Poseidon Head,
Apollo on a ship, commemorating
a naval victory
over the Egyptian fleet
Antigonus II Gonatas (c. 319 BC—239 BC) was a
Macedonian king, the son of Demetrius I Poliorcetes,
and grandson of Antigonus I Monophthalmus.
On the death of his father (283 BC), he assumed the
title "king of Macedonia", but did not obtain
possession of the throne until 276 BC, after it had
been successively in the hands of Pyrrhus,
Lysimachus, Seleucus, and Ptolemy Ceraunus.
Ceraunus was killed by the invading Gauls in 279 BC,
and the Macedonian kingdom lapsed into anarchy for
two years. Gonatas defeated an army of Gauls in 277
BC in the Battle of Lysimachia, and that won him
enough credit to claim the throne of Macedon.
He continued in undisputed possession of Macedonia
till 274 BC, when Pyrrhus returned from Italy.
Pyrrhus launched an attack on the Macedonian army,
then convinced it to support him rather than
Gonatas. When Pyrrhus was killed adventuring in the
Peloponnese in 272 BC, Gonatas recovered his
dominions. He was again (between 263 BC and 255 BC)
driven out of the kingdom by Alexander, the son of
Pyrrhus, and again recovered.
The latter part of his reign was comparatively
peaceful, and he gained the affection of his
subjects by his honesty and his cultivation of the
arts. He gathered round him distinguished literary
men — philosophers, poets, and historians. He died
in his eightieth year, and the forty-fourth of his
reign. His surname "Gonatas", the meaning of which
is lost, was usually derived by later Greek writers
from the name of his supposed birthplace, Gonni
(Gonnus) in Thessaly. More recent philologists
suggest that it means "knock-kneed".
References
- Plutarch, Demetrius, Pyrrhus, Aratus
- Justin xxiv. I; xxv. I-3;
- Polybius ii. 43-45, ix. 29, 34
- Janice J. Gabbert, Antigonus II Gonatas: A
Political Biography (1997)
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