Civilization #11: The Greatness of Philip II of Macedon

Greek culture spread around the world, came to dominate the Western World, and became the basis of Western Civilization. Normally, Westerners understood this process as one of diffusion, meaning that Greek civilization was the best, and so everyone wanted access to it. Historically, that's not true. What happened was that Greek civilization spread through a process of conquest, primarily by Alexander the Great.

The question I want to answer is: how did Alexander the Great conquer the world? Alexander the Great himself is not Greek; he's Macedonian. He's like a close cousin, but he's not considered culturally Greek. He's from a place called Macedon, which is north of Greece. For most of its history, the kingdom of Macedonia was poor, weak, and divided. So how was it possible that Macedon would conquer the world and not Sparta or Athens, which for most of Greek history were the dominant powers?

To explain what happened, I need to explain two thought experiments. We're going to do two thought experiments to develop the analytical tools to better understand the process of military conquest.

The Father and The Son: A Thought Experiment

Let's do a thought experiment. There's a father and there's a son, and they're both business people. The father starts with nothing and he makes $10 million, which is a great accomplishment. The son takes his business and expands it. He turns the $10 million inheritance into $10 billion. This happens a lot.

So who is the more impressive of the two, the father or the son?

The father is more impressive because he started with nothing. It's much harder to build something from nothing than it is to expand something. The problem, though, is that we in society, in history, and in the media, we celebrate the son because $10 billion is a lot of money. It's the father who does all the work and builds the organization and the capacity for growth; it's the son who expands it and gets all the credit. This happens a lot in history.

Now, what we're going to do is think about the qualities of the father and the son that allow them to succeed.

The Qualities of the Father

How was the father able to build a great business?

• He is innovative. He has a new idea that allows him to capture markets. It's possible that he stole the idea, but that also shows that he has wisdom and judgment. So he's innovative, or he has wisdom and judgment.
• He's a very effective manager of people. Remember, he has nothing, so he has to build loyalty among his workers. He has to find workers, recruit them, and make them work hard for him. Why would you want to work for someone and work hard for him? The business has a vision and a dream that compels you. You see the potential for growth. So not only is the father innovative, but he's also a visionary. He's a dreamer, and that's what attracts you to him.
• He's fair. He promotes talent. You want to work for someone who will treat you fairly, who will be honest with you. If you work hard, he'll tell you, "Wow, you're working really hard, thank you so much." But if you're not working so hard, then he might give you some feedback on how to improve. That's very hard to do because normally, a good boss would promote talent, but most people would promote their friends—people that they like, people who suck up to them. That's the natural human instinct.
• He's selfless. In other words, the father is almost selfless. He's always thinking about the greater good, which is really the company or the business. He's going to work harder than everyone else. If you come to work at 7:00 in the morning, he'll come in at 6:00. If you leave at 10:00 at night, he'll leave at midnight. He's always working harder than you to show that he is the most loyal to the company, and that's what makes you loyal to the company as well.

These personality traits are consistent with extremely successful people. When we study other great leaders—for example, Genghis Khan or Muhammad—we will recognize they all share very similar personality traits. I want you to remember the three distinct qualities that make them great world leaders:

1. They are strategic to the point of visionary. This means they have a vision of what the world should be, and then they have a long-term plan on how to achieve that.
2. They are innovative to a point of revolutionary. They understand that if you want to change the world, you must destroy the status quo. You must change the way society is structured, and they're willing to do that even though they know it'll be a very bloody process involving lots of wars.
3. They are extremely disciplined to the point of selfless. They are fanatical and obsessed with achieving their vision. They won't eat, they won't sleep until they achieve their vision. For them, it's all about achieving the vision and the greater good as opposed to personal happiness.

This is a pattern that we'll see over and over again, where the great world leaders that have changed history forever have possessed these three distinct qualities. Genghis Khan and Muhammad are two examples, but also Napoleon and Julius Caesar. Basically, all the great world conquerors in human history have these similar characteristics.

The Qualities of the Son

The son is very different. If the father succeeds because he is innovative, why does the son succeed? How do you transform $10 million into $10 billion? If you're a business person, you must be an aggressive risk-taker. The father is not a risk-taker because he has no opportunities to take risks. For example, you have $10 million, you can go to the bank and say, "I have a great business, can you lend me a billion dollars so I can buy out my competitors?" When you do that, that's risky, but that's how you expand very quickly. The son succeeds by taking risks that no one else is willing to take.

Who does he promote? His father promotes talent. Who does the son want around him? Exactly, he wants his friends. He's going to promote loyalty. If you listen to him, if you are obedient to him, if he likes you, then he will promote you. The father is very different; he will not do that because that's going to hurt the internal structure of your company.

The father is selfless. What does the son care about? What drives him? The father is motivated to build a great company; he wants to achieve his vision. What drives the son? Usually, it's the idea of personal glory. He's very selfish. He wants to be remembered, he wants to be famous, he wants to be admired and respected. The father cares about the vision; the son cares about personal glory.

Why would the son put personal glory first? Think about his psychology. What drives him? What does he want to prove? Exactly, that he's greater than his father. It's insecurity because everyone will say to him, "You are where you are because your father built a great organization." So for him, he must prove he's better than the father by expanding and by winning glory for himself.

Again, we will see this pattern in human history all the time. I want you to remember this because this describes perfectly the relationship between Philip II of Macedon—the man who actually built the greatest military in the world—and Alexander the Great, who will take this army and conquer Persia. This relationship between the father and son describes very well the personalities of Philip and Alexander.

The Poor vs. The Rich: A Second Thought Experiment

Another thought experiment I want us to look at is how, throughout history, poor countries often conquer rich countries. For us, that's very confusing because normally we think if you are rich, you have a very strong military, advanced technology, and a lot of resources, and therefore it's very hard to be conquered. But we see this throughout history all the time, where poor nations quickly conquered rich nations. How can we explain this?

Let's compare North Korea with South Korea. These countries have the same culture and the same people, but they are night and day.

If we were to take a snapshot of North and South Korea today, we could easily predict that in 20 years, North Korea would be poorer and South Korea would be richer. But that may not happen.

What is South Korea's biggest problem? It's not having children. In fact, it has the world's lowest fertility rate at 0.8. Its women are refusing to have children. Not only that, but South Korean culture is becoming more and more anti-family. They hate kids. There are lots of restaurants and places that refuse to let kids in. This is a very weird state of affairs. What's driving the low birth rate? Usually, young women are refusing to have children because of inequality. If you feel that you're just a normal person and the rich have all the resources, it's very hard for you to advance, so why have children?

North Korea doesn't have this problem. Because it's poor, it has equality. And because it has equality, people there are united, not divided. They're also obedient; they listen to what the government tells them to do. And last, they're hungry. They will work very hard for very little.

So it is possible that in 20 years, North Korea overtakes South Korea because its people are willing to work harder. Evidence for this is that right now, North Korea is sending weapons and soldiers to the war in Ukraine. When you do that, you make a lot of money for yourself. With this money, you can upgrade your military and then threaten South Korea. North Korea can say to South Korea, "Our military is now stronger than your military." What will South Korea do in response? If someone wants to attack you, how do you get them not to? You give them money.

North Korea doesn't even have to attack South Korea; it just has to threaten to attack, and South Korea will give them a lot of money not to. By doing that, North Korea becomes richer and more militarily advanced, while South Korea just becomes poorer. Because the North Korean army is fighting in other places like Ukraine, it's developing experience and expertise that will allow it to eventually overwhelm South Korea.

In this thought experiment, it's possible that North Korea can eventually conquer South Korea. This gives us an understanding of why Macedonia was able to conquer all of Greece, even though Macedon was by far one of the poorest places in Greece at that time. It's because the people are hungry, united, and obedient.

The World of Philip II

Now let's focus specifically on Philip II of Macedon. How was he able to conquer all of Greece, given that his nation, Macedon, was poor, weak, and divided?

King Philip was born in 383 BCE. At the time of his birth, there were three major powers in Greece.

• Athens: Even though Athens lost the Peloponnesian War, it was still very wealthy and had the best navy in all of Greece.
• Sparta: For most of Greek history, Sparta was considered to have the best military.
• Thebes: At this time, Thebes had become the most dominant military in Greece, primarily because Sparta and Athens decimated each other during the Peloponnesian War.

To the far north is Macedon. Macedon was very poor, weak, and divided. Let me explain why.

First of all, it had a geography problem. The nation is divided between agricultural farmland to the south and mountains to the north. Most of its land can't even grow crops, and where it can, its farmers are just peasants. The problem is that there are lots of tribes in the mountains, and the way they make their living is usually by coming and raiding the farmland. There's nothing you can do about it because if you chase them, they go back to the mountains.

Second, Macedon was completely surrounded by hostile powers. You have the kingdom of Thrace over here, a long-term enemy. Then you have Illyria over here, and these are warlike, mountainous people who live in fortresses. It's almost impossible to invade them, and it's easy for them to come and attack you. To the south is a place called Thessaly, and they have one of the best militaries in Greece, known for their cavalry. And of course, you also have Thebes, Athens, and Sparta, which also want to play a role in controlling Macedon. Across the sea is Persia, and for some of its history, Macedon was actually a province of Persia. Macedon was always being threatened by a more superior power, and it kept losing these wars.

The third problem it had was that it was a kingdom with a king who had many wives. Why would this be a problem? Exactly, there are a lot of sons, and they fight over who will be king. The thing is that these sons are always supported by another foreign power because the foreign powers want Macedon to be always in conflict.

For most of its history, Macedon was poor, weak, and divided. And then Philip II changed all that.

Philip's Transformation of Macedon

From 369 to 365 BCE, for about five years, Philip was a hostage in Thebes. The reason why is that Macedon lost a war to Thebes, and to ensure that Macedon did not rebel, it had to send hostages. Philip was a prince, so he was treated very nicely in Thebes and could do whatever he wanted. What he wanted to do was understand why Thebes was the dominant military power in Greece at this time. He learned from the best Theban generals; they became his mentors.

What made Thebes so effective was the idea of the Sacred Band of Thebes. This was the secret to their power. These were 300 soldiers who spent every day training to be the best soldiers they could be. In many ways, they were like special forces. This was modeled on Sparta, but the difference is that in Sparta, only citizens—only aristocrats—could be soldiers. But in Thebes, these 300 people were volunteers; they were commoners who wanted to be soldiers.

The first thing Philip learned in Thebes is that anyone can be a soldier, not just the rich. With proper training, anyone can learn to be a great soldier.

The second thing he learned is that when you have an elite group of soldiers, it's really about how to use them effectively. The traditional warfare in Greece at this time was the hoplite phalanx. Remember, it is like a moving wall; they move together slowly and try to crush the enemy. The innovation the Thebans made was to do a slant formation. The reason why is that when you do a slant, you can put the 300-man Sacred Band first against the best soldiers of the enemy. In a fair fight, these 300 will always destroy the first soldiers of the enemy. When you do that, there's a massive psychological effect. The phalanx breaks formation, and when the phalanx breaks formation and people start running away, they're all dead. That was the major innovation of Thebes at this time.

From the best generals of Thebes, Philip understood the importance of discipline in an army. This was new. In Greece, the Spartans had discipline, but most armies, like the Athenians, were citizen-soldiers. They did this for fun, as a civic duty, part-time. They would be training when they weren't fighting. When you train, you develop discipline. With discipline, you have three major strengths:

1. Mobility and Speed: This means your army can march much faster than other armies. This is important because maybe you want to attack a city. If you get there really fast and are able to siege a city and destroy it, the city cannot ask for reinforcements because reinforcements will come too slowly.
2. Coordination: Different military units are able to work together. In Greece at this time, there were maybe two different land forces: the phalanx and the cavalry, and they did their own thing. But with discipline, you can actually get them to work together. If you get them to work together, you create something called the Anvil and Hammer strategy. The idea of an anvil is you put something in place, and the hammer is you just knock that thing apart. In this attack, the cavalry becomes the hammer, and the anvil is the phalanx. With discipline, the phalanx is able to lock the other enemy army in place. Then, the cavalry sees this and they stream in from the back and destroy the enemy.
3. Flexibility: The Greeks fought using the hoplite phalanx, and that's it. But Philip understood, "Hey, if I have coordination, I can change my strategy and tactics according to the enemy." He had different units: archers, shield-bearers (people whose job was to hold shields), the phalanx, and cavalry. In response to different enemies, he would change his strategy using these different units.

Over time, if you have these three things—mobility, coordination, and flexibility—you'll be invincible. No one can beat you. The very idea that an army could do this at that time was unheard of. That's what he learned in Thebes. It is possible for you to transform your army in a way that makes it highly disciplined, and once you have discipline, it will become invincible. He became resolved to take all this education and transform the Macedonian army.

How did Philip innovate on the phalanx?

Philip not only learned military strategy from Thebes, but he was also a military innovator. He made a lot of changes to the phalanx. The phalanx is very strong, but there are a lot of issues with it. The first major issue is that it's not very mobile because everyone's carrying heavy armor. The first thing Philip did was he lightened the load. He had his soldiers wear less armor.

Then the question is, well, if you wear less armor, how do you protect yourself? The answer is two things. First, he made the spear very long; it became a pike. It became very hard to reach the phalanx because the pike was in the way. The other thing he did was he added a new unit called shield-bearers. The shield-bearers were on the flanks, on the sides, to protect the phalanx. That's how he improved the phalanx. When the Macedonian phalanx came into contact with the Greek phalanx, the Macedonian phalanx proved superior because of these innovations. They were lighter, they could move around faster, and they had longer spears, so they could maintain distance. They also had these shield-bearers who were mobile and could adapt to situations. If one part of the phalanx was being threatened, the shield-bearers could converge on that and basically lock it down.

What made Philip such a genius was he was very flexible. He was always looking at what happened in battles and making adjustments in order to become stronger. That's why his soldiers were so loyal to him—because he was such a great general and he put the lives of his men first. As we will discover, Alexander is the complete opposite; he's always risking the lives of his men.

Philip's Rise to Power

Philip got his chance in 359 BCE. His brother died, and his nephew was too young, so he became regent. Once he became regent, he basically became the de facto king for his entire life. As regent, he was determined to transform the Macedonian military. At this time, the Macedonian military was getting destroyed by everyone. Illyria attacked and destroyed the army; Thrace attacked and destroyed the army. The Macedonian army was a complete joke, and he became determined to transform it.

He recognized that if he wanted to transform the army, he needed to turn it into a meritocracy. Traditionally in Macedon, because you have a nobility, all decisions are made by social status. A person rises according to his social status as opposed to his merit. Philip was determined to change that. The thing that he did that was extremely controversial was he made the cavalry, which was full of nobility, equal to the infantry, which was made of commoners and peasants. In this new system, as long as you performed well in battle, you would be promoted.

One of the people he promoted very heavily, who would become his most successful general, was named Parmenion. I want you to remember this guy. He would basically become Philip's partner in war and his greatest general, even though Parmenion was born into the lower nobility. Philip treated him as a partner and allowed Parmenion to lead armies on his own. He was not afraid that Parmenion would rebel; he trusted him. Philip had a tremendous understanding and judgment of people. He knew who to trust and he knew how to use people effectively.

The other thing he did that was very important was he needed to make the army loyal to him. He understood that if you want the army loyal to you, you need to do three things:

1. Fight with them. He was not in the back watching the battle; he was in the front leading it. He was training with them every day. He trained harder than everyone else. In fact, in one battle, Philip lost an eye, and he had many battle wounds and scars. Because of that, his soldiers were fanatically loyal to him. Also, because Philip was fighting with his soldiers every day, he did not want to risk their lives. He was very strategic and would not put his soldiers in harm's way, so his soldiers became even more loyal.
2. Eat and drink with them. He would spend his time just eating and drinking with these common soldiers. That told the soldiers, "Hey, we're equals, we're friends, and I'm willing to listen to your complaints. Here's your opportunity to complain about a commander, here's an opportunity to complain about me. I'm willing to listen."
3. Be an excellent communicator. He would give speeches explaining his vision. He wanted to make Macedon great. He wanted Macedon to conquer all of Greece and then conquer Persia. He wanted glory for his country. Not only that, but he praised people like Parmenion. He used his speeches to praise soldiers that were good examples, and obviously, that made Parmenion feel really good and even more loyal to Philip.

Over time, Philip was able to build a strong, loyal, unified, and disciplined army using these strategies.

Philip's Strategic Genius

While he was starting to build his army, his enemies were still attacking him. What he did that was counterintuitive was he basically negotiated. He used diplomacy. He understood that having smart diplomacy is just as good as having the world's best military. At this time, it was basically Game of Thrones. Every nation was at each other's throat, and they hated each other. Sparta hated Thebes, Thebes hated Athens; they really didn't get along. So what Philip could do was use diplomacy to build alliances against other enemies. He was using diplomacy a lot in order to buy time for him to train up his army. He would also marry the princesses of other nations as part of his diplomacy. Philip was known as a great strategist, but much more importantly, he was also known as a brilliant diplomat—someone who knew how to negotiate and deceive his enemies.

After he started to build his army, he started to make his move.

The first thing he did was secure his northern frontier. He got into wars with his enemies to the north and secured his northern frontier. That's important because he wanted to move into the south eventually, but he needed to make sure that he wasn't attacked from behind.

The second thing he did was, in 347 BCE, he invaded a city called Amphipolis and conquered it. This is important because Amphipolis has gold mines. Now he had resources and money. With these resources, he could pay his soldiers, because his soldiers were training every day, not farming. He could now pay them, buy the loyalty of the nobility, and stir national sentiment in Macedon by building projects and roads. He could improve the economy. The last thing he did with the money was he started bribing everyone. He basically started bribing the nobility of Athens and other nations to support him. He was being very strategic and very clever.

In 356 BCE, his son, Alexander the Great, was born to his wife Olympias.

The last major event is in 338 BCE: the Battle of Chaeronea. This was the last battle between Philip and the people who opposed him. At Chaeronea, the two nations that opposed him were Thebes and Athens. But at this time, the great generals of Thebes had all died, and Athens basically bribed their aristocrats to support him, so Athens didn't really put out a great army. In this battle, Philip II, with his modern, highly disciplined, loyal army, destroyed everyone. He crushed Thebes and he crushed Athens.

He united all of Greece. He destroyed the entire army of Athens and almost destroyed Thebes. What happened was, when it was clear that Thebes was about to lose the battle, the Sacred Band of Thebes stood in the way. They basically sacrificed themselves so the other soldiers of Thebes could escape. The Sacred Band of Thebes was forever destroyed. The irony, of course, is that it was the Sacred Band of Thebes that taught Philip how to build a great army, and in his last act, he destroyed them.

Now that he had united all of Greece, his ambition was to take his army and conquer Persia. He sent his great general, Parmenion, into Persia. At this time, in Anatolia (today's Turkey), there were lots of Greek colonies under Persian rule, and for the longest time, they wanted to be free. So Parmenion went over with a vanguard of about 10,000 men to begin the invasion.

The Assassination of Philip II

Philip was about to go over and lead the invasion, but his daughter was about to get married, so he had to attend the wedding. At the wedding, he had one bodyguard because there would be lots of Greek diplomats, and he wanted to appear approachable. He didn't have his entire bodyguard in place. His bodyguard took his sword and stabbed him in the ribs, killing him. Then, his bodyguard was killed by the other bodyguards.

Philip was assassinated before he could launch his invasion of Persia. When he died around 337 BCE, he was really in the prime of his life. He had 30 or 40 years of military conquest to go. He died very young, and his son Alexander, who was 18 or 19 at this time, now became king. It was Alexander who would lead his army into Persia, conquer all of Persia, and move all the way to India.

For the longest time, historians did not know what happened. How is it possible for this great man, Philip II, to be assassinated in the prime of his life?

Who Killed Philip?

There are three major explanations.

1. It was Persia. Persia knew that Philip was about to invade, so they hired the bodyguard to kill him.
2. It was personal. The story is very complicated, but apparently, the bodyguard and Philip were lovers. They were homosexual lovers, and then Philip found someone else, and the bodyguard became very jealous.
3. It was the mother of Alexander, Olympias, and Alexander.

Honestly, we'll never know what happened. But if you want to evaluate a murder, you always look at two things: opportunity (who had the chance to kill him) and motive.

Let's evaluate all three possibilities. Persia had the motive, but it didn't have the opportunity. How could it access Philip's inner court? Philip was not a dumb guy; he would know exactly who to trust and who not to trust. And usually, if Persia was afraid of Philip, what they could do was basically give Sparta and Athens all the money to attack Philip. So I don't think it was Persia. Most people agree it was not Persia.

The second possibility is it was personal. That's kind of strange because Philip was very good at inspiring loyalty from others and also good at reading people. So I don't think it was personal. It could be, but I don't think it is.

This leaves us with the possibility of Olympias and Alexander. Here, it makes sense because they both have both the motive and the opportunity. The motive is very easy to understand. If Philip were to die, Alexander would become king. This is at the height of the glory of Macedon. They have the world's greatest military, they've conquered all of Greece, and Persia is an easy target. Maybe they were afraid that if Philip went to Persia, it would be too late.

The other problem is that Philip was an excellent judge of character, and what's clear about Alexander from a very early age is that he was a very violent young man. He couldn't really control his emotions. If you're Philip, you're kind of like, "Do I really want this guy to be the heir to my empire? Could he manage the empire?" Plus, remember, Philip had a lot of wives, so over time he could have new sons.

The motive is very clear, and the opportunity makes sense because they're all one family. The bodyguard was in constant communication with Olympias. What provides evidence for this line of thinking is that after the death of the bodyguard, named Pausanias, Olympias actually made a monument to him. When we look at the life of Alexander, we will see a lot of evidence that suggests he wanted his father dead. Maybe he didn't participate in the plotting of the assassination, but he clearly wanted his father dead.

What we will understand is this pattern of a great man emerging who creates a revolution that transforms the world. It will repeat itself in this way many times, including with Muhammad, Genghis Khan, Napoleon, and Julius Caesar. They all have this sort of similar personality, and they're all working within a similar social context.

Why did Thebes treat Philip so well as a hostage?

That's a great question. Why did they treat Philip so well and give him so much knowledge? The answer is, first of all, no one thought Macedon would ever be a threat. No one took Macedon seriously. It's like today, no one would take North Korea seriously. Everyone thinks in East Asia the major powers are China and Japan, and everyone thinks North Korea is a complete joke that will collapse in five years. So no one during this time ever thought Macedon could ever challenge Sparta, Athens, or Thebes. It was just overconfidence.

Second, if you're the Thebans, your enemies are Sparta and Athens. You want to build allies. The best way to build allies is by building strong relationships with weaker nations who then rely on you. The best way to do that is by indoctrinating the future leaders of that nation, like Philip. Basically, they wanted to treat him nicely so Philip would be thankful to Thebes. They didn't realize Philip had other intentions.

And it's impossible because Philip is one of these individuals, these men who we call "Great Men of History." They stand outside of history. They are, in many ways, not human. They don't behave as normal humans behave. Normally, if you're a prince, you just want to have a good time, enjoy your wealth, promote your friends, and you want personal glory. But Philip wanted to change the world, and so you can't possibly predict that.