Greek Depth Study: The Rise of Macedon, c.359-323 BC

Macedon and the accession of Philip II#

FoundationOCR H407 Component 1 Depth Study (Macedon) - Macedon before and at Philip's accessionDfE GCE Ancient History subject content

Macedon, 359-323 BC

Fig. 1Two reigns in thirty-six years: Philip's building of a state and army, and Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire.

Macedon before 359 BC was a kingdom rather than a polis, and the difference matters. It was ruled by a hereditary monarchy from the Argead house, with a nobility of landed Companions around the king and an assembly of Macedonians in arms with a role in acclamation and in certain judicial matters; there was no citizen democracy, no annual magistracy, and no equivalent of the Greek civic institutions. Its heartland was fertile lowland with substantial resources in timber and, in the neighbouring regions, in precious metals, but its position exposed it to Illyrian, Paeonian and Thracian pressure from the north and west and to Greek interference from the south.

Whether Macedonians were Greeks was a question the Greeks themselves debated. The royal house claimed Greek descent and competed at the Olympic Games; the Macedonian language and customs struck southern Greeks as strange, and Athenian orators found it useful to call Philip a barbarian. This ambiguity is a historical fact with consequences: it shaped how Greek states responded to Macedonian power and how Macedonian kings presented themselves. For the examination, the point to make is that identity here was contested and politically useful, not a fixed category.

Philip II came to power in 359 in a crisis. His brother, King Perdiccas III, had been killed with a large part of the Macedonian army in a defeat by the Illyrians; rival claimants to the throne were supported by outside powers; and Paeonians and Illyrians threatened invasion. Our sources describe Philip acting first as regent for a young nephew and then as king in his own right - the details are variously reported and the transition is not perfectly documented. What is clear is that within a few years he had bought off or defeated the immediate threats, secured the throne, and begun the reorganisation that made everything else possible.

One formative experience is worth noting. Philip had spent time as a hostage at Thebes in the 360s, in the years when Theban military innovation under Epaminondas had broken Spartan dominance. Our sources connect this with his later military thinking, and the connection is plausible - though the tendency of biographical tradition to find the origins of a great man's achievements in a formative episode should make you cautious about pressing it too far. What can be said with confidence is that Philip's reforms drew on developments already under way in Greek warfare and combined them in a new way.

The wider context is that the Greek city-states had exhausted themselves. The Peloponnesian War had been followed by Spartan hegemony, then Theban, and by decades of shifting alliances and inconclusive fighting; the Persian king had become an arbiter of Greek disputes; and the leading states were increasingly reliant on mercenaries. Athens retained a fleet and an alliance but not the resources of a tribute empire, and Thebes and Sparta had both been weakened. Macedonian success therefore has two halves to explain, and any strong answer will address both: what Philip did, and why the Greek world was in a condition to be dominated.

Worked example

Framing a two-sided explanation

How far was the rise of Macedon due to Philip II rather than to the weakness of the Greek states?

Separate the two explanations
One explanation credits Macedonian strengths - army reform, revenue, diplomacy, a unitary monarchy able to act quickly; the other credits Greek weaknesses - decades of inconclusive warfare, reliance on mercenaries, no state able to combine the others against a new threat.
Test the Macedonian side
Philip's reforms were real and specific, and he defeated Greek armies in the field at Chaeronea; a weak opponent does not explain a decisive victory over the combined forces of Athens and Thebes, nor the retention of dominance afterwards.
Test the Greek side
Yet Philip's expansion took over twenty years and depended repeatedly on Greek states failing to combine, on Athenian preoccupation with other commitments, and on his ability to exploit local quarrels such as the Sacred War. A united Greece in 350 would have been a far harder proposition.
Note the source position
Much of our sense of Greek weakness comes from Athenian orators arguing that Athens must act - Demosthenes has a strong interest in presenting his fellow-citizens as complacent and Philip as an urgent danger. That rhetoric should not be read straight as description.
Judge
Conclude that the two are not alternatives: Philip built the instrument, and the divided condition of Greece supplied the opportunity - but that the instrument had to exist for the opportunity to be taken, which gives Philip's work the greater causal weight.

Result: A judgement that integrates the two explanations, ranks them with a reason, and flags the rhetorical origin of the 'Greek weakness' picture.

Typical mistakes

Describing Macedon as simply a backward or barbarian kingdom, which underestimates its resources and its monarchy.
Explaining the rise of Macedon solely through Philip's genius, ignoring the weakness of the Greek states.

Active revision

Write a paragraph explaining the situation Philip inherited in 359 BC and the three most urgent problems he had to solve.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR AS and A Level Ancient History (H007, H407) specification (OCR (Oxford Cambridge and RSA))

Philip's transformation of Macedon#

StandardOCR H407 Component 1 Depth Study (Macedon) - Philip's army, resources and methodsDfE GCE Ancient History subject content

How Philip built Macedonian power

Fig. 2Philip's achievements formed a system: revenue paid a standing army, which made siege warfare possible, which brought further resources.

Philip's military reforms produced an army unlike any in Greece. Its core was an infantry phalanx armed with the sarissa, a pike far longer than the hoplite spear, held in two hands and giving a depth of projecting points that made a frontal attack on the formation extremely difficult. This infantry, drawn from Macedonian countrymen, was drilled to manoeuvre and to hold a line under pressure. Beside it stood the Companion cavalry, the heavy horse recruited from the nobility, which delivered the decisive charge - the combination usually described as hammer and anvil, in which the phalanx fixes the enemy line and the cavalry breaks it. Light troops, archers and specialist units filled out the force.

Two things made the army sustainable. The first was money. The acquisition of the region around Mount Pangaion, with its precious-metal mines, gave Philip a revenue reported by our sources to have been very large, and the foundation of Philippi secured it. That revenue paid soldiers year-round, which converted a seasonal levy into something close to a professional standing army - a decisive advantage over citizen forces that had to return to their farms. The second was engineering: Philip developed a siege capability, including torsion artillery, that let him take walled cities rather than merely ravage the countryside, which had been the practical limit of most Greek campaigning.

Philip's diplomacy was as important as his army, and our sources are full of it. He used marriage alliances systematically to secure frontiers and bind neighbouring dynasties, taking several wives from different regions - among them Olympias of Epirus, Alexander's mother. He bought support, and the Athenian orators complained repeatedly of Macedonian money working in Greek cities; how far this amounted to systematic bribery and how far it is Athenian rhetoric is a question worth raising. He negotiated when negotiation served, made peace and broke it when advantageous, and consistently divided his opponents rather than confronting them together.

Kingship itself was an instrument. A Macedonian king commanded in person, led the cavalry charge, was wounded repeatedly - Philip lost an eye at Methone and suffered other serious injuries - and shared the risks of his men. Authority rested on personal success, on the loyalty of the Companions, and on the acclamation of the Macedonians in arms. This gave Macedon a speed of decision impossible for a Greek city, where policy required assembly votes and alliances required congresses; but it also made the state dependent on the king's survival and personal capacity, as the crisis of 336 would show.

In assessing Philip, two habits improve an answer. First, keep the elements connected: the mines paid for the standing army, the standing army made year-round campaigning possible, year-round campaigning made siege warfare and the conquest of cities feasible, and success brought further resources. It is a system, not a list of reforms. Second, be careful with the sources. Our narrative of Philip depends largely on Diodorus and on the later epitome of Pompeius Trogus by Justin, supplemented by Demosthenes and Aeschines - contemporary Athenians whose speeches were composed to win political arguments at Athens. There is no Macedonian account and no contemporary history.

Worked example

Evaluating a contemporary but partisan source

How valuable are Demosthenes' speeches against Philip as evidence for Macedonian policy?

Establish what they are
They are political speeches delivered at Athens, urging the assembly to resist Philip; they were circulated in written form, probably revised, and belong to a public argument with Aeschines and others who favoured accommodation.
State their strengths
They are contemporary, by a well-informed politician with access to Athenian intelligence, and they supply detail about Philip's movements, alliances and the diplomatic exchanges of the 340s that no other surviving source provides at that level of immediacy.
State their distortions
Their purpose is to move an assembly to act. They therefore magnify the threat, question Philip's good faith systematically, attribute Athenian inaction to corruption or complacency, and present Macedonian success as bought rather than won. These are rhetorical strategies with a known function.
Test against other evidence
Where Diodorus or the epigraphic record corroborates a campaign or a treaty, the speeches confirm chronology usefully. Where Demosthenes alleges bribery or intent, corroboration is generally lacking, and the allegation should be reported as his claim.
Judge
Conclude that the speeches are of high value for Athenian debate, for the perception of Philip, and for the outline of events, and of low value as evidence of Macedonian intentions - which they assert rather than demonstrate.

Result: A judgement that separates the speeches' factual scaffolding from their persuasive claims and assigns value accordingly.

Typical mistakes

Treating the sarissa phalanx alone as the explanation, when the combination with cavalry and siege capability was what mattered.
Using Demosthenes as a factual account of Philip's methods rather than as a political speech to an Athenian audience.

Active revision

Explain in one paragraph how the acquisition of mining revenue changed what the Macedonian army could do.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR AS and A Level Ancient History (H007, H407) specification (OCR (Oxford Cambridge and RSA)) · GCE AS and A level subject content for ancient history (Department for Education)

Philip, Greece and the League of Corinth#

StandardOCR H407 Component 1 Depth Study (Macedon) - Philip's dealings with Greece to 336 BCDfE GCE Ancient History subject content

From intervention to hegemony

Fig. 3Each Greek quarrel became a Macedonian gain, ending in a treaty that made Macedonian supremacy the Greeks' own agreement.

Philip entered Greek affairs through openings the Greeks themselves provided. Involvement in Thessaly gave him a foothold and cavalry; the Third Sacred War, fought over the sanctuary at Delphi, allowed him to intervene as the champion of the god against the Phocians who had seized the sanctuary's treasures, and to be rewarded with Phocis' place on the Delphic Amphictyony. This is the pattern throughout: Philip advanced not by announcing a plan to conquer Greece but by being invited into Greek quarrels and turning each intervention into a permanent gain.

Athens was his most persistent opponent and the source of most of our evidence. The Peace of Philocrates in 346 ended one phase of hostilities on terms that Athenian politicians afterwards blamed each other for; the surviving speeches of Demosthenes and Aeschines are largely a continuing quarrel about who was responsible. Relations deteriorated again over Thrace, the Chersonese and Byzantium. In 339 a further Amphictyonic dispute brought Philip into central Greece, and Athens and Thebes - traditional enemies - allied against him.

The decision came at Chaeronea in 338. The allied Greek army was defeated by Philip's, with Alexander, then eighteen, commanding on one wing in the tradition preserved by our sources; the Theban Sacred Band is reported to have died where it stood. The settlement afterwards is as revealing as the battle. Thebes was treated harshly, receiving a Macedonian garrison; Athens, whose fleet Philip wanted, was treated with notable leniency and kept its independence. This calibration shows a conqueror thinking about the future rather than about revenge.

In 337 Philip summoned representatives of the Greek states to Corinth and established what modern historians call the League of Corinth: a common peace binding the members to keep the existing constitutions and territories, to refrain from attacking one another, and to supply forces for a common council, with Philip as hegemon and commander. The league then declared war on Persia, the announced purpose being vengeance for the invasions of 480. The arrangement was ingenious: it preserved the language of Greek freedom and autonomy while embedding Macedonian supremacy in a treaty the Greeks had signed, and it gave the invasion of Asia a panhellenic justification.

Philip was assassinated in 336 at a wedding festival, struck down by one of his own bodyguards, Pausanias of Orestis. Our sources report a personal grievance as the motive and also preserve rumours implicating others, including Olympias and even Alexander; the rumours are exactly the kind of material that accumulates around a convenient death, and no answer should treat them as established. The important historical point is what the assassination reveals about the Macedonian system: a state built around one man's personal authority faced an immediate crisis when he died, and Greek states moved at once to test the new king.

Worked example

Reading a settlement as evidence of policy

What does the settlement of 338-337 BC reveal about Philip's aims in Greece?

Set out what was done
Thebes received a Macedonian garrison and lost its dominance in Boeotia; Athens kept its independence, its fleet and, in the tradition, its prisoners without ransom; the Greek states were then bound into a common peace under Philip's leadership.
Infer from the differences
Harshness towards Thebes removed the strongest land power in central Greece; leniency towards Athens secured, or at least neutralised, the strongest fleet, which would matter for a campaign in Asia. The settlement is calibrated to future needs rather than to punishment.
Read the league's design
The common peace guaranteed existing constitutions and forbade internal war - which protected Philip's arrangement against Greek revision - while the hegemony gave him command of allied contingents. The Greeks retained the forms of autonomy and lost the substance of independent foreign policy.
Add the panhellenic frame
Declaring war on Persia in the name of vengeance for 480 gave Macedonian supremacy an ideological justification that Greek opinion could accept, and gave restless Greek states an enemy other than Macedon.
Judge
Conclude that the settlement shows Philip aiming not at the destruction of Greek states but at a stable, subordinated Greece able to supply men and ships for an invasion of Asia - an aim revealed more reliably by what he did than by anything the orators say he intended.

Result: An inference of policy from actions rather than from rhetoric, using the contrast in treatment as the key piece of evidence.

Typical mistakes

Presenting Philip as pursuing a fixed plan to conquer Greece from the start rather than exploiting successive openings.
Repeating the rumours about Philip's assassination as though the conspiracy theories were established.

Active revision

Why did Philip treat Thebes and Athens so differently after Chaeronea? Give two reasons and say which you find more convincing.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR AS and A Level Ancient History (H007, H407) specification (OCR (Oxford Cambridge and RSA))

Alexander's conquest of the Persian Empire#

StandardOCR H407 Component 1 Depth Study (Macedon) - Alexander's campaigns against PersiaDfE GCE Ancient History subject content

The campaign against Persia

Fig. 4The sequence shows the strategy: neutralise the Persian fleet by taking its bases, secure the eastern Mediterranean, and only then march inland.

Alexander secured his position before crossing to Asia. On his accession in 336 he moved quickly against rivals at home and against Greek states testing the new reign; when Thebes revolted in 335 he took the city and destroyed it, sparing, in the tradition, temples and the house of the poet Pindar. The destruction of a major Greek city was a deliberate demonstration, and it worked: Greece stayed largely quiet for the next decade, though Sparta later revolted and was crushed by Antipater, the regent Alexander left in Europe. The campaign in Asia was thus launched from a base secured by exemplary violence.

The invasion opened in 334 with the crossing of the Hellespont and the battle of the Granicus, where the Persian satraps of Asia Minor met him near the river and were defeated in a cavalry-led assault in which Alexander himself was nearly killed. The victory opened Asia Minor, and Alexander proceeded down the coast, taking or receiving the surrender of cities and thereby depriving the Persian fleet of its bases - a strategy that answered the naval problem without a naval battle. In 333 Darius III brought a large royal army to meet him at Issus, in ground too narrow for Persian numbers; the Macedonians won, and Darius fled, abandoning his family.

Alexander then turned south rather than pursuing Darius, a choice that shows strategic patience. The siege of Tyre in 332 took months and required building a mole out to the island city; Gaza followed. Egypt received him without serious resistance, and there he founded Alexandria and made the journey to the oracle of Ammon at Siwah, from which, our sources report, he returned satisfied by what the oracle had said about his birth - an episode whose details are irrecoverable and whose consequences for his self-presentation were considerable. Only with the eastern Mediterranean secured did he march inland.

Gaugamela in 331 was the decisive battle. On open ground chosen by the Persians, Alexander's army defeated a larger force by combining a disciplined phalanx with a cavalry strike at the point where the Persian line was drawn out; Darius fled again. Babylon and Susa surrendered, and Alexander took the Persian treasuries. At Persepolis the ceremonial capital was burnt in 330 - our sources differ over whether this was a deliberate act of panhellenic vengeance or the result of a drunken revel, and the disagreement is itself worth citing as an example of the tradition dividing. Darius was killed by his own men, and Alexander pursued and punished the killer, Bessus, presenting himself as the legitimate avenger of the Persian king he had overthrown.

Explaining the conquest requires more than admiration for Alexander's generalship. The Macedonian army was the finished instrument Philip had built, and its combination of pike phalanx, heavy cavalry and siege capability had no answer in the Persian order of battle. The Persian Empire, though vast and wealthy, was a structure of satrapies whose loyalty followed success, so each victory detached provinces from Darius. Alexander's own contributions were real and specific: speed, the willingness to fight where terrain favoured him, the strategic sense to secure the coast before marching inland, and a personal leadership that kept an army together thousands of miles from home. A strong answer distributes the credit accordingly.

Worked example

Explaining a strategic decision

Why did Alexander march south to Tyre and Egypt after Issus instead of pursuing Darius inland?

State the problem he faced
Persia retained a substantial fleet operating from Phoenician and other eastern Mediterranean ports, with the capacity to threaten his communications, to support revolt in Greece, and to operate in the Aegean behind him.
Explain the solution
Rather than build a fleet to fight at sea, he removed the fleet's bases by taking the coast. The sieges of Tyre and Gaza and the occupation of Egypt completed that process, after which Persian naval power in the Mediterranean effectively ceased to matter.
Note the political dividend
Egypt supplied enormous resources and a population willing to accept him; the foundation of Alexandria and the visit to Siwah gave him standing that he used thereafter in his self-presentation.
Weigh the risk
The delay allowed Darius to raise a new army, which had to be fought at Gaugamela; the decision therefore traded time for security. That trade was justified by the result, but the argument should be made on the reasoning available at the time, not on hindsight.
Judge
Conclude that the southern march was a sound strategic choice that eliminated the one Persian advantage the Macedonians could not meet directly, and that it illustrates a campaign planned around logistics and security rather than around pursuit of the enemy king.

Result: An explanation of strategy that identifies the problem, the solution and the trade-off, rather than narrating the route.

Typical mistakes

Narrating the battles without explaining the strategy that connected them.
Asserting one version of the burning of Persepolis when the tradition itself is divided.

Active revision

How far was Alexander's success in Asia due to the army Philip had created? Draft a paragraph for each side.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR AS and A Level Ancient History (H007, H407) specification (OCR (Oxford Cambridge and RSA)) · GCE AS and A level subject content for ancient history (Department for Education)

Alexander in the east: kingship, resistance and the army#

AdvancedOCR H407 Component 1 Depth Study (Macedon) - Alexander's kingship and relations with Macedonians and PersiansDfE GCE Ancient History subject content

The tensions of Alexander's kingship

Fig. 5One man holding two incompatible kinds of kingship: the friction ran through every crisis of the later reign.

After Darius' death Alexander spent years subduing the eastern provinces - Bactria and Sogdiana above all - in a difficult war against mobile opponents and fortified strongholds, and he settled the region with garrison foundations. In 327 he married Roxane, the daughter of a Bactrian noble, a political marriage of the kind Philip had used. He then crossed into India, defeating the ruler our sources call Porus at the Hydaspes in 326 in a battle notable for the crossing of a swollen river and for the first serious Macedonian encounter with war elephants; Porus was restored to his kingdom as a subordinate ruler, another familiar Macedonian solution.

The eastern years brought increasing friction between Alexander and his Macedonians, and the reason lay in the nature of his position. He now ruled a Persian empire as well as a Macedonian kingdom, and the two roles carried incompatible expectations. Macedonian kingship was personal and comparatively informal: the king was first among his Companions, drank with them and could be addressed frankly. Persian kingship involved court ceremonial, including proskynesis, a gesture of obeisance offered to the king - which to Persians expressed rank but to Greeks and Macedonians implied the worship due to a god. Alexander's attempt to introduce it at court in 327 met resistance and was abandoned.

Three episodes are usually cited as evidence of the tension, and each requires careful handling. The Philotas affair in 330 saw a senior officer, the son of Parmenio, accused of failing to report a conspiracy and executed, after which Parmenio himself was killed. In 328 Alexander killed Cleitus, a Companion who had saved his life at the Granicus, during a drunken quarrel in which Cleitus reportedly disparaged his achievements and his adoption of foreign ways. In 327 the so-called pages' conspiracy led to further executions, including that of Callisthenes, the court historian and nephew of Aristotle, who had opposed proskynesis. Our accounts of all three come from writers centuries later working from partisan traditions, and the details, especially of motive, are unrecoverable.

The army's patience finally broke twice. At the Hyphasis in 326 the troops refused to march further east, and Alexander, after a reported three-day withdrawal to his tent, turned back - the clearest demonstration that a Macedonian king's authority rested on the consent of the men he led. The return journey included a punishing march through the Gedrosian desert with heavy losses. At Opis in 324, when Alexander announced the discharge of veterans, the army mutinied again, resenting the integration of Persians into the units and his adoption of Persian practices; the crisis was resolved by a mixture of confrontation, executions and reconciliation, followed by a banquet at which our sources report prayers for harmony.

Interpreting Alexander's policy towards Persians is one of the great debates, and the honest position is that the evidence supports several readings. He retained Persian administrators, took Persian dress in part, married Persian and Bactrian wives, arranged the mass wedding of Macedonian officers to Persian women at Susa in 324, and trained Persian youths in Macedonian arms. Whether this expressed a vision of unity between peoples, a practical recognition that a Persian empire could not be run with Macedonians alone, or simply the personal absorption of a conqueror into the role of Great King, cannot be settled from sources written three to five centuries later by writers with their own views of monarchy. The strongest answers set out the evidence, present the readings, and explain why the question is undecidable rather than choosing a side and asserting it.

Worked example

Handling an undecidable question

Assess Alexander's aims in integrating Persians into his army and administration.

Assemble the evidence
List what is reasonably well attested: Persian satraps retained in post, elements of Persian dress adopted, Persian youths trained in Macedonian arms, the Susa weddings of 324, Persians brought into the units by the time of Opis.
Set out the readings
One reading takes these as a policy of fusing peoples into a common ruling class; a second as the practical necessity of governing an empire whose administration Macedonians could not staff; a third as the personal assimilation of a conqueror into the role of Great King, with no programme behind it.
Test each against the evidence
The practical reading explains the retention of satraps and the training of Persian troops economically. The fusion reading rests heavily on later interpretations of the Opis banquet. The personal reading fits the pattern of dress and ceremonial but explains the systematic military integration less well.
Weigh the source problem
Every account is centuries later and written by authors interested in monarchy - some sympathetic, some hostile, some working within a tradition that already had a view of Alexander's character. None preserves a statement of policy from Alexander himself.
Judge honestly
Conclude that the practical explanation is best supported by the actions we can verify, that a broader vision cannot be ruled out but cannot be demonstrated from sources of this date, and that the question turns on evidence we do not possess - a conclusion that is a judgement, not an evasion.

Result: A disciplined treatment of a contested question: evidence first, readings set out, each tested, and a conclusion that states what the sources can and cannot support.

Typical mistakes

Asserting that Alexander pursued a policy of the brotherhood of mankind, a reading the late and partisan sources cannot establish.
Reporting the motives behind the Philotas affair or the death of Cleitus as known facts.

Active revision

How far did Alexander's adoption of Persian practices damage his relations with the Macedonians? Identify the strongest piece of evidence on each side.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR AS and A Level Ancient History (H007, H407) specification (OCR (Oxford Cambridge and RSA))

Alexander's legacy and the problem of the sources#

AdvancedOCR H407 Component 1 Depth Study (Macedon) - the sources for Alexander and his legacyDfE GCE Ancient History subject content

The Alexander sources

Fig. 6Every surviving narrative depends on lost contemporaries - which is why identifying the tradition behind a passage is the first analytical move.

Alexander died at Babylon in June 323, aged thirty-two, after an illness of some days; our sources report suspicions of poison, which modern scholarship generally treats as the sort of rumour that attaches to any sudden royal death. He left no adult heir and, according to the tradition, no clear designation of a successor. The consequence was decades of war among his generals, from which emerged the great territorial monarchies of the Hellenistic age - in Egypt, in Asia and in Macedon itself. Whatever Alexander intended, the empire he conquered did not survive as a unit for a year.

The source problem for Alexander is the most acute on the specification, and stating it clearly is worth marks. No contemporary narrative survives. The men who wrote at the time or soon after - Callisthenes, the court historian executed in 327; Ptolemy, a general who became king of Egypt; Aristobulus, an officer; Cleitarchus, who produced a colourful and popular account - are all lost, surviving only in quotation and in the use later writers made of them. Everything we can read was composed between roughly three hundred and five hundred years after Alexander's death.

The surviving accounts fall into two broad traditions. Arrian, writing in the second century AD, states that he principally followed Ptolemy and Aristobulus on the ground that a king would be ashamed to lie and that both were with the campaign; his Anabasis is sober, military in emphasis and generally the most highly rated of the narratives - though his choice of sources builds in a Ptolemaic perspective, and his own admiration for Alexander shapes the presentation. The other tradition, often called the vulgate and represented by Diodorus, Quintus Curtius Rufus and the epitome of Pompeius Trogus by Justin, descends largely from Cleitarchus and is fuller of drama, moral colour and the sensational. Plutarch's Life stands somewhat apart, gathering anecdote in the service of character.

Working with this tradition requires a specific technique. First, ask which lost source a passage is likely to descend from, since agreement between Arrian and the vulgate may mean two independent traditions or may mean both used the same account. Second, distinguish the categories of information: campaign chronology and battle outlines are comparatively secure, since they were recorded and repeated; motive, private conversation and character judgements are the least secure and are exactly where the traditions diverge most. Third, notice when a story serves an obvious moral purpose - the wise refusal, the drunken outburst, the magnanimous gesture - and treat it as tradition rather than record.

Material and documentary evidence exists and should be used. Coinage struck by Alexander and his successors documents the imagery of Macedonian kingship and its rapid development after his death; the royal tombs at Vergina in Macedonia have produced spectacular finds bearing on the Argead house, though the identification of individual occupants has been debated; Babylonian astronomical diaries, contemporary cuneiform records, supply an independent line on the chronology of his arrival in Babylon; and the archaeology of the foundations across Asia shows something of the settlement policy. None of this replaces a narrative, but each supplies a fixed point against which the literary tradition can be measured - which is exactly the integration the examination rewards.

Philip and Alexander compared

Fig. 7A comparison that disciplines the essay question about which king mattered more: they shared the instrument, and used it for different things.

Worked example

Choosing between traditions

The burning of Persepolis is reported in different ways by the surviving sources. How should a historian handle the discrepancy?

State the discrepancy
One line of tradition presents the burning as a deliberate act, framed as vengeance for the Persian burning of Athenian temples in 480; another presents it as the result of a drunken revel, with a courtesan urging the act on. Some accounts combine elements of both.
Identify the traditions
The sober, deliberate version is associated with the account Arrian preferred; the dramatic version with the vulgate tradition descending from Cleitarchus. The difference is therefore not two independent witnesses disagreeing but two literary traditions with different tastes.
Ask what each version serves
A deliberate act fits the panhellenic justification of the whole expedition and presents Alexander as a rational political actor; a drunken revel fits a moralising interest in the corrupting effects of conquest and eastern luxury. Each version is doing work for its tradition.
Establish the secure core
What all accounts agree on is that the palace complex burned while Alexander was there and that the site was not restored. Archaeology confirms a major destruction by fire. That much can be asserted.
Judge
Conclude that the fact of the burning is secure, that the deliberate-vengeance version is the better attested in the tradition Arrian preferred, and that the motive cannot be established - and say so, rather than choosing the more entertaining story.

Result: A model of how to handle divergent traditions: separate the secure core from the contested motive and explain the divergence from the traditions' purposes.

Typical mistakes

Citing Arrian as though he were an eyewitness rather than a second-century AD writer using lost sources.
Treating agreement between Arrian and the vulgate as independent corroboration without asking whether both used the same lost account.

Active revision

For a well-known Alexander anecdote, write a short paragraph identifying which tradition it belongs to and what moral purpose it might serve.

Active recall

Recall the key points — then reveal.

Sources: OCR AS and A Level Ancient History (H007, H407) specification (OCR (Oxford Cambridge and RSA)) · GCE AS and A level subject content for ancient history (Department for Education)

Key points

Framing a two-sided explanation

Key points

Evaluating a contemporary but partisan source

Key points

Reading a settlement as evidence of policy

Key points

Explaining a strategic decision

Key points

Handling an undecidable question

Key points

Choosing between traditions

Sources

Greek Depth Study: The Rise of Macedon, c.359-323 BC

Key points

Framing a two-sided explanation

Key points

Evaluating a contemporary but partisan source

Key points

Reading a settlement as evidence of policy

Key points

Explaining a strategic decision

Key points

Handling an undecidable question

Key points

Choosing between traditions

Sources