Polybius and Macedonia

Abstract

For rather more than 150 years Macedonia dominated the history of the Mediterranean world; and for rather longer – in fact from the reign of Philip II to that of Perseus – the relations between Macedonia and the states of Greece proper gave rise to quite bitter and violent political controversy. The issues debated by Aeschines and Demosthenes during Philip II's rise to power are central in this conflict; but far from being resolved by Philip's victory, they continued to attract attention throughout the third century and well into the second, when the historian Polybius is a witness to the importance which the Macedonian question still held in the new context of the Roman advance to world domination. Confronted by the fall of Macedonia, Greeks inevitably pondered upon her rise to power; and commenting upon the final disaster at Pydna in 168, Polybius quotes with wonder the prophetic remarks uttered by Demetrius of Phalerum after the overthrow of the Persian empire by Alexander. ‘Can you imagine’, Demetrius had written in his Περὶ Τύχης ‘that if some god had warned the Persians or their king, or the Macedonians or their king, that in fifty years the very name of the Persians, who once were masters of the world, would have been lost, and that the Macedonians whose name was before scarcely known, would become masters of it, they would have believed it? Nevertheless, it is true that Fortune, whose influence on our life is incalculable, who displays her power by surprises, is even now, I think, showing all mankind, by her elevation of the Macedonians into the high prosperity once enjoyed by the Persians, that she has merely lent them these advantages until she may otherwise determine concerning them.’

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