Alexander III of Macedon, commonly known as Alexander the Great, was a king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon. He succeeded his father Philip II to the throne in 336 BC at the age of 20, and spent most of his ruling years conducting a lengthy military campaign throughout Western Asia and Egypt. By the age of thirty, he had created one of the largest empires in history, stretching from Greece to northwestern India. He was undefeated in battle and is widely considered to be one of history's greatest and most successful military commanders.
Amyntas I was king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia and then a vassal of Darius I from 512/511 to his death 498 BC, at the time of Achaemenid Macedonia. He was a son of Alcetas I of Macedon. He married Eurydice and they had a son Alexander.
Amyntas III was king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia in 393 BC and again from 392 to 370 BC. He was the son of Arrhidaeus and grandson of Amyntas, one of the sons of Alexander I. His most famous son is Philip II, father of Alexander the Great.
Macedonia, also called Macedon, was an ancient kingdom on the periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece, and later the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. The kingdom was founded and initially ruled by the royal Argead dynasty, which was followed by the Antipatrid and Antigonid dynasties. Home to the ancient Macedonians, the earliest kingdom was centered on the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula, and bordered by Epirus to the west, Paeonia to the north, Thrace to the east and Thessaly to the south.
Alexander I of Macedon, known with the title Philhellene, was the ruler of the ancient Kingdom of Macedon from c. 498 BC until his death in 454 BC. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Alcetas II.
Mardonius was a leading Persian military commander during the Persian Wars with Greece in the early 5th century BC who died at the Battle of Plataea.
Amyntas IV was a titular king of the Greek kingdom of Macedonia in 359 BC and member of the Argead dynasty.
Eurydice was an Ancient Macedonian queen and wife of king Amyntas III of Macedon.
In the writings of the Ancient Greek chronicler Herodotus, the phrase earth and water is used to represent the demand by the Persian Empire of formal tribute from the cities or people who surrendered to them.
The Macedonians were an ancient tribe that lived on the alluvial plain around the rivers Haliacmon and lower Axios in the northeastern part of mainland Greece. Essentially an ancient Greek people, they gradually expanded from their homeland along the Haliacmon valley on the northern edge of the Greek world, absorbing or driving out neighbouring non-Greek tribes, primarily Thracian and Illyrian. They spoke Ancient Macedonian, which was perhaps a sibling language to Ancient Greek, but more commonly thought to have been a dialect of Northwest Doric Greek; though, some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. However, the prestige language of the region during the Classical era was Attic Greek, replaced by Koine Greek during the Hellenistic era. Their religious beliefs mirrored those of other Greeks, following the main deities of the Greek pantheon, although the Macedonians continued Archaic burial practices that had ceased in other parts of Greece after the 6th century BC. Aside from the monarchy, the core of Macedonian society was its nobility. Similar to the aristocracy of neighboring Thessaly, their wealth was largely built on herding horses and cattle.
Megabazus, son of Megabates, was a highly regarded Persian general under Darius, to whom he was a first-degree cousin. Most of the information about Megabazus comes from The Histories by Herodotus.
Alabanda or Antiochia of the Chrysaorians was a city of ancient Caria, Anatolia, the site of which is near Doğanyurt, Çine, Aydın Province, Turkey.
Argaeus or Araeus, was according to 5th-century BC Greek writer Herodotus one of six predecessors of his contemporary, King Alexander I of Macedon. Alexander I's predecessors, starting from the nearest, were according to Herodotus: Amyntas, Alcetas, Aëropus, Philip I, Argaeus, and Perdiccas I. A rival tradition is held by Livy, Pausanias, Suidas and Junianus Justinus, with Caranus as the first Macedonian king.
Gygaea was a daughter of Amyntas I and sister of Alexander I of Macedon. She was given away in marriage by her brother to the Persian General Bubares. Herodotus also mentions a son of Bubares and Gygaea, called Amyntas, who was later given the city Alabanda in Caria by Xerxes I.
The Argead dynasty, also known as the Temenid dynasty, was an ancient Macedonian royal house of Dorian Greek provenance. They were the founders and the ruling dynasty of the kingdom of Macedon from about 700 to 310 BC.
The Achaemenid Empire, also called the First Persian Empire, was an ancient Iranian empire based in Western Asia that was founded by Cyrus the Great in 550 BC. It reached its greatest extent under Xerxes I, who conquered most of northern and central ancient Greece. At its greatest territorial extent, the Achaemenid Empire stretched from the Balkans and Eastern Europe in the west to the Indus Valley in the east. The empire was larger than any previous empire in history, spanning a total of 5.5 million square kilometres.
Achaemenid Macedonia refers to the period in which the ancient Greek Kingdom of Macedonia was under the sway of the Achaemenid Persians. In 512/511 BC, the Persian general Megabyzus forced the Macedonian king Amyntas I to make his kingdom a vassal of the Achaemenids. In 492 BC, following the Ionian Revolt, the Persian general Mardonius firmly re-tightened the Persian grip in the Balkans, making Macedon a fully subordinate kingdom within the Achaemenid domains and part of its administrative system. Macedonia served the Achaemenid Empire during the Greco-Persian Wars in their invasion of mainland Greece. They regained independence following the defeat and withdrawal of the Achaemenid Empire in 479 BC.
The kingdom of Macedonia was an ancient state in what is now the Macedonian region of northern Greece, founded in the mid-7th century BC during the period of Archaic Greece and lasting until the mid-2nd century BC. Led first by the Argead dynasty of kings, Macedonia became a vassal state of the Achaemenid Empire of ancient Persia during the reigns of Amyntas I of Macedon and his son Alexander I of Macedon. The period of Achaemenid Macedonia came to an end in roughly 479 BC with the ultimate Greek victory against the second Persian invasion of Greece led by Xerxes I and the withdrawal of Persian forces from the European mainland.
Aridolis was a tyrant of Alabanda in Caria, who accompanied the Achaemenid king Xerxes I in his expedition against Greece, and was taken by the Greeks off Artemisium in 480 BCE, and sent to the isthmus of Corinth in chains. His successor may have been Amyntas II.
"They took in one of these ships Aridolis, the despot of Alabanda in Caria, and in another the Paphian captain Penthylus son of Demonous; of twelve ships that he had brought from Paphos he had lost eleven in the storm off the Sepiad headland, and was in the one that remained when he was taken as he bore down on Artemisium. Having questioned these men and learnt what they desired to know of Xerxes' armament, the Greeks sent them away to the isthmus of Corinth in bonds."
Bubares was a Persian nobleman and engineer in the service of the Achaemenid Empire of the 5th century BC. He was one of the sons of Megabazus, and a second-degree cousin of Xerxes I.
