This page has been proofread, but needs to be validated.
Alexander's Wars with the Thracians.
9

about twenty years of age, marched into Peloponnesus[1] as soon as he had secured the regal power. There he assembled all the Greeks who were within the limits of Peloponnesus,[2] and asked from them the supreme command of the expedition against the Persians, an office which they had already conferred upon Philip. He received the honour which he asked from all except the Lacedaemonians,[3] who replied that it was an hereditary custom of theirs, not to follow others but to lead them. The Athenians also attempted to bring about some political change; but they were so alarmed at the very approach of Alexander, that they conceded to him even more ample public honours than those which had been bestowed upon Philip.[4] He then returned into Macedonia and busied himself in preparing for the expedition into Asia. However, at the approach of spring (b.c. 335), he marched towards Thrace, into the lands of the Triballians and Illyrians,[5] because he ascertained that these nations were meditating a change of policy; and at the same time, as they were lying ton his frontier, he thought it inexpedient, when he was about to start on a campaign so far away from bis own land, to leave them behind him


  1. See Justin, xi. 2.
  2. "Arrian speaks as if this request had been addressed only to the Greeks within Peloponnesus; moreover he mentions no assembly at Corinth, which is noticed, though with some confusion, by Diodorus, Justin, and Plutarch. Cities out of Peloponnesus, as well as within it, must have been included; unless we suppose that the resolution of the Amphictyonic assembly, which had been previously passed, was held to comprehend all the extra-Peloponnesian cities, which seems not probable."—Grote.
  3. Justin (ix. 5) says: "Soli Lacedaemonii et legem et regem contempserunt." The king here referred to was Philip.
  4. See Justin, xi. 3; Aeschines, Contra Ctesiphontem, p. 564.
  5. The Triballians were a tribe inhabiting the part of Servia bordering on Bulgaria. The Illyrians inhabited the eastern coast of the Adriatic Sea, the districts now called North Albania, Bosnia, Dalmatia and Croatia.