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Updated: June 29, 2025
A noble clemency did he show to the Olynthians, who elected Lasthenes to command the cavalry, and banished Apollonides!
For instance, he enticed the Thessalians by large gifts into their present servitude; and words cannot describe how greatly he deceived the Olynthians at first by the gift of Poteidaea and much beside. At this moment he is alluring the Thebans, by delivering up Boeotia to them, and ridding them of a long and arduous campaign.
For example, the Thessalians by many benefits he seduced into their present servitude: no man can tell how he cheated the poor Olynthians, giving them first Potidaea and many other places: now he is luring the Thebans, having delivered up Boeotia to them, and freed them from a tedious and harassing war.
The Olynthians were likewise anxious to enrol Amphipolis as a member of their confederacy, and accordingly proposed to the Athenians to form an alliance for the purpose of defending Amphipolis against their mutual enemy. An alliance between these two powerful states would have proved an insurmountable obstacle to Philip's views: and it was therefore absolutely necessary to prevent this coalition.
Philip contrived to make the Olynthians his allies; and then, crossing the river Strymon, he conquered the western part of Thrace, where there were rich gold mines. There, for purposes of defense, he founded the city of Philippi. Athens and Sparta joined the Phocians. The Thessalian nobles sided with Philip.
Now, it was precisely at such a moment, and when such a question was pending, that the influence of the peace-loving Phocion was most ruinous. As no measures of importance were taken to check the growing power of Philip, in the year 349 he attacked the Olynthians, who were in alliance with Athens.
In spite of his good arguments, however, Demosthenes failed. Philip took not only O-lyn´thus, but all the towns which formed the Olynthian union, and destroyed them so completely that a few years later one could not even find out where these once prosperous cities had been. Demosthenes made three very fine speeches in favor of the Olynthians, and several against Philip.
Here we have the first instance of Philip's skill and duplicity in negotiation. By secretly promising the Athenians that he would put Amphipolis into their hands if they would give him possession of Pydna, he induced them to reject the overtures of the Olynthians; and by ceding to the latter the town of Anthemus, he bought off their opposition.
To speak roundly, the Macedonian power and empire is very well as a help, as it was for you in Timotheus' time against the Olynthians; likewise for them against Potidaea the conjunction was important; and lately it aided the Thessalians in their broils and troubles against the regnant house: and the accession of any power, however small, is undoubtedly useful.
And, when Lamachus, the Myrinaean, had written a panegyric upon king Philip and Alexander, in which he uttered many things in reproach of the Thebans and Olynthians, and at the Olympic Games recited it publicly, Demosthenes, then rising up, and recounting historically and demonstratively what benefits and advantages all Greece had received from the Thebans and Chalcidians, and on the contrary, what mischiefs the flatterers of the Macedonians had brought upon it, so turned the minds of all that were present that the sophist, in alarm at the outcry against him, secretly made his way out of the assembly.
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