Amyntas, the name of three Macedonian kings. I. The son and successor of Alcetas, reigned from 537 to about 498 B. 0. During his reign Megabazus, the general of Darius, sent ambassadors to demand from Macedonia earth and water, the tokens of submission. The weak Amyntas gave them at once. He even invited the Persian envoys to a magnificent banquet, and when, heated with wine, they brutally ordered him to give up to them his wives and daughters, he would have had the baseness to obey; but his son Alexander disguised as women several pages of the court, who, when brought to the Persians, murdered them with their daggers.

II. Nephew of Perdiccas II., died in 369 B. C. He actually inherited only Upper Macedonia, but after contesting the sovereignty of the whole country first with his brother, who defeated him with the aid of foreign allies, and afterward with the usurper Pausanias, he became king of all Macedonia in 393. He was again driven from his throne by Argaeus, son of Pausanias, and only recovered it with the help of the Thessalians. He entered into a lasting alliance with Sparta.

III. Grandson of the preceding, succeeded, when yet an infant, his father Perdiccas III., 360 B. 0., but was in the following year deposed by his uncle Philip II., and put to death on the accession of the latter's son, Alexander the Great, who charged him with conspiring against his life (336).