Allowance made for this notably faultfinding and puritanical writer, Philip’s character did contain some real ambiguities, extending into his domestic life. His “political marriages” were mostly opportune symbols of goodwill toward princes or groups worth conciliating, but his last marriage, in 338, to the Macedonian Cleopatra, led to a final break with Olympias, his queen, who left the country accompanied by the crown prince Alexander. Though Olympias was unpopular at court and Cleopatra’s connections were powerful and important, it was not “politic” to put the succession in jeopardy. Philip showed that he had never intended this result by taking the trouble to be reconciled with Alexander. The tradition that makes him infatuated with Cleopatra is probably right.
From that point on the Persian army started to collapse and the Persian king fled, with Alexander in hot pursuit. In northern Iraq near present-day Erbil, Alexander faced as many as 1 million troops, according to Arrian (modern scholars’ estimates vary but put the total closer to 100,000 against roughly 50,000 soldiers for Alexander). Scythian horsemen from the Persian Empire’s northern borders faced Alexander, as did “Indian” troops (as the ancient writers called them) who were probably from modern-day Pakistan. “One courtier after another incited Darius, declaring that he would trample down the Macedonian army with his cavalry,” Arrian wrote.
Archaeologists began to explore the ancient kingdom of Macedonia in the late 19th century while the region was under the rule of the Ottoman Empire. He quickly harnessed the military forces of the Hellenic League, assembling an army of more than 43,000 infantry and 5,500 cavalry. Phillip II dreamed of conquering the Persian Empire—the world’s largest at the time.
Plutarch explained in “The Life of Alexander the Great” that he made an alliance with a local ruler named Taxiles, who agreed to allow Alexander to use his city, Taxila, as a base of operations. He also agreed to give Alexander all the supplies he needed — which was very useful given Alexander’s long supply lines. At some point during Alexander’s campaign in central Asia, Parmenio’s son, Philotas, allegedly failed to report a plot against Alexander’s life. The king, incensed, decided to kill not only Philotas and the other men deemed conspirators, but also Parmenio, even though he apparently had nothing to do with the alleged plot.
- Alexander wanted to press on and attempt to conquer all of India, but his war-weary soldiers refused, and his officers convinced him to return to Persia.
- From that point on the Persian army started to collapse and the Persian king fled, with Alexander in hot pursuit.
- However, his assassination by a royal bodyguard, Pausanias of Orestis, led to the immediate succession of his son Alexander, who would go on to invade the Achaemenid Empire in his father’s stead.
- A Roman army forced him to fight at Pydna (in southern Macedonia), where he was defeated by Lucius Aemilius Paullus.
- Though Alexander the Great died before realizing his dream of uniting a new realm, his influence on Greek and Asian culture was so profound that it inspired a new historical epoch—the Hellenistic Period.
- With the use of skillful diplomacy, Philip II was able to make peace with the Illyrians, Thracians, Paeonians, and Athenians who threatened his borders.
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If so, he fatally misjudged the amount of harm that could be done by marrying her. In Greece (outside Thessaly), Philip could have had no illusions about his own unpopularity, except among those of the well-to-do who were attracted by his court and his patronage; some cities also (especially the neighbours of Sparta) were glad to lean on Macedonia for support against an ancient enemy. So Isocrates had advised him eight years before; but on the details of the ways and means he had no advice to offer. Philip himself organized the Greeks now to keep the peace with him and with each other and to support him in the Persian war overseas. In the constitutional details of his settlement of Greece he may well have had the help of Aristotle, free from his recent duties as tutor of the young Alexander.
The 10-year “war for Amphipolis” with Athens showed that the Athenians, with all their naval power, were quite unable to damage the continental and military power of Macedonia or even to save their own allies from Philip’s attacks. And in the south a Thessaly divided against itself gave him an entry into Greece. These same 10 years saw central Greece immersed in the Sacred War to liberate Delphi from its occupation by the Phocians, enabling Philip to intervene as the ally of Thebes and the Thessalian League of city states. His only great defeat in the field came in Thessaly in 353, owing (it seems) to overconfidence and failure of reconnaissance.
In 332 B.C., after Gaza was taken by siege, Alexander entered Egypt, a country that had experienced on-and-off periods of Persian rule for two centuries. On its northern coast, he founded Alexandria, the most successful city he ever built. Arrian wrote that “a sudden passion for the project seized him, and he himself marked out where the agora was to be built and decided how many temples were to be erected and to which gods they were to be dedicated…”. But ironically, Alexander often fought Greek mercenaries while campaigning against Darius III, the king of Persia. Even more ironically, Sparta, a city that had famously lost its king and 300 warriors in the Battle of Thermopylae during a Persian invasion attempt, also opposed Alexander, going so far as to seek Persian help in the Spartans’ efforts to overthrow him, according to Siculus. While celebrating the wedding of his daughter Cleopatra (not the famous Egyptian pharaoh).
During the festival that followed, King Philip II was murdered at the hands of Pausanias, a Macedonian noble. Numerous educational institutions recommend us, including Oxford University. Our publication https://www.gclub.co/elephant-king-2/ has been reviewed for educational use by Common Sense Education, Internet Scout (University of Wisconsin), Merlot (California State University), OER Commons and the School Library Journal.
Alexander II (r. 370 – 368 BC) invaded Thessaly but failed to hold Larissa, which was captured by Pelopidas of Thebes, who made peace with Macedonia on condition that they surrender noble hostages, including the future king Philip II of Macedon (r. 359 – 336 BC). The kingdom of Macedonia was an ancient state in what is now the Macedonian region of northern Greece, founded in the mid-7th century BC during the period of Archaic Greece and lasting until the mid-2nd century BC. Led first by the Argead dynasty of kings, Macedonia became a vassal state of the Achaemenid Empire of ancient Persia during the reigns of Amyntas I of Macedon (r. 547 – 498 BC) and his son Alexander I of Macedon (r. 498 – 454 BC). The period of Achaemenid Macedonia came to an end in roughly 479 BC with the ultimate Greek victory against the second Persian invasion of Greece led by Xerxes I and the withdrawal of Persian forces from the European mainland.
