Alexander III of Macedon, most 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, Central Asia, parts of South Asia, and Egypt. By the age of 30, 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 from at least 512/511 until his death in 498/497 BC. Although there were a number of rulers before him, Amyntas is the first king of Macedonia for which we have any reliable historical information. During Amyntas' reign, Macedonia became a vassal state of the Achaemenid Empire in 510 BC.
Philip II of Macedon was the king (basileus) of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia from 359 BC until his death in 336 BC. He was a member of the Argead dynasty, founders of the ancient kingdom, and the father of Alexander the Great.
Cassander was king of the Ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia from 305 BC until 297 BC, and de facto ruler of southern Greece from 317 BC until his death.
Hephaestion, son of Amyntor, was an ancient Macedonian nobleman of probable "Attic or Ionian extraction" and a general in the army of Alexander the Great. He was "by far the dearest of all the king's friends; he had been brought up with Alexander and shared all his secrets." This relationship lasted throughout their lives, and was compared, by others as well as themselves, to that of Achilles and Patroclus.
Alexander I, also known as Alexander the Philhellene, was king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedonia from 498/497 BC until his death in 454 BC. He was succeeded by his eldest son, Perdiccas II.
Amyntas II, also known as Amyntas "the Little", was king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon for several months around 394/3 BC. He became king in July or August of 394/3 after the death of Aeropus II, but he was soon after assassinated by an Elimieotan nobleman named Derdas and succeeded by Aeropus' son Pausanias.
Bardylis was an Illyrian king, and the founder of the first attested Illyrian dynasty. During his reign, Bardylis aimed to make Illyria a regional power interfering with Macedon. He united many southern Illyrian tribes under his realm and defeated the Macedonians and Molossians several times, expanding his dominion over Upper Macedonia, including Lynkestis, and ruling over Macedon through a puppet king. Before the Rise of Macedon Illyrians were the dominant power in the region. Bardylis also led raids against Epirus, but his soldiers were eventually expelled from the region.
The Macedonian Wars were a series of conflicts fought by the Roman Republic and its Greek allies in the eastern Mediterranean against several different major Greek kingdoms. They resulted in Roman control or influence over Greece and the rest of the eastern Mediterranean basin, in addition to their hegemony in the western Mediterranean after the Punic Wars. Traditionally, the "Macedonian Wars" include the four wars with Macedonia, in addition to one war with the Seleucid Empire, and a final minor war with the Achaean League. The most significant war was fought with the Seleucid Empire, while the war with Macedonia was the second, and both of these wars effectively marked the end of these empires as major world powers, even though neither of them led immediately to overt Roman domination. Four separate wars were fought against the weaker power, Macedonia, due to its geographic proximity to Rome, though the last two of these wars were against haphazard insurrections rather than powerful armies. Roman influence gradually dissolved Macedonian independence and digested it into what was becoming a leading empire. The outcome of the war with the now-deteriorating Seleucid Empire was ultimately fatal to it as well, though the growing influence of Parthia and Pontus prevented any additional conflicts between it and Rome.
Paul Anthony Cartledge is a British ancient historian and academic. From 2008 to 2014 he was the A. G. Leventis Professor of Greek Culture at the University of Cambridge. He had previously held a personal chair in Greek History at Cambridge.
The historical and literary tradition describes several of Alexander's relations, some of which are the subject of question among modern historians.
The Kingdom of Dardania was a polity in the central Balkans in the region of Dardania during classical antiquity. It is named after the Dardani, a Paleo-Balkan tribe that formed the core of the Dardanian polity. Dardania was centered around present-day Kosovo, but also included parts of North Macedonia (Gostivar), Serbia and Albania. The eastern parts of Dardania were at the Thraco-Illyrian contact zone. Marcus Licinius Crassus, grandson of the triumvir Marcus Crassus, officially annexed the kingdom in 28 BC while on campaign against the Dacians and Bastarnae. The region was subsequently incorporated into the province of Moesia in 15 BC, and later in 293 AD, as the province of Dardania.
Simon Hornblower, FBA is an English classicist and academic. He was Professor of Classics and Ancient History in the University of Oxford and, before retiring, was most recently a senior research fellow at All Souls College, Oxford.
Eugene N. Borza was a professor of ancient history at Pennsylvania State University, where he taught from 1964 until 1995.
Pausanias was king of the ancient Greek kingdom of Macedon for around a year, from 394/3 to 393/2. He was the son of Aeropus II and an unknown mother, but he did not succeed his father when Aeropus died in July or August 394/3 BC. Instead, Amyntas II ruled Macedonia for several months before being assassinated in August or September 394/3 by the Elimieotan Derdas. According to Diodorus, Pausanias himself was assassinated sometime in 393/2 by Amyntas III, who then succeeded him as King of Macedonia. However, Diodorus also entirely omits the reign of Amyntas II who all other ancient sources and modern scholars agree ruled before Pausanias.
The League of the Macedonians was a confederationally-organized commonwealth institution consisting of all Macedonian communities united around a monarch. It can be paralleled from the koinon of the Molossians, but it seems that the Macedonian koinon had far less power than that of the Molossians. The capital, or headquarters, of the Macedonian koinon was the city of Beroia.
The Balkan campaign ofAlexander the Great took place in 335 BC, against a number of rebellious vassals of the Macedonian kingdom. Alexander successfully pacified each in turn, leaving him free to begin the long-planned invasion of Persia.
Sirras or Sirrhas was the son-in-law of the king of Lynkestis, Arrhabaeus, having married his daughter Irra. He participated in an Illyrian-Lynkestian coalition's defeat of the attempted invasion of Lynkestis by the Macedonian king Archelaus. He may have been a Lynkestian prince-regent or an Illyrian chieftain, part of the Illyrian force in a previous and also successful Illyrian-Lynkestian coalition against Sparta and Macedon during the Peloponnesian War.
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.
