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Course: World history > Unit 2
Lesson 4: Empire of Alexander the GreatPhilip of Macedon unifies Greece
How did Philip of Macedon unify Greece? Sal discusses his rise to power, the League of Corinth, and the rise of Alexander the Great.
Want to join the conversation?
- Seeking opinions. Do we need Sal to read the oath, or could we pause the video, read it ourselves, and he could he just explain unfamiliar terms such as hegemon?(6 votes)
- I see no problem with Sal reading the oath. It is a common practice for instructors (online) to read (aloud) from texts on which they're giving instruction. (Any perusal at coursera will bear this out.)(52 votes)
- Do people really live like the time line shows? That seems like something super natural.(9 votes)
- Did Greeks call themselves Greeks?(2 votes)
- Greeks call themselves Éllines (Έλληνες). The word "Greece" comes from Latin word "Graecia," which the Romans used to call Greece.(12 votes)
- Why is alexander the great written as alexanderthe 3rd(5 votes)
- With royal families whose realms stretch across national borders, the numbers get wonky. Alexander may have been the third person of that name to be the sovereign someplace (maybe in Macedonia?), but the first Alexander someplace else.
In Spanish history, the first King named Carlos was an Austrian, who was the fifth person named Charles to be king there. So, though he was "Carlos I" in Spain, elsewhere in Europe he was "Charles V".(4 votes)
- Why was it that every time Philip the II tried to take over Sparta it never worked?(6 votes)
- Did the Macedonians think of themselves as Greeks? Did the Greek city-states see the Macedonians as part of a shared culture, or as foreign invaders?(4 votes)
- Macedonians (Greek: Μακεδόνες, Makedónes) are a regional and historical population group of ethnic Greeks, inhabiting or originating from the Greek region of Macedonia, in Northern Greece.(2 votes)
- At3:32, was the oath that the city states had to commit to effective in unifying Greece to fight against Persia?(4 votes)
- 11:16I don't mean to sound rude, but why do you use Wikipedia? I was told by my teachers to never use Wiki for information because the information is not creditable. Those cites can be altered by other readers and could give you facts that are not true to history. Wiki and other .com cites are not that creditable. Cites that are .org, .edu, or .net are more creditable.(0 votes)
- You are right to be wary of Wikipedia, because it CAN be changed. In fact, were I your teacher and you told me that you got some information from Wikipedia, I'd ask that you go back and re-check it somewhere else.
BUT Wikipedia can be very useful. When you find a piece of information that has a footnote, you can go to THAT source to check if it really is there. You can even use the footnotes in a Wikipedia article to form the basis for your own research on something. If the person who wrote and posted the original article was honest, you'll have a good start as you begin your own project.(6 votes)
- Who is king of Macedon?(2 votes)
- Macedonia is an independent nation in 2024, governed by an elected executive and legislature.
The province of Macedonia in Greece (just across the border from the independent nation with the same name), is governed by an elected legislature and executive for local things, and under the national government of Greece for those things that nations do.
Neither the province in Greece nor the independent nation across the border has a king in 2024.(2 votes)
- do people really live like the timeline shows(2 votes)
- I’m sure you won’t see this, but they lived like how we do, just more primitive.(1 vote)
Video transcript
the 5th century in Greece started off with the persian invasion and ended with the Peloponnesian War and now we're entering into the 4th century in Greece and as we entered to the 4th century Thebes is the dominant city-state but as we get into the mid 4th century and especially the end of it we will see that all of Greece gets dominated and then unified by the Makedonians or the Macedonians and in particular the first unifier here was Philip of Macedon and this is a bust of him and he's known as he comes to power in 359 BCE he comes to power his father was king of Macedon but then his older brothers died he becomes it's actually his nephew who is heir to the throne he becomes regent for his for his infant nephew which means he has the power temporarily but then he actually takes full control and becomes king of Macedon or makaton as it's often pronounced in 359 BCE and what he then goes off about doing is taking over most of the Greek city-states and eventually he's able to unify most of the Greek city-states and you can see on this map here which i got from wikipedia this is a little bit of information about the map you can see how he expanded his empire over time that remember 359 BCE he becomes king of Macedon in 352 he's moving into he's moving into Cecily then in the end the three forties he's going into the race so he's going into Thrace and Molossia and Molossia is interesting, the king of Molossia he actually ends up mattering his he ends up marrying the king of Molossia's daughter Olympias who ends up being alexander the great mother and she's a pretty interesting characters we will see a little bit she was part of this cult that worships snakes is believed that she slept with snakes but he goes off and continues to conquer eventually he's able to subjugate most of the city-state's of Greece except for Sparta and that takes us that takes us 2 337 right over here where he is able to establish the League of Corinth it was only called the League of Corinth after the fact but he gets the leaders of the significant city-state together in corn that's why it's called the League of corn and they swear their oath essentially to Philip king of Macedon who they call the hegemon and what's really important about that is he is able to unify the Greek city-state outside of Sparta and in doing so he sets things up for his son the famous alexander the great the Great to continue to unify Greece alexander the great's actually able to subjugates part up but then more famously he goes off to conquer the entire persian empire and then beyond in his short life and will have at least another video on that but just to get a feel for what happened at the League of Corinth in 337 BCE i will share this this oath that the various city states had to commit to and it says I swear by Zeus gay Helios Poseidon and all the gods and goddesses I will abide by the common piece and i will neither break the agreement with Philip nor take up arms on land or sea harming any of those abiding by the oats nor shall I take any city or fortress nor harbour by craft or contrivance with intent of war against the participants of the war nor shall I depose the kingship of Philip or his descendants nor the Constitution's existing in each state when they swore the oath of the peace nor shall i do anything contrary to these agreements nor shall allow anyone else as far as possible but if anyone does commit any breach of the Treaty I shall go and support as called by those who need and I shall fight the transgressors of the common piece as decided by as decided by the council and called on by the hegemon who is that when this when the oath is made who is Philip of Macedonia now unfortunately for Philip this happens in 337 where for the most part he's the first to unify the Greek city-states outside of Sparta but he's only able to live about a year after that a year later we're now in 336 BCE and he's in the old capitol of the mat kalonian kingdom which is very close to Pella celebrating the wedding of his daughter to his to his brother-in-law so his daughter who is who is Alexander's sister she's being married to Olympias' brother so he's marrying his daughter to her uncle and it is during that wedding that Philip of Macedon is killed by pase Gnaeus who is his bodyguard and there's a lot of really interesting stories he's killed at the wedding in 336 BCE and there's a lot of really interesting stories about what the motivation for Policy Gnaeus was there are many accounts that say that Posse Gnaeus was Phillips lover he was on some level jealous and he was on some level because another relative of Philip fronted Palestinians and Phillip didn't go to defend him there's some narratives that this was arranged somehow by Olympias, Phillips's wife and the mother of Alexander to put Alexander on the throne there are some motivation there because also a shortly before the assassination he took a second wife which was his more favored wife as opposed to Olympias so there's a lot of really interesting account and i encourage you to read up on it but the interesting thing is is after he gets assassinated well then there's a bit of a a scrabble scramble for power but it leaves Alexander the Great or eventually is the Alexander the third officially but eventually Alexander the Great becomes becomes the hegemon and he's eventually in his short life he's only 20 years old when he becomes king he is able to as we'll see in the next few videos take over all of the Persian Empire and beyond and subjugates party so he further unifies the Greeks and takes on the mighty Persian Empire