of a European nation and a European empire must not be described more
fully here. What concerns us is the end of it all; for the end was the
arraying of that new nation and that new empire for a descent on Asia. A
year after Chaeronea Philip was named by the Congress of Corinth
Captain-General of all Greeks to wreak the secular vengeance of Hellas
on Persia.

How long he had consciously destined his fighting machine to an ultimate
invasion of Asia we do not know. The Athenians had explicitly stated to
the Great King in 341 that such was the Macedonian's ambition, and four
years earlier public suggestion of it had been made by the famous
orator, Isocrates, in an open letter written to Philip himself. Since
the last named was a man of long sight and sustained purpose, it is not
impossible that he had conceived such an ambition in youth and had been
cherishing it all along. While Philip was in Thebes as a young man, old
Agesilaus, who first of Greeks had conceived the idea of invading the
inland East, was still seeking a way to realize his oft-frustrated
project; and in the end he went off to Egypt to make a last effort after
Philip was already on the throne. The idea had certainly been long in
the air that any military power which might dominate Hellas would be
bound primarily by self-interest and secondarily by racial duty to turn
its arms against Asia. The Great King himself knew this as well as any
one. After the Athenian warning in 341, his satraps in the north-west of
Asia Minor were bidden assist Philip's enemies in every possible way;
and it was thanks in no small measure to their help, that the Byzantines
repulsed the Macedonians from their walls in 339.

Philip had already made friends of the princely house of Caria, and was
now at pains to secure a footing in north-west Asia Minor. He threw,
therefore, an advance column across the Dardanelles under his chief