Philip II and the Rise of Macedon
Philip II inherited a kingdom on the point of collapse in 359 BC and made it the strongest power in the Aegean in twenty years. Macedon at his accession had lost an army of 4,000 and a king to the Illyrians, was being invaded from three directions, and had two rival claimants supported by Athens and by Thrace. He was about twenty-three and had spent three years as a hostage in Thebes, where he had watched Epaminondas run the best army in Greece. He bought off the immediate enemies with money and marriages — he had seven wives, all of them treaties — and spent the winter drilling. The army he built was the instrument that conquered Persia. The infantry carried the sarissa, a pike some five to six metres long requiring both hands, which gave a phalanx five ranks of points projecting ahead of the front rank; discipline and pay made it a standing professional force rather than a levy of farmers; and the Companion cavalry was used as the striking arm rather than as a screen. He also took Mount Pangaeum with its gold mines, which supplied about a thousand talents a year and paid for everything, including a great many Greek politicians. Siege engineering was developed to take walled cities that Greek armies had traditionally starved out. He absorbed Thessaly, Thrace and the Chalcidice, entered the Amphictyonic council, and beat Athens and Thebes at Chaeronea in 338 BC. He was also wounded repeatedly and lost an eye at Methone to an arrow. The Greek orators who despised Macedonians as half-barbarians were describing a king who had taken more of Greece by 340 BC than Athens or Sparta had ever held.
- Year: 359 BCE
- Category: Political
