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Updated: June 21, 2025
Olynthus now knows she is fighting not for glory or territory but to avoid ejection and slavery. She has before her eyes his treatment of Amphipolis and Pydna. In a word, despotism is a thing no free country can trust, especially if it is its neighbour." He warns his hearers that once Olynthus falls, there is nothing to hinder Philip from marching straight on Athens.
This division of opinion rendered the operations of the Athenians for the aid of the Olynthians languid and desultory. Town after town of the confederacy fell before Philip; and in 347 Olynthus itself was taken. The whole of the Chalcidian peninsula thus became a Macedonian province.
Advancing by short marches, on the third day they arrived at Gigonus, where they encamped. Meanwhile the Potidaeans and the Peloponnesians with Aristeus were encamped on the side looking towards Olynthus on the isthmus, in expectation of the Athenians, and had established their market outside the city.
The Greeks attempted to make the lunar and solar courses coincide by cycles of years, but fell into great confusion. See Calendarium in Arch. Philip's illness seems to have put a stop to his progress in Thrace at this period. Immediately on his recovery he began his aggression against Olynthus.
No important step was taken to curb the growing power of Philip; and it was the danger of Olynthus which first induced the Athenians to prosecute the war with a little more energy. In 350 B.C., Philip having captured a town in Chalcidice, Olynthus began to tremble for her own safety, and sent envoys to Athens to crave assistance.
In Olynthus, among those who were engaged in public affairs, there was one party who were on the side of Philip, and served his interests in everything; and another whose aim was their city's real good, and the preservation of their fellow citizens from bondage. Which were the destroyers of their country? which betrayed the cavalry, through whose betrayal Olynthus perished?
One of his movable towers was one hundred and twenty feet high, so that he was able to drive away the defenders of the walls by missiles. He succeeded in driving the citizens of this strong town into the city, and it would have shared the fate of Olynthus, had it not been relieved by the Byzantine and Grecian mercenaries.
Olynthus was still at the head of thirty-two Greek towns, and the confederacy was a sort of counterpoise to the power of Philip. It was on this occasion that Demosthenes delivered his three Olynthaic orations, in which he warmly advocated an alliance with Olynthus. Demosthenes was opposed by a strong party, with which Phocion commonly acted.
But, by always neglecting the present, and imagining the future would shift for itself, we, O men of Athens, have exalted Philip, and made him greater than any king of Macedon ever was. Here then is come a crisis, this of Olynthus, self-offered to the state, inferior to none of the former.
Phoebidas, who was conducting a Lacedaemonian force against Olynthus, halted on his way through Boeotia not far from Thebes; where he was visited by Leontiades, one of the polemarchs of the city, and two or three other leaders of the Lacedaemonian party in Thebes.
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