Book Description

Ancient Macedonia is the culmination of half a century of the author’s inquiries into Macedonia during Antiquity. His research focused on historical geography, the origin of the Macedonians, their language, their cults and beliefs, the political institutions of the Macedonian kingdom, and more broadly, the customs and traditions of the ancient Macedonians. Since the works of Macedonian authors have essentially not survived and what we know about them comes from fragmentary accounts by other Greeks and Romans – often their adversaries – the author sought the truth not only in libraries, but also in the field, wandering across the land of Macedonia in order to identify modern ruins with ancient toponyms, and to examine ‘speaking’ stones and coins not just in museum galleries, but especially in their storerooms. This research has brought to light a hitherto little-known branch of Hellenism, which contributed more than we had imagined to the spread of the Greek language and to the birth of the Hellenistic world.