a royal monopoly. This was both economically and politically very
important because the sea powers of the Greek world, particularly Athens,
lacked their own forests and therefore were forced to import wood from
Macedonia.8
By the end of Philip II’s reign the Kingdom of Macedonia covered a
territory of 43,000 km2, which was several times larger than even the
largest of the ancient Greek states. Thanks to the conditions of its soil and
climate Macedonia was able to produce abundant crops capable of feeding
a large number of people despite obviously primitive agricultural methods.
Although no sources provide enough data to adequately estimate the
number of Philip II or Alexander’s subjects, the number of soldiers these
rulers were able to deploy in Macedonia itself indicates that the
demographic potential must have been large, though probably not over
8 Geography of Macedonia principally after: Borza 1990, pp. 23-57, 287-299; also
Corvisier 2002, pp. 37-41; Thomas 2007, pp. 23-32.
Childhood, Family, Macedonia
5
two million as Hammond believed.9 Historians have tried to calculate
ancient Macedonia’s population on the basis of 19th-century census
records, assuming that under the backward and unindustrialised Ottoman
Empire the population size would have been more or less the same as it
had been in the same area in Antiquity when it was supported by cattle
herding and primitive agriculture. According to such estimates
Macedonia’s population at the start of Alexander’s campaign was
approximately 1-1.5 million. However, there are other theories which
suggest that populations in the pre-industrialised age did grow, though so
slowly as to be indiscernible. Accordingly the population of Macedonia at
the end of Philip II’s reign would have amounted to approximately
660,000. Even if we take the lowest of these estimates, at the time of
Philip and Alexander there would have been roughly three times more
Macedonians than inhabitants of the largest Greek polis of Athens, with
populations well under 300,000 and in that 100,000 citizens of both sexes
at the most.10
The matter of ancient Macedonians’ ethnicity is one of the most hotly
discussed issues regarding those times. Ancient sources frequently
mention speeches or simple remarks being uttered in Macedonian by
Alexander or other Macedonians of his day or from the later times of the
Diadochi. For years scholars have been arguing whether or not by stating
that something was said in Macedonian meant that they were merely using
a Greek dialect or in fact a quite separate language. The academic dispute
has become even more heated on account of the more than century-old
political conflict over territory and independence. Both sides of the
political dispute have tried to gain a moral advantage over their opponents
by resorting to ‘historical’ arguments as to the right to land on account of
its ethnic past. At the turn of the 20th century Macedonia – the
southernmost state of the Balkans at the time of the emergence of modern
nationalisms – was ethnically a very complex country with a predominance
of Slavic elements. That was when the Greeks started claiming there rights
to the land on account of its ancient history. The reason the Greeks felt
they had a stronger claim to Macedonia than for instance the Bulgarians
was because, according to them, the Macedonian state had for so long had
a Greek ethnicity and it was already clearly visible in Antiquity, especially
during the reigns of its most illustrious rulers Philip II and Alexander the
9 Hammond 1994, p. 40, n. 38.
10 Billows 1994, pp. 198-206. Population of Attica: Hansen 1991, pp. 90-94. Low
estimates for Attica (ca. 200,000) and Macedonia (660,000) are after Corvisier
2000, pp. 32-44. Thomas 2007, p. 49 lists 700,000 for Macedonia under Philip II.
6
Chapter I
Great. This ‘official’ Greek stance is shared by many Western historians.11
However, the other, Southern Slavic (Macedonian and Bulgarian), side
also willingly use ‘historic’ arguments. They stress the non-Greek ethnic
of today’s Southern Slavs. With such reasoning they have even tried to
posthumously ‘Slavicise’ Alexander the Great.12
Unfortunately, pre-Hellenistic Macedonians are one of the ‘mute’
nations of history in that they have not left any traces of literature or
monumental inscriptions. Even the quite numerous graves of Macedonian
aristocrats contain no inscriptions. Only half of the 140 or so words
claimed by ancient authors to be Macedonian are undeniably of Greek
origin and even in these cases contemporary linguists do not discern a
typically Greek evolution of particular words. Moreover, although all the
ancient inscriptions discovered in Macedonia, especially in recent decades,
are in Greek, this does not mean this was the everyday language of
Macedonians. Indeed, the rulers of Thrace, Scythia and Illyria
commissioned monuments with Greek inscriptions and yet we know that
Thracians, Scythians and Illyrians had their own non-Greek languages. At
the time Greek was simply the preferred language among the cultural
elites of much of the Mediterranean area, as Latin later was in medieval
Europe. It should be remembered that in the pre-Hellenistic age all Greeks
spoke and wrote in their local dialects, not in the standardised form of the
language, koine, which in fact developed only at the start of Hellenistic
epoch. Ca. 6300 inscriptions found in Macedonia are predominantly in
(Attic) koine, some in various Greek dialects of the coastal cities and only
a tabula defixionum of Pella possibly in the local dialect close to North-
West Greek. Obviously the Attic dialect or koine could not have been the
native language of the local inhabitants. Indeed, the predominance of Attic
dialect inscriptions may in fact indicate that for the local population Greek
was a foreign language and that the ‘literary’ Attic form had been learned
only at school. Ancient authors testify that the ordinary Macedonian did
not fully understand Greek.13 This fact did not stop the most outstanding
supporter of the claim that ancient Macedonians were actually Greeks,
N.G.L Hammond, from espousing the quite curious view that the
11 Presentation of Greek position: Kalléris 1954-1976; similar: Lane Fox 1973, p.
30; Cawkwell 1978, pp. 22-23; Hammond 1979, pp. 39-54; Hammond 1999, pp.
31-33; O’Brien 1992, p. 26; Corvisier 2002, pp. 49-50; Worthington 2004, pp. 7-8;
Panayotou 2007. See: Borza 1990, pp. 3-12, 90-97.
12 Mikołajczak, Stamatoski 2002; Moroz-Grzelak 2002; Danforth 2003.
13 Borza 1990, pp. 90-94; Borza 1994; Borza 1999, pp. 41-43. See now Panayotou
2007 for Macedonian as a Greek dialect.
Childhood, Family, Macedonia
7
Macedonian language was, indeed, a Greek dialect but one unintelligible
to the Greeks.14
Although most of the evidence does suggest that in the 4th century
Macedonian was a separate language to Gree
k, one cannot consider this
issue closed. After all, there is no clear dividing line between a different
dialect and a different language. For instance, many consider present-day
Macedonian to be in fact a dialect of Bulgarian. However, ethnic identity
is not only determined by language, it also depends on the awareness of
belonging to a different ethnic group or nation. Belonging to an ethnic
group depends on a subjective conviction that some common factors exist
binding a group of people together and distinguishing them from other
ethnic groups. Such factors may include: common ancestry, a common
history, culture, association with a particular territory or a sense of group
solidarity. Analysis of all extant sources unequivocally shows that in the
5th and 4th centuries the Greeks did not regard Macedonians to be part of
their ethnic group nor did the Macedonians themselves ever claim to be
Greek. It was only in the Hellenistic epoch that Macedonians became fully
Hellenised and it was only with the growing dominance of Rome in the
Balkan Peninsula that a sense of affinity developed between the
Macedonians and Greeks. It was then that Alexander the Great was
belatedly included in the pantheon of Greek national heroes. By the time
of the Roman Empire Plutarch was willingly using Alexander of
Macedonia as an example of how Greek military prowess was equal to that
of mighty Rome. However, in Alexander’s day the Macedonians had a
separate ethnos. What is more, they were aware and proud of it. The
undeniable closeness of Macedonian to Greek would have made the latter
language partly intelligible to most Macedonians. A similar situation can
be seen today among Scandinavian or Slavonic nations whose members
can understand respectively another Scandinavian or Slavonic language
even if they have never been taught it.15
Even if 4th-century Macedonians distinguished themselves ethnically
from their Greek neighbours they most probably had the same proto-Greek
roots as members of the historic Greek tribes. Moreover, the Macedonian
royal court was already becoming Hellenised in the 5th century and
especially intensively during the reign of Archelaus – the patron of many
Greek artists including Euripides. This state of affairs was partly due to a
desire to have political influence in the Greek world, but no doubt also due
14 Hammond 1995; now also Worthington 2008, p. 8.
15 Weber 1968, p. 389; Badian 1982; Haarmann 1986, pp. 260-262; Borza 1990,
pp. 90-97, 305-306; Borza 1992; Borza 1996; Hall 2000, pp. 19-26, 170-172, 177;
Nawotka 2003, p. 27; Thomas 2007, pp. 32-37.
8
Chapter I
to Macedonian awareness of the attractive aspects of contemporary Greek
culture, which indeed fascinated many Mediterranean countries of that
epoch. Naturally the ruling dynasty and aristocracy were the first to be
Hellenised. The frescos and numerous artefacts found in recent decades in
Macedonian graves from the second half of the 4th century show that the
royal court favoured Greek and especially Attic art.16
During the reign of Philip II Macedonia was still predominantly a rural
country where cities, unlike in Greece, played a very peripheral role in
both the political and economic sense. Despite efforts made by the
administration (incidentally a fact much exaggerated by many historians),
Philip’s kingdom remained poor. Before Philip’s reign there was virtually
nothing that could be called a city in Upper Macedonia, though
archaeologists have uncovered the remains of fortified settlements which
must have been the commercial centres of the rural communities. In Lower
Macedonia the only urban centre of note was the kingdom’s capital Pella,
which was by no means the ‘poor and small town’ described by
Demosthenes. In fact the length of its defensive walls at the time of Philip
II (7-8 km) was comparable to the length of the walls of Athens (6.5 km),
and although it might not have been as populous as Athens, Pella needs to
be regarded as an important urban centre.17 The other towns of Edessa,
Dion and Aegae were much less significant though the last of these, even
after it ceased being the capital, still maintained its status as the burial
place of Macedonian kings and the centre of their cults. Ancient sources
do not clearly state when the royal residence was transferred from Aegae
to Pella, but historians believe it occurred during the reign of the state’s
reformer Archelaus. Pella had no natural defence advantages and this was
a malarial region, but it was situated on an important trade route, along
which at the time of the Early Roman empire the famous road via Egnatia
was built. Furthermore, while the coastline remained under the control of
the Greek colonies of Pydna, Methone and the Chalcidian League, Pella,
with its access to the Aegean via the river Ludias was the Kingdom of
Macedonia’s only seaport. This allowed Macedonia to export timber
brought down the river Axios from the nearby mountains as well as no
doubt minerals and agricultural products.18
It was not their economic but their political significance that
distinguished Macedonian cities most from those of Greece. In the Greek
world the city and surrounding rural areas ( chora) generally constituted a
16 Barr-Sharrar 1982.
17 Diod., 18.66. Montgomery 1985; Montgomery 1997; Hammond 1994, p. 56;
Thomas 2007, pp. 81-83.
18 Greenwalt 1999; Corvisier 2002, pp. 53-57.
Childhood, Family, Macedonia
9
separate state ( polis). Of course there were numerous exceptions to this
rule. There were large poleis, such as Athens, which would include more
than one urban settlement with inhabitants who had typically urban
occupations. On the other hand, there were also many small states that did
not have a single urban centre. Nevertheless, by the mid 4th century for the
Greeks the polis was almost always associated with citizenship and the
natural political centre. In accordance with contemporary convictions they
would also naturally have a democratic system of government.19 In the
Classical period no Macedonian urban settlement could be characterised as
a polis. At most some had limited autonomy but still under the supervision
of a royal prefect. Thus Macedonia avoided the political fragmentation so
typical in Greece, while all the subjects considered themselves to be
Macedonians first and only next the inhabitants of, for instance, Pella,
Edessa or Dion.20
This form of social organisation, different from the polis concept and
called ethne, was also present in neighbouring Thessaly as well as to a
large extent in Thrace. Moreover, these three countries, which were much
larger than Greek states, also kept the tribal system throughout the
Classical period. In Thrace it was still present at the time of the Roman
empire. On account of the fact that everywhere this social structure was
eventually succeeded by the polis, one cannot regard ethne to have been a
viable alternative but instead an earlier stage in the evolution of society. A
typical structure
for ethne societies, even in 4th-century democracy
dominated Greece, was the oligarchy or aristocracy. The political
significance of the ruling classes rested on their control of outlying
territories or of smaller towns which, as in Greece, did not have the status
of independent states.21
The 4th-century Greek historian Theopompus states that in Macedonia
during the reign of Philip II there were 800 aristocratic hetairoi whose
revenues from landed property equalled that of 10,000 of the wealthiest
Greeks.22 It is now impossible to verify this statement and it may be a
rhetorical exaggeration. Significant, however, is the very fact that
contemporary observers perceived Macedonia to be a country dominated
by a wealthy aristocracy. Their wealth has been confirmed by the
archaeological uncovering of some 100 warrior graves whose lavishness
resembled more those of nobles from the Mycenaean age or those of
contemporary Thracian aristocrats than those of Greeks of classical age.
19 Arist., Pol. , 1286b20. See Gauthier 1984, p. 86; Quass 1979.
20 Errington 1990, pp. 222-234.
21 Archibald 2000.
22 FGrH, 115 F225b.
10
Chapter I
The most sumptuous sepulchres are the royal graves at Vergina, which
shall be discussed in detail in Chapter III. The number of hetairoi during
Philip II’s reign rose to approximately 1,800. This would have been so not
only because of a natural rise in the number of Macedonian aristocrats
resulting from the country’s prosperity, but also from a large influx of
foreigners, especially Greeks. The closeness between the king of
Macedonia and his aristocrats is apparent in their name, hetairoi, which
simply means companions – the king’s companions. The hetairoi
accompanied the king in battle as well as in hunting and feasting, yet in
the monarch’s regular presence they were bound by none of the
submissiveness and strict adherence to court ceremony that was so typical
of ancient states of the East. The lack of an administrative or court
hierarchy meant that both Philip II and Alexander ruled with the aid of
their closest entourage, especially a group of seven to eight