Athenian democracy was not undone for long, however,
nor was Athenian power at a permanent end in the Aegean.
Th e Th irty Tyrants proved to be so oppressive at Athens that
the Spartan general Lysander, who had instituted them in
the fi rst place, himself helped to overthrow them and restore
the democracy. Athens remained an economic power in the
Greek world and soon reemerged as an infl uential force. Th e
rise of the city of Th ebes, which allied itself with Athens, kept
Sparta in check, and by the beginning of the fourth century
b.c.e. Athens and Th ebes had fought Sparta to a standstill in
the so-called Corinthian War, Athens had reestablished an
Athenian Confederacy, including many cities and islands in
the Aegean, and Spartan power was fading.
MACEDONIA: PHILIP AND ALEXANDER
During the fi rst two-thirds of the fourth century b.c.e. the
main powers in the Greek world were Athens, Th ebes, and
Sparta, which spent these years struggling for supremacy.
First, Th ebes and Athens united to resist Sparta. Later, Ath-
ens and Sparta united to resist Th ebes. In the 350s b.c.e. a war
broke out over control of the sanctuary at Delphi, the site of
a temple of Apollo. Th ebes took one side of this confl ict and
Athens and Sparta the other. Th is was called the Th ird Sacred
War, and it went on for four years without any resolution un-
til the Th ebans called for help from a new power in the Greek
World: Philip, king of the Macedonians.
Philip had become king of Macedonia in 359 b.c.e. and
spent the decade of the 350s unifying the small, semiautono-
mous principalities of northern Greece. He expanded Mace-
donian territory by seizing from Athens some territories in
the north, including Amphipolis, which had rich gold mines.
He also reformed the Macedonian military, making it a for-
midable fi ghting force. By 352 b.c.e. all the Greeks recognized
that Philip’s army would be decisive, and his entry into the
Th ird Sacred War was enough of a shock to bring about a
truce.
Philip settled that confl ict reasonably and became in-
creasingly involved in political aff airs among the cities of the
Greek mainland. In 348 b.c.e. he seized Olynthus, another
territory that the Athenians considered to be theirs, caus-
ing alarm in Athens and Th ebes. Th e Athenian orator De-
mosthenes (384–322 b.c.e.) gave a series of speeches to the
democratic assembly urging the city to oppose Philip with
all its power. In these speeches, the “Olynthiacs,” the orator
describes the relative strengths and weaknesses of Athens, a
democracy where decisions were made collectively, compar-
ing it with Macedonia, a military autocracy in which Philip
could move and strike where and when he saw fi t, with no
cumbersome process of deliberation.
In 338 b.c.e. Athens and Th ebes joined forces to oppose
Philip’s power. Th eir armies fought a battle at Chaeronea,
near Th ebes. Philip won a complete victory, with his 18-
year-old son Alexander leading a unit of cavalry. For the fi rst
time since the Bronze Age, if ever, a single military power
was dominant in Greece. Philip established the League of
Corinth, ostensibly a kind of United Nations to manage inter-
national aff airs among the cities of Greece, its charter being a
Treaty of Common Peace. In reality, however, this league was
the instrument of Philip’s will and the means by which Mace-
donia exerted authority over all the cities of the Greek main-
land. Philip’s fi rst plan was to expand his power and remove a
signifi cant threat by invading Asia and going to war with the
Persian Empire. As plans for this invasion were under way
in 336 b.c.e., Philip was assassinated, leaving rule over the
Macedonians and the Greeks to his son, Alexander.
Th e Greeks saw this as their opportunity to throw off
Macedonian rule, and once again Athens and Th ebes came
together to fi ght for their freedom. Seeing their opportunity
when Alexander took his army north to put down an uprising
of the Illyrians, the Greeks moved to march toward Macedo-
nia and bring an end to the Treaty of Common Peace and the
League of Corinth. Alexander proved as capable a leader as
his father. He moved south faster than anyone could have ex-
pected, defeated this rebellion, and destroyed the city of Th e-
bes. Th e next year, 334 b.c.e., Alexander led his Macedonian
army across the Hellespont into Asia to go to war with the
Persian king Darius III.
Alexander’s campaigns in Asia lasted from 334 until his
death in 323 b.c.e. Th ey mark the beginning of a period when
Macedonian Greeks ruled over much of the Greek-speaking
world east of Sicily and over much of the Near East. Aft er de-
feating Darius at Issus in 333 b.c.e., Alexander took control
of Egypt in 332 b.c.e. and then all of the Persian Empire be-
tween 331 and 324 b.c.e., having marched to the Punjab in
India, having sailed down the Indus River to the India Ocean,
and having marched across the deserts to the former Persian
capital of Susa.
Alexander seems to have sought to create a multicultural
empire. Upon returning from his march to India, he arranged
for the marriage of hundreds of his offi cers with Persian
brides and sought to unify his Macedonian forces with his
newly acquired Persian army. Th ese specifi c plans went un-
fulfi lled. Alexander died of a fever, leaving only an infant son,
born of a Bactrian woman named Roxana, and a group of ex-
perienced and ambitious Macedonian generals. According to
the historian Arrian, when asked on his deathbed to whom he
would leave his empire, Alexander replied, “To the strongest.”
In the decades that followed, Alexander’s goal for a mingling
of Greek and eastern cultures in a long-lasting Macedonian
dynasty was fulfi lled, piecemeal, by his successors, but not
without a great deal of intrigue and warfare.THE SUCCESSORS, ROME, AND AFTER
Alexander had left his general Antipater (ca. 397–ca. 319
b.c.e.) behind to rule over the Greek mainland. Th is Antipater
did with some eff ort, having to fi ght and win a war against
the Spartan king Agis III and having to deal with a certain
amount of Athenian intransigence. Upon news of Alexander’s
death, the Athenians once again made an eff ort for their free-
dom, launching a war northward against Antipater and his412 empires and dynasties: Greece