the Greeks, his army had already been trained through fighting the surrounding barbarians; it had to learn how useful and necessary it was, and realise to what purpose he made them persevere in peace. He often made them march three hundred stadia encumbered with their weapons, with helmet, shield, and splints, and in addition to this, food and clothing and utensils. They had to observe the strictest discipline. A distinguished Tarentine was dismissed from the service because he had helped himself to a warm bath; Æropus and Damasippus were dismissed because they brought singers into the camp. In the same manner as Epaminondas, in whose school Philip had learned, beat the Lacedæmonian mora by a new formation of the army and deprived them of the efficiency of their firm, quiet movements—so Philip formed the Macedonian phalanx.

Even Æmilius Paulus acknowledged that nothing ever terrified them. They stood the test at Chæronea, where the sacred troops of the Thebans were defeated, and the Athenians, also in the last fight for their freedom, did not prevail against them.j

GROTE’S ESTIMATE OF PHILIP

Thus perished the destroyer of freedom and independence in the Hellenic world, at the age of forty-six or forty-seven, after a reign of twenty-three years. Our information about him is signally defective. Neither his means, nor his plans, nor the difficulties which he overcame, nor his interior government, are known to us with exactness or upon contemporary historical authority. But the great results of his reign, and the main lines of his character, stand out incontestably. At his accession, the Macedonian kingdom was a narrow territory round Pella, excluded partially, by independent and powerful Grecian cities, even from the neighbouring sea coast. At his death Macedonian ascendency was established from the coasts of the Propontis to those of the Ionian Sea, and the Ambracian, Messenian, and Saronic gulfs. Within these boundaries, all the cities recognised the supremacy of Philip; except only Sparta, and mountaineers like the Ætolians and others defended by a rugged home.

Good fortune had waited on Philip’s steps; but it was good fortune crowning the efforts of a rare talent. Indeed the restless ambition, the indefatigable personal activity and endurance, and the adventurous courage of Philip were such as, in a king, suffice almost of themselves to guarantee success, even with abilities much inferior to his. That among the causes of Philip’s conquests, one was corruption, employed abundantly to foment discord and purchase partisans among neighbours and enemies; that with winning and agreeable manners, he combined recklessness in false promises, deceit and extortion even towards allies, and unscrupulous perjury when it suited his purpose—this we find affirmed, and there is no reason for disbelieving it. Such dissolving forces smoothed the way for an efficient and admirable army, organised, and usually commanded, by himself. Its organisation adopted and enlarged the best processes of scientific warfare employed by Epaminondas and Iphicrates. Begun as well as completed by Philip, and bequeathed as an engine ready-made for the conquests of Alexander, it constitutes an epoch in military history. But the more we extol the genius of Philip as a conqueror, formed for successful encroachment and aggrandisement at the expense of all his neighbours—the less can we find room for that mildness and moderation which some authors discover in his character. If, on some occasions of his life, such attributes may fairly be recognised, we have to set against them the destruction of the thirty-two Greek cities in Chalcidice, and the wholesale transportation of reluctant and miserable families from one inhabitancy to another.

Besides his skill as a general and politician, Philip was no mean proficient in the Grecian accomplishments of rhetoric and letters. Isocrates addresses him as a friend of letters and philosophy; a reputation which his choice of Aristotle as instructor of his son Alexander tends to bear out. Yet in Philip, as in the two Dionysii of Syracuse and other despots, these tastes were not found inconsistent either with the crimes of ambition or the licenses of inordinate appetite. The contemporary historian Theopompus, a warm admirer of Philip’s genius, stigmatises not only the perfidy of his public dealings, but also the drunkenness, gambling, and excesses of all kinds in which he indulged—encouraging the like in those around him. His Macedonian and Grecian bodyguard, eight hundred in number, was a troop in which no decent man could live; distinguished indeed for military bravery and aptitude, but sated with plunder, and stained with such shameless treachery, sanguinary rapacity, and unbridled lust, as befitted only centaurs and Læstrygons. The number of Philip’s mistresses and wives was almost on an oriental scale; and the innumerable dissensions thus introduced into his court through his offspring by different mothers, were fraught with mischievous consequences.