ILLYRIANS, MACEDONIANS, PÆONIANS.
Northward of the tribes called Epirotic lay those more numerous
and widely extended tribes who bore the general name of Illyrians;
bounded on the west by the Adriatic, on the east by the
mountain-range of Skardus, the northern continuation of Pindus,—and
thus covering what is now called Middle and Upper Albania, together
with the more northerly mountains of Montenegro, Herzegovina, and
Bosnia. Their limits to the north and north-east cannot be assigned,
but the Dardani and Autariatæ must have reached to the north-east of
Skardus and even east of the Servian plain of Kossovo; while along
the Adriatic coast, Skylax extends the race so far northward as to
include Dalmatia, treating the Liburnians and Istrians beyond them
as not Illyrian: yet Appian and others consider the Liburnians and
Istrians as Illyrian, and Herodotus even includes under that name
the Eneti, or Veneti, at the extremity of the Adriatic gulf.[1] The
Bulini, according to Skylax, were the northernmost Illyrian tribe:
the Amantini, immediately northward of the Epirotic Chaonians,
were the southernmost. Among the southern Illyrian tribes are to
be numbered the Taulantii,—originally the possessors, afterwards
the immediate neighbors, of the territory on which Epidamnus was
founded. The ancient geographer Hekatæus[2] (about 500 B. C.),
is sufficiently well acquainted with them to specify their town
Sesarêthus: he also named the Chelidonii as their northern, the
Encheleis as their southern neighbors; and the Abri also as a tribe
nearly adjoining. We hear of the Illyrian Parthini, nearly in the
same regions,—of the Dassaretii,[3] near Lake Lychnidus,—of the
Penestæ, with a fortified town Uscana, north of the Dassaretii,—of
the Ardiæans, the Autariatæ, and the Dardanians, throughout Upper
Albania eastward as far as Upper Mœsia, including the range of
Skardus itself; so that there were some Illyrian tribes conterminous
on the east with Macedonians, and on the south with Macedonians as
well as with Pæonians. Strabo even extends some of the Illyrian
tribes much farther northward, nearly to the Julian Alps.[4]
[1] Herodot. i, 196; Skylax, c. 19-27; Appian. Illyric. c. 2, 4,
8.
The geography of the countries occupied in ancient times by
the Illyrians, Macedonians, Pæonians, Thracians, etc., and now
possessed by a great diversity of races, among whom the Turks
and Albanians retain the primitive barbarism without mitigation,
is still very imperfectly understood; though the researches of
Colonel Leake, of Boué, of Grisebach, and others (especially
the valuable travels of the latter), have of late thrown much
light upon it. How much our knowledge is extended in this
direction, may be seen by comparing the map prefixed to Mannert’s
Geographie, or to O. Müller’s Dissertation on the Macedonians,
with that in Boué’s Travels, but the extreme deficiency of the
maps, even as they now stand, is emphatically noticed by Boué
himself (see his Critique des Cartes de la Turquie in the fourth
volume of his Voyage),—by Paul Joseph Schaffarik, the learned
historian of the Sclavonic race, in the preface attached by him
to Dr. Joseph Müller’s Topographical Account of Albania,—and
by Grisebach, who in his surveys, taken from the summits of
the mountains Peristeri and Ljubatrin, found the map differing
at every step from the bearings which presented themselves to
his eye. It is only since Boué and Grisebach that the idea has
been completely dismissed, derived originally from Strabo,
of a straight line of mountains (εὐθεῖα γραμμὴ, Strabo, lib.
vii, Fragm. 3) running across from the Adriatic to the Euxine,
and sending forth other lateral chains in a direction nearly
southerly. The mountains of Turkey in Europe, when examined with
the stock of geological science which M. Viquesnel (the companion
of Boué) and Dr. Grisebach bring to the task, are found to belong
to systems very different, and to present evidences of conditions
of formation often quite independent of each other.
The thirteenth chapter of Grisebach’s Travels presents the
best account which has yet been given of the chain of Skardus
and Pindus: he has been the first to prove clearly, that the
Ljubatrin, which immediately overhangs the plain of Kossovo at
the southern border of Servia and Bosnia, is the north-eastern
extremity of a chain of mountains reaching southward to the
frontiers of Ætolia, in a direction not very wide of N-S.,—with
the single interruption (first brought to view by Colonel
Leake) of the Klissoura of Devol,—a complete gap, where the
river Devol, rising on the eastern side, crosses the chain and
joins the Apsus, or Beratino, on the western,—(it is remarkable
that both in the map of Boué and in that annexed to Dr. Joseph
Müller’s Topographical Description of Albania, the river Devol
is made to join the Genussus, or Skoumi, considerably north of
the Apsus, though Colonel Leake’s map gives the correct course.)
In Grisebach’s nomenclature Skardus is made to reach from the
Ljubatrin as its north-eastern extremity, south-westward and
southward as far as the Klissoura of Devol: south of that point
Pindus commences, in a continuation, however, of the same axis.
In reference to the seats of the ancient Illyrians and
Macedonians Grisebach has made another observation of great
importance (vol. ii, p. 121). Between the north-eastern
extremity, Mount Ljubatrin, and the Klissoura of Devol, there
are in the mighty and continuous chain of Skardus (above seven
thousand feet high) only two passes fit for an army to cross: one
near the northern extremity of the chain, over which Grisebach
himself crossed, from Kalkandele to Prisdren, a very high _col_,
not less than five thousand feet above the level of the sea;
the other, considerably to the southward, and lower as well as
easier, nearly in the latitude of Lychnidus, or Ochrida. It was
over this last pass that the Roman Via Egnatia travelled, and
that the modern road from Scutari and Durazzo to Bitolia now
travels. With the exception of these two partial depressions,
the long mountain-ridge maintains itself undiminished in height,
admitting, indeed, paths by which a small company either of
travellers or of Albanian robbers from the Dibren, may cross
(there is a path of this kind which connects Struga with
Ueskioub, mentioned by Dr. Joseph Müller, p. 70, and some others
by Boué, vol. iv, p. 546), but nowhere admitting the passage of
an army.
To attack the Macedonians, therefore, an Illyrian army would have
to go through one or other of these passes, or else to go round
the north-eastern pass of Katschanik, beyond the extremity of
Ljubatrin. And we shall find that, in point of fact, the military
operations recorded between the two nations carry us usually in
one or other of these directions. The military proceedings of
Brasidas (Thucyd. iv, 124),—of Philip the son of Amyntas king of
Macedon (Diodor. xvi, 8),—of Alexander the Great in the first
year of his reign (Arrian, i, 5), all bring us to the pass near
Lychnidus (compare Livy, xxxii, 9; Plutarch, Flaminin. c. 4);
while the Illyrian Dardani and Autariatæ border upon Pæonia,
to the north of Pelagonia, and threaten Macedonia from the
north-east of the mountain-chain of Skardus. The Autariatæ are
not far removed from the Pæonian Agrianes, who dwelt near the
sources of the Strymon, and both Autariatæ and Dardani threatened
the return march of Alexander from the Danube into Macedonia,
after his successful campaign against the Getæ, low down in the
course of that great river (Arrian, i, 5). Without being able to
determine the precise line of Alexander’s march on this occasion,
we may see that these two Illyrian tribes must have come down
to attack him from Upper Mœsia, and on the eastern side of the
Axius. This, and the fact that the Dardani were the immediate
neighbors of the Pæonians, shows us that their seats could not
have been far removed from Upper Mœsia (Livy, xlv, 29): the
fauces Pelagoniæ (Livy, xxxi, 34) are the pass by which they
entered Macedonia from the north. Ptolemy even places the Dardani
at Skopiæ (Ueskioub) (iii, 9); his information about these
countries seems better than that of Strabo.
[2] Hekatæi Fragm. ed. Klausen, Fr. 66-70; Thucyd. i, 26.
Skylax places the Encheleis north of Epidamnus and of the
Taulantii. It may be remarked that Hekatæus seems to have
communicated much information respecting the Adriatic: he noticed
the city of Adria at the extremity of the Gulf, and the fertility
and abundance of the territory around it (Fr. 58: compare Skymnus
Chius, 384).
[3] Livy, xliii, 9-18. Mannert (Geograph. der Griech. und Römer,
part vii, ch. 9, p. 386, _seq._) collects the points and shows
how little can be ascertained respecting the localities of these
Illyrian tribes.
[4] Strabo, iv, p. 206.
With the exception of some portions of what is now called Middle
Albania, the territory of these tribes consisted principally of
mountain pastures with a certain proportion of fertile valley, but
rarely expanding into a plain. The Autariatæ had the reputation of
being unwarlike, but the Illyrians generally were poor, rapacious,
fierce, and formidable in battle. They shared with the remote
Thracian tribes the custom of tattooing[5] their bodies and of
offering human sacrifices: moreover, they were always ready to
sell their military service for hire, like the modern Albanian
Schkipetars, in whom probably their blood yet flows, though with
considerable admixture from subsequent emigrations. Of the Illyrian
kingdom on the Adriatic coast, with Skodra (Scutari) for its capital
city, which became formidable by its reckless piracies in the third
century B. C., we hear nothing in the flourishing period of Grecian
history. The description of Skylax notices in his day, all along the
northern Adriatic, a considerable and standing traffic between the
coast and the interior, carried on by Liburnians, Istrians, and the
small Grecian insular settlements of Pharus and Issa. But he does not
name Skodra, and probably this strong post—together with the Greek
town Lissus, founded by Dionysius of Syracuse—was occupied after
his time by conquerors from the interior,[6] the predecessors of
Agrôn and Gentius,—just as the coast-land of the Thermaic gulf was
conquered by inland Macedonians.
[5] Strabo, vii, p. 315; Arrian, i, 5, 4-11. So impracticable
is the territory, and so narrow the means of the inhabitants,
in the region called Upper Albania, that most of its resident
tribes even now are considered as free, and pay no tribute to
the Turkish government: the Pachas cannot extort it without
greater expense and difficulty than the sum gained would repay.
The same was the case in Epirus, or Lower Albania, previous to
the time of Ali Pacha: in Middle Albania, the country does not
present the like difficulties, and no such exemptions are allowed
(Boué, Voyage en Turquie, vol. iii, p. 192). These free Albanian
tribes are in the same condition with regard to the Sultan as the
Mysians and Pisidians in Asia Minor with regard to the king of
Persia in ancient times (Xenophon, Anab. iii, 2, 23).
[6] Diodor. xv, 13: Polyb. ii, 4.
Once during the Peloponnesian war, a detachment of hired Illyrians,
marching into Macedonia Lynkêstis (seemingly over the pass of Skardus
a little east of Lychnidus, or Ochrida), tried the valor of the
Spartan Brasidas; and on that occasion—as in the expedition above
alluded to of the Epirots against Akarnania—we shall notice the
marked superiority of the Grecian character, even in the case of an
armament chiefly composed of helots newly enfranchised, over both
Macedonians and Illyrians,—we shall see the contrast between brave
men acting in concert and obedience to a common authority, and an
assailing host of warriors, not less brave individually, but in which
every man is his own master,[7] and fights as he pleases. The rapid
and impetuous rush of the Illyrians, if the first shock failed of
its effect, was succeeded by an equally rapid retreat or flight. We
hear nothing afterwards respecting these barbarians until the time of
Philip of Macedon, whose vigor and military energy first repressed
their incursions, and afterwards partially conquered them. It seems
to have been about this period (400-350 B. C.) that the great
movement of the Gauls from west to east took place, which brought
the Gallic Skordiski and other tribes into the regions between the
Danube and the Adriatic sea, and which probably dislodged some of the
northern Illyrians so as to drive them upon new enterprises and fresh
abodes.
[7] See the description in Thucydidês (iv, 124-128);
especially the exhortation which he puts into the mouth of
Brasidas,—αὐτοκράτωρ μάχῃ, contrasted with the orderly array of
Greeks.
“Illyriorum velocitas ad excursiones et impetus subitos.”
(Livy, xxxi, 35.)
What is now called Middle Albania, the Illyrian territory immediately
north of Epirus, is much superior to the latter in productiveness.[8]
Though mountainous, it possesses more both of low hill and valley,
and ampler as well as more fertile cultivable spaces. Epidamnus and
Apollonia formed the seaports of this territory, and the commerce
with the southern Illyrians, less barbarous than the northern, was
one of the sources[9] of their great prosperity during the first
century of their existence,—a prosperity interrupted in the case
of the Epidamnians by internal dissensions, which impaired their
ascendency over their Illyrian neighbors, and ultimately placed
them at variance with their mother-city Korkyra. The commerce
between these Greek seaports and the interior tribes, when once
the former became strong enough to render violent attack from the
latter hopeless, was reciprocally beneficial to both of them.
Grecian oil and wine were introduced among these barbarians, whose
chiefs at the same time learned to appreciate the woven fabrics,[10]
the polished and carved metallic work, the tempered weapons,
and the pottery, which issued from Grecian artisans. Moreover,
the importation sometimes of salt-fish, and always that of salt
itself, was of the greatest importance to these inland residents,
especially for such localities as possessed lakes abounding in
fish, like that of Lychnidus. We hear of wars between the Autariatæ
and the Ardiæi, respecting salt-springs near their boundaries, and
also of other tribes whom the privation of salt reduced to the
necessity of submitting to the Romans.[11] On the other hand,
these tribes possessed two articles of exchange so precious in
the eyes of the Greeks, that Polybius reckons them as absolutely
indispensable,[12]—cattle and slaves; which latter were doubtless
procured from Illyria, often in exchange for salt, as they were from
Thrace and from the Euxine and from Aquileia in the Adriatic, through
the internal wars of one tribe with another. Silver-mines were worked
at Damastium in Illyria. Wax and honey were probably also articles of
export, and it is a proof that the natural products of Illyria were
carefully sought out, when we find a species of iris peculiar to the
country collected and sent to Corinth, where its root was employed to
give the special flavor to a celebrated kind of aromatic unguent.[13]
[8] See Pouqueville, Voyage en Grèce, vol. i, chs. 23 and 24;
Grisebach, Reise durch Rumelien und nach Brussa, vol. ii, pp.
138-139; Boué, La Turquie en Europe, Géographie Générale, vol. i,
pp. 60-65.
[9] Skymnus Chius, v, 418-425.
[10] Thucydidês mentions the ὑφαντὰ τε καὶ λεῖα, καὶ ἡ ἄλλη
κατασκευὴ, which the Greek settlements on the Thracian coast
sent up to king Seuthês (ii, 98): similar to the ὑφασμαθ᾽ ἱερὰ,
and to the χεριαρᾶν τεκτόνων δαίδαλα, offered as presents to the
Delphian god (Eurip. Ion. 1141; Pindar, Pyth. v, 46).
[11] Strabo, vii, p. 317; Appian, Illyric. 17; Aristot. Mirab.
Ausc. c. 138. For the extreme importance of the trade in salt,
as a bond of connection, see the regulations of the Romans when
they divided Macedonia into four provinces, with the distinct
view of cutting off all connection between one and the other. All
_commercium_ and _connubium_ were forbidden between them: the
fourth region, whose capital was Pelagonia (and which included
all the primitive or Upper Macedonia, east of the range of
Pindus and Skardus), was altogether inland, and it was expressly
forbidden to draw its salt from the third region, or the country
between the Axius and the Peneius; while on the other hand the
Illyrian Dardani, situated northward of Upper Macedonia, received
express permission to draw _their_ salt from this third or
maritime region of Macedonia: the salt was to be conveyed from
the Thermaic gulf along the road of the Axius to Stobi in Pæonia,
and was there to be sold at a fixed price.
The inner or fourth region of Macedonia, which included the
modern Bitoglia and Lake Castoria, could easily obtain its salt
from the Adriatic, by the communication afterwards so well
known as the Roman Egnatian way; but the communication of the
Dardani with the Adriatic led through a country of the greatest
possible difficulty, and it was probably a great convenience to
them to receive their supply from the gulf of Therma by the road
along the Vardar (Axius) (Livy, xlv, 29). Compare the route of
Grisebach from Salonichi to Scutari, in his Reise durch Rumelien,
vol. ii.
[12] About the cattle in Illyria, Aristotle, De Mirab. Ausc. c.
128. There is a remarkable passage in Polybius, wherein he treats
the importation of slaves as a matter of necessity to Greece (iv,
37). The purchasing of the Thracian slaves in exchange for salt
is noticed by Menander.—Θρᾶξ εὐγενὴς εῖ, πρὸς ἄλας ἠγορασμένος:
see Proverb. Zenob. ii, 12, and Diogenian, i, 100.
The same trade was carried on in antiquity with the nations on
and near Caucasus, from the seaport of Dioskurias at the eastern
extremity of the Euxine (Strabo, xi, p. 506). So little have
those tribes changed, that the Circassians now carry on much
the same trade. Dr. Clarke’s statement carries us back to the
ancient world: “The Circassians frequently sell their children
to strangers, particularly to the Persians and Turks, and their
princes supply the Turkish seraglios with the most beautiful
of the prisoners of both sexes whom they take in war. In their
commerce with the Tchernomorski Cossacks (north of the river
Kuban), the Circassians bring considerable quantities of wood,
and the delicious honey of the mountains, sewed up in goats’
hides, with the hair on the outside. These articles they exchange
for salt, a commodity found in the neighboring lakes, of a
very excellent quality. Salt is more precious than any other
kind of wealth to the Circassians, and it constitutes the most
acceptable present which can be offered to them. They weave mats
of very great beauty, which find a ready market both in Turkey
and Russia. They are also ingenious in the art of working silver
and other metals, and in the fabrication of guns, pistols, and
sabres. Some, which they offered us for sale, we suspected had
been procured in Turkey in exchange for slaves. Their bows
and arrows are made with inimitable skill, and the arrows
being tipped with iron, and otherwise exquisitely wrought, are
considered by the Cossacks and Russians as inflicting incurable
wounds.” (Clarke’s Travels, vol. i, ch. xvi, p. 378.)
[13] Theophrast. Hist. Plant. iv, 5, 2; ix, 7, 4: Pliny. H. N.
xiii, 2; xxi, 19: Strabo, vii, p. 326. Coins of Epidamnus and
Apollonia are found not only in Macedonia, but in Thrace and in
Italy: the trade of these two cities probably extended across
from sea to sea, even before the construction of the Egnatian
way; and the Inscription 2056 in the Corpus of Boeckh proclaims
the gratitude of Odêssus (Varna) in the Euxine sea towards a
citizen of Epidamnus (Barth, Corinthiorum Mercatur. Hist. p. 49;
Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. c. 104).
Nor was the intercourse between the Hellenic ports and Illyrians
inland exclusively commercial. Grecian exiles also found their way
into Illyria, and Grecian mythes became localized there, as may be
seen by the tale of Kadmus and Harmonia, from whom the chiefs of the
Illyrian Encheleis professed to trace their descent.[14]
[14] Herodot. v, 61; viii, 137: Strabo, vii, p. 326. Skylax
places the λίθοι of Kadmus and Harmonia among the Illyrian Manii,
north of the Encheleis (Diodor. xix, 53; Pausan. ix, 5, 3).
The Macedonians of the fourth century B. C. acquired, from
the ability and enterprise of two successive kings, a great
perfection in Greek military organization without any of the
loftier Hellenic qualities. Their career in Greece is purely
destructive, extinguishing the free movement of the separate
cities, and disarming the citizen-soldier to make room for the
foreign mercenary, whose sword was unhallowed by any feelings of
patriotism,—yet totally incompetent to substitute any good system
of central or pacific administration. But the Macedonians of the
seventh and sixth centuries B. C. are an aggregate only of rude
inland tribes, subdivided into distinct petty principalities, and
separated from the Greeks by a wider ethnical difference even than
the Epirots; since Herodotus, who considers the Epirotic Molossians
and Thesprotians as children of Hellen, decidedly thinks the contrary
respecting the Macedonians.[15] In the main, however, they seem
at this early period analogous to the Epirots in character and
civilization. They had some few towns, but were chiefly village
residents, extremely brave and pugnacious. The customs of some of
their tribes enjoined that the man who had not yet slain an enemy
should be distinguished on some occasions by a badge of discredit.[16]
[15] Herodot. v, 22.
[16] Aristot. Polit. vii, 2, 6. That the Macedonians were chiefly
village residents, appears from Thucyd. ii, 100, iv, 124, though
this does not exclude _some_ towns.
The original seats of the Macedonians were in the regions east of the
chain of Skardus (the northerly continuation of Pindus)—north of the
chain called the Cambunian mountains, which connects Olympus with
Pindus, and which forms the north-western boundary of Thessaly. But
they did not reach so far eastward as the Thermaic gulf; apparently
not farther eastward than Mount Bermius, or about the longitude of
Edessa and Berrhoia. They thus covered the upper portions of the
course of the rivers Haliakmôn and Erigôn, before the junction of
the latter with the Axius; while the upper course of the Axius,
higher than this point of junction, appears to have belonged to
Pæonia,—though the boundaries of Macedonia and Pæonia cannot be
distinctly marked out at any time.
The large space of country included between the above-mentioned
boundaries is in great part mountainous, occupied by lateral ridges,
or elevations, which connect themselves with the main line of
Skardus. But it also comprises three wide alluvial basins, or plains,
which are of great extent and well-adapted to cultivation,—the
plain of Tettovo, or Kalkandele (northernmost of the three), which
contains the sources and early course of the Axius, or Vardar,—that
of Bitolia, coinciding to a great degree with the ancient Pelagonia,
wherein the Erigon flows towards the Axius,—and the larger and more
undulating basin of Greveno and Anaselitzas, containing the upper
Haliakmôn with its confluent streams. This latter region is separated
from the basin of Thessaly by a mountainous line of considerable
length, but presenting numerous easy passes.[17] Reckoning the basin
of Thessaly as a fourth, here are four distinct inclosed plains
on the east side of this long range of Skardus and Pindus,—each
generally bounded by mountains which rise precipitously to an
alpine height, and each leaving only one cleft for drainage by a
single river,—the Axius, the Erigôn, the Haliakmôn, and the Peneius
respectively. All four, moreover, though of high level above the sea,
are yet for the most part of distinguished fertility, especially
the plains of Tettovo, of Bitolia, and Thessaly. The fat, rich land
to the east of Pindus and Skardus is described as forming a marked
contrast with the light calcareous soil of the Albanian plains
and valleys on the western side. The basins of Bitolia and of the
Haliakmôn, with the mountains around and adjoining, were possessed by
the original Macedonians; that of Tettovo, on the north, by a portion
of the Pæonians. Among the four, Thessaly is the most spacious; yet
the two comprised in the primitive seats of the Macedonians, both
of them very considerable in magnitude, formed a territory better
calculated to nourish and to generate a considerable population,
than the less favored home, and smaller breadth of valley and plain,
occupied by Epirots or Illyrians. Abundance of corn easily raised,
of pasture for cattle, and of new fertile land open to cultivation,
would suffice to increase the numbers of hardy villagers, indifferent
to luxury as well as to accumulation, and exempt from that oppressive
extortion of rulers which now harasses the same fine regions.[18]
[17] Boué, Voyage en Turquie, vol. i, p. 199: “Un bon nombre de
cols dirigés du nord au sud, comme pour inviter les habitans de
passer d’une de ces provinces dans l’autre.”
[18] For the general physical character of the region, both
east and west of Skardus, continued by Pindus, see the valuable
charter of Grisebach’s Travels above referred to (Reisen, vol.
ii. ch. xiii, pp. 125-130; c. xiv, p. 175; c. xvi, pp. 214-216;
c. xvii, pp. 244-245).
Respecting the plains comprised in the ancient Pelagonia, see
also the Journal of the younger Pouqueville, in his progress from
Travnik in Bosnia to Janina. He remarks, in the two days’ march
from Prelepe (Prilip) through Bitolia to Florina, “Dans cette
route on parcourt des plaines luxuriantes couvertes de moissons,
de vastes prairies remplies de trèfle, des plateaux abondans en
pâturages inépuisables, où paissent d’innombrables troupeaux de
bœufs, de chèvres, et de menu bétail.... Le blé, le maïs, et
les autres grains sont toujours à très bas prix, à cause de la
difficulté des débouchés, d’où l’on exporte une grande quantité
de laines, de cotons, de peaux d’agneaux, de buffles, et de
chevaux, qui passent par le moyen des caravanes en Hongrie.”
(Pouqueville, Voyage dans la Grèce, tom. ii, ch. 62, p. 495.)
Again, M. Boué remarks upon this same plain, in his Critique des
Cartes de la Turquie, Voyage, vol. iv, p. 483, “La plaine immense
de Prilip, de Bitolia, et de Florina, n’est pas représentée (sur
les cartes) de manière à ce qu’on ait une idée de son étendue,
et surtout de sa largeur.... La plaine de Sarigoul est changée
en vallée,” etc. The basin of the Haliakmôn he remarks to be
represented equally imperfectly on the maps: compare also his
Voyage, i, pp. 211, 299, 300.
I notice the more particularly the large proportion of fertile
plain and valley in the ancient Macedonia, because it is often
represented (and even by O. Müller, in his Dissertation on the
ancient Macedonians, attached to his History of the Dorians) as
a cold and rugged land, pursuant to the statement of Livy (xlv,
29), who says, respecting the fourth region of Macedonia as
distributed by the Romans, “Frigida hæc omnis, duraque cultu, et
aspera plaga est: cultorum quoque ingenia terræ similia habet:
ferociores eos et accolæ barbari faciunt, nunc bello exercentes,
nunc in pace miscentes ritus suos.”
This is probably true of the mountaineers included in the region,
but it is too much generalized.
The inhabitants of this primitive Macedonia doubtless differed
much in ancient times, as they do now, according as they dwelt on
mountain or plain, and in soil and climate more or less kind; but all
acknowledged a common ethnical name and nationality, and the tribes
were in many cases distinguished from each other, not by having
substantive names of their own, but merely by local epithets of
Grecian origin. Thus we find Elymiotæ Macedonians, or Macedonians of
Elymeia,—Lynkestæ Macedonians, or Macedonians of Lynkus, etc. Orestæ
is doubtless an adjunct name of the same character. The inhabitants
of the more northerly tracts, called Pelagonia and Deuriopis, were
also portions of the Macedonian aggregate, though neighbors of the
Pæonians, to whom they bore much affinity: whether the Eordi and
Almopians were of Macedonian race, it is more difficult to say. The
Macedonian language was different from Illyrian,[19] from Thracian,
and seemingly also from Pæonian. It was also different from Greek,
yet apparently not more widely distinct than that of the Epirots,—so
that the acquisition of Greek was comparatively easy to the chiefs
and people, though there were always some Greek letters which they
were incapable of pronouncing. And when we follow their history,
we shall find in them more of the regular warrior, conquering in
order to maintain dominion and tribute, and less of the armed
plunderer,—than in the Illyrians, Thracians, or Epirots, by whom it
was their misfortune to be surrounded. They approach nearer to the
Thessalians,[20] and to the other ungifted members of the Hellenic
family.
[19] Polyb. xxviii, 8, 9. This is the most distinct testimony
which we possess, and it appears to me to contradict the opinion
both of Mannert (Geogr. der Gr. und Röm. vol. vii, p. 492) and
of O. Müller (On the Macedonians, sects. 28-36), that the native
Macedonians were of Illyrian descent.
[20] The Macedonian military array seems to have been very like
that of the Thessalians,—horsemen well-mounted and armed, and
maintaining good order (Thucyd. ii, 101): of their infantry,
before the time of Philip son of Amyntas, we do not hear much.
“Macedoniam, quæ tantis barbarorum gentibus attingitur, ut
semper Macedonicis imperatoribus iidem fines imperii fuerint qui
gladiorum atque pilorum.” (Cicero, in Pison. c. xvi.)
The large and comparatively productive region covered by the various
sections of Macedonians, helps to explain that increase of ascendency
which they successively acquired over all their neighbors. It was
not, however, until a late period that they became united under one
government. At first each section, how many we do not know, had its
own prince, or chief. The Elymiots, or inhabitants of Elymeia, the
southernmost portion of Macedonia, were thus originally distinct and
independent; also the Orestæ, in mountain-seats somewhat north-west
of the Elymiots,—the Lynkêstæ and Eordi, who occupied portions
of territory on the track of the subsequent Egnatian way, between
Lychnidus (Ochrida) and Edessa,—the Pelagonians,[21] with a town
of the same name, in the fertile plain of Bitolia,—and the more
northerly Deuriopians. And the early political union was usually
so loose, that each of these denominations probably includes many
petty independencies, small towns, and villages. That section of the
Macedonian name who afterwards swallowed up all the rest and became
known as _The Macedonians_, had their original centre at Ægæ, or
Edessa,—the lofty, commanding, and picturesque site of the modern
Vodhena. And though the residence of the kings was in later times
transferred to the marshy Pella, in the maritime plain beneath,
yet Edessa was always retained as the regal burial-place, and as
the hearth to which the religious continuity of the nation, so
much reverenced in ancient times, was attached. This ancient town,
which lay on the Roman Egnatian way from Lychnidus to Pella and
Thessalonika, formed the pass over the mountain-ridge called Bermius,
or that prolongation to the northward of Mount Olympus, through which
the Haliakmôn makes its way out into the maritime plain at Verria, by
a cleft more precipitous and impracticable than that of the Peneius
in the defile of Tempê.
[21] Strabo, lib. vii, Fragm. 20, ed. Tafel.
This mountain-chain called Bermius, extending from Olympus
considerably to the north of Edessa, formed the original eastern
boundary of the Macedonian tribes; who seem at first not to have
reached the valley of the Axius in any part of its course, and who
certainly did not reach at first to the Thermaic gulf. Between the
last-mentioned gulf and the eastern counterforts of Olympus and
Bermius there exists a narrow strip of plain land or low hill,
which reaches from the mouth of the Peneius to the head of the
Thermaic gulf. It there widens into the spacious and fertile plain
of Salonichi, comprising the mouths of the Haliakmôn, the Axius,
and the Echeidôrus: the river Ludias, which flows from Edessa into
the marshes surrounding Pella, and which in antiquity joined the
Haliakmôn near its mouth, has now altered its course so as to join
the Axius. This narrow strip, between the mouths of the Peneius
and the Haliakmôn, was the original abode of the Pierian Thracians,
who dwelt close to the foot of Olympus, and among whom the worship
of the Muses seems to have been a primitive characteristic; Grecian
poetry teems with local allusions and epithets which appear traceable
to this early fact, though we are unable to follow it in detail.
North of the Pierians, from the mouth of the Haliakmôn to that of
the Axius, dwelt the Bottiæans.[22] Beyond the river Axius, at the
lower part of its course, began the tribes of the great Thracian
race,—Mygdonians, Krestônians, Edônians, Bisaltæ, Sithonians: the
Mygdonians seem to have been originally the most powerful, since the
country still continued to be called by their name, Mygdonia, even
after the Macedonian conquest. These, and various other Thracian
tribes, originally occupied most part of the country between the
mouth of the Axius and that of the Strymon; together with that
memorable three-pronged peninsula which derived from the Grecian
colonies its name of Chalkidikê. It will thus appear, if we consider
the Bottiæans as well as the Pierians to be Thracians, that the
Thracian race extended originally southward as far as the mouth of
the Peneius: the Bottiæans professed, indeed, a Kretan origin, but
this pretension is not noticed by either Herodotus or Thucydidês. In
the time of Skylax,[23] seemingly during the early reign of Philip
the son of Amyntas, Macedonia and Thrace were separated by the
Strymon.
[22] I have followed Herodotus in stating the original series
of occupants on the Thermaic gulf, anterior to the Macedonian
conquests. Thucydidês introduces the Pæonians between Bottiæans
and Mygdonians: he says that the Pæonians possessed “a narrow
strip of land on the side of the Axius, down to Pella and the
sea,” (ii, 96.) If this were true, it would leave hardly any room
for the Bottiæans, whom, nevertheless, Thucydidês recognizes on
the coast; for the whole space between the mouths of the two
rivers, Axius and Haliakmôn, is inconsiderable; moreover, I
cannot but suspect that Thucydidês has been led to believe, by
finding in the Iliad that the Pæonian allies of Troy came from
the Axius, that there _must have been_ old Pæonian settlements at
the mouth of that river, and that he has advanced the inference
as if it were a certified fact. The case is analogous to what he
says about the Bœotians in his preface (upon which O. Müller has
already commented); he stated the emigration of the Bœotians into
Bœotia as having taken place after the Trojan war, but saves the
historical credit of the Homeric catalogue by adding that there
had been a _fraction_ of them in Bœotia _before_, from whom the
contingent which went to Troy was furnished (ἀποδασμός, Thucyd.
i, 12).
On this occasion, therefore, having to choose between Herodotus
and Thucydidês, I prefer the former. O. Müller (On the
Macedonians, sect. 11) would strike out just so much of the
assertion of Thucydidês as positively contradicts Herodotus, and
retain the rest; he thinks that the Pæonians came down _very
near_ to the mouth of the river, but _not quite_. I confess that
this does not satisfy me; the more so as the passage from Livy by
which he would support his view will appear, on examination, to
refer to Pæonia high up the Axius,—not to a supposed portion of
Pæonia near the mouth (Livy, xlv, 29).
Again, I would remark that the original residence of the Pierians
between the Peneius and the Haliakmôn rests chiefly upon the
authority of Thucydidês: Herodotus knows the Pierians in their
seats between Mount Pangæus and the sea, but he gives no
intimation that they had before dwelt south of the Haliakmôn; the
tract between the Haliakmôn and the Peneius is by him conceived
as Lower Macedonia, or Macedonis, reaching to the borders of
Thessaly (vii, 127-173). I make this remark in reference to
sects. 7-17 of O. Müller’s Dissertation, wherein the conception
of Herodotus appears incorrectly apprehended, and some erroneous
inferences founded upon it. That this tract was the original
Pieria, there is sufficient reason for believing (compare Strabo,
vii, Frag. 22, with Tafel’s note, and ix, p. 410; Livy, xliv, 9);
but Herodotus notices it only as Macedonia.
[23] Skylax, c. 67. The conquests of Philip extended the boundary
beyond the Strymon to the Nestus (Strabo, lib. vii, Fragm. 33,
ed. Tafel).
We have yet to notice the Pæonians, a numerous and much-divided
race,—seemingly neither Thracian nor Macedonian nor Illyrian, but
professing to be descended from the Teukri of Troy,—who occupied
both banks of the Strymon, from the neighborhood of Mount Skomius,
in which that river rises, down to the lake near its mouth. Some of
their tribes possessed the fertile plain of Siris (now Seres),—the
land immediately north of Mount Pangæus,—and even a portion of the
space through which Xerxês marched on his route from Akanthus to
Therma. Besides this, it appears that the upper parts of the valley
of the Axius were also occupied by Pæonian tribes; how far down the
river they extended, we are unable to say. We are not to suppose
that the whole territory between Axius and Strymon was continuously
peopled by them. Continuous population is not the character of
the ancient world, and it seems, moreover, that while the land
immediately bordering on both rivers is in very many places of the
richest quality, the spaces between the two are either mountain or
barren low hill,—forming a marked contrast with the rich alluvial
basin of the Macedonian river Erigon.[24] The Pæonians, in their
north-western tribes, thus bordered upon the Macedonian Pelagonia,—in
their northern tribes, upon the Illyrian Dardani and Autariatæ,—in
their eastern, southern, and south-eastern tribes, upon the Thracians
and Pierians;[25] that is, upon the second seats occupied by the
expelled Pierians under Mount Pangæus.
[24] See this contrast noticed in Grisebach, especially in
reference to the wide but barren region called the plain of
Mustapha, no great distance from the left bank of the Axius
(Grisebach, Reisen, v, ii, p. 225; Boué, Voyage, vol. i, p. 168).
For the description of the banks of the Axius (Vardar) and the
Strymon, see Boué, Voyage en Turquie, vol. i, pp. 196-199. “La
plaine ovale de Seres est un des diamans de la couronne de
Byzance,” etc. He remarks how incorrectly the course of the
Strymon is depicted on the maps (vol. iv, p. 482).
[25] The expression of Strabo or his Epitomator—τὴν Παιονίαν
μέχρι Πελαγονίας καὶ Πιερίας ἐκτετάσθαι,—seems quite exact,
though Tafel finds a difficulty in it. See his Note on the
Vatican Fragments of the seventh book of Strabo, Fr. 37. The
Fragment 40 is expressed much more loosely. Compare Herodot. v,
13-16, vii, 124; Thucyd. ii, 96; Diodor. xx, 19.
Such was, as far as we can make it out, the position of the
Macedonians and their immediate neighbors, in the seventh century B.
C. It was first altered by the enterprise and ability of a family of
exiled Greeks, who conducted a section of the Macedonian people to
those conquests which their descendants, Philip and Alexander the
Great, afterwards so marvellously multiplied.
Respecting the primitive ancestry of these two princes, there were
different stories, but all concurred in tracing the origin of the
family to the Herakleid or Temenid race of Argos. According to one
story (which apparently cannot be traced higher than Theopompus),
Karanus, brother of the despot Pheidon, had migrated from Argos to
Macedonia, and established himself as conqueror at Edessa; according
to another tale, which we find in Herodotus, there were three exiles
of the Temenid race, Gauanês, Aëropus, and Perdikkas, who fled from
Argos to Illyria, from whence they passed into Upper Macedonia, in
such poverty as to be compelled to serve the petty king of the town
Lebæa in the capacity of shepherds. A remarkable prodigy happening to
Perdikkas foreshadows the future eminence of his family, and leads
to his dismissal by the king of Lebæa,—from whom he makes his escape
with difficulty, by the sudden rise of a river immediately after
he had crossed it, so as to become impassable by the horsemen who
pursued him. To this river, as to the saviour of the family, solemn
sacrifices were still offered by the kings of Macedonia in the time
of Herodotus. Perdikkas with his two brothers having thus escaped,
established himself near the spot called the Garden of Midas on Mount
Bermius, and from the loins of this hardy young shepherd sprang the
dynasty of Edessa.[26] This tale bears much more the marks of a
genuine local tradition than that of Theopompus. And the origin of
the Macedonian family, or Argeadæ, from Argos, appears to have been
universally recognized by Grecian inquirers,[27]—so that Alexander
the son of Amyntas, the contemporary of the Persian invasion, was
admitted by the Hellanodikæ to contend at the Olympic games as a
genuine Greek, though his competitors sought to exclude him as a
Macedonian.
[26] Herodot. viii, 137-138.
[27] Herodot. v, 22. Argeadæ, Strabo, lib. vii, Fragm. 20, ed.
Tafel, which may probably have been erroneously changed into
Ægeadæ (Justin, vii, 1).
The talent for command was so much more the attribute of the Greek
mind than of any of the neighboring barbarians, that we easily
conceive a courageous Argeian adventurer acquiring to himself
great ascendency in the local disputes of the Macedonian tribes,
and transmitting the chieftainship of one of those tribes to his
offspring. The influence acquired by Miltiadês among the Thracians of
the Chersonese, and by Phormion among the Akarnanians (who specially
requested that, after his death, his son, or some one of his kindred,
might be sent from Athens to command them),[28] was very much of
this character: we may add the case of Sertorius among the native
Iberians. In like manner, the kings of the Macedonian Lynkêstæ
professed to be descended from the Bacchiadæ[29] of Corinth; and the
neighborhood of Epidamnus and Apollonia, in both of which doubtless
members of that great gens were domiciliated, renders this tale even
more plausible than that of an emigration from Argos. The kings of
the Epirotic Molossi pretended also to a descent from the heroic
Æakid race of Greece. In fact, our means of knowledge do not enable
us to discriminate the cases in which these reigning families were
originally Greeks, from those in which they were Hellenized natives
pretending to Grecian blood.
[28] Thucyd. iii, 7; Herodot. vi, 34-37: compare the story of
Zalmoxis among the Thracians (iv, 94).
[29] Strabo, vii, p. 326.
After the foundation-legend of the Macedonian kingdom, we have
nothing but a long blank until the reign of king Amyntas (about
520-500 B. C.), and his son Alexander, (about 480 B. C.) Herodotus
gives us five successive kings between the founder Perdikkas and
Amyntas,—Perdikkas, Argæus, Philippus, Aëropus, Alketas, Amyntas,
and Alexander,—the contemporary and to a certain extent the ally
of Xerxês.[30] Though we have no means of establishing any dates
in this early series, either of names or of facts, yet we see
that the Temenid kings, beginning from a humble origin, extended
their dominions successively on all sides. They conquered the
Briges,[31]—originally their neighbors on Mount Bermius,—the Eordi,
bordering on Edessa to the westward, who were either destroyed or
expelled from the country, leaving a small remnant still existing
in the time of Thucydidês at Physka between Strymon and Axius,—the
Almopians, an inland tribe of unknown site,—and many of the interior
Macedonian tribes who had been at first autonomous. Besides these
inland conquests, they had made the still more important acquisition
of Pieria, the territory which lay between Mount Bermius and the sea,
from whence they expelled the original Pierians, who found new seats
on the eastern bank of the Strymon between Mount Pangæus and the
sea. Amyntas king of Macedon was thus master of a very considerable
territory, comprising the coast of the Thermaic gulf as far north as
the mouth of the Haliakmôn, and also some other territory on the same
gulf from which the Bottiæans had been expelled; but not comprising
the coast between the mouths of the Axius and the Haliakmôn, nor even
Pella, the subsequent capital, which were still in the hands of the
Bottiæans at the period when Xerxês passed through.[32] He possessed
also Anthemus, a town and territory in the peninsula of Chalkidikê,
and some parts of Mygdonia, the territory east of the mouth of the
Axius; but how much, we do not know. We shall find the Macedonians
hereafter extending their dominion still farther, during the period
between the Persian and Peloponnesian war.
[30] Herodot. viii, 139. Thucydidês agrees in the number of
kings, but does not give the names (ii, 100).
For the divergent lists of the early Macedonian kings, see Mr.
Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici, vol. ii, p. 221.
[31] This may be gathered, I think, from Herodot. vii, 73 and
viii, 138. The alleged migration of the Briges into Asia, and the
change of their name to Phryges, is a statement which I do not
venture to repeat as credible.
[32] Herodot. vii, 123. Herodotus recognizes both Bottiæans
between the Axius and the Haliakmôn,—and Bottiæans at Olynthus,
whom the Macedonians had expelled from the Thermaic gulf,—at
the time when Xerxês passed (viii, 127). These two statements
seem to me compatible, and both admissible: the former Bottiæans
were expelled by the Macedonians subsequently, anterior to the
Peloponnesian war.
My view of these facts, therefore, differs somewhat from that of
O. Müller (Macedonians, sect. 16).
We hear of king Amyntas in friendly connection with the Peisistratid
princes at Athens, whose dominion was in part sustained by
mercenaries from the Strymon, and this amicable sentiment
was continued between his son Alexander and the emancipated
Athenians.[33] It is only in the reigns of these two princes that
Macedonia begins to be implicated in Grecian affairs: the regal
dynasty had become so completely Macedonized, and had so far
renounced its Hellenic brotherhood, that the claim of Alexander to
run at the Olympic games was contested by his competitors, and he was
called upon to prove his lineage before the Hellanodikæ.
[33] Herodot. i, 59, v, 94; viii, 136.