No general played a bigger role in the Persian Wars than Themistocles, the Athenian hero who commanded soldiers at both Marathon and Salamis. Both his contemporaries and historians have remembered him as an ambitious, brilliant, and deeply controversial architect of Athens' rise to greatness as the city-state transitioned into the most formidable naval power of the eastern Mediterranean. His career unfolded during an age of extraordinary upheaval, when the expanding Achaemenid Empire threatened the independence of the Greek world, but as crucial a role as he played in those decisive conflicts, he was a major political influence as well.
Over the last 2,000 years, ambitious men have dreamed of forging vast empires and attaining eternal glory in battle, but of all the conquerors who took steps toward such dreams, none were ever as successful as antiquity’s first great conqueror. Leaders of the 20th century hoped to rival Napoleon’s accomplishments, while Napoleon aimed to emulate the accomplishments of Julius Caesar. But Caesar himself found inspiration in Alexander the Great, the Macedonian king who managed to stretch an empire from Greece to the Himalayas in Asia by the age of 30. It took less than 15 years for Alexander to conquer much of the known world.
Alexander is one of the most famous figures of antiquity, but everything he accomplished was made possible by his father, Philip II of Macedon. When Philip II came to power in 360 B.C., he was only 23 and had spent most of his adult life as the hostage of an Illyrian tribe. Philip II’s ascension to the Macedonian throne took place in the midst of great chaos in Macedonia, with the Illyrians continually raiding the kingdom from the north while other Greeks took advantage of this by taking even more Macedonian land. The problem was further exacerbated by Athenian attempts to influence the throne.
