The Phocians, who still dominated Delphi and held Ther mopylae, now furnished a pretext to Philip as the champion of Pan-Hellenism and Apollo. The Phocian mercenaries at Ther mopylae were bought off and Philip crossed into central Greece. Here he made Thebes his ally and visited the Phocians with crush ing vengeance. The Pythian games of 346 were celebrated at the delivered Delphi under Philip's presidency. Pan-Hellenic enthusi asts already saw Philip as the destined captain-general of a na tional crusade against Persia (Isocrates, Philippics, about 345). And such a position Philip had determined to secure; the Mace donian agents continued to work throughout the Greek states and in the Peloponnesus Sparta soon found herself isolated. Euboea, too, submitted to Macedonian influence.
But more work had to be done in the Balkan highlands. In 344, or one of the following years, the Macedonian arms were carried across Epirus to the Adriatic and Thessaly was com pletely reorganized. In 342 Philip led a great expedition north "comparable to nothing in antiquity since Darius' famous march to Scythia." Meanwhile he continued to foster diplomatic rela tions with various Greek states, and, by conciliatory measures, to support the efforts of the pro-Macedonian party in Athens. But Demosthenes eventually carried the day, and Philip came more or less openly to blows with Athens over Diopeithes's be haviour in the Chersonese. Athens then supported the revolt of Philip's allies in Propontis, and struck a heavy blow at his pres tige when his sieges of Perinthus and Byzantium failed in 339. But before marching south he led another expedition across the Balkans into the country now called Bulgaria, and returned to Pella with much spoil but severely wounded in the thigh.
In 338 he once more crossed into central Greece. The pretext was the contumacy shown by the Locrian town Amphissa to the rulings of the Amphictyonic council. Philip's fortification of Elateia filled Athens with alarm. Thebes was induced to join Athens ; so were some of the minor Peloponnesian states, and the allies took the field against Philip. This opposition was crushed by the epoch-making battle of Chaeroneia, which left Greece at Philip's feet. Thebes was occupied by a Macedonian garrison ; Athens, which had expected a fight to the death, was treated generously. In the following year (337) Philip was in the Peloponnesus and held a congress of the Greek states at the isthmus (from which, however, Sparta held sullenly aloof). The states attending were organized into an Hellenic league, with a constituent council and a supreme judicial court (the Amphicty onic council), acknowledging the military command of Philip and sending contingents for the expedition against Persia that was next in his plans. Philip returned to Macedonia to complete his preparations; an advance force was sent into Asia in the spring of 336. Philip was murdered that year during the marriage festival of his daughter at Aegae, the old capital of Macedonia. He left, however, in the Macedonian army a splendid instru xnent which enabled his son within ten years to change the face of the world.
See the authorities under GREECE: History. A vivid and masterly sketch of Philip's personality and work is given in D. G. Hogarth's Philip and Alexander (1897). For economic policy, A. B. West in Numism. Chron. (1923) 169.