This speech had no practical effect. The rise of Thebes shortly after this date changed the balance of power, and on the whole did not improve conditions. Despairing of originating any joint action within Greece itself, Isocrates looked farther for a leader, and in or about 368 B.C. we find him writing to Dionysius of Syracuse, who at the time held an empire far more powerful than that of any State of Greece proper, and suggesting that he should come forward as the champion of the Greek national spirit.[208] In 356 B.C. Isocrates turned again towards Sparta, this time writing to Archidamus, who had recently succeeded his father Agesilaus in the kingship, and urging him to take steps which will ‘put an end to civil war in Greece, curb the insolence of the barbarians, and deprive them of part of their ill-gotten gains.’ Archidamus, if he could be as vigorous as his father and more unselfish, might well seem to be a suitable leader for the crusade on which Isocrates had set his heart. At this time Philip of Macedon, though he was beginning to attain notoriety, was probably regarded by the majority of Greeks as a pauper prince, sitting insecurely on a throne which he had usurped, and from which he might at any time be removed by rebellion or assassination. But in this year he obtained possession of the gold mines of Pangaeum, and it was soon realized that Macedon was to play a leading part in Greek politics. In 346 B.C. Isocrates addressed Philip as one capable of taking the lead, first in combining the Greek States into a union, and secondly, in leading them to conquer the barbarian.[209] The ten years of desultory hostilities between Philip and Athens had now been ended by the peace of Philocrates, and Isocrates, thinking that Amphipolis, for which they had been fighting, was an undesirable possession for either party, imagined and hoped that the peace might be made permanent. Though the _Panegyric_ and the addresses to Dionysius and Archidamus had failed, Isocrates hoped that an appeal to Philip might be more successful. ‘I decided,’ he writes, ‘to broach the subject to you, not as a special compliment, though I should be glad if my words could find favour with you, but from the following motive. I saw that all other men of distinction have to obey their cities and their laws, and may do nothing beyond what they are told; and moreover none of them are capable of dealing with the matter I now intend to discuss. ‘You alone have had given you by fortune a full authority to send embassies to whom you will, and receive them from where you choose, and to say whatever you think expedient. Besides, you possess wealth and power beyond any other Greek—the two things which are the most potent either to persuade or to compel: and you will find persuasion useful for the Greeks and compulsion for the barbarians.’[210] A summary of a few extracts will indicate the tenor of the speech.