Antigonus II Gonatas (319 BC-239 BC) was King of Macedon from 277 BC to 274 BC (succeeding Demetrius I Poliorcetes and preceding Pyrrhus of Epirus) and from 272 BC to 239 BC (succeeding Pyrrhus and preceding Demetrius II Aetolicus).
Biography[]
A young Antigonus
Antigonus was born in Gonnoi, Thessaly, Greece in 319 BC, the son of Demetrius I Poliorcetes and Phila. His grandfather Antigonus I Monophthalmus was defeated and killed at the Battle of Ipsus in 301 BC, losing control of his vast Phrygian empire to his enemies Seleucus, Cassander, Lysimachus, and Ptolemy I Soter. Demetrius managed to escape the battle, and, in 292 BC, Demetrius gave command of his army in Boeotia to Antigonus, who crushedd a Boeotian rebellion in Thebes. In 288 BC, Antigonus was left in command of Greece as Ptolemy's fleet incited the Greek cities to revolt, while his father campaigned in Macedonia. Antigonus succeeded in driving off Ptolemy's fleet and forcing Athens to surrender. In 283 BC, Demetrius died in captivity in Syria, and Antigonus succeeded in repelling a Gallic invasion as his enemies Lysimachus and Seleucus were killed in quick succession during the continuing Wars of the Diadochi. In 277 BC, after a final victory over the Gauls at Lysimachia, Antigonus became the new King of Macedon.
Antigonus' next threat to face was from Pyrrhus of Epirus, the king of the Greek state of Epirus, who had returned from a campaign in Italia (which Antigonus had refused to support), and was in need of a new war to pay for his troops. At the Aous River in 274 BC, Pyrrhus' army of Gallic mercenaries defeated Antigonus' army; Pyrrhus called out all of Antigonus' officers by name and convinced them to defect. Antigonus fled while concealing his identity, clinging to the coastal towns, while Pyrrhus controlled the vast majority of Macedonia. However, Pyrrhus repeated his perennial mistake of not making good use of his victory; his Gallic mercenaries angered the Macedonian locals by digging up the bones of their ancestors in search of treasure, and he embarked on a siege of Sparta in 272 BC before he finished off Antigonus. Pyrrhus was killed while attempting to overthrow the Macedonian client ruler of Argos. After Pyrrhus' death, Antigonus absorbed the entirety of his army into his ranks, and he regained all of the territories captured by Pyrrhus, garrisoned Corinth and other cities, and had grateful allies in Sparta and Argos. It was said that no man ever set up more absolute rulers in Greece than Antigonus, and, in 267 BC (with Egyptian encouragement), the Athenian leader Chremonides persuaded the Spartan king Areus I into rebelling against Macedonian hegemony. Antigonus destroyed the grove and temple to Poseidon at the entrance to Attica and forced the Athenians and Spartans to surrender in 261 BC. That same year, the second of the Syrian Wars broke out as King Antiochus II and Antigonus warred with Ptolemy II Philadelphus. After the war's conclusion in 255 BC, Ptolemy recognized Antigonus as the master of Greece. In 244 BC, he crushed a rebellion in Corinth, which had joined the Achaean League in its uprising against Macedon. Antigonus died in 239 BC at the age of 80, leaving his kingdom to his son Demetrius II Aetolicus.