789 



PHILIP V. (OF MACEDON). 



PHILIP II. (OF SPAIN). 



790 



Philip seemed to approach its fulfilment. After his orators had Bet 

 forth the injuries which Persia had continually inflicted upon Greece, 

 it was unanimously resolved in the assembly that a national war 

 should be declared against the Persian empire, and that the Macedo- 

 nian king should be appointed commander-in-chief, with power to 

 apportion the contingent of each Grecian state. But when he was 

 making the most active preparations for the great expedition which he 

 meditated, and which his son was destined to accomplish, his days 

 were cut abort by the hand of an assassin. While celebrating the 

 nuptials of his daughter Cleopatra with the king of Epirus, he was 

 stabbed by a young Macedonian of his own body-guard, Pausanias, 

 whose motive for the deed, as he was himself put to death on the spot, 

 could not be ascertained, but has been most probably ascribed to 

 personal revenge, on the king's refusal to grant him redress for an 

 intolerable insult which he had received from the queen's uncle. 



Thm fell Philip (B.C. 336), at the early age of forty-seven years, 

 and in full vigour of life and intellect, at the moment when he seemed 

 to ba entering on the meridian splendour of hi<i career of glory. 



The character of Philip of Macedon has often been sketched, like 

 too many other historical poi traits, in the spirit of party. Too favour- 

 ably estimated by the opponents of democracy, the ardent advocates 

 of republican freedom have not unnaturally been led to regard the 

 Macedonian king with strong prejudice as the exemplar of monar- 

 chical tyranny. Of all the princes of antiquity, however, it would be 

 difficult to name one worthy of comparison with Philip in the fairer 

 features of his character. His government of his own kingdom must 

 be judged, by the silence of his opponents, to have been mild, just, 

 and popular. Personally kind to his enemies, he was to a singular 

 degree free from that cruelty which was the common reproach of the 

 Greeks of his age : humane, generous, and magnanimous, he often 

 showed himself capable of forgiving injuries, of sparing the vanquished, 

 nnd of using success with moderation. It was indeed his boast and 

 his truest glory, that he conquered more by mercy and conciliation 

 after victory than by mere force of arms. His splendid abilities were 

 equally conspicuous as a statesman and a general ; and his intellectual 

 tastes for literature and philosophy, for the drama and the arts, were 

 alike refined and passionate. He made his court therefore no less the 

 seat of eloquence and mental cultivation than it was the school of 

 consummate political science. Yet he was aa insatiable in his ambi- 

 tious schemes as he was unscrupulous in the means which he employed 

 to advance them : he hesitated as little as the worst politicians at 

 corruption and perfidy. The vicious intemperance of his private life 

 will not bear any comment ; but big vices, like his accomplishments, 

 were those of the Greeks, and of the state of society which produced 

 them : his virtues were peculiar to himself, and superior to his times. 



Coin of Philip II. 

 BrltUh Museum. Actual size, 



PHILIP V., tho only other of the Macedonian kings of that name 

 whose life and reign merit some attention, ascended the throne (B.C. 

 220) at the ago of 17, on the death of his uncle Antigonus Doson. He 

 was the grandson of Antigonus Gonnatns, and therefore lineally 

 descended from the first Antigonus, one of the generals of Alexander 

 the Great, whose family, in the vicissitudes which succeeded the dis- 

 memberment of that conqueror's empire, had finally obtained the 

 crown of Macedon and a general ascendancy over the affairs of Greece. 

 Philip was an able prince, whose character, both in its political energies 

 and personal vices, was not without some points of resemblance to 

 that of his greater namesake and predecessor on the Macedonian 

 throne. At the commencement of his reign, the struggle between the 

 /Ktolian and Achaean leagues, in which the latter people had been 

 worste I, caused them to call in bis aid ; and in the war which 

 followed, and in which he was placed at the head of the Achaean con- 

 federation, his activity and military skill were much distinguished. 

 His successes loon disposed the vKtolians to peace, which he as readily 

 granted them, in order that he might direct his sole attention to Italy, 

 where the disasters of the Romans in the second Punic War inspired 

 him with the hope that, by throwing his weight into the Carthaginian 

 scale, he might finally acquire the preponderance of power for himself. 

 With this view, after the battle of Cannse (B.O. 216), he formed with 

 Hannibal an alliance offensive and defensive, which he prosecuted 

 with little vigour, but which ultimately proved his own ruin ; for the 

 Romans, after the great crisis of their fato was over in Italy, no sooner 

 began to prevail in the struggle with Hannibal, than they determined 

 to take vengeance upon Philip for his aggression. After some inter- 

 vals of indecisive hostility and hollow pacification, during which they 

 found means to deprive him of most of his allies in Greece, they 

 declared war anew against him on various pretexts ; and at length he 

 nuteined from tho consul T. Quintua Flamininus, at Cynoscephaho, in 

 Thtnaly (B.O. 197), a defeat BO decisive as for ever to break tho Mace- 



donian power. Philip however, after this calamity, obtained peace on 

 terms less severe than might have been anticipated : but his proud 

 and restless spirit could ill brook the subjection to which he was 

 reduced; and the remaining years of his life were passed in covert 

 preparations for a new war with Home, which he saw to bo inevitable. 

 He died (B.O. 179) just before the last crisis in the fortunes of 

 Macedon, leaving his unworthy son Perseus to abide the strugglo 

 which was to bereave him of bis crown and liberty. 



PHILIP, ST., was the first disciple of Jesus Christ, and one of the 

 twelve apostles. He was a native of Bethsaida, a town near the sea 

 of Tiberias. After his call to the apostleship not much is recorded of 

 him in the New Testament. He has sometimes been confounded 

 with Philip the Deacon, mentioned in the Acts of the Apostles ; but 

 a little examination will plainly show that they were quite different 

 persons. 



Nicephorus Callisti tells us that in the distribution of regions made 

 by the Apostles for their respective spheres of labour, St. Philip had 

 Syria nud Upper Asia assigned to him, with St. Bartholomew ; and 

 that having there made numerous converts, he came into Hierapolis 

 in Phrygia, where he succeeded in bringing many of the inhabitants 

 from gross idolatry to the belief and practice of Christianity, on which 

 account he was at length seized by the authorities, imprisoned, and 

 scourged, and then martyred by being hanged upon a pillar, but in 

 what year is not stated. 



The Gnostics attributed a book to St. Philip, which they called his 

 Gospel; but no other sect ever pretended that this apostle left any 

 writings. 



The feast of St. Philip is observed by the Eastern churches 

 November 14th, but by the Western on the 1st of May. 



PHILIP was the name of five Spanish sovereigns, four of whom 

 were of the house of Austria, and one of the Bourbon family. 



PHILIP I., King of Castile, surnamed the Handsome, was the sou 

 of Maximilian I., emperor of Germany, by Mary of Burgundy, in right 

 of whom he inherited and transmitted to his posterity of the house 

 of Austria the seventeen provinces of the Netherlands. In the year 

 1496 he married Joanna, or Jane, eldest daughter of Ferdinand the 

 Catholic and Isabella, sovereigns of Aragon and Castile ; and in 1504, 

 on the death of Isabella, who bequeathed the kingdom of Castile to 

 her daughter Jane, Philip, as well as his consort, assumed the regal 

 title. He was crowned at Burgos with her ; and in consequence of 

 her mental weakness, exercised all the functions of government during 

 the short remainder of his life, which closed in the following year, at 

 the early age of twenty-eight. 



His queen Jane survived him for fifty years, in a state between 

 insanity and fatuity ; and her malady is said to have been much aggra- 

 vated by grief at his death, though he had never loved her. She 

 traversed her kingdom, carrying his dead body with her, and causing 

 it to be uncovered at times that she might behold it, until she was at 

 last persuaded to permit its removal and interment. She had by 

 Philip, besides daughters, two sons, both in the sequel emperors of 

 Germany, as Charles V. and Ferdinand I., the elder of whom, Charles, 

 on the death of his grandfather Ferdinand the Catholic, finally 

 re-united the crowns of Castile and Aragon. But such was the attach- 

 ment of the nation to their insane queen, that throughout her long 

 life she was always recognised as sovereign of Spain in conjunction 

 with her son; and their names were mentioned together in every 

 formal act of government. 



PHILIP II., King of Spain, the only legitimate son of the Emperor 

 Charles V. by Isabella of Portugal, was born on tho 21st of May 1527, 

 and ascended the Spanish throne on hia father's abdication in January 

 1558, having in the preceding year entered on the government of the 

 Netherlands, which Charles had in the same manner resigned to him. 

 His inheritance also included the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, Milan 

 with other Italian provinces, and the empire of the New World ; and 

 it was a true and expressive phrase for the extent of his power, that 

 "the sun never set upon his dominions." The revenues which he 

 drew from the American mines and his European realms far exceeded 

 those of any prince of his times, and are declared to have amounted 

 to 25,000,000 of ducats yearly. His navy was more numerous than 

 that of any other power ; and his veteran armies were composed of 

 the best troops, led by the ablest generals of the age. 



As tho reign of Philip II., which fills a long and important period 

 in European history, received its dark colouring from his personal 

 qualities, a slight preliminary sketch of his private character will best 

 illustrate the features of his policy and the events which it produced. 

 He was naturally of a stern and morose temperament, and as he had 

 also been deeply imbued from his youth with the sternest Konianist 

 doctrines, the very sincerity of hia belief acting upon a cold heart, a 

 gloomy temper, and a narrow mind, was sufficient to render him 

 obstinately bigoted and inexorably cruel. In temporal affairs, the 

 despotic principles in which he had been brought up had filled him 

 with extravagant ideas of regal authority ; and his father's example 

 had taught him to aspire to universal monarchy. With a superstitious 

 creed he therefore mingled the most unbounded schemes of worldly 

 ambition ; and perhaps conscientiously believing that with his own 

 projects of dominion he was promoting at tho same time the glory of 

 God, he pursued without remorse tho most inhuman course of religious 

 persecution and civil tyranny. 



