No one now could safely say the king was not a Greek.
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PHILIP’S FOREIGN POLICY DID not depend simply on military force. The income from the gold and silver mines of Macedonia and Thrace brought in an enormous annual income of a thousand talents. The king began to manufacture coins, including his famous gold staters, or “philips,” as they were nicknamed. Much of this newfound wealth helped to finance his costly standing army, which included mercenaries as well as native Macedonians, but the remainder was dedicated to buying the goodwill and guest-friendship of leading Greek statesmen, even ones hostile to him. He used to admit that “I enlarged my kingdom far more by the use of gold than of weapons.”
An unfriendly critic, the contemporary historian Theopompus, thought Philip was profligate and incompetent. “He was the worst manager in the world—not only himself but also his entourage. He did not merely spend money, he threw it away.” But this was entirely to miss the point. True, Philip’s generosity was on a Homeric scale and he often found himself short of ready cash, but spraying philips around foreign governments had the intended effect. It made friends and influenced people.
Unlike his son, Philip thoroughly enjoyed sex and had affairs with young men and women. But that was entertainment; when it came to marriage, the criterion was raison d’état. Olympias was his chief spouse but by no means his only one. His contemporaries used to joke: “With every campaign, Philip married a new wife.” These unions were politically driven, perhaps temporary, and they tended to be with the daughters of rulers with whom he had been at war. The brides included Audata, an Illyrian princess; Phila, daughter of a tricky Upper Macedonian ruler; and Meda, daughter of a contumacious Thracian king. Wives sealed deals.
Philip seems to have married two women from Thessaly, which may show the importance he placed on bringing it under his control and of the complexity of its politics. Olympias was a difficult wife, but she was not at all jealous of her husband’s philandering and became friends with Nicesipolis, one of the pair from Thessaly. Nicesipolis had the reputation of being a witch; Olympias, an acknowledged expert in such matters, was asked to check her out before Philip slept with her. She met the woman and took an instant liking to her. “No more of these slanders,” she said. “You are your own best magic.” When Nicesipolis died in childbirth, the queen took her daughter into her household and brought her up.
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PHILIP ADMIRED ATHENS, the “violet-crowned” city, its history and its culture. It epitomized the Greekness to which he and his predecessors on the Macedonian throne aspired. That did not prevent him from tricking the Athenians whenever it was in his interest to do so, nor them from obstructing his path whenever they could.
To the outside observer, the city had recovered from its total defeat, in 404, after its long war with the militaristic state of Sparta in the Peloponnese. Athens was a maritime power. After a period of quiescence it reestablished a league of island and coastal city-states in the Aegean Sea and its fleet once again ruled the waves as it had done in the fifth century. It suppressed pirates, protected its essential grain supplies from the Black Sea, and guarded against a resurgence of Persian aggression.
But first impressions can deceive. The population of adult male citizens had been devastated by the conflict, falling from an estimated 40,000 to between 14,000 and 16,250—in other words, a 60 percent collapse. There was simply not the personnel with which to restore the great Athenian empire of yore.
Also, the city had lost much of its wealth and never fully made up the deficit. From its great port at Piraeus, it could still afford to send out a fleet of one hundred warships, but not for long. What was worse, Athenians had (unsurprisingly) lost their appetite for warfare. Survivors usually opted for a quiet life and Athenians preferred to see their taxes spent at home on public works and citizens’ grants than on military adventures.
That excitable historian Theopompus may have exaggerated Athenian decadence, but he had a point when he wrote:
It is an Athenian, [who]…even on military expeditions surrounded himself with flute players and whores and harpists and grossly misused the funds appropriated for the war. However, the Athenians never gave him any trouble. On the contrary…they held him in higher regard than any other citizen. And justly so, for they themselves lived a life that tempted young men to while away their time among flute players and with prostitutes. Those who were a little older spent their days drinking and gambling and that sort of dissipation. The Athenian people as a whole spent more on public banquets and the consumption of meat than on the administration of the city.
The Macedonians knew little about the sea; from Philip’s perspective Athens, for all its flaws, still posed a threat to his growing ambition to be master of all Greece. Once his dominance was undoubted, he intended to launch a military expedition against the Great King, avenge the invasions of Darius and Xerxes, and free the Ionian city-states along the Asian littoral from Persian oppression. He aimed to march in the footsteps of Xenophon.
In 340, without many expectations, the king tried one last time to come to terms with the Athenians. He took a two-pronged approach. As we have seen, he appointed Alexander as regent and led his army to the Chersonese, his aim being to control the Bosporus. In this way he threatened the merchant shipping from grain-rich Scythia (today’s Ukraine) and denied the Athenian war fleet access to coastal ports. Then, with his sword in one hand, he picked up a pen with the other.
Philip sent Athens a long letter of complaints about the city’s unreasonable behavior. Many of these were justified, even though its author was no innocent abroad. The tone of voice was that of a reasonable man much put upon, who hoped his readers would change their minds about him.
However, the document concluded with a very firm statement of likely consequences:
These then are the complaints I have to make. You were the aggressors and, thanks to my patience, are still making further attacks on my interests and doing me all the harm in your power. So I shall defend myself, with justice on my side, and, calling the gods to witness, I shall bring my dispute with you to an issue.
The Athenians, in a jumpy frame of mind, decided to take this as a declaration of war.
Philip had allowed for the worst and was ready to react, although he was delayed by a severe thigh wound incurred during a campaign against the irrepressible Thracians. Another small war had broken out in the Amphictyony of Delphi. As its president, the king was entitled to bring his army down from Macedonia to settle the dispute, and that was what he did. But, once he was in central Greece, he laid aside pretense and marched south along the high road to Thebes and Athens. These two neighbors had loathed each other for generations, but the threat to them was palpable and immediate. They agreed to an instant entente and sent out a call for other Greek poleis to come to their aid. Within days an allied force set out to confront the Macedonian king.
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THE PLAIN RUNS NORTHWEST to southeast and is bounded by two lines of high ground and foothills. On the south stands the acropolis of the small town of Chaeronea. From that vantage point one can look across open country and make out the river Cephisus with its mountainous backdrop a couple of miles away.
It was here that the allied Greek army chose to stand and fight the Macedonians. After Philip had tricked his way through a heavily defended pass, this was the only obstacle that prevented him from invading the homelands of his enemies. The allies had assembled some 35,000 foot soldiers and 2,000 cavalry, whereas Philip had about the same number of cavalry, but only 30,000 infantry, probably the full strength of his field army.
The king commanded a force of elite Macedonian infantry on his right wing. It faced an Athenian phalanx of ten thousand hoplites. Alexander, only eighteen, was given the crucial task of leading the Macedonian horse on the left beside t
he Cephisus. Four centuries later, Plutarch recalled that an oak tree by the river used to be called Alexander’s oak, because he had pitched his tent beside it on the night before the battle. Opposing him stood the Theban hoplites, headed by the Sacred Band. We do not know where the allied cavalry was placed. Perhaps they were held in reserve. In any event, they played no part in the fighting. Lightly armed troops protected both Philip’s and the Athenians’ flanks.
The allied advantage was only theoretical, for the Macedonian soldiers belonged to a full-time professional army and had years of battle experience. On the other hand, the Athenian hoplites had had only one month of regular fighting in the previous quarter of a century.
Each side had a well-thought-out battle plan. The allied line was echeloned back, or (to use the technical term, “refused”), from the Athenians on the left near Chaeronea to the right where it touched the Cephisus. This meant that the fighting would start when the Athenians and Philip’s troops on the Macedonian right engaged. If the allies succeeded in pushing the king back, their line could then swing round and attack the enemy’s center and right like a closing fan. If the Macedonians prevailed, many allied soldiers would have a good chance of being able either to run away into the southern hills or flee along the plain.
Philip’s plan was even cleverer. It depended on indiscipline among the brave but inexpert Athenians. Technically it was ambitious: it would involve the entire Macedonian line swivelling as if on a pivot. Philip would stage a managed withdrawal up some rising ground. This would stretch the Greek line, which would presumably be advancing across open ground toward the refused enemy line. At some point a gap or a thinning of the ranks would appear. Alexander on the Macedonian left would then lead a cavalry charge through the gap and the battle would, to all intents and purposes, be over.
Hostilities opened at dawn, probably on August 2, 338. As both armies were echeloned, only the Athenians and Philip’s elite troops made contact at first. In the event, Philip’s intuition about the Athenians was correct. They rushed impetuously forward and their general, one Stratocles, shouted: “On, on, on, to Macedonia!” Philip, contracting his phalanx as it pulled back behind its wall of spears, remarked: “The Athenians haven’t a clue how to win a battle.”
The gap the king had foreseen opened between the Greek center and the Sacred Band as the men shuffled leftward in order to keep in touch with the rampaging Athenian hoplites. Alexander saw it and knew his moment had come. Leading a wedge-shaped formation of cavalry, he thundered across the plain. The Thebans were soon surrounded and fighting for their lives on the riverside. The Sacred Band was destroyed where it stood.
Two miles away the king reversed his retreat and attacked the astonished Athenians. He drove them into the hills; one thousand were killed and two thousand taken prisoner. The rout soon became general.
Many centuries later, archaeologists excavated an enclosure near where the Sacred Band had fought and which was now their grave. Two hundred and fifty-four skeletons lay in seven neat rows. Out of the three hundred lovers, only forty-six had survived. Even Philip was moved. Inspecting the battlefield after the fighting was done, he came upon the corpses of the Sacred Band and is reported to have said: “Death to those who suspect these men to have done anything dishonorable.”
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ALEXANDER WAS THE BOY of the hour, as his father generously acknowledged. It was his charge, with himself riding in the most dangerous position at the pointed apex of the cavalry wedge, that had delivered the decisive blow during the battle and precipitated the rout of the Greeks. His friends were tempted to argue that he, rather than his father, had gained the victory.
But to do so would have been a mistake. The cunning Philip deserves the credit, for he was the one who designed the plan of action—the false retreat creating the gap in the Greek line, which in turn set loose the Macedonian horse. Alexander had been no more than a piece, a high-value piece certainly, on the game board.
His father became “extravagantly fond” of him, Plutarch observed, so much so that he enjoyed hearing the Macedonians speak of Alexander as their king and Philip as their general. It was universally understood that the years of apprenticeship were over. Nobody needed to spell it out, but Alexander was heir to the throne not simply by virtue of blood, but on merit. Our sources voice no criticism of him, and evidently the royal family were united.
How then did it come to pass that within a month or two of Chaeronea, Alexander’s legitimacy was placed in question and his mother, Olympias, repudiated as an adulteress?
CHAPTER 3
“THE BULL IS WREATHED”
Every four years, Olympia, a small town in Elis in the northern Peloponnese, became an international, or at least a Panhellenic, city. Wars were suspended and, under the protection of a general truce, anyone who could prove he was a Greek was welcome to attend the Olympic Games. Crowds poured in to watch the athletic races and matches or, indeed, to take part as competitors. Unmarried women could be spectators, but married women were barred on pain of death.
Arts and sports festivals always had a religious origin and purpose in the Hellenic world, and Olympia was no exception. The town stood between a river and rising ground; a stadium, gymnasium, baths, and the athletes’ sleeping quarters provided essential facilities for the games, but at Olympia’s heart was a large sacred enclosure called the Altis. Here two temples stood, dedicated to the king and queen of heaven, Zeus and his consort, Hera. It was in honor of Zeus that the games were held (Hera had her own separate festival, at which unmarried women competed). Along the northern edge of the enclosure was a line of treasuries, looking like tiny temples, where grateful city-states housed valuable gifts to their divine patron.
It was in this enclosure that Philip, victor of Chaeronea, had the nerve to commission a remarkable building. Called the Philippeum after the king, it was a round structure, made of burnt brick. It was circled by marble columns. These carried the roof whose beams were held together by a large bronze poppy. Inside stood a life-size group of statues made from gilded marble by the fashionable Athenian sculptor Leochares. They depicted the senior members of the Macedonian royal family: Philip, Olympias, and Alexander were accompanied by the king’s parents, Amyntas IV and his murderous spouse, Eurydice. Other wives and brothers were deemed superfluous and were omitted.
What are we to make of this? The first and most obvious point is that all was harmony in the palace at Pella. Olympias was confirmed as number one wife and Alexander as the much-loved crown prince.
Second, the Philippeum appears to give notice that the Macedonian royals were edging toward “hero” or semi-divine status. In ancient Greece, the boundary between gods and humans was porous. Remarkable men were recognized to have something sacred about them. To quote the great first-century-B.C. Roman orator, Cicero, ordinary people might confer “the deification of renown and gratitude upon distinguished benefactors to whom they paid their respects and sacrificed at their shrines.”
A few outstanding legendary personalities might actually be transformed into full-on gods. One notable example was the strongman Heracles, from whom Philip proudly claimed ancestry. He was born a mortal but endowed with immortality.
However, in historical times, full apotheosis was unheard of, and Philip did not aspire so high. Ever the creative experimenter, he was among the first monarchs of a large realm or empire to found a ruler cult. From the fourth century onward this became a popular means by which a king could win consent to, even approval of, his rule. Through religious spectacle he could dramatize his subjects’ loyalty. Philip must have hoped that his newly acquired divine status would differentiate him from the quarrelsome politicians of the Greek city-states. It would give him authority without entangling him in their savage internecine politics.
For the average Hellene, though, unused as he was to this innovative political idea, the Philippeum was an insta
nce of overweening pride that leads a man to ignore the divinely fixed limits of human action. Alexander’s opinion is unknown, but as with all his father’s projects, we can safely assume that he gave it some serious thought.
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AT A BANQUET ON the evening after the Battle of Chaeronea, Philip drank too much and behaved badly. He toured the battlefield and jeered at the corpses. He went on to insult his prisoners of war. One of them, a brave (or at least cocky) Athenian politician called Demades, made a witty allusion to the Greek commander-in-chief during the siege of Troy and the notorious lame troublemaker serving in his army: “King, when fate has cast you in the role of Agamemnon, aren’t you ashamed to play the part of Thersites?”
Philip pulled himself together and as an apparent token of apology freed the Athenian captives without ransom. He even gave them clothes to wear when going home. In fact, he knew very well that he needed to conciliate Athens. Its massive fortifications made the city impregnable. Its fleets ruled the waves. Despite the decision at Chaeronea, Athens was still a force to be reckoned with. Alexander and Antipater, who had advised him during his regency, were sent to Athens to hand over the dead and negotiate a peace. A nervous city commissioned an equestrian statue of the king and gave the two Macedonians honorary citizenship.
The king artfully avoided triumphalism, refusing to hold victory sacrifices, to wear garlands, or to use perfumes. He let it be known that he did not want to be addressed as King, preferring the less autocratic title of General. He was “careful to manage Greek affairs rather than rule openly.” According to the Greek historian Polybius, “By his kindness and moderation he brought all the Athenians and their city under his control, not letting emotion push him on to further success.”
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