Hello, and welcome to Western SIEV. I wanted to give those of you
even subscribed on the Patreon feed or in the Western Sieve two point zero feed
a quick sneak peek of the kind of stuff that I'm doing now for those
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really helps me out and you get the end free versions. But I wanted
to show you a little bit about some of the news shows that I've been
putting out on the Western SIF two point o page. You know, when
I did the original show years and years ago, I didn't really talk about
Philip of Macedonia, which was a mistake, and even when I got to
Alexander the Grade, I think I covered his battles and everything in maybe two
episodes, maybe one. You know, here, I've got an episode devoted
to each of the major battles ESUS called a Melo, so on and so
forth, as well as is various other travails. But this episode is one
that I really enjoyed putting together. And this is about Philip of Macedonia and
covers the beginnings of Macedonian kingdom and society and culture and all those sorts of
things that really do matter, but that I didn't talk about it all the
first time, and that's kind of the wonder of this second kick at the
Cats. I guess, as you would say, so I hope you enjoy
it. This is just one episode, and there's I think thirty some episodes
available on the Western sit of two point zero podcast feed right now and usually
put another hour and a half two hours worth of content out every month.
So enjoy the listen of Macedonia and if you're interested and so inclined, to
give us a little support and check out the links. Macedonia lay at the
fringe of the Greek world. Opinions in Greece were divided over whether the Macedonians
were Greeks or Barbarians. Macedonians Greek, their names were Greek, and whenever
they wrote something down, which wasn't always, it was in Greek. Of
course, there were different dialects of Greek. In the Macedonian court spoke a
different dialect than what you would have heard in the countryside and Upper Macedonia,
by the way, but it would have been understandable. Ethnically, however,
Macedonia was much more mixed than Greece. But culturally, I mean Mount Olympus
lay at Macedonia's southern border, so the Macedonians worshiped the same Greek pantheon as
you'd find an Athens or Sparta. The real difference was politics. Politically,
Macedonia was in the minority, monarchy was rare, in the fifth and fourth
centuries in Greece. It survived in Sparta, which was sort of the bizarre
odd man out using that dual monarchy, but by and large every other Polish
and ancient and classical Greece had some form of representative government. Granted, what
this looked like varied in terms of place and time, but in general we
can say that the Greeks did not like kings. Greek city states were inherently
unstable as we know, and warlike as we also know. Certainly, what
set the Greeks apart from say, the Persians and Egyptians was not that they
fought, but how they fought. The Greeks fought using hop lights and phailnxes.
This manner of fighting, it's worth noting, was for the moment exclusively
Greek, and our sources report that the Greeks were very proud of their hoplights.
Macedonia was different, as we'll see in a moment. Philip of Macedonia
is going to borrow the idea of the classical Greek philanx and modify it to
suit his needs. But he's going to do this in order to improve the
fighting capability of his men, not out of a desire to be Greek.
In Greece, the ruling class was effectively the hoplight class, but in Macedonia
the rulers were the Argaeed monarchs and below them the Landid aristocracy, which didn't
fight in phalanxes. The landed aristocracy in Macedonia fought in the cavalry, and
that's going to be one of the big differences that we'll talk about, especially
as we get to Alexander. So one major advantage that the Macedonians have over
the Greeks is their relatively stable political system. I say relatively stable because there's
going to be a lot of intrigue and there's gonna be a lot of murder.
But as we saw in the Peloponnesian War, Greek city states tended to
go to war quite often when it was not in their interest to do so.
Athens could have effectively won the Peloponnesian War multiple times, but the war
party within Athens never allowed it to because it insists did on Sparta's total destruction,
which was probably never going to happen. In Macedonia. On the other
hand, the king gets to make the decision, and while that might sound
less responsive than the Greek representative government. Remember that monarchies work really well,
especially in the pre modern world, if you have a stable monarch, stable
from a political standpoint, at least city states, though they'd never really developed
in Macedonia. There were urban communities, but they were subject to the king
like anywhere else and to the Athenians. Getting back to the idea of greekness
again for a second, as we're going to see this difference in political structure
is going to matter a lot more than linguistic similarities to the Athenians. It
was the monarchy that made Macedonia backward more than anything else, though they certainly
had other planes. Now for one another complaint speaking, Macedonia fought alongside Persia
during xerxes War of Conquest. But don't get me wrong. There was Macedonian
cavalry at Plataea, but it fought with the Persian would be conquerors, not
with the Greeks. Of course, so did Thebes for that matter. During
the Peloponnesian Wars, Macedonia became essentially just another theater of war. Macedonian monarchs
took part in the conflict and switched sides frequently whenever it was in their self
interest to do so. Certainly, Macedonian kings, especially by the fifth and
fourth centuries, fans and big patrons of Greek arts. Pindar was just one
of many well known Greek poets to visit the Macedonian court, where he was
treated lavishly. Macedonian kings created their own version of the Olympic Games, which
some competitors traveled to all the way from Greece. Euripides, the playwright,
spent a good amount of time at the Macedonian court and even wrote one play,
Archie Laois while he was there. Euripides, interestingly enough, died in
Macedon in four oh six BC. Athens politely requested on several occasions that has
remains to be sent home, but the Macedonians never complied. So now let's
turn to the meat of our story. Centuries before there was a Philip or
an Alexander, the principal characters in our story. For the next dozen or
so episodes, there was a kingdom to the north of Greece called Macedonia.
In the city states of Greece, aristocratic families constantly jostled for possi Macedonia.
By contrast, throughout the classical period, and this is so important to understand
the story was ruled by one family, and one family only, the Argaydes.
The Argayades claimed their descent from an aristocratic clan from the state or city
state of Argos down in the Peloponnese. According to legend, representatives from Argos
traveled north to found a new kingdom, Macedonia, sometime during the Greek Dark
Ages, probably seventh century BC. This family, by consequence, claimed descent
through hercules. As we have seen and will see, such illusions of grandeur
when it came to the founding person, usually a man for different cities in
the classical world was common Macedonians or no exception. But what matters in all
of this is that the argaid right to rule was never challenged in Macedonia.
Philip and his son Alexander you may have heard of him, would be able
to launch distant campaigns without any real possibility of domestic trouble at home. Well,
okay, at least challenges from outside the family. That is, there
does not seem to have been a tradition amongst the ancient Arguides for the oldest
son to automatically inherit the throne Certainly, if the king had an adult son
when he died, there seems to have been a strong preference for that young
man to rule. But it wasn't a given. Brothers or even distant cousins
might challenge for the throne. And it didn't help matters that your Guyids were
quite well prolific. They practiced polygamy, and so as a result they tended
to be any number of little challengers to the throne running about. The first
several centuries of Argaid rule in Macedonia remain shrouded in mystery. We know the
names of many of these kings. There are a few Alexanders in there for
those keeping score at home, but we know little about their rule. By
and large, most Macedonian kings were concerned with dealing with the Illyrians, a
native tribe which inhabited much of what I suppose you would say is modern day
Bulgaria. The Illyrians, not the distant Greeks, were the primary foe of
the early Macedonians. Now, I should say the term Illyrian was given to
the various tribal people living northwest of Macedonia by the Greeks, but this is
a catchall term that encompassed a large number of tribal peoples. We know that
they united around the end of the fourth century BC because in four ninety six
the new Macedonian a king, Aminitis the third, was forced to flee his
kingdom to escape in a Leyrian invasion. At the same time, the other
neighbor we need to know about his Thessaly. In three ninety six, Aminitis
fled to Thessaly. This was the large flat portion of northern Greece that Xerxes
marched through and was often part of a Persian satrapi. But in three ninety
six his Thessalian allies helped Amyitis return to power. I Meanitis, like all
our gayd kings, practice polygamy. We, by the way, have no
evidence that this was the case for the Macedonians at large, or even for
the Macedonian aristocracy. Thus, it seems to have been something of a royal
prerogative, something that the Argaydes alone practiced regardless. One of amy Nitis's wives
gave birth to the Philip who will become Philip the Second in our story,
Philip of Macedonia. Philip would be famous if not for his son Alexander.
Philip was born either in three eighty two or three eighty three BC. Ancient
historians tended not to bother giving someone's birth date unless it corresponded with an important
event or natural phenomenon. In fact, it's worth noting right now that dates
in the ancient world are a bit hazy. The Greeks reckoned time in a
variety of ways, and none of them corresponded to our system of twelve solar
months, which didn't get invented until Caesar implemented it in forty six BC.
So when an ancient historian gives us a date, it might have occurred very
late the year before or roughly at the time indicated. We don't have any
details about Philip's birth or childhood. Again, it was extremely uncommon for ancient
historians to care about such things. Alexander, as we will see, is
going to be the exception to the rule. Then again, Alexander the Great,
my friends, is the exception to a lot of rules. Childbirth was
a harrowing process in the ancient world, but Philip's mother was, let's just
say, remarkable in this regard. Not only did she give birth to three
other children, a daughter named Rooni and two sons, named Alexander and Perdicas,
but mother and all four children would outlive her husband. I Meanitis.
Imanias's wife was also far more forceful than most ancient women we have information about.
It's widely believed that she was Illyrian ethnically, and this might explain her
personality because Illyrian women were normally more politically involved than their Macedonian counterparts, certainly
more than their Greek counterparts, who considered such ideas tantum out to insanity.
Imy Nitis died in three seventy BC, having lived a fairly long time.
Alexander the second, the eldest son, succeeded to the throne. Philip was
about twelve at the time. As you might remember, in three seventy one
BC, the city state of Thebes ind a crippling defeat on Sparta, and
as a result of this, Thebes began to intervene more forcefully in Thessaly.
When a Thebe in general imposed a piece on Macedonia and the warring cities of
Thessaly, young Philip found himself one of the thirty hostages sent to Thebes in
order to secure his older brother's cooperation. Philip would spend three years in Thebes.
He lived in the home of a well connected aristocrat. He wasn't free
to come and go as he pleased, but it was a pretty easy arrangement
for generations. Now, the Argaides had embraced, especially Athenian Greek culture,
so Philip already knew most of the Greek works of Greek literature and drama.
Certainly he knew Homer and all the great plays and all that. He was
also well versed in the art of hunting, which doubled his training for war
and would have endeared him to the Males and his host family. Some ancient
sources claim that Philip learned a great deal in Thebes and that those three years
had a profound influence on him. None of those sources go into any detail,
and frankly, any conclusion that Thebes quote unquote changed Philip is conjecture.
What I can say is that in Thebes Philip would have experienced life among the
elite and elading Greek city state. If anything, he might have experienced the
ups and downs of political life within a polis. One party might have power
for one year and not the next. That would have been very different from
life and relatively stable Macedonia. Philip might also have learned how factional the Greeks
were, something that he could and would use to his advantage later on,
but again it's all very much conjecture. In late three sixty eight or early
three sixty seven BC, King Alexander the Second of Macedonia was stabbed to death
during a ritual dance. Although one man was executed for the crime, it
is almost certain that more when one person was involved. Paradocus, the second
born son, was not yet old enough to take over in his own right,
so a man named Ptolemay of Aloras was appointed regent. Interestingly, he
was another of Amanitus his sons by a different wife, and historians believe it
highly likely he was involved in the murder of the previous king. Still,
the upshot from all this is that Philip now found himself a little closer to
the throne. During this period, Macedonia remained relatively weak, and Thebes intervened
in Macedonian state policy on several occasions. Old Ptolemay didn't last very long.
In three sixty five, he was murdered, either by a Parodocus himself or
someone acting on his behalf. Thus, Philip's second brother became king in his
own right, but for Macedonia in general. But change and brother meant nothing.
Paradocas followed the same policies as his brother and reached a treaty of friendship
with Thebes. It was as a result of this treaty that Philip came home.
He would never again find himself in the hands of enemies or any foreign
power. At some point after returning, Philip was given charge of a region
by his brother. Scholars speculate that this was to the east, facing the
Thracians and other Greeks. Whether Paradacas did this because he genuinely trusted his brother
or because he wanted him somewhere that he could keep an eye on him,
we do not know. Paradacas had an infant son at this point, so
he might have viewed his brother as a potential rival. Either way, Philip
would have found himself in a very active theater of war all of a sudden.
This was after the Peloponnesian War and during a period of Athenian resurgence.
Athens was trying hard to get Amphipolis back under his control, and Charles ads
the region. Just how the modern day Istanbul remained a crucial stopping point on
the weight of the Black Sea. Paradicas at first backed Amphipolis, then he
switched sides, then he switched sides again. Frankly, it seems like he
lost every time he switched, so for the other combatants it might have made
more a sense not to have Parodicas on your side during the war, but
this was at Macedonia's only problem at the time. In three sixty a large
army of Illyrians invaded, Parodicas summoned a massive force of his own, and
the two sides met either at the tail end of three sixty or at the
very beginning of three fifty nine. We do not have any major details of
the battle. What we do know is that the Macedonians were crushed, losing
four thousand men. One of those was Parodiccas. He is the first known
Macedonian king to have been killed in battle against to foreign foe. Parodacus's son
was far too young to rule on his own, so Philip was proclaimed king.
Hindsight makes Philip the obvious choice to succeed his brother, but keep in
mind he was twenty two or maybe twenty one at the time and totally unproven.
There is no direct evidence that he had participated in any major military campaigns
or had any military experience. What we can surmise is that the majority of
Macedonian nobles agreed to his rule. This might have been pragmatic. The Illyrians
were encamped in Upper Macedonia. Other tribes were chomping at the borders. This
was not a time for an internal squabble. Luckily, Pardacus's defeat and death
seems to have taken place in early winter, and no one campaigned in the
dead of winter, so that bought Philip a little breathing space. The Illyrians
wanted to go home and enjoy the spoils of their victory. Theirs was a
predatory war for financial enrichment. They weren't trying to annex Macedonia. Still,
there were various step brothers and cousins about plotting a return and looking for allies.
Philip would have some time to prepare himself, but Macedonia still looked like
a kingdom on the verge of tearing itself apart. Macedonian cavalry had always been
well regarded throughout the Balkans and into Greece, but their infantry was another matter,
and this was another problem facing Philip. Frankly, at the time,
Macedonian infantrymen weren't considered any better than any other unskilled rabb that happened to be
just wandering around. A few Macedonian kings had tried to write the ship,
but none had lived long enough to make it happen. It is worth noting
at this stage just how financially poor Macedonia was. The land was not rich
in precious metals. Though there was iron, the Macedonian kings still had to
mint coins and bronze, never silver. They couldn't even think about gold.
Even Philip's brothers had enjoyed a treasury far poorer than those of the neighboring Illyrians.
But on the other side of the coin Macedonia remained a land of opportunity.
Lower Macedonia, the part closer to de Gres, had plentiful farmlands and
the perfect climate for growing cereal grains. Upper Macedonia was less effective for farming,
but possessed excellent pasture lands. Plus Macedonia had plenty of timber. Compare
this to Grease, which had little good farmland and was almost completely devoid of
good trees by this stage, and you can see how in the right hands,
Macedonia might be able to quickly move up the ladder. Plus, another
benefit was that in Macedonia, the king technically owned all the natural resources,
so Philip had the materials he needed to revitalize his state. He just needed
to survive in order to do it, which was no small matter. But
at the time, no one knew what the future held. For the moment,
it seemed like Philip had merely taken control over an impoverished kingdom surrounded by
enemies, and that he would probably die young like his brothers, and the
throne would just pass on to the next nobody. At the time, Macedonia
was known less as a kingdom than as a resource rich tract of land open
to pillage. From the word go, Philip was determined to change things.
He had time, not much, but some, and he was determined to
use it. Most scholars agree that the armies which would bring Greece under his
control and then march forth to conquer the Persian Empire under his son, began
to coalesce. Even in these early months. Philip introduced new tactics and equipment.
Macedon lacked a hop light class. Hop lights were effective spearmen in their
own right, and Philip recognized he simply did not have the time to train
them right now, so instead he issued them a new weapon. A sarissa
assa is a pike about sixteen to eighteen feet long and designed to be held
with both hands. It had an iron tip and an iron counterweight on the
butt, which made it relatively easy for one man to control. By contrast,
most hoplights used a spear around twelve to fourteen feet long. The sarissa
was cumbersome by comparison, and useless if you were fighting alone. It was
designed for groups of pikemen to fight in concert. The sarissa was also too
heavy for the cumbersome hopland shield, which Philip replaced by a smaller two foot
diameter one. At this early stage, infantrymen in Philip's army wore no armor,
so the man in the front row only really had his eighteen foot long
pike to keep the enemy at bay, but he and if the enemy got
passed his pike. The first five rows of a Macedonian FAILINGX projected their pikes
out in front, making a direct assault on a mass of sarissa wielding soldiers.
Tantamount to suicide. Later on, Macedonian failingxes were eight rows deep,
and may have been from the start, with the first five rows all actively
participating in combat. I once saw it described as a porcupine of death,
and I think that's apt to a large extent. One Roman commander and these
were hard guys to scare in the second century BC described the approach of such
a failing as the most terrifying thing he ever saw. There was nothing subtle
about Philip's new formation. It was designed to smash into the enemy head on,
not conduct elaborate maneu verse on the battlefield. In this formation, the
individual soldier did not need great skill with his weapon. Really, all you
had to do was hold your place and thrust your sarissa. So long as
gaps did not develop in the line, odds are you would be safe.
It was easy for Philip to train his men to stay information, keep their
ranks and files, and for the front row to jab with their weapons.
It took only a few months to drill for such a failings to be proven
proficient. The pikemen of Phillip's later years and of Alexander's trained far beyond this
simple beginning. They're going to be able to execute complex maneuvers. But we're
getting ahead of ourselves. For centuries, historians have debated where Philip came up
with this idea. He may well have invented the sarissa. The Thracians sometimes
used long spears, but in that case the weapon was not held with two
hands, so Philip's idea does seem to be something novel. Philip would have
seen the Hoplights practice in Thebes, where the Sacred Band was the elite unit
of the day, but again hop Lights and the Macedonian philings men were not
the same. It is likely that Philip borrowed some of what he had seen
from the enemies around him and adapted them to his new weapon. Regardless,
when the Macedonian Phils finally debuted, it effectively made the classical Greek Philings obsolete
overnight. Greece just didn't know that yet. Alongside the Philings, Macedonia still
had excellent cavalry. There were some other specialists as well, such as javelin
throwers and chers. But again it's worth noting that around three fifty nine,
no one had any idea that Philip's ideas were going to work. He was
still totally unproven as a commander. His first test was around Amphipolis. Athans
still wanted its colony back. Philip was determined that they not get it.
In three fifty nine BC, an Athenian expedition landed at Methone, a city
on the Macedonian coast. They had mercenaries and around three thousand hop lights.
It was a substantial force, but Athens immediately divided it into two, marching
out with around half hoping to catch Philip. By surprise, he was not.
Philip pounced on the diminished army and won what must have been little more
than a skirmish. He won. Philip knew he could not follow up on
that victory yet, so he allowed the Athenians to escape. They made one
failed effort to take Amphipolis, and then they sailed home. With his confidence
growing, Philip decided to try and kick the Illyrians out of or Macedonia.
He mustered an army of around ten thousand infantry and six hundred cavalry, and
early in three fifty eight he marched north. At first, the Illyrians tried
to negotiate, but Philip wasn't having it. He wanted his country back,
so the Illyrians mustered their own army of around ten thousand infantry in five hundred
cavalry. The Illyrians, of course, were confident after routing Paradocus, so
little did they know what lay ahead of them. The two armies met in
fairly open country, great for phalanx warfare. The Illyrians hung back, still,
hoping the relatively untested Macedonians would get nervous break and run. Philip trusted
in his training and advanced. He ordered his cavalry to advance around the flanks.
There's no mention of the Illyrian cavalry, so most historians assume they dismounted
and fought with the infantry. It was a long battle. Both sides pushed
back and forth throughout the day. Whichever side held out the longest was going
to win. The Illyrians cracked first. Casualty rates in classical warfare were not
high unless one side broke and ran. The Illyrians did so most historians calculate
their losses around seventy percent. In other words, seven thousand men. The
Illyrians, now with little choice, begged for peace, and so with one
victorious battle, Philip recaptured all of Upper Macedonia. In the end of a
minute of stunning first year on the throne, but Philip remained in a precarious
situation. Sure for the moment his army was feared, but that might not
last forever. The Illyrians were chastened, but would recover. So Philip made
his first marriage alliance, marrying a data an Illyrian princess as her dowry.
Philip received significant land grants in Illyria itself and of course the promise of peace.
Not long after, Philip took a second wife, remember the polygamy thing.
Her name was Elimia. She was from Upper Macedonia. Philip was the
first king in a long time to insist on total royal control over all of
Upper Macedonia. The aristocracy there was quote unquote invited to court as companions of
the king, weakening their local ties. There doesn't seem to have been any
major opposition to Philip's policy of effectively annexing Upper Macedonian, placing it first under
our guayid control. And he cemented his control by forcing peasants to abandon pastoralism
and moved to cities and towns they could be farmers would be much easier to
control. To speed this process along, Philip brought in settlers from Lower Macedonia.
None of this was instant or inevitable, but it weren't. As much
as we remember Alexander as a great general, we have to always admire Philip
as a great diplomat. Now, don't get me wrong, Philip was a
great general too that in the classical world, diplomacy and force were intertwined.
Philip wanted to make Macedonia more secure by dominating his neighbors. He wasn't interested
in being friends with them, and three fifty eight BC his next target was
Thessaly. Vassily, at the time was essentially divided into two political organizations.
One was centered around the city of Faraye and controlled coastline. The other was
landlocked and more interested in the growing power of Thebes than anything Philip was up
to. Hence, Thessaly was politically divided in three fifty eight, just as
Macedon had been during Philip's youth, and Philip was determined to take advantage of
the situation. He did this first through just more marriages. He married a
noble from Fara Eye for his third wife, and one from the interior of
Thessaly for his fourth. These two marriages gave Philip connections with the aristocracy of
Thessaly. For the moment, this did nothing other than make an attack from
Thessaly less likely, not out of the question, just less likely. Before
the end of three fifty seven, Philip had taken another wife, Olympius.
While just one of Philip's wives at this point, she would become the most
important wife later on, as she is the mother of Alexander the Right.
She was a fierce personality, to say the least, during the wars of
the successors. She is going to lead her own armies. According to legend,
Philip fell in love with Olympius at first sight, before he even married
any of his other wives, though this could just be a post factos story
end to prop up her importance in the Alexander narrative. As with many things
associated with Alexander, it can be hard to divorce fact from fiction. For
example, Olympius is alleged to have given birth to Alexander on the exact same
day in three fifty six BC that the Great Temple of Artemists in Ephesus,
one of the wonders of the ancient world, burned to the ground. Well,
it might be amusing to think that the goddess was so distracted by Alexander's
death then she let her own temple burn down. Historians today think it unlikely
both events happened on the same day. Turning to Philip's court for a moment,
historians get only a few glimpses of life there, and these tend to
be negative because they're all written by Greeks. Certainly, Philip was absent from
court more than he was there. He went on campaign every year, but
he did have substantial palaces at both Pella and Virginia. Each palace had significant
quarters for Philip's wives, and there were few slaves in Macedonia, but plenty
of living space for servants. One thing I do want to note at this
point is that at court, Philip was always attended by what we're called royal
pages. These were the teenage sons of powerful Macedonian nobles. Philip increased their
number dramatically during his reign to give himself yet more leverage over these aristocrats.
Alexander's friends would come almost exclusively from this group. But for now, I
want to leave the narrative there in three fifty seven and pick it back up
as Philip works to flex Macedonia's military might, with some mixed results.