The Rise of the Macedonian Empire (ePub)

The first two centuries of the Macedonian monarchy, covered by the reigns of six kings, were a period shrouded in obscurity, during which the rising kingdom had enlarged itself at the expense of its neighbors, and crossing the Axios had even reached the Strymon. This career of conquest had been scarcely arrested by the Persian invasions of Europe. Indeed Alexander I, son of Amyntas, was cunning enough to bow to the storm, and while cautiously doing his utmost to befriend the Greeks, affected to fall in with Persian ideas as to Macedon being the centre of a great vassal state, and thankfully accepted any extension of territory which the Great King might be pleased to give him. By these means he gained a footing among the Thracian tribes as far as Mount Haemus, while he attained an object by which he set even greater store as a true-blooded Hellene; for his claims to that title were publicly acknowledged at Olympia, and his victories in the Stadium celebrated by the Hellenic Pindar. Yet the difficulties of Alexander did not cease, but rather increased when danger no longer threatened Greece from the side of Persia. He had removed his capital from Aigai to Pydna, a step nearer to the Hellenes whom he admired so much. But close to Pydna lay Methone, an independent Greek city; while to the eastward in Chalcidice, and as far as the Strymon, were numerous Hellenic colonies whose sympathies drew them naturally to the south rather than the west - to Hellas, not to Macedon - and which, after the Persian wars, recognized in the maritime Athens their natural leader and protectress...