Macedon

Macedon was a kingdom on the northern fringe of the Greek world, long regarded by the southern city-states as half-barbarian, though its kings claimed Greek descent and embraced Greek culture. Ruled by a warrior monarchy rather than a citizen assembly, it was transformed in the fourth century BCE into the dominant power of Greece.

Philip and Alexander

King Philip II reformed the army into the formidable pike-phalanx and, by his victory at Chaeronea in 338 BCE, brought the Greek city-states under Macedonian control. His son Alexander the Great — tutored in his youth by Aristotle — then led a Greek and Macedonian army to overthrow the Persian Empire, conquering from Egypt to the Indus before his death at Babylon in 323 BCE.

The Hellenistic legacy

Alexander's conquests scattered Greek cities and the Greek language across the East and opened the Hellenistic age. His empire did not outlast him: it was divided among his generals into the great kingdoms that warred for the next three centuries, until all of them fell at last to Rome.