The Kingdom of Macedon

MEDITERRANEAN PEOPLES HIST 1301 | History The Kingdom of Macedon The modern-day Greek and Macedonian regions were divided by the ancient Kingdom of Macedon. Despite not knowing Greek, the Macedonians assimilated Greek culture throughout the Archaic era, and their royal lineage traced back to the legendary Greek hero Heracles. From 359 to 336 BCE, King Philip II of Macedon turned his country into a major global force. With the help of skilled aristocracy for the cavalry, he gathered regular farmers and turned them into a strong infantry. Philip gained control of additional lands in Thrace (present-day northern Greece and Bulgaria) thanks to his diplomatic and military prowess. This gave him access to valuable metals and the financial means to increase his military might. After decades of hostility, Athens and Thebes ultimately formed an alliance in 338 BCE to oppose Macedon's growing influence. This confederate army was routed by the Macedonians at the Battle of Chaeronea (338 BCE). After this triumph, Philip tried to organise the Greek citystates under his command with the intention of going to war with the Persian Empire. But in 336 BCE, Philip was murdered by a personal enmity assassin. Following Philip II's death, his twenty-year-old son Alexander III—later dubbed Alexander the Great—faced an invasion from northern Thracian tribes as well as a rebellion in Greece spearheaded by Thebes and Athens. The youthful king declared he was following out his father's intention to make war against Persia after defeating these opponents in less than a year. The Persian king Darius III gathered soldiers against him, although most of them were draftees from the Persian Empire's dependent peoples. These armies crumbled against Alexander's Macedonians during the battles of Issus (333 BCE) and Gaugamela (330 BCE). Alexander first saw his fight against Persia as a war of retribution. Despite being Macedonian, he identified as a Hellene and frequently drew comparisons between himself and the Iliad hero Achilles, from whom he claimed maternal descent. The crown jewel of the Persian Empire, Persepolis, was looted and later set on fire by Alexander's army in 330 BCE. But that same year, after a group of angry Persian nobles assassinated Darius III, Alexander usurped the Persian throne and brought Persian traditions to his court, including making his subjects bow before him. In order to strengthen his hold on the Persian Empire, Alexander led his army into central Asia and the Indus River basin in 330–326 BCE (modern Pakistan). His weary soldiers rebelled in 326 BCE and refused to follow Alexander's wishes to proceed to the Ganges River in central India. At the age of thirty-three, he led his army back to Babylon in Mesopotamia, where he died in 323 BCE, most likely from the cumulative effects of his campaign-related wounds. Despite being pregnant at the time of his death, Alexander had not planned for a successor with his Bactrian wife Roxane. Thus, in what historians describe to as the Wars of the Successors, members of his court and his military commanders engaged in conflict over control of the empire. Alexander's cousin and king of Epirus, Pyrrhus, was one of the more colourful competitors. Pyrrhus was not Macedonian. For a short while, Pyrrhus took over the Macedonian crown and made an effort to establish his own kingdom in Sicily and southern Italy. He never lost a fight, but he was never able to turn his victories into a profit since he lost so many soldiers in a campaign against Rome to protect Magna Graecia in southern Italy. (Today, a triumph so expensive that it really seems like a defeat is called a "pyrrhic victory"). During a public fight in the city of Argos in 272 BCE, an old lady threw a roof tile at Pyrrhus, which caused him to die. The conflicts among Alexander's generals came to an end with his passing. A number of generals and their progeny were governing as kings over various regions of Alexander's kingdom by the middle of the third century BCE. Macedon and a large portion of Greece were governed by Antigonus and his offspring, the Antigonids. Federal leagues were established by a few Greek city-states in order to maintain their autonomy from Macedon. The Aetolian League was in central Greece, and the Achaean League was in the Peloponnese. Ptolemy, another commander from Macedonia, ruled Egypt. Ptolemy and his successors adopted the title of pharaoh and erected temples to the Egyptian gods in an effort to gain the allegiance of the Egyptian populace. Seleucus, another Macedonian general, and his offspring, the Seleucids, governed as monarchs across a large portion of the once Persian Empire, spanning from central Asia in the east to Asia Minor in the west. Cuneiform records of their sacrifices indicate that they honoured local gods, among other Persian Empire customs they absorbed. There were almost thirty million people living in the vast and intricate Seleucid Kingdom, which stretched from the Aegean Sea to modern-day Afghanistan. They belonged to several ethnic and linguistic groupings. It was hard to maintain authority over such a large empire, and from 250 BCE, parts of the far east, including Bactria and Parthia, started to break away. Both developed into independent Hellenistic kingdoms, first under the administration of old Greek local rulers. The Indus River valley was attacked and subjugated by the Bactrian dynasty in 200 BCE. Menander I, whose realm spanned from the Indus River valley to the upper Ganges in central India, is the most well-known of the Bactrian monarchs of India. Menander became a saintly man after converting to Buddhism and was called Milinda in India. Greek colonists sent their artistic creations to Bactria and India, where they had an impact on Indian architecture, painting, and sculpture. However, due to ongoing internal warfare between rival heirs, the Bactrian monarchy had fallen by the end of the second century BCE. Only the coins they produced when they were rulers let us know they existed. Unthinkable political power for aristocratic women could be attained in ancient Hellenistic countries, where planned marriages could ensure alliances and peace treaties. ancient ladies were not even present in classical Greece. For instance, as was customary for pharaohs, Ptolemy II of Egypt wed his sister Arsinoe and crowned her a co-ruler. Also, dynastic queens sometimes held power when the heir apparent was still a little child. Antiochus II, the king of the Seleucids, concluded his conflict with Ptolemy II in 253 BCE by marrying Berenice, the latter's daughter. But after Antiochus died in 246 BCE, Laodice, Antiochus's former wife, killed Berenice and her children in order to ensure her own newborn son Seleucus II would succeed him. After that, Ptolemy III started war to exact revenge for his sister's and her children's deaths. Antiochus III brought an end to a second Syrian war in 194 BCE by marrying his daughter Cleopatra I to Ptolemy V. Since Ptolemy's sons and daughter were still young, Cleopatra took over as ruler after Ptolemy died in 180 BC. Cleopatra VII, a descendant of Cleopatra, was the most well-known and influential Hellenistic queen, ruling from 51 to 31 BCE. The final Ptolemy, Cleopatra VII shared power as co-regent with her brothers, Ptolemy XIII and Ptolemy XIV, and her son, Ptolemy XV, also known as Caesarion, who was descended from Julius Caesar, the Roman commander.