Jump to content

Lower Macedonia

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

Lower Macedonia (Greek: Κάτω Μακεδονία, Kato Makedonia) or Lower Macedon or Macedonia proper or Emathia is a geographical term used in Antiquity referring to the coastal plain watered by the rivers Haliacmon, Axius and Loudias, stretching along the coast of the Thermaic Gulf, which was the core and defined the center of the Argead kingdom of Macedon.[1] The two capitals of Macedon, first Aigai and then Pella, lay in Lower Macedonia. Its districts were: Emathia, Pieria, Bottiaea, Almopia, Amphaxitis.[2] Most of the region corresponds roughly to the modern Greek region of Central Macedonia, except for the Chalcidice peninsula.

Growth of the kingdom of Macedon

History

[edit]

The kingdom of Macedonia was originally situated along the Haliacmon and Loudias rivers in Lower Macedonia, north of Mount Olympus and east of the Pierian Mountains and the Vermio Mountains. Historian Robert Malcolm Errington suggests that one of the earliest Argead kings established Aigai (modern Vergina) as their capital in the mid-7th century BC.[3] According to Maria Girtzy, the only ancient source referring indirectly to Emathia's boundaries was by Herodotus' testimony that Macedonis lay between Loudias and Haliacmon; thus Emathia (as alternative name to the district of Macedonis) was bounded by Loudias to the north and the plateau of Edessa to the northwest, the valley of Haliacmon to the south along with Vermio Mountains to the southwest, and the Thermaic Gulf to the east.[4] Some ancient geographers give Emathia as the name of a town in the region, or as a name in alternation with Macedon.[5] Pieria took its name from the Pieres, a Thracian[6] tribe that was expelled[7] by the Macedonians in the 8th century BC[8] from their original seats. Sometime, during the Archaic period, Bottiaeans were also expelled by Macedonians from Bottiaea to Bottike.

Almopia was incorporated into the kingdom during the reign of Alexander I (r. 498–454 BC) and Almopes, that originally inhabited the area before, were expelled from the region.[9][10] Amphaxitis and the eastern districts of Crestonia, Mygdonia and Bisaltia were also added to the kingdom later. There were also included the subregions Anthemous and Crousis in it, which were originally part of Chalcidice. Additionally Eordaea was incorporated to the Argead kindgom earlier than the rest of Upper Macedonia.

The Argeads conquered gradually the Thracian-inhabited areas east of the Axius in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. The regions of Edonis, Sintice, Odomantis and Pieris, conquered by Philip II, were termed in Latin Macedonia Adjecta (Επίκτητος Μακεδονία). West of Lower Macedonia, Upper Macedonia was a geographical and tribal term to describe the upper/western of the two parts in which (together with Lower Macedonia) Macedon was roughly divided.[11][12][13]

Miltiades Hatzopoulos has suggested that the Macedonian dialect of the 4th century BC spoken in Macedonia proper, as attested in the Pella curse tablet, was a sort of Macedonian 'koine' resulting from the encounter of the idiom of the 'Aeolic'-speaking populations around Mount Olympus and the Pierian Mountains with the Northwest Greek-speaking Argead Macedonians hailing from Argos Orestikon, who founded their kingdom of Lower Macedonia.[14] However, according to Hatzopoulos, B. Helly expanded and improved his own earlier suggestion and presented the hypothesis of a (North-)'Achaean' substratum extending as far north as the head of the Thermaic Gulf, which had a continuous relation, in prehistoric times both in Thessaly and Macedon, with the Northwest Greek-speaking populations living on the other side of the Pindus mountain range, and contacts became cohabitation when the Argead Macedonians completed their wandering from Orestis to Lower Macedonia in the 7th c. BC.[14] According to this hypothesis, Hatzopoulos concludes that the Ancient Macedonian dialect of the historical period, which is attested in inscriptions such as Pella curse tablet, is a sort of koine resulting from the interaction and the influences of various elements, the most important of which are the North-Achaean substratum, the Northwest Greek idiom of the Argead Macedonians, and the Thracian and Phrygian adstrata.[14]

See also

[edit]

References

[edit]
  1. ^ Thomas, Carol G. (2010). "The Physical Kingdom". In Roisman, Joseph; Worthington, Ian (eds.). A Companion to Ancient Macedonia. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 65–80. ISBN 978-1-4051-7936-2.Thomas 2010, pp. 65–80.
  2. ^ Girtzy, Maria (2001). HISTORICAL TOPOGRAPHY OF ANCIENT MACEDONIA. UNIVERSITY STUDIO PRESS.
  3. ^ Errington, Robert Malcolm (1990). A History of Macedonia. Translated by Catherine Errington. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-06319-8.Errington 1990, p. 2.
  4. ^ Girtzy, Maria (2001). HISTORICAL TOPOGRAPHY OF ANCIENT MACEDONIA. UNIVERSITY STUDIO PRESS.
  5. ^ Strabo Book 7 Fragment 11
  6. ^ Guthrie, William Keith (1993). Alderink, Larry J. (ed.). Orpheus and Greek Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement. Mythos: The Princeton/Bollingen Series in World Mythology. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-0691024998. ... assigned, Pieria, was originally inhabited by a Thracian tribe, the Pieres, who according to Thucydides (ii. ...
  7. ^ Walker, Keith G. (2004). Archaic Eretria: A Political and Social History from the Earliest Times to 490 BC. London: Routledge. p. 154. ISBN 9780415285520. ... 498-54)12' had incorporated coastal Pieria into Macedonia and expelled the 'Pieres', who afterwards took up their abode in areas at Mt.Pangaion...
  8. ^ Hansen, Mogens Herman; Nielsen, Thomas Heine (2005) [1st edition 2004]. An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis, An Investigation Conducted by The Copenhagen Polis Centre for the Danish National Research Foundation. Oxford University Press. p. 865. ISBN 978-0-19-814099-3.
  9. ^ Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, II.99
  10. ^ Roisman, Joseph; Worthington, Ian (2011-07-07). A Companion to Ancient Macedonia. John Wiley & Sons. p. 75. ISBN 978-1-4443-5163-7.
  11. ^ Joseph Roisman, Ancient Greece from Homer to Alexander: The Evidence, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, p.520
  12. ^ Eugene N. Borza, In the shadow of Olympus: the emergence of Macedon, Princeton University Press, 1991, p.31
  13. ^ Michael M. Sage, Warfare in ancient Greece: a sourcebook, Routledge, 1996, p.162
  14. ^ a b c Hatzopoulos, Miltiades B. (2017). "Recent Research in the Ancient Macedonian Dialect: Consolidation and New Perspectives". In Giannakis, Georgios K.; Crespo, Emilio; Filos, Panagiotis (eds.). Studies in Ancient Greek Dialects: From Central Greece to the Black Sea. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 321–322. ISBN 978-3-11-053081-0.

Sources

[edit]
  • A Manual of Ancient Geography. by Heinrich Kiepert, George Augustin. Macmillan. p 182 ISBN 1-146-40082-9
  • The Greek World in the Fourth Century. by Lawrence A. Tritle. p 167 ISBN 0-415-10583-8
  • The Classical Gazetteer. Hazlitt. p 210
[edit]


Stub icon

This article about a location in ancient Macedonia is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.

Retrieved from "https://en.wikipedia.org/w/index.php?title=Lower_Macedonia&oldid=1322165544"