Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and Son ... - Historia Antigua

CONSENSUS STRATEGIES UNDER PHILIP AND ALEXANDER 73
Athenians and Spartans betrayed Apollo. The Athenians did so by
forgetting that Apollo had been their forefather and the Spartans did
so by disowning the god after receiving their constitution from his
hands. 34 Theopompus’ statement was sharper and more articulated.
He had lived for a while at Macedonian court and felt that he had to
respond directly to respond to Demosthenes’ description of the sycophants
and thieves who surrounded Philip. According to the historian,
the Athenians, once the heralds of freedom, had gone over to the
other side, defending the sacrilegious against those who wanted to
punish the sacrilege; in the past Apollo had helped them to face many
wars, to found towns, and to establish their dominion over land and
sea, but now they had shamefully become the enemy of the god and
left to others the task of avenging his honor. 35 Theopompus’ reinterpretation
of events included the whole history of Athens. In his Philippic
History, he accused the Athenian leaders Chares and Charedimus,
sent to help the town of Olynthus, of being corrupt. 36 His description
of their mission deprived it of the anti-tyrannical aim that Demosthenes
had attributed to it in the Olynthiac Speeches. 37 Above all,
Theopompus tried to destroy the image of the glorious Athenian past,
undermining the credibility of its role in the Marathon battle, 38
remembering how Athens cheated its allies in the Second Athenian
Alliance, 39 and describing the city as a place full of liars and corrupt
people. 40
We can ascribe to Theopompus and Ephorus in particular the creation
of the vengeance theme with regard to the Third Sacred War to
favor Philip, but their entire school had offered its services to the
king since 346 B.C. In the same year Isocrates, master of the school,
wrote a speech for the king and two years later sent him a letter,
while the orator Python of Byzantium was given leadership of the
Macedonian embassy to Athens in 344 B.C. and to Thebes in 339 B.C. 41
Needing to fi nd an excuse for the terrible conditions imposed on the
Phocians after their defeat and to provide an answer to Demosthenes’
accusations, Ephorus and Theopompus based their defense not only
on a religious interpretation of Philip’s actions as vengeance in the
name of Apollo, but also on an attempt to deride the supposed glorious
past of the Athenians, accusing them of forgetting their progenitor
Apollo, supporting the sacrilegious Phocians, and acting like
the barbarians. To which barbarians do they refer? Even if Diodorus’
and Justin’s brief narratives do not say so specifi cally, the barbarian
who was most famous for his impiety in Greek history was Xerxes.
Herodotus mentions him as the one responsible for the destruction of
the Greek sanctuaries, including the Delphi temple, 42 the same temple
that was targeted by the sacrilegious Phocians.