R.

Malcolm ERRINGTON

RECENT RESEARCH ON ANCIENT MACEDONIA

Abstract

The researches based exclusively on the literary tradition could not

describe satisfactorily the political, social, economic and administrative
structures of the Macedonian state. New epigraphic evidence discovered on
the territory of the Macedonian kingdom in the last decades, linked with the
literary information, outlined a more concrete and a more detailed image on
the organisation of ancient Macedonia. Remarkable progress has been made
in examining the role of the urban centres in the history of he kingdom and
also in defining the relations between monarchy and the communities
structured after the poliadic model, founded either by the Macedonian kings
or conquered and annexed to the kingdom. The inscriptions certify the
granting of individual estates within the cities of Kasandreia and Kalindonia
by the Macedonian kings, as well as the guarantee of some fiscal
immunities. The most interesting case is that of the city of Amphipolis,
where epigraphic documents certify the existence of a royal governor,
epistates, probably in charge after the city was conquered by Philipp II.
Besides the king’s representative, structures typical to a Hellenistic polis are
certified at Amphipolis. Urban autonomy was probably allowed in certain
limits, depending on the Crown’s interests and, according to some
historians, every Macedonian city was supervised by an epistates. In the
light of these new data, the relations between the Seleucid or Attalid
kingdoms and the Asian cities have a precedent in Philipp II and
Alexander’s policy and it represents, in fact, the implementation of a pre-
existent model. The epigraphic sources discovered in the last years have
also contributed to clarifying some very useful details on the military
organisation of Hellenistic Macedonia. Three inscriptions discovered at
Amphipolis, Chalkis and Kynos contain settlements on the officers’
responsibilities regarding troops, soldiers’ pay and equipping the army. A
regulation for recruiting soldiers was discovered in two identical copies at
Amphipolis and Kassandreia. Approximately, the document was dated at
the end of the 3rd century BC, but probably it describes conditions already
in use. The economic status and the age conditioned the participation of the
individual in various regiments of the Macedonian army, as the two
epigraphic sources demonstrate.

In the last fifty years the history of ancient Macedonia has turned into
one of the central areas of study in Greek History. There are various reasons
for this: one of them has certainly to do with the increasing attention of
historians generally towards states other than Athens, which dominates the
literary tradition and has so long been almost synonymous with Greek
10 R. Malcolm Errington

History; another is the fact that much greater historical attention has been
turned to the period generally known as “hellenistic”, that is the post-
Alexander period of the Third and Second Centuries B.C., which is no longer
dominated by the classical Athens-centred literary tradition, and with an
attempt to reassess this so-called post-classical period as a time in which
developments occurred which may not have been as innovative and
spectacular and have caught the imagination of the western world as much as
the city-state developments of the classical period, but which had a much
longer life and in due course formed the basis for the erection of the Roman
Empire in the East. These developments are intimately associated with the
activities of the Macedonian dynasties which ruled the Greek world for
centuries after Alexander’s death and which created a symbiosis between the
locally independent democratically structured city-states and over-arching
territorial monarchies. This increased interest in non-Athenian and non-
classical areas of Greek History has led to increased research not just in the
study and the lecture room but also on the ground, and this has produced
spectacular archaeological finds, such as the Royal Tombs of Verghina and
the cemetery of Sindos, but also epigraphic finds from the classical and
hellenistic periods have increased through systematic search and registration
of finds in the area by Greek archaeologists and epigraphists to such an extent
that it is now posssible to regard Macedonian History as an absolutely
central, and no longer—according to the Athens-centred “classical”
perspective – marginal, area of ancient studies.
The new historical approach to Macedonian studies and especially the
new epigraphic finds have allowed a much more detailed and systematic
study of the Macedonian State than was possible fifty, indeed, even thirty,
years ago. It has proved possible to move research interest away from the
study of the activities of exceptionally prominent individual kings, such as
Philip II and Alexander the Great, or earlier Perdikkas II (who features in
Thucydides) and later Philip V (who is Polybios’s bête noir), individuals
therefore who for one reason or another dominate the literary tradition,
towards systematic study of the Macedonian monarchic state as a long-term
governmental system. The new evidence has shown that the classic problems
of the hellenistic and Roman periods, the long-term relationship between
previously locally independent (or at least self-governing) city-states and the
(conquering) territorial power was also a classic Macedonian problem in the
Macedonian homeland; and the recognition of e.g. the Seleucid kings that the
Greek-style city-state offered a local governmental structure which was in
fact very suitable for organising a large territorial state under ancient
conditions—and which led to their founding, or creating such cities out of
previously existing communities, where no city-state had previously
Recent Research on Ancient Macedonia 11

existed—was not just an activity of the hellenistic kings outside Macedonia

but was used by the kings in the homeland themselves on a scale never
previously considered possible.
This research activity has manifested itself in a large number of major
and minor articles in scientific journals, but also in major book publications,
of which in particular the massive three-volume “History of Macedonia”
begun by Nicholas Hammond in 1972 and continued in cooperation with Guy
Griffith (vol. II, 1979) and Frank Walbank (vol. III, 1988), despite being in
the meanwhile in part overtaken by new discoveries, broke new ground and
provided a first detailed attempt to address all questions, both political and
structural, raised by the known ancient sources on the Macedonian monarchy
from the prehistoric period to the end of the monarchy in 167. My own
Geschichte Makedoniens (1986, engl. 1990) was an attempt to produce in one
volume a concise survey of the whole of Macedonian History during the
period of monarchic independence (also in part overtaken by new
discoveries); Eugene Borza’s In the Shadow of Olympus (1990) restricts itself
to the classical period; but Miltiades Hatzopoulos’s large work Macedonian
Institutions under the Kings (2 vols. 1996) exploits all the new material, for
the collection of which he himself in a large series of preliminary
publications was largely responsible, shows that it is now posssible to present
a well-founded systematic large-scale discussion of the nature of the
Macedonian State, which a generation ago would have been quite
imposssible. Hatzopoulos has also generously provided future researchers
with an invaluable instrument of research in the collection in the second
volume of his book of the texts of all known epigraphic documents relating to
the period of the monarchy—a collection which ironically provides other
researchers with a comfortable way of disagreeing with some of his own
interpretations. But in the meanwhile even this extensive collection is no
longer complete, as a result of even more recent spectacular epigraphic finds
from Macedonia.
If we look at the areas which have received the greatest attention in
the last generation we shall above all have to look at the political and
administrative structures. Whereas previous generations, stimulated in
particular by the idea, propagated above all by Theodor Mommsen for Rome,
that a Greek state like Macedonia must have had some kind of legal
constitutional structure (Staatsrecht), whereas as far as could be seen in
Macedonia from the written sources the King and his Companions (later
called his “friends”, Philoi) were the only continually visible constitutional
factors, efforts were made to invent a constitution for the Macedonians by
postulating that the army meeting as a popular assembly had certain
12 R. Malcolm Errington

constitutional rights including the right to elect a new king.1. This idea was
extrapolated from a few incidents in times of particular crisis in which the
literary sources attest that the army did indeed have an important say in
influencing certain decisions. But since the main evidence came from the
highly unusual situation in Babylon at the time of the death of Alexander the
Great in 323 and a few other similar situations concerning individual
diadochoi, it has proved possible to show that the idea of a regular
constitutional assembly of the Macedonian army is a chimaera and that
indeed the picture generally drawn by the sources from other periods, that the
king and his chosen counsellors (his “Friends”) were normally able to govern
the centralized functions of the state without further controlling instances
from any representatives of the army or the people is basically correct, and in
this respect the regimes established by Seleukos in Asia and Ptolemy in
Egypt were not fundamentally different in principle from the conditions
which they had known at home in Macedonia: reports of riots and other
expressions of momentary dissatisfaction are not a good basis on which to
build a constitutional theory. It is therefore hardly surprising that the great
advance in our knowledge of how the state operated internally has provided
no further evidence for any kind of regular activity of an assembly of the
Macedonian army or people.2
It is, however, particularly in the area of internal administration that
new epigraphic evidence has made itself most felt and has made the greatest
contribution. Firstly there is the area of new settlement in the new territories
acquired by Philip II and Alexander the Great on and over the original
frontiers of the Macedonian kingdom towards the East, especially in the
Chalkidike. We have long known from a literary source (Justin 8.5.7-6.2) that
Philip founded new fortified settlements on the frontiers also in mountainous
Upper Macedonia from the forties onwards and transplanted populations in
order to give these new cities an adequate population. What their status, their
relationship as communities to the central government, was, however, once
they were founded, we do not know. Some new evidence from the new
territories in Lower Macedonia has however made a contribution to our
knowledge in this area. We have known for a long time from an earlier
discovered document from the area of later Kassandreia in the Chalkidike

1
See e.g. R.M.Errington, “The Historiographical Origins of Macedonian ‘Staatsrecht’”,
Archaia Makedonia III, 89-101. The interpretation was first formulated by P.Granier, Die
makedonische Heeresversammlung, München 1931, but since then has been especially
favored by many scholars with a legalistic inclination, and is still not abandoned by Nicholas
Hammond and Miltiades Hatzopoulos.
2
See R.M.Errington, “The Nature of the Macedonian State under the Monarchy”, Chiron 8,
1978, 77ff.
Recent Research on Ancient Macedonia 13

that pieces of land were granted by the kings to individuals in the newly
conquered territories, without these being in any way attached to a city: a
document shows that when Kassander founded the city of Kassandreia, on
the site of old Potideia, a private man, Perdikkas son of Koinos, petitioned
him for confirmation of his private possession of pieces of land given him by
Philip and Alexander, and he was also to be tax-free (he was granted ateleia)
for moveable goods, even when his estates were attached administratively to
the new city territory.3 A new inscription from the same area gives us an
indication of how large such estates might have been: Lysimachus, when
king of Macedonia, granted one Limnaios several estates: one of 1200
plethra (ca. 120 hectares) of land with trees on it, a second estate also with
trees of 360 plethra (ca. 36 hectares), and a third piece of 900 plethra of trees
(ca. 90 hectares) and 20 plethra (ca. 2 hectares) of vineyard. In his case, the
document does not grant him freedom of taxes, but since it was found in the
territory of Kassandreia it does show that despite the foundation of the city
and its responsibility for the organisation of its territory the king of the
moment had no scruple about giving grants of land within its territory, which
suggests that Kassander must have retained some of the city territory as royal
land when the city was founded in 315, and that Lysimachos was merely
exercising his rights on some if it.4
A new inscription from Kalindoia, south of lake Bolbe, sheds light on
land tenure in Eastern Macedonia. It is a list of priests of Asklepios and
Apollo, set up by one of them and beginning “at the time when King
Alexander granted Macedonians Kalindoia and the places around Kalindoia,
Thamiskia, Kamakaia, Tripoatis.”5 There is no mention here of the new
foundation of a city, only the grant of land to a group of Macedonians as
individuals, who are not here named as individuals, since this would not have
been necessary for the document. We know from a passage of Diodorus
Siculus (16.34.5) that a similar distribution of land had happened with the
territory of Methone after it was taken by Philip II in the 350s. There is no
evidence in this inscription that a new city was being founded by Alexander,
but that land was given to a larger group of individual Macedonians on the
territory of the former independent city Kalindoia, just as happened at
Potidaia, seems clear. There has also been published in recent years a text
found in the French excavations at Philippi in 1936. It belongs to the time of
Alexander the Great, and although the text is extremely fragmentary, which
3
Dittenberger, Sylloge3 332 = Hatzopoulos, Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian Institutions
no.20.
4
M.Hatzopoulos, Une donation du roi Lysimache. Meletemata 5,1988, 17f.=SEG 38, 1988,
619= Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian Institutions 22.
5
SEG 36, 1986 626= Hatzopoulos, Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian Institutions 62.
14 R. Malcolm Errington

makes it difficult to locate to a precise context, it is clear from it that as late

as the early years of Alexander’s reign certain questions concerning the status
of pieces of the territory of the city remained unresolved and that the city
authorities themselves were unable to resolve them without referring the
matter in dispute back to the king or his representative, whose decision was
final and was then published for all to see in the inscription which we now
possess.6 A third inscription from the southeastern Chalkidike, apparently
from the time of Philip II, shows this time the regulation of boundaries in a
context which is unfortunately incomplete and in detail unrestorable, but
which would fit well enough into the general context of a redefinition and
redistribution of territories in the Chalkidike after the fall of Olynthos and in
general in Eastern Macedonia under Philip II, which we know from the other
documents and from the literary sources took place at the time.7
From Eastern Macedonia we have a series of new private documents
which shed light on a variety of subjects, not least the way in which the kings
handled the older cities.8 Amphipolis was a special case in point, since it had
a long history as an Athenian colony of the Fifth Century, and subsequent
precarious independence, and which only became Macedonian after an
intensive struggle with the Amphipolitans themselves, a struggle which also
involved and offended Athenian interests in the region. Now one of the most
remarkable long-term cultural developments in Macedonian history is the
gradual socio-political acculturation of the Macedonian monarchic state in
the direction of the world of the Greek poleis, and the associated creation of a
cultural symbiosis, which was not merely an expression of Macedonian
military superiority but included mutual borrowings and adaptations.
Particularly impressive in this connection is the way in which city-state
(polis) life spread in these years throughout the areas conquered by the
Macedonians, where Greek-style self-governing cities had up to then not
been known; these poleis served as administrative centres and infrastructural
organisational units for the enormous territories which the new Macedonian
states occupied in Asia. The paradox is well-known, though rarely spelled
out, since it is more often formulated in terms of ethnicity than of
governmental structures: monarchically ruled Macedonians, who for the most
part did not themselves live in self-governing poleis, were mainly responsible
for a movement which made the self-governing Greek-style polis the
characteristic form of socio-political life at grass-roots level throughout the
Eastern Mediterranean area; these poleis, whether founded or just patronised

6
SEG 34, 1984, 664=Hatzopoulos, Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian Institutions no.6.
7
SEG 40, 1990, 542=Hatzopoulos, Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian Institutions no.4.
8
On this see my contribution to Archaia Makedonia VII (forthcoming).
Recent Research on Ancient Macedonia 15

by the Macedonian kings, provided a fundamental political structure, founded

on an integrated social organisation which was also a locally-based loyalty
system, which in principle survived mutatis mutandis until around the time of
the Arab conquest. The symbiotic nature of the relationship between the
monarchic-authoritarian superstructure and the city-based participatory urban
infrastructure has puzzled generations of systematic historians interested
above all in the legal-constitutional basis of the relationship between
hellenistic city and territorial monarch. But most such investigations have
begun too late, starting with the world established by Alexander and the
Diadochi and then taking it as a fixed unit called something like “the
hellenistic city”, and they have also been mainly looking in the wrong place
(particularly in Asia Minor and the Seleucid and Attalid kingdoms) to be able
to come to terms with the functional nature of the relationship in its historical
dimension. The conquerors and city-constructors in the East were above all
Macedonians, and it is becoming increasingly clear that Alexander and his
successors who set up the hellenistic city-state system in the newly conquered
territories in Asia were not creating something essentially new (except, of
course, for the huge dimensions and the gigantic geographical range of the
development), but were in fact merely exporting and further developing a
system which had already served well at home in Macedonia itself, and in
particular had been developed and practiced by Philip II.
If we wish to understand the mentality of the relationship between
hellenistic cities and their hellenistic territorial (Macedonian) monarchs—
which seems to me in the last resort to be far more important in a
fundamentally flexible and dynamic system than the question of the legal or
constitutional basis of the relationship—then we have indeed to turn to the
Macedonian homeland for an explanation. As a result of the new information
it is now possible to look for the roots of the hellenistic system not in
Alexanders’s treatment of the Greeks of Asia but in Philip’s and Alexander’s
treatment of his own new Macedonian territories. The ideas I shall sketch
here, whether right or wrong, could not even have been formulated thirty
years ago. That is a clear indication of the advance in studies on Ancient
Macedonia in this generation.
I want to approach one single problem in rather more detail and offer
a sketch of a possible development pattern. It is easy enough to talk in a
general way about the results of expansion and conquest, but such activities
always bring with them some pretty basic questions on the ground, which
require solution if the territorial expansion or conquest is to last and be more
than a mere trivial episode. In this respect the ancient world was no different
from the modern. Without the basic willingness of the ruled to be ruled and to
16 R. Malcolm Errington

see advantages outweighing disadvantages, no governmental system,

however brutal, can survive for very long.
Now the details of the politico-social organisation of the earliest
Macedonian expansion into lower Macedonia are for us still not capable of
reconstruction in detail. It is only when we come to the time of Philip II that
the information basis widens sufficiently to allow even an approach to this
problem with some level of confidence. With the capture of Amphipolis we
have for the first time the case of the integration of a major independent
Greek city into the Macedonian state in historical times; and recent finds
seem to show some aspects of how this was managed.
From the period immediately following the conquest of the city a
series of private documents is preserved which give us some information
about the internal affairs of Amphipolis. They are a series of dated records of
land transactions, and their interest for us lies in the formulaic listing of the
dating mechanism, for they all mention an epistates, mostly together with,
but two without the annual Priest of Asklepios; they usually also bear a
calendar date, whereby two calendars are discernable, one being the
Macedonian, the other can only be that of pre-Macedonian Amphipolis,
which is otherwise not known. It seems to me that the earliest group of texts
probably all belong precisely to the transitional phase immediately after the
fall of Amphipolis to Philip, and it is perhaps no accident that in these years
Amphipolitans were particularly careful to register land transactions with a
publication on stone: there may well have been a lot of them going on! The
most important thing for us is the naming of the official called the epistates,
who outside of Macedonia is always somebody set into a function by some
higher authority, and I see no reason to think this was not the case in
Macedonia also. It seems clear that developments took place in the structure
of Amphipolis at this time which lasted throughout the hellenistic period, as
far as we can tell.
The epistates together with the annual eponymous magistrate, the
Priest of Asklepios, remain a characteristic part of Amphipolitan city life
throughout the period, and both seem new. Particularly important is the case
of the epistates Spargeus, who is named in six of the documents, five times
with four different annual Priests of Asklepios and once alone, without an
Asklepios Priest at all.9 He was therefore in office for at least 4+x years,

9
The texts are conveniently published in M.Hatzopoulos, Actes de vente d’Amphipolis.
Meletemata 14, Athens 1991 and in Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian Institutions: Actes
de vente II (without priest); Epigraphic Appendix 84 (=Actes de vente III), 85 (Actes de vente
IV), 86 (Actes de vente V), 87 (Actes de vente VI), 88 (Actes de vente VII).
Recent Research on Ancient Macedonia 17

therefore was not an annual official, which the priest of Asklepios was, at
least in its function of representing the eponymous official.
From these observations and assumptions we can, I think, trace the
following changes in Amphipolis as a result of the Macedonian conquest:
Phase 1: Sparges remained continuously in office as representative of
the king for 4+x years, throughout the whole of the transition period. He was,
however, not the first epistates, since one Kallipos is also mentioned without
a Priest of Asklepios, and must therefore have served before him.
Phase 2: The Priest of Asklepios was chosen to become the
eponymous official. This was either a new post or an existing office was
heightened in status.
Phase 3: The Macedonian calendar was introduced, presumably with
the appropriate annual religious observances which were associated with the
calendar, while Sparge(u)s was still in office.10
Phase 4: At some time before the mid-Third Century (though the
event may well be much earlier than the first accidental piece of evidence)
there seems to have been a change in the character of the assembly which
passed decrees representing the city: while Amphipolis was free, this body
was, not unnaturally for an Athenian colony, the Demos,11 whereas in the
Third Century it was the Polis.12 The change must mean something, and since
we know that the Macedonians even in Athens after the conquest of Athens
after the Lamian War severely restricted the franchise in the democracy, it
would hardly be surprising if this had already been practiced in Amphipolis,
since like the Athenians in 322 it was the basis-democratically organised
Amphipolitans who had resisted the Macedonians under Philip and been
conquered by him.
Whether or not this latter change was immediate (it seems at least
plausible, but there are other occasions, particularly during the wars of the
successors, which could be envisaged), Amphipolis was clearly fully
integrated into the Macedonian State, while at the same time it retained a
certain level of self-government in local affairs. There is no need to think that
the royal epistates must always have been a stranger. There was much to be
said for employing a local person in such function, as the case of e.g.
Demetrius of Phaleron in Athens during the Macedonian occupation under
Kassandros suggests, which may not have been merely a special treatment of
Athens but a regular Macedonian way of treating subordinate or subject
communities. Thereafter Amphipolis remained Macedonian, but also

10
Hatzopoulos, Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian Institutions no. 86 (cf. no. 84).
11
Hatzopoulos, Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian Institutions no. 40.
12
Hatzopoulos, Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian Institutions no. 41.
18 R. Malcolm Errington

Amphipolitan, as descriptions of Amphipolitans from outside Macedonia

make clear: the simple ethnic Amphipolítes outnumbers by far the doubtless
strictly correct Makedòn ex Amphipóleos in the collection of Macedonians
abroad by Argyro Tataki.13 Settlers were, of course, also brought in from
other places to boost the numbers of loyal citizens, and a short generation
later the city was able to raise a named cavalry unit for Alexander’s army.14
But this is not the main point I wish to make here. It is rather that the
clearly successful integration of the independent city Amphipolis into the
Macedonian state seems to have created a precedent and provided a model
for further development and for application in other places. It was, certainly,
not a model which Philip thought to apply everywhere in the conquest phase,
as his treatment of Methone and the Chalkidian cities shows, where no new
city was founded, but land distributed to individuals; Amphipolis was in
many ways a special case, not just a well-established major city with a
substantial economic basis, but a strategically situated city which needed to
be preserved and dominated at all costs in order to control the Strymon
crossing and thereby secure easy access to the Pangaion area. The lasting
success of the Amphipolis model in Macedonia will also help explain why
the office of epistates seems to have become increasingly widespread in
Macedonia as a result of the enormous level of urbanisation which took place
under and after Philip II, so that Hatzopoulos can maintain with some
plausibility that every Macedonian polis must have had an epistates.15
But perhaps more important in the long run is that the Amphipolis
solution provides us with the “mental model” for the relationship between
Macedonian kings—outside Macedonia as well, of course—and Greek (or
Greek-style) cities which they governed or founded. The differing
expectations between kings and cities, particularly those old poleis which
themselves had a history of what they liked to call greatness – that is,
imperialism and domination of others—led certainly to a century of
regionally varying tensions, but in the last resort also to a coming-to-terms
with the changed political reality. In Macedonia itself the success of the
Amphipolitan model also led to new city foundations with a closer
approximation to the original than was possible outside Macedonia, but also
to a gradually improving status of existing urban or pre-urban communities,
which seem to have achieved polis-status with local self-governing rights
(together with international i.e. pan-hellenic—recognition of this, as for

13
A.Tataki, Macedonians Abroad. Meletemata 26. Athens 1998, 45-63.
14
Arrian, Anabasis 1.2.5.
15
Implied in Hatzopoulos, Macedonian Institutions I, 424ff.
Recent Research on Ancient Macedonia 19

instance the Delphic Thearodokoi List shows)16 in ever-increasing numbers

from the Fourth Century onwards. As the differences between the structure of
the way of life of the Macedonian urban communities and those of the rest of
the Greek world diminished, that is as more and more Macedonians came to
live in locally self-governing cities, even under the doubtless basically
benevolent patronal eye of a royal epistates, while at the same time the
majority of non-Macedonian poleis came to terms with the existence of
powerful territorial monarchies and worked out a modus vivendi with them,
so did the Macedonians achieve a cultural and social integration into the
Greek cultural koine. The beginning of this important process, I would
suggest, is first traceable in Philip II’s treatment of Amphipolis.
It would be surprising if, given the spread of city-state culture in
hellenistic Macedonia, we did not equally have a spread of epigraphic culture
there, since the hellenistic period is the time when the city states of Greece
produced in general more public inscriptions than at any other previous time
in their history. Macedonia is indeed no exception, and we now have a series
of decrees from the cities which demonstrate that a large number of them
enjoyed a limited ability to run their own affairs and to pass and set up
decrees which were called psephismata voted by local assemblies of some
kind, the most sophisticated having differing functions as on the Athenian
model with functionally separate meetings called boule and ekklesia
representing the demos (or polis).We do not know anything about how these
meetings were organised, who was allowed to participate and the criteria for
appointment to the council, which varied widely within the Greek world, but
the formal adaptation of the city structure to pan-hellenic norms is
increasingly clear and the evidence increasingly widespread. We know that,
for instance four Macedonian cities, Philippoi, Amphipolis, Pella and
Kassandreia, recognised the asylia of Kos in 243,17 and that several cities
passed decrees honouring those who had helped them, whether individuals or
groups. This is evidence for participation in the international Greek cultural
scene, since these cities both received and/or sent envoys abroad in their own
affairs. The Macedonian cities seem to have had a fairly extensive series of
officials, though the most widespread remains the royal epistates, to whom a
whole series of royal letters are addressed and published locally. But as in
other Greek cities, we have evidence for eponymous officials, in Macedonia
very often, as in Amphipolis, priests of one kind or another—it is not always
possible to know exactly what their function was beyond being a dating

16
A.Plassart, BCH 45, 1921, 1ff.
17
Most convenient texts in Hatzopoulos, Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian Institutions
nos. 36, 41,47, 58.
20 R. Malcolm Errington

mechanism—but also financial officials (tamiai) and market supervisors with

various names (agoranomoi, or in one case in Amphipolis emporiou
epimeletai), secretaries (grammateis) as well as groups named merely
archontes.
It is also clear from two quite extraordinary polis inscriptions, one
from Amphipolis and the other from Beroia, that many of the cities, at least
in the later hellenistic period, had their own gymnasia and trained their young
men as epheboi. A now famous text from Beroia, the Gymnasiarchikos
Nomos, first published in 1975, and dating from the period immediately
following the abolition of the monarchy, but in principle reflecting a situation
which was in itself much older, offers uniquely detailed information about
the way the gymnasium was run, the role of the gymnasiarch and his helpers,
the extent of the financial responsibility of the city authorities, the detailed
rules about the operation of the gymnasium festival the Hermaia including
the Lampas (torch race through the city) and a range of other detailed
arrangements (including fines for keeping discipline).18 For the Macedonian
state the text is fascinating for showing the extent to which the city
authorities were involved in the educational activities of the gymnasium, just
like in other non-Macedonian cities, but also because the text also draws
attention to the fact that many other Macedonian cities had gymnasia, and
with these regulations Beroia was just drawing equal to others in drawing up
detailed regulations for the use and administration of its gymnasium. So we
can conclude that also in this educational area at least the larger Macedonian
cities had been able to equip themselves with a modern gymnasial
infrastructure and the associated educational activities associated with this. A
later text from Amphipolis which calls itself an Ephebarchikos Nomos, but
which is unfortunately not wholly published, would serve to confirm this
conclusion, since it seems to be the republication of much older rules going
back to the period of the kings.19
It would, however, be surprising in a monarchic state such as
Macedonia if Royal ordinances did not dominate the epigraphic picture. A
large number of the documents which illustrate the activities of the cities also
illustrate the activities of the royal administration. The decrees of the
Macedonian cities for the asylia of Kos, for instance, all make reference to
the fact that their decision is in conformity to the policy of king Antigonos
(Gonatas)—a quite unnecessary assertion, if they were wholly free to do what
18
Text and extensive commentary in Ph.Gauthier-M.B.Hatzopoulos, La loi gymnasiarchique
de Béroia. Meletemata 16, 1993. Also in Hatzopoulos, Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian
Institutions no. 60.
19
Cf. SEG 35, 1985, 705; Hatzopoulos, Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian Institutions no.
42.
Recent Research on Ancient Macedonia 21

they wished.20 A letter of Demetrios II to an official Harpalos (perhaps the

epistates) in Beroia is concerned with details of the financial affairs of the
cult of Herakles Kynagidas in the city;21 and the same sort of attention to cult
finances is shown by a letter of Philip V to his official Andronikos
responsible for Thessaloniki (perhaps also an epistates) concerning the
finances of the Egyptian cults in the city half a century later.22 We have
already seen that the kings distributed land to individuals without
consultation of the city authorities; a royal letter now in the Museum of
Kozane shows Philip V writing to one Archippos (perhaps also an epistates)
concerning the possession of certain pieces of land and their use by military
settlers as late as 181.23 Nothing much seems to have changed in this respect
over the centuries of the monarchy: the king remained interested and
concerned with the details of land distribution within the kingdom. From
Macedonia there remains still no evidence that the local city authorities might
have been involved in such matters.
Macedonia remained until the end of the monarchy a strong military
power, as it had been since the time of Philip II. Some recent discoveries
enable us to assess this development much more clearly than was previously
the case. Since the 1930s two documents have become known concerning
aspects of the military organisation of Macedonia at the time of Philip V, one
from Amphipolis, the other from Chalkis. The Amphipolis document is a
royal diagramma and concerns in particular the responsibilities of military
officials for the pay of the soldiers and their equipment. It is unfortunately
badly damaged, so that large sections of it are only partly intelligible, but it is
clear that there were general disciplinary regulations for the army in order to
provide for efficiency; and the level of military bureaucracy which is
evidenced by the text is remarkable.24 From Chalkis, a Macedonian garrison
town in southern Greece, a text was found at about the same time as the
Amphipolis text which provides in great detail regulations for the running of
the garrison, including rules for keeping stores and fixing the various
responsibilities of the royal officials responsible for the garrison for its
efficient running. Until recently these texts stood alone as unique isolated
examples of the Macedonian royal bureaucracy in action, but it was difficult
to know whether we had to do with a reform under Philip V or merely with a
greater readiness to make such things public at his time—that is, an increase

20
See on this A.Giovannini, “Le statut des cités de Macédoine sous les Antigonides”,
Archaia Makedonia II, 1977, 465-472.
21
Hatzopoulos, Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian Institutions no.8.
22
Hatzopoulos, Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian Institutions no.15.
23
Hatzopoulos, Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian Institutions no.17.
24
Hatzopoulos, Epigraphic Appendix to Macedonian Institutions no. 12.
22 R. Malcolm Errington

in the epigraphic habit. This question will remain problematic, but recent
finds seems to suggest the latter, since the text from Chalkis was not unique.
A second copy of the text has been found from another garrisoned place,
Kynos in central Greece, and the text is identical with that from Chalkis.25
The bureaucracy under Philip V therefore issued, or at least insisted on
publication on stone, the detailed regulations for garrisons, which we must
now assume were general for the whole of the areas garrisoned by the
Macedonians outside of Macedonia itself. It is not very likely that the
garrison at Chalkis, which had existed long before Philip V, had had no
written instructions before his time.
The most spectacular new find, again in two separate copies of the
same basic text, one from Kassandreia, the other from Amphipolis, is a
regulation regarding the details of recruitment to the Macedonian army, again
dating probably from the end of the Third or beginning of the Second
Century, the reign of Philip V, but at least in some respects representing
earlier conditions.26 The details are astonishing and make these newly
discovered documents, despite their incompleteness, the most detailed rules
on recruitment we have for any army in antiquity. The first editors were so
impressed with the details that they thought it must be emergency regulations
issued before the battle of Kynoskephalae in 198, when we know from Livy
that exceptional efforts were made to recruit all Macedonians capable of
serving. But the double publication on stone alone makes it clear that we
have here a long-term structural regulation. The basic unit of recruitment was
the “fire-unit” (pyrokausis) a new word, and these were established with a
significant amount of bureaucracy, being recruited, it seems, by the epistatai
of the cities, for those who lived in city areas. There was also centrally kept
lists (diagraphai) run by a royal official (ho epi tas diagraphas) registering
the pyrokauseis and their members. As far as the distribution of the troops
into individual units was concerned, we have here new evidence for a social
selection, the poorest men being brigaded into the phalanx infantry. The
special units, the royal agema, the peltasts or the hypaspistai were selected
according to social criteria from the better-off. Age also played a role. The
agema was recruited from older men, with a cut-off point at 45, except for
particularly fit individuals, whereas the peltasts were not older than 35. The
rules also show great respect for maintaining family structures: in a
household where a father and son lived and the son was over 20, the father
25
Texts in M.B.Hatzopoulos, L’organisation de l’armée macédonienne sous les Antigonides.
Problèmes anciens et documents nouveaux. Meletemata 30. Athens 2001, 151ff.
26
Editio princeps by P.Nigdelis and K.Sismanides, Ancient Macedonia 6, Thessaloniki 1999,
807-822; new edition by Hatzopoulos, L’organisation de l’armée macédonienne (as n. 26)
153f.
Recent Research on Ancient Macedonia 23

over 50, the son was to be recruited; and the father was a kind of emergency
reserve (boethos); where the son was under 20 and the father 50 or under 50,
the father was to be recruited as long as he was physically fit to serve, and the
son belonged to the emergency reserve, but if the father were over fifty and
the son more than 15 the son was to serve, and such fathers who were over 55
belonged to the reserve unless they were ex-officers or guardsmen
(hegemones, hetairoi), in which case if they were physically fit they were to
join the reserve. In households where a son was under 15 the call-up of the
father depended on whether the son was physically strong enough to run the
farm: if so, the father was to be recruited. There are also detailed regulations
for the recruitment of cavalry horses, but these are less well preserved in the
text.
I hope I have shown in this paper that a great deal of new material
from Ancient Macedonia has been discovered in the last generation, and that
this material allows in some cases extraordinarily detailed information about
how the state was organised. In particular the level of bureaucracy involved
in all these areas is surprising, and it does mean that when we talk about the
development of administration in the hellenistic kingdoms the Macedonian
homeland, where the hellenistic world began, can no longer be regarded an
having made only a minor contribution to this. The Macedonian state in the
Third Century was well organised, with both central and local officials
existing with defined responsibilities, and a certain amount of local
administration being delegated to the city authorities. This gradually
improving knowledge of the efficiency of the state apparatus gives us a good
idea of how Macedonia could continue to dominate Greek affairs for some
200 years and how the Macedonian army was capable of offering the Romans
such a significant challenge.

Marburg