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Philip II of Macedonia was one of the main protagonists of the ancient Greek history after the Athenian Pericles and immediately before Philip's son, the great Alexander.

He was born in Pella, the capital of the ancient reign of Macedonia, in 380 B.C. and he was the youngest son of the king Amyntas III. In that period, Macedonia was a semi-barbaric mountainous Country at the edge of the Greek world, mainly inhabited by shepherds tribes and ruled by local lords who not always respected the power of the king and created a sort of semi-feudal system.

Philip wasn't rough and ignorant like most of his people, although surely not an intellectual, because we know he was hostage of the Greek town Thebes between 368 and 365 and here he studied and knew Epaminondas, the great military leader of this town, the first to defeat in battle the Spartans. Philosophy and rhetoric weren't very interesting for him, who learned much better the military strategy performed by Epaminondas. So, when he came back in Macedonia, Philip began to reorganize the Macedonian army to help his brother Perdiccas III who had become king in the meantime. This wasn't still enough because those were difficult years for the reign of Macedonia; the Illyrians from the west, the Greeks from the south and the Thracians from the east made continuous attacks, in vain faced by Perdiccas III.

So, in 359 B.C, the Illyrians defeated the Macedonian army, killing 4000 of its soldiers and the same king. The Illyrians controlled the northern Macedonia so that this reign was in immediate danger.

At that point, Philip began to show all his value as a leader; as soon as he had become the new king, as Philip II. First of all, he obtained the alliance of Thrace with gifts to its king and he defeated in battle a pretender to the Macedonian throne helped by Athens that had partially restored in those years its naval dominion on the Aegean Sea. Philip avoided a direct conflict against Athens with a peace treaty in which he gave it the town of Amphipolis, along the Macedonian coast.

At that point, he was ready to reorganize its army creating the phalanx, partially on the model of the Theban army led by Epaminondas some years before. The phalanx was the most powerful military force before the Roman army; it was formed by a rigid "wall" of 8 rows of heavily armed infantry, protected at their sides by a very mobile chivalry. The weapon used by the phalanx was the "sarissa", a long lance (6 metres long) that could be raised

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