Greek Coin of
Macedonian Kingdom
 Philip III, Arrhidaeus – King of Macedonia: 323-317 B.C.
Bronze 18mm (5.15 grams) Miletos mint. Struck under Asandros, circa 323-319 B.C.
Reference: Price P64; ADM I Series VII
Head of Apollo right, wearing tainia.
BAΣIΛEΩΣ ΦΙΛΙΠΠΟΥ, Horseman riding right holding spear; labrys (double-axe) above, monogram below.

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Labrys (Greek: λάβρυς, lábrys) is the term for a symmetric doubleheaded axe originally from Crete in Greece, one of the oldest symbols of Greek civilization; to the Romans, it was known as a bipennis. The symbol was commonly associated with female divinities.

The double-bitted axe remains a forestry tool to this day, and the labrys certainly functioned as a tool and hewing axe before it was invested with symbolic function. Labrys symbolism is found in Minoan, Thracian, and Greek religion, mythology, and art, dating from the Middle Bronze Age onwards, and surviving in the Byzantine Empire.

In Greek and Roman mythology, Apollo, is one of the most important and diverse of the Olympian deities. The ideal of the kouros (a beardless youth), Apollo has been variously recognized as a god of light and the sun; truth and prophecy; archery; medicine and healing; music, poetry, and the arts; and more. Apollo is the son of Zeus and Leto, and has a twin sister, the chaste huntress Artemis. Apollo is known in Greek-influenced Etruscan mythology as Apulu. Apollo was worshiped in both ancient Greek and Roman religion, as well as in the modern Greco–Roman Neopaganism.

As the patron of Delphi (Pythian Apollo), Apollo was an oracular god — the prophetic deity of the Delphic Oracle. Medicine and healing were associated with Apollo, whether through the god himself or mediated through his son Asclepius, yet Apollo was also seen as a god who could bring ill-health and deadly plague as well as one who had the ability to cure. Amongst the god’s custodial charges, Apollo became associated with dominion over colonists, and as the patron defender of herds and flocks. As the leader of the Muses (Apollon Musagetes) and director of their choir, Apollo functioned as the patron god of music and poetry. Hermes created the lyre for him, and the instrument became a common attribute of Apollo. Hymns sung to Apollo were called paeans.

In Hellenistic times, especially during the third century BCE, as Apollo Helios he became identified among Greeks with Helios, god of the sun, and his sister Artemis similarly equated with Selene, goddess of the moon. In Latin texts, on the other hand, Joseph Fontenrose declared himself unable to find any conflation of Apollo with Sol among the Augustan poets of the first century, not even in the conjurations of Aeneas and Latinus in Aeneid XII (161–215). Apollo and Helios/Sol remained separate beings in literary and mythological texts until the third century CE.

Philip III Arrhidaeus (Greek; ca. 359 BC – December 25, 317 BC) was the king of Macedon from after June 11, 323 BC until his death. He was a son of King Philip II of Macedon by Philinna of Larissa, allegedly a Thessalian dancer, and a half-brother of Alexander the Great. Named Arrhidaeus at birth, he assumed the name Philip when he ascended to the throne.

In Plutarch‘s report, he became both physically and mentally disabled following a poisoning attempt by Philip II’s wife, Queen Olympias, who wanted to eliminate a possible rival to her son Alexander. However, this may just be malicious gossip, and there is no evidence that Olympias really caused her stepson’s condition. Alexander was very fond of him, and took him on his campaigns, both to protect his life and to ensure he would not be used as a pawn in a challenge for the throne. After Alexander’s death in Babylon, Arrhidaeus was proclaimed king by the Macedonian army in Asia. However, he was a mere figurehead, and a pawn of the powerful generals, one after the other. His reign and his life did not last long.

The crater Ariadaeus on the Moon is named after him.

 Biography

He appears to have never been a danger for Alexander’s succession to Philip II, notwithstanding their being of about the same age; all the same, when the satrap of Caria Pixodarus proposed his daughter in marriage to Philip, who offered Arrhidaeus as husband, Alexander thought it prudent to block the operation, with considerable irritation of his father (337 BC). Arrhidaeus’ whereabouts under the reign of his brother Alexander are unclear; what is certain is that no civil or military command was given him in those thirteen years (336 BC–323 BC).

He was at Babylon at the time of Alexander’s death, the 11 June 323 BC. A succession crisis erupted: Arrhidaeus was the most obvious candidate, but he was mentally unfit to rule. A conflict exploded between Perdiccas, leader of the cavalry, and Meleager, who commanded the phalanx: the first wanted to wait to see if Roxana, Alexander’s pregnant wife, would deliver a male baby, while the second objected that Arrhidaeus was the closest relative living and so should be chosen king. Meleager was killed, and a compromise was engineered: Arrhidaeus would become king with the name of Philip, and he would be joined by Roxana’s son as co-sovereign should he prove a male, as he did, and joined his uncle with the name of Alexander. It was immediately decided that Philip Arrhidaeus would reign, but not rule: this was to be the prerogative of the new regent, Perdiccas.

When news arrived in Macedon that Arrhidaeus had been chosen as king, Cynane, a daughter of Philip II, matured the design to travel to Asia and offer the new king her daughter Eurydice for wife. This move was an obvious affront to the regent, whom Cynane had completely bypassed: to prevent the move Perdiccas sent his brother Alcetas to kill Cynane, but reactions among the troops generated by this murder was such that the regent had to give up and accept the marriage. From that moment on Philip Arrhidaeus was to be under the sway of his bride, a proud and determined woman bent on substantiating her husband’s power.

Eurydice’s chance came when the first war of the Diadochi sealed the fate of Perdiccas, making a new settlement necessary; settlement that was made at Triparadisus in Syria in 320 BC. Eurydice moved deftly enough to obtain the removal of the first two designed regents, Peithon and Arrhidaeus, but was powerless to block the too powerful Antipater: the latter was made new regent and Philip Arrhidaeus and his wife were forced to follow him to Macedon.

The regent died of natural causes the following year, nominating as his successor not his son Cassander, but a friend of his, Polyperchon. Cassander’s refusal to accept his father’s decision sparked the second war of the Diadochi, in which Eurydice saw once again a chance to free Philip from the control of the regent. An opportunity presented itself in 317 BC, when Cassander expelled Polyperchon from Macedon: Eurydice immediately allied herself with him and made her husband nominate him new regent, and Cassander reciprocated by leaving her in full control of the country when he left to campaign in Greece.

But all this was to prove exceedingly volatile: that same year (317) Polyperchon and Olympias, allied with the king of Epirus Aeacides, invaded Macedon, while the Macedonian troops refused to fight the son of Alexander, whom the invaders had brought with them. Philip and Eurydice had no choice but to escape, only to be captured at Amphipolis and thrown into prison. It soon became clear that Philip was too dangerous to be left alive, as many enemies of Olympias saw him as a useful tool against her, and so on December 25 317 BC she had him executed, while his wife was forced to commit suicide.

The following year, when Cassander reconquered Macedon and avenged Philip’s death, he interred the bodies of Philip and Eurydice with royal pomp at Aegae, and celebrated funeral games to their honour.

In 1977 important excavations were made near Vergina leading to the discovery of a two-chambered royal tomb, with an almost perfectly conserved male skeleton. Manolis Andronikos, the chief archaeologist on the ground and the majority of archaeologists, decided it was the skeleton of Philip II, but many have disputed this attribution and instead proposed it to be the remains of Philip Arrhidaeus.

Subsequent forensic reconstruction of the skull contained in the gold Larnax (cremains container) clearly demonstrates damage to the right eye socket of the skull in keeping with historical accounts that Philip II had been struck by an arrow in the right eye and as a consequence, had been severely disfigured. See Prag, John and Richard Neave: Making Faces: Using Forensic and Archaelogical Evidence (British Museum Press: 1997).

Macedonia or Macedon was an ancient kingdom on the northern periphery of Classical Greece and later the dominant state of Hellenistic Greece. It was ruled during most of its existence initially by the legendary founding dynasty of the Argeads, the intermittent Antipatrids and finally the Antigonids. Home to the Macedonians, the earliest kingdom was centered on the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula, bordered by Epirus to the west, Paeonia to the north, the region of Thrace to the east and Thessaly to the south.

The rise of Macedon, from a small kingdom at the fringe of typical Greek city states affairs, to one which came to control the fate of the entire Hellenic world, occurred under the reign of Philip II. With the innovative Macedonian army, he defeated the old powers of Athens and Thebes in the decisive Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC and subdued them, while keeping Sparta in check. His son Alexander the Great pursued his father’s effort to command the whole of Greece through the federation of Greek states, a feat he finally accomplished after destroying a revolting Thebes. Young Alexander was then ready to lead this force, as he aspired, in a large campaign against the Achaemenid Empire, in retaliation for the invasion of Greece in the 5th century BC.

In the ensuing wars of Alexander the Great, he was ultimately successful in conquering a territory that came to stretch as far as the Indus River. For a brief period his Macedonian Empire was the most powerful in the world, the definitive Hellenistic state, inaugurating the transition to this new period of Ancient Greek civilization. Greek arts and literature flourished in the new conquered lands and advancements in philosophy and science were spread to the ancient world. Of most importance were the contributions of Aristotle, a teacher to Alexander, whose teachings carried on many centuries past his death.

After the death of Alexander the Great in 323 BC, the following wars of the Diadochi and the partitioning of his short-lived empire, Macedonia proper carried on as a Greek cultural and political center in the Mediterranean region along with Ptolemaic Egypt, the Seleucid Empire, and the Attalid kingdom. Important cities like Pella, Pydna, and Amphipolis were involved in power struggles for control of the territory, and new cities were founded, like Thessalonica by the usurper Cassander, which is now the second largest city of modern day Greece. Macedonia’s decline of influence began with the rise of Rome until its ultimate subjection during the second Macedonian Wars.

The Roman province of Macedonia (Latin: Provincia Macedoniae, Greek: Ἐπαρχία Μακεδονίας) was officially established in 146 BC, after the Roman general Quintus Caecilius Metellus defeated Andriscus of Macedon, the last self-styled King of the ancient kingdom of Macedonia in 148 BC, and after the four client republics (the “tetrarchy“) established by Rome in the region were dissolved. The province incorporated ancient Macedonia, with the addition of Epirus, Thessaly, and parts of Illyria, Paeonia and Thrace. This created a much larger administrative area, to which the name of ‘Macedonia’ was still applied. The Dardanians, to the north of the Paeonians, were not included, because they had supported the Romans in their conquest of Macedonia.