Olynthus falls in 348 BCE, despite the Athenian help that had eventually been sent.

Many of the inhabitants of the city, their lands expropriated and distributed to Philip's followers, are sold into slavery.

Although Greek warfare has always permitted this theoretically, and the Greeks themselves occasionally have treated small cities with brutality, the treatment of the large city of Olynthus is, nevertheless, shocking to Greek sentiment.

In addition, there is no comfort for Athens from the events in its front yard; …

Rome concludes another treaty with Carthage in 348 BCE.

The Sacred War, which the Thessalians, Thebans, and others still are unable to finish for themselves, brings Philip back into Greece, when desultory warfare in 347 causes the Boeotians to call him in; in alarm, Phocis appeals to Athens and Sparta.

The Phocian commander Phalaecus, however, unexpectedly declines to allow the Athenians and Spartans to occupy Thermopylae.

Plato, in his Philebus, considers the place of pleasure in the good life.

In the Laws, his longest and last work—he dies in 348/347 BCE at the age of about eighty—Plato considers a model constitution for an ideal city.

It must seem to Athenians, with Amphipolis and Olynthus gone, that there is no immediate further point in fighting; Philip, moreover, has been putting out peace feelers for some time.

The Phocians surrender to Philip, who exacts an indemnity and receives their Amphictyonic votes.

Many individual Phocian troops, branded as temple robbers, have already fled (some of them in the late 340s will eventually join Timoleon in Sicily).

The cities of Phocis are physically destroyed and the remaining inhabitants distributed among villages.

It is doubtful whether Philip ever seriously intended any other solution to the war in its Phocian dimension.

Philip under the peace terms, gains control of northern and central Greece, including Thermopylae and …

…Delphi.

He is admitted to membership of the Delphic Amphictyony, an association of neighboring states.

The votes of the Thessalians and their clients give him a control of its council, which can be used on occasion for political and diplomatic ends.

Athens is forced in April 346 BCE to conclude the notorious Peace of Philocrates—notorious because of the attempts by various leading Athenian orator-politicians to saddle each other with responsibility for what is in fact inevitable.

Athens has reason to fear that Philip's next campaign in Thrace (346 BCE) might challenge its own control of the sea route to southern Russia, its main source for imported corn.

Significantly, however, it had been Philip, and not Athens, who had made the first overtures for peace, though all the military initiatives lay in his own hand.

His plans for the future, in Greece and farther afield, include Athens as a willing ally, not as a defeated enemy.

Demosthenes, partly to gain time to prepare for the long struggle he sees ahead, agrees to the peace and goes as one of the ambassadors to negotiate the treaty with Philip.

Philip, recognizing Demosthenes' eloquence as a threat to his plans, ignores him during the negotiations and instead addresses his fellow ambassador Aeschines.

The two men return from the embassy bitter foes, Demosthenes denouncing Aeschines and Aeschines assuring everyone of Philip's good intentions, seeking to reconcile the Athenians to Macedonian expansion into Greece.

In his oration On the Peace late in 346 Demosthenes, though condemning the terms of the treaty of Philocrates, argues that it must be honored.

Even before the peace with Athens is ratified, the Athenian publicist Isocrates had, in the letter To Philip, invited Philip to reconcile the four leading cities of Greece and to lead a united Greek alliance in a war of expansion against Persia.

The Getae, together with kindred tribes living in the Carpathian Mountains north of the Danubian Plain and in the Transylvanian Basin, have developed a distinct society and culture by the second half of the fourth century BCE.

Closely related to the Getae are the Dacians, who live south of the lower Danube (some historians even suggest that these are names applied to a single people by different observers or at different times).

Their combined culture is sometimes called Geto-Dacian.

An agricultural people, they work their rich mines of silver, iron, and gold.

They speak a Thracian dialect but are influenced culturally by the neighboring Scythians and by the Celtic invaders of the fourth century BCE.

They first appear in the Athenian slave market at this time.

The Middle East: 345–334 BCE

Persian Decline and the Rise of Alexander the Great

The era from 345 to 334 BCE marks the final years of Persian authority under Artaxerxes III Ochus and his successors, a period characterized by internal instability, palace intrigue, and diminishing imperial cohesion. Artaxerxes III attempts to reverse the gradual weakening of Persian dominance through harsh and often violent methods, including punitive campaigns against rebellious provinces such as Phoenicia and Egypt. In 343 BCE, after a fiercely contested military campaign, he successfully reconquers Egypt, reinstating Persian control after decades of independence.

Artaxerxes III's reign abruptly ends in 338 BCE when he is poisoned by his court eunuch and advisor, Bagoas, who subsequently installs Artaxerxes’s son, Arses, on the throne. However, Arses rules briefly, himself falling victim to assassination orchestrated by Bagoas two years later. In 336 BCE, Bagoas places Darius III Codomannus on the Persian throne. Contrary to Bagoas's expectations, Darius swiftly eliminates the manipulative eunuch, securing power for himself but inheriting a fragile and fractious empire.

This internal turmoil coincides with the rapid ascent of Macedonia under Philip II and, following Philip’s assassination, his son Alexander the Great. By 334 BCE, Alexander commences his historic invasion of Persian territory, crossing the Hellespont into Anatolia. The Persian Empire, weakened by internal conflicts and incapable of mounting an effective defense, faces an unprecedented existential threat as Alexander’s campaign signals the imminent end of centuries-long Persian dominance in the Near East.