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| | MACEDONIA
- MAKEDONIA
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-- PATHSTE THN EIKONA NA THN MEGALWSETE
Macedonia
(historic region).
Region in southeastern
Europe
, in the south central part of the
Balkan Peninsula
.
Macedonia
covered about 66,000 sq km (25,500 sq mi). Today
slightly more than half of the region lies in northern and northeastern Greece,
in the Greek
province
of
Macedonia
. The Former
Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia and a small portion of Bulgaria
make up the remainder of the region.
Macedonia
spanned a diverse geographic area. Though mostly
mountainous, the region also encompassed the valleys of the
Aliakmon
,
Vardar
(Axios), Nιstos, and
Struma
rivers, all of which drain into the
Aegean Sea
.
Neolithic peoples established settlements in
northern
Macedonia
in about 6200 BC. After 3000 BC, a Greek-speaking
tribe of shepherds settled first in the mountainous regions between Mounts
Olympus and Pindus and later in the rich alluvial plain of the
Aliakmon
and Axios rivers. Philip
II, who ruled from 359 to 336 BC, led the kingdom into a period of growth
and expansion. Philip conquered the Greeks in 338 BC and unified the Greek
city-states and
Macedonia
into one empire.
Philip's son, who became known as Alexander
the Great, took command of the empire following Philip's assassination in
336 BC. Alexander pursued his father's objectives and created a vast empire
which stretched south into
Egypt
and across
Persia
(now known as
Iran
) to northwestern
India
. Culture and art flourished under Alexander's
rule.
Alexander died in 323 BC, leaving the empire
with no clear successor. The vacuum created by Alexander's death led to
conflicts within the empire and eventually to its dissolution. Generals in the
Macedonian army divided the empire into smaller kingdoms. These kingdoms
continued to fight with each other for several decades until the year 215 BC.
Starting in 215 BC
Macedonia
was assailed by the Romans in a series of three
wars which lasted until 168 BC. In 148 BC the region became a Roman province.
During the early Christian period the region was an important field for the
missionary labors of Saint
Paul the Apostle.
After the final division of the
Roman Empire
in AD395 Macedonia became part of the
Byzantine Empire
. In the 6th century Slavs from other parts of
eastern Europe settled in
Macedonia
in large numbers. Successively thereafter the
region was assailed by bands of Goths, Huns, Slavs, Bulgars, and Turks. The
Ottoman Empire
ruled the region from 1371 to 1912. After the
Balkan Wars (1912-1913) the region was divided among
Greece
,
Bulgaria
, and
Serbia
.
ALEXANDER THE GREAT 
MEGA ALEXANDROS
356-323
B.C.
356 - 323 P.C
HIS FATHER - PHILLIP 
 HIS MOTHER -
OLYMPIA
Alexander the Great (356-323 BC), king of
Macedonia, conqueror of the Persian
Empire, and one of the greatest military
geniuses of all times.
Alexander, born in Pella, the
ancient capital of Macedonia, was the son of Philip II, king of Macedonia, and of Olympias, a princess of
Epirus. Aristotle was Alexander's tutor; he gave Alexander a thorough
training in rhetoric and literature and stimulated his interest in science, medicine, and
philosophy. In the summer of 336 BC Philip was
assassinated, and Alexander ascended to the Macedonian throne. He found himself
surrounded by enemies at home
and threatened by rebellion abroad. Alexander disposed quickly
of all conspirators and domestic enemies by ordering their execution. Then he descended on
Thessaly
(Thessalia), where
partisans of independence had gained ascendancy, and restored Macedonian rule.
Before the end of the summer of 336 BC he had
reestablished his position in Greece
and was elected by a congress of states at Corinth. In 335 BC as general of the Greeks in a campaign
against the Persians, originally planned by his father, he carried out a
successful campaign against the defecting Thracians, penetrating to the Danube
River. On his return he crushed in a single week the threatening
Illyrians and then hastened to Thebes, which had
revolted. He took the city by storm and razed it, sparing only the temples of
the gods and the house of the Greek lyric poet Pindar, and selling the surviving
inhabitants, about 8000 in number, into slavery. Alexander's promptness in
crushing the revolt of Thebes
brought the
other Greek states into instant and abject submission.
Alexander began his war against Persia
in the spring of 334 BC by crossing the
Hellespont
(modern Dardanelles) with an army of 35,000 Macedonian and Greek troops; his chief
officers, all Macedonians, included Antigonus, Ptolemy, and Seleucus. At the
river Granicus, near the ancient city of Troy, he attacked an
army of Persians and Greek
mercenaries totaling 40,000 men. His forces
defeated the enemy and, according to tradition, lost only 110 men; after this
battle all the states of Asia Minor
submitted to him. In passing through
Phrygia
he is said to have
cut with his sword the
Gordian
knot. Continuing to advance southward, Alexander encountered the main
Persian army, commanded by King Darius III, at
Issus, in northeastern Syria. The size of Darius's army is unknown; the ancient tradition
that it contained 500,000 men is now considered a fantastic exaggeration. The Battle of Issus,
in 333, ended in a great victory for Alexander. Cut off from his base, Darius
fled northward, abandoning his mother, wife, and children to Alexander, who
treated them with the respect due to royalty.
Tyre, a strongly
fortified seaport, offered obstinate resistance, but Alexander took it by storm
in 332 after a siege of seven months. Alexander captured Gaza
next and then
passed on into Egypt, where he was greeted as a deliverer. By these successes he
secured control of the entire eastern Mediterranean coastline. Later in 332 he
founded, at the mouth of the Nile
River, the city of Alexandria,
which later became
the literary, scientific, and commercial center of the
Greek world.
Cyrene, the capital of the ancient North African kingdom
of
Cyrenaica, submitted to Alexander soon afterward, extending his dominion
to Carthaginian territory.
In the spring of 331 Alexander made a pilgrimage to the
great temple and oracle of Amon-Ra, Egyptian god of the sun, whom the Greeks
identified with Zeus. The earlier Egyptian pharaohs were believed to be sons of
Amon-Ra; and Alexander, the new ruler of Egypt, wanted the god to acknowledge him as his son. The pilgrimage
apparently was successful, and it may have confirmed in him a belief
in his own divine origin. Turning northward again, he reorganized his forces at Tyre
and started for Babylon
with an
army of 40,000 infantry and 7000 cavalry. Crossing the
Euphrates
and the Tigris
rivers, he
met Darius at the
head of an army of unknown size, which, according to the exaggerated accounts of
antiquity, was said to number a million
men; this army he
completely defeated in the Battle of Gaugamela, on
October 1, 331 BC. Darius fled as he had done at Issus
and was later
slain by one of his own satraps.
Babylon
surrendered
after Gaugamela, and the city of Susa
with its enormous
treasures was soon conquered. Then, in midwinter, Alexander forced his way to
Persepolis, the Persian capital. After plundering the royal treasuries and
taking other rich booty, he burned the city during a drunken binge and thus
completed the destruction of the ancient
Persian Empire. His domain now
extended along and beyond the southern shores of the
Caspian Sea, including modern Afghanistan and Baluchistan, and northward into Bactria
and Sogdiana, the modern Western Turkistan, also known
as Central Asia. It had taken Alexander only three years, from the spring of 330
BC to the spring of 327 BC, to master this vast area.
In order to complete his conquest of the remnants of the Persian Empire, which had once included part of western India, Alexander crossed the Indus
River
in 326 BC, and invaded the Punjab
as far as the
river Hyphasis (modern Beas); at this point the Macedonians rebelled and refused to go
farther. He then constructed a fleet and passed down the
Indus, reaching its
mouth in September 325 BC. The fleet then
sailed to the
Persian Gulf. With his army, he returned overland across the desert to Media.
Shortages of food and water caused severe losses and hardship among his troops.
Alexander spent about a year organizing his dominions and completing a survey of
the
Persian Gulf
in preparation for further conquests. He arrived in Babylon
in the
spring of 323 BC. In June he
contracted a fever and died. He left his empire, in his own words, “to the
strongest”; this ambiguous testament resulted in dire conflicts for half a century.
Alexander was one of the greatest generals of all time, noted for his
brilliance as a tactician and troop leader and for the rapidity with which he
could traverse great expanses of territory. He was usually brave and generous,
but could be cruel and ruthless when politics demanded. The theory has been
advanced that he was actually an alcoholic having, for example, killed his
friend Clitus in a drunken fury. He later regretted this act deeply.
As a
statesman and ruler he had grandiose plans; according to many modern historians
he cherished a scheme
for uniting the East and the West in a world empire, a new and
enlightened “world brotherhood of all men.
” He trained
thousands of Persian youths in Macedonian tactics and enrolled them in his army.
He himself adopted Persian manners and married Eastern wives, namely, Roxana (died
about 311 BC), daughter of
Oxyartes of Sogdiana, and Barsine (or Stateira; died about 323 BC), the elder daughter of Darius; and he
encouraged and bribed his officers to take Persian wives. Shortly before he
died, Alexander ordered the Greek cities to worship him as a god. Although he
probably gave the order for political reasons, he was, in his own view and that
of his contemporaries, of divine birth. The order was largely nullified by his
death shortly after he issued it.
To bind his conquests together, Alexander founded a
number of cities, most of them named Alexandria, along his line of march; these cities were well located, well
paved, and provided with good water supplies. Greek veterans from his army
settled in them; young
men, traders,
merchants, and scholars were attracted to them; Greek culture was
introduced; and the Greek language became
widely known.
Thus, Alexander vastly extended the influence of Greek civilization and prepared
the way for the kingdoms of the Hellenistic period and the conquests of the
Roman Empire.
PHILIP II  FILIPPAS
II
382-336
B.C.
382 - 336 P.C
Philip
II (of Macedonia
) (382-336
BC), king of Macedonia
(359-336 BC) and father of Alexander
the Great, born in Pella. From 367 to 365, Philip was
a hostage in Thebes,
and during that period he observed the military techniques of Thebes, then the greatest power in Greece.
In 364 he returned to Macedonia. In 359 he was made regent
for his infant nephew Amyntas; later that year he seized the throne for himself.
Faced by internal dissensions and
attacked on all sides, Philip reorganized the Macedonian army on the model of
the Theban phalanx. In less than two years he had secured the safety of
his kingdom and firmly established himself on the throne. From then on his
policy was aggressive. In 357 he conquered the Athenian colony of
Amphipolis in Thrace, gaining possession of the gold
mines of Mount
Pangaeus, which financed his subsequent
wars. In 356 he captured Potidaea
in Chalcidice
and Pydna on the Gulf
of
Thermaikos. In 355 he captured the
Thracian town of Crenides, which, under its new nam,
Philippi, soon acquired great wealth and fame.
In
354 Philip conquered Methone and then advanced into Thessaly. By 352 he had reached the
pass of Thermopyle, which he did not attempt to take,
because it was strongly guarded by the Athenians. In 351 the great
Athenian orator Demosthenes
delivered the first of his Philippics, a series of speeches warning the
Athenians about the Macedonian
menace to Greek liberty. By 348
Philip had conquered
Thrace
and Chalcidice. Two years later he made
peace with Athens, which had been at war with him in
defense of its ally, the Chalcidian city Olynthus. Philip was next requested
by the Thebans to interfere in the sacred war against Phocis. He marched into Phocis
in 346 and destroyed its
cities. Thereafter
Macedonia
replaced Phocis
in the Amphictyonic
League, giving Philip the right to participate in Greek political affairs;
in 338 the council appointed Philip commander of the league forces. The
Athenians, aroused by Demosthenes, united with the Thebans against Philip, but
their combined army was utterly defeated in 338 at the Battle
of Chaeronea.
Philip's victory made him complete master of Greece. Two years later, while
preparing to invade Persia, he was assassinated.
Philip was the greatest statesman
and general of his time. He laid the foundation of
the Macedonian military power employed by his son, Alexander the Great, to
conquer and Hellenize the Middle East. A treasure-filled royal
tomb, believed to be Philip's, was excavated at Vergina, near Thessaloniki, Greece, in 1977.
PHILIP II TOMB
- TAFOS TOU FILIPPOU II
On
the 8th of November 1977
, the archaeologist Manolis Andronikos excavated the
royal tomb of Philippos II in the Megali Toumba hill in Vergina. The
excavated tomb has already been identified as Philippos' by M. Andronikos.
Description of the tomb
(1) 
(2) 
(3) 
(4) & (7) 
(6) 
(7) 
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The
main chamber contained many items related to Philippos. Among those, the
most significant was the golden larnaka with the 16-ray star that contained his
remains, and a golden oak wreath (the largest ever found). The study of
the main-chamber reveals that it was quickly built and has had no inner
wall-decoration (the plaster on the walls is not finished), when the antechamber
was constructed with more care. That could seem strange for the tomb of a
great king like Philippos, but it is totally justified. When Philippos was
murdered in Aiges (336BC), Alexander III was promptly presented to the army and
was accepted as the new king. But the capital of his kingdom was
Pella
and Alexander had to go there quickly to take care of
any clai
me
rs of the throne. That couldn't happen before
Philippos' tomb was sealed. So they started to quickly build the
main-chamber of the tomb, while the ceremony was prepared. Then Philippos was
burnt (just like Achilleas in the Iliada, probably because of Alexander's will),
and his bones were collected, washed with wine, and carefully placed in the
golden larnaka, with the golden oak-wreath. Then the chamber was sealed
with the closing of a big marble door. Now Alexander was free to leave for
Pella
and the workers could finish up the building of the
rest of the tomb.
In
the antechamber, another golden larnaka (with a 14-ray star) was found with the
remains probably of Philippos' last wife Kleopatra, murdered by Olympiada. On
the face of the building (outside) there is a wall painting that describes a
hunting scene where we can see Philippos and his son Alexander. After the
completion of the tombs' construction it was covered with soil up to the surface
of the ground.
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