Western Civilization

according to Arrian, an ancient Greek historian,

Alexander, “with a word of thanks for the gift, took

the helmet and, in full view of his troops, poured the

water on the ground. So extraordinary was the effect

of this action that the water wasted by Alexander

was as good as a drink for every man in the army.”

Ever the great military leader, Alexander had found

yet another way to inspire his troops.

Alexander the Great was the son of King Philip II

of Macedonia, who in 338B.C.E. had defeated the

Greeks and established his control over the Greek

peninsula. When Alexander became king after

Philip’s death, he led the Macedonians and Greeks

on a spectacular conquest of the Persian Empire,

opening the door to the spread of Greek culture

throughout the ancient Near East. Greek settlers

poured into the Near Eastern lands to work as

bureaucrats, traders, soldiers, and scholars.

Alexander’s triumph gave rise to a new series of

kingdoms that blended the achievements of the

Eastern world with the cultural outlook and

attitudes of the Greeks. We use the termHellenistic

to designate this new order. The Hellenistic world

was the world of Greeks and non-Greek Easterners,

and it resulted, in its own way, in a remarkable series

of accomplishments that are sometimes

underestimated. They form the story of this chapter.

Macedonia and the Conquests

of Alexander

Q FOCUSQUESTION: How was Alexander able to amass

his empire, and what might his rule have been like if

he had lived longer?

While the Greek city-states were continuing their frat-

ricidal warfare, to their north a new and ultimately

powerful kingdom was emerging. The Macedonians

were probably not Greek; scholars are still unsure

whether the Macedonian language was an archaic dia-

lect of Greek or an altogether separate language. The

Greeks certainly viewed the Macedonians as barbarians,

although the Greeks allowed them to participate as

“Greeks” in the Olympic games beginning in the fifth

centuryB.C.E.

Unlike the Greeks, the Macedonians were mostly ru-

ral folk and were organized in tribes, not city-states.

Not until the end of the fifth centuryB.C.E., during the

reign of King Archelaus (ca. 413–399B.C.E.), did Mace-

donia emerge as an important kingdom. But his reign

was followed by decades of foreign invasions and inter-

nal strife until King Philip II (359–336B.C.E.) took con-

trol and turned Macedonia into the chief power of the

Greek world.

Philip instituted military reforms that transformed

Macedonia into a major military power. He created a

new phalanx of infantrymen who were more lightly

armed than Greek hoplites; each carried a smaller

shield and a shorter sword. But the Macedonian infan-

tryman’s chief weapon was a long thrusting spear—

eighteen feet in length, or twice as long as the Greek

hoplite’s spear. In this way, Macedonian infantrymen

could impale an opposing hoplite force before the hop-

lites could even reach them. The Macedonian phalanx

was supported by strong cavalry contingents that

served to break the opposing line of battle and create

disorder in the enemy’s ranks. Philip also strengthened

the bonds between the army and its leaders. Even the

king shared in the dangers of battle, receiving many

wounds. Philip’s new army defeated the Illyrians to the

west and the Thracians to the north and east and was

then drawn into the Greeks’ interstate conflicts.

Philip and the Conquest of Greece

The Greeks had mixed reactions to Philip’s growing

strength. Many Athenians, especially the statesman and

orator Demosthenes (duh-MAHSS-thuh-neez), came to

have a strong distrust of the Macedonian leader’s inten-

tions. Demosthenes delivered a series of orations,

known as thePhilippics, in which he portrayed Philip as

ruthless, deceitful, treacherous, and barbaric and called

on the Athenians to undertake a struggle against him.

Other Athenians, such as Isocrates (eye-SAHK-ruh-teez),

an important teacher of rhetoric, viewed Philip as a sav-

ior who would rescue the Greeks from themselves by

uniting them (see the box on p. 75).

Demosthenes’s repeated calls for action, combined

with Philip’s rapid expansion, finally spurred Athens to

action. Allied with a number of other Greek states, Ath-

ens fought the Macedonians at the Battle of Chaeronea

(ker-uh-NEE-uh), near Thebes, in 338B.C.E. The Macedo-

nian army crushed the Greeks, and Philip was now free

to consolidate his control over the Greek peninsula. The

independent Greekpolis, long the basic political unit of

the Greek world, came to an end as Philip formed an

alliance of the Greek states that we call the Corinthian

League because it met at Corinth. All members took an

oath of loyalty: “I swear by Zeus, Earth, Sun, Poseidon,

74 Chapter 4 The Hellenistic World

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