Philip II and Alexander the Great: Father and Son ... - Historia Antigua

170 RECEPTION OF FATHER AND SON
his kingdom had made himself a throned companion of the
twelve gods. He had ruled twenty-four years. He is known to
fame as one who with but the slenderest resources to support
his claim to a throne won for himself the greatest empire in the
Greek world, while the growth of his position was not due so
much to his prowess in arms as to his adroitness and cordiality
in diplomacy. Philip himself is said to have been prouder of his
grasp of strategy and his diplomatic successes than of his valor
in actual battle. Every member of his army shared in the successes
that were won in the fi eld but he alone got credit for
victories won through negotiations.
The immediate reaction is that this is far better than the brief
conclusion on Alexander. That Philip was the “greatest of the kings in
Europe” clearly echoes Theopompus’ famous line in the Proem to his
Philippica that Europe had never produced such a man as Philip. 19
Theopompus goes on to detail Philip’s various character fl aws and
ruthlessness, such as his excessive drinking, a voracious sexual appetite
for women, men, and boys, his incontinence, his inability to
manage money, and his destruction of Greek cities. 20 He also states
that Philip owed more to luck than anything else, and expounds on
the dangers of life at the Macedonian court. There are echoes here of
Demosthenes (2.18–19), who says the Macedonian court was dangerous,
debauched, and full of indecent dancing and drunken revelry,
and he regularly attributes the king’s military successes to his use of
bribes. 21 Theopompus and Demosthenes were contemporary writers
and they did not like Philip (yet Demosthenes would call Philip “the
cleverest man under the sun,” Aes. 2.41). Clearly the criticisms of our
later writers on Philip are far more limited in extent, 22 and in fact they
dilute what the earlier sources give us in their presentation of the two
kings.
Thus, Diodorus echoes what Theopompus has to say about Philip
and Europe, but he decides to modify it and even ignore some of the
more telling criticisms. Philip seemingly has done enough to make
him a god; 23 he came from nowhere and won for himself “the greatest
empire in the Greek world.” He did so by a combination of military
force and diplomacy, and he thought more of diplomacy than
fi ghting. 24 In other words, he used other means to beat his enemies
(unlike Alexander) and especially to consolidate his position, again
unlike his son.
The similarity in viewpoint and especially in the placement
between Diodorus’ longer closing comment on Philip and shorter one
on Alexander and Justin’s longer closing comment on Philip and
shorter one on Alexander is striking. Moreover, Trogus/Justin turns