Civilization #11: The Greatness of Philip II of Macedon

Today we will be discussing how Greek culture spread around the world and how it 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. It spread because Greek civilization was the best. 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 today is how did Alexander the Great conquer the world? Because 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. It was weak. It was divided. How was it possible that the kingdom of Macedon would conquer the world and not Sparta or Athens, which for most of Greek history were the dominant powers?

For me to explain what happened I need to explain to you two thought experiments. We're going to do two thought experiments to develop the analytical tools in order to better understand the process of military conquest.

The father and the son

Let's do a thought experiment. There's a father and there's a son, and they're both business people. They start a business. 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 $10 million, the inheritance, into $10 billion, and this happens a lot. 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, in the media celebrate the son because $1 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 we're going to think about the qualities of the father and the son that allow them to succeed.

• What can we say about the father? How was he able to build a great business? The first thing we can say is he is innovative, meaning 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. He's innovative, or he has wisdom and judgment. That's the first major quality of the father. He's very innovative, or he's wise and has good judgment.
• The second quality about the father we can say is that 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. He has to recruit workers, and he has to make them work hard for him. What can he do to find good workers and ensure they work hard for him and build the business? Why would you want to go work for someone and work hard for him? They pay you good money, but a lot of people pay you good money. What's different about this business? The vision or the dream. The business has a vision and a dream that compels you. You see the potential for growth. Not only is the father innovative, but he's also a visionary. He's a dreamer, and that's what attracts you to him.
• The other thing is that he's fair, meaning that he promotes talent. You want to work for someone who treats 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 what do we humans want to do? A good boss would promote talent, and most people would do what? Promote his or her friends, promote people that they like, promote people who suck up to them. That's the natural human instinct.
• 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 seven o'clock in the morning, he'll come in at six. If you leave at ten 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 are the three distinct qualities of a good business person, a good founder: innovative, a good manager of people by sharing the vision, by communicating the vision and by being fair to people, by promoting talent, and also selfless, very disciplined. He will work very hard in order to achieve the greater good, to ensure the company succeeds.

Three qualities of great world leaders

It turns out that these personality traits are consistent with extremely successful people. When we study other great leaders, for example Genghis Khan, Muhammad, then 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. The first is 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. They're very strategic.
2. The second thing is they are innovative to a point of revolutionary. What they understand is if you want to change the world, you must destroy the status quo. You must change the way society is structured. They're willing to do that even though they know it'll be a very bloody process involving lots of wars. That's a second quality that they have that's different from everyone else.
3. The third quality is 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 that make them unique in their time. Genghis Khan, Muhammad are two examples, but also Napoleon and Julius Caesar. Basically all the great world conquerors in human history have these similar characteristics.

The son's qualities

Now the son is very different. If the father succeeds because he is innovative, why does the son succeed? No, he's not, actually. How do you transform $10 million into $10 billion? If you're a business person, what must you do? You must be aggressive. You're an aggressive risk-taker. The father is not a risk-taker because he has no opportunities to take risks. The example here is 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 first thing about the son that's very different from the father is he succeeds by taking risks that no one else is willing to take. That's the first thing.

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

The father is selfless. What does the son care about? What drives him? What does he really care about? 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? 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.” 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, the greatest army in the world, and conquer Persia. This relationship between the father and son describes very well the personalities of Philip and Alexander. This repeats itself throughout history. You will see this in life. You will see this throughout history.

Poor countries and rich countries

Another thought experiment is throughout history what we discovered is 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, you have advanced technology, and you have a lot of resources, and therefore it's very hard to be conquered. But we see this throughout history all the time, where poor countries quickly conquered rich nations. How can we explain this? To explain this we'll do another thought experiment.

Let's compare North Korea with South Korea. These countries are the same culture, same people, but they are night and day. North Korea we know is poor. South Korea is rich. North Korea is primitive, meaning they don't have that much advanced technology. South Korea is very advanced, technologically advanced. Think of Samsung, the cars and the phones they produce and the computers they produce. A very advanced country. The last thing is that North Korea is a dictatorship, and South Korea is a democracy.

If we were to take a snapshot of North and South Korea today, then we could easily predict that in 20 years' time North Korea would be poorer. South Korea would be richer. But that may not happen. What is South Korea's problem? What is South Korea's biggest problem? Do you know? 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, lots of places that refuse to let kids in. This is a very weird state of affairs. What's driving the low birth rate? Why are young women refusing to have children? Inequality. If you feel that you're just a normal person, 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; therefore it has equality. Because it has equality, people there are united. They're not divided. They're united. What else? They're obedient. They listen to what the government tells them to do. The last thing is they're hungry. They will work very hard for very little. It is possible that in 20 years' time North Korea overtakes South Korea because its people are willing to work harder than the South Korean people.

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 what you can do is 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? North Korea is like, “We're going to come and invade you.” What will South Korea do in response? Someone wants to attack you, so how do you get this person not to attack you? Give them money.

North Korea doesn't even have to attack South Korea. North Korea just has to threaten to attack South Korea, and South Korea will give them a lot of money not to attack. By doing that North becomes richer and more militarily advanced. South Korea just becomes poorer. Because the North Korean army is fighting in other places like Ukraine, it's developing all this 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 Macedon was able to conquer all of Greece even though Macedon was by far one of the poorest places in Greece at that time, because the people are hungry, united and obedient. I want you to remember these two thought experiments because they will help us explain a lot of history.

Macedon at Philip's birth

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. I want to talk about the world of Greece and Macedon at the time of his birth. Around this time there are three major powers in Greece.

• There's Athens. Remember that even though Athens lost the Peloponnesian War, it's still very wealthy, and it still has the best navy in all of Greece, so it's still a major power. Then you have Sparta, which for most of Greek history was considered the best military. This is Sparta here to the south. This is Athens, and then to the north is a place called Thebes. What's interesting is at this time Thebes has become the most dominant military in Greece primarily because Sparta and Athens decimated each other during the Peloponnesian War. Because of the war Thebes has become the dominant power in Greece at this time. Then to the far north is Macedon, the kingdom of Macedon.

Now Macedon is very poor, weak and divided. Let me explain why it is. First of all it has 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 grow crops its farmers are just peasants. The problem is that there are lots of tribes in the mountains, and the way they make their living usually is by coming and raiding your farmland. There's nothing that you can do about it because if you go chase them they go back to the mountains. That's the first problem. The economy is very, very divided, and the people don't have that many resources. That's the first problem.

The second problem is Macedon is completely surrounded by hostile powers. You have the kingdom of Thrace over here, and that's 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, so they're a huge problem. To the south is a place called Thessaly, and they have one of the best militaries in Greece. They're known for their cavalry, their horsemen. Then of course you also have Thebes, Athens and Sparta, which also want to play a role in controlling Macedon.

Over here of course across the sea is Persia. For some of its history Macedon was actually a province of Persia. Persia actually conquered or subjugated Macedon, so Macedon is always being threatened by a more superior power, and it keeps on losing these wars. The third problem it has is that it's a kingdom. It has a king, and the king has many, many wives. Why would this be a problem? 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 changes all that.

Philip in Thebes

He's born in 383, and then from 369 to 365, for about five years, he's a hostage in Thebes. The reason why is Macedon lost a war to Thebes, and to ensure that Macedon does not rebel against Thebes, Macedon had to send hostages. Philip was a hostage in Thebes, but he's a prince, so he's treated very, very, very nicely in Thebes, and he can do whatever he wants. The thing that he wants to do is he wants to understand why Thebes is the dominant military power in Greece at this time. He learns from the best Theban generals. They become his mentors.

What makes Thebes so effective is the idea of the Sacred Band of Thebes. This is the secret to the power of Thebes. These are 300 soldiers who spend every day training to be the best soldiers they can. In many ways they're like special forces, and this is modeled on Sparta. The difference is in Sparta only citizens, only aristocrats, can 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 anyone can be a soldier, not just the rich. With proper training anyone can learn to be a great soldier. That's the first thing he learned.

The second thing he learned is 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 is called a phalanx, 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, “We're going to do a slant.” The reason why is when you do a slant you can put the 300-man Sacred Band first against the best soldiers of the enemy. We know that 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. What happens is the phalanx breaks formation. When the phalanx breaks formation and people start running away, they're all dead. That is the major innovation of Thebes at this time.

From the best generals of Thebes, Philip understood the importance of discipline in an army. This is new because in Greece, remember, the Spartans had discipline, but most armies like the Athenians were citizen-soldiers. They did this for fun. They did this as a civic duty. They did this 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. The first major strength that you have is the idea of mobility, speed. What this means is 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 you're able to besiege a city and destroy it, the city cannot ask for reinforcements because reinforcements will come too slowly. This is a major innovation, the idea of mobility.
2. The second is the idea of coordination. Different military units are able to work together, and this is really important. In Greece at this time there are maybe two different land forces. There's a phalanx, and then there's a cavalry, and they do their own thing. But with discipline you can actually get them to work together, and 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. The anvil is the phalanx. With discipline the phalanx is able to lock the other enemy army in place. Then what happens is the cavalry sees this, and they stream in from the back and destroy the enemy. It's called the anvil and hammer strategy. The Thebans used it, but Philip started to use it as well. You can use this with discipline, if every soldier knows his or her role in the army.
3. With coordination you can also have the idea of flexibility. Remember the Greeks fought using the hoplite phalanx, and that's it. But what Philip understood is, “Hey, if I have coordination, I can change my strategy and tactics according to the enemy.” He had different units. He had archers. He had shield-bearers, people whose job was to hold shields. He had phalanxes, and he had 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 because 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.

Regent and military reformer

He got his chance in 359. The reason why is his brother died, and the brother's son, his nephew, was too young, so he became regent. He became the sort of placeholder before the son can become of age. But once he became regent he basically became 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.

What he recognized is if I want to transform the army, I need 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, and 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, peasants. In this new system as long as you perform well in battle you'll be promoted.

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

Building loyalty

1. The other thing that he did that was very important was he needed to make the army loyal to him. What he understood is if you want the army loyal to you, you need to do three things. The first thing is you need to fight with them. He was not in the back watching the battle. He was in the front leading the battle. 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 the lives of his soldiers. He was very strategic. He would not put his soldiers in harm's way, and so his soldiers became even more loyal to him.
2. The second thing that he did was he ate and drank with them. These common soldiers, he would spend his time just eating and drinking with them. 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 to you.”
3. The third thing was he was 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. But not only that, he praised people like Parmenion. He used his speeches to praise soldiers that were good examples, and obviously that made Parmenion feel really good. That made him even more loyal to Philip. Philip over time was able to build a strong, loyal, unified, disciplined army using these strategies.

Diplomacy and conquest

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. Remember at this time it's basically Game of Thrones. Every nation is at each other's throats, and they hate each other. Sparta hates Thebes. Thebes hates Athens. They really didn't get along. 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 known also 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 he basically secured his northern frontier. He got into these wars with his enemies to the north, and he secured his northern frontier. That's important because he wants to move into the south eventually, but he needs to make sure that he's not attacked from behind. That's the first thing he does.

The second thing that he does is in 347 he invades a city called Amphipolis, and he conquers it. This is important because Amphipolis has gold mines. Now he has resources. He has money. With these resources he can pay his soldiers because his soldiers are training every day. They're not farming. They're training every day, so he can now pay them. He can now buy the loyalty of the nobility, and he can stir national sentiment in Macedon by building projects, by building roads. He can improve the economy. The last thing that he does with the money is he starts bribing everyone. He basically starts bribing the nobility of Athens, other nations, to support him. He's being very strategic and very clever.

In 356 his son Alexander the Great is born to his wife Olympias. The last major event is in 338 BCE, the Battle of Chaeronea. This is the last battle between Philip and the people who opposed him. In Chaeronea the two nations that oppose him are Thebes and Athens. But at this time the great generals of Thebes have all died, and in Athens, the aristocrats supported him, so Athens didn't really put out a great army. In this Battle of Chaeronea Philip II, with his modern, highly disciplined, loyal army, destroyed everyone. He crushed Thebes. He crushed Athens.

He united all of Greece. He destroyed the entire army of Athens, and he almost destroyed Thebes. But 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 it's the Sacred Band of Thebes that taught Philip how to build a great army. In his last act he destroyed the Sacred Band of Thebes. Now he united all of Greece. Now that he united all of Greece his ambition is to take his army and conquer Persia.

What he did was he sent his great general Parmenion into Persia. Remember in Anatolia at this time, which is today Turkey, there are lots of Greek colonies that are under Persian rule, and for the longest time they want to be free of Persian rule. Parmenion went over with a vanguard of about 10,000 men to begin the invasion.

Philip's assassination

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 at the wedding there'll be lots of Greek diplomats. He wanted to appear approachable, so he didn't have his entire bodyguard in place. He had one bodyguard. His bodyguard took his sword and stabbed him in the rib, killing him. Then his bodyguard was killed by the other bodyguard. Philip was assassinated before he could launch his invasion of Persia.

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

1. For the longest time historians do not know what happened. How is it possible for this great man, Philip II, to be assassinated in the prime of his life? There are three major explanations. The first explanation is it was Persia. Persia knew that Philip was about to invade, and so they hired the bodyguard to kill him. That's the first explanation.
2. The second explanation is 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. It's a very complicated story. It was personal.
3. Then there's one more explanation. The other explanation was it was the mother of Alexander, Olympias, and Alexander. These are the three explanations. Honestly we'll never, ever know what happened. But if you want to evaluate a murder you always look at two things. Look at opportunity, who had the chance to kill him. Look at motive. If you look at these two things, 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's not a dumb guy. You would know exactly who to trust and who not to trust. Usually if Persia was afraid of Philip, what they could do was basically give Sparta and Athens all the money to attack Philip. I don't think it's Persia. I think most people agree it was not Persia.

The second possibility is it was personal, and that's kind of strange because Philip is very good at inspiring loyalty from others. He's also good at reading people. I don't think it was personal. It could be, but I don't think it is. This leaves us the possibility of Olympias and Alexander. Here it makes sense because they both have both the motive and the opportunity.

Let me first explain motive. 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 conquered all of Greece. Persia is an easy target. Maybe they were afraid that if Philip goes to Persia it'll be too late.

The other problem is Philip is an excellent judge of character, and what's clear about Alexander from a very early age is he was a very violent young man. He couldn't really control his emotions. 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 has 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 is in constant communication with Olympias.

What provides evidence for this line of thinking is after the death of Philip's 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 killing of his father, 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 and with Genghis Khan, with Napoleon, with Julius Caesar. They all have this sort of similar personality, and they're all working within a similar social context.

Why did they treat Philip so well and give him so much knowledge?

The answer is first of all no one thinks Macedon will ever be a threat. No one takes 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. This place will collapse in five years' time. No one during this time ever thought Macedon could ever challenge Sparta or Athens or Thebes. No one did. It was just overconfidence.

The second thing is if you're the Thebans, your enemies are Sparta and Athens, so 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 want to treat him nicely so Philip would be thankful to Thebes. They didn't realize Philip had other intentions.

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. You just want to enjoy your wealth. You want to promote your friends, and you want personal glory. But Philip wanted to change the world, and so you can't possibly predict that.

Changes to 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 with it is it's not very mobile because everyone's carrying heavy armor. The first thing that Philip did was he lightened the load. He had his soldiers wear less armor. Then the question is if you wear less armor, how do you protect yourself?

The answer is two things he did. The first thing he did was he made the spear very long. It became a pike, so it became very hard to reach the phalanx because the spear was in the way. The pike was in the way. The other thing that 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. Remember they were lighter. They could move around faster, and they had longer spears, so they could maintain distance from you a lot longer. Also they had these shield-bearers who were mobile and could adapt to situations. If one part of the phalanx was being threatened, then 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 at 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. Alexander is the complete opposite. He's always risking the lives of his men.

There's a lot of changes, but the phalanx is a major innovation. You have the shield-bearers in place. They have helmets, and they have shields as well. The shield-bearers were really the secret sauce of the Macedonian army because the shield-bearers were meant to resolve any issues that might arise in battle. Again you have the flexibility because these are extremely disciplined and loyal men. Even though Alexander was bold and aggressive, he would make mistakes. But the loyalty and discipline of the Macedonian army would compensate for a lot of his strategic mistakes.

The thing about this class that's different is we build on all this knowledge. We will see how military strategy changes over time, and we'll see how the Macedonians will influence Greek culture.