Alexander the Great Failure

by John D Grainger

  and then Pausanias, the son of King Aeropos, who died, possibly murdered, after

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  only a short reign. Amyntas III became king in 393. He was a great-nephew of

  Archelaos and grandson of the fi fth son of Alexander I, and so of a line hitherto nowhere near the kingship. The succession had moved steadily further away from the direct line; the only qualifi cations for being king were a connection, however distant, to the royal line, and the ability to survive. There is no indication that the Assembly had any infl uence in all this, but it had presumably ratifi ed each new king.23 (See Genealogies, p. xiv).

  The inevitable result of the long succession crisis was a weakening of the state once more. The struggle was wholly within the royal family, and no outsiders had much infl uence on the outcome, except as murderers. Amyntas III’s authority as king was seriously diminished, and his kingdom was almost at once invaded by

  Illyrians from across the north-western border. His predecessors had lost control of the border kingdom of Lynkos, and Amyntas was driven out by the invaders,

  who put up a man called Argaios as king; he is said to have maintained himself for two years before Amyntas managed to return.24 So by 391, when Amyntas returned, the kingdom had had eight kings in nine years, including Amyntas for the second time.

  Argaios is not certainly identifi able, but was probably a brother or half-brother of Orestes, and so a son of King Archelaos. Orestes had been a child king; perhaps Argaios was even younger, in his teens by the late 390s. It was always a temptation for a defeated or ignored royal candidate to look for support outside the kingdom during a period of confusion in the royal house, and neighbours would hope to

  infl uence a puppet ruler. It did not usually work for the candidate in the long term, since by defi nition he was lacking in supporters within the kingdom, but the invaders usually found it profi table. The Illyrians, the Thracians, Athens, and later the Epirotes, all tried to infl uence affairs in Macedon and ultimately failed.

  Their interventions, however, generally ensured that the kingdom continued in

  a weakened condition, which was probably a secondary aim.

  Amyntas had considerable internal support and recruited help from Thessaly;

  he also made some arrangement with the city of Olynthos in the Chalkidike by

  which he handed over land near that city as a gift in exchange for armed help.

  The Thessalians succeeded in returning Amyntas to his kingship25 and then were thanked and went home. (This is a fairly tentative reconstruction, and a

  different version is possible.)26 Macedon at this time was clearly much weakened as a result of the uncertainty at the top. A new king required some time – up to a decade perhaps – to establish himself and after his death his achievements, if there were any, were swiftly dissipated by the struggle for the succession. After ten years of confusion, Amyntas required longer than most to secure his position and develop his power.

  Macedon’s weakness coincided with the growth of a new league of Chalkidian

  cities led by Olynthos, and during the 380s the league took in the nearby

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  Macedonian towns, including even Pella,27 so depriving Amyntas of his royal seat. During the fi fth century, under the impulse of expanding trade and the

  example of the Greek colonial cities nearby, and along the kingdom’s coast, the urban centres in Macedon had multiplied and grown. 28 Few were really large as yet, and most were still basically rural, but they constituted markets for rural produce, and were places where imported manufactured goods were available,

  and the skills of local craftsmen could be marketed. Their populations were also alternative power bases for the kings, whose dependence on the rural barons

  and the peasantry was thus lessened. They were reinforced by immigrants from

  Greece, such as the people of Mycenae who were forced out of their city by the Argives in 464 and given refuge by Alexander I. 29 Perdikkas repeated the gesture for the Hestiaians from Euboia, forced out by the Athenians in 446. 30 In particular it was such men as these, and those from the towns, trained as hoplite infantry, who were able to give the kings the ability to fi ght Greek invaders, as compared with the Illyrians and Thracians, who could normally be dealt with by the barons’

  cavalry and the peasants.

  Loss of control over several of these urban centres to the Chalkidian League

  meant that the kings lost access to their fi nancial resources, the use of their hoplite soldiers, and control of their lands. Amyntas III was reduced to dependence on the rural areas, on the support of the barons, and on the peasant soldiers who were useless against cavalry or hoplite infantry. The advance of the Chalkidian League into the urban centres of Macedon bade fair to destroy the kingdom.

  Amyntas may have been driven from his kingdom for a second time by another

  Illyrian invasion in 383, though if so he quickly recovered, and indeed it is not clear that he was facing more than another momentary Illyrian raid.31 By this time, however, he had become so concerned at Chalkidian power that he turned

  to the predominant power in Greece, Sparta, appealing for help. Complaints

  also reached Sparta at about the same time from a couple of Chalkidian cities

  not members of the League. At last appreciating the potential of the League for power and future expansion, the Spartans intervened. 32

  This was the time when Sparta’s imperial reach was at its greatest. The

  Chalkidian League was seen by the Spartans, once the case was pointed out to

  them, as a major threat to its neighbours and to the Spartan hegemony of Greece.

  A force of Spartan soldiers came north and, in alliance with Amyntas, laid siege to Olynthos. The siege lasted three years, demonstrating to the Spartans just

  how formidable a force the league already was. No doubt congratulations were

  handed round at Sparta when the eventual peace treaty broke up the League, but the major benefi ciary was Amyntas, who regained his lost lands and his towns

  and cities. 33

  Amyntas III was almost as slippery in his international relations as his

  great-grandfather Alexander I, and with as much justifi cation and necessity. He

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  allied himself at various times with Thessalians, Athens, the Chalkidian League, Illyrians and Sparta, all with the purpose of gaining, regaining or reviving his kingdom. The destruction of the Chalkidian League at Sparta’s hands did not

  induce him to remain friendly with that city for very long, and soon afterwards he was allied once more with Athens, which had recovered suffi ciently from its defeat to form a new league of its own. 34 This was a balance to Sparta, and the whole Spartan hegemony loosened in the 370s. In the end it was the Thebans

  who brought it down, fi rst by defeating a Spartan detachment at Leuktra in

  371 and then by carrying the war into the Peloponnese under the leadership of

  Epameinondas and Pelopidas. It was, however, only beginning to make progress

  in this when Amyntas died, in 370, of natural causes.

  Macedon was for the moment a relatively stable state, but it was still ringed

  by enemies, and its internal structure remained extremely volatile. Below the

  level of the royal court, the state’s infrastructure was no more than rudimentary.

  The king’s income was based largely on his ability to control and dispose of

  the natural resources of the kingdom: these consisted particularly of precious metals and timber; so when the king lost control of the mines, as Perdikkas II had lost control of the Bisaltian silver mine, the minting of coins ceased. Sales of timber were in part an index of the kingdom’s foreign policy: the alignment
with Athens was linked with that city’s constant demand for shipbuilding timber for its fl eet. 35

  The kingdom’s military power still lay with the horse-riding baronage. The

  peasant infantry was probably unwilling to turn out without compulsion being

  applied, or the inducement of either pay or the likelihood of loot – and the kings were not rich enough to pay wages. And so only a king with good control over

  the kingdom – meaning the ability to control the baronage – could cut a major

  fi gure in foreign affairs. All too often it was relatively easy for one of his enemies to knock Macedon out of the game by inducing an invasion by one enemy or

  another, or by persuading a pretender to the throne to raise a rebellion.

  The absence of a governing infrastructure meant that there was no kingdom-

  wide bureaucracy to provide a continuing administrative spine to the country, no professional military force to control internal dissent, discipline unruly barons, or stand guard to deter invaders. The Chalkidian League could dispose of fewer than 10,000 soldiers in 383, and yet it was able, with no real diffi culty, to mop up the nearby Macedonian towns; and Amyntas had been unable to prevent it. 36

  Therefore, as a state, Macedon was still a primitive political entity, overly reliant on the strength and wealth and personal charisma of individual kings. Hence the repeated instability whenever a king died.

  A clear pattern can be seen during the century and a half before Amyntas died.

  It can even be tabulated without too great a distortion of reality, as alternating periods of collapse and royal stability:

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  1. 497–454: Alexander I’s rule;

  2. 454–430: the kingdom breaks up;

  3. 430–413: Perdikkas II’s sole rule;

  4. 413: a royal bloodbath;

  5. 413–399:

  Archelaos’

  rule;

  6. 399–391: royal succession dispute; and

  7. 391–370: Amyntas III’s rule.

  The alternation of chaos in the royal household and the subsequent revival of

  royal rule under the winning candidate was itself thoroughly unsettling. The

  presumption had to be that no king would be able to pass on his power to his

  successor, who was likely to be weaker for an ever-longer period. The turbulence of Amyntas III’s reign is one result – he was clearly a less effective king than his predecessors.

  The kings understood what needed to be done. Archelaos’ rule may be taken

  as example: he cut roads through the forests; he organized a professional army, though it was never large; he gained control of the Greek cities on his coastline; he moved the royal centre from traditional Aigai to coastal Pella.37 This he did

  in his decade and a half of rule, but he was able to do it because he took over a kingdom which was more or less intact. His predecessor Perdikkas had had to

  spend over 20 years recovering lost territories, and the succession dispute in 413, though lethal to several members of the royal family, had been brief, and had

  affected the royal house rather than the rest of the kingdom; the fact that the Greek powers were locked into their Great War also helped to insulate the dispute from outside interference. But the larger succession dispute of the 390s rapidly wasted Archelaos’ achievements, and the continuing troubles of Amyntas III’s

  reign did not allow a full recovery.

  It was only by the 370s that Amyntas III recovered some of his predecessors’

  powers, but by then he was an old man, and when he died the whole structure fell apart again. But by now simply regaining control in the traditional manner was not enough; a more robust governmental structure was clearly needed. Macedon

  in the 370s was a weaker state, internally and in its foreign relations, than at any time since the Persian invasions.

  In this situation it did not help that Amyntas had fathered no fewer than six

  sons, by two different wives. The order of their birth is unclear, and it is possible that Amyntas’ marriages were bigamous (not a matter for condemnation in

  Macedon). The senior wife was Eurydike, a princess of the Lynkestian royal

  family; the second wife was Gygaia, whose origin is not known; both wives gave birth to three sons. A son of Eurydike, Alexander, appears to have been recognized as Amyntas’ heir during his lifetime, for he is named directly after his father in a treaty with Athens;38 he was probably the eldest son. There was also a daughter, Eurynoe.

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  Alexander II was about 20 years of age when his father died. His accession was peaceful and undisputed, as far as we can tell. He quickly made an agreement with the Illyrians to pay them tribute to prevent an invasion,39 and he was confi dent enough of his power to intervene the next year in Thessaly, to assist the rulers of the city of Larissa, his father’s old ally, against a local tyrant, but his confi dence was misplaced. By intervening in Thessaly he had attracted the attention of the current Greek hegemonic power, Thebes. He occupied the cities of Larissa and

  Krannon, and promised to leave them independent once the crisis had passed; but then he changed his mind; his liberation of his ally became an occupation. 40

  In his absence a rebellion began in Macedon, headed by Ptolemy of Aloros,

  probably a son of Amyntas II ‘the Little’ (king briefl y in 393), and married to Eurynoe, Alexander’s sister. Ptolemy does not appear to have claimed the throne, yet, but he had been a prominent counsellor of Amyntas III in the 370s, he was experienced in affairs, and he was one of the men who could be counted as a

  candidate for the kingship. In Thessaly the Theban general Pelopidas bundled the Macedonian troops out of the cities they were occupying and then marched on

  into Macedon, where he arbitrated the internal dispute. Ptolemy was reconciled to the king, and Alexander became an ally of Thebes. But Alexander had to

  provide hostages to Thebes as an earnest of his good behaviour; and Ptolemy

  was still around. Alexander had been humiliated with depressing ease. Pelopidas’

  ‘settlement’ guaranteed continuing trouble.41

  Given the previous history of the kingdom, the events which followed are not

  a surprise. Having been pushed out of Thessaly, Alexander was seen to be in a

  weak position and was humiliated by the ease with which Pelopidas had swatted

  him down. Ptolemy of Aloros had the support of Amyntas’ widow Eurydike, in a

  relationship distant observers assumed was sexual. In the spring of 367 Ptolemy organized the assassination of King Alexander, his brother-in-law.42 This had clearly been likely from the time he had become ‘reconciled’ to Alexander after his rebellion the year before, yet allowed to live on in the kingdom. Ptolemy now seized power, supported by Eurydike. The Thebans, who had been allied with

  Alexander and had brought about the arbitration and the reconciliation, did

  nothing.

  Ptolemy’s technical position was that he was the guardian of the next son of

  Amyntas, Perdikkas III, and it was in Perdikkas’ name that the coins were minted for the next three years. 43 Ptolemy was the man to whom foreigners went for decisions, though we are not informed of the extent of his authority over his

  fellow barons – it was probably even less than that of Amyntas and Alexander.

  Perdikkas was probably only a year or so younger than his dead brother; the

  youngest of the three sons of Amyntas and Eurydike, Philip, was 13 or 14 in 368, when he was sent to the Thebans as one of Pelopidas’ hostages, so Perdikkas was about 16 in 367. Alexander’s youth had shown that an older head was required.

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  Ptolemy clearly believed, as did Eurydike, that he was th
e right man for the post.

  The temptation to rid himself of Perdikkas and take the kingship for himself

  must have been strong.

  If Ptolemy could hoist himself to power by the aid of some local adherents

  and a foreign power, so could others. A pretender called Pausanias, probably

  a younger son of King Archelaos and brother of the former king Argaios,

  approached from Chalkidike, presumably gaining assistance from the quiescent

  Chalkidian League. He recruited a force of Greek mercenaries and gained control of the Anthemos district in the north-west part of Chalkidike, and of some small cities close by. This gave him a useful base, perhaps centred on his own estate (as Ptolemy’s original base was his estate at Aloros). Ptolemy was not strong enough to combat this threat himself. The Greek soldiers employed by Pausanias, and

  those of the towns and cities under his control, obviously gave him the edge.

  Instead Ptolemy contacted the Athenian general Iphikrates who was in nearby

  waters with a small fl eet, attempting to gain control of Athens’ long lost colony city of Amphipolis. Iphikrates was able to drive Pausanias out with ease, thus once again demonstrating Ptolemy’s weakness.44

  After some time Pelopidas of Thebes led a force north, having been asked to do so by some Macedonians who were adherents of Alexander. But they were disappointed in the outcome: Ptolemy was confi rmed in his position, a humili a tion, but it certainly stopped his competitors from rebelling; Pelopidas left with another set of hostages, including Ptolemy’s own son Philoxenos. The Theban purpose

  was clearly to ensure that internal disputes in Macedon would continue. 45

  Ptolemy’s authority was reduced to the original Macedonian kingdom, from

  the north slopes of Olympos to Almopia, and east to the Axios valley. The

  eastern area beyond the Axios had gone, much of Chalkidike was hostile, as

  Pausanias’ career showed, and the western hill-kingdoms had all slipped away

  into independence or the Illyrian orbit. Amyntas III had not been able to recover control over these kingdoms, and Lynkos (Eurydike’s homeland) had become

  subject to King Bardylis of the Illyrians. This brought the enemy boundary to