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PREAMBLE:
‘THE GREATEST OF THE KINGS IN
EUROPE’?
In the summer of 338 BC arguably the most decisive battle in ancient Greek
history took place at Chaeronea in Boeotia, as a result of which thousands of
Greeks were killed or captured. It was fought between a coalition of Greek
states and Philip II of Macedonia, and its outcome would decide the fate of
Greece. If the Greeks won, they would retain their autonomy and might even
check what was by now Philip’s naked imperialism. If the king won, Greek
liberty would be lost, and he would add the Greek mainland to his rapidly
growing empire. Victory went to Philip, and the course of Greek history, north
and south of Mount Olympus (the geographical frontier between Macedonia
and Greece in antiquity), was for ever altered.1 As one ancient source soberly
puts it, ‘for the whole of Greece this day marked the end of its glorious
supremacy and of its ancient independence.’2
Philip was now master of Greece. However, the man who had transformed
Macedonia from a disunited, weak backwater into an imperial power in a mere
two decades of rule would not live much longer. Two years later, in 336, as he
was about to invade Asia, he was brutally cut down at the height of his power
by an assassin’s sword. The throne passed to his son Alexander, who inherited
his father’s plan to invade Asia and brought it to spectacular fruition. In a reign
that lasted for only thirteen years (336–323), he extended Macedonia’s empire
from Greece in the west to include Asia Minor, the Levant, Egypt, Central Asia
and what the Greeks called India (modern Pakistan and Kashmir) in the east.
He was not yet thirty-three years old when he died, was worshipped as a god by
some of his subjects, and had already planned an invasion of Arabia. Given that
he created an empire that was for a long time unparalleled in extent, it is easy
to see why history calls him Alexander the Great.
We can therefore understand why Philip is not a household name as
Alexander already was in antiquity and continues to be today, and why he still
lives in the shadow of his more famous son. But, would there have been an
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Alexander the Great without Philip II before him? It goes without saying that
all historical figures are a product of their predecessors. Yet in evaluating the
relationship of the lesser-known Philip to Alexander, and thus the significance
of Philip’s reign in Greek history, the question becomes crucial. Alexander’s
successes, especially in battle, were brilliant, and his reign is one of the most
exciting in any period of history. He is arguably the most famous of the
ancient world’s kings and generals, and the best-known person from antiquity
after Jesus Christ. However, without what Philip had already done for
Macedonia, for its army, for its nationalistic pride, for its economy, for its
cultural life, and for its expansion into an imperial power, Alexander’s reign
and the world he left behind would have been quite different. He would not be
the sort of king to excite popular imagination even today, have movies made
about him, songs written about him, and even hotel rooms named after him.3
We do not know more about Philip because the ancient source material on
him is not plentiful. The histories of Philip or of that period written by
contemporary historians exist today only as fragments, quoted by later writers
who used them for their own accounts. Of special importance is the Philippica
(History of Philip) in fifty-eight books by Theopompus of Chios, of which we
have a large number of fragments. Our other contemporary literary sources are
speeches made by Athenian orators, principally Demosthenes and Aeschines.
However, the veracity of the information they contain, given that they were
written by orators and not historians, is questionable. The first continuous
narrative of Philip’s reign is that of Diodorus Siculus (of Sicily), who was
working in Rome from 30 to 8 BC. He wrote a Universal History in forty books
covering from mythical times to Caesar’s Gallic Wars, and his account of
Philip’s reign is the focus of Book 16. Then we have Justin’s Latin epitome
(written at some point between the second and fourth century AD) of the
Historiae Philippicae by Pompeius Trogus (a first-century BC writer), which
deals with Philip in Books 7–9. Also of note is Plutarch (writing in the second
century AD), whose biographies of Demosthenes, Alexander and Phocion are of
relevance to Philip’s reign. Since Diodorus and Justin are our two major
narrative sources for Philip, I cite them more often than other sources in my
notes. For more details on the ancient sources, see Appendix 1.
Despite the limitations of the sources, much ancient testimony on Philip
indicates anything but a king who deserves not to share centre stage with his
son in Macedonian history. ‘Philip . . . made himself the greatest of the kings
in Europe in his time, and because of the extent of his kingdom had made
himself a throned companion of the twelve gods’, and relying more on his
diplomacy than fighting, he ‘won for himself the greatest empire in the Greek
world’, concludes Diodorus at the end of his narrative of his reign.4 Aeschines
reported that Demosthenes called him ‘the cleverest man under the sun’,5 and
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Theopompus famously said that Europe had never produced a man like him.6
Perhaps the greatest praise for his accomplishments, especially on the military
and economic sides, comes from a speech supposedly given by his son
Alexander before his mutinous troops at Opis (in Mesopotamia) in 324, in
which he says:7
Philip took you over when you were helpless vagabonds, mostly clothed in
skins, feeding a few animals on the mountains and engaged in their defence
in unsuccessful fighting with Illyrians, Triballians and the neighbouring
Thracians. He gave you cloaks to wear instead of skins, he brought you
down from the mountains to the plains; he made you a match in battle for
the barbarians on your borders, so that you no longer trusted for your safety
to the strength of your position so much as to your natural courage. He
made you city dwellers and established the order that comes from good laws
and customs. It was due to him that you became masters and not slaves and
subjects of those very barbarians who used previously to plunder your
possessions and carry off your persons. He annexed the greater part of
Thrace to Macedonia and, by capturing the best placed positions by the sea,
he opened up the country to trade; he enabled you to work the mines in
safety; he made you the rulers of the Thessalians, who in the old days made
you dead with terror; he humbled the Phocian people and gave you access
into Greece that was broad and easy instead of being narrow and hard. The
Athenians and the Thebans were always lying in wait to attack Macedonia;
Philip reduced them so low, at a time when we were actually sharing in his
exertions, that instead of our paying tribute to the Athenians and taking
orders from the Thebans it was we in our turn who gave them security. He
entered the Peloponnese and there too he settled affairs, and his recognition
as leader with full powers over the whole of the rest of Greece in the
expedition against the Persians did not perhaps confer more glory on
himself than on the commonwealth of the Macedonians.8
Of course, Philip had his critics. Demosthenes, whose bias against Philip is
evident in his political speeches, thought the king’s aim was to bring Greek
freedom to an end. According to him, Philip only succeeded because all of
Greece was corrupted, and he owed most of his triumphs to his use of bribery
and the ‘crop of traitors’ (so many of them that Demosthenes said the day
would be over before he could name them all) throughout Greece.9 Although
Theopompus offered a seemingly favourable assessment of Philip (cited
above), he goes on to criticise the king for such things as his ruthlessness,
drinking, sexual appetite for women, men and boys, incontinence, frittering
of money, and disregard for friends and allies.10
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Moreover, in the Opis speech quoted above Alexander followed what he
said about his father with a long harangue about how his own deeds and
services to his people were much greater.11 The content of the entire speech is
suspect, and it is more than likely a rhetorical composition.12 However,
Alexander did face a mutiny, and he did deliver a speech to his men in which
we might reasonably expect him to refer to his father’s achievements. The
opening references to Philip’s turning all Macedonians from nomads to
agriculturalists, and replacing animal-skin clothing with the equivalent of
Armani suits, are probably embellishments on his part.13 Yet the remainder of
the extract rings true when we consider Philip’s accomplishments set against
the dire plight that the Macedonians found themselves in when he became
king. In the space of a mere twenty-three years, Philip created the first nation-
state in Europe; he is the first ‘modern’ regent of the ancient world, having
much in common with Napoleon. By the end of his reign, his lands would
comprise the north of modern Greece, the south of the former Yugoslavia,
much of Albania, most of Bulgaria and all of European Turkey. He added
Greece to his empire and sent an advance force against the Persian empire,
able to do so owing to his creation of one of the most formidable armies the
ancient world would see. He united his kingdom, centralised the capital at
Pella, and developed the economy for the first time in Macedonia’s history –
and all of this is just the tip of the iceberg.
How Philip achieved all that he did is a remarkable story. It involved a
combination of diplomacy, military skill and force, speed, ruthlessness, and an
unscrupulous ability to deceive both opponents and allies as befitted his plans.
He fought hard battles and waged tough sieges in Greece, the Balkans and as
far east as Byzantium, but ultimately he preferred his own brand of diplomacy
over fighting.14 Also part of that diplomacy – and hence of the story – are his
seven polygamous marriages, which played so important a role in his policies
that one ancient writer says that he ‘made war by marriage’.15 In his battles and
sieges he lost an eye, shattered a collarbone, suffered a near-fatal wound that
maimed a leg and made him limp for the rest of his life, but he never missed a
beat. His face as it appears in a modern reconstruction is testimony to the hard
life he led and the knocks he received in the pursuit of his own glory and that
of his kingdom (Plate 1).
It is easy enough to describe what Philip did and what he left behind, but
what were his goals as king? What were his influences? What made him tick?
How did he see himself? Did he have a dark side to his character, as his critics
would have us believe? What was the nature of his relationship with
Alexander? Was he an imperialist who aimed to rob Greece of its liberty, as
Demosthenes said; an opportunist who cynically exploited circumstances and
random events for his own ends?16 Was he a king who wanted to achieve unity
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in a kingdom continuously torn apart by civil distress and foreign incursion,
to transform the economy and create prosperity for his people, to make
Macedonia into the greatest power of the ancient word? Did he intend to
transform the monarchy into an absolutist one, and in terms of how he saw
himself did he seek divine honours towards the end of his life? If so, to what
extent did he influence Alexander in this regard, whose pretensions to
personal divinity dictated his actions and policy when he was king?17
My aim in my life of Philip is to show that he was a great historical figure,
to bring him out of the shadow of his more famous son and to demonstrate
the importance of his reign in Greek history – and by extension for Alexander
the Great. To do so, I present as full a picture as possible of the events before,
during and after his life. I hesitate to use the word ‘biography’ for my book
because it is impossible to write one of Philip given the paucity of the ancient
evidence. I have refrained from giving excessively copious references to
ancient sources (although my narrative is driven by their evidence) and
modern scholars’ works in the notes; otherwise they would be endless and
packed. Generally, I give references to modern works (mostly in English)
when I deal with controversial issues or matters that cannot be treated more
fully became of limitations of space. These works cite additional bibliography
in their notes and the like, especially of foreign works.
All dates are BC except where indicated.