0:00

December 7th, 1941. A

0:07

date which will live in infamy.

0:09

It's history. One small

0:12

step for man. One

0:14

giant leap for mankind.

0:18

The events. The

0:20

city of the North is not a city of

0:22

the West. The city of the North is a

0:24

city of the West. Let's have

0:27

a fight now. Not quite to

0:29

the more massive mental world humanity.

0:32

From this time and place. I take

0:34

pride in the words. Ish

0:37

bin, I'm the Alina. Mr.

0:40

Wobichoff, tear down

0:42

this world. The

0:44

drama. Eight six of a half, gorgeous. Marine

0:47

six. Now at two,

0:49

has an immediate explosion and what appears to

0:51

be a complete collapse. So how can the

0:53

entire area... I welcome this kind of examination.

0:55

Because people have got to know whether or

0:57

not their presidents have come. The

0:59

deep question. If we dig deep in our

1:01

history and our doctrine. And

1:04

remember that we are not descended

1:06

from fearful men. It's

1:15

hardcore history. Like

1:20

many of you, I am a fan

1:22

of ancient mythology. The

1:25

stories of creation.

1:28

Or how human beings came to be.

1:31

Or tales that involve gods and

1:33

heroes and monsters. And sometimes just

1:35

regular people. Who go

1:38

through interesting sorts

1:40

of events. Or travels

1:42

or what not. And

1:46

often times these mythological

1:48

stories are meant to impart lessons.

1:51

We're supposed to learn something from

1:53

them. What to do,

1:55

what not to do. You're

1:58

tempted to almost say at the end of all. of

2:00

them and the moral of the story is, right?

2:03

What are we supposed to learn from this? Hunter

2:05

S. Thompson used to call it in his columns, The

2:07

Wisdom. And some

2:10

of my favorite mythological stories

2:12

are cautionary tales, examples

2:15

of what can happen if we're not

2:17

careful. And one of

2:19

my favorite versions of that

2:21

kind of story, that kind of

2:23

mythological teaching

2:26

tool, is the

2:28

famous story of Daedalus and Icarus.

2:32

If you know your ancient Greek philosophy,

2:34

you will recall that Daedalus is

2:36

a master craftsman, an inventor. He

2:39

can seemingly make anything. He's the one who

2:42

built the famous labyrinth

2:44

that held the Minotaur, and it

2:47

was the king of Minoa,

2:49

the Cretan area on the island

2:51

of Crete that had Daedalus build

2:53

this forum. But at a certain

2:56

point, he turns against Daedalus and

2:58

imprisons Daedalus and Icarus. But

3:00

of course, when you imprison one of

3:02

the great inventors of all time, he's

3:05

going to try to invent a way to get out. And

3:08

in this case, he does. He creates

3:10

wings for he and his son. Wings

3:14

made of multiple different materials,

3:16

including things like feathers and

3:18

beeswax, and he and his son

3:20

are going to be able to fly out of this prison.

3:23

But Daedalus warns his son before

3:25

doing so. He

3:28

tells him not to get

3:30

complacent and allow himself to

3:32

fly too close to the water, because if

3:34

you're too low, the moisture, he says, from

3:37

the sea will ruin the wings, and you'll

3:39

lose your power of flight and you'll crash.

3:42

Conversely, he warns

3:44

him about getting filled

3:46

with hubris and forgetting how dangerous

3:49

this is and allowing himself to fly

3:51

too high, because if he does that,

3:53

the sun will melt the beeswax

3:55

that hold these wings together and

3:57

you'll plummet and fall. And,

4:00

of course, being an ancient Greek

4:03

mythological tale, how would

4:05

it work if everything just went fine? And, of

4:07

course, it doesn't. Icarus

4:09

forgets his father's warnings, gets

4:12

taken sort of over by the

4:15

enthusiasm that happens when a human

4:17

being gets a chance to fly like a bird,

4:20

allows himself to fly too high, and

4:22

the sun melts, the bees wax,

4:25

the wings fall apart, and

4:27

Icarus plunges into the sea and

4:29

dies. The

4:32

moral of the story, the takeaway from

4:34

all this, is supposed

4:36

to be a warning

4:39

about ambition and

4:42

allowing oneself to

4:44

get too ambitious, to forget

4:47

that there is a middle

4:49

ground that everyone should shoot for.

4:53

In philosophy, this is sometimes called the

4:55

golden mean, and it

4:57

involves things that are considered to be virtues

4:59

when you have them in the right amount,

5:02

but if you have them in the wrong amount, can

5:04

turn into vices. And

5:07

one of the examples that's often used in

5:09

the ancient Greek philosophies is courage.

5:12

The right amount of courage is a virtue. If

5:16

you have too little of it, it's cowardice, and

5:18

that's a vice. But if you have

5:20

too much of it, it's recklessness, and that's

5:22

a vice too. The

5:26

question of ambition is

5:28

an equally interesting one. It's

5:30

a very Goldilocks-type concept, this

5:32

golden mean. This porridge

5:34

is too hot, this porridge is too cold, this

5:36

porridge is just right. Well,

5:38

if you're dealing with ambition and not porridge,

5:41

where is the just right point?

5:44

It's not easy to pin down, is it? The

5:51

dictionary defines ambition

5:55

as an ardent desire for

5:57

rank, fame, or power. It's

6:00

described as a character trait that

6:04

involves people who are driven to succeed

6:07

at lofty goals, right? It

6:09

involves drive, ambition, tenacity, the

6:12

pursuit of excellence, the desire

6:14

to be the best. The

6:19

interesting thing about the desire to be

6:21

the best though is that

6:23

that's a competitive thing. It

6:25

means you're competing with other people

6:27

who also want to be the

6:29

best. You're seeking distinction, right? Fame.

6:33

You want to be seen as better than

6:35

other people. There's

6:39

an interesting line Edmund Burke once said

6:41

that fame is the passion which is

6:43

the instinct of all great souls, right?

6:46

They seek distinction and

6:48

to a certain degree this is positive unless

6:51

it gets too intense to

6:55

steal a phrase that was originally used

6:57

for something else. Ambition is

6:59

a bit like fire, a dangerous

7:01

servant and a cruel master

7:03

and you can see what happens when it gets

7:06

out of control. In

7:08

the case of a mythological figure like

7:10

Icarus, his

7:13

over ambition or his

7:16

hubris obviously cost

7:18

him his life. And

7:21

in most cases where

7:23

something like ambition is out

7:26

of balance, right? Where you have too much of it,

7:29

it only burns the person who's trying to achieve

7:31

the fame and distinction, right? If you're a runner

7:34

and you want to be the fastest human being in the

7:36

world, maybe you cut corners,

7:38

maybe you cheat, maybe you take

7:40

performance enhancing drugs, but at

7:43

the end of the day the person who

7:45

paid the price for that is you. But

7:49

what if when Icarus' hubris

7:51

gets the best of him and

7:54

the sun melts his beeswax holding

7:56

the wings together and he falls,

7:59

what if he falls? on a crowd of people?

8:02

What if it isn't just about Icarus anymore? What

8:05

if the area where

8:07

you seek fame and

8:09

success and distinction

8:13

involves the lives and destinies

8:17

of lots and lots of people? That's

8:21

when this question of this

8:26

virtue of ambition or

8:28

desire to be the best can

8:31

become ultimately at

8:34

times genocidal. I mean

8:37

take for example a figure like

8:39

Julius Caesar from the Roman Republican

8:41

era, right? There's

8:44

a great story about Caesar and it very

8:46

well may not be true. It's recounted in

8:48

a couple of different sources which doesn't mean

8:50

it's true. The

8:52

Roman writer Suetonius recounts

8:55

a version of this tale as does the

8:57

Greek author Plutarch, but

8:59

they talk about when Julius Caesar was

9:01

stationed in Spain. He was about 32

9:03

years old at the time. Suetonius says

9:05

he's reading a history of Alexander

9:08

the Great. Plutarch says he

9:10

is sitting at the foot of

9:12

a statue of Alexander the Great who lived

9:14

a couple of centuries before Caesar. Suetonius

9:17

says he was sighing and

9:19

had a vexing look on his face. Plutarch

9:21

says he's out and out weeping and when

9:24

somebody says why are you crying Caesar is supposed

9:26

to have replied don't I have good reason to?

9:28

At the age

9:30

that I am now Alexander

9:33

the Great had conquered you know all

9:35

these kingdoms and what have I done

9:37

of distinction? Showing

9:39

that in Caesar's mind

9:41

he's not just competing with the other

9:44

august figures of his own era right the

9:46

other great human

9:48

beings who are pushing the

9:50

envelope of distinction and fame and notoriety

9:52

and power in the ancient Roman Republic.

9:55

Julius Caesar's competing on

9:58

a celestial level. He

10:00

wants to be the best that ever was, and

10:02

when you're playing on that

10:05

level of rarefied turf, you're up

10:07

against people like Alexander the Great.

10:12

But when your over-ambition sends

10:15

you crashing to the ground,

10:19

if you're Julius Caesar, you land

10:21

on a lot of people. As

10:24

author Tom Holland said about Caesar,

10:26

he said Caesar's own ambitions were

10:28

one day to consume the entire

10:31

Republic. Clearly

10:33

that never would have happened if Caesar's

10:35

ambitions had been to become the

10:37

best flute player in ancient

10:39

Rome, but he wanted to

10:42

be the great ruler,

10:44

conqueror, empire builder.

10:48

And when that's what you want to be famous for, it

10:51

means you're going to have to kill a lot of people

10:53

to win the gold medal. In fact, if you look at

10:55

the way the Roman Republic is

10:58

set up, it's set up to encourage

11:00

distinction between its greatest figures,

11:02

and that worked for Rome for a long

11:04

time. It was almost part

11:06

of the plan, right? Get your greatest figures desiring

11:09

to outdo one another, and when they do

11:11

great deeds, they pull the Republic with them.

11:15

There's also a built-in mechanism to keep it

11:17

from getting out of control. It's sort of

11:19

a crabs-in-a-bucket dynamic, where if any one figure

11:22

starts to become too successful and almost climb

11:24

out of the bucket, the other great figures,

11:26

the other crabs, pull them back down. And

11:29

that works until it doesn't. And

11:32

eventually somebody barbecues the Republic, and

11:34

that's Julius Caesar. And

11:37

the number of people who die because of that

11:40

is legion. The

11:43

reasons for this are recognized

11:45

by other people who

11:48

try to compete in

11:50

this same kind of celestial

11:52

historical event. There's a

11:54

very interesting line from Napoleon

11:56

Bonaparte, written in the 1790s, where he talks

11:59

about the danger of ambition. And remember,

12:02

Bonaparte's one of the few people that you could call a

12:05

peer of a guy like Alexander or Julius

12:07

Caesar. If they were going to be tried

12:09

in the celestial court of historical justice and

12:12

you had to have a jury of your

12:14

peers, Napoleon could be one of those people

12:16

sitting on the jury. And he once said

12:18

that ambition, which overthrows governments

12:20

and private fortunes, which

12:23

feeds on blood and crimes,

12:26

ambition is like all the nordant

12:28

passions, he wrote, a violent and

12:30

unthinking fever that ceases only when

12:32

life ceases, like a

12:35

conflagration which, fanned by a

12:37

pitiless wind, ends only after

12:39

all has been consumed. And

12:43

the poster child for

12:45

the dangers associated with outsize,

12:48

out-of-control ambition, the geopolitical,

12:52

real-life example of

12:55

an Icarus in global affairs, is

12:58

Alexander the Great. Of

13:02

course, Icarus clearly failed at what he

13:05

was trying to do. If you're trying

13:07

to fly across the water and instead

13:10

you crash into the sea and die, that's

13:12

not success. In

13:14

Alexander's case, measuring how

13:16

well he did depends on what he was trying to do

13:19

in the first place, doesn't it? If

13:21

he was trying to become eternally

13:23

famous, achieve glory,

13:26

conquer lots of places, and write

13:29

his name in the sands of time

13:31

more deeply and enduringly than anyone else

13:33

ever, he might have to

13:35

give the guy an A+. After

13:38

all, he lived more than 2,300 years ago, and

13:42

he's probably, I mean, biblical personages

13:45

aside, the most famous early figure in

13:47

history that most people, if you brought

13:50

a microphone and started asking them on

13:52

the street of any major city in

13:54

the world, that most people would recognize,

13:56

don't you think? The

14:00

guy still has books coming

14:02

out about him or some aspect of

14:04

his life or career every year. Regularly

14:08

has movies and TV shows and all kinds of

14:10

things like that coming out. Podcasts

14:13

too, it must be said. And

14:16

he's fascinated people ever

14:18

since his life. Yours truly,

14:20

clearly also. There's

14:22

a ton of reasons for this. First of all, we should

14:25

notice that he's one of the better examples you can use

14:27

to prove something that historians have

14:29

understood for a very long time, which is

14:31

that you interpret people through the

14:33

lens and the morality and the standards

14:36

and ethics of the time that you

14:38

live in. So Alexander has been seen

14:41

any number of different ways based

14:44

on who's doing the viewing. In

14:46

some eras he's been seen as

14:48

a almost philosopher king. In

14:51

others he's been seen as a

14:54

great representative of the idea of

14:57

the civilizing

14:59

force. We've

15:01

used the term historical arsonist before. In

15:03

some eras Alexander was seen as someone

15:06

who had to come along to break

15:08

the log jam that was keeping the

15:10

world from moving forward. A great blender

15:12

of civilizations, a great spreader of Hellenism,

15:14

or a butcher. Depends

15:18

on who's doing the viewing, right? Guys

15:20

like Alexander are the equivalent of holding

15:23

a mirror up to the society that's

15:25

assessing them. Like

15:27

so many great figures in history who

15:30

did amazing things, Alexander

15:32

benefited from nepotism. He

15:35

is the son of a king, right? He's

15:37

in a monarchy. That's

15:39

the best kind of nepotism if you're trying

15:42

to start your career off with a great

15:44

advantage. I mean, what's the old line that,

15:46

you know, they start off on third and

15:48

think they hit a triple? I

15:50

mean, don't you think a guy like Caesar or Napoleon

15:53

or Genghis Khan would have loved that

15:55

sort of a head start, right? When

15:58

Caesar's crying supposedly. at the

16:00

foot of Alexander's statue because

16:03

he hasn't achieved as much by the

16:05

same age as Alexander did. Well, Alexander had a huge

16:07

head start, didn't he? A

16:09

lot of guys who have the words,

16:11

the Great, after their name fall into that category.

16:13

I mean, you can look at a guy like

16:16

Frederick the Great of Prussia. He

16:18

had a father who did a lot

16:20

of the heavy lifting of building all

16:23

of the edifice for conquest

16:25

that would come later. He centralized a

16:28

state. He organized a taxation system. He

16:30

built a bureaucracy. And oh yeah, he

16:32

created a maserati of an army and

16:35

then handed the keys to the sports

16:37

car to his son to go

16:39

off and do amazing things and then get the

16:42

title, The Great, added to his

16:44

name. Probably should have been his dad's title when you

16:46

think about it. And you

16:48

can say similar things for

16:50

Alexander. Alexander's

16:52

father was an amazing figure. He

16:55

is such an incredible person that had

16:58

Alexander not lived, we would probably know

17:00

his dad's name instead. And maybe his

17:02

dad would have been called the Great.

17:06

Instead his dad was called Philip II of

17:09

a place called Macdonia. Quick

17:13

word on pronunciation here, or mispronunciation

17:15

as the case may be. I'm

17:18

one of those people who've long been

17:20

a heretic on the matter and pronounce

17:22

Macdonia with the hard C sound instead

17:24

of the more common in English soft

17:26

C sound. I have a

17:28

lot of reasons for that. If you'd like to read

17:30

a long-winded account of my thinking, we will link to

17:32

a written article in the show notes about it. But

17:35

I've been a heretic since I first encountered some

17:38

of the history writing in the 1980s where some

17:40

of those historians simply took the question out

17:42

of the hands of the reader by substituting

17:44

a K for a C in the words

17:46

like Macadonian or Scythian.

17:50

As you follow the tumbling

17:53

etymological dominoes on this

17:55

question, you might find

17:57

yourself a heretic too. If

18:00

I'm mispronouncing the word in your mind, just

18:02

know that I'm doing it intentionally. Macedonia,

18:05

though, is an area north of Greece. And

18:08

whether or not it's composed of people you

18:10

should call Greek has been

18:12

an ongoing issue from Philip

18:15

the Second's time until now. For

18:18

different reasons, though, in Philip the Second's

18:20

time, you couldn't participate, for example, in

18:22

the Olympic Games unless you were considered

18:24

Greek. And the Greeks during

18:26

the time period had debates about this,

18:28

and Philip the Second, amongst other Macedonian

18:30

kings, worked hard to try to make

18:32

sure he and his people

18:34

were considered meeting the criteria that

18:37

would classify them as Greek. These

18:39

days the question is still an open one, but

18:42

a lot of it revolves around all

18:44

of the DNA that has

18:46

moved into the region north of Greece over

18:48

all the centuries since Alexander the Great's time,

18:51

23 centuries or more. A

18:54

lot of different peoples move into that area.

18:56

How does that affect the ethnic makeup? Well,

18:59

people still talk about it. One

19:04

thing you can say, though, is that

19:06

this area north of Greece in classical

19:08

Greek times wasn't very

19:10

much like classical Greece. Classical

19:13

Greece, of course, is the Greece of the

19:15

Greek and Persian wars, the Peloponnesian wars. So

19:18

think 500 BC,

19:20

BCE, 400, 300, that

19:22

whole range, populated, of

19:24

course, by city-states. The

19:27

famous ones, right? Athens, Sparta,

19:29

Corinth, Argos, Thebes. All

19:33

these places could almost be

19:35

likened to small-scale countries, you know, where the

19:37

people were patriotic towards their cities, where the

19:39

cities went to war with one another. They

19:43

usually controlled a decent chunk of

19:45

the surrounding territory, and

19:47

the people who lived there were

19:50

considered to be sort of the members

19:53

of a country, but the countries were small-scale places. All of

19:55

these places tend to be small-scale.

20:00

to have thriving middle classes. The

20:04

citizens, up until a certain time period,

20:06

usually made up the militaries of these

20:08

places, and these city-states fought each other.

20:12

These armies were often militia

20:14

armies in terms of their

20:16

organization. So if you were

20:18

a farmer in Thebes, and all of a sudden you guys

20:20

were gonna go to war against Corinth,

20:22

well you were going to go

20:25

grab your armor from over the

20:27

fireplace, and it might have been

20:29

the same armor your dad and

20:31

your granddad used. Grab your three-foot

20:33

diameter round shield, put

20:35

the sword in your belt, get your six

20:38

to nine foot long long spear, and

20:40

run down the hill to join your

20:43

neighbors in the local phalanx,

20:45

the closed body of troops who

20:47

stood shoulder to shoulder, five

20:50

or eight ranks deep, and

20:53

met the other citizens of

20:55

the other city-state. And when the fighting

20:57

was done and the decision had,

20:59

you'd go back home, put the armor back

21:01

over the fireplace, grab the plow, and get

21:03

back to the farm. Things

21:07

were very different though, north of Greece

21:09

and Macedonia, where they really

21:11

didn't have a thriving middle class, and

21:13

they didn't have any city-states. They had

21:15

villages and towns and hamlets. Instead

21:18

of a thriving middle class, they sort of had

21:20

a group that tilled the land. I'm not sure if

21:23

you called them peasants, that would be exactly right, but

21:25

you definitely had a nobility that was often

21:28

referred to by a Greek word that's

21:30

often translated to knights or

21:33

barons, and

21:35

these people owed their allegiance to a

21:37

king. Now even

21:40

the idea of having a king

21:42

to the Greeks of this

21:44

time period was a sign, a

21:46

mark of barbarism. Kings

21:49

were what the Egyptians had with a pharaoh.

21:52

Kings were what the Persians had with

21:54

their great King of Kings. In

21:57

the Greek city-state you often had all kinds of

21:59

different governments, but kings weren't usually a part

22:01

of it. And one of the states that

22:04

had kings, Sparta, famously had two of them.

22:07

Kind of takes the whole, you know, absolute

22:09

ruler side of the question out of the

22:11

equation, doesn't it, if you have two of

22:13

them. Reminds me

22:15

a little of the Roman Republic's concept

22:18

of having not one consul, but

22:20

two consuls, right? Divides the

22:22

power and authority a little bit. But

22:25

if you had a king, that was a sure sign that

22:27

you probably weren't Greek. And if your

22:30

king was polygamous, well that was another

22:32

sure sign it probably wasn't a Greek

22:34

place, because in, you know, Greece of

22:36

the time period we're talking about, polygamy

22:38

was another sure sign of barbarism. Add

22:43

to that the fact that

22:45

these Macedonians lived a much

22:47

more sort of a rustic

22:49

existence than your average cosmopolitan

22:51

Greek city-state. Cosmopolitan by comparison,

22:55

you look at Macadonian Royal Society

22:58

and it looks more like a mafia crime

23:00

family than anything you can think of. Well

23:02

mafia crime family, if you combined it with

23:04

a daytime soap opera. A mafia

23:07

crime family with some more homosexuality and

23:09

sorcery than most mafia crime families are

23:11

known for. I wrote

23:14

down some of the adjectives used by historians

23:16

to describe, you know, the

23:18

Macadonian royal family situation and they talked

23:20

about assassinations, executions,

23:22

civil wars, hostage-taking,

23:24

incest, drunken murders,

23:27

adultery, witchcraft. Makes

23:30

for great reading, but you might not want to live

23:32

there. It

23:34

does mean that the kings

23:36

of Macadonia who came of age

23:38

and managed to rule were in

23:41

a sort of a Darwinian sense

23:43

pretty tough survivors. In

23:46

fact, Philip II had two older brothers.

23:49

It's interesting to note that Philip II's mother

23:51

gave birth to three sons. All three became

23:53

kings and all

23:56

three died violently. One

23:59

was killed in wars fighting

24:01

Macadonia's enemies. Another was assassinated, which

24:03

is a pretty normal

24:05

thing to happen. Actually, two of them were assassinated.

24:09

Macadonia was a territory with

24:12

powerful enemies all around them.

24:15

They had the Illyrian tribes in one

24:17

direction, which again the Greeks considered to

24:19

be barbarians. They had the

24:21

Thracian tribes, and there were like 40

24:23

different Thracian tribes, also to

24:26

the north in the other direction. What

24:29

this meant was twofold. One, they were always

24:31

fighting these people, but two, they were often

24:33

intermarrying their royal families to try to cement

24:35

deals. There are

24:37

strong strains of Thracian,

24:41

Illyrian, and Epirote

24:43

blood that runs through the royal

24:45

families of the Macadonians. Traditionally,

24:50

Philip II is seen as a guy

24:53

who brings Macadonia to power

24:55

from nothing. That

24:58

is probably not true, considering

25:00

the newfangled histories about him,

25:02

because one of the great

25:04

things that revisionist historians have figured out

25:06

in a lot of these cases is

25:08

that any time the history sort of

25:10

portrays someone as creating

25:13

something from nothing, it probably

25:16

wasn't true. That there were probably

25:18

foundational things bubbling up under the

25:20

surface that didn't make their appearance

25:22

felt in the history books until

25:24

someone was able to reach a

25:26

critical mass. That's probably

25:28

the case with Philip II, who was

25:30

probably building upon state formation

25:33

and development that his ancestors had been

25:35

able to lay down, lay

25:37

down a few levels of solidity

25:39

that a guy like Philip II could

25:41

finally run with in

25:44

the same way that he laid down the Maserati

25:47

type situation that his son got to

25:49

run with. And

25:53

one of the reasons that Philip is so

25:55

able to exploit these

25:58

maneuvers done by some of his his

26:00

predecessors is the

26:02

stability he brings to the leadership

26:04

question. I mean, that's the

26:06

key issue. If you look at it

26:08

in hindsight, that's keeping Macedonia from doing

26:11

better. They can't keep competent

26:13

leaders on the throne for very long. At

26:15

one point before Philip takes over, Macedonia

26:17

is going to have five kings in six years,

26:21

and most of them die violently. That's

26:23

a difficult situation to overcome, even

26:25

with a lot of advantages. And what sort of

26:28

advantages are we talking about? Well,

26:31

one is that Macedonia has got quite a bit

26:33

of arable land. Compare that

26:35

to the powerful Greek city-states in the south,

26:38

who are splitting

26:40

up the land between all the different

26:42

city-states. So no city-state controls at all.

26:45

They've been cutting down trees for hundreds

26:47

of years in Greece

26:49

proper, which isn't fantastic tree-growing

26:52

territory to begin with. Macedonia

26:54

has got a lot of trees. In fact, the

26:57

ancient sources record that the best and

26:59

most important timber in this

27:01

period, and remember timber is used

27:03

for everything, including the building of

27:05

navies, very important in ancient Greece.

27:08

The best timber comes from Macedonia. They've

27:11

got wonderful areas to farm and

27:14

to graze cattle and horses.

27:18

They control important mineral and precious

27:20

metal mines, and we'll get more

27:22

of them. And

27:24

they've also got a population

27:27

that will prove to be

27:30

very culturally and

27:32

maybe lifestyle-wise good

27:35

at fighting. This

27:37

is sort of an interesting thing to examine

27:39

compared to our modern era, when people

27:42

can kill other people with a

27:45

push of a button from drones

27:48

halfway around the world, but in

27:50

an era where you actually have to kill

27:53

people by shoving a knife into their throat

27:55

or something like that, the

27:57

way you're brought up can influence how well

27:59

you're able to do that. I mean

28:03

there's a big difference isn't there between

28:05

somebody raised on a ranch

28:08

like a cow hand who

28:11

slaughters and drives cattle for example and a

28:13

kid growing up in Los Angeles playing Dungeons

28:15

& Dragons. Now the Dungeons & Dragons kid

28:17

with his video games and all that might

28:20

be very good at the drone strikes from

28:22

the other side of the globe but

28:24

one's going to think that when it comes to

28:27

killing an animal or a person

28:29

by hand there might be

28:32

some advantages to the one who's doing that

28:34

on the farm and in

28:37

his book By

28:39

the Spear Philip II Alexander the Great

28:41

and the Rise and Fall of the

28:43

Macadonian Empire historian Ian Worthington sort of

28:45

draws this distinction he compares an Athenian

28:48

to a Macadonian

28:51

and compares their cultures and the way

28:54

they grow up and the carrots and

28:56

sticks in their societies and how something

28:58

like that might actually have an effect

29:00

on the battlefield when you

29:02

don't get to shoot somebody from a hundred

29:05

yards away but you actually have to walk

29:07

up and shove a spear

29:09

into them and Worthington

29:12

talks about the

29:14

Athenian lifestyle you know

29:16

probably the most like

29:18

the Los Angeles Dungeons & Dragons kids

29:20

of this era and he says quote

29:23

the whole fabric of Macadonian society

29:25

was alien to Greeks and

29:28

so abhorred by them a

29:30

Macadonian male was an entirely different

29:32

animal from his Athenian counterpart for

29:35

example who came of age in 18 was then eligible

29:38

to attend the assembly which is the

29:40

body that debates and votes on domestic

29:43

and foreign policy he says served

29:45

in the army as and when

29:47

required was eligible for jury

29:50

service when he turned 30 and if

29:52

he came from a well-to-do

29:55

family attended symposia to engage

29:57

in intellectual discussions before letting

30:00

down and swapping talk for

30:02

sex with the ever-present courtesans."

30:07

He then says, quote, Macadonia

30:10

was utterly different. No

30:12

one was allowed to wash in warm water,

30:14

except women who had just given birth. No

30:17

man could recline at a banquet until

30:19

he had speared and killed one of

30:22

the ferocious wild boars without using a

30:24

net to trap it. A

30:26

soldier had to wear a rope or sash

30:28

around his waist until he had killed his

30:30

first man in battle. To

30:33

achieve these expectations, he writes, boys

30:35

from an early age were taught to fight, ride

30:38

a horse, and hunt wild

30:40

boar, foxes, birds, and even

30:42

lions. End quote.

30:46

He then says that Macadonian

30:48

society was rugged and

30:50

had more in common with the

30:52

tough love of Homeric heroes or

30:54

even Viking society than classical Greece.

30:59

According to the ancient writers, there are all

31:01

sorts of other things that the Macadonians have

31:05

as part of their lifestyle that make them

31:07

seem a little like Vikings. They're supposed to

31:09

wear animal skins or bear pelts, drink

31:12

their alcohol out of big

31:14

drinking horns. Right? Reminds

31:16

you of Vikings right there, doesn't

31:18

it? The Athenians, who in a

31:20

very cultured way at their symposia, where they're

31:22

going to talk politics and all these sorts

31:24

of things, they would always take

31:27

their wine and mix it with water, cut

31:29

the strength down, you know, to make

31:32

sure people weren't just passing out at

31:34

their parties. They could continue to have

31:36

a nice, high-minded conversation. The Macadonians wanted

31:38

their wines straight and unmixed, and

31:41

they weren't going to have polite little

31:43

sober conversations. They were going to have

31:45

drinking parties where they were going to

31:47

have competitions to see who could drink

31:49

the most wine the fastest. Right? You

31:52

get two guys standing up there with giant terrines of

31:54

unmixed wine, and they both go at it to try

31:56

to see who can last the longest without just passing

31:59

out at their feet. different

32:01

kind of culture entirely. And this

32:03

is the kind of culture that

32:06

Philip is born into right around 383, 382 BC BCE. The murderous

32:08

soap opera of Macedonian

32:15

royal life is in full

32:17

swing during his birth. And

32:20

you don't know what to believe. The ancient

32:22

sources are really hard on women, especially women

32:24

of some power and authority. The Romans and

32:26

the Greek historians always treat them as kind

32:28

of uppity, you're evil

32:30

or borderline malicious

32:32

just by being powerful and assertive.

32:35

Adrian Goldsworthy, the modern historian, suggests

32:38

we not treat these stories specifically

32:40

as though they're 100% true. But

32:44

Philip's mom, a woman

32:46

named Eurydice, is

32:49

obviously married to Philip's dad, but supposedly

32:52

is in a sexual

32:55

relationship with her son-in-law,

32:58

Philip's sister's husband, and they

33:00

both plot against Philip's dad.

33:04

The plot fails and

33:06

Philip's dad forgives them and they

33:09

maybe go on to continue to maneuver

33:11

behind his back. And then when Philip's

33:13

dad dies, the

33:16

guy who's shacking up with Philip's

33:18

mom is continually inserting

33:21

his hands and trying to manipulate

33:23

the kingship. He may have been

33:25

involved by hook or

33:27

by crook in the assassination of Philip's brother

33:29

when he's a king. So

33:33

it's an interesting family dynamic

33:35

to say the least, but

33:38

nothing unusual given Macedonian history.

33:40

Around the year 368, Philip

33:43

is sent as a hostage to

33:45

the Greek city-state of Thebes. Now

33:48

the reason you send a royal family

33:51

member to another city-state or place

33:53

like Thebes is as

33:55

part of a peace agreement. It sort of

33:58

seals the deal. to go back

34:00

in the peace agreement when we have a bunch of

34:02

your royal family members with us. Think

34:05

about the phenomenon of pages in

34:07

the middle ages. It's not that dissimilar, and Philip

34:09

would have been treated nicely. It wasn't like they

34:11

threw them in a dungeon. But

34:15

it's in Thebes that supposedly Philip

34:17

learns a lot of

34:19

important things about warfare, because

34:21

he's in Thebes at a very

34:24

specific time in history, the time

34:26

in history where Thebes is for

34:28

a short period sort

34:30

of the kings of the Greek

34:32

scene, because they've recently, in

34:34

371 BCE, defeated

34:38

and broken Spartan power. At

34:41

a famous battle called Luchtra, maybe

34:44

the greatest Greek general up until

34:46

this time period, a guy named

34:48

Epaminondas was the guy

34:51

in charge, and he was doing

34:53

really interesting things militarily, and

34:55

Philip is housed with one of his

34:57

generals, and so he's learning

34:59

things, things that he will, well, at

35:02

least the tradition holds, build off of.

35:05

He's going to create an army that builds

35:07

on the foundation that he's taught when he's

35:09

in Thebes. The other thing that happens in

35:11

Thebes is Philip is exposed to all sorts

35:14

of high-minded things. I mean, the guy he

35:16

stays with is a follower

35:19

of the Pythagorean sort of

35:21

lifestyle, I mean, vegetarianism, self-sacrifice,

35:27

a whole bunch of things that Philip

35:29

really wasn't personality-wise, but he's

35:31

getting a chance to really see how

35:33

city-states operate, how their government works, and

35:35

to be exposed to these sorts of

35:37

philosophical ideas that maybe

35:39

wouldn't have been too

35:41

common for a bearskin-wearing

35:44

drinking horn-using, you know,

35:47

barbarian. Meanwhile,

35:50

Philip's oldest brother is assassinated

35:52

during a war dance. His

35:55

next oldest brother recalls Philip from

35:58

Thebes, and he's killed in

36:00

a fight with the Illyrians and another

36:03

4,000 macadonian troops with him,

36:06

and this is the scene that Philip

36:08

finds himself in once he

36:10

sort of reaches the kingship. Now

36:15

the first thing to say about Philip is

36:18

you just don't know much about

36:20

him that you can depend on, because like

36:23

his son Alexander, he is

36:25

the subject of an immense propaganda

36:28

campaign, and the Athenians in this time

36:30

period who were his enemies are the

36:32

best propagandists in Greece, they have some

36:35

of the best orators and speakers going,

36:38

one of them is named Demosthenes, and

36:40

Demosthenes, I mean he'll write

36:42

a bunch of arguments against Philip known

36:44

as the Philippics, and much

36:47

of what we know about Philip comes

36:49

from the Philippics, but the entire design

36:51

and approach of the Philippics is to

36:53

make Philip sound like he's Darth Vader

36:55

or Sauron breathing down Athens' neck, so

36:58

maybe not exactly a

37:02

realistic or fair account

37:04

of the guy. I've

37:06

always loved the way historian Will Durant,

37:09

gosh, I mean I want to say it's almost

37:11

a hundred years ago now, writing about

37:13

Philip describes him, and it may not be

37:15

a fair description either,

37:17

because some of the modern-day historians are

37:20

much kinder to Philip in terms of

37:22

treating him as a more cultured man,

37:24

a more well-spoken man than

37:26

the old-style historians, but Will Durant

37:29

gives a quick rundown that

37:31

just describes how amazing the

37:33

guy is, both in pro and cons,

37:35

and this is what he has to

37:37

say about the personality of Philip the

37:40

Great, or the man

37:42

who maybe should be named Philip the Great,

37:46

in his book The Life of Greece, and

37:48

he says, quote, He

37:50

had all the virtues except those

37:53

of civilization. He was strong

37:55

in body and will, athletic

37:57

and handsome, a magnificent animal,

38:00

trying now and then to be an

38:02

Athenian gentleman. Like his

38:04

famous son, he was a man

38:06

of violent temper and abounding generosity,

38:09

loving battle as much, strong

38:11

drink more. Unlike

38:13

Alexander, he was a jovial laughter, and

38:15

raised to high office a slave who

38:17

amused him. He liked

38:20

boys, but liked women better, and married

38:22

as many of them as he could. He

38:25

continues a little farther. Most

38:28

of all, he liked stalwart men, who

38:30

could risk their lives all day, and

38:32

gamble and carouse with him half the

38:34

night. He was literally, before

38:36

Alexander, the bravest of the brave,

38:39

and left a part of himself

38:41

on every battlefield." He

38:46

had a subtle intelligence, capable

38:48

of patiently awaiting his chance,

38:51

and of moving resolutely through

38:53

difficult means to distant ends.

38:55

In diplomacy, he was affable

38:58

and treacherous. He broke a

39:00

promise with a light heart, and was always

39:02

ready to make another. He

39:04

recognized no morals for governments,

39:06

and looked upon lies and

39:08

bribes as humane substitutes for

39:10

slaughter. But he was lenient

39:13

in victory, and usually gave the defeated

39:15

Greeks better terms than they gave one

39:17

another. All who met

39:19

him, except the obstinate Demosthenes, liked

39:21

him, and ranked him as the

39:24

strongest and most interesting character of

39:26

his time." And

39:29

Demosthenes, who really didn't like him, still

39:31

had to say, quoting

39:33

Demosthenes, "...What a man!

39:36

For the sake of power and

39:38

dominion, he had an eye struck

39:40

out, a shoulder broken, an arm

39:42

and leg paralyzed." To

39:46

personality-wise, we're not sure

39:48

what can be said about Philip. Here's

39:51

what you can say for a fact, though. This

39:54

is a guy who took

39:56

the field with his army every

39:59

single year. year of his twenty-three-year

40:01

reign except one, and the

40:03

one where he didn't, it was because he

40:06

was recovering from wounds, of

40:08

which he got several. As

40:11

Demosthenes said, he is a

40:13

guy who sacrificed multiple body parts, and

40:15

that was not any

40:17

sort of a lie. I mean, the man, by the

40:19

end of his reign, is crippled. He

40:22

loses an eye. He

40:24

has a collarbone broken. His

40:26

hand is supposedly completely mangled. He

40:29

takes a spear through his thigh,

40:31

his lower leg, both bones broken

40:33

at the same time. He

40:38

walked by the end of his life with

40:40

a pronounced limp. But

40:43

he took part in twenty-eight

40:45

campaigns, eleven sieges. Demosthenes says

40:47

he captured forty-five cities. This

40:49

is how you build an

40:51

empire, right? Or something

40:53

that's going to be an empire. And

40:57

like his son, and like Macadonian

40:59

commanders before him, he

41:01

fought in the front. These

41:04

are not Napoleonic-style commanders who

41:06

sit behind the army and

41:09

command the troops as the battle is

41:11

going on in real time, and move

41:13

forces around, and send in reserves, and

41:16

counter-march your forces to match what

41:18

the enemy is doing. These

41:20

are people who set things up in advance. They

41:23

build the military forces. They pick the commanders. They

41:26

position them on the field before the battle

41:28

starts, and then before the fighting actually commences,

41:30

they put themselves in the front rank in

41:33

a Homeric kind of style, right? A

41:36

hero king. And they command. And when you do

41:38

that and you fight twenty-eight

41:40

campaigns, you're going to

41:43

get wounded. And the number of times that

41:45

Philip's troops thought he was dead on the

41:47

battlefield is numerous. In

41:50

1977, to just take

41:53

a little break from all these, he

41:55

said, she said, kind of historical accounts

41:57

from the past and all the propaganda.

42:00

An archaeologist found

42:02

a tomb in

42:05

northern Greece, or the area where

42:07

Macadonia was during this time period,

42:09

the traditional Macadonian heartland. It

42:12

was under a mound, a hill,

42:14

a man-created hill, a tell. And

42:17

in the tomb they found multiple bodies,

42:19

but in one specific tomb around

42:23

a bunch of armor and

42:25

magnificent materials, they

42:28

found a golden box

42:31

with a Macadonian star etched

42:33

into the top, and purple

42:35

cloth, purple being the royal color. Inside

42:39

the box were bones. The

42:44

way that Macadonian royalty

42:46

was often treated

42:49

after death was what we might

42:51

call today a partial cremation. Because

42:54

unlike today's cremations, where you are left with

42:57

ashes and bone ships, very small bone ships,

43:00

in a lot of the funerals

43:02

during the time around Philip's lifespan,

43:04

it was common to have a fire that was only

43:07

hot enough to burn the skin off. And

43:09

then the bones would be taken, washed in wine,

43:11

and put in a container of

43:14

the sort that in 1977 was found in this tomb.

43:18

So you can still look at the bones and

43:20

analyze the bones. In addition

43:22

to the bones, there were things like armor.

43:25

For example, a specific sign

43:27

that maybe we're dealing with Philip II's bones

43:30

in this tomb are greaves

43:32

that were found. Greaves are the armor that

43:34

goes on the shins. And

43:37

these greaves were shaped differently. One in

43:39

particular, shorter than the other, shaped

43:42

for a person who'd suffered a bad

43:44

leg injury. And

43:46

in 77, they thought it might be

43:48

Philip II. Now, I think about 90%

43:51

of the people that are the

43:53

experts in the field would say, it's pretty close

43:55

to unanimous, but maybe not quite, would say that

43:58

this is Philip II. And what that means is

44:00

you can get some hard concrete

44:02

stuff about the guy. He

44:04

was between 5'6 and 5'8, for example, which

44:08

might seem a little short to us

44:10

today, but historians often say that that's

44:12

not that uncommon for the people

44:14

of the time period in this area. Although,

44:17

if he were a little shorter than the

44:20

average Macedonian, that

44:22

would sort of jibe with his son's

44:25

height too, who was also shorter than

44:27

the average Macedonian, so maybe Alexander got

44:29

it from his dad. The skeleton

44:32

also shows the wounds,

44:34

including the most obvious

44:37

during his lifetime that no one would have

44:39

been able to avoid the fact that an

44:41

arrow had struck him in the face and

44:44

took out an eye. Actually, it's

44:46

worse than that. It didn't take out the

44:48

eye because a physician had to scoop out

44:50

the eye with what amounted to a spoon,

44:52

and when you think of

44:55

someone doing that to you without any

44:57

sort of real anesthesia or anesthetic, it

44:59

boggles the mind to consider the amount of

45:02

pain we're talking about here. I

45:05

got that rundown of Philip's

45:07

campaign record from

45:09

historian Richard A. Gabriel, who wrote a

45:12

book called Philip II of Macazon, Greater

45:14

Than Alexander, and he ran

45:16

down how Philip's statecraft

45:20

was much more oriented

45:22

towards results than

45:24

perhaps Homeric glory

45:27

and swordplay,

45:30

and he writes, In

45:33

a very important way, however,

45:36

Philip's view of war as

45:38

distinct from personal bravery was

45:40

decidedly un-Homeric. Unlike the

45:42

Iliad's heroes, this great warrior king

45:44

who took the field every year

45:46

of his 23-year reign, save one

45:48

when he was recovering from wounds,

45:50

who took part in 28 campaigns

45:53

and 11 sieges, who captured

45:55

45 cities if one

45:57

can trust Demosthenes, and who was wounded

46:00

at least five times, never went to

46:02

war for its own sake, or only

46:04

for personal glory. For Philip,

46:07

war was first and foremost an instrument

46:09

of state policy, with which

46:12

to achieve specific strategic objectives.

46:14

It was always the continuation of

46:17

policy by other means, in the

46:19

genuine Clausewitzian sense. The

46:21

rhetorician, Paulianius, observed that, quote,

46:24

Philip achieved no less through

46:26

conversation than through battle, and

46:29

by Zeus he prided himself more on

46:31

what he acquired through words than on

46:33

what he acquired through arms. End

46:36

quote. And then Gabriel says

46:39

this Clausewitzian view of war led

46:41

Philip to become the greatest strategist of

46:43

his time. Clausewitz,

46:46

of course, is famous for saying

46:48

that war is

46:50

a continuation of politics or policies

46:53

by other means. But

46:55

for Philip II, this applied

46:57

to all sorts of things,

47:00

including marriage. Marriage

47:02

for Philip was Clausewitzian. In

47:05

this he is far from alone. After

47:08

all, royal marriages, for

47:10

diplomatic reasons, right to cement

47:12

alliances or connections between powerful

47:15

families, or to wed states

47:18

or kingdoms or locations more closely

47:20

together, isn't just common, it's

47:22

almost the norm. But

47:25

the Macedonian ruler has a huge advantage

47:27

over a lot of these other

47:29

royal families that do the same thing. I mean, after

47:31

all, if you're Henry VIII of

47:33

England and you're marrying for diplomatic reasons,

47:35

it's kind of a limitation, isn't it,

47:37

if you can just marry one wife?

47:41

Philip didn't have any sort of limitation like that

47:43

at all. One of the

47:45

things the Greeks used as evidence that

47:47

the Macedonians were barbarians is

47:49

that they were polygamous. Philip

47:51

could marry as many wives as he

47:54

wanted to to cement his

47:56

diplomatic and political goals.

48:00

he's going to have seven or eight

48:02

wives during his lifetime and have multiple

48:05

of them at the same

48:07

time. And the women that he

48:09

married are interesting characters if

48:12

the ancient sources are to be believed.

48:15

I mean, for example, he will marry an Illyrian

48:18

wife or two, and the Illyrians are

48:20

the problem children of that whole part

48:22

of the world, exceedingly

48:24

dangerous, responsible for the death

48:27

of Philip's older brother and four

48:30

thousand Macadonian soldiers right before Philip,

48:32

you know, takes the throne. So it

48:35

makes sense to marry an Illyrian princess, but

48:37

they seem to be, if the ancient sources

48:39

can be believed, quite the

48:41

handful. Supposedly,

48:43

Illyrian women could be trained

48:46

to fight in combat

48:48

as men, with swords, spears,

48:50

shield, armor, and on horseback.

48:53

And there will be a strain of

48:56

the Illyrian DNA running through the Macadonian

48:58

royal line, where mother

49:01

is supposed to continue the tradition of teaching the

49:03

daughters how to fight like this. And

49:05

it is a fascinating thing to

49:08

consider. There's a very Wonder Woman Amazonian

49:10

element to the whole thing, and it's interesting

49:12

to think of Philip marrying a woman who

49:15

could kill him in

49:17

combat. But that's

49:19

hardly the extent of

49:21

Philip marrying interesting and

49:24

potentially dangerous women.

49:26

I mean, he marries magical women, if you

49:28

believe the sources. I'm gonna say if you

49:30

believe the sources many times here, because one's

49:33

not sure what to make of them, and

49:35

remember, especially when dealing with women, they are

49:37

far from fair. I use

49:40

the term magical. Some of them might

49:42

say witches instead, and Philip

49:45

is supposed to have married at least

49:47

one of these magical princesses, maybe two.

49:52

One thing you can say is that

49:55

by the time Philip marries the woman

49:58

who will be Alexander the Great, Great's

50:00

mother, one wonders whether

50:02

or not, as a young couple, Philip

50:04

would have been in his 20s, and

50:07

Alexander the Great's mother, a woman named Olympias,

50:09

would have been in her teens. One

50:12

imagines that you could have

50:14

looked at them at a party and said,

50:16

I wonder what kind of children those two

50:18

people will produce, because one

50:21

has to look at

50:23

a teenage Olympias and

50:26

say that you can sort

50:28

of divine how formidable a

50:30

person she was, because

50:33

as a teenage girl she can

50:36

handle this guy, right? The

50:38

most formidable person of his

50:41

time, a figure

50:43

that the ancient Greeks to the south

50:45

of him had all kinds of trouble

50:47

with. You just heard, you

50:50

know, Professor Gabriel describe his qualities,

50:52

you heard Will Durant describe his

50:54

qualities, and yet this teenager from

50:57

a place called Melosia in Iparis

51:02

can handle him.

51:04

And she may have even scared him a

51:06

little. Philip

51:08

II's family claimed

51:11

a descent from Heracles,

51:13

who we would call

51:15

Hercules, right? If you recall

51:17

your Greek mythology, Heracles is

51:19

the son of Zeus, not just

51:22

a Greek god, but the king

51:24

of the Greek mythological pantheon,

51:27

right? If you're gonna claim to send it from

51:29

a god at some point in your, you

51:31

know, genetic line, why not make it the king

51:33

of the gods? Who could you possibly marry who's

51:36

gonna bring enough, you know, cachet

51:38

to the marriage to compete with

51:40

something like that? Well,

51:42

Olympias's family in Melosia

51:45

claimed descendant from the greatest hero

51:47

of the most important Greek story

51:49

to most Greeks growing up during

51:52

this time period, the Iliad. Olympias's

51:55

family claimed descent from Achilles.

52:00

which means that when they have a child together,

52:02

this family who claims descent from

52:05

Heracles and through him, Zeus, and

52:08

this other family who claims descent through

52:10

Achilles, you're going to have a

52:12

kid who mixes the blood of Zeus, Heracles

52:15

and Achilles. And

52:17

somehow the great God

52:20

Dionysus manages to get

52:22

involved in this whole affair too and

52:24

creates this fusion in the

52:27

child that they're going to have that

52:29

impacts that child's life for

52:31

its entirety. To

52:36

this day, historians still try to

52:38

argue and debate how important these three

52:40

figures were to

52:42

Alexander and like so much of his life

52:45

are trying to disentangle true contemporary

52:48

things, you know, things that were part

52:50

of his life from the

52:52

many fables and stories and

52:54

romances or just plain

52:56

bad histories that cropped up after his death.

53:00

Was he really into Achilles the

53:02

way the later sources say?

53:04

Some people say no Dionysus is

53:07

very hard to figure out. Heracles

53:09

is the least controversial since Alexander

53:11

definitely put the figure of

53:13

the hero demigod on coins

53:15

and whatnot. But there are

53:17

other historians that will make a

53:20

much more closely connected case. I mean, there's

53:22

a whole book about Alexander's connection to Dionysus

53:24

and Dionysus

53:26

is in my opinion, this is

53:28

one of those opinion comments,

53:31

but is the most interesting

53:33

and hard to get your mind around of

53:35

the Greek deities in part

53:37

because he rules over those parts of

53:39

humanity and humankind that

53:43

are themselves hard to get

53:45

one's mind around, right? The

53:47

subconscious, the hidden sides of

53:50

one's character, the psychological dark

53:52

areas. There's

53:54

a book called Alexander the Great, The Invisible

53:56

Enemy by historian John Maxwell O'Brien, and it's

53:58

all about this connection. between Alexander

54:01

and this particular god Dionysus,

54:04

and he describes Dionysus in the most

54:06

interesting of ways. Dionysus is officially the

54:08

god of wine, but wine itself is

54:11

a weird sort of a concoction

54:14

that can be both positive and

54:16

negative, which is kind of how the god can

54:18

be too. Here's how

54:21

O'Brien describes Dionysus, and he

54:23

says, quote, The god

54:25

of everything that blossomed and breathed, Dionysus

54:27

could surface in the moisture on a

54:30

rose, bellow majestically through

54:32

a raging bull, or

54:34

imperceptibly shed old skin for new in the

54:36

guise of a snake. He

54:38

was the divine patron of the theater,

54:40

with an empty mask as his emblem,

54:42

the god of a thousand faces, who

54:45

epitomized metamorphosis and could transform

54:48

mortals at will. Armed

54:50

with ecstasy and madness, this

54:53

paradoxical deity would smile at

54:55

human determination and laugh at

54:57

logic. In league with death as

55:00

well as life, his realm reached

55:02

beyond the grave to the murky

55:04

waters of the netherworld. End

55:06

quote. O'Brien

55:09

points out that Dionysus

55:11

wasn't really so much the god

55:13

of wine as he was the

55:15

wine itself, and through the drinking

55:18

of the wine, humans could

55:20

commune with the god and

55:23

all the pros and cons that

55:26

the drinking of alcohol or intoxicants,

55:28

because there are interesting theories about

55:31

the intoxicants that might have been

55:33

used as part of the

55:35

religious rights connected to Dionysus to induce

55:38

different sides of human behavior and

55:40

trances and all those kinds of

55:43

the subliminal or unconscious

55:46

sides of humanity. And

55:49

O'Brien writes quote, Dionysus

55:51

proffered himself through wine and

55:54

mortals revealed his personality as

55:56

well as their own through

55:58

drinking and drunkenness. A

56:01

number of the gods' epithets describe

56:03

his attractive attributes or praise the

56:05

benefits to be culled from his

56:07

precious gift. He is a

56:09

relaxer of the mind, a healer

56:11

of sorrow, a dispeller of

56:13

care, a provider of

56:15

joy, a merry maker, and

56:17

a lover of laughter. Other

56:20

epithets refer to his less

56:22

admirable characteristics and simultaneously serve

56:24

as a reminder of the

56:27

potential destructiveness of his earthly

56:29

agent. He is a disturber of

56:31

the soul, a mind-breaker, a

56:33

bestower of envy, a dispenser

56:35

of anger, a chaser of

56:37

sleep, a noisemaker, and a

56:40

liar. The visible effects

56:42

of the wine, O'Brien writes, unmasked

56:45

the fundamental ambivalence of the god

56:47

and revealed a kindred quality in

56:49

mortals. Wine exalted

56:52

the spirit, but it also had

56:54

the capacity to unleash primordial impulses.

56:57

Under its influence, a veneer

56:59

of sophistication might disappear abruptly,

57:02

and civility could be transformed

57:04

into uncontrollable rage. The

57:07

wine god disclosed reasons uneasy

57:09

sway over emotion and served

57:11

as a chilling reminder of

57:13

bestiality at its core." Here's

57:19

mother Olympias was a

57:21

devotee of Dionysus, an

57:24

initiate if the sources are to be

57:26

believed in the mystery cult of

57:28

the god, and it's a mystery

57:31

cult because nobody knows what goes

57:33

on in the various rites connected

57:35

to the god, although

57:37

if one believes the Greek

57:39

playwright Euripides, who was spending

57:42

time hanging out in Macadonia,

57:44

he wrote in his play the Bacchae about

57:47

it. He says that the

57:49

women met in

57:51

sacred areas just

57:53

amongst their own kind and

57:56

tore live animals to pieces and

57:58

devoured them. They

58:02

participated in magic rites, carried

58:05

wands and worshiped and

58:07

kept snakes, which

58:10

is another thing associated with

58:12

Olympias. She's supposed to

58:14

have kept snakes, maybe

58:17

even in her bedroom. And

58:21

it's long been a part

58:23

of the Alexandrian

58:25

tradition, maybe written to

58:27

make her sound just a

58:30

bit more weird and interesting that

58:32

this freaked out Philip II

58:34

of Macedonia in his wonderful classic

58:37

work on Alexander from the early

58:39

1970s. Historian Peter Green

58:41

wrote about it this way, quote, in

58:44

the autumn of three 57, Philip married

58:46

his Eparate princess and for the first time

58:48

in his life, found he had taken on

58:50

rather more than he could handle. Olympias,

58:53

though not yet 18, had

58:55

already emerged as a forceful, not

58:58

to say eccentric personality. She

59:00

was among other things, passionately

59:02

devoted to the orgiastic rights

59:04

of Dionysus and her

59:06

Menandic frenzies can scarcely have been

59:09

conducive to peaceful domestic life. One

59:12

of her more outre habits, unless, as

59:14

has been suggested, it had a ritual

59:16

origin, was keeping an assortment

59:18

of large tame snakes as pets. To

59:21

employ these creatures on religious occasions

59:24

could raise no objections, but

59:26

their intermittent appearance in Olympias' bed

59:28

must have been a hazard calculated

59:31

to put even the toughest bridegroom

59:33

off his stroke. End

59:35

quote. Now, it's

59:37

always a mistake to assume that people

59:40

from other cultures and earlier eras

59:42

would react the same way to

59:45

circumstances and stimuli that we would.

59:47

I'm just going to say that

59:49

personally, though, if I'm

59:51

laying in my bed and all of

59:53

a sudden crawling through my sheets and

59:55

on my sleeping form is a large

59:58

serpent, because that's how it's called. described in the

1:00:01

sources, that's gonna freak me out

1:00:03

a little bit. Puts

1:00:05

a whole new sort of reptilian spin on

1:00:07

the idea of love

1:00:09

me love my dog, doesn't it? But

1:00:13

I'll say this about Peter Green in

1:00:15

1970. He's a lot fairer to

1:00:17

Olympias than the ancient sources or even

1:00:19

the early modern ones. I mean the 1920s

1:00:21

is one of those eras where there's

1:00:23

a lot of writing about Philip and Alexander and

1:00:25

Olympias and the writers

1:00:27

and historians from that era are

1:00:29

just as harsh, maybe more

1:00:32

so, on Alexander's mother

1:00:34

and Philip's wife than even

1:00:36

the ancients. I mean listen to

1:00:38

the way science fiction author but also

1:00:41

popular historian H.G. Wells describes Philip's

1:00:43

wife Olympias and

1:00:46

you get this sense that she's practically

1:00:48

demonic and he first

1:00:51

extols all the wondrous qualities of

1:00:53

Philip II, right? Very

1:00:56

similar I would say to the way

1:00:58

Professor Gabriel describes Philip, right? Greater than

1:01:00

Alexander. If not for Philip there is

1:01:02

no Alexander but he has this tragic

1:01:04

flaw. He's joined, you know,

1:01:07

like a ball and chain to

1:01:10

a dangerous demonic force

1:01:13

who eventually destroys

1:01:16

him and

1:01:18

limits Alexander's ability to be as great as

1:01:20

his father. Here's the way H.G. Wells

1:01:23

describes Alexander's mother

1:01:26

and Philip's wife Olympias

1:01:28

and see if she doesn't sound very

1:01:31

much like something, you know,

1:01:33

out of a dark horror movie. Wells

1:01:36

writes, quote, It

1:01:38

is necessary now to tell something of

1:01:40

the domestic life of King Philip. The

1:01:43

lives of both Philip and his

1:01:45

son were pervaded by the personality

1:01:47

of a restless and evil woman,

1:01:49

Olympias, the mother of Alexander. He

1:01:53

then talks about how Philip

1:01:55

and she were married and then says,

1:01:57

quote, It was not long

1:01:59

before Olympias and Philip were bitterly

1:02:01

estranged. She was jealous of him,

1:02:04

but there was another engraver source of

1:02:06

trouble in her passion for religious mysteries.

1:02:09

We've already noted that beneath the

1:02:11

fine and restrained Nordic religion of

1:02:13

the Greeks, the land abounded with

1:02:15

religious cults of a darker and

1:02:18

more ancient kind, aboriginal

1:02:20

cults with secret initiations,

1:02:22

or geastic celebrations, and

1:02:24

often with cruel and

1:02:26

obscure rites. These

1:02:29

religions of the shadows, he writes,

1:02:31

these practices of the women and

1:02:33

peasants and slaves, gave Greece

1:02:35

her orphic, Dionysic, and Demeter cults,

1:02:37

and they've lurked in the tradition

1:02:40

of Europe down almost to our

1:02:42

own times. The witchcraft

1:02:44

of the Middle Ages, with

1:02:46

its resort to the blood

1:02:48

of babes, scraps of executed

1:02:50

criminals, incantations, and magic circles,

1:02:53

seems to have been little else than

1:02:55

the lingering vestiges of these solemnities of

1:02:57

the dark whites. In these

1:02:59

matters, Olympias was an expert and

1:03:01

an enthusiast, and Plutarch

1:03:04

mentions that she achieved considerable

1:03:06

celebrity by use of tame

1:03:08

serpents in these pious exercises.

1:03:11

The snakes invaded her domestic apartments,

1:03:14

and history is not clear whether

1:03:16

Philip found in them matter for

1:03:18

exasperation or religious awe. These

1:03:21

occupations of his wife must have

1:03:23

been a serious inconvenience to Philip,

1:03:25

for the Macedonian people were still

1:03:28

in the sturdy stage of social

1:03:30

development, in which neither enthusiastic religiosity

1:03:32

nor uncontrollable wives

1:03:35

was admired." So,

1:03:39

according to Wells and a lot of

1:03:42

other people writing in the 1920s,

1:03:44

Alexander's father is one of the great men in

1:03:46

history, his mother's a witch. Neither

1:03:50

of those things matters very

1:03:52

much, if not for the

1:03:54

creation of the tool that leads to

1:03:56

the fame of both of

1:03:59

those people. and their child,

1:04:02

the military Maserati that Philip

1:04:04

II will create, the

1:04:06

Macadonian army. The

1:04:10

Macadonian army, by the way, is

1:04:12

arguably the most important part of this story. I

1:04:15

mean, you can make a case that

1:04:17

without that, none of the sorts

1:04:20

of things that get Philip II,

1:04:22

and more importantly, his son Alexander in

1:04:24

the history books, happens. I

1:04:26

mean, it's the tool that

1:04:28

creates all the opportunities for conquest,

1:04:31

right? In

1:04:34

my head, I always try to switch the

1:04:37

battles around and imagine Alexander, instead

1:04:39

of commanding what is

1:04:41

almost certainly the best army in the world

1:04:44

at the time period he's commanding it, probably

1:04:46

the best army the world had ever seen.

1:04:48

I try to imagine Alexander having

1:04:50

to switch sides with the general

1:04:53

he's fighting, right? Why don't you

1:04:55

give Darius the Macadonians and you

1:04:57

take the Persians in this big

1:04:59

battle and let's see how that

1:05:01

goes. Might have gone fine. Alexander

1:05:03

probably, you know, really good general

1:05:05

knows what he's doing, but I mean, he was

1:05:08

fighting with the best army in the world when

1:05:10

he did what he did. And

1:05:12

so it seems like the real important

1:05:16

decisive moment in the history of this

1:05:18

story is Philip creating this

1:05:21

amazing army.

1:05:23

Because Philip made the Macadonian

1:05:25

army and then conversely, it's safe to say

1:05:28

that the Macadonian army made Philip. Where

1:05:32

the heck did he get the idea for it? Well,

1:05:35

we should talk a little bit about

1:05:38

the Macadonian army, Philip's influences, and

1:05:40

even kind of more important ancient

1:05:43

warfare and how it worked and what

1:05:45

we know and what we don't know.

1:05:48

Because trying to figure out how the

1:05:50

army that Philip created worked is in

1:05:52

itself a speculative kind of an affair,

1:05:54

which is weird when you think about

1:05:57

it. First

1:06:01

of all, let's just talk about what he made.

1:06:03

The Macedonian army, I can't...it's

1:06:07

like a boxer who's never lost.

1:06:10

And then you try to imagine what it would

1:06:12

have taken to beat them, right? Whereas

1:06:14

if you have a fighter that has lost, even

1:06:16

once, you can say, well, you know, we saw

1:06:19

how Buster Douglas broke him down. That's the strategy

1:06:21

for, you know, beating this guy. And

1:06:24

the army, at least under Alexander, is

1:06:26

basically undefeated. Every sort

1:06:28

of mental scenario

1:06:31

that you envision is

1:06:33

a fantasy. So

1:06:36

the army was that good. Now remember,

1:06:38

the entire world is not connected during

1:06:41

this time period. So armies from far-flung

1:06:43

areas generally didn't fight each other,

1:06:45

right? So the great armies of China in

1:06:47

this same era are not fighting the Macedonians.

1:06:49

So we just don't have a comparison when

1:06:52

we say the Macedonians were the best in

1:06:54

the world. Well, they didn't fight the Chinese.

1:06:57

And of course, no one in the Americas was

1:06:59

fighting anyone from outside the Americas, so we don't

1:07:01

know how they would have done. But

1:07:04

I'm just going to say if we're betting and

1:07:06

we're having the Macedonians fight any of

1:07:08

those contemporary armies from anywhere in the

1:07:10

world, I'm taking the Macedonians because they're

1:07:12

undefeated, basically. And

1:07:15

what Philip does is invent a style

1:07:17

of warfare that is going to become

1:07:19

the Cadillac style of

1:07:21

warfare in the entire region for like 175 years. For

1:07:25

the next almost 200 years, if you're going to

1:07:27

have a top-flight army in the Mediterranean, you're

1:07:30

going to have a Pyke Phalanx, probably.

1:07:35

And when in a couple of centuries the Romans and

1:07:38

their mannipled legions throw

1:07:40

the Phalanxes on the ash

1:07:42

heap of history, it's worth

1:07:44

questioning whether they were even

1:07:46

fighting the same sort

1:07:48

of army that Alexander and

1:07:51

Philip had developed at all. A lot

1:07:53

of evolution and changes and adaptations and

1:07:55

maybe even de-evolution going

1:07:58

on in the Andrian

1:08:00

system of fighting over the 175 years it was

1:08:02

dominant. But

1:08:06

Philip develops a troop type that

1:08:09

makes all the difference in the world. And he

1:08:11

develops the Pyke Phalanx. It's

1:08:14

interesting to think about one guy developing this

1:08:17

because normally weapon systems are cultural in the

1:08:19

ancient world. They develop as a part of

1:08:21

what's going on in society. And a lot

1:08:23

of people fight connected to the

1:08:26

land and the kind of enemies they face

1:08:28

and the terrain and all sorts of things.

1:08:32

I mean who invented the hoplite right? Sometime

1:08:35

in the 700s maybe BCE

1:08:37

the hoplite just sort of appears in a bunch

1:08:39

of places. There's nobody you can say that guy

1:08:41

came up with the idea. But

1:08:44

Philip invented the Pyke Phalanx. And

1:08:47

the Macadonian Pyke Phalanx is kind of a hoplite

1:08:50

killing machine. He

1:08:52

takes the best parts of

1:08:54

the hoplite phalanxes and so the super

1:08:57

charges them in a way that makes

1:08:59

them better hoplite phalanxes. He

1:09:03

gives them a much longer spear.

1:09:06

He packs the human beings even

1:09:10

more closely together. He

1:09:12

makes the formation deeper. So

1:09:15

if you have a bunch of hoplites probably

1:09:17

about 8 ranks deep, sometimes 4, sometimes 12,

1:09:20

but usually about 8 ranks deep with

1:09:22

their 7 to 9 foot spears smash

1:09:25

into a 16 rank Pyke Phalanx

1:09:29

with 16 to 23 foot spears. Well

1:09:35

you can see how one is almost built to

1:09:38

overcome the other. A lot of advantages than

1:09:40

the Pyke Phalanx. So

1:09:42

if this is the key thing that Philip

1:09:44

invents, because we'll talk about the rest of

1:09:46

the army in a bit, but if

1:09:49

this is the key thing Philip invents, where

1:09:51

did he get the idea for this? If

1:09:54

this is the moment of development that's going to

1:09:56

impact everything he does, Alexander does

1:09:58

and a bunch of armies. for 175 years

1:10:01

do, where did the guy come

1:10:03

up with it? Was it just he dreamt it? And

1:10:06

so, you know, you can start down

1:10:08

this path of imagine, of imagining where

1:10:10

Philip, Incorporated, you know, brainstorm

1:10:13

kinds of material, Diodorus Siculus, ancient

1:10:15

historian, says that one of the

1:10:17

things that gave Philip the idea

1:10:19

for these pike phalanxes was

1:10:21

the Iliad. And

1:10:24

I find this fascinating to think about, because if

1:10:26

it's true, let's just play with this for a

1:10:28

minute. If it's true, and it is true, the

1:10:30

Iliad was a huge book in Macadonian society. I'm

1:10:33

sure everyone, Philip Alexander, all those people would have

1:10:35

read it, Alexander supposed to have memorized it. And

1:10:37

why not? He's supposed to be

1:10:39

descended from Achilles takes a lot of pride in being

1:10:41

descended from Achilles. Well, you know,

1:10:43

Achilles is the lead superhero in

1:10:46

the, you know, ancient version of

1:10:48

a mass movie blockbuster, you know,

1:10:51

the Iliad, that's, that's the Achilles story, right? So you're

1:10:53

going to know that story backwards and forwards. In fact,

1:10:56

you know, there's a lot of historians who will

1:10:58

call Macadonian society during

1:11:00

this time period Homeric, meaning

1:11:03

it kind of has a Homeric value system

1:11:05

and all that maybe even Alexander's desire to

1:11:08

be the best, right, this ambition, this

1:11:10

thing at the core of his ambition,

1:11:12

that may be a Homeric value. But

1:11:16

it's so weird to think about because, and

1:11:18

of course, it reminds me of a Star

1:11:20

Trek episode original series, the one

1:11:22

where a very imitative society on another

1:11:24

planet got a hold of

1:11:26

an Earth book, a history book that was

1:11:29

left behind by an earlier Earth expedition. And

1:11:31

the history book was the history of the

1:11:33

gangster wars in Chicago, you know, in the

1:11:35

prohibition 1920s. And then they

1:11:39

modeled their whole society on it, so

1:11:41

that when the Earth ships come back

1:11:43

a while later, the entire planet looks

1:11:45

like, you know, Al Capone, and guys

1:11:47

walking around with submachine guns and talking

1:11:49

like, you know, gangster era Chicago. It's

1:11:52

a little like, if this is true,

1:11:54

you just imagine Macadonian society with their one

1:11:56

book, and they model their whole society on

1:11:59

the value of a people that

1:12:02

if they existed, existed in

1:12:04

the late Bronze Age. If

1:12:07

there was a Trojan war of the

1:12:10

kind that the Iliad talks about, it

1:12:12

happened in like 1100 BCE, somewhere around

1:12:14

there. And then

1:12:16

people would have talked about it, and oral

1:12:18

historians would have transmitted the tale for hundreds

1:12:21

of years before a guy or group of

1:12:23

people, we don't know, that we

1:12:25

call Homer, consolidated all that

1:12:27

into sort of a written form that

1:12:30

could then be passed down for hundreds of

1:12:32

years more. So by the time a guy

1:12:35

like Alexander or Philip II is reading it,

1:12:37

this is material that's been written down for

1:12:40

like 500 years. And

1:12:44

when it was finally written down,

1:12:46

it had already been transmitted orally

1:12:49

for three or four centuries before

1:12:51

then. So

1:12:54

if Philip II really gets

1:12:56

this idea for Pike Phalanxes

1:12:59

from reading about the Achaeans in the

1:13:01

Trojan War, using block formations

1:13:03

of troops with very long spears,

1:13:06

that's wild to me. And

1:13:09

the fact that this formation then

1:13:11

goes on to dominate the battlefields

1:13:13

from Philip's time forward for

1:13:15

almost another 200 more years. Well,

1:13:18

if you really got that idea from the

1:13:20

echoes of the late

1:13:23

Bronze Age, I'd love to

1:13:25

think that was true. I'm going to pretend that

1:13:27

that story is true. There

1:13:30

are some more logical candidates,

1:13:32

though. How about the Athenian

1:13:34

general Efricrates and his famous reforms?

1:13:37

You ancient history military

1:13:40

nerds out there know that Efricrates

1:13:42

is one of these guys who

1:13:44

sort of looked at the traditional

1:13:46

hoplite heavy infantry and decided

1:13:48

they'd be better if they weren't so heavy. He

1:13:51

lightens them up, gives them a small wicker

1:13:53

shield instead of the big heavy wood one,

1:13:57

lighter equipment, less armor, gives them

1:13:59

some Jadlands to throw also.

1:14:01

They become a much more flexible force

1:14:04

on the battlefield, much more useful,

1:14:07

maybe not as good if you

1:14:09

get him into a slogging match with the

1:14:11

old-fashioned Hoplites, but probably better at

1:14:13

everything else. Oh yeah, and this

1:14:15

is maybe how it really

1:14:18

plays into Philip, supposedly doubles the

1:14:20

length of their spear. So if

1:14:23

a Hoplite spear is seven to nine feet,

1:14:25

you know, he's rocking more of a 14 to 18

1:14:29

foot spear on his Hoplite

1:14:31

Peltast mix, can we call

1:14:33

them? And it's interesting

1:14:36

to imagine what that might actually mean, you know,

1:14:38

if you're one of these guys facing a Hoplite and all

1:14:41

of a sudden your spear is twice as long as theirs.

1:14:43

I mean, trying to imagine how

1:14:45

you might use it is interesting, but you

1:14:47

can certainly see some advantages in your being

1:14:49

able to stab them and they

1:14:52

not being able to stab you back, can't you?

1:14:54

And a

1:14:56

Fricrates, by the way, was active in

1:14:58

Macedonia right around this time period. So

1:15:00

there's hardly one degree of separation involved.

1:15:02

So he certainly could be an influence

1:15:04

on where the heck Philip gets this

1:15:06

idea to create this new

1:15:09

thing on the battlefield, which

1:15:11

becomes dominant, like this great

1:15:14

idea. And then of course, the

1:15:16

odds on favorite for big influence

1:15:18

on Philip that you read just

1:15:20

about everywhere is what

1:15:23

he learned during his time as a

1:15:25

hostage when he was a teenager in

1:15:27

Thebes. This

1:15:29

is always shown in the

1:15:31

sources to be an important part

1:15:34

of Philip's development because, well, how could it

1:15:36

not rub off on him? Basically, he was

1:15:38

staying in the house, I guess, of a

1:15:40

noted Theban general. And according

1:15:43

to some of the ancient sources, he has access

1:15:45

to this general's library and he's being encouraged to

1:15:47

read up on all the latest knowledge

1:15:50

of cutting edge Greek warfare. And

1:15:52

he was probably interacting and

1:15:54

certainly very close to Epaminondas, the

1:15:57

Theban general, the guy often given credit for

1:15:59

the things like, oh, I don't know, smashing

1:16:02

Spartan power in a way that it was

1:16:04

never the same again, stuff

1:16:07

like that, maybe the greatest Greek

1:16:09

general of all time. So Philip's interacting with a

1:16:11

guy like that during the time period

1:16:13

when Thebes is sitting on top of the world for

1:16:15

a relatively short period of

1:16:17

time in the hierarchy

1:16:20

of Greek city states. Right. Once you smash

1:16:22

Sparta, you're kind of left as the big

1:16:24

dog. And Epeminandus famously

1:16:27

defeated the Spartans at Luchtra in 371 BCE

1:16:29

by breaking all the rules. And that's

1:16:34

how you beat the Spartans. The

1:16:38

kind of things that he did to break all the

1:16:40

rules. Once they work, everybody

1:16:42

adopts them, but somebody's got to be

1:16:44

the visionary that decides to roll the

1:16:46

dice and really take a

1:16:48

chance and try some new things on the

1:16:50

battlefield. And that's what Epeminandus did. And of

1:16:53

course, you know, by defeating the

1:16:55

Spartans, he basically hit the jackpot, right? He

1:16:57

rolled the right roll on the dice when

1:16:59

he rolled them. But

1:17:01

what makes his bet so gutsy

1:17:05

is that in the ancient world, the

1:17:09

punishments for having your

1:17:11

innovation fail are massive.

1:17:15

Nowadays, of course, we're accustomed to making

1:17:17

constant updates and changes in warfare, new

1:17:19

equipment, new tactics, new approaches, you know,

1:17:21

new technologies, all kinds of things involved.

1:17:23

So that even over the course of

1:17:25

a short war, we can expect to

1:17:27

see all sorts of innovations and changes

1:17:30

and whatnot. But this

1:17:32

is a relatively modern development.

1:17:34

And it's connected to the opportunity

1:17:37

costs and the dangers of

1:17:39

innovations going sideways on you.

1:17:42

So if you look at the First World War, which is one

1:17:44

of these wars that you really is the first time you can

1:17:46

look and you can just watch technology, having

1:17:49

a leap frogging effect as the war

1:17:51

goes on as sides, you know, continually

1:17:53

try to out improve and out invent

1:17:55

one another, you see it in the

1:17:57

air war in the First World War, for example, where Every

1:18:00

six months, either the allies or

1:18:02

the central powers create

1:18:04

some new engine or airframe or way

1:18:06

of fighting or weapon or something that

1:18:08

allows them to get the jump on

1:18:11

the other side for like six months

1:18:13

until a new invention or innovation on

1:18:15

the other side flips the coin. You

1:18:19

can see new technology and ways of fighting introduced

1:18:21

all throughout that war. Look how the British introduced

1:18:23

tanks. Built them up in secret

1:18:25

for a while. And then finally in one battle, they

1:18:27

throw out enough of them to make a difference and

1:18:29

they sort of see what happens. And

1:18:32

when it's not war changing, and they really

1:18:34

didn't expect it to be war changing in

1:18:36

that battle, they then sit down and

1:18:38

figure out, okay, how did it go? That was a good

1:18:40

experiment. What can we do different next time? You know, what

1:18:43

worked, what didn't work? But it doesn't

1:18:45

lose you the war. And

1:18:47

that's the difference. In the First World War,

1:18:49

you can try these things out and the

1:18:51

failure for your innovation not working isn't

1:18:54

enormous. Whereas in the

1:18:56

ancient world where most wars are decided

1:18:58

with one or two battles, having

1:19:01

your innovation go sideways and costing you

1:19:03

the battle could easily cost you the

1:19:05

war. So the penalty for failure is

1:19:07

huge and the incentives to be conservative

1:19:10

are overriding. So when a guy like

1:19:12

Epaminondas throws the dice on something like

1:19:14

breaking all the rules of Greek warfare,

1:19:17

you've got to admire his moxie. But

1:19:20

that's how you beat the Spartans, right? So for

1:19:22

those who don't know, and it's only important to

1:19:24

know because a lot of what Epaminondas does after

1:19:26

he breaks the rules are gonna be the kind

1:19:29

of thing Philip incorporates into his

1:19:31

way of fighting, right? The

1:19:34

first rule of Epaminondas breaks has to do

1:19:36

with something, you know, I'm

1:19:38

going off on tangents on tangents now,

1:19:40

but has something to do with the

1:19:42

way human beings fight when they get

1:19:44

on a pre-modern battlefield, especially in these

1:19:46

hoplite, close formation type deals. And

1:19:49

it's a fascinating part of what I like to call

1:19:51

the physics of the ancient battlefield. But

1:19:53

because this happens, there are certain

1:19:57

conventions of Greek fighting

1:20:00

were in place before Pemminanda. So we have to

1:20:02

talk about what's going on in the battlefield. Did

1:20:04

you know, because it's kind of interesting, that

1:20:07

when you get two lines

1:20:09

of hoplites facing off against one

1:20:11

another, if we try to

1:20:13

imagine what this would look like visibly from the

1:20:15

air, think about railroad tracks. And

1:20:17

you have the two tracks facing each other.

1:20:20

Those are the lines of hoplites on both

1:20:22

sides and an intervening space between them. And

1:20:24

at some point when a battle happens, one

1:20:26

or both of those lines of hoplites crosses

1:20:28

the intervening space and starts bashing into the

1:20:30

other one. But

1:20:33

what's interesting is when you get a bunch of men, you

1:20:36

know, in long lines, maybe 100, maybe 200, maybe

1:20:39

300 yards long, four, eight,

1:20:41

maybe 12 ranks deep, when

1:20:44

they're all lined up shoulder to shoulder with a spear

1:20:46

in the right hand and a shield in the left

1:20:48

hand, did you know that

1:20:50

the formation drifts to the right and

1:20:53

it's so reliable, the Greeks count

1:20:56

on it? Imagine

1:20:59

a ripple going through the entire 100 to 300 yard line of men

1:21:01

as everybody just

1:21:04

sort of scooches a little bit to the right.

1:21:06

You say, well, what's going on? Well, the sources

1:21:08

indicate that men in these sorts of

1:21:12

situations, either while they're standing there, waiting to

1:21:14

advance or while the advance is happening or

1:21:17

both tend to move a little to the

1:21:19

right because to the right is where the shield of the

1:21:21

guy next to them is. And

1:21:26

they are almost unconsciously or

1:21:28

maybe consciously trying to scooch

1:21:30

over just a little bit more behind the

1:21:32

protection of the guy next to them. And

1:21:35

when everybody does that along the whole line, the

1:21:37

whole line moves to the right. And

1:21:41

if your whole line is moving to the right and

1:21:44

the enemy you're facing's whole line is

1:21:46

moving to their right, then your lines

1:21:48

are moving sort of out of alignment

1:21:50

with each other and going to overlap

1:21:53

on each side. So

1:21:56

what these armies did in an

1:21:59

attempt to control what was going on on

1:22:01

their right and to have the troops that

1:22:04

were the least likely to be prone to

1:22:06

this drift on the right, you

1:22:08

put your best troops on the right. And

1:22:11

this became almost a Greek convention and the

1:22:13

sources will say things like, make

1:22:15

it clear that the right wing is expected

1:22:17

to be victorious and the left wings of

1:22:20

both armies expected to kind of lose. And

1:22:22

that was just the way it was until

1:22:24

the Pemenondis didn't do it that way.

1:22:29

At Luchtra he put his best

1:22:31

troops on the left. That's

1:22:34

a violation, you just don't do that.

1:22:37

He put his best troops up against

1:22:39

the Spartans best troops, the

1:22:41

guys who made the Spartan reputation,

1:22:43

the Spartiates. There

1:22:45

were 700 of them at Luchtra and

1:22:48

a Spartan king. During

1:22:51

this time period any of you Spartan

1:22:54

fans know that the Spartans were having

1:22:56

issues keeping up with the number of

1:22:58

Spartiates that they would normally want and

1:23:01

the culture in the society and a bunch

1:23:03

of trends were making Spartiates rarer and rarer.

1:23:05

So when you have 700 of

1:23:08

them at the Battle of Luchtra you have

1:23:10

an irreplaceable number of Spartiates. If

1:23:13

Pemenondis wanted to kill as

1:23:15

many of those as he could, so

1:23:18

he created the head of

1:23:20

the sledgehammer at

1:23:22

Luchtra aimed right at those

1:23:24

people. That's

1:23:27

the best way to envision what if

1:23:29

Pemenondis' army looked like. The Spartans

1:23:31

looked like a long row, like

1:23:33

a railroad track, like we said,

1:23:35

of you know eight to

1:23:37

twelve rank deep hop lights, right? So

1:23:40

a long line of those people, hundreds

1:23:42

of yards long. The

1:23:44

Thebans looked more like a sledgehammer. The

1:23:47

head of the sledgehammer was made up of

1:23:50

the one professional force the Thebans were known

1:23:52

to have in their infantry, the famous Sacred

1:23:54

Band, 300 strong

1:23:57

professionals, some of the sources.

1:24:00

indicate maybe homosexual lover pairs

1:24:02

that were devoted to each

1:24:04

other. That'll improve your unit

1:24:06

cohesion maybe. But

1:24:08

they were joined by

1:24:10

a block of troops. Wait

1:24:13

for it. 50 ranks

1:24:15

deep. Now the Thebans

1:24:17

were known to fight deeper than

1:24:19

most other Greek city states

1:24:21

traditionally, but in this

1:24:23

battle, the Pemmon on this goes

1:24:26

wild, makes the formation 50

1:24:28

ranks deep. He's going to

1:24:31

face off against a Spartan hoplite force. That's

1:24:33

probably about 12 ranks deep. So think about

1:24:35

the difference. If we're talking about the

1:24:38

physics of human, you

1:24:40

know, mass and movement and weight and depth

1:24:42

and all that stuff, the difference between a

1:24:45

50 rank closed

1:24:47

formation running into a 12 rank closed

1:24:49

formation. Now, if

1:24:51

Pemmon is deciding to do this though, means

1:24:54

he has to weaken the rest of his

1:24:56

army, right? Where do those 50 deep

1:24:59

units take from? Right? You pull from the rest

1:25:01

of the lines, the rest of the lines significantly

1:25:04

weaker. It's like the handle

1:25:06

of the sledgehammer. Well, if

1:25:09

you're worried about weakening part of your

1:25:11

line, cause you don't want those troops

1:25:13

to get smashed and run away. If

1:25:15

Pemmon on this does something unusual, he

1:25:17

angles that whole area away

1:25:19

from the enemy. So imagine the

1:25:22

sledgehammer head is right up against the

1:25:24

Spartans. They want to smash, but

1:25:26

the handle of the sledgehammer

1:25:28

is diagonally away from the

1:25:30

rest of the enemy army.

1:25:33

So theoretically,

1:25:36

the sledgehammer head could

1:25:38

destroy the dangerous

1:25:41

Spartans before the rest

1:25:43

of the Theban line even came into contact

1:25:45

with the troops across the way from them.

1:25:48

And that's what happened at Lutra. The

1:25:51

sledgehammer head of the Thebans ran

1:25:54

into the Spartans killed

1:25:56

400 of the 700 irreplaceable

1:25:59

Spartans. and the Spartan

1:26:02

King. And when the rest of

1:26:04

the Spartan armies saw what happened to those

1:26:06

guys, the superheroes of

1:26:08

the battlefield, they decided they wanted nothing

1:26:10

to do with the rest of the

1:26:12

Thebans and that was the Battle at

1:26:14

Luchtra. But

1:26:17

by changing certain key

1:26:19

conventions of how people fought, Epaminondas

1:26:21

was able to destroy Spartan

1:26:23

power and he would do it again, at

1:26:26

Mantonie, he'd lose his life there. But

1:26:29

the entire affair involved things

1:26:32

that would be a staple of Macedonian

1:26:34

warfare, things like the oblique order of

1:26:36

battle and refused flanks, which were the

1:26:38

things where Epaminondas was angling the rest

1:26:41

of his army away from his enemies.

1:26:45

That oblique order of battle will be a constant

1:26:47

in Macedonian warfare and of course, if

1:26:50

Philip is hanging out with a Theban general

1:26:52

with access to his library and making maybe

1:26:54

some cocktail parties with the Pamanunas,

1:26:56

this is the kind of stuff he might absorb. About

1:27:00

the time Philip becomes king though, and around

1:27:02

the time he's marrying Olympias, that

1:27:04

seems to be the time period where if he

1:27:07

was going to create a new military system, that's

1:27:09

when it was going to start. And

1:27:13

it might be an ongoing process, but

1:27:16

by having these Phalangites,

1:27:18

these pike phalanx troops,

1:27:21

to act as a solid core

1:27:23

for his army in the middle

1:27:25

of his battle line, he's addressed

1:27:27

the real weakness of the Macedonian

1:27:29

armies that existed before him. They

1:27:31

never had a sort of a

1:27:33

hoplite, heavy infantry element to the

1:27:35

army. The army had great

1:27:37

cavalry, they were called the companion cavalry,

1:27:41

maybe the best cavalry in the world,

1:27:43

arguably, at this time period. And

1:27:45

it was great, but it was all they had.

1:27:47

So when Philip comes to the throne,

1:27:49

he gets that, the wonderful Macedonian cavalry

1:27:51

and then creates the missing element that

1:27:53

allows them to defeat people like Greek

1:27:55

hoplites. He creates the phalanx and then

1:27:57

he adds all sorts of other his

1:28:00

army. He's

1:28:02

often credited with the first European Combined

1:28:04

Arms Force, although one can

1:28:06

make a case that that was also a

1:28:08

Pemminundus's development, but to this

1:28:11

Macadonian cavalry that's great and

1:28:13

the Macadonian phalanx that's a missing

1:28:15

ingredient, he adds mercenaries for example.

1:28:19

Extra important during this time period where he's,

1:28:21

you know, introducing these military reforms because you

1:28:24

need some professionals, you know, to handle the

1:28:26

load and keep you from getting overrun with

1:28:29

Illyrians and Peyoneans and Thracians. In

1:28:31

the meantime, he

1:28:34

also starts employing large numbers of allies.

1:28:36

I mean the Thasalian cavalry

1:28:38

is going to be absolutely vital in

1:28:40

the army of Alexander. It starts fighting

1:28:42

with Philip at a certain point, uses

1:28:45

a lot of Thracians, employs light troops

1:28:47

and skirmishers, which is, you

1:28:49

know, something that's been the development going on

1:28:51

in Greece for the past several

1:28:54

decades. Increasing importance and new

1:28:57

ways to use them. I mean there was a

1:28:59

Spartan unit that was destroyed by light

1:29:02

troops, you know, in recent

1:29:04

memories. So all these sorts of elements allow

1:29:07

Philip to create an army that is more

1:29:09

tactically flexible depending on what you're facing. He's got

1:29:11

the troops for the job. If you're

1:29:13

facing someone that wants to smash right into you and

1:29:16

punch you in the mouth, he's got great troops to punch

1:29:18

you back. If you don't want to

1:29:20

punch those people in the mouth because you don't want

1:29:22

to get that close to them because they scare you

1:29:24

and you're gonna try to stay away at a distance

1:29:26

and throw things at them and then evade their charge.

1:29:28

Philip has troops to get you too. You want

1:29:31

to fight in bad terrain? Philip's got the troops for

1:29:33

that. Got his specialist corps,

1:29:35

his agranians, people from the highlands. Think

1:29:37

about like, you know, Gurkhas or something

1:29:39

in the time period. He'll wheedle you

1:29:42

out of the bad terrain and if

1:29:44

you hide behind the walls of your

1:29:46

city, he and Alexander are going to

1:29:48

bring the first really

1:29:50

awesome siege

1:29:53

troops in Greek history. All the times when

1:29:55

you hide yourself behind the walls in Greece,

1:29:58

the enemy army just ravages your face. fields

1:30:00

and lutes and, and pillages and then leaves,

1:30:02

or maybe surrounds you and tries to wait

1:30:04

you out. Phillip and Alexander go through your

1:30:06

walls and they come and get you. And

1:30:09

that changes things too. I

1:30:13

mean, there are going to be years in

1:30:15

Phillips timeline where he'll

1:30:17

take three Greek city-states in a

1:30:19

year. That's like warp

1:30:21

speed. I mean, famously the

1:30:24

Trojans were able to withstand a 10

1:30:26

year siege in the Llyat, right? And if

1:30:29

that's a little long, maybe by most

1:30:31

historical standards, uh, Philip

1:30:34

taking three towns in a year is

1:30:36

crazy short, crazy quick, changes

1:30:38

the entire equation between, you know,

1:30:41

the reliance that a town or a city

1:30:44

state would have on its walls and fortifications

1:30:46

to keep the bad guys out. And

1:30:49

part of what makes all this possible is

1:30:52

more of these people that Philip is

1:30:54

using in his army or professionals, they're

1:30:57

specialists, they're engineers and more and more of

1:30:59

his army's getting paid. The

1:31:02

mercenaries obviously get paid right away, but he's

1:31:04

starting to pay the guys in

1:31:06

the Pike-Fehlencks eventually. And he's capturing, I

1:31:08

love this part about, you know, ancient

1:31:10

economics could be so interesting sometimes when

1:31:12

he needs money, he goes out there

1:31:14

and takes silver and gold mines

1:31:16

from other people, like takes it from the

1:31:19

Thracians, for example, a couple of famous mines.

1:31:21

And then all of a sudden the money,

1:31:23

which comes right out of the earth, like

1:31:25

an ATM machine goes right into his hands.

1:31:28

I was reading one historian that said that neither Philip

1:31:31

nor Alexander for that matter, um, were

1:31:34

anything like economists and

1:31:36

they had a sort of a pirate mentality

1:31:38

when it came to cash. Uh,

1:31:41

when you needed more cash, you just

1:31:43

took something, right? I mean, you racked

1:31:45

up credit card debt, maxed out all

1:31:47

of the, you know, credit lines.

1:31:49

And then when you conquered some new territory,

1:31:51

you paid off the credit cards and you

1:31:54

know, got right with the bank and started all

1:31:56

over again. One

1:31:59

thing you can say about. the way Philip used

1:32:01

this army though is that it was just one

1:32:04

of his many tools and if you compare

1:32:06

him to his son Alexander

1:32:08

is going to be a lot more

1:32:10

high-handed than Philip. You know it's

1:32:12

my way or the highway I'm going to tell

1:32:14

you what to do how dare you you know

1:32:16

try to negotiate or get me to haggle whereas

1:32:19

probably because he had to Philip

1:32:22

is a lot more clever and

1:32:24

sneaky he'll stab you in

1:32:27

the back and then he'll give you a

1:32:29

good deal when he doesn't have to later

1:32:31

I mean he's he's working every sort of

1:32:34

slick clever angle and

1:32:37

one might suggest because he has to he's

1:32:40

paying off people I mean I love

1:32:42

the way again Peter Green describes this

1:32:45

because not only is he utilizing all

1:32:47

these tools but he's spent enough

1:32:49

time now in one of these Greek city-state's

1:32:51

Thebes to get a look at

1:32:53

how their government functions and compare it to how

1:32:55

his government functions right he's a king he can

1:32:58

do certain things that they can't do

1:33:01

in these governments where politics is a

1:33:03

thing and you've got different factions vying

1:33:05

for leadership and well we can sort

1:33:07

of relate today to how you

1:33:10

might be a little inefficient with

1:33:12

the way you conduct long-term policy

1:33:14

in a representative system something

1:33:16

a you know autocratic system might not

1:33:18

have to worry about and Green

1:33:21

points out that Philip noticed this as

1:33:23

a weakness that he could exploit right

1:33:26

away and Green writes quote Philip's

1:33:29

training for power was proceeding

1:33:31

along useful if unorthodox lines

1:33:34

his experience as a member of

1:33:36

the macadonian royal household had given

1:33:38

him an understandably cynical view of

1:33:40

human nature in this

1:33:42

world murder adultery and usurpation

1:33:45

were commonplace as liable to

1:33:47

be practiced by one's own

1:33:49

mother as by anyone else

1:33:51

in later life Green writes Philip

1:33:54

took it as axiomatic that all

1:33:56

diplomacy was based on self-interest and

1:33:58

every man had At his price,

1:34:01

events seldom proved him wrong. In

1:34:04

Thebes, he saw, too, the

1:34:06

besetting weaknesses of a democratic

1:34:08

city-state, constant party intrigue,

1:34:11

lack of a strong executive

1:34:13

power, the inability to

1:34:15

force quick decisions, the unpredictable

1:34:18

vagaries of the assembly at voting

1:34:20

time, the system of

1:34:22

annual elections which made any

1:34:24

serious long-term planning almost impossible,

1:34:27

the amateur ad hoc military

1:34:29

levies. For the

1:34:31

first time, Green writes, he

1:34:34

began to understand how Macedonia's

1:34:36

outdated institutions, so despised

1:34:38

by the rest of Greece, might

1:34:40

prove a source of strength when dealing

1:34:42

with such opponents. Throughout

1:34:45

his life he gained his greatest

1:34:47

advances by exploiting human cupidity and

1:34:50

democratic incompetence, most

1:34:52

often at the same time." Thebes

1:34:57

willingness to throw bribe money all

1:35:00

over the place, in large amounts, seems

1:35:03

to almost tie directly into

1:35:05

one of the tragic flaws

1:35:07

of the Greek city-state experience

1:35:09

during this time, and that's

1:35:12

that bribes were really effective.

1:35:16

The ancient historian Diodorus is

1:35:18

supposedly quoting Philip as

1:35:21

saying that the expansion of

1:35:23

his kingdom owed far more to money than

1:35:26

to arms, and then Diodorus

1:35:28

later picks up the story and just talks

1:35:30

about how the bribes

1:35:32

by Philip completely undercut

1:35:35

any sort of Greek attempt

1:35:38

at unity or a united

1:35:40

front against this Darth Vader in

1:35:42

the north exerting more and

1:35:45

more pressure on the freedom of the Greek city-states.

1:35:47

He says, yeah, but he comes calling with a

1:35:49

big wad of cash. What are

1:35:51

you going to do? This writes, quote,

1:35:54

Nevertheless, there was such a crop of

1:35:56

traders, so to speak, at that time

1:35:58

in Greece, that It was impossible for

1:36:01

Athens to check the impulse of

1:36:03

members of the Greek cities towards

1:36:05

treachery. There was a

1:36:07

story that once, Diodorus writes, when

1:36:09

Philip wanted to take a particularly

1:36:11

well-fortified city, and one of the

1:36:13

locals claimed that the place was

1:36:15

impregnable, he, meaning

1:36:17

Philip, responded by asking whether

1:36:19

the walls were unscalable by

1:36:22

cash. Experience

1:36:24

had taught him that anything that could

1:36:26

not be subdued by force of

1:36:28

arms could be overcome by gold,

1:36:30

so by using bribery to make

1:36:32

sure that he had traitors inside

1:36:34

the cities, and by calling those

1:36:37

who took his money his guest

1:36:39

friends and familiars, he corrupted

1:36:41

men's morals with this pernicious

1:36:43

form of diplomacy." One

1:36:47

of the historians that I was reading called Philip

1:36:50

a warrior diplomat, which I think is

1:36:53

a great term, very descriptive, a

1:36:55

good rundown of the things Philip brought to

1:36:58

the table, but I would add one more

1:37:00

term, warrior diplomat fixer, because

1:37:03

in my mind I envision him showing

1:37:05

up to these negotiations and these diplomatic

1:37:07

affairs, you know, dressed in full military

1:37:10

regalia, armed to the teeth, right? We

1:37:12

can do it that way if that's how you want to play it.

1:37:16

But also with a lawyer in tow, right?

1:37:18

With a notary public and basically ready to

1:37:20

negotiate some deal, right? Sign on the dotted

1:37:22

line, my lawyer, notarize it and we're good

1:37:24

to go. No one has

1:37:27

to die. But

1:37:29

if you're just the kind of person that

1:37:31

would rather not have anything so obviously signed,

1:37:33

sealed and delivered, just like a briefcase full

1:37:35

of cash, well, Philip can do it that

1:37:38

way too. What's that

1:37:40

old line that Malcolm X is supposed to

1:37:42

have uttered, right? By any means necessary. That's

1:37:44

how I kind of see Philip II. By

1:37:47

any means necessary, he's going

1:37:49

to achieve his goals. The

1:37:51

question of what those goals were

1:37:54

and how farsighted Philip

1:37:56

was in seeing those outcomes

1:38:00

Well, that's a debatable point, right? That's the kind of thing

1:38:02

that doesn't come down to us from the sources all

1:38:05

these centuries later. There's a couple

1:38:07

of ways you could look at it though. Philip

1:38:10

could be a master opportunist, somebody

1:38:12

who seizes unexpected occurrences

1:38:15

when they happen and becomes the

1:38:17

beneficiary of them. Some domino,

1:38:19

some unexpected domino tumbles, and Philip's right

1:38:21

there, Johnny on the spot to be

1:38:23

the one who benefits, and he's got

1:38:25

some advantages in that regard. We

1:38:28

mentioned already that the form of government gives

1:38:30

him an advantage, right? These other Greek states

1:38:32

have to sit here in debate and have

1:38:34

politics come into it, and people

1:38:36

try to convince the public to go along with one of

1:38:38

them. I mean, Philip doesn't have to do any of that.

1:38:40

He just orders it. He's

1:38:42

also got a professional military by this time,

1:38:44

which means it's basically standing ready to go,

1:38:47

whereas if Thebes decides they want to go

1:38:49

somewhere, or Athens does, they've got to

1:38:52

get the guys to grab their spears

1:38:54

and their armor and their shields and get

1:38:56

out to the fields and start to muster

1:38:58

the forces. I mean, by the time they

1:39:00

get their act together, you know, Philip's moved

1:39:02

already. He's occupied the key

1:39:04

strategic point. He sees the opportunity,

1:39:06

whatever it is. So he's particularly

1:39:08

set up to be a beneficiary

1:39:11

of opportunism, if that's how it goes.

1:39:15

But another way of looking at it is that

1:39:17

Philip is the guy who creates these opportunities, he's

1:39:21

a chess master here setting up a

1:39:23

checkmate down the road, and each one

1:39:25

of these miles stones that he achieves

1:39:28

is one more connect the dots toward

1:39:30

the ultimate goal. Now do opportunities that

1:39:32

are unexpected happen? And does he seize

1:39:34

them? Absolutely. But you

1:39:36

can expect to have opportunities develop

1:39:38

without knowing explicitly what they are.

1:39:42

And this sense, then Philip is a master

1:39:44

strategist, setting up the kinds of

1:39:46

an outcome that he wants and

1:39:49

every step of the way, pursuing that goal

1:39:51

relentlessly. One of the things he obviously does

1:39:54

is keep the major powers in Greece

1:39:56

from uniting against him. problem

1:40:00

with Athens since he pretty much took

1:40:02

over the throne. Athens and

1:40:04

Thebes are the key most powerful Greek

1:40:06

city-states. He keeps a close connection

1:40:09

to Thebes, right? A sort of an alliance with

1:40:11

Thebes keeps Athens and Thebes from

1:40:13

realizing that they have more of an

1:40:15

interest in preventing him from gaining

1:40:18

any more power and being any more of a

1:40:20

threat to them and keeps them focused on, you

1:40:22

know, fighting the Third Sacred War and all these

1:40:24

other things. And this is a time period where

1:40:27

Greece famously will bleed itself

1:40:29

of treasure and

1:40:31

human beings in these many wars that they fight

1:40:34

with each other, making

1:40:36

them all the weaker

1:40:38

when the final, you know,

1:40:40

Darth Vader versus the Republic conflict

1:40:44

happens. And

1:40:46

it's very interesting too because it depends

1:40:49

on how you want to view this

1:40:51

thing, but the Greeks portray this entire

1:40:53

eventual showdown with Philip as

1:40:55

Greek liberty against, you know, someone

1:40:57

coming to snuff it out. But

1:41:01

at this point in time the

1:41:03

Greeks can't focus on their collective liberty. They're

1:41:05

too busy fighting one another and that's working

1:41:07

exactly the way Philip II would have wanted

1:41:09

it to. Whether he meant to do it

1:41:12

that way or whether it just is a

1:41:14

happy coincidence. One

1:41:17

thing you can say about Philip is

1:41:19

that he's out there in the field

1:41:21

working tirelessly to make this stuff happen

1:41:24

and giving up, you know, the

1:41:26

use of major body parts along the way.

1:41:28

I mean he's the ultimate road dog. What

1:41:31

did we say? There was one year where he wasn't out in the

1:41:33

field and he may have been recovering, you know,

1:41:36

from some terrible injury inflicted upon him

1:41:38

by some enemy. But

1:41:41

while he's on the road in 356

1:41:46

BCE, so a year after he marries Olympias

1:41:48

and maybe only a year or two after

1:41:50

he actually takes over as

1:41:53

the king of Macedonia, he

1:41:55

gets some good news while on the road.

1:41:57

Traditionally three pieces of good news. The

1:42:00

first piece of good news is that his

1:42:02

general, Parmenio, has defeated the Illyrians, which is

1:42:04

always a good thing. The

1:42:06

second piece of good news he supposedly gets at

1:42:09

the same time is that his horse has won

1:42:11

in the Olympic Games in a competition. And

1:42:14

this has a deeper meaning than the way it might sound.

1:42:16

The fact that a Macedonian king

1:42:18

is allowed to take part

1:42:20

in the Olympic Games is a sign

1:42:22

that the Macedonians had met the qualifications,

1:42:24

the minimum qualifications, to be considered as

1:42:27

Greeks, which would have been a big deal

1:42:29

to Philip. Then finally the

1:42:31

third piece of news, not necessarily in

1:42:33

the order of importance, but

1:42:36

that Olympias has borne Philip a

1:42:38

son, officially

1:42:40

named Alexander the third, but we

1:42:42

know him as Alexander the Great.

1:42:46

Now there are some

1:42:48

things that have gone on, at

1:42:51

least that's what sources hundreds of

1:42:53

years later say, that would have

1:42:55

clued any soothsayer

1:42:58

or oracle

1:43:01

worth their salt that this was going to happen.

1:43:05

You don't have these great figures born in history without

1:43:07

a lot of signs from the heavens, and

1:43:09