Affairs of GREECE, during the Third Period of the Sacred War, when ATHENS and MACEDONIA became principal Parties

SECTION I

Chronology of the Times. Naval Successes of Macedonia against Athens; Opening for Negotiation alarming to the War-party at Athens; Philip's Popularity alarming: Measures of the Warparty: Olynthus gained from the Macedonian to the Athenian Alliance; Embassy of Æschines to Peloponnesus; Philippics of Demosthenes

The imperfection of anticnt chronology makes continual difficulty for the investigator of antient history. For supplying the deficiencies, and correcting the errors, of Diodorus and the Arundel Marbles, which alone offer any extent of chronological clue, it behoves him to seek assistance wherever it may be found; and, for the times with which we are now ingaged, a very valuable subsidiary remains, in the remarks of Dionysius of Halicarnassus upon the orations of Demosthenes. It is therefore very satisfactory to find these confirming Diodorus, so far as to show that his chronology does not, probably, err, for these times, more than for those for which we have opportunity to compare it with the higher authorities of Thucydides and Xenophon. The beginning of the Olympian year, about midsummer, long after the beginning of the common season for the action of Grecian armies, would be likely often to make confusion of two military seasons, for writers who did not, with the accuracy of Thucydides, divide the year into summer and winter, the season of military action, and the season of military rest; especially for compilers like Diodorus, unversed in either political or military business, and writing not till some centuries after the times in question.