Hi, so I'm going to be talking to you about Philip II of Macedon, who is commonly known as Alexander the Great's father, but his story is just less known. But just because it's less known does not make him any less important. In fact, his legacy really helped set up Alexander the opportunity to conquer the Persians.
He was born in 382 BC to the Argead dynasty and he was the last son of his father, Aminatis III, so he was a prince of Macedon. He was primarily educated by his mother up until the age of 12 and then after that he was sent as a hostage to Thebes, which not like we would think of hostages today. He was well treated there and this was commonly done for peace between tribes or city-states.
So he actually really got another education there because he lived under the roof of another military general, a thievin general, and so this really educated him in military techniques and tactics and also he was exposed to a lot of contemporary Greek politics at the same time. Just a little background about Macedon. It was surrounded by many enemies like the Illyria and Thrace at times and the Paeonians and this Macedon was Constantly being picked on and raided. So Macedon was just kind of on the verge of collapse before the second rule with poor leadership.
And it was just kind of a backwater kingdom. There was a lot of, there were seven kings. before Philip and five of them were actually assassinated and only one died of old age and the other died in battle. So very unstable leadership at the time and so that kind of set up the stage for Philip to come in.
Macedon was also, they considered themselves to share Greek descent. and dialects and Greek gods. So they did appreciate quite a bit of Greek culture, but this is not what the Greek city-states, how they viewed Macedon to them.
They were unrefined, uneducated, barbaric, and underdeveloped as well. So the reign of Philip II, as I said, kind of came at a perfect timing. He comes back into the picture back from Thebes around 365. And over the next seven years, there's three kings. And with two of them being assassinated and one dying in battle, Philip quickly...
grabs the throne and asserts his claim over it. He's 23 years old, and he comes to the throne in 359 BC. He quickly starts to reform things and to legitimize his reign and rebuild this empire, his nation. And so by doing this, he first and foremost Kind of wins over the hearts of his people and he promises and persuades a lot of nobles that have given him a lot of wealth and land if they follow him. And so he's able to persuade the people and at the same time, we really see him as this charismatic leader and this rare leader.
because he was also able to inspire people. And yeah, he challenges a lot of the men to join him and side with him. So he shows a lot of charisma and just kind of wins over the people, which is vital because he has a lot of, there's a lot of threats to remove him from neighboring nations around him and to put their own kind of puppet ruler on the throne. So it's important to him to strengthen his empire at that time. And this leads us to the importance of how he rebuilds the army and reforms kind of some things about that.
So he takes, he changes his army from the classical Greek phalanx to the Macedonian. Greek phallax which this he really uniforms his army together and whereas the a lot of the neighboring tribes would fight kind of uncohesive he focused on uniforming his military and Also develops this new spear called the sarissa, which was a change from six to eight kind of feet long spears to something that was 16 to 18 feet long. And in this, he really, the winter before going to battle, he really drilled into his soldiers to and discipline them to be uniform. And this is because if somebody were to abandon this uniform rank, it would cause a lot of havoc and you just wanted to keep your soldiers tight and group together.
This would give them more of a push against the enemy. So in the spring, he returns to. the fighting resumes and he's able to push back those threats of people overtaking his army.
So he's able to push back the Athenians and also kind of negotiate with some other tribal states surrounding him. So Philip over time expanded his territories along the northern coast of the Aegean Sea. He not only knew how to win wars but he also knew how to keep the peace and he did this often through marriage alliances with neighboring states including Elyria and one in particular with a northwest kingdom, Everest.
He married Olympia Olympias who was Alexander the Great's mother. He was also smart in kind of mixing some of his people and around areas that he had conquered. So moving nobles into those locations to kind of keep balance and he also got outsiders also into his court too.
which really helped for political reasons and kind of more knowledge of what was going on in those areas. So he continued warring for more coastal territory, and these included a couple of what were known as sacred wars in Greece in between 350 and 340 BC. Um, so many of these Greek states were kind of uncomfortable with the amount of territory that he was gaining, um, and felt kind of his encroaching presence, um, in, around their territories.
Um, so he, um, goes to war with Athens for, um, kind of control of Amphibolus, which is one key, uh, moment where... This is a very important port for Athens and resources. And he kind of has this trend where he makes some treaties. and breaks those treaties and yeah so this kind of instigates the triple alliance in 357 BC with Thrace and Illyria and Pionta to attack Philip and because he just had so many ambitions this kind of threat created this alliance and we see this commonly with Philip kind of shuts these threats down with policy. He calmly kind of deals with these problems and he offered Athens more territory, offered some land over to them and this problem kind of fizzled away.
So he if he didn't have to take his army to battle he was also really good about it. about using diplomacy to settle things as well. So by 354, he's taken control over almost the entire coastline of Greece.
And at this point he's 28 years old and he's doubled the size of his kingdom. So Macedonia has become increasingly wealthy and he's upgraded his army and he's secured his throne through multiple marriages and has a few heirs. So he's really known for being ambitious and kind of always in motion, which kind of scares a lot of the neighboring nations. He continues to expand and goes after a location in eastern Thrace, which...
was again a territory of Athens, which provided them a lot of resources. So he goes to war with Athens there, but gets kind of pushed back. And this kind of leads him to march on Greece later.
He marches on Greece, going again through the Pass of Thermopylae. But... He kind of gets trapped in that location and actually tricks Athens that he's not going to attack. And they believe him and he is able to pass through Thermopylae with no problems.
And this leads to the Battle of Cheronia. So after winning this decisive battle against Athens and Thebes, he creates the League of Corinth and this he conveniently positions himself as the lead military leader of this League He also does this he unites the Greek city-states by persuading them to wage war against the Persian Empire and And in 336 BC, Philip sets out a portion of his army to prepare for his invasion. And they do this by freeing some Greeks living on the western coast of Persia. And he would follow in a year to come, but he wanted to make sure that his borders were secure in Macedonia.
And before leaving to fight. And so before this, he arranges a marriage between his daughter Cleopatra and the king of Epirus. And creates a festival and has a lot of sports and events at one of these festivals as he's walking out.
He is stabbed in the heart and assassinated. The culprit was caught but was killed instantly. And there's a lot of rumors and theories around this for who could have been behind this assassination.
So while Alexander the Great's legacy often overshadows his father, it's really Philip II that laid a lot of groundwork. for Alexander the Great's reign and made it possible for Alexander to conquer Persia. And yeah, so Philip II, his career is just as equally as important and could be argued even more important sometimes.
And he... Definitely deserves a lot more credit than he is given in today, but he was truly a great conqueror and a great political statesman. He was very much involved with leading wars and being a part of them and was just a great man. outgoing, had incredible outgoing leadership skills, and it's very obvious in the way that he reigned. And so with that, that's Philip II.
Thank you.