CHAPTER XXV

.

ILLYRIANS, MACEDONIANS, PÆONIANS.

Northward of the tribes called Epirotic lay those more numerous and widely extended tribes who bore the general name of Illyrians; bounded on the west by the Adriatic, on the east by the mountain-range of Skardus, the northern continuation of Pindus,—and thus covering what is now called Middle and Upper Albania, together with the more northerly mountains of Montenegro, Herzegovina, and Bosnia. Their limits to the north and north-east cannot be assigned, but the Dardani and Autariatæ must have reached to the north-east of Skardus and even east of the Servian plain of Kossovo; while along the Adriatic coast, Skylax extends the race so far northward as to include Dalmatia, treating the Liburnians and Istrians beyond them as not Illyrian: yet Appian and others consider the Liburnians and Istrians as Illyrian, and Herodotus even includes under that name the Eneti, or Veneti, at the extremity of the Adriatic gulf.[1] The Bulini, according to Skylax, were the northernmost Illyrian tribe: the Amantini, immediately northward of the Epirotic Chaonians, were the southernmost. Among the southern Illyrian tribes are to be numbered the Taulantii,—originally the possessors, afterwards the immediate neighbors, of the territory on which Epidamnus was founded. The ancient geographer Hekatæus[2] (about 500 B. C.), is sufficiently well acquainted with them to specify their town Sesarêthus: he also named the Chelidonii as their northern, the Encheleis as their southern neighbors; and the Abri also as a tribe nearly adjoining. We hear of the Illyrian Parthini, nearly in the same regions,—of the Dassaretii,[3] near Lake Lychnidus,—of the Penestæ, with a fortified town Uscana, north of the Dassaretii,—of the Ardiæans, the Autariatæ, and the Dardanians, throughout Upper Albania eastward as far as Upper Mœsia, including the range of Skardus itself; so that there were some Illyrian tribes conterminous on the east with Macedonians, and on the south with Macedonians as well as with Pæonians. Strabo even extends some of the Illyrian tribes much farther northward, nearly to the Julian Alps.[4]

[1] Herodot. i, 196; Skylax, c. 19-27; Appian. Illyric. c. 2, 4, 8.

The geography of the countries occupied in ancient times by the Illyrians, Macedonians, Pæonians, Thracians, etc., and now possessed by a great diversity of races, among whom the Turks and Albanians retain the primitive barbarism without mitigation, is still very imperfectly understood; though the researches of Colonel Leake, of Boué, of Grisebach, and others (especially the valuable travels of the latter), have of late thrown much light upon it. How much our knowledge is extended in this direction, may be seen by comparing the map prefixed to Mannert’s Geographie, or to O. Müller’s Dissertation on the Macedonians, with that in Boué’s Travels, but the extreme deficiency of the maps, even as they now stand, is emphatically noticed by Boué himself (see his Critique des Cartes de la Turquie in the fourth volume of his Voyage),—by Paul Joseph Schaffarik, the learned historian of the Sclavonic race, in the preface attached by him to Dr. Joseph Müller’s Topographical Account of Albania,—and by Grisebach, who in his surveys, taken from the summits of the mountains Peristeri and Ljubatrin, found the map differing at every step from the bearings which presented themselves to his eye. It is only since Boué and Grisebach that the idea has been completely dismissed, derived originally from Strabo, of a straight line of mountains (εὐθεῖα γραμμὴ, Strabo, lib. vii, Fragm. 3) running across from the Adriatic to the Euxine, and sending forth other lateral chains in a direction nearly southerly. The mountains of Turkey in Europe, when examined with the stock of geological science which M. Viquesnel (the companion of Boué) and Dr. Grisebach bring to the task, are found to belong to systems very different, and to present evidences of conditions of formation often quite independent of each other.

The thirteenth chapter of Grisebach’s Travels presents the best account which has yet been given of the chain of Skardus and Pindus: he has been the first to prove clearly, that the Ljubatrin, which immediately overhangs the plain of Kossovo at the southern border of Servia and Bosnia, is the north-eastern extremity of a chain of mountains reaching southward to the frontiers of Ætolia, in a direction not very wide of N-S.,—with the single interruption (first brought to view by Colonel Leake) of the Klissoura of Devol,—a complete gap, where the river Devol, rising on the eastern side, crosses the chain and joins the Apsus, or Beratino, on the western,—(it is remarkable that both in the map of Boué and in that annexed to Dr. Joseph Müller’s Topographical Description of Albania, the river Devol is made to join the Genussus, or Skoumi, considerably north of the Apsus, though Colonel Leake’s map gives the correct course.) In Grisebach’s nomenclature Skardus is made to reach from the Ljubatrin as its north-eastern extremity, south-westward and southward as far as the Klissoura of Devol: south of that point Pindus commences, in a continuation, however, of the same axis.

In reference to the seats of the ancient Illyrians and Macedonians Grisebach has made another observation of great importance (vol. ii, p. 121). Between the north-eastern extremity, Mount Ljubatrin, and the Klissoura of Devol, there are in the mighty and continuous chain of Skardus (above seven thousand feet high) only two passes fit for an army to cross: one near the northern extremity of the chain, over which Grisebach himself crossed, from Kalkandele to Prisdren, a very high _col_, not less than five thousand feet above the level of the sea; the other, considerably to the southward, and lower as well as easier, nearly in the latitude of Lychnidus, or Ochrida. It was over this last pass that the Roman Via Egnatia travelled, and that the modern road from Scutari and Durazzo to Bitolia now travels. With the exception of these two partial depressions, the long mountain-ridge maintains itself undiminished in height, admitting, indeed, paths by which a small company either of travellers or of Albanian robbers from the Dibren, may cross (there is a path of this kind which connects Struga with Ueskioub, mentioned by Dr. Joseph Müller, p. 70, and some others by Boué, vol. iv, p. 546), but nowhere admitting the passage of an army.

To attack the Macedonians, therefore, an Illyrian army would have to go through one or other of these passes, or else to go round the north-eastern pass of Katschanik, beyond the extremity of Ljubatrin. And we shall find that, in point of fact, the military operations recorded between the two nations carry us usually in one or other of these directions. The military proceedings of Brasidas (Thucyd. iv, 124),—of Philip the son of Amyntas king of Macedon (Diodor. xvi, 8),—of Alexander the Great in the first year of his reign (Arrian, i, 5), all bring us to the pass near Lychnidus (compare Livy, xxxii, 9; Plutarch, Flaminin. c. 4); while the Illyrian Dardani and Autariatæ border upon Pæonia, to the north of Pelagonia, and threaten Macedonia from the north-east of the mountain-chain of Skardus. The Autariatæ are not far removed from the Pæonian Agrianes, who dwelt near the sources of the Strymon, and both Autariatæ and Dardani threatened the return march of Alexander from the Danube into Macedonia, after his successful campaign against the Getæ, low down in the course of that great river (Arrian, i, 5). Without being able to determine the precise line of Alexander’s march on this occasion, we may see that these two Illyrian tribes must have come down to attack him from Upper Mœsia, and on the eastern side of the Axius. This, and the fact that the Dardani were the immediate neighbors of the Pæonians, shows us that their seats could not have been far removed from Upper Mœsia (Livy, xlv, 29): the fauces Pelagoniæ (Livy, xxxi, 34) are the pass by which they entered Macedonia from the north. Ptolemy even places the Dardani at Skopiæ (Ueskioub) (iii, 9); his information about these countries seems better than that of Strabo.

[2] Hekatæi Fragm. ed. Klausen, Fr. 66-70; Thucyd. i, 26.

Skylax places the Encheleis north of Epidamnus and of the Taulantii. It may be remarked that Hekatæus seems to have communicated much information respecting the Adriatic: he noticed the city of Adria at the extremity of the Gulf, and the fertility and abundance of the territory around it (Fr. 58: compare Skymnus Chius, 384).

[3] Livy, xliii, 9-18. Mannert (Geograph. der Griech. und Römer,

## part vii, ch. 9, p. 386, _seq._) collects the points and shows

how little can be ascertained respecting the localities of these Illyrian tribes.

[4] Strabo, iv, p. 206.

With the exception of some portions of what is now called Middle Albania, the territory of these tribes consisted principally of mountain pastures with a certain proportion of fertile valley, but rarely expanding into a plain. The Autariatæ had the reputation of being unwarlike, but the Illyrians generally were poor, rapacious, fierce, and formidable in battle. They shared with the remote Thracian tribes the custom of tattooing[5] their bodies and of offering human sacrifices: moreover, they were always ready to sell their military service for hire, like the modern Albanian Schkipetars, in whom probably their blood yet flows, though with considerable admixture from subsequent emigrations. Of the Illyrian kingdom on the Adriatic coast, with Skodra (Scutari) for its capital city, which became formidable by its reckless piracies in the third century B. C., we hear nothing in the flourishing period of Grecian history. The description of Skylax notices in his day, all along the northern Adriatic, a considerable and standing traffic between the coast and the interior, carried on by Liburnians, Istrians, and the small Grecian insular settlements of Pharus and Issa. But he does not name Skodra, and probably this strong post—together with the Greek town Lissus, founded by Dionysius of Syracuse—was occupied after his time by conquerors from the interior,[6] the predecessors of Agrôn and Gentius,—just as the coast-land of the Thermaic gulf was conquered by inland Macedonians.

[5] Strabo, vii, p. 315; Arrian, i, 5, 4-11. So impracticable is the territory, and so narrow the means of the inhabitants, in the region called Upper Albania, that most of its resident tribes even now are considered as free, and pay no tribute to the Turkish government: the Pachas cannot extort it without greater expense and difficulty than the sum gained would repay. The same was the case in Epirus, or Lower Albania, previous to the time of Ali Pacha: in Middle Albania, the country does not present the like difficulties, and no such exemptions are allowed (Boué, Voyage en Turquie, vol. iii, p. 192). These free Albanian tribes are in the same condition with regard to the Sultan as the Mysians and Pisidians in Asia Minor with regard to the king of Persia in ancient times (Xenophon, Anab. iii, 2, 23).

[6] Diodor. xv, 13: Polyb. ii, 4.

Once during the Peloponnesian war, a detachment of hired Illyrians, marching into Macedonia Lynkêstis (seemingly over the pass of Skardus a little east of Lychnidus, or Ochrida), tried the valor of the Spartan Brasidas; and on that occasion—as in the expedition above alluded to of the Epirots against Akarnania—we shall notice the marked superiority of the Grecian character, even in the case of an armament chiefly composed of helots newly enfranchised, over both Macedonians and Illyrians,—we shall see the contrast between brave men acting in concert and obedience to a common authority, and an assailing host of warriors, not less brave individually, but in which every man is his own master,[7] and fights as he pleases. The rapid and impetuous rush of the Illyrians, if the first shock failed of its effect, was succeeded by an equally rapid retreat or flight. We hear nothing afterwards respecting these barbarians until the time of Philip of Macedon, whose vigor and military energy first repressed their incursions, and afterwards partially conquered them. It seems to have been about this period (400-350 B. C.) that the great movement of the Gauls from west to east took place, which brought the Gallic Skordiski and other tribes into the regions between the Danube and the Adriatic sea, and which probably dislodged some of the northern Illyrians so as to drive them upon new enterprises and fresh abodes.

[7] See the description in Thucydidês (iv, 124-128); especially the exhortation which he puts into the mouth of Brasidas,—αὐτοκράτωρ μάχῃ, contrasted with the orderly array of Greeks.

“Illyriorum velocitas ad excursiones et impetus subitos.”

(Livy, xxxi, 35.)

What is now called Middle Albania, the Illyrian territory immediately north of Epirus, is much superior to the latter in productiveness.[8] Though mountainous, it possesses more both of low hill and valley, and ampler as well as more fertile cultivable spaces. Epidamnus and Apollonia formed the seaports of this territory, and the commerce with the southern Illyrians, less barbarous than the northern, was one of the sources[9] of their great prosperity during the first century of their existence,—a prosperity interrupted in the case of the Epidamnians by internal dissensions, which impaired their ascendency over their Illyrian neighbors, and ultimately placed them at variance with their mother-city Korkyra. The commerce between these Greek seaports and the interior tribes, when once the former became strong enough to render violent attack from the latter hopeless, was reciprocally beneficial to both of them. Grecian oil and wine were introduced among these barbarians, whose chiefs at the same time learned to appreciate the woven fabrics,[10] the polished and carved metallic work, the tempered weapons, and the pottery, which issued from Grecian artisans. Moreover, the importation sometimes of salt-fish, and always that of salt itself, was of the greatest importance to these inland residents, especially for such localities as possessed lakes abounding in fish, like that of Lychnidus. We hear of wars between the Autariatæ and the Ardiæi, respecting salt-springs near their boundaries, and also of other tribes whom the privation of salt reduced to the necessity of submitting to the Romans.[11] On the other hand, these tribes possessed two articles of exchange so precious in the eyes of the Greeks, that Polybius reckons them as absolutely indispensable,[12]—cattle and slaves; which latter were doubtless procured from Illyria, often in exchange for salt, as they were from Thrace and from the Euxine and from Aquileia in the Adriatic, through the internal wars of one tribe with another. Silver-mines were worked at Damastium in Illyria. Wax and honey were probably also articles of export, and it is a proof that the natural products of Illyria were carefully sought out, when we find a species of iris peculiar to the country collected and sent to Corinth, where its root was employed to give the special flavor to a celebrated kind of aromatic unguent.[13]

[8] See Pouqueville, Voyage en Grèce, vol. i, chs. 23 and 24; Grisebach, Reise durch Rumelien und nach Brussa, vol. ii, pp. 138-139; Boué, La Turquie en Europe, Géographie Générale, vol. i, pp. 60-65.

[9] Skymnus Chius, v, 418-425.

[10] Thucydidês mentions the ὑφαντὰ τε καὶ λεῖα, καὶ ἡ ἄλλη κατασκευὴ, which the Greek settlements on the Thracian coast sent up to king Seuthês (ii, 98): similar to the ὑφασμαθ᾽ ἱερὰ, and to the χεριαρᾶν τεκτόνων δαίδαλα, offered as presents to the Delphian god (Eurip. Ion. 1141; Pindar, Pyth. v, 46).

[11] Strabo, vii, p. 317; Appian, Illyric. 17; Aristot. Mirab. Ausc. c. 138. For the extreme importance of the trade in salt, as a bond of connection, see the regulations of the Romans when they divided Macedonia into four provinces, with the distinct view of cutting off all connection between one and the other. All _commercium_ and _connubium_ were forbidden between them: the fourth region, whose capital was Pelagonia (and which included all the primitive or Upper Macedonia, east of the range of Pindus and Skardus), was altogether inland, and it was expressly forbidden to draw its salt from the third region, or the country between the Axius and the Peneius; while on the other hand the Illyrian Dardani, situated northward of Upper Macedonia, received express permission to draw _their_ salt from this third or maritime region of Macedonia: the salt was to be conveyed from the Thermaic gulf along the road of the Axius to Stobi in Pæonia, and was there to be sold at a fixed price.

The inner or fourth region of Macedonia, which included the modern Bitoglia and Lake Castoria, could easily obtain its salt from the Adriatic, by the communication afterwards so well known as the Roman Egnatian way; but the communication of the Dardani with the Adriatic led through a country of the greatest possible difficulty, and it was probably a great convenience to them to receive their supply from the gulf of Therma by the road along the Vardar (Axius) (Livy, xlv, 29). Compare the route of Grisebach from Salonichi to Scutari, in his Reise durch Rumelien, vol. ii.

[12] About the cattle in Illyria, Aristotle, De Mirab. Ausc. c. 128. There is a remarkable passage in Polybius, wherein he treats the importation of slaves as a matter of necessity to Greece (iv, 37). The purchasing of the Thracian slaves in exchange for salt is noticed by Menander.—Θρᾶξ εὐγενὴς εῖ, πρὸς ἄλας ἠγορασμένος: see Proverb. Zenob. ii, 12, and Diogenian, i, 100.

The same trade was carried on in antiquity with the nations on and near Caucasus, from the seaport of Dioskurias at the eastern extremity of the Euxine (Strabo, xi, p. 506). So little have those tribes changed, that the Circassians now carry on much the same trade. Dr. Clarke’s statement carries us back to the ancient world: “The Circassians frequently sell their children to strangers, particularly to the Persians and Turks, and their princes supply the Turkish seraglios with the most beautiful of the prisoners of both sexes whom they take in war. In their commerce with the Tchernomorski Cossacks (north of the river Kuban), the Circassians bring considerable quantities of wood, and the delicious honey of the mountains, sewed up in goats’ hides, with the hair on the outside. These articles they exchange for salt, a commodity found in the neighboring lakes, of a very excellent quality. Salt is more precious than any other kind of wealth to the Circassians, and it constitutes the most acceptable present which can be offered to them. They weave mats of very great beauty, which find a ready market both in Turkey and Russia. They are also ingenious in the art of working silver and other metals, and in the fabrication of guns, pistols, and sabres. Some, which they offered us for sale, we suspected had been procured in Turkey in exchange for slaves. Their bows and arrows are made with inimitable skill, and the arrows being tipped with iron, and otherwise exquisitely wrought, are considered by the Cossacks and Russians as inflicting incurable wounds.” (Clarke’s Travels, vol. i, ch. xvi, p. 378.)

[13] Theophrast. Hist. Plant. iv, 5, 2; ix, 7, 4: Pliny. H. N. xiii, 2; xxi, 19: Strabo, vii, p. 326. Coins of Epidamnus and Apollonia are found not only in Macedonia, but in Thrace and in Italy: the trade of these two cities probably extended across from sea to sea, even before the construction of the Egnatian way; and the Inscription 2056 in the Corpus of Boeckh proclaims the gratitude of Odêssus (Varna) in the Euxine sea towards a citizen of Epidamnus (Barth, Corinthiorum Mercatur. Hist. p. 49; Aristot. Mirab. Auscult. c. 104).

Nor was the intercourse between the Hellenic ports and Illyrians inland exclusively commercial. Grecian exiles also found their way into Illyria, and Grecian mythes became localized there, as may be seen by the tale of Kadmus and Harmonia, from whom the chiefs of the Illyrian Encheleis professed to trace their descent.[14]

[14] Herodot. v, 61; viii, 137: Strabo, vii, p. 326. Skylax places the λίθοι of Kadmus and Harmonia among the Illyrian Manii, north of the Encheleis (Diodor. xix, 53; Pausan. ix, 5, 3).

The Macedonians of the fourth century B. C. acquired, from the ability and enterprise of two successive kings, a great perfection in Greek military organization without any of the loftier Hellenic qualities. Their career in Greece is purely destructive, extinguishing the free movement of the separate cities, and disarming the citizen-soldier to make room for the foreign mercenary, whose sword was unhallowed by any feelings of patriotism,—yet totally incompetent to substitute any good system of central or pacific administration. But the Macedonians of the seventh and sixth centuries B. C. are an aggregate only of rude inland tribes, subdivided into distinct petty principalities, and separated from the Greeks by a wider ethnical difference even than the Epirots; since Herodotus, who considers the Epirotic Molossians and Thesprotians as children of Hellen, decidedly thinks the contrary respecting the Macedonians.[15] In the main, however, they seem at this early period analogous to the Epirots in character and civilization. They had some few towns, but were chiefly village residents, extremely brave and pugnacious. The customs of some of their tribes enjoined that the man who had not yet slain an enemy should be distinguished on some occasions by a badge of discredit.[16]

[15] Herodot. v, 22.

[16] Aristot. Polit. vii, 2, 6. That the Macedonians were chiefly village residents, appears from Thucyd. ii, 100, iv, 124, though this does not exclude _some_ towns.

The original seats of the Macedonians were in the regions east of the chain of Skardus (the northerly continuation of Pindus)—north of the chain called the Cambunian mountains, which connects Olympus with Pindus, and which forms the north-western boundary of Thessaly. But they did not reach so far eastward as the Thermaic gulf; apparently not farther eastward than Mount Bermius, or about the longitude of Edessa and Berrhoia. They thus covered the upper portions of the course of the rivers Haliakmôn and Erigôn, before the junction of the latter with the Axius; while the upper course of the Axius, higher than this point of junction, appears to have belonged to Pæonia,—though the boundaries of Macedonia and Pæonia cannot be distinctly marked out at any time.

The large space of country included between the above-mentioned boundaries is in great part mountainous, occupied by lateral ridges, or elevations, which connect themselves with the main line of Skardus. But it also comprises three wide alluvial basins, or plains, which are of great extent and well-adapted to cultivation,—the plain of Tettovo, or Kalkandele (northernmost of the three), which contains the sources and early course of the Axius, or Vardar,—that of Bitolia, coinciding to a great degree with the ancient Pelagonia, wherein the Erigon flows towards the Axius,—and the larger and more undulating basin of Greveno and Anaselitzas, containing the upper Haliakmôn with its confluent streams. This latter region is separated from the basin of Thessaly by a mountainous line of considerable length, but presenting numerous easy passes.[17] Reckoning the basin of Thessaly as a fourth, here are four distinct inclosed plains on the east side of this long range of Skardus and Pindus,—each generally bounded by mountains which rise precipitously to an alpine height, and each leaving only one cleft for drainage by a single river,—the Axius, the Erigôn, the Haliakmôn, and the Peneius respectively. All four, moreover, though of high level above the sea, are yet for the most part of distinguished fertility, especially the plains of Tettovo, of Bitolia, and Thessaly. The fat, rich land to the east of Pindus and Skardus is described as forming a marked contrast with the light calcareous soil of the Albanian plains and valleys on the western side. The basins of Bitolia and of the Haliakmôn, with the mountains around and adjoining, were possessed by the original Macedonians; that of Tettovo, on the north, by a portion of the Pæonians. Among the four, Thessaly is the most spacious; yet the two comprised in the primitive seats of the Macedonians, both of them very considerable in magnitude, formed a territory better calculated to nourish and to generate a considerable population, than the less favored home, and smaller breadth of valley and plain, occupied by Epirots or Illyrians. Abundance of corn easily raised, of pasture for cattle, and of new fertile land open to cultivation, would suffice to increase the numbers of hardy villagers, indifferent to luxury as well as to accumulation, and exempt from that oppressive extortion of rulers which now harasses the same fine regions.[18]

[17] Boué, Voyage en Turquie, vol. i, p. 199: “Un bon nombre de cols dirigés du nord au sud, comme pour inviter les habitans de passer d’une de ces provinces dans l’autre.”

[18] For the general physical character of the region, both east and west of Skardus, continued by Pindus, see the valuable charter of Grisebach’s Travels above referred to (Reisen, vol. ii. ch. xiii, pp. 125-130; c. xiv, p. 175; c. xvi, pp. 214-216; c. xvii, pp. 244-245).

Respecting the plains comprised in the ancient Pelagonia, see also the Journal of the younger Pouqueville, in his progress from Travnik in Bosnia to Janina. He remarks, in the two days’ march from Prelepe (Prilip) through Bitolia to Florina, “Dans cette route on parcourt des plaines luxuriantes couvertes de moissons, de vastes prairies remplies de trèfle, des plateaux abondans en pâturages inépuisables, où paissent d’innombrables troupeaux de bœufs, de chèvres, et de menu bétail.... Le blé, le maïs, et les autres grains sont toujours à très bas prix, à cause de la difficulté des débouchés, d’où l’on exporte une grande quantité de laines, de cotons, de peaux d’agneaux, de buffles, et de chevaux, qui passent par le moyen des caravanes en Hongrie.” (Pouqueville, Voyage dans la Grèce, tom. ii, ch. 62, p. 495.)

Again, M. Boué remarks upon this same plain, in his Critique des Cartes de la Turquie, Voyage, vol. iv, p. 483, “La plaine immense de Prilip, de Bitolia, et de Florina, n’est pas représentée (sur les cartes) de manière à ce qu’on ait une idée de son étendue, et surtout de sa largeur.... La plaine de Sarigoul est changée en vallée,” etc. The basin of the Haliakmôn he remarks to be represented equally imperfectly on the maps: compare also his Voyage, i, pp. 211, 299, 300.

I notice the more particularly the large proportion of fertile plain and valley in the ancient Macedonia, because it is often represented (and even by O. Müller, in his Dissertation on the ancient Macedonians, attached to his History of the Dorians) as a cold and rugged land, pursuant to the statement of Livy (xlv, 29), who says, respecting the fourth region of Macedonia as distributed by the Romans, “Frigida hæc omnis, duraque cultu, et aspera plaga est: cultorum quoque ingenia terræ similia habet: ferociores eos et accolæ barbari faciunt, nunc bello exercentes, nunc in pace miscentes ritus suos.”

This is probably true of the mountaineers included in the region, but it is too much generalized.

The inhabitants of this primitive Macedonia doubtless differed much in ancient times, as they do now, according as they dwelt on mountain or plain, and in soil and climate more or less kind; but all acknowledged a common ethnical name and nationality, and the tribes were in many cases distinguished from each other, not by having substantive names of their own, but merely by local epithets of Grecian origin. Thus we find Elymiotæ Macedonians, or Macedonians of Elymeia,—Lynkestæ Macedonians, or Macedonians of Lynkus, etc. Orestæ is doubtless an adjunct name of the same character. The inhabitants of the more northerly tracts, called Pelagonia and Deuriopis, were also portions of the Macedonian aggregate, though neighbors of the Pæonians, to whom they bore much affinity: whether the Eordi and Almopians were of Macedonian race, it is more difficult to say. The Macedonian language was different from Illyrian,[19] from Thracian, and seemingly also from Pæonian. It was also different from Greek, yet apparently not more widely distinct than that of the Epirots,—so that the acquisition of Greek was comparatively easy to the chiefs and people, though there were always some Greek letters which they were incapable of pronouncing. And when we follow their history, we shall find in them more of the regular warrior, conquering in order to maintain dominion and tribute, and less of the armed plunderer,—than in the Illyrians, Thracians, or Epirots, by whom it was their misfortune to be surrounded. They approach nearer to the Thessalians,[20] and to the other ungifted members of the Hellenic family.

[19] Polyb. xxviii, 8, 9. This is the most distinct testimony which we possess, and it appears to me to contradict the opinion both of Mannert (Geogr. der Gr. und Röm. vol. vii, p. 492) and of O. Müller (On the Macedonians, sects. 28-36), that the native Macedonians were of Illyrian descent.

[20] The Macedonian military array seems to have been very like that of the Thessalians,—horsemen well-mounted and armed, and maintaining good order (Thucyd. ii, 101): of their infantry, before the time of Philip son of Amyntas, we do not hear much.

“Macedoniam, quæ tantis barbarorum gentibus attingitur, ut semper Macedonicis imperatoribus iidem fines imperii fuerint qui gladiorum atque pilorum.” (Cicero, in Pison. c. xvi.)

The large and comparatively productive region covered by the various sections of Macedonians, helps to explain that increase of ascendency which they successively acquired over all their neighbors. It was not, however, until a late period that they became united under one government. At first each section, how many we do not know, had its own prince, or chief. The Elymiots, or inhabitants of Elymeia, the southernmost portion of Macedonia, were thus originally distinct and independent; also the Orestæ, in mountain-seats somewhat north-west of the Elymiots,—the Lynkêstæ and Eordi, who occupied portions of territory on the track of the subsequent Egnatian way, between Lychnidus (Ochrida) and Edessa,—the Pelagonians,[21] with a town of the same name, in the fertile plain of Bitolia,—and the more northerly Deuriopians. And the early political union was usually so loose, that each of these denominations probably includes many petty independencies, small towns, and villages. That section of the Macedonian name who afterwards swallowed up all the rest and became known as _The Macedonians_, had their original centre at Ægæ, or Edessa,—the lofty, commanding, and picturesque site of the modern Vodhena. And though the residence of the kings was in later times transferred to the marshy Pella, in the maritime plain beneath, yet Edessa was always retained as the regal burial-place, and as the hearth to which the religious continuity of the nation, so much reverenced in ancient times, was attached. This ancient town, which lay on the Roman Egnatian way from Lychnidus to Pella and Thessalonika, formed the pass over the mountain-ridge called Bermius, or that prolongation to the northward of Mount Olympus, through which the Haliakmôn makes its way out into the maritime plain at Verria, by a cleft more precipitous and impracticable than that of the Peneius in the defile of Tempê.

[21] Strabo, lib. vii, Fragm. 20, ed. Tafel.

This mountain-chain called Bermius, extending from Olympus considerably to the north of Edessa, formed the original eastern boundary of the Macedonian tribes; who seem at first not to have reached the valley of the Axius in any part of its course, and who certainly did not reach at first to the Thermaic gulf. Between the last-mentioned gulf and the eastern counterforts of Olympus and Bermius there exists a narrow strip of plain land or low hill, which reaches from the mouth of the Peneius to the head of the Thermaic gulf. It there widens into the spacious and fertile plain of Salonichi, comprising the mouths of the Haliakmôn, the Axius, and the Echeidôrus: the river Ludias, which flows from Edessa into the marshes surrounding Pella, and which in antiquity joined the Haliakmôn near its mouth, has now altered its course so as to join the Axius. This narrow strip, between the mouths of the Peneius and the Haliakmôn, was the original abode of the Pierian Thracians, who dwelt close to the foot of Olympus, and among whom the worship of the Muses seems to have been a primitive characteristic; Grecian poetry teems with local allusions and epithets which appear traceable to this early fact, though we are unable to follow it in detail. North of the Pierians, from the mouth of the Haliakmôn to that of the Axius, dwelt the Bottiæans.[22] Beyond the river Axius, at the lower part of its course, began the tribes of the great Thracian race,—Mygdonians, Krestônians, Edônians, Bisaltæ, Sithonians: the Mygdonians seem to have been originally the most powerful, since the country still continued to be called by their name, Mygdonia, even after the Macedonian conquest. These, and various other Thracian tribes, originally occupied most part of the country between the mouth of the Axius and that of the Strymon; together with that memorable three-pronged peninsula which derived from the Grecian colonies its name of Chalkidikê. It will thus appear, if we consider the Bottiæans as well as the Pierians to be Thracians, that the Thracian race extended originally southward as far as the mouth of the Peneius: the Bottiæans professed, indeed, a Kretan origin, but this pretension is not noticed by either Herodotus or Thucydidês. In the time of Skylax,[23] seemingly during the early reign of Philip the son of Amyntas, Macedonia and Thrace were separated by the Strymon.

[22] I have followed Herodotus in stating the original series of occupants on the Thermaic gulf, anterior to the Macedonian conquests. Thucydidês introduces the Pæonians between Bottiæans and Mygdonians: he says that the Pæonians possessed “a narrow strip of land on the side of the Axius, down to Pella and the sea,” (ii, 96.) If this were true, it would leave hardly any room for the Bottiæans, whom, nevertheless, Thucydidês recognizes on the coast; for the whole space between the mouths of the two rivers, Axius and Haliakmôn, is inconsiderable; moreover, I cannot but suspect that Thucydidês has been led to believe, by finding in the Iliad that the Pæonian allies of Troy came from the Axius, that there _must have been_ old Pæonian settlements at the mouth of that river, and that he has advanced the inference as if it were a certified fact. The case is analogous to what he says about the Bœotians in his preface (upon which O. Müller has already commented); he stated the emigration of the Bœotians into Bœotia as having taken place after the Trojan war, but saves the historical credit of the Homeric catalogue by adding that there had been a _fraction_ of them in Bœotia _before_, from whom the contingent which went to Troy was furnished (ἀποδασμός, Thucyd. i, 12).

On this occasion, therefore, having to choose between Herodotus and Thucydidês, I prefer the former. O. Müller (On the Macedonians, sect. 11) would strike out just so much of the assertion of Thucydidês as positively contradicts Herodotus, and retain the rest; he thinks that the Pæonians came down _very near_ to the mouth of the river, but _not quite_. I confess that this does not satisfy me; the more so as the passage from Livy by which he would support his view will appear, on examination, to refer to Pæonia high up the Axius,—not to a supposed portion of Pæonia near the mouth (Livy, xlv, 29).

Again, I would remark that the original residence of the Pierians between the Peneius and the Haliakmôn rests chiefly upon the authority of Thucydidês: Herodotus knows the Pierians in their seats between Mount Pangæus and the sea, but he gives no intimation that they had before dwelt south of the Haliakmôn; the tract between the Haliakmôn and the Peneius is by him conceived as Lower Macedonia, or Macedonis, reaching to the borders of Thessaly (vii, 127-173). I make this remark in reference to sects. 7-17 of O. Müller’s Dissertation, wherein the conception of Herodotus appears incorrectly apprehended, and some erroneous inferences founded upon it. That this tract was the original Pieria, there is sufficient reason for believing (compare Strabo, vii, Frag. 22, with Tafel’s note, and ix, p. 410; Livy, xliv, 9); but Herodotus notices it only as Macedonia.

[23] Skylax, c. 67. The conquests of Philip extended the boundary beyond the Strymon to the Nestus (Strabo, lib. vii, Fragm. 33, ed. Tafel).

We have yet to notice the Pæonians, a numerous and much-divided race,—seemingly neither Thracian nor Macedonian nor Illyrian, but professing to be descended from the Teukri of Troy,—who occupied both banks of the Strymon, from the neighborhood of Mount Skomius, in which that river rises, down to the lake near its mouth. Some of their tribes possessed the fertile plain of Siris (now Seres),—the land immediately north of Mount Pangæus,—and even a portion of the space through which Xerxês marched on his route from Akanthus to Therma. Besides this, it appears that the upper parts of the valley of the Axius were also occupied by Pæonian tribes; how far down the river they extended, we are unable to say. We are not to suppose that the whole territory between Axius and Strymon was continuously peopled by them. Continuous population is not the character of the ancient world, and it seems, moreover, that while the land immediately bordering on both rivers is in very many places of the richest quality, the spaces between the two are either mountain or barren low hill,—forming a marked contrast with the rich alluvial basin of the Macedonian river Erigon.[24] The Pæonians, in their north-western tribes, thus bordered upon the Macedonian Pelagonia,—in their northern tribes, upon the Illyrian Dardani and Autariatæ,—in their eastern, southern, and south-eastern tribes, upon the Thracians and Pierians;[25] that is, upon the second seats occupied by the expelled Pierians under Mount Pangæus.

[24] See this contrast noticed in Grisebach, especially in reference to the wide but barren region called the plain of Mustapha, no great distance from the left bank of the Axius (Grisebach, Reisen, v, ii, p. 225; Boué, Voyage, vol. i, p. 168).

For the description of the banks of the Axius (Vardar) and the Strymon, see Boué, Voyage en Turquie, vol. i, pp. 196-199. “La plaine ovale de Seres est un des diamans de la couronne de Byzance,” etc. He remarks how incorrectly the course of the Strymon is depicted on the maps (vol. iv, p. 482).

[25] The expression of Strabo or his Epitomator—τὴν Παιονίαν μέχρι Πελαγονίας καὶ Πιερίας ἐκτετάσθαι,—seems quite exact, though Tafel finds a difficulty in it. See his Note on the Vatican Fragments of the seventh book of Strabo, Fr. 37. The Fragment 40 is expressed much more loosely. Compare Herodot. v, 13-16, vii, 124; Thucyd. ii, 96; Diodor. xx, 19.

Such was, as far as we can make it out, the position of the Macedonians and their immediate neighbors, in the seventh century B. C. It was first altered by the enterprise and ability of a family of exiled Greeks, who conducted a section of the Macedonian people to those conquests which their descendants, Philip and Alexander the Great, afterwards so marvellously multiplied.

Respecting the primitive ancestry of these two princes, there were different stories, but all concurred in tracing the origin of the family to the Herakleid or Temenid race of Argos. According to one story (which apparently cannot be traced higher than Theopompus), Karanus, brother of the despot Pheidon, had migrated from Argos to Macedonia, and established himself as conqueror at Edessa; according to another tale, which we find in Herodotus, there were three exiles of the Temenid race, Gauanês, Aëropus, and Perdikkas, who fled from Argos to Illyria, from whence they passed into Upper Macedonia, in such poverty as to be compelled to serve the petty king of the town Lebæa in the capacity of shepherds. A remarkable prodigy happening to Perdikkas foreshadows the future eminence of his family, and leads to his dismissal by the king of Lebæa,—from whom he makes his escape with difficulty, by the sudden rise of a river immediately after he had crossed it, so as to become impassable by the horsemen who pursued him. To this river, as to the saviour of the family, solemn sacrifices were still offered by the kings of Macedonia in the time of Herodotus. Perdikkas with his two brothers having thus escaped, established himself near the spot called the Garden of Midas on Mount Bermius, and from the loins of this hardy young shepherd sprang the dynasty of Edessa.[26] This tale bears much more the marks of a genuine local tradition than that of Theopompus. And the origin of the Macedonian family, or Argeadæ, from Argos, appears to have been universally recognized by Grecian inquirers,[27]—so that Alexander the son of Amyntas, the contemporary of the Persian invasion, was admitted by the Hellanodikæ to contend at the Olympic games as a genuine Greek, though his competitors sought to exclude him as a Macedonian.

[26] Herodot. viii, 137-138.

[27] Herodot. v, 22. Argeadæ, Strabo, lib. vii, Fragm. 20, ed. Tafel, which may probably have been erroneously changed into Ægeadæ (Justin, vii, 1).

The talent for command was so much more the attribute of the Greek mind than of any of the neighboring barbarians, that we easily conceive a courageous Argeian adventurer acquiring to himself great ascendency in the local disputes of the Macedonian tribes, and transmitting the chieftainship of one of those tribes to his offspring. The influence acquired by Miltiadês among the Thracians of the Chersonese, and by Phormion among the Akarnanians (who specially requested that, after his death, his son, or some one of his kindred, might be sent from Athens to command them),[28] was very much of this character: we may add the case of Sertorius among the native Iberians. In like manner, the kings of the Macedonian Lynkêstæ professed to be descended from the Bacchiadæ[29] of Corinth; and the neighborhood of Epidamnus and Apollonia, in both of which doubtless members of that great gens were domiciliated, renders this tale even more plausible than that of an emigration from Argos. The kings of the Epirotic Molossi pretended also to a descent from the heroic Æakid race of Greece. In fact, our means of knowledge do not enable us to discriminate the cases in which these reigning families were originally Greeks, from those in which they were Hellenized natives pretending to Grecian blood.

[28] Thucyd. iii, 7; Herodot. vi, 34-37: compare the story of Zalmoxis among the Thracians (iv, 94).

[29] Strabo, vii, p. 326.

After the foundation-legend of the Macedonian kingdom, we have nothing but a long blank until the reign of king Amyntas (about 520-500 B. C.), and his son Alexander, (about 480 B. C.) Herodotus gives us five successive kings between the founder Perdikkas and Amyntas,—Perdikkas, Argæus, Philippus, Aëropus, Alketas, Amyntas, and Alexander,—the contemporary and to a certain extent the ally of Xerxês.[30] Though we have no means of establishing any dates in this early series, either of names or of facts, yet we see that the Temenid kings, beginning from a humble origin, extended their dominions successively on all sides. They conquered the Briges,[31]—originally their neighbors on Mount Bermius,—the Eordi, bordering on Edessa to the westward, who were either destroyed or expelled from the country, leaving a small remnant still existing in the time of Thucydidês at Physka between Strymon and Axius,—the Almopians, an inland tribe of unknown site,—and many of the interior Macedonian tribes who had been at first autonomous. Besides these inland conquests, they had made the still more important acquisition of Pieria, the territory which lay between Mount Bermius and the sea, from whence they expelled the original Pierians, who found new seats on the eastern bank of the Strymon between Mount Pangæus and the sea. Amyntas king of Macedon was thus master of a very considerable territory, comprising the coast of the Thermaic gulf as far north as the mouth of the Haliakmôn, and also some other territory on the same gulf from which the Bottiæans had been expelled; but not comprising the coast between the mouths of the Axius and the Haliakmôn, nor even Pella, the subsequent capital, which were still in the hands of the Bottiæans at the period when Xerxês passed through.[32] He possessed also Anthemus, a town and territory in the peninsula of Chalkidikê, and some parts of Mygdonia, the territory east of the mouth of the Axius; but how much, we do not know. We shall find the Macedonians hereafter extending their dominion still farther, during the period between the Persian and Peloponnesian war.

[30] Herodot. viii, 139. Thucydidês agrees in the number of kings, but does not give the names (ii, 100).

For the divergent lists of the early Macedonian kings, see Mr. Clinton’s Fasti Hellenici, vol. ii, p. 221.

[31] This may be gathered, I think, from Herodot. vii, 73 and viii, 138. The alleged migration of the Briges into Asia, and the change of their name to Phryges, is a statement which I do not venture to repeat as credible.

[32] Herodot. vii, 123. Herodotus recognizes both Bottiæans between the Axius and the Haliakmôn,—and Bottiæans at Olynthus, whom the Macedonians had expelled from the Thermaic gulf,—at the time when Xerxês passed (viii, 127). These two statements seem to me compatible, and both admissible: the former Bottiæans were expelled by the Macedonians subsequently, anterior to the Peloponnesian war.

My view of these facts, therefore, differs somewhat from that of O. Müller (Macedonians, sect. 16).

We hear of king Amyntas in friendly connection with the Peisistratid princes at Athens, whose dominion was in part sustained by mercenaries from the Strymon, and this amicable sentiment was continued between his son Alexander and the emancipated Athenians.[33] It is only in the reigns of these two princes that Macedonia begins to be implicated in Grecian affairs: the regal dynasty had become so completely Macedonized, and had so far renounced its Hellenic brotherhood, that the claim of Alexander to run at the Olympic games was contested by his competitors, and he was called upon to prove his lineage before the Hellanodikæ.

[33] Herodot. i, 59, v, 94; viii, 136.

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