Macedonia

Macedonia (in Greek Makedonia ) is the country inhabited by the Macedonians ( Macedones ), who not only gave their name to the country, but also formed it by bringing together regions, in which physical geography did not promote unity. At the end of a process, which lasted from the foundation of the kingdom at the beginning of the seventh century BCE until its abolition by the Romans in 167 BCE , the term Macedonia, in a geographical sense, designated all the lands between the Pindus chain to the west and the plain of Philippi to the east, and between Mount Olympos to the south and a line close to the border of present‐day Greece to the north. The cradle of Macedonian power was the Old Kingdom, around the great alluvial plain of Emathia, formed by the rivers Haliakmon, Loudias, and Axios, and the smaller plain of Pieria, with its surrounding mountains: Olympos, the Pierian mountains, Bermion, and Barnous. To the west, Upper Macedonia was composed of high plateaux: from the south to the north, Elimeia, Orestis, Lynkos and, even further west, Tymphaia and Parauaia, which had originally constituted small independent kingdoms. For about two centuries, the Axios River formed the eastern border of the kingdom. The conquest and absorption into Macedonia of the New Territories to the east of this river, which were shared between colonies from the Greek city‐states along the coasts and the “indigenous” tribes of the interior, including the Crestonians, Mygdonians, Bottiaeans, Odomantes, Bisaltes, and Edonians, was a long process that started at the beginning of the fifth century BCE and had barely finished on the eve of the Roman conquest.

Alluvial plain · Ancient history · Archaeology · Cartography · CONQUEST · Geography · Indigenous · Kingdom · Macedonian · Byzantine Studies and History · Classical Antiquity Studies · Geology · History · Paleontology

• A Companion to Ancient Macedonia

  Open Access•Joseph Roisman, Ian Worthington•Companion to Ancient Macedonia•2010

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