Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/37

AMYNTAS AND ALEXANDER. 19 oonij rising the coast of the Thermaic gulf as far north as the mouth of the Haliakmon, and also some other territory on the same gulf from which the Bottiaeans had been-expelled; but not comprising the coast between the mouths of the Axius and the Haliakmon, nor even Pella, the subsequent capital, which were still in the hands of the Bottiaeans at the period when Xerxes passed through. 1 He possessed also Anthemus, a town and ter- ritory in the peninsula of Chalkidike, and some parts of Mygdo- nia, the territory east of the mouth of the Axius ; but how much, we do not know. We shall find the Macedonians hereafter ex- tending their dominion still farther, during the period between the Persian and Peloponnesian war. We hear of king Amyntas in friendly connection with the Peisistratid princes at Athens, whose dominion was in part sus- tained by mercenaries from the Strymon, and this amicable sentiment was continued between his son Alexander and the emancipated Athenians. 2 It is only in the reigns of these two princes that Macedonia begins to be implicated in Grecian affairs : the regal dynasty had become so completely Macedonized, and had so far renounced its Hellenic brotherhood, that the claim of Alexander to run at the Olympic games was contested by his competitors, and he was called upon to prove his lineage before the Hellanodika3. 1 Herodot. vii, 123. Herodotus recognizes both Bottiteans between the Axius and the Haliakmon, and Bottiseans at Olynthus, whom the Mace- donians had expelled from the Thermaic gulf, at the time when Xerxes passed (viii, 127). These two statements seem to me compatible, and both admissible : the former Bottiseans were expelled by the Macedonians subse- quently, anterior to the Peloponnesian war. My view of these facts, therefore, differs somewhat from that of O. Mul ler (Macedonians, sect. 16). 1 Herodot. i, 59 , v, 94 ; viii, 136.