Richard A.Gabriel -Great Captains of Antiquity
✍️ Quote:
Philip II of Macedonia (382–336 B.C.E.),
father of Alexander the Great, unifier of Greece, author of Greece’s first
federal constitution, founder of the first territorial state with a centralized
administrative structure in Europe, forger of the first Western national army,
the first great general of the Greek imperial age, and dreamer of great dreams,
was one of the greatest captains in the history of the West.
page 84
✍️ Quote:
To
understand Philip’s character, it is necessary to understand the land that
shaped him. In almost all aspects of cultural life Macedonia was regarded by
the Greeks of Philip’s day as a primitive backwater inhabited by semisavage
barbarians who spoke a terribly uncouth form of Greek, whose political
institutions were tribal to say the least, and whose customs, social values,
and sexual practices bordered on the unspeakably depraved. To the degree that
city-state Greeks thought about isolated Macedonia at all it was from the
perspective of snobbish contempt.
page 94
✍️ Quote:
Philip’s
“new model army” was the first in Greek history to be structured and trained on
rational principles of military science.
page 94
✍️ Quote:
Philip was
the first Greek general to integrate siege operations as a routine part of his
army. He also trained his troops to operate in concert with siege operations
much as the Assyrians had done.
page 98
✍️ Quote:
That Philip
was disposed by his nature to the practice of war and politics is obvious
enough. Even the idea of a pan-Hellenic alliance of Greek states united in a
war against Persia had been around since 380 B.C.E. when it was put forth by
Isocrates in his Panegyricus. Later, when it was clear that Philip would indeed
unite Greece by force of arms, Isocrates, now in his nineties, rewrote the
piece under the title of Philippus and commended it to Philip who saw in it the
ideological justification for his planned war against the Persians.
page 98
✍️ Quote:
The Battle
of Chaeronea was one of the most important battles in the history of Greece.
Philip’s victory and his eventual establishment of a unified Greece marked the
end of the city-state and the beginning of the imperial age.
page 106
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