11. Deuriopus (ἡ Δευρίοπος) was the name of a tract of country along the Erigon,[1938] which was considered as belonging to Pæonia,[1939] and probably lay to the east of Lyncestis [pg 460] and north of Eordæa.[1940] In Pæonia also was situated the rugged district of Pelagonia, to the north of Lyncestis,[1941] having on its northern frontiers narrow passes, which protected it from the incursions of the Dardanians.[1942] As to other parts of the extensive territory of Pæonia (in comparison with which Macedonia was originally very inconsiderable in size), it is only necessary to observe, that, beginning near the source of the Axius, the banks of which river had from early times been occupied by Pæonian tribes, a narrow strip of land extended down to Pella and the coast;[1943] though, according to Herodotus, it could not have actually reached the edge of the sea, as the frontiers of Bottiaïs and Mygdonia at this point came into contact with one another.[1944] Immediately to the north of Lower Macedonia, i.e., to the north of Macedonian Pæonia, Bottiaïs, and Mygdonia, but without the confines of these provinces, was situated, as we learn from Thucydides,[1945] the Pæonian city of Doberus.[1946] The king of the Odrysians arrived, according to the same writer,[1947] at this place after having come from his dominions, which were bounded by the Strymon, over mount Cercine; in which passage he left the Pæonians to the right, and to the left the Sintes and Mædi (Thracian races, supposed by Gatterer to have penetrated hither when the Siropæonians and others crossed over to Asia).[1948] From which notices I have ventured to set down the mountain, the city, and nations just mentioned, as may be seen in the accompanying map.[1949]
Early history of the kingdom of Macedonia.
12. The subject of this dissertation made it necessary for us to enter into the above detail as to the several provinces and divisions of Upper and Lower Macedonia. We must now proceed to inquire into the gradual extension of the kingdom of Macedon; an investigation in which we are fortunately assisted by the clear and accurate account of Thucydides, who lived at no great distance from the country which he describes; and whose words I now transcribe as follows (II. 99.):
“Accordingly, the subjects of Sitalces mustered at Doberus, and prepared for a descent into Lower Macedonia, which country was under the rule of Perdiccas. For to the Macedonians belong[1950] the Lyncestæ and the Elimiots, and other nations in the upper parts of the country, which are the allies and subjects[1951] of these Macedonians,[1952] but have nevertheless princes of their own. The present kingdom of Macedonia, extending along the sea,[1953] was first occupied by Alexander the father of Perdiccas, and his ancestors of the family of Temenus, who came originally from Argos; and ruled over it, having by force of arms expelled the Pierians from Pieria,[1954] and the Bottiæans from the district called Bottiæa. They also obtained in Pæonia a narrow tongue of land, extending along the river Axius down to Pella and the sea: and on the further side of the Axius they possess the district called Mygdonia, as far as the Strymon, of which they dispossessed the Edones. They also dislodged the Eordians from the country still called Eordia, and from Almopia the Almopians. These Macedonians also subdued those other nations which they now possess; viz., Anthemus, together with Crestonia and Bisaltia, and a large part of the Macedonians themselves. The whole of this country together is called Macedonia; and Perdiccas, [pg 462] the son of Alexander, was king of it when Sitalces made his invasion.”
13. This chapter has not by any means been exhausted by those who have written on the growth and size of Macedonia; and therefore it will be convenient to set down some of the chief inferences which may be drawn from it.
In the first place, it is plain that the Macedonians, who made the conquest, and founded the kingdom of Macedon, were not the whole Macedonian nation, but only a part of it. There were in the mountainous districts Macedonian tribes, which had their own kings, and originally were not subject to the Temenidæ. These are the Macedonian highlanders of Herodotus,[1955] from whose district the road passed over mount Olympus (the Cambunian chain) into the country of the Perrhæbians;[1956] and it began, as has been already remarked, in Elimeia.[1957] The Elimiots were, according to Thucydides, one portion of these Macedonians, the Lyncestæ another; both which appellations were merely local, and the full title was “the Macedonians in Lyncus,” or “the Macedonian Lyncestæ.”[1958] Of the remaining Macedonian nations in the mountain-districts we only know the name of the Orestæ;[1959] at least there are no others who can with any certainty be considered as Macedonians.
14. The name of Macedonia was not therefore, as some have supposed, confined to the royal dynasty of Edessa, but was a national appellation; so much so, that it is even stated that those very kings subdued, among other nations, a large portion of the Macedonians. The tribes of Upper Macedonia were long governed by their own princes; thus Antiochus was king of the Orestæ at the beginning of the Peloponnesian war;[1960] the Lyncestæ were under the rule of Arrhibæus, the son of Bromerus,[1961] the great grandfather, by the mother's side, of Philip of Macedon, who derived [pg 463] his descent (not altogether without probability) from the Bacchiadæ, the ancient rulers of Corinth;[1962] and these kings, though properly recognising the supremacy of the Temenidæ, were nevertheless at times their nearest, and therefore most dangerous, enemies.[1963]
15. The Macedonian kingdom of the Temenidæ, on the other hand, began from a single point of the Macedonian territory, concerning the position of which there are various traditions. According to Herodotus, three brothers of the family of Temenus, Gauanes, Aëropus, and Perdiccas, fled from Argos to Illyria, from thence passed on to Lebæa in Upper Macedonia, and served the king of the country (who was therefore a Macedonian) as shepherds. From this place they again fled, and dwelt in another part of Macedonia, near the gardens of Midas, in mount Bermius (near Berœa), from which place they subdued the neighbouring country.[1964] Thucydides so far recognises this tradition, that he likewise considers Perdiccas as the founder of the kingdom, reckoning eight kings down to Archelaus.[1965] The other account, however, that there were three kings before Perdiccas, is unquestionably not the mere invention of later historians, but was derived, as well as the other, from some local tradition. According to this account the Macedonian kingdom began at Edessa,[1966] which had been taken by Caranus, of the family of the Temenidæ, and by him named after a goatherd, who rendered him assistance, Ægæ (or Ægeæ).[1967] Both narrations have equally a traditional character, and were doubtless of Macedonian origin, only that the latter appears to have been combined with an Argive [pg 464] legend of a brother of the powerful Phido having gone to the north. The claim of Edessa is also confirmed by the fact, that, even when it had long ceased to be the royal residence, it still continued the burial-place of the kings of Temenus' race, and, as Diodorus says, the hearth of their empire.[1968]
16. Edessa and the gardens of Midas were both situated between the Lydias and the Haliacmon, in the original and proper country of Macedonia, according to the account of Herodotus.[1969] The manner in which the dominions of the Temenidæ were extended along the sea-coast, and towards the interior, we learn from Thucydides, who comprises in one general view all the conquests of these princes until the reign of Alexander. For to suppose that Alexander, the son of Amyntas, made all these conquests, is an error which is even refuted by the words of Thucydides; although it is very possible that this prince, who began his reign about 488 B.C., at the time of the Persian power, and was the brother-in-law of a Persian general,[1970] added considerably to the territory which he had inherited.[1971] But when Xerxes undertook his great expedition against Greece, the power of Macedon was as great as it is described by Thucydides; nor was its territory much enlarged during the interval between the Persian and Peloponnesian wars.[1972] For at the time of the Persian war (481 B.C.) the Pierians were already settled in New Pieria, especially in the fortified towns of Phagres and Pergamus, at the foot of mount Pangæum,[1973] whither they retired, after having been driven out of Old [pg 465] Pieria by the Macedonian kings;[1974] in fact, this extension of the territory of Macedon must have taken place at an early period.[1975] Moreover, Olynthus was, according to Herodotus,[1976] at least before 480 B.C., in the hands of the Bottiæans, who had, as we learn from both Herodotus and Thucydides, expelled the Macedonians from the ancient Bottiaïs; consequently this district had been under the rule of the Macedonians before the expedition of Xerxes. Thirdly, Amyntas the Macedonian, in 510 B.C., offered Anthemus in Chalcidice to the Pisistratidæ;[1977] the same argument therefore applies in this case also. Anthemus, however, could hardly have been obtained without Mygdonia: and that this district was then a part of the Macedonian dominions is probable also from the following reasons.[1978] According to Thucydides, the Macedonians drove out the nation of the Edonians[1979] from Mygdonia, between the rivers Axius and Strymon; and accordingly we find the Edonians always mentioned as dwelling to the east of the Strymon, at the foot of mount Pangæum. Now Ennea Hodoi, situated on the eastern bank of the Strymon, was, according to Herodotus,[1980] in the possession of the Edonians in the year 481 B.C.; and Myrcinus, in the same region, was found by Histiæus, when he visited it, to be an Edonian district,[1981] as it was at a later period by Brasidas.[1982] The latter argument is not indeed of itself decisive, as it might be said that the Edonians were [pg 466] only driven together by the conquests of the Macedonians, and had previously been in possession of the further side of the Strymon; but when combined with the former facts, it offers an almost certain proof that the whole country, from lake Bolbè to within a short distance from the Peneus, was subject to the Macedonians before the expedition of Xerxes.[1983] Methone[1984] was on this coast the only interruption to the series of Macedonian possessions; this Eretrian colony had been, about 746 B.C.,[1985] together with the numerous Eubœan settlements in Chalcidice,[1986] at a period when the power of the Macedonians on this line of coast was very insignificant; and it preserved its independence until the reign of Philip the son of Amyntas.[1987]
17. From the facts now ascertained, we may deduce a result of some importance with regard to the language of Herodotus. This historian clearly and precisely distinguishes between Bottiaïs and Macedonia in the time of Xerxes,[1988] although it is certain that Bottiaïs was then in the power of the Macedonians;[1989] Macedonia he classes as a district with Bottiaïs, Mygdonia, and Pieria. He uses the word, therefore, not in a political, but in a national sense; i.e., he restricts it to the territory originally possessed by the Macedonian nation, not applying it to countries which had been obtained by conquest or political preponderance. The Macedonia of Herodotus is consequently the territory of the Macedonians before all the conquests of the Temenidæ. It extended, according to Herodotus, in a narrow tongue down to the sea;[1990] a fact disregarded by Thucydides, when [pg 467] he states that the coast of Lower Macedonia was first reduced by the Temenidæ.[1991] Further from the sea, however, the ancient Macedonia had a much wider extent, and included the districts of Edessa and Berœa, Lyncestis, Orestis, and Elimeia: for Macedonia is stated by Herodotus to have been on the one side bounded by mount Olympus (which ridge, where it borders on Pieria,[1992] was called the Macedonian mountains),[1993] and on the other by mount Dysorum. This last fact is evident from the statement of the same writer, that a very short way led from the Prasian lake to Macedonia, passing first to the mine from which Alexander obtained an immense supply of precious metal; and then, that having crossed mount Dysorum, you were in Macedonia;[1994] i.e., evidently in the original Macedonia, since he expressly excludes from it the mine which had been a subsequent accession. The Prasian lake was in Pæonia;[1995] but in what district of it is not known;[1996] mount Dysorum, however, can only be looked for to the north of Edessa and to the west of the Axius, Macedonia Proper not extending so far as that river. In this manner it is placed in the accompanying map; in which also the ancient boundaries of the Macedonian race are laid down according to the results obtained by these researches.