The History of Greece Volume 6 (Paperback)

Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: northern or western regions of Thrace, and who had Chap. ' ' X1 V been his ally in his war with Athens, had, it seems, . now become hostile to him1: having perhaps been induced by a sense of their common interest to unite with Cersobleptes. Philip was thus led to carry the war into the heart of Thrace, where he is said to have defeated the barbarians in several engagements. But his views were not now confined to victories, ravages, and plunder. He meditated a permanent conquest, and for this purpose not only imposed a tribute of a tenth of the produce on the conquered territory, but also founded a number of new towns, or military co- lonies, in the interior.2 But such a situation was one in which few Greeks would have been tempted to settle, even by the offer of lands and houses: it sounded as emigration to the inland regions of Au- stralia would to a Frenchman; and it seems that he was driven to some extraordinary measures for peopling his new colonies. Demosthenes3 mentions three towns, Drongile, Kabyle, and Mastira, as among the wretched places which Philip had been taking and settling in Thrace. As to one of these, Kabyle or Kalybe, which stood on the river Taxus, and belonged to the Astian tribe, whose land stretched toward By- zantium, we are distinctly informed, that he planted a colony there which was peopled with the refuse of society.4 And such, we may infer from the nickname it derived from the character of its inhabitants (Pone- ropolis: Roguetown), must have been the case with another city built at the foot of Rhodope, which he himself honoured with the name of Philippopolis.5 If we connect these hints with Justin's rhetorical Phil. Eplst . 8. Diodnrus, u. s. iv To!s iirixatpots rinraa Kriffat if uiiymt ir6Ims. De Cherson. 44 ita! a vv f fm/ict Kai it...