men, as well; the Agrianians were recruited from the upper Strymon River area and were used in
actions calling for “rapid movement on difficult terrain.” Often associated with the Agrianians were
archers from Macedon or Crete, eventually organized into chiliarchies.
In traditional Greek phalanxes, the line had been eight ranks deep; under Philip (and later
Alexander) that increased to sixteen or even, at times, thirty-two ranks, which gave the Macedonian
infantry additional weight as it crashed into the lines of its enemies. The Macedonian infantrymen
were positioned more or less closely together, depending upon tactical requirements. The “locked
shields” ( synaspismos) formation, for instance, with the infantrymen no more than a foot apart, was
used to meet attacks or to make a decisive offensive thrust. Alexander would use it at the battle of the
Hydaspes River to break the Indian king Porus’ otherwise impenetrable defensive screen of
elephants.
Discipline was vital to the success of the Macedonian infantry. Above all, it was crucial for each
infantryman to remain in his position in line and not to lose contact with the men to his left and right.
Any break in the line could have disastrous results for the entire formation, for once a line was
broken, it was difficult for infantrymen to stay in order and fight as a tactical unit.
Overall, if Greek hoplite warfare of the fourth century typically resembled a rugby scrum much
more closely than it did modern infantry combat, the reforms Philip made to the Macedonian infantry
gave it a huge advantage over the units of other armies. Those who dared to do battle with Philip’s
new infantry were confronted by what must have looked like a giant porcupine—with sixteen-foot
quills. Moreover, even if Philip’s new infantry could not force a break in the enemy line, they could
await a devastating attack by their cavalry. Although Macedon always had produced excellent riders
and cavalrymen, here too Philip made dramatic improvements.
THE MACEDONIAN AND ALLIED CAVALRY
Fourth-century Greek cavalry warfare is hard to compare with the mounted warfare of modern or
early modern times. First, the horses the Greeks or Macedonians rode were smaller (around 52 to 55
inches at the withers) than modern mounts. Second, ancient riders never benefited from the use of full
modern saddles or stirrups, which did not become common until the Middle Ages; instead, they used
harsh bridles or bits to control their horses. So ancient cavalrymen had to rely on their own riding
skills to control their mounts in combat. Men who grew up in lands more suited to the breeding of
horses (such as Alexander in Macedon, which had large, fertile plains) would have had an enormous
advantage over those who had not grown up riding every day.
Under Philip II the traditional Macedonian cavalry, which always had been drawn from among the
wealthy landowners of Macedonia, was expanded and reorganized into a devastating fighting force of
about 3,300 riders—the hetairoi, or Companions, mentioned above. They were divided into eight
squadrons (called ilai), one of which, the Royal Squadron ( ile), provided the bodyguard of the king
himself when he fought on horseback. Apart from the 300 members of the Royal Squadron, who were
courtiers of the king, the rest of the hetairoi were recruited regionally.
This line drawing of a member of the Macedonian Companion cavalry ( hetairoi) shows the rider armed with a sword and a lance, and
protected by a bronze corselet and greaves. It is most important to note that he rides without the benefit of a saddle or stirrups, which
were not widely used until the Middle Ages. Rather, Alexander’s cavalry troops controlled their mounts by means of bits or bridles.
Fighting effectively required superior riding skills.
The hetairoi were armed with a nine-foot lance made out of tough cornel wood. The lance was
tipped with a leaf-shaped blade, with a larger blade at its back end, and was held by a strap attached
at its central, balance point. It could be thrown or used as a devastating thrusting weapon. Hetairoi
also usually carried a reserve of javelins and perhaps a small shield, but not much in the way of body
armor. Unlike the frontline infantry, the cavalrymen wore the Macedonian hat, the kausia. What
protected them was speed and maneuverability.
The Greek city-states typically deployed their cavalry on the flanks of their hoplite infantries and
wedge formation (shaped like the Greek letter delta, Δ), with their leader at the front, so that the
cavalry could be thrust like a spearhead into the enemy’s weak points.
Associated with the Companion cavalry were the mounted advance scouts, the prodromoi. Divided
into four squadrons of 150, these scouts, recruited from Macedon itself, conducted reconnaissance
missions, but also could be detailed to fight in advance of the main cavalry during pitched battles.
Lightly armed during reconnaissance missions, on other occasions (unlike the Companion cavalry) the
prodromoi carried a much shorter, lighter version of the infantry sarissa, to be used against other
more lightly armed cavalry units. Lightly armed scouts from Paeonia and Thrace were deployed
alongside them.
While Greek city-states trained their cavalry to fight in a square formation ( left) Philip II and Alexander used the squadrons of the Macedonian cavalry as an offensive strike force; for this purpose the delta- or wedge-shaped formation ( center), which perhaps was
based upon Scythian precedents, proved to be most effective. The Thessalian cavalry usually fought in a diamond or rhomboid formation
( right); because it allowed the Thessalians to turn and fight in any direction quickly, it was ideal for defensive warfare.
The Macedonian army included allied cavalry from Thessaly, commanded by a Macedonian
officer. Its numbers were about the same as those of the hetairoi, and it usually was stationed on the
left wing of the Macedonian line. Its main job was to protect the left flank of the infantry. Divided into
ilai, the Thessalian cavalry fought in a diamond-shaped formation, which could fend off attacks from
any direction and so was especially suited to defensive combat. It would be difficult to say whether
they or the hetairoi were the best in the world. Other contingents of allied cavalry from central
Greece and the Peloponnesus played a much less significant role. Mercenary cavalry played a rather
more important role than allied cavalry, and their numbers increased as the Macedonian kings gained
the resources to be able to pay them.
Overall, what Philip created was a fearsome military force, one trained and equipped to fight in
any tactical situation throughout the year in any season on any terrain. During the 350s and 340s, at the
head of his reorganized army, Philip was able to defeat first the Phocians, then the Thessalians, the
traditional rival of the Macedonians (whose wonderful cavalry thereafter served with the
Macedonians), and the Phocians yet again in 346, to end the (third) so-called Sacred War. These
victories brought Philip into the middle of the second ring of Macedon’s rivals, the city-states of
Greece.
THE BATTLE OF CHAERONEA
Within a few years Philip and the key city-state of Athens were at odds over a variety of issues,
including Athenian attacks upon Philip’s allies in Ca
rdia and his territories in Thrace. During his
siege of Byzantium in 340, Philip captured a fleet carrying grain to Athens. Athens, which depended
on grain shipped from the wheat-rich lands of the Crimea through Byzantium, had little choice but to
fight.
Thus, late in the summer of 338, the Athenians, the Thebans, and their allies gathered on the plain
of Chaeronea to confront Philip and his new, professional army. The Greeks fought with great
bravery, but were no match for the Macedonian pikemen, who had been trained to a peak of fitness
and discipline. At the decisive moment in the battle, Philip’s eighteen-year-old son, Alexander, led
the charge that broke through the allies’ line. More than a thousand Athenians perished, as did the
entire “Sacred Band” of Thebes.
The battle was a turning point in history. Philip not only had awakened Macedon; he had put the
Greeks into a deep military and political sleep. Though they received their prisoners of war back
without ransom, the Athenians were forced into a treaty of friendship and alliance with Macedon. The
Thebans lost control of the rich agricultural region of Boeotia, and an oligarchy was imposed on
them. Sparta had taken no part in the battle, but had refused to become a Macedonian ally in its
aftermath; its territory was therefore invaded. Macedonian garrisons also were installed in Thebes, in
the key commercial city of Corinth, in Ambracia, and in other strategic locations. These garrisons
were the chains with which Philip shackled the Greeks.
Ivory portrait head of Alexander III of Macedon from the royal tombs at Vergina. By permission of the Thessaloniki Museum
THE GENERAL ALLIANCE AND DECLARATION OF WAR
Philip then imposed a general alliance on the Greeks in the autumn of 338. An assembly of
representatives was established by the spring of 337. The decisions taken by the assembly were sent
out not for debate, but for implementation.
In the same year, the new allies voted for an offensive and defensive alliance binding them to
Macedon for all time. All then turned to the question of whether to declare war on Persia. Before the
vote, Philip made it known that he wanted to go to war on behalf of the Greeks to punish the Persians
for the destruction of the temples during the invasion of 480.
Unsurprisingly, the allies voted for war and elected Philip to lead the joint forces. By the spring of
336 an advance force commanded by three Macedonian officers, including Philip’s best general,
Parmenio, had reached Asia Minor to commence preliminary operations. Born around 400, Parmenio
was already an important presence at the royal court in Pella when Philip became regent. Later Philip
was quoted as remarking that whereas the Athenians elected ten generals every year, in many years he
himself had only ever found one, Parmenio.
Philip himself was to follow Parmenio with the main force in the autumn of the same year. Whether
Philip planned to take Alexander with him to Asia is debatable. Indeed, as we shall see shortly, given
what had transpired between father and son in the years leading up to Chaeronea, Alexander’s
presence at that decisive battle would have seemed unlikely only a few years earlier.
CHAPTER 4
The Assassination of Philip II
DEATH AT SUNRISE
Greece had never quite seen the likes of Philip II of Macedon. Tough, capable, cunning, battle-
scarred and battle-hardened, Philip had raised Macedon by his own arms from the brink of
dissolution to preeminence in Greece in just over twenty years. Passed off as a charming if ruthless
opportunist by pretentious Athenian orators, Philip in fact could outfight, out-drink, and out-think any
man or woman from Epirus to the Bosphorus. Philip was the ideal Machiavellian prince—except,
perhaps, for one fatal misconception about human nature. Philip believed that every man’s honor had
a price and that once that price had been met, all accounts were settled. This error cost him his life.
In the dewy cool of an October morning in 336, before the sun had risen, Philip entered a theater
packed with guests who had come to celebrate the wedding of his daughter to King Alexander of
Epirus. As he did, a man whose honor could not be bought stepped out from the shadows of Philip’s
past and plunged a knife deeply into the king’s side, killing him instantly. Seconds later, Philip’s
guards speared the assassin to death as he tried to make his escape. The stunned spectators were left
to wonder: Who was the assassin? Why had he killed Philip? And—the question on everyone’s mind
—was he part of a wider conspiracy?
Ivory portrait head of Philip II of Macedon from the royal tombs at Vergina, c. 350–325 B.C.E. By permission of the Thessaloniki
Museum
The story of Philip’s murder is a tawdry affair. The consensus among the ancient writers was that
there had indeed been a wider plot. Whether it included Olympias and her son was hotly disputed,
and remains so to this day. What is certain is that Philip’s death was a defeat for those who wanted
his successor to be a “legitimate” Macedonian. In the aftermath of the assassination, powerful figures
who had supported such a succession were systematically eliminated. Just as it seemed that
Alexander had been effectively pushed aside, Philip’s murder reversed his fortunes. Rarely in history
has a father’s death presented a son with a larger or more timely opportunity.
A LEGITIMATE HEIR
In 337 Philip had determined to marry again, to wife number eight. Most of Philip’s previous
marriages had been made to secure alliances with Macedon’s neighbors. But this time Philip had
fallen in love, with a young Macedonian woman named Kleopatra, the niece of Attalus, a nobleman
and officer in the Macedonian army. Such a marriage, which might someday produce another potential
heir to the throne, was bound to create trouble between Philip and Olympias—who unquestionably
wanted Alexander to succeed his father—as well as between Philip and Alexander. The brawling
broke out even before the marriage was consummated.
At the wedding banquet, after drinking too much, Attalus called upon the Macedonians to pray “that
the union of Philip and Kleopatra might bring forth a legitimate heir to the throne.” This was a
reference, not to Alexander’s illegitimacy (for Philip had married Olympias) but to his ethnicity.
Olympias was a Molossian princess, so her son was only half Macedonian—an important fact in
Alexander’s world, and one never sufficiently emphasized in ancient or modern biographies of
Alexander. Attalus proposed a toast to an heir who would be fully Macedonian, and, not
coincidentally, a relation of his.
Alexander, however, interpreted Attalus’ toast as an insult to his legitimacy. “Wretch, do you take
me for a bastard, then?” he shouted, and hurled his wine cup at Attalus.
Incensed, Philip himself then drew his sword and would have killed his own son right there and
then, but was so drunk and enraged that he tripped and fell. Alexander scoffed: “Look, men, here is
the man who was getting ready to cross from Europe to Asia, and who cannot even cross from one
table to another without falling down.”
After this scandalous incident, Olympias upbraided Philip for attempting to kill Alexander. Soon
Philip and Olympias were irreconcilably alienated. Predictably siding with his mother, Alex
ander
took Olympias away to her homeland in Epirus; he himself left for Illyria.
There matters stood for a time, until Philip came to his senses. Persuaded by his friend Demaratus
of Corinth, he initiated a reconciliation with the son who was by far his most promising offspring. But
more trouble between father and son soon followed. Philip hoped to cement an alliance with one
Pixodarus, the Persian governor of Caria, a strategically important mountainous area along the
southwestern coast of Asia Minor that eventually would be vital to his plans for the conquest of Asia.
So Philip offered Philip Arrhidaeus (Alexander’s mentally impaired half brother) as a husband for the
satrap’s eldest daughter. Learning of the proposal, Olympias and her friends reported to Alexander
that Philip was planning to replace him as heir (with his brother). Alexander then sent a friend, the
tragic actor Thettalus, to Pixodarus to offer himself (Alexander) as the bridegroom instead.
When Philip found out about this, he reproached Alexander for behaving so ignobly as to wish to
marry the daughter of a “mere Carian,” the slave of a barbarian (the king of Persia). He then took his
anger out on Thettalus, whom he had put in chains, and on Alexander’s closest friends, Harpalus,
Nearchus, Erygius, and Ptolemy. All were exiled.
At this high cost, Alexander’s ploy succeeded. Seeing the divisions within the Macedonian royal
house, Pixodarus prudently withdrew the offer of his daughter’s hand. Philip’s diplomacy was
scuttled.
Behind the stories of the breach between father and son, which Plutarch insists Olympias widened,
lay the undeniable fact that Alexander was only half Macedonian. His claim to the throne, whatever
signs of precocious brilliance he had displayed, always would be subject to dispute. Indeed, Philip’s
next moves could only have increased Alexander’s sense of isolation.
By the spring of 336, Philip had sent the expeditionary force commanded by Attalus, his new
wife’s uncle, and by Parmenio across the Hellespont, honoring them with the order to liberate the
Greek cities of Asia Minor, and thus to begin punitive operations against the Persians. Philip planned