Macedonia lay on the periphery of the Greek world to the north of Thessaly (chap. 1). Leaving aside the difficult question of whether or not they were Greek, the Macedonians, in the eyes of their neighbors to the south, were a backward folk (Dem. IX 31) even if the splendid golden objects (see Figure 18.1) found at Vergina (ancient Aegae) suggest an aesthetically sophisticated society.
A History of Greece: 1300 to 30 BC, First Edition. Victor Parker.
© 2014 Victor Parker. Published 2014 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Figure 18.1 Gold ossuary from Philip II’s tomb at Aegae; n. b. the sixteen-pointed “Star of Vergina” on the lid. Source: photo © Gianni Dagli Orti/Corbis
However that may be, the Macedonian aristocracy had long shown an interest in the “higher” culture down south. At the invitation of the Macedonian king Archelaus, the Athenian tragedian Euripides had spent his final years there (Diod. XIII 103; Paus. I 2,2), and years later a Macedonian officer could be represented, even in heated argument, as quoting Euripides (Plut. Alex. 51). When Philip II was looking for a tutor for his son, he chose Aristotle who gave the boy, Alexander the Great, a copy of the Iliad which he had personally annotated (Plut. Alex. 7-8) and from which Alexander could allegedly quote (Plut. Alex. 28). By the mid-fourth century aristocrats in Macedonia spoke standard Greek well enough, even if most Greeks could not understand “Macedonian” (Curtius, VI 9,35), and some Macedonians clearly understood “Macedonian” better than standard Greek (Plut. Alex 51). For whatever the cultural pretensions of the standard-Greek-speaking aristocracy, the soldiers in Philip’s and Alexander’s armies were rough mountaineers (from Upper Macedonia) and hardy farmers (from Lower Macedonia) who probably did not often quote from Euripides and “Homer.”
Up until the fourth century the sources mention Macedonia only in passing - for the simple reason that events in Macedonia for the most part passed notice south of the Tempe Pass. However, the Macedonians had occasionally come into conflict with the Chalcidian League (chap. 16), as well as with Athens, which held outposts in the northern Aegean (chaps. 13-14). They were moreover involved in affairs in Thessaly in 369 (Diod. XV 61) with the result that when the Boeotians intervened in Thessaly, their commander, Pelopidas, had to deal with the Macedonians also (Diod. XV 67). Both the Boeotians and the Athenians intervened in dynastic struggles in Macedonia over the next few years (Plut. Pel. 26; Aesch. II 29), and conflicts between the Macedonians and the Athenians grew (Aesch. II 30). In the late 360s the Macedonian king, Perdiccas III, seized the old Athenian colony Amphipolis, to which the Athenians had never given up their claim (see chap. 13), and installed a garrison there (Diod. XVI 3).
World History
