troops, under Attalus, had been sent across, to keep open the road for the great expedition, and had encamped on mount Ida.' Philip was thus enabled to commence his passage across the Hellespont whenever he pleased. But the close of his career was already at hand." He was assassinated in August, B. C. 336, by a certain Pausanias, at the instigation, it is said, of Olympias, one of Philip's several wives—and the mother of his famous son Alexander—whom he had repudiated to please a younger bride. "Philip was unquestionably an uncommon and extraordinary man, and the opinion of several among the ancients, that by the foundation of the Macedonian state he did something far greater than Alexander by the application of the powers he inherited, is quite correct. … When we regard him as the creator of his state, by uniting the most different nations, Macedonians and Greeks; … when we reflect what a man he must have been, from whom proceeded the impulse to train such great generals, … to whom Alexander, it must be observed, did not add one, for all Alexander's generals proceeded from the school of Philip, and there is not one whom Alexander did not inherit from Philip;—when we perceive the skill with which he gained over nations and states, … we cannot but acknowledge that he was an extraordinary man." _B. G. Niebuhr, Lectures on Ancient History, lectures 69 and 66 (volume 2)._ ALSO IN: _C. Thirlwall, History of Greece, chapters 43-46 (volumes 5-6)._ _T. Leland, History of the Life and Reign of Philip of Macedon, books 2-5._ GREECE: B. C. 351-348. The Olynthian War. Destruction of Olynthus by Philip of Macedonia.