Philip wished his wife to be his chief concubine rather than his consort. Olympias, a proud and passionate woman, chafed at her husband's marital infidelities, and had the will and courage to revolt and act for herself when Philip set her aside in 337 B.C. She cannot be acquitted of guilty knowledge of the murder of Philip which occurred a year later at the marriage arranged by him between her daughter and her brother. The act was timed to assure the accession of her son, who was its chief beneficiary. "My father," Alexander is reported to have said twelve years later to his mutinous Macedonian soldiers,[58] "found you nomadic and poor. Clad in sheepskins, you tended your meagre herds on the mountains, and had to fight grievously for them against the Illyrians, Triballi, and Thracians on your borders. He gave you cloaks to wear in place of hides, he led you down from the hills into the plains, he made you the match in battle of the barbarians who dwelt near you; so that you depended for your safety thenceforth, not on the inaccessibility of your country, but on your own valor. He taught you to live in cities; he appointed good laws and customs for your governance. He made you lords, instead of slaves and subjects of those barbarians by whom you and your possessions had long been harried. The greatest part of Thrace he annexed to Macedon. By seizing the most suitable points on the seacoast, he threw open your country to commerce. He gave you the chance to work your mines in safety. The Thessalians, before whom you had cowered, half dead with fright, he taught you to conquer, and by humbling the Phocians he made your road into Greece, hitherto narrow and difficult, broad and easy. To such a degree did he lower the Athenians and the Thebans, who had ever been ready to fall upon Macedon,--and herein had he my help,--that, instead of your paying tribute to Athens and taking orders from Thebes, it was to us in turn that they went for protection. Into the Peloponnesus he passed and set matters to rights there; and, being appointed commander-in-chief of united Greece in its projected war against Persia, he achieved this high distinction, not so much for himself as for the commonwealth of Macedonia."