Philip II of Macedon

Philip II of Macedon
Basileus of Macedon

Bust of Philip II of Macedon.
Reign 359–336 BC
Predecessor Perdiccas III
Successor Alexander the Great
Born 382 BC
Pella, Macedon
Died October 336 BC (aged 46)
Aigai, Macedon
Burial Aigai, Macedon
Wives
Issue Cynane
Philip III
Alexander the Great
Cleopatra
Thessalonica
Europa
Caranus
Greek Φίλιππος
House Argead dynasty
Father Amyntas III
Mother Eurydice I
Religion Ancient Greek religion

Philip II of Macedon[1] (Greek: Φίλιππος Β΄ ὁ Μακεδών, Phílippos II ho Makedṓn; 382–336 BC) was the king (Basileus) of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon from 359 BC until his assassination in 336 BC. He was a member of the Argead dynasty, the third son of King Amyntas III, and father of Alexander the Great and Philip III.

Biography

See also: Rise of Macedon

Philip was the youngest son of the king Amyntas III and Eurydice I. In his youth (c. 368 – 365 BC), Philip was held as a hostage in Thebes, which was the leading city of Greece during the Theban hegemony. While a captive there, Philip received a military and diplomatic education from Epaminondas, became eromenos of Pelopidas,[2][3] and lived with Pammenes, who was an enthusiastic advocate of the Sacred Band of Thebes.

In 364 BC, Philip returned to Macedon. The deaths of Philip's elder brothers, King Alexander II and Perdiccas III, allowed him to take the throne in 359 BC. Originally appointed regent for his infant nephew Amyntas IV, who was the son of Perdiccas III, Philip managed to take the kingdom for himself that same year.

Philip's military skills and expansionist vision of Macedonian greatness brought him early success. He first had to re-establish a situation which had been greatly worsened by the defeat against the Illyrians in which King Perdiccas himself had died. The Paionians and the Thracians had sacked and invaded the eastern regions of the country, while the Athenians had landed, at Methoni on the coast, a contingent under a Macedonian pretender called Argeus.

Using diplomacy, Philip pushed back the Paionians and Thracians promising tributes, and crushed the 3,000 Athenian hoplites (359). Momentarily free from his opponents, he concentrated on strengthening his internal position and, above all, his army. His most important innovation was doubtless the introduction of the phalanx infantry corps, armed with the famous sarissa, an exceedingly long spear, at the time the most important army corps in Macedonia.

Philip had married Audata, great-granddaughter of the Illyrian king of Dardania, Bardyllis. However, this did not prevent him from marching against them in 358 and crushing them in a ferocious battle in which some 7,000 Illyrians died (357). By this move, Philip established his authority inland as far as Lake Ohrid and earned the favour of the Epirotes.[4]

He agreed with the Athenians, who had been so far unable to conquer Amphipolis, which commanded the gold mines of Mount Pangaion, to lease it to them after its conquest, in exchange for Pydna (lost by Macedon in 363). However, after conquering Amphipolis, he kept both the cities (357). As Athens declared war against him, he allied with the Chalkidian League of Olynthus. He subsequently conquered Potidaea, this time keeping his word and ceding it to the League in 356. One year before, Philip had married the Epirote princess Olympias, who was the daughter of the king of the Molossians.

During 356 BC, Philip also conquered the town of Crenides and changed its name to Philippi: he established a powerful garrison there to control its mines, which granted him much of the gold later used for his campaigns. In the meantime, his general Parmenion defeated the Illyrians again. Also in 356 Alexander was born, and Philip's race horse won in the Olympic Games. In 355–354 he besieged Methone, the last city on the Thermaic Gulf controlled by Athens. During the siege, Philip was injured in his eye. It was later removed surgically.[5] Despite the arrival of two Athenian fleets, the city fell in 354. Philip also attacked Abdera and Maronea, on the Thracian seaboard (354–353).

Map of the territory of Philip II of Macedon.

Philip was involved in the Third Sacred War which had begun in Greece in 356. During the summer of 353 he invaded Thessaly, defeating 7,000 Phocians under the brother of Onomarchus. The latter however defeated Philip in the two succeeding battles. Philip returned to Thessaly the next summer, this time with an army of 20,000 infantry and 3,000 cavalry including all Thessalian troops. In the Battle of Crocus Field 6,000 Phocians fell, while 3,000 were taken as prisoners and later drowned.

This battle granted Philip an immense prestige, as well as the free acquisition of Pherae. Philip was also tagus of Thessaly, and he claimed as his own Magnesia, with the important harbour of Pagasae. Philip did not attempt to advance into Central Greece because the Athenians, unable to arrive in time to defend Pagasae, had occupied Thermopylae.

Hostilities with Athens did not yet take place, but Athens was threatened by the Macedonian party which Philip's gold created in Euboea. From 352 to 346 BC, Philip did not again come south. He was active in completing the subjugation of the Balkan hill-country to the west and north, and in reducing the Greek cities of the coast as far as the Hebrus. To the chief of these coastal cities, Olynthus, Philip continued to profess friendship until its neighboring cities were in his hands.

Philip II gold stater, with head of Apollo.

In 349 BC, Philip started the siege of Olynthus, which, apart from its strategic position, housed his relatives Arrhidaeus and Menelaus, pretenders to the Macedonian throne. Olynthus had at first allied itself with Philip, but later shifted its allegiance to Athens. The latter, however, did nothing to help the city, its expeditions held back by a revolt in Euboea (probably paid by Philip's gold). The Macedonian king finally took Olynthus in 348 BC and razed the city to the ground. The same fate was inflicted on other cities of the Chalcidian peninsula.

Macedon and the regions adjoining it having now been securely consolidated, Philip celebrated his Olympic Games at Dium. In 347 BC, Philip advanced to the conquest of the eastern districts about Hebrus, and compelled the submission of the Thracian prince Cersobleptes. In 346 BC, he intervened effectively in the war between Thebes and the Phocians, but his wars with Athens continued intermittently. However, Athens had made overtures for peace, and when Philip again moved south, peace was sworn in Thessaly.

With key Greek city-states in submission, Philip II turned to Sparta; he sent them a message: "If I win this war, you will be slaves forever." In another version, he warned: "You are advised to submit without further delay, for if I bring my army into your land, I will destroy your farms, slay your people, and raze your city." According to both accounts, the Spartans' laconic reply was one word: "If". Philip II and Alexander both chose to leave Sparta alone. Later, the Macedonian arms were carried across Epirus to the Adriatic Sea.

Silver tetradrachms dated back to the reign of Philip II

In 345 BC, Philip conducted a hard-fought campaign against the Ardiaioi (Ardiaei), under their king Pluratus, during which he was seriously wounded by an Ardian soldier in the lower right leg.[6]

In 342 BC, Philip led a great military expedition north against the Scythians, conquering the Thracian fortified settlement Eumolpia to give it his name, Philippopolis (modern Plovdiv).

In 340 BC, Philip started the siege of Perinthus. Philip began another siege in 339 of the city of Byzantium. After unsuccessful sieges of both cities, Philip's influence all over Greece was compromised. However, he successfully reasserted his authority in the Aegean by defeating an alliance of Thebans and Athenians at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, while in the same year, Philip destroyed Amfissa because the residents had illegally cultivated part of the Crisaian plain which belonged to Delphi.

It was these decisive victories that finally secured Philip’s position as having the majority of Greece under Macedonian sovereignty.

Philip created and led the League of Corinth in 337 BC. Members of the League agreed never to wage war against each other, unless it was to suppress revolution. Philip was elected as leader (hegemon) of the army of invasion against the Persian Empire. In 336 BC, when the invasion of Persia was in its very early stage, Philip was assassinated, and was succeeded on the throne of Macedon by his son Alexander III, who later become known as Alexander the Great.

State system and Achaemenid Persian borrowings and influences

As historians Roisman and Worthington state, to Macedonian rulers, Achaemenid Persia stood as an example of statehood and mores.[7] This is especially true of Philip II as he built his power and created many institutions to imitate those known from the Achaemenid Empire.[7] Thus, inspired by Persian achievements, Philip established a Royal Secretary and Archive, and aimed at the elevation of the political as well as religious level, and he used a special throne (Gr. thronos) borrowed from the Achaemenid court to demonstrate his elevated rank.[7] The institution of the Royal Pages (Gr. Paides Basilikoi) was probably inspired by Achaemenid prototype - among their duties, Arrian mentions mounting the king on his horse "in the Persian style".[7] The status of Thrace in 342-334 under the Macedonian sway as a kind of regular satrapy resembled Achaemenid administrative practices, and the organization of the royal court, generally, followed in a fashion of the Achaemenid tradition.[8] Some scholars deny Philip's international borrowings from Persian tradition, but it must be said that states do not develop in a vacuum.[8] For an increasingly powerful Macedonia, the most immediate model of a great monarchy was Persia.[8]

Assassination

The murder of Philip occurred during October 336 BC, at Aegae, the ancient capital of the kingdom of Macedon. The court had gathered there for the celebration of the marriage between Alexander I of Epirus and Philip's daughter, by his fourth wife Olympias, Cleopatra. While the king was entering unprotected into the town's theater (highlighting his approachability to the Greek diplomats present), he was killed by Pausanias of Orestis, one of his seven bodyguards. The assassin immediately tried to escape and reach his associates who were waiting for him with horses at the entrance of Aegae. He was pursued by three of Philip's bodyguards; tripping on a vine, he died by their hands.

The reasons for Pausanias' assassination of Philip are difficult to expound fully, since there was already controversy among ancient historians. The only contemporary account in our possession is that of Aristotle who states rather tersely that Philip was killed because Pausanias had been offended by the followers of Attalus, uncle of Philip's wife Cleopatra (renamed upon marriage Eurydice).

Fifty years later, the historian Cleitarchus expanded and embellished the story. Centuries later, this version was to be narrated by Diodorus Siculus and all the historians who used Cleitarchus. According to the sixteenth book of Diodorus' history,[9] Pausanias had been a lover of Philip, but became jealous when Philip turned his attention to a younger man, also called Pausanias. The elder Pausanias's taunting of the new lover caused the youth to throw away his life, which turned his friend Attalus against the elder Pausanias. Attalus took his revenge by inviting Pausanias to dinner, getting him drunk, then subjecting him to sexual assault.

When Pausanias complained to Philip, the king felt unable to chastise Attalus, as he was about to send him to Asia with Parmenion, to establish a bridgehead for his planned invasion. He also married Attalus's niece, or daughter, Eurydice. Rather than offend Attalus, Philip tried to mollify Pausanias by elevating him within the bodyguard. Pausanias' desire for revenge seems to have turned towards the man who had failed to avenge his damaged honour, so he planned to kill Philip. Some time after the alleged rape, while Attalus was already in Asia fighting the Persians, he put his plan in action.

Other historians (e.g., Justin 9.7) suggested that Alexander and/or his mother Olympias were at least privy to the intrigue, if not themselves instigators. The latter seems to have been anything but discreet in manifesting her gratitude to Pausanias, according to Justin's report: he says that the same night of her return from exile she placed a crown on the assassin's corpse and erected a tumulus to his memory, ordering annual sacrifices to the memory of Pausanias.

Many modern historians have observed that all the accounts are improbable. In the case of Pausanias, the stated motive of the crime hardly seems adequate. On the other hand, the implication of Alexander and Olympias seems specious: to act as they did would have required brazen effrontery in the face of a military personally loyal to Philip. What seems to be recorded in this are the natural suspicions that fell on the chief beneficiaries of the murder; their actions after the murder, however sympathetic they might seem (if actual), cannot prove their guilt in the deed itself.

Whatever the actual background to the assassination, it might have had an enormous effect on later world history, far beyond what any conspirators could have predicted; as asserted by some modern historians, had the older and more settled Philip been the one in charge of the war against Persia, he might have rested content with relatively moderate conquests, e.g. making Anatolia into a Macedonian province, and not pushed further into an overall conquest of Persia and further campaigns in India.[10]

Marriages

The dates of Philip's multiple marriages and the names of some of his wives are contested. Below is the order of marriages offered by Athenaeus, 13.557b–e:

Tomb of Philip II at Aigai

Great Tumulus of Aigai
The tomb of Philip II of Macedon at the Museum of the Royal Tombs in Vergina.
The golden larnax and the golden grave crown of Philip.

In 1977, Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos started excavating the Great Tumulus at Aigai[11] near modern Vergina, the capital and burial site of the kings of Macedon, and found that two of the four tombs in the tumulus were undisturbed since antiquity. Moreover, these two, and particularly Tomb II, contained fabulous treasures and objects of great quality and sophistication.[12]

Although there was much debate for some years,[13] as suspected at the time of the discovery Tomb II has been shown to be that of Philip II[14] as indicated by many features including the greaves, one of which was shaped in a way consistent with fitting a leg with a misaligned tibia (Philip II was recorded as having broken his tibia). Also the remains of the skull show damage to the right eye caused by the penetration of an object (historically recorded to be an arrow).[15][16]

A study of the bones published in 2015 indicated that Philip was buried in Tomb I, instead of Tomb II.[17] On the basis of age, knee ankylosis and a hole matching the penetrating wound and lameness suffered by Philip, the authors of the study identified the remains of Tomb I in Vergina as those of Philip II.[17] Tomb II instead was identified in the study as that belonging to King Arrhidaeus and his wife Eurydice II.[17] However this latter theory had previously been shown to be false.[16]

More recent research gives further evidence that Tomb II contains the remains of Philip II.[18]

Legacy

Cult

The heroon at Vergina in Macedonia (the ancient city of Aegae – Αἰγαί) is thought to have been dedicated to the worship of the family of Alexander the Great and may have housed the cult statue of Philip. It is probable that he was regarded as a hero or deified on his death. Though the Macedonians did not consider Philip a god, he did receive other forms of recognition by the Greeks, such as at Eresos (altar to Zeus Philippeios), Ephesos (his statue was placed in the temple of Artemis), and Olympia, where the Philippeion was built.

Isocrates once wrote to Philip that if he defeated Persia, there would be nothing left for him to do but to become a god,[19] and Demades proposed that Philip be regarded as the thirteenth god; however, there is no clear evidence that Philip was raised to the divine status accorded his son Alexander.[20]

Fictional portrayals

Games

Dedications

References

  1. ↑ Philip II of Macedonia: Ian Worthington, Yale University Press, ISBN 0300164769, 9780300164763
  2. ↑ Dio Chrysostom Or. 49.5
  3. ↑ Homosexualities by Stephen O. Murray,University of Chicago Press,page 42
  4. ↑ The Cambridge Ancient History Volume 6: The Fourth Century BC by D. M. Lewis, 1994, page 374, ISBN 0-521-23348-8: "... The victory over Bardylis made him an attractive ally to the Epirotes, who too had suffered at the Illyrians' hands, and his recent alignment ..."
  5. ↑ A special instrument known as the Spoon of Dioclese was used to remove his eye.
  6. ↑ Ashley, James R., The Macedonian Empire: The Era of Warfare Under Philip II and Alexander the Great, 359–323 BCE., McFarland, 2004, p.114, ISBN 0-7864-1918-0
  7. 1 2 3 4 Roisman & Worthington 2011, p. 345.
  8. 1 2 3 Roisman & Worthington 2011, p. 346.
  9. ↑ Diodorus Siculus, The Library of History, 16.91-95
  10. ↑ Dr. Laurence T. Stevens, "The Assassin Who Launched The Hellenistic Age" in Jane Trent (ed.) "Is History Made By Accident?"
  11. ↑ http://www.aigai.gr/en/
  12. ↑ National Geographic article outlining recent archaeological examinations of Tomb II.
  13. ↑ Hatzopoulos B. Miltiades, �The Burial of the Dead (at Vergina) or The Unending Controversy on the Identity of the Occupant of Tomb II. ��Tekmiria, vol. 9 (2008)
  14. ↑ http://news.discovery.com/history/archaeology/remains-of-alexander-the-greats-father-confirmed-found-141009.htm
  15. ↑ See John Prag and Richard Neave's report in Making Faces: Using Forensic and Archaeological Evidence, published for the Trustees of the British Museum by the British Museum Press, London: 1997.
  16. 1 2 Musgrave J, Prag A. J. N. W., Neave R., Lane Fox R., White H. (2010) The Occupants of Tomb II at Vergina. Why Arrhidaios and Eurydice must be excluded, Int J Med Sci 2010; 7:s1–s15
  17. 1 2 3 Antonis Bartsiokas; et al. (July 20, 2015). "The lameness of King Philip II and Royal Tomb I at Vergina, Macedonia". Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America. doi:10.1073/pnas.1510906112.
  18. ↑ New Finds from the Cremains in Tomb II at Aegae Point to Philip II and a Scythian Princess, T. G. Antikas* and L. K. Wynn-Antikas, International Journal of Osteoarchaeology
  19. ↑ Backgrounds of early Christianity By Everett Ferguson Page 202 ISBN 0-8028-0669-4
  20. ↑ The twelve gods of Greece and Rome By Charlotte R. Long Page 207 ISBN 90-04-07716-2
  21. ↑ "Γενικό Επιτελείο Στρατού: Εμβλήματα Όπλων και Σωμάτων". Hellenic Army General Staff. Retrieved 24 July 2014.

Sources

External links

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Philip II of Macedon
Born: 382 BC Died: 336 BC
Preceded by
Perdiccas III		 King of Macedon
359–336 BC 		Succeeded by
Alexander III the Great


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