Lower Macedonia

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File:Map Peloponnesian War 431 BC-en.svg
Macedon (orange) during the Peloponnesian War around 431 BC, with Athens and the Delian League (yellow), Sparta and Peloponnesian League (red), independent states (blue), and the Persian Achaemenid Empire (purple)

Lower Macedonia (Template:Langx, Kato Makedonia) or Lower Macedon or Macedonia proper or Emathia is a geographical term used in Antiquity referring to the coastal plain watered by the rivers Haliacmon, Axius and Loudias, stretching along the coast of the Thermaic Gulf, which was the core and defined the center of the Argead kingdom of Macedon.[1] Its districts were: Emathia, Pieria, Bottiaea, Almopia, Amphaxitis.[2] Aigai (near modern Vergina), the original capital of Macedon, and Pella, the birthplace of Alexander the Great and the new capital of the kingdom since the 4th century BC, were in Lower Macedonia, in modern Central Macedonia, in Greece.

File:Growth of the ancient Greek Kingdom of Macedon (English)v3.svg
Growth of the kingdom of Macedon

History

The kingdom of Macedonia was originally situated along the Haliacmon and Loudias rivers in Lower Macedonia, north of Mount Olympus and east of the Pierian Mountains and the Vermio Mountains. Historian Robert Malcolm Errington suggests that one of the earliest Argead kings established Aigai (modern Vergina) as their capital in the mid-7th century BC.[3] According to Maria Girtzy, the only ancient source referring indirectly to Emathia's boundaries was by Herodotus' testimony that Macedonis lay between Loudias and Haliacmon; thus Emathia (as alternative name to the district of Macedonis) was bounded by Loudias to the north and the plateau of Edessa to the northwest, the valley of Haliacmon to the south along with Vermio Mountains to the southwest, and the Thermaic Gulf to the east.[4] Some ancient geographers give Emathia as the name of a town in the region, or as a name in alternation with Macedon.[5] Pieria took its name from the Pieres, a Thracian[6] tribe that was expelled[7] by the Macedonians in the 8th century BC[8] from their original seats. Sometime, during the Archaic period, Bottiaeans were also expelled by Macedonians from Bottiaea to Bottike.

File:Macedonian Kingdom.jpg
Map of the Kingdom of Macedon after Philip II's expansion in 358 BC.

Almopia was incorporated into the kingdom during the reign of Alexander I (r. 498–454 BC) and Almopes, that originally inhabited the area before, were expelled from the region.[9][10] Amphaxitis and the eastern districts of Crestonia, Mygdonia and Bisaltia were also added to the kingdom later. There were also included the subregions Anthemous and Crousis in it, which were originally part of Chalcidice. Additionally Eordaea was incorporated to the Argead kindgom earlier than the rest of Upper Macedonia.

The Argeads conquered gradually the Thracian-inhabited areas east of the Axius in the 5th and 4th centuries BC. The regions of Edonis, Sintice, Odomantis and Pieris, conquered by Philip II, were termed in Latin Macedonia Adjecta (Επίκτητος Μακεδονία). West of Lower Macedonia, Upper Macedonia was a geographical and tribal term to describe the upper/western of the two parts in which (together with Lower Macedonia) Macedon was roughly divided.[11][12][13]

Ancient Macedonian dialect

Script error: No such module "Labelled list hatnote". Miltiades Hatzopoulos has suggested that the Macedonian dialect of the 4th century BC spoken in Macedonia proper, as attested in the Pella curse tablet, was a sort of Macedonian 'koine' resulting from the encounter of the idiom of the 'Aeolic'-speaking populations around Mount Olympus and the Pierian Mountains with the Northwest Greek-speaking Argead Macedonians hailing from Argos Orestikon, who founded their kingdom of Lower Macedonia.[14] However, according to Hatzopoulos, B. Helly expanded and improved his own earlier suggestion and presented the hypothesis of a (North-)'Achaean' substratum extending as far north as the head of the Thermaic Gulf, which had a continuous relation, in prehistoric times both in Thessaly and Macedon, with the Northwest Greek-speaking populations living on the other side of the Pindus mountain range, and contacts became cohabitation when the Argead Macedonians completed their wandering from Orestis to Lower Macedonia in the 7th c. BC.[14] According to this hypothesis, Hatzopoulos concludes that the Ancient Macedonian dialect of the historical period, which is attested in inscriptions such as Pella curse tablet, is a sort of koine resulting from the interaction and the influences of various elements, the most important of which are the North-Achaean substratum, the Northwest Greek dialect of the Argead Macedonians, and the Thracian and Phrygian adstrata.[14]

See also

References

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  1. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Thomas, Carol G. (2010). "The Physical Kingdom". In Roisman, Joseph; Worthington, Ian (eds.). A Companion to Ancient Macedonia. Oxford: Wiley-Blackwell. pp. 65–80. ISBN 978-1-4051-7936-2.Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Footnotes/anchor_id_list' not found..
  2. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Girtzy, Maria (2001). HISTORICAL TOPOGRAPHY OF ANCIENT MACEDONIA. UNIVERSITY STUDIO PRESS.
  3. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Errington, Robert Malcolm (1990). A History of Macedonia. Translated by Catherine Errington. Berkeley: University of California Press. ISBN 978-0-520-06319-8.Lua error in package.lua at line 80: module 'Module:Footnotes/anchor_id_list' not found..
  4. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Girtzy, Maria (2001). HISTORICAL TOPOGRAPHY OF ANCIENT MACEDONIA. UNIVERSITY STUDIO PRESS.
  5. ^ Strabo Book 7 Fragment 11
  6. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Guthrie, William Keith (1993). Alderink, Larry J. (ed.). Orpheus and Greek Religion: A Study of the Orphic Movement. Mythos: The Princeton/Bollingen Series in World Mythology. Princeton, New Jersey: Princeton University Press. p. 62. ISBN 978-0691024998. ... assigned, Pieria, was originally inhabited by a Thracian tribe, the Pieres, who according to Thucydides (ii. ...
  7. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Walker, Keith G. (2004). Archaic Eretria: A Political and Social History from the Earliest Times to 490 BC. London: Routledge. p. 154. ISBN 9780415285520. ... 498-54)12' had incorporated coastal Pieria into Macedonia and expelled the 'Pieres', who afterwards took up their abode in areas at Mt.Pangaion...
  8. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Hansen, Mogens Herman; Nielsen, Thomas Heine (2005) [1st edition 2004]. An Inventory of Archaic and Classical Poleis, An Investigation Conducted by The Copenhagen Polis Centre for the Danish National Research Foundation. Oxford University Press. p. 865. ISBN 978-0-19-814099-3.
  9. ^ Thucydides, History of the Peloponnesian War, II.99
  10. ^ Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Roisman, Joseph; Worthington, Ian (2011-07-07). A Companion to Ancient Macedonia. John Wiley & Sons. p. 75. ISBN 978-1-4443-5163-7.
  11. ^ Joseph Roisman, Ancient Greece from Homer to Alexander: The Evidence, Wiley-Blackwell, 2011, p.520
  12. ^ Eugene N. Borza, In the shadow of Olympus: the emergence of Macedon, Princeton University Press, 1991, p.31
  13. ^ Michael M. Sage, Warfare in ancient Greece: a sourcebook, Routledge, 1996, p.162
  14. ^ a b c Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css has no content.Hatzopoulos, Miltiades B. (2017). "Recent Research in the Ancient Macedonian Dialect: Consolidation and New Perspectives". In Giannakis, Georgios K.; Crespo, Emilio; Filos, Panagiotis (eds.). Studies in Ancient Greek Dialects: From Central Greece to the Black Sea. Walter de Gruyter. pp. 321–322. ISBN 978-3-11-053081-0.

Sources

  • A Manual of Ancient Geography. by Heinrich Kiepert, George Augustin. Macmillan. p 182 Template:ISBN
  • The Greek World in the Fourth Century. by Lawrence A. Tritle. p 167 Template:ISBN
  • The Classical Gazetteer. Hazlitt. p 210