PHILIP THE ORGANISER
[350-324 B.C.]
Thus Macedonia, under the rule of a prince who had dexterously and systematically developed and employed her resources, had risen to the height where at last she might entertain the thought of issuing forth, and, at the head of united Greece, entering the lists against the Persian might. In the historical accounts that lie before us the forces that were actually at work to produce Philip’s astonishing success seem curiously to be lost sight of. Though the writers follow, through all its cleverly planned movements, the hand that seized and drew into its owner’s possession all the Greek states one after another, they leave us in the dark as to every detail concerning the personality to which that hand belonged, and to which it owed its strength and firmness. Gold which they always show the hand to dispense at exactly the right moment, seems to be about the only means of effecting his purposes that they attribute to Philip.
On looking closely into the inner life of the state two events stand forth that, arising from earlier causes, were made to yield their full significance by Philip, and in reality formed the basis of his power.
“My father,” said Arrian’s Alexander to the mutinous Macedonians at Opis in 324, “took you under his protection when he was king, and you, destitute and clad in skins, wandered here from your mountains where you had tended your flocks of sheep that you could with difficulty protect against the Illyrians, the Thracians, and the Triballi; he gave you the chlamys of the soldiers and led you down into the plain, where he trained you to be the equal of the barbarian in the fight.” Every man capable of bearing arms had always indeed come forward in time of war, but only to return to his hearth or plough when the need of his services was at an end. The dangers by which Philip was beset when he first assumed the rule, the attacks against which he had to protect a land that was menaced on all sides, gave rise to a measure that, already set on foot in Archelaus’ reign, might have averted much of the subsequent internal strife, had it been brought to full development. On the basis of the duty owed by every man to his country in time of war, Philip brought into existence a standing army of native forces that, constantly increasing in size and strength, finally came to number forty thousand men.