Amyntas III of Macedon
Amyntas III was the father of Philip II and grandfather of Alexander, a king from a side branch of the Argead house who came to the throne in 393 BC in the chaos after Archelaus, was thrown out of his kingdom by the Illyrians within the year, got it back with Thessalian help, was thrown out again, and by the end of twenty-three years had kept Macedon in being by giving away whatever he had to whoever was strongest. That is the whole of his achievement and the reason there was a kingdom for Philip to inherit. He was a great-grandson of Alexander I through a younger son and had no better claim than the four or five men who reigned between Archelaus's murder and his own accession, some for months. When the Illyrians under Bardylis invaded in 393 he fled, handing the border districts to the Chalcidian League of Olynthus in return for help, and was restored by the Aleuadae of Larissa. The Chalcidians kept the districts and Pella itself for a time, and in 383 Amyntas asked Sparta to intervene against them, which it did, besieging Olynthus for three years and breaking the League in 379; Macedon got its towns back as a client of Sparta. He paid the Illyrians tribute. He made an alliance with Jason of Pherae when Jason was strong, and with Athens when Athens was, supporting the Athenian claim to Amphipolis in 371 at a congress at Sparta, which his son would take for himself. He married Eurydice, an Illyrian or Lyncestian princess who bore him Alexander II, Perdiccas III and Philip, and another wife who bore three more sons, and the succession quarrels between the two families filled the decade after his death. He gave his youngest son as a hostage to the Illyrians and the boy was later sent to Thebes, where he learned from Epaminondas the army he would build. Amyntas died old in 370 BC, in his bed, which no king of Macedon had managed since Alexander I, and his son Alexander II was murdered within two years.
- Nationality: Macedonian
- Roles: king, monarch
