Once again, as so often in these years, Macedonia needed a new ruler. Perdiccas had married some years earlier and left a son named Amyntas, but the boy was not more than two or three years old and could not possibly take up the rulership of Macedonia at this time. That left Perdiccas’ brother Philip, now (late 360) about twenty-four years old; his half-brothers Archelaus, Menelaus, and Arrhidaeus, and two former pretenders still living in exile—Argaeus and Pausanias—to compete for power. It was of course Philip who stepped in, took control of Macedonia, and proceeded over the course of a remarkable twenty-four-year reign to transform Macedonia, and with it the history of the eastern Mediterranean world. Until 360, as we have seen, our knowledge of Macedonia and its history is sparse and sketchy, but the accession to power of Philip as king changed that: for the first time the focus of Greek historians turned northward and centered on Macedonia and a Macedonian ruler. The real history of Macedonia, therefore, begins with the reign of Philip II.
CHAPTER 3
The Reign of Philip
6. Medallion of Emperor Alexander Severus showing portrait of Philip II of Macedonia
(Wikimedia Commons public domain image by Jastrow)
This man [Philip] ruled over the Macedonians for twenty-four years, and starting with the weakest of resources he built his kingdom into the greatest of the powers in Europe; taking over Macedonia when it was a slave to the Illyrians he made it the master of many great peoples and cities. Through his own excellence he received the leadership of all of Greece, the cities willingly subordinating themselves … Conquering in war the Illyrians, the Paeonians, the Thracians, the Scythians, and all the peoples neighboring on these, he took it upon himself to overthrow the kingdom of the Persians, and having sent forces ahead into Asia was in the act of freeing the Greek cities there when he was cut short in the midst of it all by fate. But he left behind so many and such great forces that his son Alexander required no further allies to bring about the destruction of Persian power. And Philip achieved all of this not by luck, but through his own excellence. For this king excelled in military shrewdness, in courage, and in brilliance of mind.
(Diodorus 16.1.3–6)
FEW IF ANY RULERS IN WORLD HISTORY CAN EVER HAVE TAKEN UP POWER under circumstances as difficult, indeed as outright disastrous, as those confronting Philip when he assumed the rule of Macedonia in the winter of 360/59. The defeat of his brother Perdiccas in battle against Bardylis and his Illyrians did not just result in Perdiccas’ death: it brought about the near total destruction of the Macedonian army. As we have seen, as many as four thousand Macedonian soldiers are reported to have died along with Perdiccas in this battle; many of the survivors were doubtless captured by the victorious Illyrians; and those who got away simply dispersed to their homes or some other refuge. The main army of the Macedonian state thereby ceased to exist in any useful sense, and the northwestern portion of Macedonia—Pelagonia and Lyncus at least, and likely some portions of Eordaea and Orestis, perhaps as much as a quarter of Macedonian territory in all—was occupied by the Illyrians and ceased temporarily to be part of Macedonia. That in itself constituted a major problem for the new ruler of Macedonia, but it was only a part of the difficulties Philip had to confront.
The defeat and death of the Macedonian ruler, and destruction of his army, was taken as an opportunity by various other neighbors and rivals of the Macedonians to extend their power at Macedonia’s expense, or to gain influence over Macedonia, or simply to loot and pillage in Macedonia to their hearts’ content. From the upper Axius valley to the north of Macedonia, Paeonian tribesmen invaded the Amphaxitis plain, looting, killing, and destroying as they came. From the south, an Athenian expedition of thirty ships and three thousand hoplites under the general Mantias appeared at Methone, convoying the Macedonian pretender Argaeus with a force of exiles and mercenaries, with the aim of installing Argaeus as a pro-Athenian puppet ruler over Macedonia. The Athenian goal was to control the Macedonian coast, ensuring access to Macedonian timber, and especially to win back control of the strategic former Athenian colony of Amphipolis, which was occupied at the time by a Macedonian garrison installed by Perdiccas. From the east, a large Thracian army gathered, probably commanded by the great Thracian ruler Cotys and accompanied by another Macedonian pretender named Pausanias, preparing to invade Macedonia to install Pausanias as a pro-Thracian puppet ruler. With the army destroyed, and enemy forces invading Macedonia from the north-west, north, east, and south, it looked as if Macedonia was simply falling apart, to survive at best as a partitioned region ruled by outsiders or by puppet rulers installed by outsiders. The prospects facing Philip seemed bleak indeed.
One must recall that at this time Philip was a young man of just twenty-four and untried in command, the son of a ruler who had been weak at best, and the younger brother of rulers who had been outright failures. There was nothing in the situation he faced or in his immediate past history to suggest that he had any prospect of being a successful ruler. Yet the task Philip set himself was not merely to deal with these immediate threats to Macedonia’s integrity and security, but to raise Macedonia to the position of a major regional power able to overmatch its regional rivals and threaten their security and integrity, rather than merely struggling to preserve itself against their attacks. And over the course of his twenty-four-year reign he was to succeed spectacularly in this self-imposed task; so spectacularly that it is a wonder he is not remembered as one of the great rulers in western history.
1. DEFUSING THE INITIAL CRISIS
Before Philip could even begin to work towards his major aims and goals, however, he had to deal with the immediate problems confronting his rule in particular and Macedonia in general: how he managed to deal with the multi-faceted and drastic crisis brought about by Perdiccas’ defeat would determine whether he would ever have the chance to strengthen Macedonia at all. In the event, it must be said that, his youth and inexperience notwithstanding, Philip’s analysis and assessment of the problems confronting him and the means available to him for coping with them was brilliant. In one short year he defused the crises and established himself firmly as Macedonia’s unquestioned ruler. How did he go about this?
The greatest difficulty limiting Philip’s possibilities was the lack of military force. The destruction of Perdiccas’ main Macedonian army did not leave Macedonia denuded of military manpower, by any means; but it gave Macedonians little incentive to join up with and serve under a ruler—Philip—whose prospects of success seemed bleak at best. What probably saved Philip in the beginning was having a secure base of power with some military force of his own, in the region of Macedonia—possibly Elimea as we have seen—over which his brother had placed him. He realized immediately, however, that he lacked the military force to confront Bardylis and his Illyrians in the north-west or the Thracian army approaching from the east. He correctly drew the conclusion that he must try to deal with these two threats by diplomacy and, if possible, bribery. Before he could do so, he had to establish himself as ruler of Macedonia, which presumably involved occupation of the new capital city established by Archelaus, Pella. At Pella, Philip would be at the center of things, controlling the Macedonian court and such administrative institutions as there might be. More importantly, it was no doubt at Pella that the royal treasury was located. That Philip seized and controlled this is nowhere stated; but in his first moves against Macedonia’s enemies he was able to engage in extensive “bribery” (giving of presents, to put it more neutrally), showing that he had significant funds at his disposal from the start. Where else but from the royal treasury could such funds have come?
Though our sources unfortunately offer little detail, it is clear that Philip initiated negotiations with Bardylis which resulted in some sort of truce at a minimum, perhaps an outright peace agreement. Bardylis was, perforce, left in control of the portions of upper Macedonia he had already occupied, since there was nothing to be done about it as things stood. In return for acknowledging Bardylis�
� occupation, Philip got a respite from further Illyrian attacks. It seems likely that he also sent some sort of tribute payment and/or a promise to resume the tribute payments his father Amyntas had made to keep the Illyrians out of Macedonia. It is likely too that Philip’s marriage to the Illyrian Audata, probably a daughter or niece of Bardylis, occurred at this time, and as part of this negotiation. By Audata, his second wife, Philip eventually had a daughter named Cynnane. This shrewd but humiliating diplomacy, then, secured Philip’s north-western flank and bought him a period of quiet from that quarter in which to act.
The second great issue facing Philip was the threatened Thracian invasion from the east, led by Cotys with the aim of installing Pausanias as puppet ruler. Here again Philip was too weak to respond other than by diplomacy. Philip apparently met with Cotys in person, and by a mixture of promises and bribes persuaded the aged Thracian ruler to abandon his project. Cotys was no doubt promised that Philip would be a suitably friendly and humble Macedonian ruler, so that there was no need to install Pausanias; and cash gifts from Philip took the place of loot extracted by force. Pausanias was thus abandoned and, since nothing further is ever heard of him, likely either killed outright or handed over to Philip for execution. Very fortunately for Philip, Cotys died soon after this agreement was reached and his great Thracian realm was divided into three parts, each ruled by one of his three sons. These three much smaller and weaker Thracian realms offered a much lesser threat to Macedonia and Philip, particularly as Cotys’ three sons immediately entered into rivalries against each other, rivalries which Philip was eventually able to exploit effectively to his advantage.
The two gravest threats to Philip’s position as Macedonian ruler, and to the stability of Macedonia, were thus dealt with for the immediate time being by a mixture of diplomacy and bribery that was, while humiliating, effective and necessary. But such humiliating diplomacy could hardly help to ensure Philip’s position within Macedonia, as Macedonian ruler. He needed a show of strength to persuade the Macedonians that he could be more than a weak puppet of stronger outside powers. There remained two threats to be dealt with: the Athenians and their would-be puppet ruler Argaeus, and the Paeonians. Success in whichever threat he first confronted was absolutely necessary, and Philip therefore assessed which of these was the weaker and therefore the easier to deal with. He decided to confront Argaeus and the Athenians first, no doubt also in part because, in marching on the ancient capital Aegae and seeking to occupy it, Argaeus represented the more existential threat to Philip himself as Macedonian ruler. Consequently, he sent messengers to the Paeonian ruler Agis, to buy him and his raiders off for the time being with gifts and promises.
One thing Philip could not afford to do at this time was get embroiled in a major war with the Athenians: they were too powerful and he lacked the resources. His problem thus was to eliminate Argaeus without antagonizing the man’s Athenian backers too much. He quickly found the solution. The guiding principle to Athenian policy in the north Aegean for more than half a century had been to recover control of their former colony Amphipolis at the mouth of the River Strymon. They had founded this colony in 438/7 to give them a secure base from which to import the Macedonian and Thracian timber which was vital to their ship-building; but they lost control of it in 424 when the Spartan commander Brasidas induced the population to rebel and ally with Sparta. Since then the Athenians had made numerous unsuccessful attempts to recover control, and the installation of a Macedonian garrison in Amphipolis by Perdiccas was a key cause of Athenian hostility to Perdiccas and his brother Philip. Philip was so short of military manpower that he could not afford to maintain this garrison in any case: he needed those troops for other purposes. However, upon withdrawing the garrison from Amphipolis he made a virtue of necessity by letting the Athenians know that he supported their claim to Amphipolis, words that cost him nothing but won him the beginning of good will among the Athenians. He followed up by seeking a formal declaration of peace.
As a result of this, the Athenian commander in the north, Mantias, who had been sent to Methone with thirty ships and three thousand hoplite warriors, kept his Athenian hoplites at Methone and sent Argaeus to Aegae with only a small force of mercenaries and exiles, but with very few Athenians. The people of Aegae correctly assessed Argaeus’ chances of making himself ruler of Macedonia as negligible and refused to back him: they were perhaps angered too by Argaeus’ foreign backing. As a result Argaeus was obliged to retreat back towards the coast, and here—along the route between Aegae and Methone—Philip and his forces lay in wait. In a sharp battle, Argaeus’ force was decisively defeated. Most of the mercenaries were killed, as almost certainly was Argaeus himself (he is never heard of again). The surviving Macedonian exiles were arrested, but the Athenians among Argaeus’ force were carefully separated out and released without ransom and even with compensation for their losses. They presumably returned to Mantias at Methone and strengthened the impression that Philip was well disposed to Athens. Thus Philip had brought an end to the Athenian threat to his power by showing careful good will to the Athenians at little cost; had eliminated his rival Argaeus once and for all; and had shown himself a promising military leader by winning his first military engagement with decisive ease.
Now that the Macedonians saw reason to believe in Philip, he was able to begin recruiting further soldiers and prepare to deal with the remaining threat of the Paeonians. Here he again had some good luck: the Paeonian ruler Agis apparently died at this time, leaving the Paeonians with much weaker leadership. Philip launched a swift expedition up the Axius valley and inflicted a sharp defeat on the Paeonian tribesmen, who thereafter troubled Macedonia very little, and in fact came under Macedonian suzerainty. As the campaigning season of 359 drew to a close, Philip could congratulate himself on his achievements. He was now firmly established as ruler of Macedonia. By an astute, and as it was to prove highly characteristic mix of diplomacy, bribery, and victorious military engagement, he had calmed or seen off the various threats to Macedonia. The two pretenders Pausanias and Argaeus were no more; the Paeonians were cowed; the Athenians were considering a formal peace; the Thracians were quiet; and the Illyrian threat was contained by tribute and marriage alliance. The Macedonian people were duly impressed by their astute young ruler; but Philip knew that his achievements to date were only temporary. To win true security for Macedonia, and for his own rule of Macedonia, he needed a far greater military force than he could as yet command. Only a strong military force could truly secure Macedonia against the Illyrian threat, overawe the Athenians into staying out of Macedonian affairs, and keep the Paeonians and Thracians cowed. Having won himself a breathing space, therefore, Philip devoted the fall of 359 and the winter and spring of 358 to military recruitment, and to the creation of a new Macedonian army.
The process is described by Diodorus at 16.1–2: Philip traveled around Macedonia summoning the people to assemblies where he built up their morale and explained his plans. He recruited men, and re-organized the training and equipment of the Macedonian infantry. He himself, as ruler, provided his recruits with their new-style equipment and led them in a series of competitive training drills and maneuvers. He taught them a new style of close-order fighting he had devised, and he thereby “first established the Macedonian phalanx”. The exact meaning of Diodorus’ words, the kind of equipment and fighting Philip introduced, and the claim that he originated the Macedonian phalanx, are all controversial and have been the source of much scholarly debate. All of this will be examined in detail in the next chapter. But whatever the details of Philip’s work, one clear result is not in dispute: by the summer of 358 Philip was able to dispose of an army of ten thousand well trained infantry and in excess of six hundred cavalry. Such a military force is without precedent in recorded Macedonian history, except perhaps in the force Perdiccas had led to confront the Illyrians two years earlier. But Philip’s force seems to have been better trained and equipped than his brother’s had been, t
hough its purpose was the same: to confront the Illyrians.
In the summer of 358 Philip invaded north-western Macedonia at the head of this army: he had never had any intention of allowing the Illyrians to control the north-western cantons of Macedonia permanently, the peace he had negotiated in 359 being merely an expedient to earn a respite in which to rebuild Macedonia’s army. Now that the army was ready, the peace was abandoned: when Bardylis sent messengers to Philip to protest his action and demand he adhere to the terms of the peace, Philip demanded that all Illyrian forces should withdraw from Macedonian territory. That meant a military confrontation, and Bardylis summoned his forces, which matched those of Philip almost exactly: ten thousand infantry and five hundred cavalry, according to Diodorus (16.4.4). The battle that occurred somewhere in north-western Macedonia was hard-fought. Philip himself commanded a picked force of elite infantry on the right of his phalanx, and instructed his cavalry stationed on the far right wing to charge around the Illyrians’ left flank and attack them from the rear. The Illyrians responded by forming themselves into a square, and put up a desperate fight. But Philip’s newly trained and organized infantry proved irresistible: the Illyrian resistance was overcome, and when they broke and ran Philip’s cavalry kept up a determined pursuit to kill as many fleeing Illyrians as possible and make the victory decisive. Some seven thousand Illyrians perished, we are told, a full two-thirds of the army engaged; and the Illyrians had no choice but to withdraw entirely from Macedonian territory.
Thus Philip had triumphantly overcome all the problems confronting Macedonia at his accession, and shown himself to be already the strongest Macedonian ruler since the founding ruler, Alexander I. At about this same time the Athenians agreed to a peace treaty with Philip, leaving him in full control of Macedonia and free from any external threat. He had at his disposal a victorious army that was the largest in Macedonia’s history, and the good will of his people whom he had saved from foreign invasion and occupation and the seeming dissolution of their state. As a result of this great victory, Philip could now embark on the process of state-building by which he hoped to turn Macedonia into the strongest state in Greece and the Balkan region, instead of one of the weakest.
Before and After Alexander Page 7
