According to
Herodotus and
Thucydides, Alcetas was the fifth king of Macedonia.[5] However, a much later tradition records
Caranus as the founder of Macedonia and therefore Alcetas as the eighth king. This unhistorical assertion is almost universally rejected by moderns scholarship as propaganda invented at the Argead court during the reign of
Philip II.[6][7][8][9]
By all accounts, Alcetas was a calm and stable ruler, who sought to preserve his kingdom through peaceful means. Unlike his predecessors, he apparently did not engage in unnecessary warfare in order to extend the boundaries of his kingdom. His wife is unknown, but he was the father of
Amyntas I.[10][11]
^Errington, R.M. (1974). "Macedonian 'Royal Style' and Its Historical Significance". The Journal of Hellenic Studies. 94: 20 – via JSTOR.
^King, Carol (2010). "Macedonian Kingship and Other Political Institutions". In Roisman, Joseph; Worthington, Ian (eds.). A Companion to Ancient Macedonia. Wiley-Blackwell. p. 375.