In relating these words of Agesilaus
Xenophon, his biographer, exclaims, "Who else regarded it as a
misfortune to conquer when he was making war on peoples of his own
race?"
CONQUEST OF ASIA BY ALEXANDER
=Macedon.=--Sparta and Athens, exhausted by a century of wars, had
abandoned the contest against the king of Persia. A new people resumed
it and brought it to an end; these were the Macedonians. They were a
very rude people, crude, similar to the ancient Dorians, a people of
shepherds and soldiers. They lived far to the north of Greece in two
great valleys that opened to the sea. The Greeks had little regard for
them, rating them as half barbarians; but since the kings of Macedon
called themselves sons of Herakles they had been permitted to run
their horses in the races of the Olympian games. This gave them
standing as Greeks.
=Philip of Macedon.=--These kings ruling in the interior, remote from
the sea, had had but little part in the wars of the Greeks. But in 359
B.C. Philip ascended the throne of Macedon, a man young, active, bold,
and ambitious. Philip had three aims:
1.
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