But the dominant interest of Chæronea is the battle which, in 338 B. C., was lost by the forces of Greece united against Philip of Macedon. No single account of the terrible defeat has been handed down by dramatist or historian, as Æschylus and Herodotus immortalized the victories of Salamis and Marathon, and only general facts in the struggle are known to us from lesser writers. Before the march to Chæronea Demosthenes had risen in the Assembly, at a terrified meeting in the cold and hopeless dawn, and persuaded the Athenians to make a hasty alliance with Thebes against the encroachments of Philip. In the battle the Athenians held the left wing while the right, the post of honour, was given to the famous Sacred Band of the Thebans. Between them were gathered the other allies. Against the Thebans at the crucial moment Philip turned his cavalry under the command of the young Alexander. As the struggle became hopeless the Athenians retreated, but the members of the Sacred Band fought until they fell, raising one last memorial to their great founder, Epaminondas, and offering one last atonement for the cowardice of Thebes in the Persian wars. The victory of Macedon was not so much wrested from the Greek arms as it was due to ineradicable defects in the Greek political character. It was characteristic of all Greek history that the allies should have formed no united and harmonious army under one fully empowered leader. The intense individualism which made Greece supreme in the arts and in science and philosophy left her at the mercy of peoples able to subordinate single wills to a national purpose. In the presence of the architecture, sculpture, and literature of the Greeks it is impossible to deplore their unthwarted intellectual freedom, their keen sensibilities, their genius for personal development. But at Chæronea it is easy to see not only the disintegration, but also the demoralization of a national life which lacked the heroic sacrifice of self and the persistence of a common controlling ideal as much as it lacked administrative genius and political wisdom.