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The Peace of Philocrates (346 ) ended the ten
year long War of Amphipolis between Athens and Macedon, and helped establish
Philip II of Macedon as a power in central and southern Greece. For the
previous ten years two parallel wars had dominated Greece. In central Greece
the Third Sacred War involved Phocis, Athens and Sparta on one side and Thebes,
Boeotia and Thessaly on the other, and saw armies campaigning in Boeotia,
Phocis and Thessaly. Further north Macedon and Athens had officially been at
war since Philip attacked and captured Amphipolis, also claimed by Athens. The
war had seen Athens form alliances with the Chalcidice League and various
Thracian kings, but without achieving anything. Battles of the Third Sacred War
(356-346 ) Battles of the Third Sacred War (356-346 ) The Sacred War and the
War for Amphipolis both ended in 346 , after some complex negotiations. Philip
first sent out peace feelers in the summer of 347. After some careful
investigations the Athenian politician Philocrates proposed that Philip should
be invited to send peace envoys. This first prospect of peace quickly passed,
and instead the Athenians sent out envoys to try and arrange an anti-Macedonian
alliance. These efforts failed. Philip appears to have been motivated by a
desire to create a stable settlement in Greece and an alliance with Athens that
would allow him to concentrate on a campaign against the Persians in Asia
Minor. Meanwhile in Phocis the existing leader Phalaecus, had been deposed, and
his successors offered to give Athens and Sparta the key fortresses that
defended Thermopylae. The Athenians sent one expedition to the Chersonese to
work with Cersobleptes, and prepared to send another to occupy Thermopylae. At
the end of 347 the Athenians made another attempt to form an anti-Macedonian
alliance, although this time they also included the possibility of a collective
peace. They also asked Philip if he would release the prisoners captured at
Olynthus. Early in 346 news reached Athens that Phalaecus had been restored as
leader at Phocis, and that Philip was willing to release the captives in return
for peace. This convinced the Athenians to open peace negotiations, and ten
envoys (including Demosthenes) were sent to Pella to meet with Philip. Philip
offered fairly generous terms. He offered not to attack Athens's allies in the
Chersonese during the peace negotiations, return the prisoners from Olynthus
without a ransom, help the Athenians regain their position on Euboea, and
repopulate Thespiae and Plataea (both destroyed by Thebes). In return Philip
was to be free to deal with Phocis. In mid March the Athenian envoys left Pella
to return home. Philip in turn moved east, and defeated Cersobleptes in eastern
Thrace. In April the negotiations moved to Athens, where Philip's envoys met
the Athenian assembly. The Athenians debated two motions - one to wait until
the envoys dispatched at the end of 347 had returned, the other to demand a
Common Peace, open to all Greeks. Philip's senior envoy, Antipater, made it
clear that this wasn't acceptable. Athens was now faced with simple choice -
make peace on Philip's terms, or fight on almost alone. She decided to make
peace, and even excluded Phocis and Cersobleptes from the peace treaty. Battles
and Sieges of Philip II of Macedon Battles and Sieges of Philip II of Macedon,
358-338 The Athenians now sent the same ten ambassadors back to Pella, where
they had to wait for Philip to return from Thrace. Philip refused to let them
go home without him, and instead made them accompany him as he marched south.
Philip didn’t formally agree to the treaty until they had reached Pherae.
By the time he was approaching Thermopylae it was too late for anyone to stop
him. Demosthenes now broke from the other Athenian envoys and managed to get
the Assembly to refuse Philip's call to supply troops for a possible clash with
Thebes. Philip chose to abandon any plans for a military clash, and instead
went for the peaceful route. Phaleacus, the Phocian leader, agreed to surrender
Thermopylae to Philip and went into exile. With their army gone, the Phocians
had now choice other than to surrender. Philip didn’t want to punish them
too harshly, and in particular wanted to keep them as a counter to Thebes. The
Phocians did have to repay the money taken from Delphi, dismantle their towns
and move back into villages, and lost their position on the Delphic
Amphictyony, (taken by Philip). The peace settlement ended the Third Sacred War
and the War for Amphipolis, but it also alienated Athens and Thebes. The
Athenians felt that their allies in Phocis had been punished too harshly, and
that their interests had not been served well by the peace treaty (few of the
promised benefits had been delivered). Thebes, which had been Philip's ally in
the Sacred War, no longer trusted Philip and began to suspect that he posed a
threat to their city, and was also angry that Phocis hadn't been punished more
severely. After settling the two wars, Philip left a Thessalian garrison to
watch Thermopylae, giving him easy access to central Greece. He also began to
hint that his main aim was an expedition into Asia Minor The peace in Greece
didn't last too long. Demosthenes kept agitating against Philip, and Athens was
one of a number of allies of Byzantium and Perinthus when they came under siege
in the early 330s. This fight was soon overshadowed by the Fourth Sacred War or
Amphissean War (339-338 ), which saw Philip invade central Greece to punish
Amphissa for sacrilege against the Delphic Oracle, but expanded into a wider
war when Athens finally managed to gather an alliance against him. The war was
ended by the crushing Macedonian victory at Chaeronea (August 338 ), which
established Philip II as the dominant power in all of Greece.l
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