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The location of Aegeae*
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 23 February 2012
Extract
In AJA xcviii (1994) 609-16, F.B. Faklaris discussed the location of Aegeae, founded by the first Temenid king of the Macedonians and famous thereafter as the burial-place of the Macedonian kings (Pliny NH iv 33 ‘Aegeae in quo sepeliri mos reges’). He located it at Kopanos and not at Vergina, where I had put it in 1968. The geographical difference between the two sites is considerable. Kopanos is east of Mt. Bermion, and being some 19 km south of Edessa and 5 km east of Naoussa, it looks towards the plain of Pella. Vergina lies at the northern end of the Olympus massif, which consists of the Pierian mountains and Mt. Olympus; and it faces the Haliacmon and the western end of the plain. The choice between the two sites is to be determined by the interpretation of the literary evidence and by the ongoing flow of the archaeological discoveries.
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References
1 There are several spellings of the name. I take mine from [Αἰ]γεᾶν in a late fourth-century inscription (IG iv 67 line 15). Theophrastus, writing at a similar date, had Αἰγειαί in De Ventis 27.
2 In a lecture which was later published in Ancient Macedonia i (Thessaloniki 1970) 64 f.; my reasons were stated fully in HM i 156 ff. and ii 13 f.
3 The sequence of events was clearly stated by Justin vii 1.8-10, regni sedem statuit … pulso deinde Mida … aliisque regibus pulsis: ‘he established the capital of his kingdom … then drove out Midas and other kings’. In CQ xli (1991) 497 and 501Google Scholar I argued that the source of Trogus, whom Justin was abbreviating, was Marsyas Macedon. Thus, as Marsyas reported the early traditions of the Macedones, he and Herotodus drew on the same tradition.
4 Mende on the other side of the Thermaic Gulf was founded at the same time as Methone according to the literary tradition. There the dating has been confirmed by the excavation of the early cemetery with ‘grave goods … from the late 8th and early 7th centuries BC’. See Vokotopoulou, J. in AEMTh iv (1993) 404 and 415Google Scholar, and my article in BSA xc (1995) 315Google Scholar with note 36.
5 The Lydias (or Loudias) changed its course several times in antiquity (HM i 144-8) and in recent times. The Greek Statistical Service Map, sheet ‘Emathia’ (1:200,000), shows ‘a regional canal’ collecting the waters below Naoussa and joining the Haliacmon at Koloura.
6 Quoted and discussed in HM ii 8. The oracle is fictitious, being post eventum, but it was designed to conform with the geographical situation of the capital city.
7 This oracle is also fictitious (see HM ii 9). Caranus was said to be the grandfather of Perdiccas (Diod. vii fr. 15.1). Parke, H.W., A history of the Delphic Oracle (Oxford 1939) 65Google Scholar f. attributed it to the time when Pella replaced Aegeae as the capital.
8 The passage is discussed in HM 1.157.
9 Fox, R. Lane, Alexander the Great (London 1973) 504.Google Scholar
10 Faklaris invoked another passage: Steph. Byz. s.v. Balla μεταγαγὼν εἰς τὸν νῦν λεγόμενον Πύθιον τόπον. He look it to mean that Apollo was worshipped at Balla, and that, since there is some evidence of Apollo being worshipped at Vergina, the site there was Balla. That is not the meaning of Stephanus Byzantinus, as an inscription in BCH ii (1897) 112Google Scholar Μακεδὼν Ἐλειμιώτης ἐκ Πυθείου makes clear. The true meaning is that X (probably Philip II) ‘transferred the population of Balla to Pythion’ in Perrhaebia, which thus became a city of Macedones, as I explained in HM i 118 and 158, and recently in my Philip of Macedon (London 1994) 53.Google Scholar
11 As we see from the so-called Tomb of Rhomaios with its throne at Vergina, dated c. 300 BC, and the burial of Philip III and Eurydice and the re-burial of Cynane ‘at Aegeae as was customary for the kings’ (Diod. xix 52.5; cf. FGrH 73 (Diyllus) F 1) in 316 BC.
12 Mémoire sur le berceau de la puissance macédonienne (Paris 1858) 98 f.Google Scholar
13 The communis opinio was expressed recently by Borza, E.N., In the shadow of Olympus (Princeton 1990) 18 and 81Google Scholar ‘Mieza (modern Kopanos/Lefkadia below Naousa’). For some of the reasons see HM i 163 and Ph. Petsas in The Princeton Encyclopedia of Classical Sites (Princeton 1976) 577.Google Scholar
14 BCH xlv (1921) 17Google Scholar iii 59, in the form ‘Meza’. This inscription militates against the doubts of Borza (n. 13) 275 ‘whether or not Mieza was a proper town’.
15 Reports were published by Petsas in Praktika 1965, 39 f., 1966,31 f., and 1968, 65 f., and also in Ergon 1965 [1966] 21-8 and Makedonika vi (Thessaloniki 1967) 33 with Plate 50. And by Siganidou, M. and Trochides, K. in AEMTh iv (1993) 121–5Google Scholar. Petsas kindly showed me round the site in 1968. Nothing could be more convincing. There are rather distant photographs in Praktika (1965) Plates 48a and 52.
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