Philip preferred diplomacy to war, although he adopted an original style. A polygamist, he married seven times and never divorced any of his wives. The motive for these unions was invariably reason of state. Lust seems to have played a part, never love. As one ancient commentator neatly observed, he “made war by marriage.” His third bride was the hawk-eyed and ferocious Olympias, a princess of Epirus (as well as wedding her, Philip is also reported to have seduced her brother, a good-looking boy). In 356, she gave him a son and heir, Alexander, to the promotion of whose interests she devoted the rest of her monomaniacal life.
Philip’s other main negotiating technique was bribery. No city was impregnable, he liked to say, if it had a postern gate big enough to admit a donkey laden with gold.
When diplomacy failed, Philip unhesitatingly resorted to war. He was brave in battle, as his scars attested, and set a powerful example to his men. His idea of war owed something to the individual heroism of Homeric heroes. At the siege of Methone, a polis on the coast of the Thermaic Gulf, he was inspecting his lines when a defender on the ramparts shot an arrow that struck his right eye and blinded him. Despite this dangerous wound, he remained in active command and when the city sued for peace some days later he generously gave them easy terms. Other injuries left a hand and a leg permanently damaged and a shattered collarbone.
Personal courage, though, was not enough to ensure victory. Inspired by Epaminondas and Pelopidas, Philip introduced sweeping military reforms. He professionalized the army by introducing regular pay, providing armor at his expense, and establishing a system of promotion. He made his soldiers carry their own armor, weapons, and food, so reducing the need for a cumbersome baggage train. They were no longer seasonal peasant farmers, but full-time career soldiers.
Philip was inspired by the primal phalanx in Homer’s Iliad. The Greeks confront the Trojans in battle with
an impenetrable hedge of spears and sloping shields, buckler to buckler, helmet to helmet, man to man. So close were the ranks that when they moved their heads the glittering peaks of their plumed helmets met and the spears overlapped as they swung them forward in their sturdy hands.
But Philip was also an innovator. He took the concept of the phalanx to its logical conclusion. He introduced an extraordinarily long pike, the sarissa. This was between fourteen and eighteen feet in length and had to be held in both hands. It was carried upright and, when approaching the enemy, the first five ranks of the phalanx lowered their sarissas, creating the effect of a super-sized porcupine, and charged. The shield-wall of the ordinary Greek phalanx found itself facing a spear-wall. Old-fashioned hoplites were unable to reach enemy combatants and fight them hand-to-hand with their short swords.
Philip deployed his new-look phalanx in close association with his heavy cavalry. Like Epaminondas, he ordered the latter to attack at the beginning of a battle rather than waiting for the infantry to engage. While the phalanx pinned down the enemy’s center, the cavalry, riding in wedgelike squadrons, did their best, slashing and stabbing, to disrupt the opposite line and, above all, to ride against its flanks or rear.
Greek armies did not have the technology to capture walled towns with any ease, and when they fell it was usually because of treachery. In about 350 Philip established an engineering corps. Its commander designed new siege machines, such as a covered battering ram, and seems to have invented the torsion catapult, whose missiles had a greater range and speed of travel than the traditional mechanically drawn catapult.
Macedonian kings gathered around them an elite force, the Companions, who were friends and advisers at home and led the cavalry in the field. They functioned as royal bodyguards. Philip expanded their number to eight hundred and personally chose each one of them.
With his new supplies of gold Philip could afford to add mercenaries to his native Macedonian troops. These men were necessarily loyal to him alone and, as well as strengthening his military capacity, they made it more difficult for his own citizens to apply political pressure on him.
On campaign, discipline was fierce and training relentless. On one occasion the king dismissed an officer for taking a hot bath in camp and another was flogged when he broke ranks for a drink. But if we are to trust the fourth-century historian Theopompus, many were hell-raisers off-duty.
According to him, they were addicted to drink, with a shocking propensity for unmixed wine, the ancient equivalent of spirits, and for gambling. There was worse to come.
Some of them used to shave and depilate their bodies, although they were men, while others made love to their companions, although they were bearded [in other words, they were adult homosexuals in our modern sense, something Greeks found distasteful]. They habitually took two or three rent boys about with them, and themselves provided the same service for others. It would be perfectly fair to call them courtesans rather than courtiers, escorts rather than bodyguards.
Even if some of this is exaggerated, we know that Philip admired the Theban Sacred Band and we may infer that he encouraged sexualized male bonding among his special forces as a method for managing morale.
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This was not a boy with obvious potential. He was delicate and underdeveloped. He had been skinny and sickly ever since he was a child. He had a weak voice and found it difficult to pronounce the letter “r.” His manner seems to have been effeminate, for other boys nicknamed him Battalus, after a well-known and very effeminate flute player. (As an adult, he was accused of frequenting workingmen’s taverns in drag and was criticized for his alleged homosexuality: but he also married and had three children. We do not know where the truth lies.)
Born in 385, the infant was called Demosthenes after his father, who was a successful businessman and owned a factory that manufactured swords and cutlery; he also produced couches. Unfortunately, he died when his son was only seven years old. Relatives who were appointed as guardians in his will so mismanaged the estate that when Demosthenes reached his majority at eighteen there was hardly any of it left to inherit.
He was in his teens when he heard a leading statesman of the day, Callistratus, speak at a trial and was so impressed that he chose oratory as his future vocation. He gave up his other studies, enrolled with teachers of rhetoric, and read textbooks on public speaking.
The law courts in the fourth century were busier than ever and litigation thrived. There were careers, and money, to be made. The provision of legal advice and the writing and delivery of speeches on behalf of accusers and defendants was professionalized. There were honorable advocates and real criminals to pursue, but enemies with grudges, business rivals, politicians flooded the courts with false or frivolous charges. There was no public prosecution service, although a state official could raise an action if it concerned the community as a whole. Any citizen was allowed to bring a preosecution, and a class of habitual litigants came into being, nicknamed sycophants (literally, one who brings figs to light by shaking the tree; whence our word for a fawner or flatterer). Ostensibly, they worked in the public interest, but in fact for financial gain. They blackmailed innocent citizens by threatening them with court proceedings. In some cases, the state paid for convictions. It was this murky world that Demosthenes aspired to enter.
The young orator underwent a strict training regime. If we are to believe the stories told about him, he spent every waking hour practicing declamation and acquired a full-length mirror to monitor his performance. He liked to go down to the sea at Phaleron where he shouted above the sound of the waves and, as he was short-winded, he hired an actor to teach him how to deliver long sentences in a single breath. He corrected his indistinct articulation by reciting speeches with pebbles in his mouth and developed his vocal strength by speaking at the same time as walking uphill.