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Posted by Shogun 144 on February 21 2005, 10:14 AM
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Philip II (Greek: Phillipos II) has throughout history often been overshadowed by his famous son: Alexander III the Great. But without the conquests or military reforms of Philip, Alexander could not have done what he did.
Philip was born the heir of a breaking kingdom. In 382 B.C. Philip was born Amyntas III and Queen Eurydice. Philip was the Royal couple’s youngest child. Little is known of Philip before he turned twelve years old, but in that year much happened. In 370 B.C. Amyntas died and Alexander II, the oldest of the three, rose to the throne. However Alexander II was not a very good general, or politician, and he soon got embroiled in a two front war with both the Illyrian hill tribes and the powerful city state of Thebes. The only way to make peace was for Alexander II to send his two younger brothers to each power as hostages. Philip went to Thebes in the care of a Theban politician named Pammenes. During his time as a hostage Philip observed the tactics and strategies of the greatest Greek tactician of the time: Epamiondas. Philip was even probably able to question and have talks with Epamiondas because Pammenes was friend of the general. The influence that Philip’s time in Thebes had on him can never be under estimated. In 365 B.C. Philip, now 17, was forced to leave Thebes to go back home to Macedonia, Alexander II had been assassinated and Perdiccas (the next oldest brother) had just chased the assassin out and assumed the throne as Perdiccas III. As a result Prince Philip was called home to help centralize Royal authority.
When Philip returned home he was anxious to try out all he had learned at Thebes. Perdiccas showed early on that he could play the dangerous game of Greek politics, and do it well. At some point during his reign Perdiccas became involved in a Athenian plan to conquer the city of Amphipolis. Acting together Perdiccas, Philip, and an Athenian commander named Timotheus captured Amphipolis. But Perdiccas broke off the alliance as soon as he controlled the city, and for good reason. Amphipolis was strategically important for Macedonia: he who controlled Amphipolis could blackmail a fleet with its tall trees, use the gold mines to build an great army, and block the way north. Realizing that Macedonia was backwater in terms of economy Perdiccas asked the Athenians to help reform that sector of Macedonian life. However Perdiccas would not live long enough to see what their answer would be, for in the last week or so of December 360 B.C. Perdiccas was killed fighting an Illyrian invasion under their king Bardylis. The New Year found Philip suddenly in place as regent for Perdiccas’ son Amyntas. As Philip showed he was more then ready for the job.
The first few weeks and months of Philip’s reign were quite hectic and in the military field- ground breaking. The first thing Philip realized was that his position as king/regent was anything but secure. When secret talks with Athens resulted in the Athenians promising support in exchange for Amphipolis, Philip reluctantly gave up the city in order to buy some time. Philip then turned and bribed the invading Thracians and Paeonians, thus giving him some much needed breathing room for the rest of the year. The primarily focus laid in the military, because now that Philip was king he could reform the military to his vision. One of the things that he did was improve Alexander II's Pezhetairoi (English: Foot Companions) by replacing their spears which were 13.32 feet long with a sarissa (English: Pike) which was 19.68 feet long. Of course Philip had to redesign the entire unit because of the new weapons. He made his new formation, called a phalanx, about 16 ranks deep and 16 files wide. In addition Philip created a new unit for use as his own personal bodyguard, this unit was known as the Hypaspistai, because of the scarcity of sources we do not really know what the Hypaspistai really were, but it seems that they were a elite formation of old style hoplites/skirmishers. Other important formations in the Macedonian army, such as the elite Hetatairoi cavalrymen (English: Companions) and the multi-ethnic archers and skirmishers came later on when Macedonia had more land.
Starting in 358 Philip struck back at his enemies with full force. Starting in the spring of 358 B.C. Philip struck his enemies with his new army with full force. First the Paeonians fell to Philip and then in the summer he turned against Bardylis and killed him and his army to the last man. In 357 Philip wed Olympias, daughter of the King of Molossis, which was located in Epirus. Philip also wed Phila of Elymiotis and Audata of Illyria; all three marriages were for the purpose of securing and expanding Macedonian borders. About this time Philip learned that Artaxerxes III of Persia was willing to send Philip money if he attacked Athens (Artaxerxes was doing this because Persia and Athens where at war with each other), or to be more precise Amphipolis. Philip leapt at the opportunity and took up the Persians on their offer, letting them think that they were manipulating him. Amphipolis fell easily and Philip then turned around and offered to give it up again if Athens gave him the port of Pynda. When Athens did not respond Philip simply conquered Pynda and kept both cities for himself, knowing that Athens was powerless to stop because of the war with Persia. In 356 the city of Crenides to the east of Amphipolis sent Philip a letter stating that they wished for him to be their protector, Philip of course leapt at the opportunity to gain the newly discovered silver mines of Mt. Pangaeum and took over the city, renaming it Philippi. By now Philip noticed that Macedonia had out grown her ruling traditions, so he copied some Persian institutions to help him govern his country. To the south Athens used its treasury and natural fear of a growingly autocratic Macedonia to form an alliance against Philip amongst his neighbors. Philip in response exploited the northern city-states' distrust for Athenian meddling to get more involved in Greece by capturing the Athenian controlled city of Potidaea. According to legend on the day that Philip captured Potidaea news arrived that Olympias had given birth to a son named Alexander, that Phila had also given birth and her son was named Philip Arridaeus, that Philip’s trusted general Parmenion had crushed the pro-Athens Illyrians, and finally that Philip’s horse had won a race at the Olympic Games. The authenticity of this is under debate, but mostly held to be false. Later that same year (356) the Macedonian nobility met and decided that given recent events that Philip had a right to call himself a true king, no longer just king-regent for Prince Amyntas. The following year Philip, taking advantage of Athenian distraction with Persia for the last time, besieged the port of Methone, which fell in 354 B.C., in the course of this siege Philip lost one of his eyes to an arrow.
It was after these first victories that Philip continued to reform the army. When Philip returned home from Methone he began a program that essentially weakened the power of the nobility to the point where they could no longer threaten him, and then he began to send them out of Macedonia proper and into the new territories. With that out of the way Philip created new nobility from Macedonians and none Macedonians alike, and they where obliged to serve as cavalrymen in the Macedonian army, and so was born the Hetatairoi. What made Philip’s new cavalry so remarkable was that now that he had a greater number of cavalrymen; it was cavalry, not infantry that was the center of the army. In typical Macedonian fashion the Hetatairoi fought at the fore front of the attack and in a wedge, a very radical departure from the Greek disdain for horse troops. This was the primary reason for their success; Philip knew how to use shock troops and exploited it to the fullest.
Starting in 354[ Philip would begin his march to hegemony over the Greek world. While Philip was subjugating the north Thebes began planning to regain some of her lost glory by conquering a relatively small and defenseless state of Phocis. But the Phocians found out and hired a mercenary army with treasure they looted from Delphi, Thebes used this as an opportunity to give a ‘righteous’ tinge to their ambition and once it become clear that Athens could not help Phocis they declared open war in the spring of 354 B.C. Within months the entirety of the Greek world divided on the issue of the Theban/Phocis war. In Macedonia when Philip received the news of the Sacred War, as it was called, with delight as he no longer had to worry about Athenian (or for that matter Athens-Allied) intervention as he went his merry way through Thrace, which he conquered bits of in 353 B.C. Meanwhile in Thessaly political problems lead to Philip’s intervention in the Sacred War. According to tradition the presidency of the Thessalian League (a confederacy of sorts that gave political stability to Thessaly) was chosen by the city of Larissa, but Pharae, supported by Phocis, took that power appointed a tyrant named Jason to power. Jason was soon killed by his enemies and Larissa appealed to the only available power for aid: Macedonia. Philip, who had just conquered bits of Thrace, immediately marched south declaring that he fought for righteousness and was, for the first time in his life, defeated by a Phocian named Phayllus. Philip’s defeat has been attributed to numerous causes, among them are: overconfidence, lack of reconnaissance, and the use of catapults by the Phocians. During the winter Philip was forced to put down a mutiny by his troops and in the spring of 352 Philip won a resounding victory over his enemies at the battle of Crocus Field, thus avenging his earlier defeat in the eyes of his troops. In response the Athenians, alarmed at the recent turn of events, sent a force to block the pass of Thermopylae, in order to make sure that Philip never reached central Greece. Meanwhile Philip had just returned to Larissa where he was overwhelmingly elected to the position of Tagos (English: President) of the Thessalian League. The effects of this election were enormous; by becoming the leader of a pan-Hellenic organization Philip had transformed himself from a semi-Hellenic barbarian to a full fledged Greek. Further more Thessaly became Macedonian land and stayed that way for 150 years after Philip’s election. Following the election Philip decided to rub salt on the wound so to speak by marching his army at record speed from Thessaly to the Sea of Marmara in Thrace, to prove that his army was the fastest in the world. Philip mysteriously disappeared from the scene of world affairs in 351 B.C., ancient sources say that he suffered from some year long illness; modern historians believe that the whole illness thing was to cover up that Philip was really taking a year long vacation with his wives and six year old sons in Pella, the Macedonian capital. In 350 Philip was once again active when he began to make threatening movements in the general direction of the city of Olynthus, which appealed for aid from Athens, which could not supply aid due to the Sacred War. In 349 Philip actually besieged Olynthus and when he took it through treachery in 348 so fell the whole of the Chalcidice peninsula, later that year Philip intervened in Molossis and expelled the current king, putting his brother-in-law Alexander of Molossis on the throne instead. Meanwhile to the south Thebes was losing the Sacred War as Phocis had begun an invasion of their home territory of Boeotia in 347. But the idea of asking Philip of Macedonia had become some what repugnant, his treatment of Olynthus and the rest of the Chalcidice was unnerving to many Greeks. Finally Thebes broke the ice and asked the Macedonian King to help them, thinking that they might manipulate the Macedonians into the ending the war, then leaving. Philip responded with his typical enthusiasm for war and brushed aside a pitiful attempt to block Thermopylae and in 346 B.C. Phocis fell to Philip, ending the Sacred War. While still in Thessaly a peace treaty (not to a mention a ceasefire) with Athens was already under way and this treaty discussion was incorporated into the larger discussions between the Thebes and Phocis. In the end the Athenians agreed to recognize Philip’s leadership in Thessaly and that Philip should have the League’s seat at the Delphic Amphictyony (a type of supreme pan-Hellenic council), as well as its votes. Philip also managed to force the defeated Greeks to recognize his agreement with the Phocians over the handing over of their votes in the Amphictyony to Philip. With these treaties, as well as plans for a united Greek crusade against Persia, in place Philip left Greece alone for a while, but he would be back.
With the long war against Greece over Philip turned his attention elsewhere. After securing an outright alliance with Athens upon returning home to Pella (something that the many Athenians opposed) Philip turned his attention to the frontier and advanced into modern Albania where an arrow wound resulted in difficulty walking for the rest of his life. Upon returning to Macedonia Philip began a reorganization program in Thessaly, in order to solidify his control of the area and demonstrate how Macedonia treated ‘civilized’ territory in peacetime. In 342 B.C. Philip attacked Thrace again and annexed several bits and pieces as he crushed another Illyrian prince, He also used the opportunity presented to attack the Scythians beyond his borders as far as the Black Sea. In 341 B.C. Philip founded the city of Philippopolis (modern Plodiv) and appointed a viceroy for the entire area there, in order to help govern. In 340 Philip once again turned towards Thrace, this time with the intent of conquering all the way to the Sea of Marmara, where two of Philip’s allies lay: Perinthus and Byzantion. Philip immediately called on Perinthus and Byzantion to surrender to him instead of suffering a siege, they refused and Philip declared war on his former allies and besieged Perinthus. In Persia King Artaxerxes, believing he had no other choice, declared war on Macedonia and dispatched Mentor of Rhodes to Perinthus. Meanwhile at Perinthus Philip was shocked, he never expected this to happen, but he met it with his typical professionalism and appointed Prince Alexander as regent and called up Parmenion to Perinthus to help him. In Thrace meanwhile Persian forces began to cross the Hellespont and reinforcements began to pour in from the Persian Aegean. In Athens all of this was met with dumbfounded shock, Philip had finally crossed the line for even the Athenian moderates could no longer put up with the Macedonian actions. When Philip stopped and raided 240 grain ships from Athenian colonies on the Black Sea Athens declared war on Philip and set out to blockade Macedonian ports. Philip was shocked for a second time and Artaxerxes was giddy with happiness. By 339 Philip was grudgingly forced to lift the sieges of Perinthus and Byzantion and he took the long route south to Greece, as if he wanted for his enemies to multiply and gather. That November Philip advanced to the south, rushing to get through Theban land before they could close themselves off, but the Thebans were fast and managed to cut off access before Philip could get there. The crushing decisive victory that Philip so craved over Greece did not finally come until August 338 when the Macedonians and Greeks met on the plains outside of Chaeronea, here at this pivotal battle Philip proved once and for all the superiority of Macedonian combined arms warfare, where infantry preformed a supporting role (anvil) for which the wedges (hammer) of heavy cavalry were to strike the enemy with. And Philip never let anyone forget that it was his 18 year old son Alexander who led the charge that won the battle, the battle that decided the fate of Greece.
With victory at Chaeronea Philip now had the opportunity he had always wanted to reform Greece to his image. Immediately following Chaeronea the Macedonian army moved further south to campaign against Sparta, the only Greek city that Philip had not dealt with. As Philip marched against Sparta, Prince Alexander and a courtier named Antipater negotiated with Athens and in a remarkable act of kindness only demanded that the Athenian empire be dismantled. A very easy demand to meet since most Athens’ empire was already mostly independent of the mother city. It is believed Philip treated Athens kindly because he needed Athens as a friendly ally rather then a dejected vassal plotting for revenge. As 338 came to a close the King of Persia, Artaxerxes III, suddenly died and his son, Artaxerxes IV, assumed the throne. Philip immediately recognized the opportunity granted to him, for he knew that every new Persian king needed a few months to sort out their kingdoms. When he reached the city of Corinth Philip called for every city in Greece to send a delegate there, for he was organizing a new pan-Hellenic league. This new league, called the League of Corinth, was part of the realization of Philip’s life dream of a new world fashioned to his liking. At Corinth in the spring of 337 B.C. Philip forced the delegates to sign a document that shall be outlined here: All city states may retain their autonomy, though they can not go to war against each other expect in suppressing revolution. All Greek cities are to recognize Philip II of Macedonia as the League’s supreme Commander-in-Chief (Greek: Hegemon) and that further more the position is hereditary to the Macedonian Royal House. And lastly the League is to convene in council (Greek: Synedrion) every few months, this council’s primary job is to over see the keeping of the general peace (Greek: Koine Eirene), thus making any sort of change a capital crime. Following the signing Philip announced now that Greece was unified that now was the time to make Persia pay for the invasion of Xerxes back in the 5th century. The council, not having much choice, immediately pledged to raise forces to join Philip’s army for the invasion. As the meeting ended Philip announced the invasion would begin in 336 B.C. and he sent an advance force under Parmenion to Thrace to begin preparations starting in 337.
Now with Greece under his thumb and the invasion he had wanted for decades under way Philip decided to celebrate. In mid 337 (probably the summer) Philip announced a wedding between his younger son Philip Arridaeus (who had mental problems) and the daughter of the Persian satrap of Caria, Pixodarus. This wedding was a politically brilliant move for it forced Pixodarus to give Philip access to the important Anatolian port of Halicarnassus, which could prove profitable in the coming invasion. Unfortunately for Philip however this move made his elder son, Alexander, quite upset. Alexander thought as first son he was untitled to being married first, and further more he was concerned that he had lost his father’s favor some how and was being replaced. Moving quickly Alexander wrote to Pixodarus that he would marry the princess instead, and while Pixodarus was giddy with the news, Philip was not when he heard of it. Philip immediately sent word to Pixodarus straightening out the matter and then he ordered Alexander’s advisors (these advisors were named Erigyius, Laomedon, Harpalus, Ptolemy, and Nearchus) to leave Macedonia at once. With that problem out of the way Philip then rested and relaxed, only to commit the mistake that cost him his life. That autumn Philip announced that he was marrying again, this time a woman named Cleopatra, the niece of his advisor Attalus. During one of the famous Macedonian drinking parties at the wedding Attalus remarked that he hoped his niece would provide a worthy heir to the throne. This deeply offended an already hurt Olympias and Alexander who promptly left Pella to live with Olympias’ brother Alexander of Molossis. Things only became worse as time went on, the new Queen Cleopatra was mistrusted and reviled, primarily because she had no political importance, and it looked as though Philip had married her simply due to passion, which was a cardinal sin to the Greek mind. That winter Philip received word that Alexander had allied himself with several Illyrian tribes and was preparing to raise an army. It was now that Philip finally realized the consequences of his actions and he exiled Attalus to be with Parmenion who was preparing the way to cross into Asia Minor, hoping this fixed the problem. Philip then sent word of this to Alexander, who was quite happy that the man who offended him was gone and as a result Alexander returned to Pella peacefully. In the early spring of 336 B.C. Philip managed to convince Olympias to return to Pella, when she returned she did so with her brother, so Philip decided to arrange for a marriage between Olympias’ brother and their daughter, Cleopatra. At the wedding festival held at the theater of Aegae Philip was shaking hands with the guests and before he knew what happened there was a knife in his chest, put there by a disgruntled young noble named Pausanias, who had a personal score to settle with Philip due to his wife. Because the wound was too deep and too close to his heart Philip died at Aegae, he was 46 years old.
In conclusion Philip II of Macedonia was undoubtedly one of history’s most revolutionary rulers. During his time on the throne of Macedonia Philip single handedly turned the Greek world upside down with his determination and drive to conquer, Philip also changed the face of warfare with the formation of the Macedonian Phalanx and the inspired use of his Hetatairoi heavy cavalrymen. Unfortunately Philip is often overshadowed by his son Alexander, who took up Philip’s dream and carried it as far as the Indus. |
User Comments:
| Titus Ultor
:: February 21 2005 |
| Excellent work! I didn't want it to end. |
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