Ancient Macedonia

Miltiades B. Hatzopoulos

• Publisher: De Gruyter
• Year: 2020
• ISBN:
  9783110718768
• Edition: 1
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Ancient History
• Index: History

Nearly two centuries have passed since K. O. Müller published the first "scientific" study "on the habitat, the origin and the early history of the Macedonian people". An ever growing number of publications appearing each year has rendered urgent a critical appraisal of this exuberant production, the more so that many aspects of ancient Macedonia remain controversial, if not problematic. Yet after seventy years of large-scale systematic excavations the activity of Greek archaeologists, as well as the labour of scholars from all over the world, have revealed a heretofore terra incognita and given a consistency to the people that Alexander led to the end of the known world. Now more than ever before we can tackle the "main problems" that have been contested without conclusion: Where exactly was Macedonia? Which were its limits? Where did the Macedonians come from? What language did they speak? What cults did they practice? Did they believe in an afterlife? What political and social institutions did they have? What was Alexander's role in his father's death? What were his aims? To what extent can we trust ancient historians? Alexander failed to provide a stable successor to the Achaemenid multiethnic empire, and the sands of Egypt have effaced even the traces of his last abode, yet if he returned to life, he could still boast in the words of Cavafy, a modern Alexandrian in every sense, "a new Hellenic world, a great one, came to be... with the extended dominions, with the various attempts at judicious adaptations. And the Greek koine language all the way to outer Bactria we carried it, to the peoples of India".

1 Introduction: Why does ancient Macedonia matter?

The name of Macedonia inescapably evokes that of Alexander. But the empire he founded disintegrated centuries ago, and the sands of Egypt have effaced even the traces of his last abode. Adepts of political correctness can freely question his achievements and line him up along with Genghis Khan and Timur Lenk as one the major scourges of humanity. It is perhaps another passing fashion, no less than the uncritical admiration Alexander enjoyed in the colonialist era. But does Alexander exhaust by himself the contribution of Macedon to world history? In fact, Alexander was but the brilliant propagator of a Macedonian heritage which dated from before his birth and survived long after his death.

The mountain chains of Pindos and of its southern ramifications, from Lake Ochrid and the twin Prespa lakes down to the Corinthian Gulf, cut the Greek peninsula in two: in the east, along the Aegean coast, a Greece of polis-states, in the west a Greece of ethnos-states. For Thucydides (1.5.3–1.6.2) genuine Greece did not extend beyond Delphi. Westwards and northwards the Ozolian Lokroi, Aitolians, Akarnanians and even more so the Epirotes and the other peoples (in Greek ethne) of Upper Macedonia (Lynkestai, Orestai, Elimiotai), even if they were not authentic barbarians, “lived like barbarians” (Thuc. 1.6.1). Thucydides meant that they did not live in walled urban centres which dominated the surrounding countryside and concentrated the main economic and social activities, and practically all the functions of the state, but in unfortified villages of equal status disseminated over extensive territories and having as a single point of reference a common sanctuary, such as Thermos in Aitolia, Dodona in Epirus or Itonos in Thessaly. The survival of kingship in some of these ethnos-states constituted for the Athenians of the classical period an aggravating factor, which (if politically expedient) could be used as a criterion for excluding them from the Hellenic community, although they shared with the other Greeks the same language and the same religion.

The Macedonian kingdom under the Temenid dynasty formed a particular case. The central Macedonian plain faced the Aegean sea. In the fifth century Pella, Beroia, Aigeai and Europos were already urban centres. Nevertheless, even for a pro-Macedonian such as Isocrates, who made a clear distinction between Macedonians and barbarians, these elements did not suffice to make him accept the Macedonians as authentic Greeks, because of their monarchical regime.

The Macedonian state was founded by the Argeads, one of the numerous ethne or “clans” hailing from the western mountain chains, who conquered “coastal Macedonia” and settled on the land. In spite of the urban centres they found there, annexed and further developed, they retained from their past the institution of kingship and the primary centrality not only of the royal residences of Aigeai and later Pella, but also of a common sanctuary: that of Zeus at Dion. There, every October, representatives of local communities and ordinary citizens gathered to offer sacrifices, celebrate contests, and take counsel together about the common weal.

The originality of the Macedonian kingdom consists in this combination of archaism and modernity, in the appetite of the Macedonian élites for the latest intellectual quests and cultural creations, and also in the parallel conservation of the values of an epic past. No wonder that this heady mixture exerts an irresistible attraction to those who study it.

The Macedonian sovereigns imported poets, historians, philosophers, architects and painters from Athens and other city-states renowned as centres of letters and arts, though not to copy them passively. They favoured the appearance of new artistic and intellectual schools and of particular genres which corresponded to local conditions and mentalities. The combination of architectural orders, the emancipation of decoration from structure in monumental buildings, the use of stucco as a complement to masonry and illusionist painting – all these were first developed in Macedonia before being disseminated acrοss the Hellenistic world and later copied by Rome. The same is true of vaulted tombs with monumental façades, which we call “Macedonian”, of the large and sumptuous honorary tholoi (rotundas) and, of course, of the royal palaces. Even the koine, the Greek “common tongue”, which spread across the ancient world as an international language and which is the direct ancestor of Modern Greek, had its cradle in Macedonia, where Philip II (or perhaps Archelaos) adopted Attic Greek, instead of the Macedonian dialect, for the purposes of administration. The vehicle of Buddhism at the gates of India, it later became the language through which Christian religion was propagated in the Mediterranean. It survives today as the liturgical language of the Greek Orthodox Church.

These facts have been known for some time and today tend to be generally acknowledged. What has not been yet fully realised is that the kingdom of Macedonia was the harbinger of modern European monarchies, whose direct heirs are modern democracies, be they formally kingdoms or republics, in which an elected prime minister or president wields more power than any king of the past. The combination of a strong executive authority embodied in the king assisted by his Companions/Friends, who formed his Privy Council and General Staff, with extensive local autonomy for the numerous cities of the realm assured an equilibrium between centre and periphery. In effect, each city had its own citizenship, its own legislation, its own assembly and council, its own magistrates. The cities interacted with the central authorities through the epistatai, the chief magistrates of each city, but also thanks to the continuous renewal of court aristocracy by local magistrates and army officers of the local levy who distinguished themselves.

The foremost cohesive element of the Macedonian people was the army, which fell under the direct authority of the king. It comprised both professional units and numerous and well-trained reserves thanks to the institutions of the gymnasium and the ephebeia, a two-year training for youths aged between eighteen and twenty years. This unique political system, which was no less inventive than that of the Athenian democracy, was abolished by the Romans, who, however, ended up adopting many elements of Hellenistic kingship. These elements, were reintroduced into Western European states by jurists of the later Middle-Ages, and greatly influenced the evolution of modern monarchies, whose heirs are our contemporary democracies, that combine extensive territories peopled by citizens possessing a vigorous national identity, a strong central government and more or less wide local autonomy, though that autonomy is generally less extensive than in ancient Macedonia. Thus, it would not be out of place to submit that the ancient Greeks not only invented democracy, symbolised by the Parthenon, but also the modern national state embodied in the ‘democratic’ royal palace of Aigeai, with its porticoes wide open to the public.

2 The Land: Where was Macedonia?

“Macedonia was an historical-geographical term based upon confused historical memories and devoid of geographical significance ... Disappearing at the time of the Turkish conquest (the Turks spoke only of Rumeli) the term was resurrected during the classical revival only to be variously used and later to be deliberately misappropriated”, wrote a British modern historian half a century ago.¹ Until very recently if somebody entered the word “Macedonia” into an internet search engine, the first item that would appear would be the Wikipedia article “Republic of Macedonia”, with the following commentary: “The Republic of Macedonia geographically roughly corresponds to the ancient kingdom of Paeonia, which was located immediately north of the ancient Kingdom of Macedonia. Paeonia was inhabited by the Paeonians, a Thracian people, whilst the northwest was inhabited by the Dardani and the southwest by tribes known historically as the Enchelae, Pelagones and Lyncestae; the latter two are generally regarded as Molossian tribes of the northwestern Greek group”. The second item was another Wikipedia article: “Macedonia-Wikipedia”, itself subdivided into nine articles: 1) Republic of Macedonia, a country in southeastern Europe; 2) Macedonia (Greece), a traditional geographic region, spanning three administrative divisions of northern Greece; 3) Macedonia (region), a region covering all of the above, as well as parts of Bulgaria, Albania, Kosovo and Serbia; 4) Macedonia (ancient kingdom), also known as Macedon, the kingdom that became Alexander the Great’s empire; 5) Macedonia (Roman province), a province of the early Roman Empire; 6) Diocese of Macedonia, a late Roman administrative unit; 7) Macedonia (theme), a province of the Byzantine Empire; 8) Independent State of Macedonia, a proposed puppet state of the Axis powers (1944); 9) Socialist Republic of Macedonia, a part of the former Yugoslavia (1944–1991), predecessor of the Republic of Macedonia. In these articles the reader could follow the protean significance of the geographical term from a small kingdom on the shores of the Thermaic Gulf in the sixth century to Greater Macedonia under Philip II and his successors until 167, to the Roman province established in 146, which constantly changed boundaries during the Republic and the Early Empire, to its division between Macedonia Prima (or Macedonia tout court corresponding roughly to the Greek province of Macedonia) and Macedonia Secunda or Salutaris (territorially corresponding roughly to present-day North-Macedonia) in the late fourth century, to the creation of the Diocese of Macedonia under Constantine the Great, regrouping several Balkan provinces of the Roman Empire, to the Byzantine theme of Macedonia situated outside Macedonia in Western Thrace, to the modern Greek province of Macedonia, to the short-lived puppet state created by the Germans in 1944, to the Socialist Republic of Macedonia, which succeeded it in the same year and finally became the Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. In 1991 this federated state seceded from Yugoslavia and declared its independence dropping the “Yugoslav” part of its name. Situated almost completely outside the borders of the ancient kingdom of that name, it was admitted to the United Nations under the provisional name of Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia or FYROM. North-Macedonia, the new official name of this entity, is now added to the list of Macedonian metamorphoses.

How did such a paradoxical result come about? The answer is to be sought in the third of the above-mentioned articles, Macedonia as a geographical region including, in addition to the Greek province of Macedonia and to North-Macedonia, parts of Bulgaria, Albania, Serbia and even Kosovo.

By the end of the eighth century, when the theme of Macedonia was created in Thrace, the term had lost all connexion with the ancient kingdom, due to successive Roman administrative reforms, though memories of it continued to linger.² The Ottoman conquest emptied it of all practical relevance. When early modern geographers rediscovered the works of Strabo and Claudius Ptolemy, and started introducing ancient geographical terms into their maps, they did so with the loosest approximation. See, for instance, the maps of Ortelius (1570), Mercator (1598), Mariette (1645), Blaeu (1650), De Wit (1680), Nolin (1699) and Homann (1740).³

A new era began with the French Revolutionary and Napoleonic wars, which opened the Ottoman Empire to European political and scientific scrutiny. The ensuing progress of cartography coincided with parallel territorial losses by Turkey. Thus, after the Treaty of Berlin (1878), Ottoman possessions in the Balkans had shrunk to six “vilayets” (provinces): Adrinople, Shkodra, Iannina, Skopje, Monastir and Salonica. The latter three had been lately included in the enlarged state of Bulgaria by the stillborn Treaty of San Stefano (1878), and remained a hotbed of Bulgarian irredentism. For practical reasons European diplomacy arbitrarily regrouped them under the name “Macedonia” reserving (on sounder historical grounds) the name “Thrace” for the vilayet of Adrinople. Although this nomenclature (especially concerning the three ‘Macedonian’ vilayets) did not correspond to any administrative, historical or natural entity, it was readily adopted by diplomats and geographers alike, and thus the territorial settlement of the Balkan Wars (1912–13) was presented as a partition of an unimpaired Macedonia, which in fact had never existed within such frontiers, into several parts, but mainly three: Aegean Macedonia, Vardar Macedonia and Pirin Macedonia, annexed respectively by Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria.

Other factors contributed to and simultaneously aggravated the confusion regarding the configuration of Macedonia.⁴ First, no ancient work comparable to Pausanias’ Description of Greece that includes Macedonia within its scope (instead of stopping at Ozolian Lokris as Pausanias does) had survived from antiquity. Due to additional ill-luck the seventh book of Strabo’s Geography, with the description of Macedonia, has come down to us in a fragmentary state. Modern geographers working with literary sources had to make do only with lists of place names, mostly names of cities, found in the works of Pliny, Claudius Ptolemy, Hierocles, in Roman itineraries and in late lexica. Secondly, Macedonia occupied the northernmost part of the (ancient and modern) Greek world, and due to its location was most exposed to all sorts of invasions and demographic upheavals, which resulted in frequent change of place names. Thus, to mention a couple of instances, besides Mount Olympοs and the city of Beroia, which clung to their antique names, or Thessalonike (Θεσσαλονίκη), which during the Middle-Ages merely lost its first syllable (Σαλονίκη) in the popular idiom,⁵ Pella became Hagioi Apostoloi, and Edessa took the Slavic name of Vodena (Βοδενά) in the Middle Ages, retaining its ancient name only in ecclesiastic terminology. Unfortunately, the cases in which the ancient place names were retained or in which their memory persisted were the exception. When Renaissance and early modern scholars became interested in put...