the area populated by Greeks; that he was not looking for conquest, but coexistence. What Demosthenes did not miss was the implications of the early steps in this process, the drive toward the unification of Greece. To his mind this involved the suppression of democracy (including the privilege of each democratic city to go to war with any other). When, by a carefully arranged request, Philip intervened in one of these local wars and came out of it as official head of the confederation of Thessaly, the orator delivered his First Phillipic. He kept on delivering them as long as he lasted. At this point it is necessary to note that although Philip was a diplomatic liar on a large scale, a lecher, and a drunken viking, his civil administration was quite as sharp as his military. He gave good government. The gold mines he had opened allowed him to pay for everything on the nail; there was justice in his courts and people were prosperous under his administration. What the hell was the use of democracy when you lived better under Philip? There was thus a strong pro-Philip party in most cities and Demosthenes had an uphill job. It is unnecessary to trace all the steps in the complicated double dance that followed, but in 338 the allied armies of Athens, Thebes, and some of the lesser cities met that of Macedon at Chaeronea. Thebes was wiped out and Athens terribly crippled. To the surprise of the defeated, the conqueror, instead of going on for the expected exations and proscriptions, called a conference of the powers of Greece at Corinth, even including Athens and Thebes. He presided at that conference and, recognizing that Greeks thought with their tongues, let them talk as long as they pleased. The issue was a general agreement prohibiting wars within Greece and naming Philip as the Captain-General of a League of Corinth to enforce. Since such a league must have a purpose beyond the mere police function, there was implied in its statute the idea that the fundamental reason for the League was a war of revenge on Persia for the aggressions begun by military means 150 years before and continued by other devices since. This idea was of no small help to pro-Macedonian parties; no concept could have been more popular than a union of
the homonoia against the great power which did not recognize it. III In 357 Philip married, as his seventh wife, an Epirote princess named Olympias, whom he had met at Samothrace during the celebration of the mysteries there. She was an Orphic priestess and a bacchanal, who claimed descent from Achilles, indulged in strange rites and a friendship for snakes. In a sense she became his only wife, a woman who could keep step with him. The night the marriage was consummated she dreamed that thunderbolts fell on her womb, and in due time was delivered of a son named Alexander. Alexander’s earliest tutor was a man of extraordinary strictness, who made him march half the night to gain an appetite for breakfast and eat a light breakfast to have an appetite for dinner. When passed beyond the grammar school age, Alexander was turned over to Aristotle. The training was both philosophical and military; he early developed such strength, such address, such extraordinary good looks, such quickness of intelligence that in view of his mother’s close connection with mysterious deities tales began to circulate that he might be of no human origin. As he grew up at the court he drank to keep the others company, but not very much. He exhibited an extraordinary continence and walked out of the room with a sneer when his father caused a courtesan to be placed in his bed; he did not care for games. At the age of eighteen he commanded the Companion cavalry when it delivered the decisive charge at Chaeronea. When he was twenty, and an advanced corps under the old marshal, Parmenio, had already secured a beachhead at the Dardanelles for the attack on Persia, Philip was assassinated and Alexander became King of Macedon. The leading Greek cities of the opposition, Athens and Thebes, expressed a delight over the death of the monster which quickly cooled when Alexander came through the passes at the head of his army. He was elected Captain-General of the League in his father’s room, and turned back to northern Macedon, where, to secure his base before attempting the great adventure against Persia, he conducted two whirlwind campaigns