How the fuck did Macedonia just come outta nowhere, take over

Its easy to conquer as long as you have the better army

>>2523000
Macedonians were Greek.

>>2523014

But they conquered the more southern parts of Greece, the parts you think of when you think of Greece

>>2523037
I just mentioned it in case you were the kind of idiot who thinks that the FYROM is the descendant of Macedon.

>>2523000
>barbarians sit on the periphery of actual civilizations
>suddenly a charismatic leader aided by a relatively knew technological, tactical, or strategic innovation conquers most of the known world
Shit like that just happens.

>>2523000

You should look at it more like a Civil War between Macedonians and Persians, remember Macedonia was within the Persian sphere of influence while the Ionians were rebelling against their Persian Lords.

>>2523014
Yet Alexander would speak in Macedonian when he wanted to hide something from a Greek.

The Macedonians were filthy barbarians until they held a spear to the Greeks' neck.

The Romans were filthy barbarians until the they sacked and vanquished the Greeks.

>>2523014
Macedonians are slavs, retard

>>2523108
The macedonians were a greek colony
They weren't considered barbaric because of their language or people, but because they were a monarchy in a sea of greek oligarchies

>>2523117
FYROM people are Bulgarians, yes, but we're talking about Macedonians.

>>2523123
>The macedonians were a greek colony
Fuck off you WE WUZ faggot.

They were not Greek.

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>>2523132
>but we're talking about Macedonians
no shit sherlock, and they are slavs you dumbass

>>2523136
>Fuck off you WE WUZ faggot.
Projecting much?

>>2523155
I'm from that other archipelago that has more islands than the Aegean.

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>>2523148

Is claiming Alexander as a non-greek the most easy way to rile greek nationalists? You guys are fucking faggots.

The Kingdom of Macedon was not comprised of Slavs, but they weren't certainly greek. They were philhellenes at best.

One thing I wonder is, wouldn't the persian empire be able to raise an army ten times the size of the macedonians or more? Why couldn't they overwhelm Alexander's army?

>>2523148
WE

>>2523189
They did raise an army much greater than that of Alexander's. Twice. However they were also going through/just fiinished with a civil war at the time, so things were a little iffy. Plus you couldn't just field an army of a million soldiers and think they can all communicate or have logistical support in the classical age. Even the largest armies that were ready for immediate battle that we can verify were no more than 75 thousand (Different between the entire national army)

>>2523000
Nice trips

A unified Greece was still weak compared to the Persians but with Alex's skill they was able to defeat a much larger Persian army.

Once he conquered Syria and Egypt he had a massive pool of manpower and money to fight with and just kept snowballing across Asia

>>2523008
Its easy to conquer when the Greeks are in-fighting themselves and the Persians lost their last great King who was assassinated by a corrupt eunuch/court official.

File: Battle_gaugamela_decisive.png (28KB, 721x547px) Image search: [Google]

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>>2523189
The army was in fact enormous, but that size was its own undoing. The persian infantry had essentially no training, and could not maneuver while keeping in a body in a line stretching miles.

So the problem for Alexander is to tie up and neutralize the Persian cavalry and chariots while he goes for the decisive blow against Darius himself, who twice made Alexander the generous favor of running away from the battle when Alexander charged him.

The enormous advantage of the Persians in terms of infantry numbers is negated as they all just stand there with their dicks in their hands and then find out that the King ran away and there is no reason to be there.

>>2523000
Somewhere between Barbarism and Civilization somebody decided instead of taking the bad from both to take the good from both.

>>2523189
The claims the Persians kept raising "massive" armies and numbers of soldiers after losses like Granicus and especially Issus puts a damper on hyperbolic claims and the narrative exaggeration of their armies manpower. Ignoring satraps and border garrisons needed their own militias and regiments of soldiers to keep order in far flung areas of the Achaemenid Empire during Alexander';s initial invasion as well as the serious number of losses in men killed, routed, or captured, I don't think the aped claim about "constantly tens of times larger then Alexander's" army can be accepted at face value at that point.

>>2523136
They weren't Slavs at that point either.

>>2523014
they werent greek in the way states south of thessaly were greek, they were a hellenized state

>>2523000
>muh long spears
It is less the spears and more the training needed to use them.

Macedonia's small geographic size doesn't represent the economic power it gained after achieving hegemony over Greece and thus a large proportion of Mediterranean trade. It could support well trained heavy infantry and decent cavalry.

By contrast Persia was a land empire with less wealth concentration and many far flung satraps that could only send some light infantry and light cavalry drawn from local forces that existed only to subdue disparate local tribes, not square off against Athens or Corinth.

So Alexander supported his highly trained army near the Mediterranean coast, winning pitched battles and convincing some of the wealthiest Persian satraps to fold, then gathered his resources for the march to Gaugamela.

>>2524005
>far flung satraps that could only send some light infantry and light cavalry drawn from local forces that existed only to subdue disparate local tribes
Were tribe revolts common?

>>2524066
egypt revolted after basically every succession
iirc darius had a bunch of revolts and spent his first two or three years convincing people he was the rightful ruler because a palace coup before him made him look like a usurper

>>2523891
the slav haplogroup shows up in the neck of the woods in the second half of the bronze age, so yeah, they would have been.

>>2524077
Egypt didn't revolt until Darius's death, and didn't again until after Xerxes' own. Egypt was also the most rebellious province in the Achaemenid Empire but every time a decent to strong ruler showed up, they were put down eventually.

Not really that different with the Romans who had their own fair share of revolts, uprisings, and civil issues in territories they conquered.