Part 25

This kingdom had acquired considerable power even before the outbreak of the Persian war; after that war, during which Amyntas had been obliged to submit, affairs were for a time stagnating; Perdiccas at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war was but a very contemptible enemy of the Athenians. After the Peloponnesian war, too, Macedonia was so powerless and so much inferior to Olynthus, that this city was enabled to take from it all the country about the Thermaic gulf. Amyntas, the father of Philip, was pressed extremely hard by the Illyrians, and was on the point of giving up his country altogether: he implored the assistance of the Thebans, and sent them his son as a hostage. These circumstances render it all the more wonderful, that Philip raised his kingdom in so extraordinary a manner: a greater contrast can hardly exist. Terrible as the history of Philip is to every friend of Greece, it must nevertheless be owned that he was an extraordinary man. In the very first year of his reign he laid the foundation of the greatness of a state which was almost annihilated. Although only twenty-four years old, he ascended the throne with mature thoughts, and immediately set about carrying them into effect, not scrupulous as to what means were most desirable, but only thinking how he could make the best use of those at his command. And he did this with uncommon surety and adroitness. He was quite aware that he lacked the means of overcoming the Greek tactic by a higher one, as the Romans did; he therefore endeavoured to overpower them with greater masses, and in this he was successful. He did not, however, confine himself to this course, but, like the Italian and Spanish courts of the sixteenth century, became powerful by means of cunning, intrigues, faithlessness and bribery. His plans, though favoured by the circumstances of the time, would have been checked by great and towering difficulties, if he had not carried them out by infamous means; he could not have destroyed Olynthus, to mention one example, had he not deceived the Olynthians and hired traitors in the place. At Philip’s death, Macedonia was already a compact empire; its boundaries had been extended into Thrace as far as Perinthus, and the Greek coast and the Greek towns belonged to it. The Odrysian princes maintained themselves in the mountains of the interior, in the neighbourhood of Adrianople. Thessaly had chosen Philip as its protector, and the towns of eastern Epirus, Ambracia and Amphilochia, had Macedonian garrisons. Every one knows in what manner Alexander extended this empire. After his death, a new Macedonian kingdom arose under the dynasty of Antipater, which, however, no longer embraced Thrace, for that country then belonged to the dynasty of Lysimachus. We know nothing about the boundaries of Macedonia and Thrace at that time; it may have been the Strymon or the Nestus; we have nothing but the scanty information in Diodorus. Afterwards Lysimachus united the two states, and Ptolemy Ceraunus appears still to have possessed the greater part of the empire of Lysimachus in Thrace. Then follows the great invasion of the Gauls, who made themselves masters of the whole of the northern parts, until they established themselves in Thrace and Upper Macedonia. Antigonus Gonatas restored Upper Macedonia and extended it as far as the river Nestus, and Magnesia also belonged to it, though Thessaly was only under the protection of Macedonia, just as Napoleon distinguished between France and Italy.[96] We now have to draw a distinction between Macedonia proper and Μακεδονία ἐπίκτητος. The latter comprised all the country east of the river Strymon, that is, Magnesia, Orestis, and probably also several small tribes in the Thessalian mountains, though not the peninsulas of Pallene, Sithonia, and Athos, which were again regarded as parts of Macedonia proper. Philip III. lost Magnesia and Orestis, which fell into the hands of the Romans; but he recovered the former, and for a time was in possession of the country of the Dolopians and Athamanians.[97] This was the extent of Macedonia at the time when the Romans conquered Perseus. They now separated Magnesia, and divided the remaining country into four parts. Livy has here translated Polybius somewhat hastily, but on the whole he has stated the division rightly; the editions, however, are faulty, on account of the Vienna MS.; criticism has yet much to do here, for the passage contains several obscurities. These four districts would not interest us at all, were it not that they are important in a numismatic point of view; we have an extraordinary number of tetradrachmae belonging to them, although the division into four districts did not exist longer than about twenty years. The Roman governors, even after the abolition of autonomy, in consequence of the revolt of the Pseudo-Philip, must have continued to coin money with the same matrices, or else the barbarians, who otherwise imitated Greek coins in quite a ridiculous manner and with numerous faults, must in this instance have employed Greek die-cutters for the purpose of imitation; this may have been the case, for example, with the Gauls and other nations.

_Macedonia prima_, Μακεδόνων ἡ πρώτη (so on coins, and not Μακεδονία ἡ πρώτη), is the country on the east of the river Strymon as far as the Nestus, comprising the towns of the interior on the eastern bank of the Nestus. The Romans divided the country in such a manner as to make rivers the boundaries, in order to tear the races to pieces, the same as was done in modern times, when what are called the natural boundaries began to be talked of.[98] By this process the Romans produced that state of dissolution, which was the object of their policy. They further abolished the _commercia_, that is, no one was allowed to have property in another district, in order that people of different parts might become entirely estranged from one another; the ἐπιγαμία, lastly, was probably likewise prohibited. The result is the strongest refutation of the doctrine, that rivers form the natural boundaries. Mountains are the true barriers between nations; think, e.g., of the Alps in Wallis, which separate Germany from Italy; for, although on one side or the other there may be a little village of people from the opposite side, still the inhabitants are distinctly marked by their language, manners, and mode of dress. Now in Macedonia prima, Greeks, Thracians, Paeonians, Macedonians, and others, were jumbled together as one nation; the second division again contained Greeks, many Paeonians, a few Thracians, and some Macedonians; the third consisted almost wholly of Macedonians and some Greeks; while the fourth contained many Macedonians, but at the same time a great number of Gauls and Illyrians. The first division of Macedonia, as I remarked before, was on the east of the river Strymon, bounded on the east by the river Nestus, though some parts beyond it also were included. The second, with its capital of Thessalonica, extended between the rivers Strymon and Axius, along the entire length of these rivers. The country west of the Axius was again divided into two parts, forming the third division, which comprised Lower Macedonia and Pieria with the capital of Pella; and the fourth comprising Elimiotis, Lyncestis and the Illyrian and Gallic districts belonging to it. The whole of the Chalcidian Acte, the coast of which was occupied by Greeks, was thus included in Macedonia. These are the four parts into which, in all probability, Macedonia was divided when it was a Roman province, and in which it continued to enjoy some kind of existence. This we must infer from the number of coins; those belonging to Macedonia prima are far more numerous than those of all the Macedonian kings together.

In the Epitome of Strabo, the name Macedonia is used in a very singular sense, for it is made to include Illyricum. He considers Macedonia as a parallelogram, of which mount Scardus forms the northern, and the river Hebrus the eastern side; in the south is the _via Egnatia_, a line drawn from Epidamnus to Thessalonica. This outline excludes southern Macedonia, and embraces many countries which do not belong to it. He may have regarded this as the extent of the Roman province; but it never had such boundaries. No one can say what his thoughts were; but it is possible that he made a mistake in copying. We know, on the contrary, that Thessaly was added to Macedonia as part of the province. When I come to the survey of the Roman state, I shall speak of the boundaries and the differences of the provinces at different times, a subject which must not be overlooked, because on this point great errors still prevail.

The extent which Macedonia acquired under the Antigonids,[99] (that is, from the time of Antigonus Gonatas and his successors until the reign of Perseus, a period of about a hundred years), with tolerably natural boundaries, embraced the countries as far as the ridge of the high mountains, but Orestis, though situated beyond the chain of these mountains, also belonged to it. The geography of these countries has as yet been very little inquired into by Europeans, whence the maps are still as confused as they were about fifty or sixty years ago. No modern traveller, as far as I know, has yet visited all the countries on the side of Skupi (Uskup?) and the high mountains. The notices contained in the ancients of these countries, cannot be applied with certainty, the names of the mountains being too indefinite; those countries are quite beyond the reach of classical literature, and we know mounts Orbelos and Rhodope scarcely more than by name. These north-western mountains may be most correctly conceived as a western continuation of mount Haemus, which is itself a continuation of the Alps. The Alps pass through Carniola close by the Adriatic, and enter into southern Bosnia; another branch runs through Styria to the north; on the borders of Hungary its breadth is not great, and it forms a hilly country until it disappears in the great plain of Slavonia and Lower Hungary; but in Bosnia the mountains again extend as far as the Save. All Bosnia and Servia is a mountainous country, while Slavonia opposite has rich and fertile plains and but few mountains. In the neighbourhood of Belgrade, the mountains approach the Danube, extend again, and occupy nearly the whole space between the Danube and the Adriatic; they then, shutting in the Danube, extend to the territory of Widdin, retreat into the splendid country of the Bulgarians, and there leave an extensive and extremely fertile space between the river and mount Haemus. From Illyricum and Dalmatia the mountains proceed, so as to form a hilly country in the neighbourhood of Scutari. Between the Drino and mount Haemus, Scardus is the highest point on the road from Ragusa to Constantinople. The Macedonian dominion extended to this point; here dwelt the Dardanians, the north-western people of Macedonia. The mountains then following are probably Scomios and Orbelos, which seem to be parts of the mountains proceeding from Haemus. Rhodope, a mountain between the Strymon and Nestus, is probably a branch of mount Haemus. Pangaeos seems to be a southern continuation and extremity of Rhodope.

The whole of the Thracian mountains running parallel with the sea between the Strymon and Nestus are rich in gold and silver mines. They were taken possession of at an early time by the neighbouring nations, especially the Thasians, and it appears that the Phoenicians, at a very remote period, also had settlements on the southern coast. Afterwards many Greeks established themselves there, and Thucydides, e.g., is known to have possessed a mine in those parts. The richest mines were in mount Pangaeos, but the other mountains as far as Haemus also contain many precious metals. I know for certain, that Bosnia and the mountains near Skupi also contain silver mines, which are known but not worked. Should those countries ever pass from the hands of barbarians, and come under the dominion of Europeans, it will be seen that the ores of precious metals extend even much further. The silver mines were worked even before the Peloponnesian war, under Alexander I., the son of Amyntas; but where they existed is uncertain. The gold mines of Pangaeos were first worked, but not vigorously, by the Athenian Callistratus,[100] but afterwards by Philip with great industry: he is said to have annually derived from them 1000 talents; they existed in the neighbourhood of Crenidas, where afterwards the mountain-city of Philippi was built.

In the west, a mountain branches off from Scardus, which we know under the name of the CANDAUIAN (not CANDAVIAN, according to a passage in Polybius) mountains; the name is familiar to us from the unfortunate expedition of P. Sulpicius Galba; it forms the boundary between upper Macedonia, parts of which are situated in the valleys of the mountain, and Illyricum. This is a cold mountain, not that the more northern ones are not still colder, but the latter were thinly, and the former thickly peopled. According to the accounts of travellers, those mountains must be very cold and ungenial. But as soon as you come to the part where the mountains descend towards the sea, and where the rivers empty themselves into it, the climate becomes all the more splendid, and the valleys more lovely and mild: the whole country changes into the most beautiful plains with smiling hills.

Macedonia thus forms the greater part of a circle, of whose periphery about one-third is cut off by a line from mount Olympus to the river Nestus.

The AXIUS, οὗ κάλλιστον ὕδωρ ἐπικίδναται αἶαν, is the most important river of Macedonia, though it flows beyond the real country of Macedonia in its narrowest sense. In its upper course it is a rapid torrent; further down it becomes muddy, whence its water is, in point of fact, not particularly excellent. For this reason, attempts were made even in antiquity to emend Homer, because it was thought impossible that he should have made any mistake at all. Connected with the Axius were the LUDIAS and the HALIACMON, a beautiful river descending from the western mountains. The STRYMON is altogether a Thracian river, and is called so by the poets; its banks, at least in later times, are more particularly the seats of the Thracians, but at an earlier period Paeonians also dwelt there. The Strymon is a mighty river without any fords, whence it was crossed only by bridges, as at Amphipolis. The NESTUS has nothing that is particularly remarkable.

Gulfs to be noticed are:—the Pierian, and the gulf of Therma or Thessalonica; the Toronaean, the Strymonian, and Singitian gulf.

The hilly districts of Macedonia produce everything that is grown in those southern countries; they are among the most fertile parts of the earth, especially in the neighbourhood of Thessalonica and Pella; such also is the narrow Pierian country, from Olympus as far as the sea: it is a real garden. At present the chief products there are cotton and tobacco, which of course did not grow there in ancient times, though cotton may have been cultivated during the later Macedonian and the Roman period in some islands of the Aegean.

Having spoken of the Macedonians inhabiting the western country, we now proceed to MACEDONIA PROPER, also called EMATHIA, with its capital Aegeae. I have no doubt that you will be convinced, that what I am going to bring forward as a hypothesis, is not said lightly nor without full persuasion, or that such a persuasion has been arrived at without much labour. It is my opinion, that the Thracians did not spread themselves in those countries until a later period: the Pelasgian race which we find in Asia as far as Bithynia and the Maeander, undoubtedly once occupied the whole of the southern coast. To that period we have to refer much of what is related about the Thracians, as for example, the tradition about Orpheus, who is conceived to have dwelt in Pieria, on the slope of Olympus, near the well Pimplea. It is opposed to all our feelings, and it can have no historical meaning to conceive him as a Thracian; but the matter becomes intelligible, if we suppose that the Thracians immigrated into those countries at a later period, and that the recollections connected with the places which fell into the hands of the Thracians, were transferred to this people. Mount Olympus was considered as the seat and centre of the gods, because it was situated, in a measure, in the midst of the great Pelasgian nation, which we must conceive to have extended farther northward. It is not likely that the Greeks should have assigned to their gods a habitation at the extreme end of their father-land. We must therefore suppose that the Thracians spread over these countries from the Strymon and Nestus. Now, as in the west, we find the Macedonians as a Pelasgian people, so we meet in the central part, about the Axius and Strymon, the Paeonians, whom Herodotus expressly mentions among the Teucrian Trojans, who were as much a Pelasgian people as the Siceli. The statement of Herodotus that they were ἄποικοι τῶν Τευκρῶν, means nothing else than that they and the Teucrians belonged to the same race. I consider these Paeonians to have been a remnant of the ancient inhabitants, who maintained themselves against the invading Thracians. Before the Macedonian kings, the so-called Temenids, established their kingdom, the Thracians occupied the country down to the borders of Thessaly, not only as far as the river Strymon, but also the country on the west of it: the Crestonaean, Crossaean, Mygdonian, and Pierian countries were in fact all inhabited by Thracians, before the Macedonians of Aegeae spread over those parts. This gradual conquest of Mygdonia and Pieria belongs to a period previous to the Persian wars, certainly that of Pieria, and it is highly probable that the conquest of Mygdonia also belongs to the same period. Perdiccas was extending his empire as early as the time of the Peloponnesian war, but it was as yet ill consolidated. Archelaus did most, he first fortified towns, made roads, and prepared Macedonia for that career which it completed under Philip; still, however, after the death of the latter, the state of Macedonia was powerless. But Archelaus, nevertheless, has the merit of having laid the foundation.

The name PIERIA is sufficiently familiar to us from the poets. It is odd enough that the country, which was afterwards inhabited by the barbarous Thracians, and at a still later period by the Macedonians, who after all were always an ἄμουσον ἔθνος, should in the remotest ages have been the seat of the Muses, who are hence called _Pierides_, and from the wells of the country, _Pimpleides_, _Libethrides_ (_Pimplei dulcis_, in Horace: Λειβηθρίδες). The BOTTIAEANS, a kindred people, dwelt east of the Macedonians proper; being expelled by the Macedonians from the neighbourhood of Pella, originally a Bottiaean place, they went to the Chalcidians, to whom they were no doubt welcome, as they must have preferred a kindred people in their neighbourhood to the Thracians. Then follow the PAEONIANS about the Axius and Strymon, who were pushed away from the coast into the interior. Herodotus relates that during the expedition of Darius Hystaspis, the nations dwelling about the Strymon as far as the sea, were carried away by the Persians, and received settlements in Phrygia: these are the Paeonians of the lower districts, and their country was thereupon taken possession of by the Thracians. Hence it cannot be surprising that afterwards no Paeonians were found there. MYGDONIA, the lower country, east of the Axius, about the Thermaic gulf, was, previously to the extension of the Macedonians, inhabited by Thracian Edonians. The EDONIANS are remarkable on account of the many allusions to them in the Latin poets, especially in reference to the worship of Bacchus (_Non sanius ego Bacchabor Edonis_, says Horace). This worship is, in a certain sense, Thracian, especially in regard to women, and existed by the side of the Phrygian. Following the narrow tract of land along the coast, we first arrive in the most southern province, _Pieria_; next follows _Bottiaeis_, with Pella, as far as the Axius; then _Mygdonia_ along the coast, beginning with the cape forming the entrance to the bay of Thessalonica, and extending to the town of Aenea; the country, from this point to the neighbourhood of Potidaea, is called _Crossaea_, and had an ancient Thracian population. During the subsequent extension of the Macedonians, those nations were not expelled, nor did they become serfs, but were only reduced to the condition of subjects.

All this is correctly indicated in the maps of D’Anville and Barbié du Bocage; but Anthemus is erroneously marked in all maps, for, instead of a country, it is put down as a town. It is a district of small extent, but plays a prominent part in the history of Olynthus.

The capital of Pieria was DION, a native Macedonian town, not Greek, but adorned with beautiful buildings, prosperous and handsome, until it was destroyed by the Aetolians on a predatory excursion. PYDNA and METHONE, both Greek towns, were situated to the north of it. Pydna was the first conquest of Philip; both towns had until then preserved their independence, which is a proof of the great weakness of the Macedonian kings. Philip is said to have destroyed them both; in regard to Methone this is certain, for during its siege he lost one eye, and for this reason gave vent to his barbarous rage against the town; but Pydna, if it was destroyed, must have been restored, for it is mentioned under the later Macedonian kings; in history it is remarkable especially on account of the decisive battle fought there, in which Perseus lost his kingdom and his crown.

The real EMATHIA is in the interior of Macedonia.[101] This lower Macedonia, in its proper sense, below the slopes of the Candauian mountains, does not extend to the sea, from which it is separated by Pieria and a narrow strip of the ancient Bottia. This was ancient Macedonia proper, the kingdom of the ancestors of Alexander, and contained the ancient Macedonian capital of AEGEAE,[102] which was the residence of the kings before the reign of Philip. There is a story about the name of this town, according to which it is derived from αἶγες: the founder of the Macedonian kingdom is said to have conquered the town by following, during a thunder-storm, close behind a herd of goats, and thus entering the open gates with a small band of followers. The royal sepulchres existed there as late as the time of Pyrrhus, but the Gauls in his army plundered them. When at Rome, I heard a very vague report: an English traveller, it was said, had discovered in 1819 or 1820, by excavations, the tombs of Macedonian kings; but Aegeae was not mentioned in the report. The person who told me this, was too ignorant to invent such a thing; but whether there is any truth in it, I do not know; I have never heard anything more about it. This place has two names, EDESSA and Aegeae; the former has been transferred to several other places, and above all to the very ancient town of Roha in Mesopotamia. It is with these places as it is with Boston, which in England is an insignificant town, while the Boston in America is a great city. In like manner, Edessa in Syria is far more important than Edessa in Macedonia. The names of many other Greek and Macedonian places, as Beroea, Cyrrhos, Chalcis, Amphipolis, and others were similarly transferred to places in Syria. Even names of Macedonian districts re-appear there. This shows a peculiar attachment to Macedonia, and characterises the sentiments of the founder of the Syrian empire. If we compare Seleucus with Ptolemy Soter, the former is far more attached to Macedonia; in Egypt we find nothing of the kind, everything there beginning anew.