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Ancient Macedonia's Rise and Fall

Macedonia was an ancient kingdom located in Northern Greece that was originally ruled by the Argead dynasty. It later expanded under King Philip II and his son Alexander the Great to become one of the largest empires in the ancient world. After Alexander's death, Macedonia remained an important cultural and political center along with other successor states. However, its power declined due to conflicts with Rome, and it was eventually absorbed into the Roman province of Macedonia. Macedonian kings exercised absolute power and financed their large armies through taxing mining operations and minting coins.

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140 views2 pages

Ancient Macedonia's Rise and Fall

Macedonia was an ancient kingdom located in Northern Greece that was originally ruled by the Argead dynasty. It later expanded under King Philip II and his son Alexander the Great to become one of the largest empires in the ancient world. After Alexander's death, Macedonia remained an important cultural and political center along with other successor states. However, its power declined due to conflicts with Rome, and it was eventually absorbed into the Roman province of Macedonia. Macedonian kings exercised absolute power and financed their large armies through taxing mining operations and minting coins.

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Macedonia 

Ancient Greek also called Macedon (/ˈmæsɪdɒn/), was an ancient kingdom on the


periphery of Archaic and Classical Greece,[6] and later the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece.
[7]
 The kingdom was founded and initially ruled by the royal Argead dynasty, which was
followed by the Antipatrid and Antigonid dynasties. Home to the ancient Macedonians, the
earliest kingdom was centered on the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula,[8] and bordered
by Epirus to the west, Paeonia to the north, Thrace to the east and Thessaly to the south.

Before the 4th century BC, Macedonia was a small kingdom outside of the area dominated by
the great city-states of Athens, Sparta and Thebes, and briefly subordinate to Achaemenid Persia.
[3]
 During the reign of the Argead king Philip II (359–336 BC), Macedonia subdued mainland
Greece and the Thracian Odrysian kingdom through conquest and diplomacy. With a
reformed army containing phalanxes wielding the sarissa pike, Philip II defeated the old powers
of Athens and Thebes in the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC. Philip II's son Alexander the Great,
leading a federation of Greek states, accomplished his father's objective of commanding the
whole of Greece when he destroyed Thebes after the city revolted. During Alexander's
subsequent campaign of conquest, he overthrew the Achaemenid Empire and conquered territory
that stretched as far as the Indus River. For a brief period, his empire was the most powerful in
the world – the definitive Hellenistic state, inaugurating the transition to a new period of Ancient
Greek civilization. Greek arts and literature flourished in the new conquered lands and advances
in philosophy, engineering, and science spread throughout much of the ancient world. Of
particular importance were the contributions of Aristotle, tutor to Alexander, whose
writings became a keystone of Western philosophy.

After Alexander's death in 323 BC, the ensuing wars of the Diadochi, and the partitioning of
Alexander's short-lived empire, Macedonia remained a Greek cultural and political center in the
Mediterranean region along with Ptolemaic Egypt, the Seleucid Empire, and the Kingdom of
Pergamon. Important cities such as Pella, Pydna, and Amphipolis were involved in power
struggles for control of the territory. New cities were founded, such as Thessalonica by the
usurper Cassander (named after his wife Thessalonike of Macedon).[9] Macedonia's decline
began with the Macedonian Wars and the rise of Rome as the leading Mediterranean power. At
the end of the Third Macedonian War in 168 BC, the Macedonian monarchy was abolished and
replaced by Roman client states. A short-lived revival of the monarchy during the Fourth
Macedonian War in 150–148 BC ended with the establishment of the Roman
province of Macedonia.

The Macedonian kings, who wielded absolute power and commanded state resources such as


gold and silver, facilitated mining operations to mint currency, finance their armies and, by the
reign of Philip II, a Macedonian navy. Unlike the other diadochi successor states, the imperial
cult fostered by Alexander was never adopted in Macedonia, yet Macedonian rulers nevertheless
assumed roles as high priests of the kingdom and leading patrons of domestic and
international cults of the Hellenistic religion. The authority of Macedonian kings was
theoretically limited by the institution of the army, while a few municipalities within
the Macedonian commonwealth enjoyed a high degree of autonomy and even had democratic
governments with popular assemblies.

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