Macedonia under the Argead Kings

Ancient Macedonia is often synonymous with Alexander the Great. After all, his conquests stretched the Macedonian Empire thousands of miles wide, and during his reign Macedonia was without equal. Alexander and his father, Philip II, who raised Macedonia to superpower status, still dominate our perceptions of this ancient kingdom and empire. Macedonian kings before Philip and Alexander are often portrayed as their opposites--weak and ineffectual--but this book proves that this is a mistake. While Macedonia under the Argead Kings covers the reigns of Philip, Alexander, and his immediate successors, it takes an even closer look at what life was like in Macedonia before its most famous rulers. While the literary evidence speaks of Macedonia's internal disunity during this period, as well as its dynastic upheavals, it is important to note that the authors of this literature were often Greeks, who had very different perspectives of what their enemies, the Macedonians, were like. This book supplements the literary sources with archaeological evidence to tell a more complicated story. While the Argead kings certainly varied between successes and failures and faced their fair share of security crises, when viewed as a continuum, we see that Macedonia's earlier history was not a path of steady deterioration but a more subtle rise and fall. When the Argead kings are brought out from the shadows, we can see their importance in the kingdom's development and their influence on each another and the wider Mediterranean world.

Ian Worthington is Professor of Ancient History at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. His previous books include The Last Kings of Macedonia and Athens after Empire. He is also General Editor of Brill's New Jacoby/ Jacoby Online.