In the Shadow of Olympus

The Emergence of Macedon

Eugene N. Borza

• Publisher: Princeton University Press
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9780691215945
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Greek Ancient History
• Index: History

In tracing the emergence of the Macedonian kingdom from its origins as a Balkan backwater to a major European and Asian power, Eugene Borza offers to specialists and lay readers alike a revealing account of a relatively unexplored segment of ancient history. He draws from recent archaeological discoveries and an enhanced understanding of historical geography to form a narrative that provides a material-culture setting for political events. Examining the dynamics of Macedonian relations with the Greek city-states, he suggests that the Macedonians, although they gradually incorporated aspects of Greek culture into their own society, maintained a distinct ethnicity as a Balkan people. "Borza has taken the trouble to know Macedonia: the land, its prehistory, its position in the Balkans, and its turbulent modern history. All contribute...to our understanding of the emergence of Macedon.... Borza has employed two of the historian's most valuable tools, autopsy and common sense, to produce a well-balanced introduction to the state that altered the course of Greek and Near Eastern history."--Waldemar Heckel, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Toward a History of Ancient Macedonia

THE frontiers of the Greek world have until recently received scant attention.¹ Scholarship—and indeed public interest—has been mainly focused on the great centers of Classical Greece: Athens, Corinth, Delphi, Olympia, and Sparta, to name a few; or on the popular archaeological sites of the Bronze Age: Knossos, Mycenae, Tiryns, and Santorini, among others. This phenomenon is due in part to the central themes of a rich ancient literature— much of it produced in Athens—and to the remarkable series of excavations conducted by Greek and foreign archaeologists in the central, southern, and Aegean regions of the country. It is also not a coincidence that the development of these archaeological sites corresponds with the growth of tourism (a major source of revenue for the modern Greek state) and that most of these sites lie within a few hours’ journey from Athens by air, land, or sea.²

A perusal of the shelves of any well-stocked classics library reveals the enormous amount of space taken up by the excavation reports of the famous sites.³ Taking into account the popular and scholarly general accounts of the Classical period, the often lavish and very beautiful picture books, and the guide books and histories, one could come away with the impression that ancient cultures in Greece existed mainly in such places. Barely noticed, tucked away midst these volumes, would be a few works with titles like Epirus, Early Civilization in Thessaly, The Thracians, Archaia Makedonia, and Altthrakien. These areas were the marches of the Greek world, peopled with “half-Greeks,” as the late L. H. Jeffery called them. They are regions not much exploited archaeologically (the islands of Thasos and Samothrace and the fine inland site of Olynthus are among the exceptions). It is almost as if the northern and western regions of the Greek peninsula were to be forever relegated to the half-light of the barbarian world. It is to be regretted, for example, that we have as yet little internal evidence for two important and wealthy Chalcidic cities: Mende has not been systematically excavated, and the site of Torone has only recently been explored for the first time.

Yet it is an encouraging trend in classical scholarship that these remote areas are beginning to receive attention. Several factors account for this emergence. We may have nearly reached a stage of exhaustion in mining the traditional sources for Greek history. How much more historical material can be squeezed from Thucydides? What new authors will come to light? It is sobering to reflect that, a half dozen or so recent major finds excepted, virtually all the Greek literature we now possess has been known since the Italian Renaissance. Indeed, it may be the simple passage of time, during which we have worked carefully through the literary evidence from antiquity, that now forces us to seek fresh materials. As these seem not to be forthcoming for Classical Greece, we turn increasingly to non-Classical periods—note, for example, the recent surge of interest in the Dark Ages and Archaic period—and to regions heretofore thought to be outside the mainstream of Greek history.

Moreover, most of the important Classical sites in the south have been dug, and, while much remains to be excavated, increasing urbanization, industrial development, and large-scale agriculture will make it economically undesirable and technically difficult to explore virgin archaeological zones. Major Bronze Age excavation will probably continue apace. Interest in the period is high, many of the sites are located in sparsely populated areas, and the Greek government sees such regions as attractive to tourism. Thus, virtually by default, attention shifts to the peripheral areas, many of which are not yet densely peopled and industrialized, where one may still walk unhindered over field and slope, noting surface sherds and identifying natural landmarks. As we turn to less familiar and mainly unworked regions, we do so with a sound base of traditional Greek history and an increasing skill in the integration of literary evidence with material finds. We also have learned much from the social, behavioral, and physical sciences, which enable us to join to the critical core of humanistic endeavor the insights of economics, cultural, and physical anthropology, geology, and environmental studies. The final decades of this century are proving to be a new era of fulfillment for the study of Balkan regions hitherto relatively unknown. And this is no more true for any region than for ancient Macedonia.⁴

Ancient Macedonia: The Nineteenth-Century View

The course of Macedonian studies in the modern era has been fitful. Neglect of Macedonia has occurred partly for the reasons stated above: funds for excavation have usually been directed toward the more accessible, famous, and tourist-oriented sites in the southern lands and islands of Greece, places that have direct links with a literature and history that once formed the core of education in the West, and that continue to permeate the popular consciousness everywhere.

Ironically, the ancient Macedonians themselves are unwittingly partly responsible for their own relative obscurity. They produced a commander of unrivaled reputation whose career—part conquest and part romance—has overwhelmed the literature on Macedon, and has diverted our attention from the society from which he sprang. Moreover, in their own day both Alexander the Great and his father, Philip, incurred the enmity of the greatest of the Athenian orators. Demosthenes’ castigations of the Macedonian kings have echoed through the centuries. Whatever one thinks of Macedon’s conquest of Greece, Demosthenes has had his revenge, as the Demosthenic view of the Macedonians has affected our understanding of fourth-century Greek politics. That view produced a drama in which the “civilized” cities of Greece, led by Demosthenes and the Athenians, struggled against domination by the northern “barbarians,” Philip and his Macedonian warriors.

Only recently have we begun to clarify these muddy waters by revealing the Demosthenic corpus for what it is: oratory designed to sway public opinion at Athens and thereby to formulate public policy. That elusive creature, Truth, is everywhere subordinate to its expressive servant, Rhetoric. Demosthenes’ pronouncements are often no more an accurate recording of the events and personalities of the day than are the public statements of politicians in any age.⁵ The Demosthenic view colored our reconstruction of events. Demosthenes’ language and elegant style made him part of the Athenian literary traditions that have pervaded Western education and culture, appealing not only to our refined tastes but also to our patriotic feelings. Few persons spoke in behalf of the Macedonians in their day, and those who did were regarded as fools or traitors. Macedon spoke with its spears. But Macedonian arms, so effective against Demosthenes during his life, have been powerless against him since.

Moreover, the ancient Macedonians inhabited an area that was a hinterland of modern Greece. At the very moment when Heinrich Schliemann, Wilhelm Dörpfeld, and Arthur Evans were uncovering the riches of Bronze Age culture in the Peloponnesus and Crete, Macedonia still lay uneasily under Turkish overlordship. Most of ancient Macedonia was incorporated into the modern Greek state only in 1913 (see below, pp. 9–10), and it has been a politically sensitive region ever since, in its relationships both with the Athens-dominated government in the south and with its non-Hellenic neighbors to the north.

During World War I there was widespread internal opposition to the Greek government’s policy of accommodation with the Central Powers. In 1916 a National Movement was formed under the leadership of Eleftherios Venizelos, who established an alternative provisional government at Salonica. By June 1917 the Salonica-based movement had succeeded in gaining the recognition of the Allies and overthrowing the regime at Athens. As late as the 1950s and 1960s there existed among right-wing politicians and military officers in Athens a deep suspicion of and hostility toward left-wing politicians and university students in Salonica. Fear of left-wing trends in the north contributed to the coup that produced the military dictatorship of 1967–74. The important strategic character of Macedonia is reflected in the current organization of the Greek government: Macedonia (including western Thrace) possesses its own cabinet-level minister, the Minister for Northern Greece. The only other region of the nation to claim its own ministry is the Aegean.

Comprehensive studies of Macedonia are thus a mark of recent twentieth-century scholarship. The nineteenth century saw Macedonia largely in terms of political biography and “missionary history.” The “mission” was the notion prevalent in German scholarship that it was Philip and Alexander’s destiny to propagate Hellenic unity and to spread the higher culture of the Greeks among the more backward peoples of the world. It was a civilizing mission. It had little to do with Macedon or Macedonian history except insofar as that northern race had produced two men whose historical impact was undeniable. Philip, after all, was the conqueror and unifier of Greek city-states long torn by internecine conflict. Thus freed from the burden of energies dissipated in continual strife, the Greeks might at last release their higher culture upon the world, with the Macedonians acting as the vehicle for its spread. The impetuous, brilliant young Alexander, tutored by Aristotle, fond of Homer and Euripides, was the suitable instrument for the mission.

It was a dynamic idea in the minds of nineteenth-century scholars, made no less important by the fact that many German intellectuals and politicians felt witness to the same phenomenon in their own day: the unification of the German states and the consequent spread of their own Kultur. This vision remained a feature of German scholarship on the subject—the emergence of the World Figure as a stabilizing force and as the articulator of the potent energies of a creative people. Until the Hohenzollern collapse, the modern analogy was the adoration of the Prussian dynasty. In the twentieth century it was transformed into a more generalized messianic Führerprinzip.⁶ Whatever the value of this concept as a reflection of contemporary moods in historiography and political ideology, it has dealt mainly with the dramatic external features of Macedonian history, such as the conquests of famous kings. Serious study of the infrastructure of Macedonian society and history still lay in the shadow of ancient Argead imperialism and modern Prussian diplomacy.

One of the inescapable dilemmas faced especially by German scholars was the recognition that Philip, the embodiment of national will and the unifier of Greece, was also regarded as a threat to the higher civilization of an Athens widely admired among educated persons in the Western world. Even the staunchest advocates of Philip’s apparent single-minded resolve were forced to retreat before Demosthenes’ ringing cries for freedom from tyranny. Few saw through the rhetoric. When the English historian-archaeologist D. G. Hogarth attempted in 1897 to present a view of Philip that emphasized the king’s Macedonian outlook, echoed Diodorus Siculus’s (16.95.1–4) encomium to Philip’s statesmanship, hinted at some duplicity in Demosthenes’ activities, and questioned the orator’s ethics, his book was greeted with mixed reviews.⁷ Western philhellenism and pro-Athenian sentiment were too strong to permit a serious attempt to acquit Philip of the charge of threatening civilization by warring with Athens. Thus Hogarth’s work had little effect on subsequent scholarship. Early twentieth-century historians continued occasionally to write political biographies of the pre-eminent fourth-century B.C. kings, and when they did consider Macedonian affairs they viewed them only as part of general Greek history.⁸ What was required for a deeper understanding of Macedon and its kings were serious source studies and archaeology, but archaeological interest remained dormant for decades because twentieth-century interest in Macedonia sprang from modern politics rather than from the study of antiquity.

Macedonian Studies and the “Macedonian Question”

In modern times “Macedonia” has meant mainly to Makedonikon zētēma, the infamous “Macedonian Question.” At least as early as the 1880s, both the Great Powers and local irredentists were anticipating the prospect of allocating portions of the decaying Ottoman E...