1.
FIRE FROM HEAVEN
A little over a hundred years ago there was almost nothing to see of one of antiquity’s greatest cities. Pella had been destroyed by an earthquake early in the first century BC, reduced to a cemetery of tiles. Only a few areas remained occupied until they too were abandoned, whereupon the great metropolis was lost and then forgotten. ‘Few cities as important and as rich in memories have left fewer traces of their existence,’ remarked one nineteenth-century visitor.[1] Besides a local spring known as the ‘Baths of Alexander the Great’, a few plundered tombs and an assortment of ancient finds, gathered from the fields by farmers along with their crop, there was scant trace of the glory that had once been Pella. Excavations began immediately after Macedonia’s incorporation into the Greek state following the Balkan Wars (1912–13). Two field seasons (1914–15) revealed sections of late Hellenistic houses, the remains of a fountain and some small finds, but the First World War brought a premature close to the investigation; Pella slipped from memory once more.
The major breakthrough came in early 1957, when a local family began to dig a cellar for their village house in what is now Old Pella, the modern settlement that overlaps the ancient one.[2] They hit some Ionic column drums and called in archaeologist Photios Petsas, who was already investigating the lost city. He quickly realised the significance of the find and managed to secure some money for a small exploratory excavation. The column drums were found to be still in situ, and more appeared to extend beyond the boundaries of the would-be basement. Over the following months, the archaeologists slowly revealed the building’s plan as courtyards, walkways, antechambers and banqueting rooms began to emerge from the sun-baked earth. It was a massive Hellenistic house, one of the largest ever discovered, occupying an entire city block. Among the finds were a stunning set of river-pebble mosaics, some of them displaying geometric patterns. Others were of pictorial scenes from myth, including Dionysos riding a leopard – the mosaic that gives the house its modern name, the House of Dionysos. But one of them stood out as different; rendered in white pebbles and outlined in terracotta tracery were two men in heroic nudity, their bodies almost luminescent against the dark background, hair and lips picked out in hues of orange and red. With billowing cloaks and weapons raised, they confront a muscular mountain lion at the centre of the composition, ready for the kill. Petsas would later suggest that the scene represented Alexander and one of his Companions on a royal hunt; here was no mythical event but one rooted in real life.
It was an extraordinary discovery. The excavations had, in a matter of weeks, revealed one of Greece’s greatest treasures. There could be no more fitting introduction to the archaeological richness that lay just beneath the soil. Roof tiles bearing the stamp ‘Of Pella’ put the identification of the city beyond doubt and excavations continued until 1963. They resumed in 1976, lasting up to the present day. The combined toil and endeavour of generations of archaeologists, conservators and stonemasons have now succeeded in resurrecting the ancient city. Their work has brought Pella back from the dead.[3]
Lion hunt mosaic, House of Dionysos, Pella.
The remains that can be seen today, including the House of Dionysos, mostly date to the Hellenistic period (323–31 BC), when the city was redeveloped and enlarged with riches acquired during Alexander’s conquests. It was organised according to a Hippodamian plan – a design accredited to the ancient civic planner Hippodamos – with city blocks and public buildings set within a neat grid of avenues and roads. Water pipes spread out underfoot like the veins of a leaf, while the streets were crammed with shops, shrines, bathhouses, and private residences of varying size and grandeur; the bare Greek light reflects harshly off their friable white limestone remains. A massive agora or marketplace, the commercial heart of Pella, dominates the city; an expansive rectangle of open land enclosed by colonnades with rooms behind, where roads and people converged, it is the largest known forum complex from antiquity. At its zenith, Pella rivalled those other great beacons of Hellenistic civilisation, Pergamon, Alexandria and Antioch. It was the capital of Macedonia, but is better known today as the birthplace of Alexander the Great.
The Pella that Alexander knew, however, was much smaller and has proved harder to trace. It has only been uncovered in a few areas, where archaeologists have been able to delve below the later layers or investigate plots still under cultivation. Excavations have established that it was laid out on a grid plan from its foundation. A Classical cemetery was discovered under the eastern parts of the agora, and, along with a surviving section of the northern fortification wall, the core of the early city has been placed further to the south, on the fringes of what was once a large inland lake, which by the early twentieth century had become a sprawling swamp and was subsequently drained, the land being turned over to agriculture. A fortified islet known as Phakos, now a low bump in a farmer’s field, was located just offshore; connected to the mainland via a wooden bridge, it functioned as a citadel, prison and royal treasury. An outlet of the river Loudias provided access to the Thermaic Gulf and the Aegean Sea. Pella was originally a port city.
On a normal day, some 2,300 years ago, the surrounding harbour would have been alive with activity. The sound of hammer and saw emanating from the ship sheds, piles of Macedonian timber stacked high along its length; fishermen setting out onto the lake with their flat-bottomed boats, casting nets for the daily catch, perhaps tossing a morsel or two to the pelicans that also called Pella home; flocks of glossy ibis occasionally rising from the surrounding reed-beds, painting the sky with their iridescent wings. In the city’s many workshops, men set to work fashioning pottery or huddled around their forges, ready to mould, bend and temper their metal products. Women cloaked in colourful shawls could sometimes be seen venturing out from their houses, carrying offerings to the sanctuaries of the local healing god Darron, or Athena Alkidemos (Defender of the People). Boys played at knucklebones under shaded eaves, merchants hollered from their market stalls, men clustered together in the public spaces, ready to exchange gossip or talk politics, stray dogs picked at stinking middens. Outside the cocoon of the city’s walls, families could be found among the cemetery mounds and thickets of gravestones that bore the names and images of the dead, saying prayers to the departed and leaving graveside gifts to sustain their beloved’s lives in the next world. Around them lay extensive vineyards and water-meadows, the ponding of rivers and protective marshes serving to shield Pella from potential invaders; one Roman general later commented that it had not been chosen as the capital without good reason.
During the winters, fog could quickly envelop the land, bringing days without dawn, dank and muffled mornings, life trapped in vapour; snowfall could often be heavy, a blanket of white stretched over terracotta roofs and open spaces, an icy wind that barrelled down the Axios valley chilling residents to the bone. Spring, and the welcome return of swallows, brought a resurgence of life, the opening of the sailing season attracting new people and wares to the city. With the hottest months came swarms of insects, thick as altar smoke, plaguing the horses of the royal stud and herds of cattle. The locals were then surely thankful for the nearby streams that stayed cool despite the rising temperatures, while those rich enough headed out to their country estates; the city turned drowsy towards the dog days of summer. Standing on the southern edge of the archaeological site, with fields of cotton and wheat extending into the distance, the views bisected by a modern motorway, it can be hard to reimagine the scenes, but hidden below the dusty plain lies the memory of this rich waterfront city, the place that Alexander once called home, where he was born and grew up and which, in 334 BC, he left never to return.[4]
Pella had emerged as the new centre of Macedon towards the end of the fifth century BC.[5] Aigai, identified with modern Vergina to the west, remained the ancestral and ceremonial capital, but because Pella was better situated to exercise control over the kingdom, it became a co-capital, an administrative and military hub; its name was likely derived from the ashen coats of the local herds, the image of a grazing cow being stamped onto the city’s coinage and official clay seals.[6] It quickly grew into Macedonia’s greatest city, and was further enlarged by Philip.[7]
The move from Aigai to Pella is usually attributed to a previous Macedonian king, Archelaos (413–399 BC), who did much to develop the infrastructure of the kingdom.[8] One of his royal projects was a new palace, decorated by Zeuxis, the most celebrated painter of the day, and such was its magnificence and fame that people apparently came to Macedonia to see the palace rather than the king.[9] Although it is not specifically stated by the sources, it is generally believed that Archelaos’ palace was built at Pella, and that it was the principal royal residence for his descendants for much of the fourth century BC, including Philip and his family. It remains the most likely candidate for Alexander’s birthplace and childhood home.
The Classical palace has so far eluded firm identification. It may have been close to the waterfront, where the Loudias flowed into Pella’s lake. One Athenian visitor was accused of attempting to hold secret talks with Philip by taking a canoe along the river; others ridiculed the king’s court as a dwelling in an outflow of slime.[10] Another possible location is further to the north, on the site of the later Hellenistic palace that crowns the heights of a low hill overlooking the city. For many years it remained closed off to the public, the shaggy grass growing up around metal canopies that sheltered the exposed remains, a playground for butterflies and other insect life, the understorey patrolled by tortoises, going nowhere slowly. Areas have recently been renovated and opened to the public, allowing the visitor to walk the corridors of power and to admire the regal views across the land, the sparkling waters of the Thermaic Gulf lying in the distance, Mount Vermion and the Pierian range scoring a jagged line across the western sky which the eye can trace south towards the peaks of Olympos, home of the gods.
During the Hellenistic era, the palace was a labyrinthine complex, stretching across some seven hectares; buildings were terraced into the hill at various levels, linked together by corridors, halls, gateways, courtyards and stairs. Its grand façade towered above the rest of the city, a bank of bright white stucco, rich colours picking out the decorative architectural details. The roof was of strong Macedonian timber and held the great weight of large terracotta tiles that are now stacked in piles across the site, patinated with lichen and bleaching under the sun; when the clouds above began to boil and bruise, the weather breaking like a fever over the plain, the rain beat down upon them, the water gushing out of marble lions’ heads positioned along its length. A monumental entrance afforded a carefully controlled passage into the palace, each of the interior buildings being based around a central courtyard, the spaces subdivided and given over to specialised functions – meeting halls, feasting rooms, private residences, an exercise yard and service quarters. It has been suggested that the palace’s core may reflect the original blueprint of Archelaos’ building, but the dating remains uncertain.[11]
The beginnings of Alexander’s life, his earliest years, are similarly difficult to retrace. Besides his birth, they are not alluded to in any of the surviving accounts. It is perhaps not surprising, then, that the most enduring portrait of the infant Alexander comes from a writer of fiction: Mary Renault. In 1969 her novel Fire from Heaven was published, in which she imaginatively recounts Alexander’s journey from boy to man. Some fifty years after its publication, it still has the ability to transport the reader into the past, helping to place the young Alexander back into Pella’s forgotten spaces. Renault begins her story in the private apartments of Archelaos’ palace, when a silent intruder stirs a four-year-old Alexander from his sleep:
Renault’s Alexander is a strange and extraordinary child, with pale white skin, blond hair that would not hold a curl, and a unique, adventurous spirit. He is different from other children, not afraid of snakes in the dark. This portrait was the result of Renault’s lifelong fascination with Alexander. She had first come under his spell in the 1920s when she encountered a plaster-cast bust of him in Oxford’s Ashmolean Museum. She later confessed to her friend Kasia Abbott that this face had come to haunt her, ‘the amazing eyes, the way his hair springs from his brow, and what must already early in his twenties have been his weather-beaten beauty, his skin burnt almost black and his hair almost white with sun.’[13] A postcard of the original bust was one of her most prized possessions and took up permanent residence in her beachfront cottage near Cape Town.
Sadly, Renault never managed to visit Alexander’s homeland. Two previous trips around Greece and the islands, undertaken i...
