Epaminondas was a cultivated man and employed a personal philosopher under whom Philip studied and was fascinated by, the thinker and scientist Pythagoras.
The two or three years the prince spent in Thebes showed him what it was like to live in one of the myriad Greek-speaking mini-states and be a fully paid-up Hellene. For, despite the best efforts of kings such as Alexander II and Archelaus, the Macedonian court was rough at the edges, still more than a little barbarian. Philip was impressed. There is little doubt that, as his historian Justin writes, his time at Thebes “gave Philip fine opportunities to improve his extraordinary abilities.”
The prince probably returned to Pella about 365, soon after the accession of his sibling, the doomed Perdiccas. The new king trusted his little brother, whom he placed in charge of territory somewhere near the Thermaic Gulf on the eastern end of Macedonia and gave command of cavalry and infantry. There Philip was able to put into practice the military lessons learned in Thebes, as Perdiccas may have intended. It proved to be an essential apprenticeship.
The great Illyrian battle in 359 was a terrible moment in Macedonia’s history. Philip almost certainly fought in it and witnessed the catastrophe. The king and four thousand of his men lay dead on the battlefield. There was widespread disillusion in Macedonia with the war. Enemies approached from every quarter: the tribes of Paeonia raided the kingdom, the Illyrians were planning a wholescale invasion, a pretender to the throne was backed by the Thracians, and the Athenians were helping another one with a fleet and a not insubstantial army.
Philip was appointed regent to his nephew, Perdiccas’s infant son. Immediately he gave a master class of coolness under fire and tactical brilliance. Realizing that he could not defeat all his enemies at once, he placed them in a line and dealt with them one at a time. He married the daughter of Bardylis, the Illyrian king, bribed the Paeonians not to invade his kingdom, and suborned the Thracians not merely to abandon the Macedonian pretender, but to put him to death.
Philip then tricked the Athenians into holding back their expeditionary force by promising to hand over to them a prosperous coastal port, then ambushed their now isolated claimant and had him killed. The energetic regent soon persuaded the Macedonian assembly to advance him to the kingship. He was not cruel, but he was ruthless, and undeviatingly so, when his own survival was at stake. Learning from Archelaus and other royal ancestors that safety called for bloody hands, he eliminated his three stepbrothers, although he only caught up with two of them some years later. Seeing no threat from the infant ci-devant king, he did not touch him and brought him up at court: a rare case of a royal child surviving.
Philip had not the slightest intention of keeping any of his promises. After a year had passed, he invaded Paeonia, inflicted a terminal defeat, and annexed it. Turning almost at once to Illyria, he won a stunning victory. His father-in-law, Bardylis, now over ninety years old, met his death in the field and seven thousand enemy soldiers also lost their lives. Perdiccas was avenged. More to the point, Philip had wrested back control of Upper Macedonia. His kingdom was united again.
He now ruled over a large and settled territory. Like his recent predecessors, he faced the challenge of transforming his role from that of the Homeric leader of an unruly war band to that of a head of government.
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HOW WERE PHILIP’S TRIUMPHANT feats of arms achieved? He had been able to look back into the past for inspiration.
On the plain that lay between the city and the sea, two armies faced each other. It was the ninth year of a long and bitter struggle as a Greek expeditionary force attempted to capture the legendary city of Troy on the coast of Asia Minor. The origin of the war lay in the greatest sex scandal of the ancient world; the beautiful Helen had abandoned her husband, Menelaus, king of Sparta, and eloped with the handsome Paris, prince of Troy.
Homer, author of the great epic poem about the war, evokes the scene.
In their swift advance across the plain, their marching feet had raised a cloud of dust, dense as the mist that the South Wind wraps round the mountaintops, when a man can see no further than he can heave a rock.
Mingling among the rank and file, kings and aristocrats stood on chariots. Once one of them had identified an enemy, who would also be riding a chariot, he jumped down onto the ground and challenged him to a duel. Each warrior carried two light throwing spears and a sword. For protection he had a round shield, which he could hang on his back if retreating. While the warriors fought, their poorly armed retainers cheered them along. They advanced or retreated in a mêlée, as the fortunes of their leaders ebbed and flowed, and seem not to have played a decisive role in the battle.
On the present occasion Paris, the cause of all the trouble, stepped out from the Trojan ranks to challenge any Greek to a duel. The cuckolded husband, Menelaus of Sparta, enthusiastically responded and leaped from his chariot. Paris was a coward and was whisked away by his divine patron, Aphrodite, goddess of love.
Archers were unpopular, for they killed unfairly from a safe distance. Later on in the siege, Paris loosed a shaft at the greatest warrior of all, the hot-tempered, beautiful Achilles, and killed him. Bows and arrows were evidence of bad character.
Greeks in later centuries agreed with Homer’s (almost certainly) fictional heroes that war brought glory and that individual courage marked a man out for praise and fame. In that way he became almost godlike, isotheos.
By the eighth century B.C., the age of kings and lords in mainland Greece had passed. What is more, we have no idea whether the war at Troy ever took place. It may have been a literary invention. The Homeric description of warfare is implausible. Simply to use the chariot as a taxi service to the front line is odd behavior at a time when the Hittites in Asia Minor and the Egyptians deployed massed chariots in battle.
However, most people were convinced that this distant Hellenic conflict was historical. It inspired a belief in military glory. Philip knew it behooved a brave leader like Achilles to risk his life in the thick of the fighting, to fight hand-to-hand and to lead from the front. No skulking in the rear.
The Macedonian king fought by this rule and, unsurprisingly, was frequently wounded on his many campaigns. When one of his fiercest critics conceded that “he was ready to sacrifice to the fortune of war any and every part of his body,” he was not exaggerating. A hand and a leg were maimed, a collarbone broken, and, worst of all, Philip lost an eye during the siege of a city. His doctor succeeded in extricating the arrow and the king survived. Despite being in great pain, he remained in command. When he took the city, he did not punish the defenders for their resistance. This was a sign of magnanimity, a virtue expected of a great monarch.
According to Plutarch, “he did not cover over or hide his scars, but displayed them openly as symbolic representations, cut into his body, of virtue and courage.”
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CITY-STATES DOMINATED BY MIDDLE-CLASS farmers and traders succeeded the feudal realms. The style of battle changed to match the new politics. This was the age of the citizen militia. In place of well-born charioteers hurling spears at individual opponents came disciplined troops of hoplites. These were heavily armed soldiers who marched in a tight formation called the phalanx.
The hoplite wore a metal helmet, a breastplate, greaves, and thigh pieces. He carried two thrusting spears and swords for hand-to-hand fighting, and protected himself with a large round shield, which also helped to cover his neighbor on the left and presented a shield wall to the enemy. The main strength of the phalanx lay in its momentum. Its function was to be a human battering ram and crash through the enemy’s line. It pushed and it shoved. Most casualties were incurred once there had been a decision: the losers were slaughtered in flight.