Hello and welcome to how to take over the world. This is Ben Wilson. It's good to be back. Hello everyone. Yes, it's been a year, but.  Here's another episode   , uh, thanks to everyone who reached out with words of encouragement or words of complaint, either way, both helped to get me back on track to producing more episodes.

So I appreciate it also special shout out, thanks to the guys at my first million , uh, uh, which is a big business podcast that shouted out the podcast.  Sam Parr, one of the hosts, there is a big fan and uh, , uh, thanks Sam, and, and welcome to everyone who got turned on to the podcast that way   , uh, uh, the other co-host of my first million, who will go unnamed.

I'm a, I'm not shouting you out until you listen to an episode. He said he hasn't listened yet.   So yeah, if you want to shout out,  get on it.    Um,  ,

for this next series, I'm going to be talking about someone who needs no introduction, Alexander the great, but on this first episode, I'm going to be talking about someone who does need a little introduction and that's his father, Phillip, the second of Macedonia. And you'll see in the title of this episode that I have dubbed him, Phillip, the great.

Why is that? Uh, Uh, no, no one calls him Napa. I think he should be called Phillip. The great , uh, and the reason for that is I want to give a little analogy. I want you to think back to the movie. Uh, if you've seen it, , in, in the first iron man movie, Tony stark played by Robert Downey Jr. Is a Playboy billionaire who owns a major weapons manufacturer.

He's a genius level engineer who can build these incredible weapons. And at the beginning of the first movie, he's captured by terrorists and basically enslaved and forced to build a bomb for them in this little cave in Afghanistan, he's got one assistant to help him, a guy, a fellow slave by the name of Yansen.

Well, unbeknownst to the terrorists, he's also building a super suit, the first iron man suit, because you know, Tony stark is this genius and he's able to build it in a K with nothing but scrap metal and spare parts. And at the very end, his assistant units and dies,  and Tony uses his iron man suit to blast his way out, kill the terrorist and escape his imprisonment.

okay. So I want you to imagine this scenario, but with one small difference, imagine that Tony stark builds the suit from scrap metal and.  But then he's the one who's killed and his assistant incen uses the suit to blast his way out and escape  in that scenario.

Who's the real hero.  The guy who built the super suit from scratch in a cave or the guy who just used it.  And so obviously, you know, , I think everyone would agree that the major achievement is, is building a super iron man suit out of scrap metal. And in this analogy, Phillip is Tony stark and Alexander.

The great is Yansen.  Phillip takes Masad on a small backwater kingdom. That's just nobody it's constantly invaded, rated controlled by its neighbors. And he turns it into the dominant regional power. He takes over Greece. Essentially. He draws up plans for an invasion of Persia, the largest empire on earth.

He builds the army to invade Persia. . He sends an expeditionary force, gets everything ready and prepared for the.  And then he dies.  And then his son Alexander is the one who actually conducts the invasion and establishes the largest empire the world had ever seen. Spoiler alert. Sorry, if you didn't know what Alexander did.

Um, but I think that Philip is under-credited as the mastermind of this entire thing. So anyway, I'm not trying to take anything away from Alexander. I think his father Philip also deserves credit for being a truly great conqueror and statesman in his own. Right. so let's jump into his story, but first, a quick word from our sponsor.

So to start off with, where did Philip come from and how did he rise?  Phillip was born a prince of Mastodon or Macedonia. I'll mostly say mass it on. But if I slip up and say Macedonia, they mean the same thing. Macedonia is a region that mostly lies in the far north of what is the modern country of Greece.

And partly in the country of what is now called Northern Macedonia Pella. The city where Phillip was born is in modern day, Greece  and Mastodon had this sort of weird relationship with Greece. It existed on the periphery of the Greek world. Macedonians sort of considered themselves Greeks and Greeks definitely did not consider Macedonians to be so the Macedonian language was extremely closely related to Greek.

Um, could really even be called a dialect of Greek. It was mostly mutually intelligible, sort of like Spanish and Portuguese. Uh, probably actually even a little more similar, maybe something more like Spanish and Portuguese, you know, three or 400 years ago,  they did have claims of common descent with the Greeks.

They worshiped the same gods as the Greeks, but they culturally had some significant differences with them.  They were less developed, less wealthy. Uh, Uh, one of the main things that separated Macedonians was that they didn't have city states. They had many towns and urban areas, even a few cities, but they didn't center their identities on these city states  what the Greeks called policies. The Macedonians were more tribal and tended to place more emphasis on their family or bloodline.  So anyway, they were kind of Greek, , but the Greeks viewed them as these sort of uneducated, undefined, barbaric, semi Greeks, and Macedonians looked at the Greeks as decadent degenerates.

Um, that's maybe a overly negative view of it. Uh, Uh, it wasn't all bad blood. There was definitely some mutual admiration, especially from the Macedonians who really admired many aspects of Greek culture, art music, and all of that.  Now Phillip is born a prince of Mastodon. So that means a life of good living and luxury.

Right. He's he's royalty. Well, yes and no he's nobility. So yes, he spends most of the time feasting hunting and making.  Rather than farming or working in manual labor, but Mastodon was a very rough and tumble place.  And the Macedonian Kings were not exempt from that rough and humble nature.

And they almost never met peaceful ends. I mean, here are the names and manner of death of the eight Kings of Mastodon. Before Phillip first, we have a king who consolidated and basically founded Macedonia, a guy named Alexander. The first he is assassinated and the kingdom is taken over by his son PIR to kiss the second purchase.

The second is assassinated by his illegitimate son Archaius who takes over as king before he is assassinated by his friend and lover. There's a big civil war and a guy named . The third comes out as king. His wife tries to poison him, but he survives actually and manages to die of old age. Yay. Congrats to  the one guy who doesn't get.

He is succeeded by his son Alexander the second, but he is. Yep. You guessed it assassinated by his son, Ptolemy, who is say it with me assassinated by Phillip's older brother   who takes over and manages to not get assassinated. Um, but only by dying in battle.

So you had the idea of the rough lifestyle. These people lived, the Macedonians were still kind of wild and that included the nobility. This was at a time when it was still expected that Kings and generals would actually get their hands dirty and swing their swords.  Often in the front lines and not just command from the back.

And it was a time when assassination was obviously, as we just saw very common and almost sort of accepted tool of regime change.  The Macedonian Kings of this era were all from this one family called the  dynasty. Every Macedonian king was an RD ad with no exceptions and no one really even tried or challenged this rule.

We're not quite sure why this one dynasty had such a hold on the public imagination that everyone just sort of accepted that they should be the Kings. They did claim to be of Greek descent. Their origin story is that they were descended from an aristocrat from the city of Argos, a descendant of Hercules, very illustrious guy who conquered Macedonia,  but you know, those kinds of stories were common in those days.

Um, but you know, for whatever reason, everyone agreed that the king should be an arc yet,  but they're unchallenged status as Kings of Mastodon. Didn't bring with it a tradition of stability as he might.  And that's because while the RD ads were unchallenged as Kings, any are GAD could be king.

Uh, Uh, there doesn't appear to have been a very fixed succession rule. If you were the eldest son of the past king, and you were a competent leader of, you know, whole mind and whole body, then you'd probably be in pole position, but a cousin or a half-brother could always swoop in, if you weren't careful and RD ads were polygamous , um, or at least the Kings were polygamous.

So there were always plenty of men to vie for the throne.    So they had multiple wives, they fought in the front lines of their battles.

And when you hear about their exploits, you get the impression that these arguer ads were just this crazy hard drinking. A bunch of men who liked women gambling and fighting and Mastodon was the kind of violent, wild place where that type of person could thrive.  It was said that a Macedonian boy wasn't allowed to recline at dinner with the adults until he had killed a boar without the use of a net, just with a spear.

So strength capacity for violence, vitality, the ability to drink large quantities of alcohol, all of these things were highly valued in Macedonia. It was the land of the chats.  And Phillip grows up in this environment and definitely takes on many Macedonian attributes.

But when he's 12, he also gets the chance to get a first rate education. There's a peace treaty. That's forced on Mastodon. And as part of it, Philip, the younger brother of the king, you sent to be a hostage in the city, state of Thebes,   the idea of hostages in the ancient sense is something that is foreign to us.

Now, when we think of hostages , um, um, we probably think of like a terrorist holding someone in a camp, threatening to cut off their finger, unless you send them $10,000 by Saturday or whatever. Hostage taking in the pre-modern world was nothing like that. It was something very different. The hostage taker would treat the hostage like a member of their household to be raised and educated and would be sent back home.

Once they reached adulthood,  they were treated very well and encouraged to befriend the children in the household.  So there is this catch though, which is that there's an implicit threat that if the family of the hostage acts up, the hostage will be executed. So it has this weird dual purpose. On the one hand, it ensures good behavior because you'll kill the hostage.

If their family crosses you. And on the other hand, it was supposed to foster friendships because the children of one state are growing up with and being educated with the children of another it's like the world's weirdest summer camp is the only thing I can think to compare it, to learn important, life lessons, make friendships that will last a lifetime.

Maybe get executed at the end. Try not to focus on that.

But luckily for Philip, he is not executed and even more lucky for him. He's raised in Thebes, which is the preeminent military power in Greece at the time. And not only that, but he's housed, educated and raised  by a man named  , who was a military leader and who was very close with a guy named  , who was the star general of the time, not only in Thebes, but of the entire Greek world, Macedonia had been a backwater, a semi civilized frontier territory, but now here's Philip getting a military education from the very best of the business.

We don't know for certain that he learned directly from  , but it seems plausible. And certainly at the very least he was able to observe firsthand .

How the Phoebe army functioned and was organized

So he's in Thebes from age 12 to about age 17 or 18. And I have to point out that this is a pattern for tons of great conquers and achievers. They're half outsiders, half insiders. So think about Napoleon he's a well-to-do card-carrying French aristocrat, right? No one can challenge the status as officially notable.

So he is half insider, but he's also a Corsican , uh, he's. He speaks in Italian dialect as his first language. He always speaks French with an accent. So he's definitely half outsider or think about Steve jobs.

He's literally raised in Silicon valley and interns for Hewlett Packard, the quintessential Silicon valley company, as a high schooler, definitely an insider, but he's also adopted biologically the son of a Syrian immigrant. And for that reason always felt like a little bit of an outsider.  These people are insiders enough to have access to the resources and education of the dominant system, but outsiders enough that they aren't caught up in the same way of thinking as everyone else who came before them.

And Phillip fits that mold perfectly. He's a semi barbarian Macedonian. Who's being educated by one of the preeminent military powers in Greece and therefore in the world, half insider, half outside.

now when Phillip reaches adulthood and his time as a hostage comes to an end, he goes back to Macedonia and is given command of some Eastern regions by his brother.  the king of Macedonia.  Phillip administers, these regions capably or so we think , um, frankly, there just aren't a ton of records about this part of Phillip's life, but that all changes a few years later when pertussis leads a third of the Macedonian army against the tribal people called the Elyria.

Since  the battle is a complete disaster, purdah kisses killed and his army is completely wiped out. And the librarians follow this up by invading Mastodon and rating and looting at-will it's total chaos for a series of weeks  pertussis. His son is only a boy. And with the is running amok, the Macedonians know they need a strong king.

So Phillips steps forward and seizes the throne and is proclaimed king by the army. He's only 22 or perhaps 23, when he becomes king

to say that Phillips rural, it was precarious at the beginning would be a huge understatement.   The Alerian is our rating and plundering and the   and other Western barbarian people see this chaos and figure, Hey, we want a piece of the spoils.

We want some of that action. So they also start reading Massad on another tribal people, these ones on the Eastern side of acid on see the situation and they want a piece to , uh, uh, they're a little more organized and civilized than the Syrians and pay Ionians. So they get a puppet, a half-brother of Phillips who they're hoping to install on the throne and the Greek city-state Athens does the same thing.

They dig up a half-brother RG ad, who they're going to try and sit on the throne to be there.   So you've got all these vultures circling because they can feel that the whole Macedonian kingdom might just collapse. Third of their army is destroyed. There's this brand new king , uh, who no one really knows.

He's only been in the country for five years. He grew up in Thebes and foreign pillagers are running a mock and rating towns at will  

so in most people's minds, Phillip is a dead man walking, um, but Phillip is, you know, obviously not your average king, he Springs into action. The first thing he does is execute arrival, claimant one of his half brothers and forced two other claimants to escape into exile.

The ones backed by Athens and grace.  And then luckily he gets a breather. It was the practice at a time for everyone to basically go home.  In classical societies, the vast, vast majority of these people were not professional soldiers. They were mostly farmers or in the case of barbarians, like   herdsmen and fishermen.

So they needed to go home, tend to their affairs, you know, fall harvest, spring, planting, all of that. So over autumn and winter of 360 BC, all these Raiders go home and Phillip has time to reorganize and prepare for these numerous pending invasions. The situation was bleak, but at least he had a chance to organize.

So the first task for Philip is to rally the people of Macedonia behind him. He's getting ready to go for on one Macedonia against race, Athens, Elyria, and Pena. But first he has to make sure he even has the one, because if you're a Macedonia noble with a few villages and a few hundred soldiers behind you, nothing about this situation is screaming.

Let's get behind Philip and support him. He doesn't necessarily seem like the safe bet. But Phillip goes on a charm offensive. He's going around to the parties, shaking hands, kissing babies, showing off how smart and intelligent, clever he is. Uh, Uh, in the words of the ancient Greek historian, Daya, Doris, he says, quote, bringing together the Macedonians in a series of assemblies  and exhorting them with eloquent speeches to be men.

He was courteous and sought to win over the multitudes by his gifts and his promises.  Okay. So a few things about that. Number one, by all accounts, Phillip was extremely charismatic. He had this almost magical sway over people. They were immediately naturally drawn to him. Part of that might have been that he had the natural aspect of a leader.

He was nearly six feet tall, which was very tall for the time and was apparently quite handsome, which helps obviously when you're trying to charm people. Um, Um, so Phillip is getting gifts and making promises, as you might expect, you know, support me in, I'll make you Lord over such and such an area and give you these territories.

But to me, the most interesting line in there is that he exhorted them to be.  He's challenging them, challenging their manhood.

It gives me a little bit of those old tiny Explorer ads, you know, hazardous journey, low wages, safe return, doubtful fame and glory and cases, success. And I think that's a valuable lesson so many times we think we can win people over by offering them things. And there is definitely some merit to that,  but it can also be an effective tactic to be demanding.

There are a lot of leaders who will, you know, try and stay in power by being nice to you and, and hoping for reciprocity. It's so easy to find leaders like that. They're a dime a dozen it's much rarer to find a leader who you feel like will actually push you and lead you to do great things. A lot of times people will respect the leader who has high expectations, who pushes them, who challenges them.

So Phillip is trying both approaches. He's flattering, he's bribing, but he's also challenging and pushing.  And as he's doing this, he's also training his army  in the winter of 360.  The army that would come to conquer the entire world  starts to form.  Phillip has two problems to solve. On the one hand, he's going to have to fight these barbarians.

They're generally bigger and stronger and more fearsome individual fighters than Macedonians, but they don't tend to fight as cohesive units. So you can deal with them, but you have to be very disciplined about it. The bigger problem to solve is the Greek infantry. The hoplites, the hoplites were the greatest heavy infantry in the world, and it's not particularly close.

The Greek hoplites were essentially a heavily armed Spearman. He would be wearing iron armor, including a breastplate, a helmet , uh, and grieves for the shins. They also carried around concave shield called the Aspice, which weighed about 15 pounds. Their primary weapon was the Doru.

It was an eight to 10 foot sphere used.  Hoplites also carried a short sword for very close combat. They carried the shield on the left arm and together with other hoplites around them, they would create a shield wall where, you know, they're shielded mostly protect themselves, but also a little bit to the guys, to the left and to the right of you  hoplites were organized into groups called phalanx, which were eight to 10 rows deep ,  the back rows would place their shields on the backs of the soldiers in front of them and hold them in place. Meanwhile, the front ranks would push with their shields and also try to stab with their Spears as much as possible or stab with a short sword. If they were close, I have to do that  at certain times.

Commanders would give a command to take a step forward and then the back rows would push with their shields and the whole weight of the failings. These eight to 10 men would push on the enemy, moving them backwards. This was called the   and according to many of ancient accounts, Greek armies would literally push each other off the battle.

This is how one scholar described, uh, the method of ancient warfare. he says, quote, battles of the late archaic and classical periods tended to follow the same script. Armies would line up someone elected as general would give a rousing speech followed by the sacrifice of a goat or a sheep to gain favors with the gods.

Then both armies would charge each other. Then one phalanx would shove the other off the field.  So Greek warfare was basically, you can think of it like a very stabby game of rugby.  Um, I actually think if I remember correctly, there's a pretty good example of it in the movie, Troy , uh, where they do this, you know, they all yelled together, Ooh.

And kind of push or their shields push each other off, off the battlefield.  In terms of other soldiers, Greek armies would typically have limited skirmishers who would throw Spears before the phalanx rushed each other and engaged, and they would have some cavalry who protected the wings of their army.

Greek armies were typically weak when it came to cavalry , uh, uh, which is not terribly surprising, right? Greece is Rocky country. It's very hilly, very mountainous. There aren't a lot of open fields or Plains, the type of ground that cavalry succeed on  a mass add-on by comparison is much more open.

And as a result, they had much better cavalry than the Greeks. So that was Phillip's one advantage, but his big disadvantage was that his inventory we're probably going to get smoked by these recop lights. So he needed to come up with a tactic that neutralized the opposing infantry, especially the Greek hoplites.

And he can't just copy them because his infantry were not as well equipped as the Greeks hoplites were expected to furnish their own armor and weapons. And the average Macedonian soldier was not wealthy enough to afford the heavy armor of the hoplite

But over the winter of 360 BC, Phillip trained his inventory in a new style of fighting , uh, something completely innovative that he kind of came up with himself. I'm sure he took inspiration from somewhere, but it's really not attested to, as a major fighting style before Philip came up with it,  he issued his men with a new weapon along spear called a Syriza.

The spear was 16 to 18 feet long and had a counterweight at the end. So Macedonian soldiers could have most of the length out in front of them. If you imagine this little counterweight right behind them so that they have a full 16 feet of spear poking out in front of them,  they had a shield much smaller and lighter than the Greek aspects that was strapped to their upper left arm.

Now think about this. If you're a Macedonian soldier and you face a hoplite one-on-one with your big two armed pike that you're heating around, right? He's going to run up to you. Knock aside your big pike and easily just come up and stab you with his shorter spear.  But conversely, if you think about facing an entire formation of Macedonian soldiers with their services, it was eight soldiers deep, and the first five ranks could all wield their Spears out in front of the formation.

The last three ranks would be resting and waiting and would have their Spears kind of tilted upwards to try and block any , uh, any arrows or Spears that might be thrown at them. But as you approach the Macedonians, you would literally have five ranks of Spears stabbing at you before you could get to them.

Um, at least that was the idea, right? And remembered the Greek phalanx, mostly relied on this obese, most this great unified push to win their battles. But to do that, you need your frontline literally pressed up against the opposing frontline with your shields, essentially on them.

Greeks, mostly fought each other. So they were usually shield to shield, trying to push each other off the battlefield. But the idea with the Syriza is that if we can deploy enough Spears, they'll never get close enough to be able to give us that big push. We'll just be stabbing them to death.  Uh, Uh, now that sounds like a great strategy and practice, but these Syriza formations take incredible discipline.

It's really easy to get tangled up with other Spears. So you need to walk in very strict, very tight formations turning or doing any maneuvers is extremely difficult and you don't have great protection against arrows and other missiles. So you need to hold your ground and not run when other people are throwing Spears at your

so Philip spends all winter drilling and drilling his men until they're prepared to fight in these formations with their services. This is a huge military innovation, but it's also a huge risk. No one had really tried this.  When the spring comes, you have this big buildup everyone's ready to charge in and, and take their piece of Macedonia.

But the first thing Philip does is buy off the  unions and the thracians they'd be back, but he needed time to deal with the Athenians.  So Phillip essentially pays them a bribe and all of a sudden he has taken most of the barbarians off the table entirely.  At the same time, this Athenian supported pretender to the throne, a half-brother of Philips named Argus launches, an invasion of Mastodon.

He's got a few disaffected Macedonians and a substantial force of Athenians.  

Now the Athenian we're primarily involved in Macedonia because they wanted to control a city called  , which Mastodon also claimed to some sovereignty over.   So Phillip publicly seeds, any claim over in pitless,  which greatly reduces the Athenian commitment to this guy, Argus, like they have already committed to helping him.

So they kind of give a half-hearted effort, but they're not really all in it because well, if Mastodon is not really even going to challenge our claim to pitless then who cares? Yeah. So our Gaius marches to the ancient capital of Macedonia,

A city called a JIA  JIA. I think I'm pronouncing that right. Um, but the Athenians mostly stay behind, right. They kind of split their forces and they send a little troop of advisors with him. I mean, it's a, it's a,  it's a force. It's a, it's some soldiers, but not their full army. Um, Um, they're not abandoning him again.

They're not really going out of their way to support this guy.  So our Gaius with the few Athenian troops who do come and his small Macedonian forest, he declared himself king. Um, and he's hoping that the common people of Mastodon will rise up and support him. Uh, he's an argue ad. He's got a claim and he's got the support of Athens.

So why not? You know, maybe people think, Hey, this guy's got a shot, but the common folk want nothing to do with him either. Because at this point they liked Philip , uh, which I think is likely right. He's gone on this charm offensive or just because they thought our gay has chances were.  When he realizes that the people are not going to rise up to support him.

He tries to get out of Dodge. He tries to leave Massad on, but Philip chases him down with astonishing speed. He can't believe how quickly Phillip ch uh, catches up to him. And in Phillip's first battle against cop lights, his Cyrissa wielding soldiers easily to feet. Uh, Uh, numerically, inferior foe. He's magnanimous towards the Athenians who he wants peace with.

So he lets the surviving at the Indian soldiers go home unharmed,  but his half-brother Argus. He executes as well as any Macedonian trader who were with him.

This rapid March would be something of a hallmark throughout his career. And it's one of the most obvious and most important connecting links of all these great conquerors and generals. There are different in many, many ways.  Some were attacking general. Some were defensive generals, some relied on their artillery, like Napoleon  some on their cavalry, like Alexander others' on their infantry, like Cesar, some were tall, some were short, some were white, some were black.

They were different in a lot of different, different ways, but there is no such thing as a general, who's a slow marcher.  They all have that in common. Every single one of them moves fast.  Um, and I think the lesson of that , uh, or the takeaway there is, is pretty obvious. Um, and that's something I'm trying to remember and implement more.

There are great generals who make lots of mistakes. But there is no such thing as a great general who moves slow.  And I think that's true of entrepreneurs, of scientists, of artists.

Um, you cannot be great and move slow.

In the aftermath of his victory, Athens quickly makes peace with Philip since he had promised to keep his hands off of amphibious. So Phillip finally has an uneasy peace. There are no immediate threats to his kingdom. So hypothetically, he's got a moment to rest and relax,  but the problem is that all the same powers are still waiting to pounce.

All these tribal barbarians around Mastodon had been bribed to not attack, but that can only last for so long before they invade again and asked for more tribute. So the rather than rest on his laurels and see what comes his way, Phillip decides to go on the offensive

first, this kind of king like figure this leader of the pony and tribes. Uh, Uh, he dies. So while they're disorganized Philip invades and installs his own puppet as leader of Pena  the next year in 3 58, BC Phillip invades, Elyria, the Macedonians had typically been afraid of the Libyans and we're even more so now because , um, well the first part they're physically larger, they're more barbaric, which is to say less settled, more warlike and accustomed to combat , uh,  uh, uh,  uh, included more meat fish , uh, which tended to make the men bigger than the Macedonians  especially the common Macedonians who mostly subsided on , um, wheat and bread.

, uh, And, uh, is one of their chief tactics was to use their physical size and strength to intimidate and overwhelm their enemies. Before the battle even began, they would beat their chest scream loudly and mountainous furious charge and scare off the opposing forces. And they were big scary guys as often worked.

And we imagined, you know, this would have been particularly terrifying to the Macedonians who, , just a year before or two years before had uh, , uh, had seen their king and a third of their own.  Massacred by these Olympians.  So the Macedonians would have had this in their mind and they're thinking, man, do we really want to go fight these guys when we don't have to do we want to March into Elyria and take the fight to them.

Um, but Phillip convinces them. He's trained them. He's disciplined them. He's installed them with this mindset that we can do this.  So they March in, they have this grueling battle. It's not an easy battle by any stretch of imagination, but the Macedonians stay disciplined.  They outlast the Allianz and end up winning, killing thousands of

And it's this crushing victory. Total victory over the Leary ends.  

This is a big deal for Philip because Mastodon had actually been partially under Illyria and occupation.  Mastodon could be divided into two areas, upper Macedonia and lower masses.  Lower Macedonia were fertile lowlands. Uh, most people in lower Macedonia farmed and lived in villages, but then there was upper Macedonia.

It was up in the mountainous hill regions up north. It was still more of a wild place. Most people did not farm, but were rather herdsman tending flocks of sheep and cattle. Their societies were still quite tribal and it was poor. Um, Um, if lower Macedonia was halfway between the civilized Greeks and the barbarians, then upper Macedonia was halfway between lower Macedonia and the barbarians, right?

So it was just kind of a spectrum of barbarity and upper Macedonians were still a little bit more wild, a little bit different.  And the Northern Macedonians had been under the domination of these other barbarians under the Olympians for quite some time,  but with this victory now, all of Mastodon was under Phillip's control,

wanting to make the victory permanent. Phillip takes an Elyria.  And then to make sure he maintains control over upper Macedonia as well. He takes a second wife, this one from upper Macedonia. So he takes two wives at the same time. He also cements his victories. In other ways, he builds fortified cities and upper Macedonia to protect them from future El-Erian incursions.

And he populates these cities , um, with some upper Macedonians from the Hills , uh, uh, makes them farmers and, and puts them in cities, but he also takes him lower Macedonians and has them settle in these cities.   He also does , uh, kind of the inverse. He takes some of the nobility, some of the tribal leaders from upper Macedonia, and he brings them to Pella where his court is and makes them some of his chief officers and advisors. Um, Um, so this kind of ensures that he's kind of mixing up , uh, all of Macedonian society kind of homogenous.

Um,  Um, destroying these old villages, old bloodlines, he's moving people around. So they would all kind of be reliant on him. Now there's different power structures and all points to Pella. It all points to Philip.

Um, and again, this is another hallmark of Phillip. He knew how to win wars. He was a great tactical battle leader, but perhaps even more impressively, he knew how to win the peace, so to speak. He knew how to create a new situation that wouldn't just go back to the way it was once he'd won the battle,  but that would be permanently advantageous to him.

so in just a couple of years, Phillip has secured his throne and his kingdom in 3 56 BC, we get the first hint that he might also have bigger ambition.  He wants again, takes two new wives this time. They're from the two leading families of the two most prominent and important city states in the Greek region of vessels.

This is interesting because all these marriages are meant as political arrangements. So these new wives show that he starting to shift the focus towards Greece. He's thinking about Northern Greece , uh, uh, and, and what he can do that. And then by 3 57, BC Philip takes his fifth wife. Olympias from Epirus. Uh, Uh, she was the daughter of one of the late Kings of one of the tribes there. Again, this is a nearby region that could be prone to rating Mastodon. So this marriage was also likely politically motive.

According to Plutarch, her real name was Paula Zena. Olympias being a nickname. She was Phillip's most famous wife because she mothered Alexander the great, and we'll talk more about Olympia in the next episode.  Plutarch relays, the story that Philip in Olympia actually met and fell in love as teens when they were both being initiated into some religious ceremony.

Most scholars, , reject this as probably a, you know, a romantic invention, but uh, , uh, who knows, I mean, it could be true. The marriage was certainly politically expedient, but that doesn't mean there wasn't also a romantic component. It doesn't mean that uh Olympias and Phillip weren't young, hot people. Um, Um, it certainly was, , a productive marriage, , as Olympias bore a son Alexander,  just a year later in 3 56.

um, But to go back to the military campaigns in early 3 57, BC, Phillip reneges on his promise to Athens to respect the independence of amphibious and declares war on the city , um, citing that the people there were quote ill, disposed toward him and offered many pretexts for war.

Um, Um, I love that. In other words, you guys have given me so many good reasons to go to war with you guys. I'm not even going to list them all, you know? Um, so you, you can read between the lines there , uh, that maybe he couldn't quite think of one good reason. So he just said, you guys are so rotten. I don't even have to say, well, I'm going to war with you.

And Fidelis was not particularly large or powerful in terms of their military, but they were a very important port for trading goods to, and from math. Um, Um, and not just mass it on, but thrice and other European regions as well. a number of wars had actually been fought over the city , uh, uh, for that reason to control the trade going in and out of there, including between Athens and Sparta.

The fact that Phillip was willing to make this aggressive move reflected two facts, one that he was feeling much more powerful and secure.  And second, that Athens is tied up fighting wars in Southern Greece, and he knew they wouldn't really be able to contest him,

 But even without a Fimian support, taking amphibious was a daunting task. What it lacked in size and manpower and paperless made up for it with very stout, natural and man-made defenses.

Others had tried to put it to CG numerous times and no one had ever succeeded. It was a coastal city with great access to the sea. And the usual approach had been to try to blockade it for long periods of time to try and starve the city. Um, but this never worked just because it had so many access points, Phillip, instead of trying to blockade it , uh, ops for an aggressive siege with numerous assaults and heavy use of CJ engines to break down the city walls,  the citizens of amphibolous appeal to Athens to come save them.

But the Athenians who, as I mentioned were already fighting in another war are unable to come and eventually Philip takes the city through sheer grit and slow, steady, determined.  He brings the city into the Macedonian kingdom. And of course, once again, introduces Macedonian settlers to make sure that the city remains loyal to him. Hi,

Later that same summer Phillip takes another coastal city. This one called no,

He had actually been controlled by Athens. So at this point they officially declare war on Phillip,  but because they're still involved in this other conflict, it's just an empty threat and they don't send any forces to actually deal with it.

But late in the summer of 3 57, BC things start to get more serious  with these marriages and vessels and taking these numerous cities, his neighbors start to realize that Phillip is serious about local expansion and control before you can imagine his neighbors and , uh, especially the Greeks kind of thinking, okay, look at this cute little novelty.

Mastodon is throwing around their weight for once , uh, cute job, little Philip. Um, but after it, Phillip takes amphibious and piton up back-to-back it becomes less cute people start taking them seriously and not necessarily in a good way for Philip.   Three Kings from three case ponia and Elyria form, a triple Alliance to attack Mastodon.

And at the same time, the Athenians begin courting. A group of city states called the Chelsea DND league to help them actually launch an attack on Phillip. So it appears that Phillip has maybe overplayed his hand a little, he's got some extra territorial gains. Sure. But in many ways, he's back to where he was at square one.

He is once again, surrounded by multiple enemies on every side who threatened overwhelm him.  And this is what I love about Phillip. He always has the same response to these types of situations. He doesn't drop some grand campaign. He doesn't try to respond to all the threats at the same time. He doesn't make some big gesture.

He just starts quietly handling each problem. One at a time, always being pragmatic. He makes concessions where he needs to, but he just solves the problems one at a time in the lowest drama way.

  In this instance, he does this by first, going to the Chelsea Dean league and saying, look, Athens, isn't actually going to be doing any fighting. They're otherwise preoccupied. So how about instead of us slugging it out, I'll just give you a couple of cities and we call it a day and they think this sounds pretty good.

They get something for nothing. So they agree this frees up the rest of the army to March into Elyria and score a big victory against the Assyrians. and when the other two king see this, they think twice about this Alliance and the whole thing kind of fizzles. And just like that, Phillip quickly escapes the dire straits that he was in.

The thing I think about when I see this is that problems compound, right? If you're starting a business and you have a cashflow problem, then that can cause a talent problem because you can't pay enough for the right employees. And that creates a product problem, which creates a marketing and sales problem, which reinforces the financial problem.

And so on.  Problems compound. I think we all realized that we've, you know, I at least have had that problem before things spinning out of control, right. Problems causing more problems. But I think what's important to realize is that the inverse is true. That solutions compound as well. In other words, if what started as a cashflow problem is now a talent and sales and marketing and operations problem and everything else, then solving just one of those things will also help alleviate all the other problems as well.

And that's what Philip does so well. He doesn't get overwhelmed by his problems. He just tackles them one at a time, knowing that solving one problem will also help alleviate the others

around this time. Phillip also receives a very convenient request from a city called dace. They are tired of being occupied by the thracians. So Phillip comes, kicks out the thracians settle some Macedonians and renames the city Philippi in honor of him.  This is the city that the apostle Paul would write a letter to that would get immortalized in the Bible as Philippians  for his next movie, 3 54 BC Phillip takes the city of Metheny.

They were another important port and another strong ally of Athens who wants again, is to preoccupied to help. Philip does take the city, but it's very costly to him personally. Um, Um, he shot in the eye with an arrow and loses an eye.  I should mention that Phillip was not a behind the scenes general, right?

Like most Macedonian generals. He was actually in combat swinging his sword. He suffered numerous serious injuries throughout his military career, including a lost eye, broken ribs, a broken collarbone, and a spear through the leg. They gave him a permanent limp. so, so this, uh, This last I is just the first of what would be many, many injuries throughout his career.

And uh, , uh,  I kind of like to imagine him as this.  Pirate like figure right walking around with a limp and one eye and all these broken bones, this tough grizzled guy, who'd actually seen wars actually kill people with his bare hands. As the kind of guy Philip was  with the conquest of Metheny. Phillip was now the master of the entire coastline of what is now Northern Greece.

The area was important because it had major silver, gold and iron mines. So he was still in his coffers on that and minting new coins, but also Greece had pretty extensive trade with Europe. At the time they traded with the Macedonians various Celtic tribes with the thracians, the Scythians  maybe even some lower down Germanic tribes.

And now most of that trade had to go through Macedonian controlled ports and Philip is able to levy some big taxes and all that trade to produce an enormous amount of income for him.

This allows Phillip to professionalize the army and give them wages. So they no longer need to go home during the winter to tend to their farms. They can just drill and practice and improve all your.   It also allows him to hire foreign mercenaries who can bolster his army, especially CJ engineers who can help him think of new ways to breach city defenses.

In fact, he plows so much money back into his army that he basically collects no surplus. Um, it gets to the point that even though he's got all this new income,  he's struggling to make payments on time to his soldiers.  He was fond of telling a story about a time when he was wrestling a man, a foreigner named Minnie Gettys, um, , and some soldiers come to see him about their late wages.

Phillip finishes, his wrestling match runs to the soldiers, still sweating and says,   you're right. Comrades. I have been practicing with this barbarian in order to thank you properly for the credit you have extended to me and then runs mass them dives into a pool and start swimming laps until they leave bored and confused.

, he thought this was a very clever way to avoid paying wages. And it tells you something about Macedonian culture that he told this story many times with pride.  And I think that story is very emblematic of Phillip's personality in the land of the CHADS. He was the head, Chad, the chattiest of the Chad's, right?

He's the alpha, the tallest, the smartest, the most handsome, the most charming. And he knows it. When you read them out, Philip, he just oozes this self-confidence , um,  um, mostly in a good way. He doesn't really feel the need to punish his enemies super harshly. He's very polite. He's like um, , um,  if you ever go to the gym and you ask the biggest guy there for help, how to use a machine or something.

Just like you find some completely jacked guy who weighs 250 pounds, pure muscle, you can tell he just lives at the gym. That guy is actually almost always super polite and helpful to you because he's not threatened by you and amateur lifter. He's got nothing to prove. And Phillip is very much that way.

He's so self confident that he is the smartest and the most charismatic man in the room that he's polite. He's social, he's forgiving, he's gracious. And he's funny. He doesn't feel the need to prove he's always the best. He honestly sounds like he just he'd be a great hang.

 um, , so in 3 54, BC, Phillip is 28. He's doubled the size of his kingdom. He's made Masad on insanely wealthy, seriously upgraded its army and taken it from a picked on and loaded backwater to one of the most dominant forces in the region.   And he's got five wives and numerous children.

So he's already accomplished a lot and things are looking good for him, but it's important to remember that at this point, Phil, it might be the master of the European region, just north of Greece, but he's still essentially a non entity in the Greek world. And that's where his one good. I would turn in 3 53 BC.

Phillip was in   on the Eastern border of Macedonia in rather minor engagement. When he received word that war had broken out into messily  500 miles away on the Southwestern border of Macedonia. The conflict was between the city states of Larissa and FarEye Phillip had married a woman from each city state, but Larissa was a longer standing ally of mastodons and they appealed to Phillip for help.

He agreed to support them, but there's an issue it's too far to March and make it in time to be of any help. So the logical thing to do is to sail his army to that. But Athens was allied with FarEye and Athens was still technically at war with Mastodon and the Athenian Navy had come up to block any possible sea route to the engine

and this is one of those incidents where we see the true character of Phillip come out, because the easy thing to do would be to simply give up. It's not your territory. Anyway, it's just an ally. You can always say, you know, guys, I would have loved to have helped, but it just wasn't possible, but that's not what he does.

It's just not in his nature to do that. Right. So he does something clever. He's got a very small Navy, just enough to guard his transport ships,  to ferry his troops around. So he sends out his four fastest warships and moves all of his fastest rowers to those.  , fill it, basically sends them out as bait.

And once they're spotted by the Athenian Navy, they sail away as fast as possible. And the Athenians give chase, leaving the path clear for Philip and his men to sail right through on the transport ships.  Unfortunately, once Philip does get to vessels, he soundly beaten twice. The army he's fighting is from a city state called  , uh, uh, who were allies of fair eye.

And they use a false retreat to lure Phillip's troops in and attack them with catapults , it's a moment of momentary danger for Philip it's his first major defeat, and he knows that he can't leave it unanswered. So in the next summer, in 3 52 BC Phillip returns to facily and this time with overwhelming force, he meets the same general who had defeated him the previous year.

And this time he scores a resounding victory.  This was part of something called the third sacred.  It's a long story, but the whole conflict started over a city state that had supposedly illegally stolen sacred funds from the temple of Apollo in Delphi.

And so Phillip is supposedly fighting to avenge the honor of this temple of Apollo. Um, obviously there is a big component of , uh, trying to protect his power into vessels. Um, but there's this religious reason as well, and he never wants to pass up an opportunity for a good bit of propaganda. So he gives his men Laurel wreaths to wear over their helmets before this battle, Laurel wreath was a symbol of Apollo.

So he's basically showing that he's this pious guy, a righteous Crusader. And um, , um, you know, according to the sources, this gave his men a lot of confidence going into the battles. One of the reasons that they won two are cynical, postmodern minds that might seem cheesy, right? Oh, are going to dress up like gods and that'll give our men confidence.

But , um, you know, all the ancient sources think he was a brilliant move. So I think it's fair to say that , uh, it did give his men , um, some, some boost, some benefit.

Of course, just because he's fighting on behalf of the gods that doesn't stop Phillip from uh, , uh, from wedding, his beak a little bit after the victory, he takes a few cities and vessels and incorporates them into his kingdom and his ecstatic allies from Larissa who are now the undisputed power and Thessaly declare him arc-on of vessels.

And arc-on basically meant that he was technically be Supreme commander of armed forces and passively it's a pretty big deal. It now means that in this region of Greece, he can call on all their soldiers whenever he wants to come fight his wars.  He also tries to move south to see if he can finish the war, but he's blocked at the pass of Thermopylae, which is a famously narrow pass in Greece.

It's the place where , um, if you've seen the movie 300, it's where the 300 Spartans held off the entire Persian army.  Phillip decides it's not worth the damage. His army would suffer to attack the pass. So he withdraws and the sacred war grinds on in decisively for the next six years. There's not a ton of that.

Um, Um, every summer, Phillip is going to war against some local tribe um, , um, some local, you know, barbarians or taking some minor city at the edges of the sacred war, but nothing major for the next six years. But there is a lot of attention on Massad on now because they are technically still the beating heart, the central player on one side of the sacred war. And Athens is the other, neither of these cities are the chief instigator of this third sacred war.  That's the small city state of focus, but since they're the most powerful power on each side, they're honors at stake in the outcome, neither Mastodon nor Athens attack each other directly.

During this time, they're kind of just circling each other to see what happens.  The problem was that Athens didn't have the military power to March into Mastodon and attack. And Philip didn't have the Naval power to sail down to Athens and attack. So it was just a long ongoing study.  Uh, , some of the Athenians don't take it all that seriously.

They think it's fine that they're in the stalemate , uh, this kind of holding pattern and, and don't feel the need to actually attack Philip. Um, but there are others who are constantly agitating against him and, and want to attack him. They're led by the famous orator Demosthenes. He's,  uh, He's known as one of the greatest speakers and statesmen of all time and the main topic of his activism was opposing Phillip.

He believed that Philip had to be opposed. Absolutely. Uh, Uh, one such surviving quote , uh,  uh, reads quote, men of Athens. I want you to know and realize the restless activity, which is ingrained in Phillip's nature. Seriously, is anyone here so foolish as not to see that our negligence we'll transfer the war from Chelsea east.  By the way I pointed this out before , uh, uh, that the great ones all have this insane energy. And I love that. That's the one thing that Demosthenes calls out. I want you to know and realize the restless activity, which is ingrained in Phillip's nature.

That's a great way to phrase it. These people are just always in motion and it's ingrained in their very nature.  The Masa Annie's was a real pain for Philip. In many ways. He was correct about him in 3 48, BC Phillip defeats the Athenian allies in the  league. And in 3 46, BC, Phillip decides that the sacred war has ground on for long enough.

And he decides that he is going to fully commit to winning it. So he starts assembling his army to March south and defeat fossas, which again was the city that caused this whole sacred war by pillaging sacred funds from the temple of Apollo,  the  themselves get scared by this realize that the war unwinnable, there's no way they can stand up to fill up.

So they elect a government that favors unconditional peace. They essentially surrender in order to secure a more favorable peace term.  Once this happens, the citizens of Athens start asking themselves if this is really the hill they want to die on,  do they really want to risk their next fighting Philip in a war where the people that they're supposedly fighting for have already surrendered Phillip himself starts to make some peace overtures by unilaterally releasing Athenian prisoners. So the Athenians take this opportunity to send 10 ambassadors to discuss peace terms.

When they get there, they are surprised to see other ambassadors from all the major powers, Thebes, Sparta, Vasily, and others. It was a real sign of how far Phillip had come that his court was really the place to be for all of these ambassadors. From these major city states throughout Greece.   I want to read Adrian Goldsworthy's account of Phillip's behavior towards these Athenian ambassadors, because I think it sheds a lot of light on his character. This is from the book Philip and Alexander , uh, which highly recommend by the way, he says, quote,  the Athenians were received with great courtesy and entertained lavishly.

All 10 had prepared speeches to be delivered in order of age and experience. And Phillip listened with patients to them, all, something that took at least several hours. One of them repeated the Athenian claim to amphibious DeMoss knees as the youngest and most junior spoke last, he was well known for the care with which he prepared and scripted.

Any speech, not trusting himself to speak off the cuff, unless he could not avoid it.  Others claimed Moston he's had a fit of nerves and after a bad start dried up altogether, Phillip is supposed to have shown sympathy, encouraging him to take his time and continue when he was.

When they were summoned again, Phillip spoke graciously answering each argument in turn often naming the order. In question, the king concluded with warm expressions of Goodwill toward Athens. He agreed to send his own ambassadors to Athens, to continue negotiations.

So there you can get a feel for kind of the polite nature of Phillip, right? He's very patient. This guy, Demosthenes is railing on him all the time, but we just kind of says, you know, and thomasines is really struggling to, to give a speech. And Phillip, his patient says, Hey, you know, take your time, man.

It's all right. You know, if you need a minute, you can have a minute finish your speech and DeMoss. And he's also said the king was praised for his looks, his drinking capacity and a memory, another ambassador named a ski NACE added that he was well-mannered generous and eloquent. They both agreed that he was clever and cunning.

Phillip never passed up an opportunity to solve a conflict diplomatically.  You could tell he loved campaigning. He loved war. He did love battle, but he also loved diplomacy and he preferred to solve conflicts, diplomatically whenever possible.  Honestly many times so that he could use his army to take on an even bigger conflict with even more glory.

But, but still he was a great diplomat.  The Athenians agreed to a peace deal called the peace of Socrates that essentially confirmed things as they stood peace with no conditions,

which was a pretty big concession from Athens because it meant Phillip got to hold on to Amtrak.  That important port city near Macedonia, but it did come with a promise from Phillip that he would cease all aggression toward Athens and her allies with a piece of velocity signed to Philip March through Thermopylae occupied posis destroyed the city, resettled it citizens in smaller towns and impose a tax on them until they paid back the money they had taken from the temple of Apollo.

Also as part of the settlement for the war. Mastodon was given leadership of the emphasis bionic league, a collection of city states in central coastal Greece, thus expanding Phillip's sphere of influence even further into central.  there's another big propaganda coup for him.

He has successfully portrayed himself as the defender of Apollo. And he's now known as a holy warrior, right? A pious man throughout all of Greece.  And so at the end of this war in 3 46, BC, Phillip was, you could say the most powerful force in the Greek world at the age of only 40.

He doesn't take a break to enjoy it, though. He immediately embarks on more reforms and settles more walled communities on his borders. The historian Justin said he had a great quote. He said

As shepherds drive their flocks sometimes into winter, sometimes into summer pastures. So he transplanted people in cities  the next year, he campaigned against some El-Erian tribes. As he frequently did. This particular campaign is only notable because a blow from an Elyria and struck him and broke his collarbone.

Also, during this time, there are low level conflicts between Athens and Macedonia. The piece of   is still technically in effect, but you'll have situations where , um, let's say a democratic city state has a civil war and Macedonians pay mercenaries to fight on one side and Athens pays mercenaries to fight on the other.

Yeah.  Both hoping to install a government friendly to themselves. So, you know, there's some conflict involved, but no open war in 3 41 or three 40 BC peace finally completely breaks down between Athens and on it comes to a boil over a region called Eastern race. It was always an extremely sensitive area for the Athenians.

If you look at a map of Turkey, we're talking about that little part of Turkey that is in Europe , uh, basically Athens imported, most of their wheat and a number of other raw materials from the black sea region. And so all those vital resources had to come through that narrow area where modern day Istanbul is at the time the city was called Byzantium and that little Strait was called the Hellespont and also through the Dardanelles, which is similarly a very narrow Strait leading to the black.  If someone were to control either of these choke points, they could easily block all of Athens vital goods and essentially starved the city if they want to do

Well, the trouble came in that this area was part of grace, as I said, and remember, the three nations were neighbors of Macedonia  and the people that Philip had subdued and basically brought into his kingdom. So in 3 41, BC, you have a situation where Byzantium and some of her neighbors declare themselves opposed to Philip.

So in three 40 BC, Phillip besieged as Byzantium and a nearby city called parentless, when he does this, the Athenian smashed the stone tablets, that the piece of velocities was inscribed on and declare war on him.

The monster Denise was as happy as a pig. He was finally getting his wish and Athens was committing to war with Philip. Once again,  the Macedonian sieges of Byzantium and parent, this end in face.  But Phillip does use the opportunity to strengthen his position with other surrounding communities in the area.

And though he is at war now with Athens, Phillip is in no rush to start fighting. He delays for a couple of years during which time he attacks the Scythians, who are tribal, Northern barbarians. And once again, just kind of campaigns around in nearby regions securing his borders. He does. During this time, he receives a spear thrust that pierces his thigh, which nearly kills him and leaves Phillip with a permanent limp  in 3 38, BC Phillip finally marches south into Greece.

The proximate cause was involvement in another sacred war. The reasons for these squabbles are kind of unbelievable when you read about them, you know, you dedicated this trophy wrong saying that we were allied with the Persians in this war. When really they just sent us money to stay neutral, or, you know, you guys farm this land when it was supposed to belong to the temple of Apollo.

I guess we better fight about it.  But Phillip is marching against the city called Emflaza for one of these perceived slights against the.  He wants again, it gets blocked near Thermopylae, the same path that is the gateway to Southern Greece. So he camps out for a few days then sends a message to one of his generals saying that war has broken out in three threes  and he can't get past their mobily anyway. So he's going to pack up and go back home.  He makes sure that the message gets intercepted by his enemies. And you get the impression that these Greek defenders at Thermopylae are not very bright because they read this and they say, okay, sounds legit.

To me, checks out 100%. Let's all go home. And they immediately abandoned the past.  So Philip easily marches through the past at Thermopylae, with little opposition, occupies emphasis and banishes. Those who offended the gods that basically settles the fourth sacred war. And what's even more important. He is now just a few days, marched from Athens.

And obviously the citizens of Athens are panicked when word reaches them. That Phillip is so close. They closed the city gates call an emergency session of the assembly, start running around like a chicken with their heads cut off the whole nine yards. So Mastodon and Athens are sort of staring at each other, but neither of them is making a move.

Um, because they're waiting on something they're both waiting to see what Thebes will do. Pheebs technically had been the ally of Mastodon. Um, but they didn't terribly want to see Mastodon just totally knockout Athens and become masters of all of Greece. Right? So both Philip and the Athenians are lobbying the Thebans to join their side.

And so Athens and Phillip were both waiting around to see what Thebes will do.  Athens offers the foot, the entire bill for Naval operations, two thirds of the army operations and give Supreme command to the Thebans and to give them dominion over the ocean league, which was a very important collection of cities.

Phillip is unable to match that offer. So the Thevenin army links up with the Athenian army and they both turned to face Philip  Philip and the allied Athenian and Phoebe and armies dance around each other for awhile, each trying to initiate battle on ground that is more favorable to themselves.

You can kind of feel the nerves of the generals involved as they seek each other out, trying to get better ground and not wanting to risk and engagement on anything less than perfect it's conditions.  They finally ended up facing each other at the battle of Cara Neha.  This is one of the most critical battles in history.

The fate of Greece is going to be decided in a single day.  And yet we know very little about the battle. We know that Philip had around 30,000 men and an additional 2000 cavalry. The allied military was probably a little larger with around 35,000.  Including the elite 300 men of the Phoebe and sacred band.

This was an elite force of warriors, the most fierce and notorious fighting force in all of Greece. At the time,  some claimed that the sacred band was made up of 150 pairs of lovers who fought all the harder because they were fighting for their partner. Um, historians, I think mostly agree that this is probably untrue.

I mean, if nothing else, logistically that's very difficult to pull off. Um, Um, it's probably a later Athenian invention, but the even band was extremely highly regarded as the most elite fighting force in Greece.  We know that the allies chose a place that abutted a river on one side, probably with the idea that they were doing this so that Philip couldn't outflank them with his superior cavalry.

Daya Dora says the Alexander commanded one flank of the army and Phillip commanded the other though. He doesn't say which in one tradition, the Macedonians are said to have conducted a false retreat and lured the allies into a less secure place.  Another tradition states that Phillip played it safe, trusting that a long drawn out battle would favor his professional soldiers over the citizen, soldiers of Athens and Thebes,  potentially both are true.

Um, Um, all sources do seem to indicate that it was a long drawn out battle with neither side breaking quickly and each side thinking at times that maybe they had victory within grasp,  Plutarch's says that Alexander basically won the battle by breaking through the feed and sacred band. However, it happened, the allied line was eventually broken.

The soldiers fled and many were killed or captured  about a thousand Athenians alone were killed in 2000 captured or about a third of their men and a similar results for the feed bins and other allies, DeMoss, the niece, who was a participant in the battle through aside his shield, which was embossed with gold lettering, spelling out good fortune and fled back to Athens.

Oddly at the site at the battle of Caronia, there's a monument set up, not only to the victors, but also to the defeated. It has been suggested that it was set up as a monument to the sacred band who did not fleet, but rather stood and died to the man. And this story seems at least somewhat plausible as 255 corpses have been found beneath the monument, which is pretty close to the 300 men who were said to have composed the group.

In any case, Philip had defeated the allied army of the Athenians and feed bins and was now for all intents and purposes, master of all of Greece.

However, Philip was now on his way into a very interesting quagmire , um, um, invading Greece in three 50 BC. It was a little bit like invading Afghanistan today. It was completely ungovernable in a great way to lose blood and treasure.  The Greeks were insanely independent. Their autonomy as city states was very important to them.

It was sacred basically. And so if one city state rose up to dominate for awhile in Greece, most of the other city states would ally together to defeat them. This created a permanent state of stasis where no one could control Greece for long

Athens would be powerful for one generation and then Biebs and then Sparta and then Corinth, and then back to Athens, back to Sparta. Uh, but always some grand Alliance would put that leading city, state bank place mere hours after the battle of Cabernet ended word reached Athens and Thebes of the defeat.

And the citizens flew into productive panic and began fortifying their city walls by all appearances they'd have no trouble recruiting other city states into a grand Alliance that would defy the dominance.  He would have to expend years, probably sieging, Athens and Thebes and fighting all these other enemies, just so that he could subdue Greece for a time.

Uh, , Phillip had a quote, he said I would rather be remembered as a good man for a long time than as a master for a short time. .

Yeah. But this is where Phillip shows his true genius. He doesn't declare himself king of all of Greece. Instead he calls all of the Greek city states together to a grand council at the city of Corinth  there. He makes it proposal a grand league. The league of Corinth, all city states in Greece are to be free and allied with one another.

They're not to attack each other, interfere with free navigation or attempt to control any other's internal affairs  Mastodon was to be head of the league, but they would simply be first among equals.  And then Philip gets up and pulls a Steve jobs.  You can imagine the hush among the representatives as he lets them know, there is one more thing.

He proposes that the first act of the league of Corinth be to declare war on the largest empire.  A civilization, more ancient and much more prosperous than the Greeks,

the Persian empire.  Phillip explains that with him at their head, they will feel an army from every Greek city, 200,000 men strong, and they are going to smash the Persians, conquer their lands and make themselves richer than they had ever imagined  the members of the league roar their approval. And the stage is set for one of the greatest military campaigns in all of history.

By the way, you might be wondering what the pretext was for this invasion. Phillip says that it is to punish them for destroying Greek shrines during the invasion of 480 and 479 BC. And by the way, that is 150 years previously. It's a little bit like if president Biden of the USA proposed a war against England for the burning of the Capitol in the war of 18.

It's a, It's kind of a flimsy justification. Everyone knows that the real justification is to unify all of these Greek city states into a larger purpose  and bring home some treasure and bring home some glory  in 337 BC. One of Phillip's head generals, Permian crosses into Asia minor, and the war with Persia is technically begun.

This was an advanced guard to clear the way and fill plan to follow a year later with the full army. In the meantime, he needed to sort out the home front and make sure everything would be okay in his absence with all the wives that Philip had married over the years, he had actually never taken a bride from lower Macedonia, the core of his kingdom and his main power base.

So in 3 37, BC, Phillip marries again, this time to a girl named Cleopatra, which is a very common name at the time.  And she belonged to an important aristocratic Macedonian family. She was the niece of adolescents and important noble.  And though it was a diplomatically, very advantageous marriage. She was supposedly very beautiful as well.

And some sources say that Phillip was quite smitten with it.

the Macedonian nobility are thrilled at this turn of events and none more so than analysts who proposes a toast at the wedding. He says, may the gods bless this union with a legitimate heir to the Macedonian throne?  And this is obviously a very explosive thing to say with Alexander sitting right there, Alexander stands up, throws his cup of Adelaide and says, are you calling me a bastard?

Things look like they're going to come to violence. When Phillip stands up to intervene, he draws his sword, but he trips probably due to his bad leg and falls flat on his face. Alexander exclaims look, everyone. Here's the man who was preparing to cross from Europe to Asia, but he came out cross from one couch to another.

So, you know , uh, this is humiliating to fill up.  A really bad thing for Alexander to say, who knows how much, you know, alcohol was blowing through his blood at the time, probably at least a fair amount. Um, but this was a very stupid thing to say.  Phillip explodes um, , um, comes after him. Luckily his friends and companions hold Phillip back long enough that um, , um, that Alexander can escape.

And Alexander flees, not only the wedding, but Macedonia entirely he and his mother flee to appear us and take up residence with her family.  It appears that this exact issue was something that Alexander was very concerned about. Adrian Goldsworthy described Alexander as impatient, quick tempered, determined and obsessively competitive. I think that's a good description. I would add very suspicious,  very suspicious of other people. Many ancient writers, blame this on his mother, which seems possible.

Um, but it's also possible that it was inherent to Alexander. Uh, Uh, he certainly displayed a good deal of suspicion even when he was apart from his mother,  Alexander was a carbon copy of his father in many ways, a perfect little.  But one big difference was that while Philip was confident and comfortable in his own skin, Alexander was more suspicious and paranoid.

Phillip had tried to assuage this fear for Alexander he'd commissioned a monument for himself. And in this monument it had a statue of himself and he was flanked by his parents on one side and Olympias and Alexander on the other, which clearly set out Alexander as his heir. Um, Um, he also, you know, Alexander was the second leading commander of his army, often leading the companion cavalry, the, the leading elite cavalry of, of their army.

So, you know, Phillip was making every effort to assure Alexander, no, you are my air. Um, and even after this incident, Phillip is gracious and invites Alexander home. After a few months, he may or may not have personally really forgiven Alexander. There's no way to know, but in any case before he could leave for Asia in this invasion of Persia, he needed his air to be around. He needed to have a clear air in case he died on campaign  complicating. Their relationship was the fact that Cleopatra this new wife of Philip was pregnant by the end of the year. And she would end up giving birth to a boy.  Phillip could make every assurance that he wanted to Alexander.

But the fact the matter was if the boy grew up and reached adulthood and was of sound, mind, and sound body, there was a good chance that he could contest Alexander for the throne. He was Macedonian on his father's side and his mother's side, very illustrious ancestry he'd have a power base because of his family that was related to Atlas.

And so Alexander sees this and it's kind of understandable that he would feel some suspicion and some paranoia.  Um, Um, we can tell that he was on edge because he unnecessarily upsets his father. Once again, Phillip was arranging a marriage between an Anatolian king and Alexander's older brother, the disabled era Deus.

And Airedale, you don't hear about him because , um, we don't know exactly what was wrong with him, but it appears that he had some mental disability and they were quite kind to him. They just, you know, kept him out of the limelight.  So he was around, but not anyone important. And , uh, but Alexander sees every day, us getting married to this princess and he gets jealous and sends his own Envoy to this Anatolian king.

It says what you want to marry. You want to marry your daughter to the disabled kid. Why marry him when your daughter can marry? Phillip's true. Army Alexander and a word gets back to Phillip who is livid. Once again, understandably, his own son is interfering in foreign affairs. Phillip calls off the original marriage and gives Alexander talking to it and basically says, what are you doing, man?

You're my air. You're going to marry someone really important someday, some Macedonian princess or some Greek or Persian, noble, not the daughter of some insignificant king in the middle of nowhere.

Alexander is appropriately chastised and Phillip banishes, a few of Alexander's close friends who he thought that had kind of, you know, egged him on.  And once again, confirms Alexander status as heir to the Macedonian throne.

 So 3 36 BC is the pinnacle year of Phillip's achievement.  He's going to see his daughter married and a confusingly. His daughter's name is Cleopatra. Okay. Not his wife Cleopatra, but he also has a daughter named Cleopatra and she is going to marry the king of appear us.

Whose name is Alexander again, not his son Alexander, but technically his brother-in-law Alexander. Um, so this marriage in part is kind of an olive leaf to Alexander  and his mother Olympias because he's marrying one of his daughters to  basically someone from Olympia says family. So this is kind of cementing their place in court with Phillip.

And so he's going to make.  A really big deal, right? It's not just a wedding. It's his last major public event before he goes off to war to conquer Persia. So it's going to be the big thing. He makes a big festival of it. There's going to be theater. There's going to be games. There are going to be , uh, uh, athletic competitions, everything.

Um, Um, before this all happens, he goes to the Oracle of Delphi and asks if the omens are good for his invasion of Persia, the Oracle replies wreath is the bowl. All is done. There is also the one who will smite him.  And Phillip feels comforted thinking that the king of Persia is the bowl and he is the one who will smite him.

Uh,  Uh, the last thing is, is the wedding. Now I need to give a little background before the wedding and I've got to issue my first ever content warning for what comes next. If you've got children, you might not want them to hear this next part. Um, it involves some, some pretty nasty gruesome stuff. Uh, so be warned if you've got kids in the car, you might just want to shut it off now and turn it back on when they're not around.

Okay. So , uh, uh, background , uh, king, Phillip had very few body guards and this was a point of, of pride for him, right? He was a man of the people, unlike the king of Persia who always had this big retinue.  Philip was a man. Right. And he could protect himself. So he only needed these few seven body guards to help protect him.

One of these body guards was a man named   a young man, a Pomeranian had a really strange story. , so another young man named  , right. I told you the stories would be confusing, but stick with me. So , uh, this other young man named posy, Aeneas had been the lover of Philip and we'll call him Pasina this one  in Hellenistic world.

It was very common for older men to take adolescents as lovers. Um, so yeah, sorry. This whole time Phillip was a pedophile. So it was everyone in Greek society. Uh, Uh, that's just, that was very common for at the time. No one would have thought that this was wrong or looked at it askance. Um, but however, as is one aged out of his boyish good looks and into adulthood, Philip lost interest as was normal.

Uh, Uh, it was not normal for adult men to have a sexual relationship. It was just viewed as something that was appropriate between an older man and a younger boy. Um, Um, so Phillip loses interest in posse Aeneas one and instead took up an affair with another young man , um, who we will call Aeneas number two. Um, so Pasina is one took offense to this and insulted posse Aeneas number two, saying that he was a slut and as much a woman as a man,  the second posse Aeneas was very much grieved by these insults.

Uh, they were being whispered around court and decided to prove his Manliness by throwing himself into the most dangerous part of a battle where he was killed , um, thereby proving in death that he was a man. And uh, , uh, and that these insults that were being said about him were not true.  Adolescents, a powerful Macedonian nobleman was a friend of the dead person.

And heard his plan. And so he was enraged at POS Aeneas number one for causing his death.  So he invited him to a party. Intentionally got him pass out, drunk, physically abused him, and then gave him to the stable boys who gang raped him.  Adults made no attempt to conceal that it was he who had done this.

And in fact, fired the flames. Right? He was spreading the rumors because he was so mad at this posse Aeneas. And so he was letting everyone know that this young, the man had, had been abused and raped. Yeah. Pacino is one complained of this to Philip , um, and wanted redress. But Phillip was about to leave on campaign.

He could not risk offending, one of his most important and powerful Nobles. So he tried to mollify the boy by expressing his sympathy and promoting him to the position of oil body guard.  But the boy's feelings were not assuaged. He stood right. And soon his anger turned toward Phillip soon.

He made a plot to get his revenge. Yeah.  As Philip entered the theater during his moment of triumph , uh, during these opening ceremonies to this wedding, pacinian quickly ran up to him, thrust a dagger between his ribs and then ran off  Philip's heart was pierced and he died within just a couple of minutes.  Three other body guards caught up to POS Aeneas.

As he ran and quickly killed him.  Of course, suspicion would soon turn to Alexander and his mother Olympias.  He stood the most to gain from Phillip's death. He would now be king is, would be rivals, were dead within a fortnight. And Alexander would be able to prosecute Phillip's glorious conquest of Persia himself.

It's possible that Alexander recruited   or perhaps just fueled the flames and talked to him and got him a little more riled up and angry at Phillip it's also   was just a jilted lover who was angry at horrible abuse and killed Phillip for his own reasons.  Um, you know, we'll never know when Phillip lay dying. It was Alexander, who was by his side, who looked into his face as Philip drew his last breaths. And I can't help, but wonder what Phillips saw when he looked into Alexander's eyes,  where they, the still silent eyes of someone who held a great secret  or were they the eyes of someone who was an aggrieved son who couldn't believe that he was watching his father die in his own hands?

We uh, , uh, of course we'll never know. And in some ways I feel like it's one of those optical illusions. I can look at it one way and think, yeah, this is definitely it. And look at it another way and think, no, no, no,  it's definitely the other way.  But we will explore all of that and much more of the childhood conquest of Persia of Alexander , um, all coming next episode until then. Thanks for listening to, how to take over the world.

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