Macedonian Power and Philip II, 359–336 B.C.E.

The Macedonian kings governed by maintaining the support of the elite, who ranked as their social equals and controlled many followers. Men spent their time training for war, hunting, and drinking heavily. The king had to excel in these activities to show that he deserved to lead the state. Queens and royal mothers received respect because they came from powerful families or the ruling houses of neighboring regions.

Macedonian kings thought of themselves as ethnically Greek; they spoke Greek as well as their native Macedonian. Macedonians as a whole, however, looked down on the Greeks as too soft to survive life in their northern land. The Greeks regarded Macedonians as barbarians.

In 359 B.C.E., the Illyrians, neighbors to the west, slaughtered Macedonia’s king and four thousand troops. Philip, the new king, restored the troops’ confidence by teaching them to use thrusting spears sixteen feet long. He trained them to maneuver in battle while maintaining formation. Deploying cavalry as a strike force, Philip routed the Illyrians. During the 340s B.C.E., Philip persuaded or forced most of northern and central Greece into alliance with him. Seeking glory for Greece and fearing the instability his strengthened army would create in his kingdom if the soldiers had nothing to do, he decided to lead a united Macedonian and Greek army to conquer the Persian Empire. He justified attacking Persia as revenge for its invasion of Greece 150 years earlier.

Athens and Thebes rallied a coalition of southern Greek city-states to combat Philip, but in 338 B.C.E. the Macedonian king and his Greek allies crushed the coalition’s forces at the battle of Chaeronea in Greece. The defeated city-states retained their internal freedom, but Philip forced them to join his alliance. The battle of Chaeronea marked a turning point in Greek history: never again would the city-states of Greece be independent agents in international affairs.