Archélaos

Archélaos is king of Macedonia of 413 with 399 av. J. - C.. He is the natural son of Perdiccas II and undoubtedly of a slave. He goes up on the throne while making assassinate the legitimate heirs.

Its reign starts at the time when the Expédition of Sicily ruin power of Athens. Also, the threat of the last city Attic, even maintains it the cordial relations with it enabling him to rebuild part of its fleet by selling wood to him. Athens confers to him in thanks the title of proxenes and évergète of the people . This respite on the Athenian side enables him to intervene in Thessalie where it supports the family of the Aleuades (with Larissa). It represses also a revolt of the town of Pydna.

He is a large restorer of L `state Macedonian and is also known like a man of culture and contacts cultural and artistic with the southernmost Greece. He fixes the new capital of the kingdom at Pella and accommodated there at his court of many Greek artists : Poets, musicians, tragic actors, including Euripide (480-406, Greek tragic actor) and painters, of which Zeuxis (464-398, the painter more celebrated of its time). It organizes, a religious festival with the assistance of musicians and sportsmen honouring Zeus and the Muses with Dion, town of Piérie and one of the religious centers most important of the kingdom. The largest athletes and artists of Greece come to Macedonia to take part in this event.

Archélaos I develops the trade with the creation of roads which are also important for the movements of the soldiers and it supports the rise of the currency. It reinforces the army, in particular the cavalry and the infantry hoplite and built many fortresses. Archélaos I is assassinated, victim of a plot at the time of a shooting party, although nothing never came to prove it. According to Élien (or Aelian, Claudius Ælianus, called Élien the Sophist, v.175-v.235, historian and speaker Romain) in " Varied Historia, 8.9" , the reason would be that Archélaos I had promised the hand of one of his/her daughters and when he renonça with his promise the desperate husband-to-be would have assassinated it. Thucydide (471-v.440, politician and Athenian historian ) would have said of Archélaos I which it made more for his kingdom than all his brought together predecessors.

Its death is followed from one long period of disorders. One does not know the name of sound (or its) wife (S) but it had six children, Oreste (399-398) and Argaeus II (393-392) who were Kings, Amyntas, Pausanias and two girls. The first married Irrhos d' Illyrie and the second married one named Derdas.

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