Philip II of Macedon

Third son of Amyntas III, king of Macedon from 359 BC after the death in battle of his brother Perdiccas III against the Illyrians. The military reformer whose creation of the sarissa-phalanx (18-foot pike-armed heavy infantry in depth-eight files), the combined-arms integration of Companion cavalry with hypaspists and phalanx, and the long-range campaign-logistics of Macedonian supply made the Asian conquest possible. Crushed the Greek coalition at Chaeronea in 338 BC with the young Alexander commanding the left wing, then formed the League of Corinth in 337 as the platform for the Panhellenic war against Persia he did not live to lead. Assassinated in October 336 BC at the wedding of his daughter Cleopatra to Alexander I of Epirus, stabbed by his bodyguard Pausanias of Orestis in the theatre at Aegae. The question of Olympias's or Alexander's complicity in the plot was already asked in antiquity and remains unresolved.

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