Page:History of Greece Vol X.djvu/73

OLYNTHIAN CONFEDERACY. 51 this enterprise at a time when the Illyrians were masters of the country so as to drive Amyntas to despair and flight, we maj- be sure that it must have cost them serious efforts, not without great danger if they failed. We may also be sure that the cities themselves must have been willing, not to say eager, coadjutors ; just as the islanders and Asiatic Greeks clung to Athens at the first formation of the confederacy of Delos. The Olynthians could have had no means of conquering even the less considerable Macedonian cities, much less Pella, by force and against the will of the inhabitants. How the Illyrians were compelled to retire, and by what steps the confederacy was got together, we are not permitted to know. Our information (unhappily very brief) comes from the Akanthian envoy Kleigenes, speaking at Sparta about ten years afterwards (B. c. 383), and describing in a few words the confederacy as it then stood. But there is one circumstance which this witness, himself hostile to Olynthus and coming to solicit Spartan aid against her, attests emphatically ; the equal, generous, and brotherly principles, upon which the Olynthians framed their scheme from the beginning. They did not present themselves as an imperial city enrolling a body of dependent allies, but invited each separate city to adopt common laws and reciprocal citizen- ship with Olynthus, with full liberty of intermarriage, commercial dealing, and landed proprietorship. That the Macedonian cities near the sea should welcome so liberal a proposition as this, com- ing from the most powerful of their Grecian neighbors, cannot at all surprise us ; especially at a time when they were exposed to the Illyrian invaders, and when Amyntas had fled the country. They had hitherto always been subjects ; * their cities had not TU>V kv M.a.Ke6ovia TroAewv. Kal 'A/ivvrav 6e pOVVTU TE fK TUV TTofauV, KCtl OGOV OVK ^KTTETTTUKOTa 7)6?} SK TTaarjf 'Mo.KE- floviac;. We know from Diodorus that Amyntas fled the country in despair, and ceded a large proportion at least of Lower Macedonia to the Olynthians. Accordingly, the straggle between the latter and Amyntas (here alluded to), must have taken place when he came hack and tried to resume his do minion. 1 Xen. Hellen. v, 2,12 raf 1% MaKsdoviof rro^eif eliev&eoovv uiti etc. ; compare v, 2, 38.