The prudent lenity exhibited by Philip towards the Athenian prisoners, combined with his evacuation of Amphipolis, produced the most favorable effect upon the temper of the Athenian public, and disposed them to accept his pacific offers. Peace was accordingly concluded. Philip renounced all claim to Amphipolis, acknowledging that town as a possession rightfully belonging to Athens.[445] By such renunciation he really abandoned no rightful possession; for Amphipolis had never belonged to the Macedonian kings; nor had any Macedonian soldiers ever entered it until three or four years before, when the citizens had invoked aid from Perdikkas to share in the defence against Athens. But the Athenians appeared to have gained the chief prize for which they had been so long struggling. They congratulated themselves in the hope, probably set forth with confidence by the speakers who supported the peace, that the Amphipolitans alone would never think of resisting the acknowledged claims of Athens. [445] Diodor. xvi. 4. Philip was thus relieved from enemies on the coast, and had his hands free to deal with the Illyrians and Pæonians of the interior. He marched into the territory of the Pæonians (seemingly along the upper course of the river Axius), whom he found weakened by the recent death of their king Agis. He defeated their troops, and reduced them to submit to Macedonian supremacy. From thence he proceeded to attack the Illyrians—a more serious and formidable undertaking. The names _Illyrians_, _Pæonians_, _Thracians_, etc., did not designate any united national masses, but were applied to a great number of kindred tribes or clans, each distinct, separately governed, and having its particular name and customs. The Illyrian and Pæonian tribes occupied a wide space of territory to the north and north-west of Macedonia, over the modern Bosnia nearly to the Julian Alps and the river Save. But during the middle of the fourth century before Christ, it seems that a large immigration of Gallic tribes from the westward was taking place, invading the territory of the more northerly Illyrians and Pæonians, circumscribing their occupancy and security, and driving them farther southward; sometimes impelling them to find subsistence and plunder by invasions of Macedonia or by maritime piracies against Grecian commerce in the Adriatic.[446] The Illyrians had become more dangerous neighbors to Macedonia than they were in the time of Thucydides; and it seems that a recent coalition of their warriors, for purposes of invasion and plunder, was now in the zenith of its force. It was under a chief named Bardylis, who had raised himself to command from the humble occupation of a charcoal burner; a man renowned for his bravery, but yet more renowned for dealings rigidly just towards his soldiers, especially in the distribution of plunder.[447] Bardylis and his Illyrians had possessed themselves of a considerable portion of Western Macedonia