In the spring of 339, whether prompted by Thebes or of their own volition, the people of Amphissa, a town in nearby Locris, reported Athens to the Amphictyonic Council on grounds of sacrilege. This was because the work on the trophy had been done while Phocis had been illegally and impiously in control of Delphi and Apollo’s oracle. The point was correct but technical. Athens was threatened with a fine of fifty talents.
The orator Aeschines was a member of the Athenian delegation to the council and he brilliantly turned the tables on the Amphissans. It turned out that they had committed a far worse sacrilege, for they were cultivating sacred land in the plain below and had even put up buildings on it. If true, this was a serious offense. The claim was investigated and confirmed.
How are we to explain Aeschines’ inspired guess? The ancient sources do not say, but we may surmise that, over the years, adherence to rules had been lax; everyone knew this, but turned a blind eye.
In any case, nothing more was said about the complaint against Athens, and Amphissa was instructed to remove the buildings and quit the land. Doubtless hoping for support from Thebes (which never came), the delegates refused.
At an emergency meeting Philip was appointed commander of the Amphictyonic army with a view to dealing with the Amphissans. Although Aeschines had cleverly evaded the charge of sacrilege, it was at the very high price of allowing Philip to intervene once again in mainland Greek affairs.
What nobody knew at the time was that the king had finally given up on Athens and its Greek allies. He had offered the hand of friendship, he felt, and been spurned. The only alternative was war. The king understood that the sharpest weapons in a general’s armory were deception and surprise. He awaited his moment.
—
Few people were much troubled by the prospect of a new Sacred War and nothing much was done about it, largely because Philip was still recovering from his Thracian wound. But in the autumn of 339 he marched down into Greece, ostensibly to fulfill his commission from the Amphictyonic Council. But then, ignoring Amphissa, he suddenly turned east and captured the town of Elateia by surprise, a key point on the road to Thebes and Attica. The news, which came at night, stunned the Athenians. An emergency meeting of the ecclesia took place soon after dawn. Plutarch catches the atmosphere:
Nobody dared to mount the speakers’ platform, nobody knew what ought to be said, the assembly was dumbfounded and appeared completely at a loss.
The herald asked: “Who wishes to speak?” No one came forward. He repeated the question again and again to a silent assembly. Then Demosthenes stepped up to the platform and took charge of the situation. He announced a “struggle for freedom.” The ecclesia approved a proposal for an alliance with the Thebans.
Demosthenes headed a delegation to win over the old enemy. When they arrived in Thebes they found envoys from Philip already there. After an impassioned debate, the Thebans agreed to join forces with Athens against the Macedonians. This was despite the fact that they were in Philip’s debt for quashing Phocis. However, they knew they had little choice, for if he conquered Athens they would stand alone and be too weak to resist whatever he demanded. They could only safely be his friend if Athens was his enemy.
The Thebans drove a hard bargain. Athens was to pay two thirds of the costs of the war and to accept a Theban commander-in-chief of land forces. Athens was also to recognize Theban supremacy in Boeotia.
The new allies defended the passes that led into Boeotia and Attica, and winter passed without incident. The ancient historians are silent about this interval, but it appears that at the eleventh hour Philip was still anxious to avert war if he could and may have offered negotiations. If so, he was rebuffed. Demosthenes was awarded a second gold crown. When the summer of 338 came, Philip moved. He forced one of the defended passes, and the coalition retreated to a fallback position on the plain of Chaeronea, a town in Boeotia.
The Macedonians followed and at dawn on August 4, 338, battle commenced. The two armies were more or less equal in numbers, with 30,000 infantry on each side. Philip’s 2,000 cavalry were outnumbered by the coalition’s 3,800. But there was a real difference. The Macedonians were well trained and experienced; the citizen soldiers of Athens and Thebes had scarcely wielded a spear in anger in the previous two decades.
The opposing lines of battle stretched for about two miles between rising ground below the citadel of Chaeronea and a river skirted by marshland. Philip led his elite infantry, the hypaspists, on his right wing with a gentle incline behind him. His son Alexander, now eighteen years old but already a seasoned soldier, commanded the cavalry on the left.
The Athenian hoplites formed up against Philip; various Greek allies stood in the center and the Boeotians on the right. The Sacred Band were placed on the far edge next to the boggy ground.
Philip’s line was echeloned back at an angle from his position. His plan was for the troops under his direct command to make contact with the inexperienced Athenian phalanx. They would then slowly retire in good order up the slope behind them to their right, tempting the Athenians to follow.
This was a trap. The Greeks would almost insensibly shift across to fill the opening the Athenians left as they advanced. The Greek line would be stretched thin and eventually a gap would emerge through which the Macedonian cavalry would be able to gallop.
The trick worked. As Philip’s right wing pulled back at an angle towards Chaeronea, his left moved forward as if the line were rotating on a pivot. As the Athenians moved after Philip, the Greek line thinned out as predicted, except for the Sacred Band at the other end of the battlefield, by the river, which obeyed orders and did not move. As a result a space soon appeared to their left. Alexander saw his chance and thundered through it with the Macedonian horse. The Sacred Band were surrounded. They fought on and most of them died where they stood.
Meanwhile, the Athenians ran overenthusiastically after Philip’s hypaspists. Their commander shouted: “Let’s drive them back to Macedon!” As they scrambled up the slope they lost formation. Philip gave his men the order to countercharge. The stunned Athenians scattered. They were pursued into the foothills. One thousand men died and two thousand were captured.
The rest of them escaped, including Demosthenes. He was no general and had taken his place in the ranks of hoplites, but as the tide of battle swung towards the Macedonians, he took to his heels “in the most shameful fashion” (writes Plutarch). His cloak caught on a bramble bush behind him and he shouted in a panic: “Take me alive.” It was a cruel irony that the inscription on his shield read “Good luck.”
—
Two stories are told of Philip’s reaction to his victory. As they reflect aspects of his contradictory personality they could both be true. After the battle the king presided over a celebratory banquet at which he drank deep of unmixed wine. After the meal he roamed around the battlefield with some companions. They looked at the bodies of the dead and jeered at them. The king took a childish pleasure in repeating the preambles to the bills laid before the ecclesia on the Pnyx, beating time to the rhythm—“Demosthenes, son of Demosthenes, of Paeonia, proposes.”
An Athenian prisoner of war, a leading politician called Demades, reproved Philip, in a reference to two characters in the Iliad—the Mycenaean king who led the Greeks at Troy, and an ugly and abusive soldier with a foul tongue. He said: “Fortune has cast you as Agamemnon. Aren’t you ashamed to act the part of Thersites?” To his credit Philip sobered up instantly.
It must have been on the same occasion that the king came across the corpses of members of the Sacred Band and, perhaps recalling those whom he had known as a hostage in Thebes, he burst into tears. He said: “Perish any man who suspects that these men either did or suffered anything shameful.” They were then buried in a mass grave where they had fallen. Philip ordered the statue of a lion to be erected to mark the spot.