History lover

Alexander, or Philip II, the Great?

Alexander the Great is a well known figure from ancient history. Widely regarded as a military genius, his exploits against the Persian Empire are legendary and he is one of the most popular and well studied figures of all time. His death at a young age simply augmented his impressive achievements, that he managed to do so much in such a small amount of time is astounding.

However, history does tend to forget, or at least overlook, the achievements of Alexander’s father, Philip II of Macedon. Before Philip, Macedon was a relatively insignificant nation to the north of the Greek City States. It had never achieved anything like the feats of Sparta and Athens to the south. After Philip’s rise to power, things began to change.

Philip had spent a lot of his youth as a hostage of Thebes, then the most powerful of the Greek City States, and learned a lot concerning military tactics and strategies. On his return to Macedon he combined the knowledge he had gained with his own ideas and transformed the Macedonian military. His best creation was the ’sarissa’, a very long spear to be used in conjunction with the phalanx formation. This meant that the core of the Macedonian armies was an impenetrable wall of very long spears which was immensely tough to break down.

Philip managed to add many lands to the Macedonian Empire and defeated many Greek City States. By the end of his lifetime, he had subdued nearly all of northern Greece. His assassination could have meant the end of Macedonian expansion, if it were not for Philip’s son, Alexander, ascending to the throne.

Alexander’s achievements after this event are well known, however, without Philip’s excellent groundwork and military genius to have worked with, one could wonder just how far Alexander would have got. There is no doubt Alexander the Great was worthy of his title, but mention should also go to Philip for the work he put in that allowed Alexander to become great.
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