These two years had been so employed by Philip as to advance prodigiously his power and ascendency. He had deprived Athens of her hold upon the Thermaic gulf, in which she now seems only to have retained the town of Methônê, instead of the series of ports round the gulf acquired for her by Timotheus.[501] He had conciliated the good-will of the Olynthians by his cession of Anthemus and Potidæa; the latter place, from its commanding situation on the isthmus of Pallenê, giving them the mastery of that peninsula,[502] and ensuring (what to Philip was of great importance) their enmity with Athens. He not only improved the maritime conveniences of Amphipolis, but also extended his acquisitions into the auriferous regions of Mount Pangæus eastward of the Strymon. He possessed himself of that productive country immediately facing the island of Thasos; where both Thasians and Athenians had once contended for the rights of mining, and from whence, apparently, both had extracted valuable produce. In the interior of this region he founded a new city called Philippi, enlarged from a previous town called Krenides, recently founded by the Thasians; and he took such effective measures for increasing the metallic works in the neighborhood, that they presently yielded to him a large revenue; according to Diodorus, not less than one thousand talents per annum.[503] He caused a new gold coin to be struck, bearing a name derived from his own. The fresh source of wealth thus opened was of the greatest moment to him, as furnishing means to meet the constantly increasing expense of his military force. He had full employment to keep his soldiers in training: for the nations of the interior—Illyrians, Pæonians, and Thracians—humbled but not subdued, rose again in arms, and tried again jointly to reclaim their independence. The army of Philip—under his general Parmenio, of whom we now hear for the first time—defeated them, and again reduced them to submission.[504] [501] Demosthenes, Philippic i. p. 41. s. 6 ... εἴχομέν ποτε ἡμεῖς Πύδναν καὶ Ποτίδαιαν καὶ Μεθώνην, καὶ ~πάντα τὸν τόπον τοῦτον οἰκεῖον κύκλῳ~, etc. [502] Demosthenes, Philipp. ii. p. 70. s. 22. [503] Diodor. xvi. 4-8; Harpokration v. Δάτον. Herodot. ix. 74. [504] Diodor. xvi. 22; Plutarch, Alexand. c. 3.