n expedition against the king of Persia, avenge the invasion of
Greece by Xerxes, and liberate the Asiatic Greeks. A large force of two
hundred thousand foot and fifteen thousand horse was promised him, and all
the States of Greece concurred, except Sparta, which held aloof from the
congress. Athens was required to furnish a well equipped fleet. All the
States, and all the islands, and all the cities of Greece, were now
subservient to Philip, and no one State could exercise control over its
former territories.

(M724) It was in the year B.C. 337, that this great scheme for the
invasion of Persia was concerted, which created no general enthusiasm,
since Persia was no longer a power to be feared. The only power to be
feared now was Macedonia. While preparations were going on for this
foolish and unnecessary expedition, the prime mover of it was
assassinated, and his career, so disastrous to Grecian liberty, came to an
end. It seems that he had repudiated his wife, Olympias, disgusted with
the savage impulses of her character, and married, for his last wife, for
he had several, Cleopatra, which provoked bitter dissensions among the
partisans of the two queens, and also led to a separation between himself
and his son Alexander, although a reconciliation afterward took place. It
was while celebrating the marriage of his daughter by Olympias, with
Alexander, king of Epirus, and also the birth of a son by Cleopatra, that
Pausanias, one of the royal body-guard, who nourished an implacable hatred
of Philip, chose his opportunity, and stabbed him with a short sword he
had concealed under his garment.

(M725) Alexander, the son of Philip by Olympias, was at once declared
king, whose prosecution of the schemes of his father are to be recounted
in the next chapter. Philip perished at the age of forty-seven, after a
most successful reign of twenty-three years. On his accession he found his
kingdom a narrow territory around Pella, excluded from the sea-coast. At
his death the Macedonian kingdom was the most powerful in Greece, and all
the States and cities, except Sparta, recognized its ascendency. He had
gained this great power, more from the weakness and dissensions of the
Grecian States, than from his own strength, great as were his talents. He
became the arbiter of Greece by unscrupulous perjury and perpetual
intrigues. But he was a great organizer, and created a most efficient
army. Without many accomplishments, he affected to be