Philip II came to the throne of the minor Macedonian kingdom, located in the north of Greece, in 359 BCE. At the time, Macedon was being overrun by a neighboring group of people known as the illyrians. Outperforming his predecessors, Philip managed to not only kick the illyrians out of his kingdom, but he turned the tide and annexed the illyrian kingdom in a decisive campaign. Philip then resolved to conquer and become the master of Greece in 354 BCE. Having been seriously weakened by the Peloponessian War, not even the maritime power of Athens was able to stop the Macedonian's ambitions. Philip, being a brilliant statesman and general, engineered his army into one of the strongest of the ancient world, applying powerful ranged weapons of the age and the famous Macedonian phalanx. Not bein