Before and After Alexander

by Richard A. Billows

  This agreement did not last long: in 353 Philip suffered an unexpected defeat in Thessaly, as we shall see, and that led Cersebleptes to transfer his allegiance to the Athenians, Philip’s enemies since his annexation of Amphipolis. Busy in Thessaly, Philip was not able to respond in Thrace until the fall of 352; but then a near two-year campaign beginning in October or November of 352 saw him considerably strengthen his position in Thrace. Allying himself now with Cersebleptes’ rival Amadocus and the Athenians’ enemies Perinthus and Byzantium, he marched along the coast to the fortress of Heraion Teichos, which he began to besiege. The siege lasted into 351, but eventually Philip captured the place, and apparently handed it over to the Perinthians. Philip had demonstrated that neither the Athenians nor the Thracian rulers could prevent him invading Thrace and operating there at his will. For now, that was enough, and he returned to Macedonia where much other business awaited him. He controlled the Thracian coast now almost as far as the Thracian Chersonnese, which was held by the Athenians, and the Thracian rulers inland were cowed. With that, Philip was satisfied for several years. It was not until 346 that he campaigned in Thrace again, and then only briefly. It was perhaps at that time that the sons of Berisades were removed from power and western Thrace up to the Nestos fully annexed to Macedonia. The aim of the campaign, however, was to weaken Cersebleptes, which was achieved by a resounding victory at Hieron Oros in early summer. Cersebleptes was obliged to make a subordinate alliance with Philip, but left in command of his realm. The central Thracian ruler Amadocus had apparently died, to be succeeded by a son named Teres, who was also now allied to Philip. In just a few months, any potential threat from Thrace was neutralized.

  The final move in Philip’s long series of interventions in Thrace took place in the years 342 to 339, when for reasons left rather obscure—perhaps Cersebleptes was again intriguing with the Athenians—Philip decided to annex Thrace once and for all. A series of campaigns in 342 and 341 culminated in a crushing victory by Philip’s army over the joint forces of Cersebleptes and Teres in summer of 341, with both rulers now being deposed from power. Philip founded a series of Macedonian colonies in the Hebrus valley (see above, p. 79), including most famously Philippopolis (modern Plovdiv). He made contact with a tribe called the Getae in the Danube valley and established an alliance with them, cemented by marrying the Getan king’s daughter Meda. He consolidated Macedonian control of the Thracian coast on the Black Sea, but met with setbacks when he attacked and besieged his former allies Perinthus and Byzantium which, thanks to Persian and Athenian help, he failed to capture. Giving up there, he decided to return to Macedonia via the Danube. There he fought briefly against some Scythians north of the Danube and, feeling that his control of Thrace was now securely established, marched south towards Macedonia. Crossing through the mountain passes of Triballia, however, he was ambushed by local Triballian tribesmen and suffered a severe wound to his thigh. Philip recovered from this wound after a few weeks, and was able to get back to Macedonia in late summer of 339 having added all of Thrace to his kingdom and ended the Thracian threat to Macedonia for several generations.

  4. SETTLING RELATIONS WITH THE SOUTHERN GREEKS

  Macedonia’s relationship with its southern Greek countrymen had always been highly problematic. The developing city-states of southern Greece saw in Macedonia and the Macedonians a backward region and a people at best half-Greek, but blessed with rich natural resources of timber and metals that the southern Greeks coveted. As a result, southern Greeks had freely interfered in Macedonia throughout its history, from the settlement of southern Greek colonies along the coast—Methone, Pydna, and Therme, for example—to the interventions by Athenians, Spartans, and Thebans in the fifth and early fourth centuries. It was Philip’s aim to end the relative subordination of Macedonia, and make it instead the leader of the Greek world, with the southern Greeks following Macedonian commands rather than the other way about.

  His first task in this regard was to win control of the southern Greek colonies on the Macedonian coast itself. These were the ports of Macedonia, and controlling them meant controlling Macedonia’s imports and exports. The first to be seized was Amphipolis at the mouth of the Strymon, besieged and captured by storm in the winter of 357/6. Later in the year 356 Pydna to fell to Philip’s siege: in both cases Demosthenes (1.5) hints at co-operation by pro-Macedonian elements within the cities, which makes sense. As the ports of the Macedonian territory, their future would be more secure as part of Macedonia proper. The same may be said of Apollonia, Galepsus, and Oisyme, on the coast between Amphipolis and the Pangaeum region, which were taken by Philip in late 356 to early 355. Methone took longer: it was not until the winter of 355 that Philip was ready to besiege it, and not until the spring of 354 that the town was forced to capitulate. During the siege, Philip was hit in the right eye by an enemy arrow, losing the sight of that eye. When the town finally surrendered, the people of Methone were permitted to depart freely with one garment each; the city was re-populated with Macedonian settlers. At some indeterminate date Therme too came under Macedonian control—it was later re-founded with the name Thessalonice by Alexander’s successor Cassander—and with that Macedonian control of its own coast and harbors was complete.

  Beyond the coast of Macedonia, and far more troubling to Philip as ruler of Macedonia, lay the great three-pronged Chalcidice peninsula, home to numerous southern Greek colonies. On their own, these colonies were each no threat; but banded together under the leadership of the largest and most powerful of them, Olynthus, they had posed a very real threat to Macedonian security, most recently during the reign of Philip’s father Amyntas III. The obvious solution was to incorporate the Chalcidice into Macedonia, but that would be no easy task. Philip’s first move in this direction, in fact, was to assure the Olynthians and their allies of his friendship, securing a treaty with them in early 356. The Chalcidice would have to wait while Philip built his strength. But the Chalcidice was not fully united behind Olynthus: the key city of Potidaea at the neck of the Pallene peninsula—the westernmost of the three peninsulas making up the southern Chalcidice—was hostile to Olynthus. Here Philip offered to demonstrate his friendship to his new allies. He helped them besiege Potidaea, captured the place in the summer of 356, and handed it over to the Chalcidian League. That secured a friendly peace with the Olynthians and other Chalcidians for several years.

  Of course, this peace could not last: the ambitions of Philip and Olynthus were essentially at odds with each other. The first crack appeared after Philip’s unexpected defeat in Thessaly in 353 (discussed below), when the Olynthians made an offer of alliance to Philip’s enemies the Athenians. For the moment this came to nothing, but it was clear to Philip that the Olynthians were at best fair-weather friends. Two years later, in 351, Philip found occasion to deliver a stern warning to the leaders of Olynthus, as Theopompus reveals. What the issue was exactly is not made clear in our sources, but it is evident that an anti-Macedonian faction existed and was strong at Olynthus; and it was perhaps at this time that Olynthus gave shelter to Philip’s two half-brothers (and rivals) Menelaus and Arrhidaeus, and maybe also Derdas of Elimea. All three were in Olynthus a few years later, at any rate. In 349 outright war broke out between Philip and the Olynthian League. The immediate cause, we are told, was that Philip demanded the Olynthians hand over to him his two half-brothers, and they refused. It seems evident that the Olynthians were permitting, perhaps even encouraging Menelaus and Arrhidaeus to intrigue against Philip in Macedonia from their shelter at Olynthus. Philip decided that the time had come to annex the Chalcidice to Macedonia once and for all. The war was fought in two phases, in fall 349 and in 348, with a break for operations in Thessaly in the winter of 349 to 348.

  Towards the end of summer in 349 Philip marched his army south of Lake Bolbe in the north-eastern Chalcidice and invested the key city of Stageira (famous in history as the home town of the great philosopher Aristotle). The siege did not take long, and when
Stageira was captured the city was razed to the ground. The lesson was not lost on the neighboring cities, which capitulated to Philip in short order—the likes of Arethousa, Stratonice, and Acanthus at the neck of the Athos peninsula. With the eastern part of the Chalcidice under his control, Philip could feel that a good start had been made. In spring of 348 he again invaded the Chalcidice, this time concentrating on the western side of the great peninsula down to the Pallene peninsula, the cities there apparently surrendering without much resistance, no doubt mindful of the fate of Stageira. The Olynthians appealed to Athens for help, and the Athenians—prompted by Demosthenes—ordered their general at the Hellespont, Charidemos, to intervene with eighteen triremes and four thousand mercenary peltasts (a special kind of “medium” infantry; see Glossary). This aid arrived too late: Philip had marched past Olynthus to the south and captured the Olynthian port city of Mecyberna, and then proceeded into the Sithone peninsula (the middle of the three Chalcidian peninsulas) where the key city of Torone likewise capitulated. That left Olynthus, at its inland location north of the Sithone peninsula, isolated and exposed to Philip’s siege, which began about mid-summer of 348 after two defeats in major skirmishes had confined the Olynthians behind their city walls.

  The siege lasted several months, but was concluded around the beginning of September by the capture of the city. Olynthus was destroyed as being too dangerous to Macedonian security, and the bulk of the population was sold into slavery, an atrocity Philip evidently felt was necessary to secure Macedonia’s hold over the Chalcidice. Macedonian settlers were introduced into the Chalcidice, especially to the rich lands south of Lake Bolbe, around Apollonia and Arethousa, and to the territory of Olynthus and the western Chalcidic coast. After a generation or so, the Chalcidice was thoroughly Macedonianized and an integral part of the Macedonian realm. This represented a huge expansion of Macedonia, not only in territory but in wealth. The Chalcidice was home to a number of thriving cities, and had significant natural resources of timber and mines, as noted in Chapter 1. The capture and integration of the Chalcidice rounded off the establishment of a Macedonian homeland that now ran from the Pindus mountains and Lake Ohrid in the west to the River Nestus in the east, and from Mount Olympos and the Aegean Sea in the south to the Messapion range and even beyond to Mount Orbelus in the north.

  Two other major regions of Greece bordered on Macedonia to the south and south-west, of unequal importance: to the south was the rich and important territory of Thessaly; to the south-west the poor and mountainous region of Epirus. Relations with Epirus were relatively easily managed. Around the end of 358 or beginning of 357 the Epirote ruler Neoptolemus the Molossian died, leaving three children: two teenage daughters and a son named Alexander, around five years old. It was, consequently, Neoptolemus’ younger brother Arrybas who became ruler, marrying the older of his two nieces, Troas, and becoming guardian of his nephew Alexander. It was easy for Philip, fresh from his great victory over Bardylis, to establish an alliance with the new ruler Arrybas, cemented by Philip marrying Arrybas’ younger niece Olympias, who thus became Philip’s fourth wife, after Phila of Elimea (m. ca. 360), Audata the Illyrian (m. 359), and Philinna of Larissa (m. 358, see below). That alliance and marriage settled relations between Philip and Arrybas for seven years, until Philip felt the need to re-visit the relationship in 350. The cause is not clear—perhaps Arrybas had become too friendly with the Molossian ruling family’s traditional allies, the Athenians—but Philip intervened in Epirus and took custody of his young brother-in-law Alexander, now about twelve years old, carrying him off to Pella to be educated under Philip’s eye. It seems likely that some borderlands, Atintania and Parauaea bordering on the upper Macedonian canton of Tymphaea, were now added to Macedonia. Young Alexander was educated in Philip’s school at Pella, and in time became one of Philip’s paides (see Chapter 4 section 6), learning to be a good leader and loyal to Philip. In the winter of 343/2, finally, when Alexander was about twenty, Philip again invaded Epirus and completed his settlement of the region as a subordinate ally of Macedonia by removing the ruler Arrybas and setting young Alexander on the throne. Almost Philip’s last act was to further secure his relationship with Alexander, in 336, by marrying his daughter by Olympias, Cleopatra, to her uncle Alexander, making the latter his son-in-law as well as his brother-in-law.

  Thessaly was a more difficult region to manage. Thanks to its large agricultural plain, the largest in Greece, well-watered by the perennially flowing River Peneius and its tributaries, Thessaly was the largest grain-growing region of Greece, and the only region that regularly had a large surplus of grain for export. That made Thessaly wealthy and important. Like Macedonia, Thessaly was a region of landowning aristocrats dominating and exploiting a large serf population—the penestai—and lacking in significant cities: only Larissa in the north, Pharsalus in the south, and Pherae on the coast were major urban settlements. The various regions of Thessaly were dominated by great aristocratic clans, the most important at this time being the Aleuadae of Larissa, and the family of the tyrant Jason and his nephew Alexander in Pherae. The Aleuadae, as we saw in Chapter 2, had long-standing friendly relations with the ruling Argead clan of Macedonia. In the late 370s the tyrant Jason of Pherae had made himself ruler of all Thessaly. After his death in 370, the power of Pherae declined, but in the later 360s Jason’s nephew Alexander sought to rebuild his uncle’s power. Alexander was assassinated in 358 by his brothers-in-law Lycophron and Tisiphonus, and this upheaval provided the occasion for the Aleuadae to try to break Pheraean power. Too weak, as it turned out, to do this on their own, they turned to the recently victorious Philip for help, which Philip was glad to give. He entered Thessaly with his army, established the independence of northern Thessaly under the Aleuadae, and married a woman of Larissa named Philinna. Though some sources demean Philinna as a mere “flute-girl,” in truth she was doubtless a member of the Aleuad clan, married by Philip in order to cement his alliance with the Aleuadae. Within a year, it seems, Philinna bore Philip his first son, named Arrhidaeus after Philip’s grandfather. Sadly, as the lad grew up, it became apparent that he suffered from some form of mental deficiency.

  His alliance with the Aleuadae settled his relationship with Thessaly for several years, in Philip’s estimation, as he was busy with northern affairs. Only a brief interventions by a small force was needed in early 355 to keep the Aleuad control of northern Thessaly secure. This situation changed as a result of the so-called Third Sacred War, fought from 356 until 347 between the Phocians and the Boeotians with various allies on both sides. In order to prosecute this war the Phocian leaders—at first Philomelus and then Onomarchus and Phayllus—laid hands on the wealth of Apollo’s oracle at Delphi, using this money to enroll large mercenary armies that temporarily made Phocis a major power in the Greek world. The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi played a very important role in Greek religion and international relations. It was standard for every Greek state, and for many private individuals too, to consult the Oracle before any major undertaking. Control of the Oracle was thus of importance to every Greek, and especially to every Greek state; and the wealth of the Oracle represented the accumulated gifts of Greeks of all sorts over centuries. Seizing control of the Oracle and its wealth was thus a hugely controversial move by the Phocians, and one that aligned the Greek world into pro- and anti-Phocian camps.

  Inevitably, therefore, the “Sacred” war impacted on Thessaly, especially as the Thessalians had long played a major role in the organization—called the Amphictyonic League—that oversaw the Oracle. In the event, the Aleuadae and their regional associates in the Thessalian koinon (league or commonwealth) allied with the Thebans, leading their rival Lycophron of Pherae to ally with the Phocians. In pursuit of this alliance, a Phocian force under Phayllus entered Thessaly in 353 to help Lycophron, causing the Aleuadae once again to appeal to Philip for aid. Having captured Methone, rounding off his control of Macedonia’s coast, and having for the time being subdued the Il
lyrians and Thracians, Philip was ready to settle the troubled affairs of Thessaly.

  Besides being large, populous, and wealthy, Thessaly was of great strategic importance to Macedonia because it offered the only good land routes by which Macedonia might be invaded from the south: the Vale of Tempe between Mounts Olympus and Ossa, through which the River Peneius reached the sea, was the best, though more mountainous inland routes to the west of Olympus or via Elimea were also passable. Philip therefore naturally wanted to control Thessaly, and the Phocian invasion offered him all the excuse he needed to make his move. At first his invasion of Thessaly went well. In summer 353 he drove Phayllus and his mercenaries out of Thessaly, but that success turned out to be merely a prelude to much more difficult campaigning. Late in the summer the Phocian commander Onomarchus entered Thessaly with a large army including, crucially as it turned out, a substantial train of catapults and stone-throwers. Having accurately assessed the strength of Philip’s pike phalanx, Onomarchus decided to fight him via a stratagem. He found a valley overlooked by hills on either side, and drew up his army in the mouth of this valley, his aim apparently being merely to protect his flanks against Philip’s Macedonian and allied Thessalian cavalry. Secretly, however, he had stationed his catapults and stone-throwers just out of sight on the reverse slopes of the overlooking hills on either side. For once, Philip’s scouts failed him: they did not notice and report the enemy artillery on either side, allowing Philip to be drawn into Onomarchus’ trap. When Philip’s army advanced to the attack, Onomarchus had his men retreat in feigned flight, drawing Philip’s forces into the valley. At a signal, the artillery on either side crested the hills and rained down a withering fire of bolts and stones onto Philip’s troops. The effect was devastating. Though Philip managed to extract his army, it had suffered heavy losses in this defeat, and morale plummeted. For the only time in his career, Philip nearly lost control of his Macedonian soldiery; and the effects of his defeat were to be felt elsewhere among his many enemies, who were emboldened to renew resistance to him, as we have seen. For the moment, Philip could only pull his army back out of Thessaly, to the reassurance of winter quarters in Macedonia, where their obedience and morale were restored by gifts and rest.