CENTRAL GREECE. 197 of Dionysius. The mournful letters written by Plato after the death of Dion contrast strikingly with the enviable end of Timo leon, and with the grateful inscription of the Syracusans on hia tomb. CHAPTER LXXXVI. CENTRAL GREECE: THE ACCESSION OF PHILIP OF MACEDON TO THE BIRTH OF ALEXANDER. 359-356 B. C. MY last preceding chapters have followed the history of the Sicilian Greeks through long years of despotism, suffering, and impoverishment, into a period of renovated freedom and compara- tive happiness, accomplished under the beneficent auspices of Ti- moleon, between 344-336 B. c. It will now be proper to resume the thread of events in Central Greece, at the point where they were left at the close of the preceding volume the accession of Philip of Macedon in 360-359 B. c. The death of Philip took place in 336 B. c. ; and the closing years of his life will bring be- fore us the last struggles of full Hellenic freedom ; a result stand- ing in mournful contrast with the achievements of the contempo rary liberator Timoleon in Sicily. No such struggles could have appeared within the limits of pos- sibility, even to the most far-sighted politician either of Greece ot of Macedon at the time when Philip mounted the throne. Among the hopes and fears of most Grecian cities, Macedonia then passed wholly unnoticed ; in Athens, Olynthus, Thasus, Thes- saly, and a few others, it formed an item not without moment, yet by no means of first-rate magnitude. The Hellenic world was now in a state different from anything which had been seen since the repulse of Xerxes in 480-479 B. c. The defeat and degradation of Sparta had set free the inland etates from the only presiding city whom they hal ever learned tc look up to. Her imperial ascendency, long possessed and griev- ously abused, had been put down by the successes of Epaminon- 17*
