The latest history of Macedon in German language, covering the entire period of the independent kingdom, was published four decades ago. [1] It was not followed by any scholarly book of the same undertaking in any European language. Perhaps Nicholas Hammond's formidable 'trilogy', by the grandeur of its scope, (it was written in collaboration with Gay Griffith and Frank Walbank, and straddled a period of 16 years from 1972 to 1988), has for decades discouraged any similar endeavour. Hammond's work was ready for publication by the time Errington's book appeared in 1986. Thus, those who appreciated Sabine Müller's excellent monographs on the Argeads (Die Argeaden, Paderborn 2016) and Perdikkas II (Perdikkas II. Retter Makedoniens, Berlin 2017) will welcome the publication of her new handbook in German, provided they do not take it for what it is not. Sabine Müller's difficult task was to write in less than two hundred pages a compact political history of the Macedonian kingdom, but by no means a Macedonian encyclopaedia including geography, linguistics, art or political theories.

The book duly begins with a first part divided into three short chapters devoted respectively to the definition of its scope, the present situation of research and the available sources (literary, epigraphic, numismatic and papyrological). Geography, economy, culture, political and military institutions and coinage constitute the second and third parts, which are summarily passed over in order to open the road to political history. A fourth part, inevitably divided into reigns, covers some 115 years of history from Amyntas I, in the late sixth century, to the accession of Amyntas III in 394. The latter's long and troubled reign leads on to the terrible decade from his death in 370 to the accession to Philip II in 360. We can be thankful to the author for her meritorious effort to put some order in the extravagant and, at least apparently, contradictory sources for this period.

The epic of Macedon's rise to a world power under Philip II is told with clarity and brio and the mystery story of the king's assassination gets rid of malicious rumours. According to the author Olympias and Alexander would not have left Macedonia for Epirus and Illyria respectively because of Philip's marriage with a new young wife (Kleopatra). Olympias needed to arrange her brother's, Alexander of Molossia, wedding with her daughter (and Philip's), also named Kleopatra. As for Alexander, he wanted to secure the north-western frontier of the kingdom and eventually to recruit Illyrian troops. The infamous Pyxodaros affair is rightly deemed so fictitious that is not even mentioned.

For the reign of Alexander the Great, Sabine Müller takes the risky choice of following his campaigns not only in Europe against the bellicose "barbarians" of Thrace and Illyria and against troublesome Greeks, but also in Asia from Ionia to India. The interested reader will find in some fifteen pages the battles of Granikos and Issos, the siege of Tyre, the conquest of Egypt, the visit to Siwa, the "mother of all battles" at Gaugamela, the burning of the Persepolis palaces, the murder of Dareios, Alexander's 'change' into a successor of the Achaemenid kings, the Indian campaign, the return to Babylon and eventually the death of the king who in 13 years conquered most of the then known world. It is a pity though that such a reader cannot follow this extraordinary achievement with the help of the appropriate map(s).

The sixth part of the book covers the period of the Macedonian 'civil wars' between Alexander's death in 323 and the taking over of the kingdom by Antigonos Gonatas in 277. Telling in 34 pages a story rich in political events and implicating scores of ephemeral protagonists in a territory extending from the Ionian Sea to the Hindus is an ambitious bet, if not a feat. Again, the lack of maps handicaps the attentive reader.

On the other hand, the 38 pages reserved for the more than a century long Antigonid rule cannot do full justice to a period rich in political and military events. However, the knowledge of this period has been greatly enhanced in the last fifty years thanks to intense archaeological work and the discovery and systematic publication of hundreds of inscriptions in epigraphic corpora. Royal correspondence, and both central and local legislation in the form of royal decrees and civic laws, have permitted a better understanding and shed a new light on events simply mentioned or even deliberately distorted in our scanty or partial literary sources. There emerges a new Macedonia in which the people, the ethnos, both collectively and severally in its civic communities, appears as an element of continuity in Macedonian history, at least as important as the members of the successive royal dynasties.

In short, Sabine Müller has produced a very concise but authoritative handbook for those who wish to experiment a first approach to the kingdom of Alexander the Great. More advanced readers will happily discover a new and in-depth contribution of the same author, which has just been published: Sabine Müller, Herausforderungen und Strategien der Argeaden, Alexanders Familie, Projektverlag, Bochum / Freiburg 2025, 215 pages.

Note:

[1] Malcolm Errington: Geschichte Makedoniens, Munich 1986.

Miltiades B. Hatzopoulos