Philip II (Macedon)

Philip II 382-336 BC, king of Macedon (359-336 BC), son of Amyntas II. While a hostage in Thebes (367-364), he gained much knowledge of Greece and its people. He was appointed regent for Amyntas, young son of his brother Perdiccas III, but seized the throne for himself, ruthlessly suppressing foreign and Macedonian opposition. Reorganizing his army and training it in the effective Theban phalanx formation, he entered upon an ambitious career of expansion by conquest and diplomacy. In the first two years he moved eastward, taking over Amphipolis (357) and the gold mines of Thrace (356), in the same region where he had founded Philippi. In 351, Demosthenes , fearing Philip's encroachments, delivered in Athens the first of the denunciatory Philippics. By 348 Philip had annexed the Chalcidice (now Khalkidhikí), including Olynthus, and was involved in a war over Delphi between Phocis and its neighbors. In the settlement (346) Philip became a member of the Delphic council, with a recognized position in Greece. But Demosthenes continued to agitate, and when Philip moved to absorb the European side of the straits and the Dardanelles (340), Athens and Thebes went to war with him. Philip crushed them at Chaeronea (338). Now master of Greece, he established a federal system of Greek states. He was preparing an attack on Persia when he was killed. His wife, Olympias , was accused (probably falsely) of the murder. Philip's consolidation of his kingdom and his reduction of Greece to relative peace made possible the campaigns of his son, Alexander the Great. Philip was the true founder of Alexander's army and trained some of his best generals, e.g., Antigonus Cyclops, Antipater, Nearchus, Parmenion, and Perdiccas.

Bibliography: See D. G. Hogarth, Philip and Alexander of Macedon (1897, repr. 1984); S. Perlman, ed., Philip and Athens (1973).

Macedon Ancient country in se Europe, roughly corresponding to present-day Macedonia, Greek Macedonia, and Bulgarian Macedonia. The Macedonian King Alexander I (d.420 bc) initiated a process of Hellenization. In 348 bc, Philip II founded Thessaloníki. In 338 bc he became King of Greece. His son, Alexander, built a world empire, but this rapidly fragmented after his death (323 bc). The Romans eventually defeated Macedon in the Macedonian Wars, and the empire shrunk to Macedonia proper. In 146 bc, Thessaloníki became capital of the first Roman province. In ad 395, Macedonia became part of the Eastern Roman (Byzantine) Empire. Slavs settled in the 6th century. From the 9th to the 14th century, Bulgaria and the Byzantine Empire contested control of the area. A brief period of Serbian hegemony preceded Ottoman rule from the 14th to 19th century. In the late 19th century, Greece, Serbia, and Bulgaria claimed Macedonia. In the first of the Balkan Wars (1912–13), Bulgaria gained much of historic Macedonia, but it was decisively defeated in the Second Balkan War, and the present-day boundaries were established.