Before and After Alexander

by Richard A. Billows

  The problems initially confronting Philip can be separated into three major sets of issues: there were the internal issues of Macedonia’s political and military weakness, its characteristic disunity and regional rivalries, and the disloyalty of members of the ruling Argead family and of other dynastic and aristocratic families; there were the constant threats of invasion and harassment posed by the barbarian peoples to Macedonia’s north and east—the Illyrians, Dardanians, Paeonians, and Thracians above all; and there was the issue of relations, often hostile relations, with the various Greek states and communities to the south of Macedonia, in the first place the Olynthian League and the Thessalians, and beyond them the stronger states dominating the rest of the Greek mainland—Thebans and Athenians most prominently.

  The historical sources on which we have to rely for information were almost exclusively written by southern city-state Greeks (especially Athenians), and were overwhelmingly interested in relations between Philip and the city-states of Greece (especially Athens). This seriously distorts a basic historical reality: it is made to seem that Philip’s main preoccupation throughout his reign was relations with the Athenians and other city-state Greeks, when in point of fact Philip’s main concerns were rather with solving Macedonia’s internal problems, creating a properly unified state, and establishing Macedonian dominance over its barbarian neighbors, rather than the other way around. While we can trace the history of Philip’s relations with southern Greece, and especially the Athenians, in considerable detail, we get only occasional glimpses into how he dealt with the more crucial issues of internal weakness and barbarian foes. It seems most useful to treat each of these issues separately in turn, gathering all the information we can to present the best possible picture of how Philip went about dealing with each of these three sets of issues.

  2. BUILDING A MACEDONIAN STATE

  Undoubtedly the primary issue confronting Philip was that of establishing his rule over Macedonia, of unifying it into a coherent state under his control, and of strengthening it militarily, politically, socially, and economically. He began this project with an enormous source of strength: the large infantry army he had built and led to victory over the Illyrians gave him a secure power base no previous Macedonian ruler had at his disposal. The army was indeed the key to Philip’s state-building success, and to the nature of the Macedonian state he brought into being. I will defer detailed discussion of Philip’s military reforms, and of the Macedonian army, to the next chapter. Here, I shall discuss the unification of Macedonia, the proper subordination of the Macedonian aristocracy, the improvement of the Macedonian economy, and the creation of a Macedonian warrior “middle class” that formed the backbone of the Macedonian state and Macedonian power for several centuries to come.

  One of the difficulties Macedonian rulers had faced throughout Macedonia’s history was the lack of unity of the country. As already described in Chapter 1, the core lands of Macedonia comprised two broad regions, generally referred to as lower and upper Macedonia; upper Macedonia was itself divided by mountain ranges into a series of sub-regions, each of which had its own local traditions and dominant families or clans. Within these upland sub-regions, or cantons as they are often called, local dynastic families had a tendency to take power and set themselves up as rivals or outright enemies of whatever Argead prince was ruling Macedonia at the time. Members of a dynastic family in Lyncus, for example, using the name Arrhabaeus and claiming descent from the old Bachhiad ruling clan of early Corinth, set themselves up at times as independent rulers of their region: the first Arrhabaeus was an enemy of Perdiccas II in the 420s (Thucydides 4.74–78 and 124–28); the second Arrhabaeus was an enemy of Archelaus (Aristotle Politics 1311b). The same is the case with the princely Derdas family of Elimea. We know of at least three princes of this name: the first was an enemy of Perdiccas II (Thucydides 1.57.3); the second probably assassinated the ruler Amyntas II (the Little), as we have seen, but was subsequently an ally of Amyntas III (Xenophon Hellenica 5.2.38–41); the third was an enemy of Philip, captured and killed at the sack of Olynthus in 347 (Athenaeus 10.436c, 13.557b). Further, Thucydides (2.80) tells us of a king of Orestis named Antiochus. Indeed, in an early treaty between Athens and Perdiccas II from ca. 440, preserved in an inscription (Inscriptiones Graecae I3.89), we find among those who swear to the treaty, along with Perdiccas himself and members of his family, four men with the title basileus (king) from upper Macedonia: Arrhabaeus, Derdas, Antiochus, and a fourth whose name is unfortunately lost.

  To make Macedonia strong, Philip needed to fully integrate the upper Macedonian cantons into the Macedonian state, and to subordinate the dynastic families there once and for all. Derdas of Elimea was driven out of his territory and forced into exile: as we have seen, he fled to Olynthus and was there captured by Philip (and fairly certainly executed). Members of his family stayed in Elimea, but now as subordinates of the Argead ruler: we find an Elimiote Harpalus son of Machatas (a name used by the Derdas family) serving loyally under Alexander some years later. The princely dynasty of Lyncus had Philip to thank for driving out the Illyrian occupiers in 358: they perforce had to accept subjection to Philip. Three sons of Arrhabaeus II named Arrhabaeus, Heromenes, and Alexander remained quietly subordinate during Philip’s reign. The first two were executed by Alexander on suspicion of complicity in the plot to murder Philip; but we may suspect that they were really guilty of being perceived as potential threats to Alexander’s succession to his father’s power. The plain fact is that Philip’s new army, his victory over the Illyrians, and the many further victories that followed, made him far too formidable for the dynasts of upper Macedonia to challenge. They had to be content with subordination to Philip, and seek advancement in his service, or face being exiled and/or executed. The manpower of upper Macedonia was mobilized in Philip’s service: in the fully developed Macedonian army at the end of Philip’s reign and the beginning of Alexander’s, we find large battalions of infantry drawn from the regions of upper Macedonia as established segments of the Macedonian heavy infantry phalanx (see further Chapter 4, below). Their experience of successful military service, and the rewards they won as a result, made them loyal to Philip and his successor rather than to the old local dynastic families.

  Thus a mixture of threats and rewards brought the dynastic houses of upper Macedonia to heel, and successful military service in Philip’s army and wars transferred the loyalty of the men of upper Macedonia to Philip, and integrated them into the Macedonian identity. The other great threat to Macedonian unity came from the Argead ruling family itself. For almost a hundred years, since the death of Alexander I in about 454, Macedonia was plagued by rivalries between competing branches of the Argead family descending from Alexander’s many sons. Members of the Argead family had not scrupled to ally themselves with great Macedonian aristocrats, with members of the upper Macedonian dynastic houses, or even with foreign powers such as the Olynthians, the Thracians, and the Athenians, in their quests to overthrow the ruling Argead and take his place. Not only for his own sake, but to create a stable and unified Macedonia, Philip could not allow that. He ruthlessly eliminated all members of the Argead family, therefore, except his own immediate heirs.

  Right at the start of his reign, Philip eliminated the representatives of two rival branches of the Argead clan who were trying to make themselves ruler with foreign backing: Argaeus with Athenian support, and Pausanias with Thracian support. We have seen how Philip bought off their foreign support and ended these threats to his position. So far as we can tell, what remained of the Argead family after the deaths of these two pretenders, were Philip’s three half-brothers, Archelaus, Menelaus, and Arrhidaeus, and his nephew Amyntas son of Perdiccas. His three half-brothers were direct rivals to Philip for rule of Macedonia, and the eldest, Archelaus, seems already to have made a play for power in 359. What exactly happened is not known, but Archelaus met a violent end. The other two brothers fled and eventually found refuge in Olynthus, like Derdas
; and like Derdas they perished at the sack of Olynthus in 347 (Justin 8.3.10). That left, besides Philip himself, only Amyntas alive of the Argead family. As his dead brother’s young son, Amyntas was Philip’s ward and, until he had sons of his own, his heir presumptive. Philip brought Amyntas into his own household and had him carefully brought up there, eventually along with his (Philip’s) own sons Arrhidaeus and Alexander. After all, Philip could not know whether his sons would survive childhood and prove to be suitable heirs. When Amyntas reached adulthood, Philip showed that Amyntas was very much in his thoughts as part of his family by marrying his own daughter Cynnane (by his Illyrian wife Audata) to Amyntas. At the same time, of course, this kept Amyntas firmly under his control and within his own immediate family circle; and Amyntas remained loyal as long as Philip was alive.

  With potential Argead pretenders eliminated, the dynastic upper Macedonian houses thoroughly subjected, and upper Macedonia firmly integrated into the Macedonian state, the most dangerous obstacles to Macedonian unity had been dealt with. But there was also the problem of the Macedonian aristocracy more generally. The Macedonian aristocracy were primarily big landowners, who lived a life centered around horse-rearing, hunting, warfare, and the symposium (drinking party). Their estates were apparently worked by a kind of serf class, freeing them from the need to do any productive work. Besides the serfs, they had tenants and retainers who, in periods of warfare (endemic during most of Macedonian history) served their lords as cavalry (the retainers) and light infantry (the tenants). The Macedonian army before the time of Philip was, indeed, made up of the personal followings of various aristocrats added to the personal following of the ruler himself, who was a great landowner like the aristocrats. The military power of the ruler thus depended on the degree to which he was able to persuade members of the aristocracy to back him. Those aristocrats who did support a given ruler became his hetairoi (companions, a term going back to Homeric times), and served as his synedrion (governing/advisory council). The importance of the aristocratic role as hetairoi of the ruler is illustrated by the existence of a major annual festival celebrating it, named the hetairidia. One should also note the naming of a set of “barons from lower Macedonia” (Errington 1990 p. 15) as guarantors of the peace treaty with Athens preserved in Inscriptiones Graecae I3.89.

  Strong rulers were those who succeeded in uniting the vast majority of the aristocracy behind them; weak rulers were those who failed to do this. And there was a clear tendency in early Macedonian history (before Philip II, that is) for aristocrats to rally behind rival pretenders to the throne (that is, those opposing the sitting ruler), or even, as in the case of Ptolemy of Aloros in the early 360s, to set themselves up as rivals to the ruler. A stable and successful Macedonia required bringing the aristocracy to heel and ending their divisive ways. Philip’s creation of a new and powerful infantry army beginning in 358 gave him an unprecedented position of strength from which to deal with the aristocracy: no aristocratic landowner, no matter how wealthy and powerful, could compete militarily with Philip’s army. Any aristocrat, or even coalition of aristocrats, who set themselves up against Philip faced the prospect of a visit by Philip’s new Macedonian phalanx, and possible annihilation. That intrinsically gave the Macedonian aristocracy a strong incentive to demonstrate loyalty to Philip; but this was a negative incentive. Philip gave them a positive incentive too. As Philip’s new army campaigned around the southern Balkan region, winning battles and wars, Philip seized lands from defeated enemies and incorporated them into Macedonia. By traditional notions of “spear-won land,” these conquered lands belonged to the ruler and were his to dispose of. Philip granted to favored aristocrats additional estates of conquered land, vastly increasing their wealth. But they did not own these additional estates outright: instead they had revocable possession, and the condition of maintaining possession was to continue demonstrating loyalty to the ruler, to Philip that is. According to the contemporary historian Theopompus, Philip’s eight hundred or so hetairoi at the height of his reign held, thanks to this policy, as much landed wealth as the ten thousand wealthiest men from the rest of Greece combined.

  The aristocracy were thus firmly subordinated to Philip’s rule by a carrot and stick approach: the carrot was the gaining of vast new estates to increase their wealth; the stick was the threat of losing those estates and, in the extreme, of being annihilated by Philip’s army. But Philip was not satisfied with just this: he pursued two further policies to increase his control of the aristocracy. In the first place, Philip invited leading men from all the rest of Greece to move to Macedonia and enter his service, becoming his hetairoi, and like the native aristocrats being rewarded with large revocable estates of conquered land. These new, immigrant hetairoi owed their wealth and status entirely to Philip’s favor, and were self-interestedly loyal to Philip as a result; they thus formed a powerful block of support that Philip could use against any disaffected Macedonian aristocrats. Some famous examples of such new hetairoi are Eumenes of Cardia, the Cretan Nearchus, Erigyius of Mitylene, and Medeius of Larissa.

  In addition, and very importantly, Philip was interested in binding the sons and grandsons of the aristocracy to his service, making them not only loyal followers, but useful ones. To this end he established a school at Pella and invited the aristocracy of Macedonia to send their sons there, to receive the best education available (essentially an Athenian education) at Philip’s expense. Naturally, the invitation could not be refused: an aristocrat who declined to send his son(s) would signal thereby his lack of trust in Philip and be suspected of disloyal designs, perhaps of outright plans to rebel. While this genuinely offered the aristocracy an excellent free education for their sons, and of course fostered mutual familiarity and relationships among the sons of the aristocracy, no one was unaware that this school also meant that the sons of the aristocracy were now under Philip’s control. They served effectively as hostages for the good behavior of their fathers, and were educated in the way Philip judged best. This latter is a crucial point: Philip needed the aristocracy to feel true loyalty and commitment to the Macedonia he was building; and he also, crucially, needed capable officers for the army and military system he was developing. While literacy skills, and a grounding in literature, music, and rhetoric were doubtless the basics of the education provided, physical training, and especially military training, obviously played a major role too, especially in a special system of what might be called higher education.

  When the boys being educated reached their late teens, roughly their eighteenth year, they were inducted into a group called the paides (literally youths, in this context) who served for some two years a kind of military apprenticeship in the immediate entourage of the ruler, in this case Philip himself. They waited on Philip, provided personal service and attendance, and fought directly with and under him in battle, as a kind of guard in addition to the regular royal bodyguard. Though we never hear of it before the time of Philip, the institution of the paides may have been an old and traditional part of Macedonian society: it will no doubt have been normal for the teenage sons of the ruler’s hetairoi to serve him in this way. But Philip certainly placed a new and more thorough emphasis on the paides, making service in this group an integral part of the passage from youth to manhood for the Macedonian aristocracy. For by having the sons of the aristocracy in his personal service and entourage, he could inculcate loyalty to himself and personally train them in the business of serving as officers in his new-style army and military system. The success of this training system is well seen in the officers of Alexander’s army, all of whom had, like Alexander himself, grown up in service to Philip and in Philip’s training system. It is no coincidence that so many of Alexander’s officers—the likes of Ptolemy, Craterus, Seleucus, Cassander, Lysimachus, and others—proved to be highly capable and successful generals: they had learned the necessary skills in the same school as Alexander himself, under Philip.

  Another matter that required development an
d improvement under Philip was the Macedonian economy: a state is at bottom only as strong as its economy allows it to be. As I pointed out in Chapter 1, Macedonia had the potential in land, manpower, and natural resources such as timber and metals to be a wealthy and powerful society. This potential had never been fulfilled, in part due to the constant pressure on Macedonia by invading forces from the Balkan region, looting and pillaging and at times occupying swathes of Macedonian territory; in part due to the occupation of the Macedonian coast and harbors by southern Greek colonies which came to be dominated by the Athenians, giving Athens control over Macedonian trade; and in part due to the archaic social system of aristocratic dominance and the concomitant disunity. Philip’s successful military activity drove invaders out of Macedonia and, by extending Macedonian control over neighboring territories, provided an era of peace and security hitherto unknown for the Macedonians themselves. It also enabled Philip to seize control of the harbors on the Macedonian coast—Pydna, Methone, Therme—and assert his own control over trade between Macedonia and the Aegean and eastern Mediterranean world. And of course Philip had fully unified Macedonia and brought the aristocracy to heel, creating the conditions for socio-economic advancement within Macedonia.