This kingdom had acquired considerable power even before the outbreak of the Persian war; after that war, during which Amyntas had been obliged to submit, affairs were for a time stagnating; Perdiccas at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war was but a very contemptible enemy of the Athenians. After the Peloponnesian war, too, Macedonia was so powerless and so much inferior to Olynthus, that this city was enabled to take from it all the country about the Thermaic gulf. Amyntas, the father of Philip, was pressed extremely hard by the Illyrians, and was on the point of giving up his country altogether: he implored the assistance of the Thebans, and sent them his son as a hostage. These circumstances render it all the more wonderful, that Philip raised his kingdom in so extraordinary a manner: a greater contrast can hardly exist. Terrible as the history of Philip is to every friend of Greece, it must nevertheless be owned that he was an extraordinary man. In the very first year of his reign he laid the foundation of the greatness of a state which was almost annihilated. Although only twenty-four years old, he ascended the throne with mature thoughts, and immediately set about carrying them into effect, not scrupulous as to what means were most desirable, but only thinking how he could make the best use of those at his command. And he did this with uncommon surety and adroitness. He was quite aware that he lacked the means of overcoming the Greek tactic by a higher one, as the Romans did; he therefore endeavoured to overpower them with greater masses, and in this he was successful. He did not, however, confine himself to this course, but, like the Italian and Spanish courts of the sixteenth century, became powerful by means of cunning, intrigues, faithlessness and bribery. His plans, though favoured by the circumstances of the time, would have been checked by great and towering difficulties, if he had not carried them out by infamous means; he could not have destroyed Olynthus, to mention one example, had he not deceived the Olynthians and hired traitors in the place. At Philip’s death, Macedonia was already a compact empire; its boundaries had been extended into Thrace as far as Perinthus, and the Greek coast and the Greek towns belonged to it. The Odrysian princes maintained themselves in the mountains of the interior, in the neighbourhood of Adrianople. Thessaly had chosen Philip as its protector, and the towns of eastern Epirus, Ambracia and Amphilochia, had Macedonian garrisons. Every one knows in what manner Alexander extended this empire. After his death, a new Macedonian kingdom arose under the dynasty of Antipater, which, however, no longer embraced Thrace, for that country then belonged to the dynasty of Lysimachus. We know nothing about the boundaries of Macedonia and Thrace at that time; it may have been the Strymon or the Nestus; we have nothing but the scanty information in Diodorus. Afterwards Lysimachus united the two states,