Antipater

Antipater (; ; c. 400 BC319 BC) was a Macedonian general and statesman under the successive kingships of Philip II of Macedon and his son, Alexander the Great. In the wake of the collapse of the Argead house, his son Cassander would eventually come to rule Macedonia as a king in his own right. In 320 BC, Antipater was elected regent of all of Alexander the Great's Empire but died the following year. In a perplexing turn of events, he chose an infantry officer named Polyperchon as his successor instead of his son Cassander, and a two-year-long power struggle (the Second War of the Diadochi) ensued. Career under Philip and Alexander Nothing is known of his early career until 342 BC, when he was appointed by Philip to govern Macedon as his regent while the former left for three years of hard and successful campaigning against Thracian and Scythian tribes, which extended Macedonian rule as far as the Hellespont. In 342 BC, when the Athenians tried to assume control of the Euboean towns and expel the pro-Macedonian rulers, he sent Macedonian troops to stop them. In the autumn of the same year, Antipater went to Delphi, as Philip's representative in the Amphictyonic League, a religious organization to which Macedon had been admitted in 346 BC. After the triumphal Macedonian victory at the Battle of Chaeronea in 338 BC, Antipater was sent as ambassador to Athens (337–336 BC) to negotiate a peace treaty and return the bones of the Athenians who had fallen in the battle.