ily defensible by sea. Deprived of aid from
Athens, the city fell into the hands of Philip, and was an acquisition of
great importance. It was the most convenient maritime station in Thrace,
and threw open to him all the country east of the Strymon, and especially
the gold region near Mount Pangreus. This place henceforward became one of
the bulwarks of Macedonia, until the Roman conquest.

(M704) Having obtained this place, he commenced, without a declaration of
war against Athens, a series of hostile measures, while he professed to be
her friend. He deprived her of her hold upon the Thermaic Gulf, conquered
Pydna and Potidaea, and conciliated Olynthus. His power was thus so far
increased that he founded a new city, called Philippi, in the regions
where his gold mines yielded one thousand talents yearly. He then married
Olympias, daughter of a prince of the Molossi, who gave birth, in the year
B.C. 356, to a son destined to conquer the world.

(M705) The capture of Amphipolis by Philip was, of course, followed by war
with Athens, which lasted twelve years. And this war commenced at a time
Athens was in great embarrassments, owing to the social war.

(M706) But he was aided by another event of still greater importance--the
sacred war, which for a time convulsed the Hellenic world, and which grew
out of the accusation of Thebes, before the Amphictyonic Council, that
Sparta had seized her citadel in time of profound peace. The sentence of
the council, that Sparta should pay a fine of five hundred talents, was a
departure of Grecian custom, and Sparta refused to pay it, which refusal
led to her exclusion from the council, the Delphic temple, and the Pythian
games, and this exclusion again arrayed the different States of Greece
against each other, as to the guardianship of the Oracle itself.

Philip of Macedon seized this opportunity, when so many States were
engaged in war, to prosecute his schemes. He attacked Methone, the last
remaining possession of Athens on the Macedonian coast, and captured the
city, and then advanced into Thessaly against the despots of Pherae, who
invoked the aid of Onomarchus, now very powerful.

(M707) It was at this time, B.C. 353, that Demosthenes, the orator,
appeared before the Athenian people. He was about twenty-seven years of
age, and the wealth of his father secured him great advantages in
education. His father died while he was young, and his property was
confided to the care of guard