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 PHILIP OF MACEDON had been educated at Thebes in the brilliant days of Epaminondas, and was as accomplished a Greek as Demosthenes himself. As a soldier he was among the greatest and most creative known to history. The Macedonians had always been warriors; but Philip mad that mighty military machine, the Macedonian army, which under its founder subdued Illyrians, Thracians, and Greeks, and under his son conquered the East. A master of strategy and tactics, his only fault in war was the reckless exposure of his person. For imperial aims and achievements he belongs to the old order of the Alexanders, the Caesars, and the Charlemagnes, being indeed the first man of that type who arose in the West. To State, no less than to army, he gave a new organization, one which maintained a healthy cohesian down to the last struggle with Rome two centuries later. He proposed to himself to bring Macedonia completely within the Greek state-system; and then, placing himself at the head of this, to concentrate his energies on the old Greek idea of attack on Persia. In carrying out this aim he studiously moved in the paths marked out by Greek history. The only type of union known or possible was the federative. He was careful, therefore, to avoid the appearance of conquest, and to figure as the instrument of the Amphictyonic Council, the venerable Diet recently resuscitated by Epaminondas, which sat at Delphi, the religious centre of Greece. By the battle of Chæronea, B.C. 338, in which he defeated the combined Athenians and Thebans, his projects were at length realized. Proceeding to Corinth, he convoked a congress which was attended by all the Greek States except Sparta, who stood aloof in sulky insignificance. There war was declared against Persia, and Philip was elected generalissimo of the federal army. But while preparing for the invasion, his career was cut short by an assassin in the 47th year of his age.
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| This biography is
reprinted from The New Calendar of Great Men. Ed. Frederic
Harrison. London: Macmillan and Co., 1920. |
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