archibald, zosia halina [en] - economies of the northern aegean. fifth to first centuries bc...

ANCIENT ECONOMIES OF THENORTHERN AEGEAN

OUP CORRECTED PROOF FINAL, 8/10/2013, SPi

Map 1. The east Balkan and north Aegean area

OUPCORRECTEDPROOFFIN

AL,

8/10/2013,SPi

Ancient Economies ofthe Northern Aegean

Fifth to First Centuries bc

ZOSIA HALINA ARCHIBALD

1


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Preface

Most visitors to the northern Aegean today approach it (whether phys-ically or in virtual and abstract terms) from the south, that is, from theAegean Sea. In this book I have attempted not just to look at this part ofsouthern Europe from the familiar, southerly perspective, but to imagineit from other angles. The chapters are organized to reect these differentapproaches, which do deliver different impressions. They are compatibleimpressions, but nonetheless rather unfamiliar to most Classicists andhistorians, those of classical antiquity as of more recent times.I might begin with maps. The map that forms the frontispiece to

the book is a unique creation. I could not nd a map that provided thephysical environment of my story, so it had to be created. Modernnational boundaries are powerful drivers of the available geographicalinformation, so most attempts to make use of what is available tend tofollow patterns created by convenient, readily accessible parameters.These parameters are of little use when mapping the remote past,which blissfully ignores modern boundaries. Older maps are anothermatter. Nineteenth-century maps of southern Europe give a far broaderperspective, but populate the landscape with unfamiliar names andhabits of mind. Travelling about the region certainly helps to provide abetter sense of local ecologies; but modern geography conceals as muchas it reveals. The great river courses of the east Balkan area have changedtheir beds and altered the immediate landscape in ways that require bigteam projects to disentangle. What we see is not what used to be there.So this book is consciously arranged like a series of successive stage

sets, which gradually reveal the full perspective of the remote past. First,there is a preliminary summary, in Chapter 1, intended to explain whatthe story is about. The players are not just characters and choruses fromantiquity, since the story is told through the voices of contemporaryhistorians, geographers, and archaeologists. We need to hear theiraccounts, but must also manage to discern the fact that they speak indifferent registers. Modern political congurations of the region havedivided up its history into a mass of separate, sometimes quite contra-dictory interpretations. The stories are not the same, nor are the inter-pretations compatible. They cannot all be equally valid. Somehow,choices have to be made and readers need to know what these choicesare. The introductory chapter tries to see the past through the eyes of a


number of key modern personalities, whose research has created muchof the modern architecture of the subjects explored here.Other themes introduced in Chapter 1 are gradually developed in later

chapters. Political history is almost always a key component of bignarratives; but whose politics may be in question is not easy to discern.The politics of the powerful in southern Europe during the second half ofthe rst millennium bc is both more noticeable than it is in central andsouthern Greece and less so. The actions of powerful individuals, rulers,princes, and landowners are manifested in all kinds of ways, which alsoleave visible tracesstructures, monuments, public statements, in theform of stone inscriptions and funerary architecture. For a variety ofreasons, modern access routes into the region, even today, tend to avoidthe inland trajectories that linked the continental heartlands of princesand landowners to coasts and harbours, and thus to the more familiarlandmarks and place names of classical maritime itineraries. This mayexplain why some of these monumental power statements have onlybeen discovered comparatively recently. Yet the stories about the power-holders of the region do survive and can be reinstated, if we nd amethod by which this can be done.If we make an effort of imagination to resurrect the landward power-

holders of southern Europe, we can begin to see patterns in the geopoliticallandscape. The Greco-Persian wars emerge as a signicant driver of socialand economic changes that refashioned existing hierarchies and therebyintroduced new fashions and customs. Understanding the social param-eters of the region is therefore the rst task to be explored. This cannot, ofcourse, be done without also considering how these social entities havebeen described and interpreted as modern scholars have sought to glossand project the disparate evidence about ancient societies in the regioninto recognizable and coherent social forms. The communities thatemerge from historical accounts and archaeological vestiges in Chapter 2have thus to be made into identiable economic agents in Chapter 3,before the focus returns in Chapters 4, 5, and 6 towards the ways in whichthe landscape has become a canvas for human discovery and use.Most scholarly works on classical antiquity stick to a limited chron-

ology, well supported by ancient literary or other written texts. I havedelved much further back into the past. It is no longer uncommon to ndancient historians acknowledging the importance of long-term pro-cesses. I want to emphasize this deep perspective. Subsistence patternsin southern Europe have very deep roots indeed, which partly explain therobustness of the mixed agricultural economies that become discerniblein rural establishments of the fth to third centuries bc. The long-term


vi Preface

strategies also help to frame the particular events and relationships thatprovide some of the incidental detail that emerges from my story.The deeply rooted ecologies of the south-east Balkan and north

Aegean area have to be understood in terms of particular communitiesand traditions. Perhaps the hardest task for any historian who wants tomake this region better known is to create the kinds of associations thatcome so easily to more southerly and easterly locations, whose namesecho down the centuries through the poetry of Homer and the rhetoric oforators. The place names of this region are often strange modern ones,and rural mysteries at that. The best kept secret of the east Balkans are itsrural retreats. Modernity has gloried in the urban landscape of antiquity,whilst ignoring its equally impressive contributions to the managementand construction of the rural landscape.The scene-setting that each chapter tries to create results in a series of

lters through which various historical identiersethnic groups,peoples, archaeological sites, artefacts, and commoditiesare viewed inturn. These lters include demography, geology, ecology, languages, andepigraphy. Filters of this kind employ different methods and producedifferent results, which must nevertheless be factored into the overallnarrative of the past. Beyond these lters rises the broader discourseabout the nature of ancient societies, their organization and structure. Ihave tried to keep discussion of social matters rmly in touch witheconomic ones and have chosen paradigms that seem to reect theclose connection between the material and the social that is such astriking component of any encounter with the artefacts and monumentsthat these societies created. It makes a very different environment inwhich to evaluate some of the familiar and established models forconceptualising classical antiquityincluding the paradigms inventedby Moses Finley; the overriding preoccupation with coastal locationsagainst inland ones; the polis of the Copenhagen project; regionalism,national boundaries.

Handbridge, Chester, May 2013


Preface vii

Acknowledgements

The idea for this book was conceived about ve years ago, but it was mycolleague at Liverpool, Graham Oliver, who persuaded me, in 2010, thatthis was the right time to write it. Preparation of the text has coincidedwith a number of international projects and publications that make this aparticularly opportune time to consider the ancient economies of the eastBalkan/northern Aegean area as a single entity.My work has been immensely enhanced by the support and assistance

of many people. Figures 6.1 and 6.2 are reproduced with the kind permis-sion of Arthur Muller and Henri Trziny (Muller 2010, 212 g. 142; 221g. 143, respectively). Map 1 (frontispiece) was specially prepared for thisvolume in collaboration with Dr Richard Chiverrell, Department of Geog-raphy, University of Liverpool. A number of previously published mapsand plans have been redrawn, with modications, by Dr Esme Hammerle.These include Figure 2.1 (map of Macedonia, various sources); Figures4.14.2, which draw on information published in Ghilardi et al. 2008,113 g. 2 and gs. p. 122; Figures 4.3, 4.4, and 4.5, which represent, withnecessary modications, parts of the preliminary plans publishedin Adam-Veleni, Poulaki, and Tzanavari 2003: Tria Platania (p. 58),Komboloi (p. 65) and Vrasna (p. 95). Figure 4.6 has been redrawn, withmodications, from Christov and Lazovs report in AOR 2010, 192 g. 3;Figures 5.5 and 5.6, redrawn, with modications, from M. Madjarovsreports in AOR 2010, 189 g.1; Figure 4.7 reproduces data presented inAOR 2006, 231, map 2; Figure 4.8 reproduces data presented in AOR 2010,241, map 2. Figure 5.3 reproduces the data from Tzvetkova 2008, map 11.I am most grateful to Richard Chiverrell and Esme Hammerle for theirassistance; and to Katerina Tzanavari and Mitko Madjarov for their will-ingness to allow preliminary plans of their projects to be included here.I would also like to express particular gratitude to Lydia Domaradzka,

Lisa Kallet, Jack Kroll, Gavrail Lazov, Evi Margaritis, and Gary Reger,who have given me advanced access to new publications; and to themany friends and colleagues who have either read drafts of differentchapters, discussed various aspects of the contents, or otherwise contrib-uted to my perceptions: Alexandru Avram, Alexandre Baralis, ChaidoKoukouli-Chrysanthanki, John Davies, Vincent Gabrielsen, Bruce Gibson,Alexey Gotzev, Denver Graninger, Edward Harris, Chryssoula Karadima,


Maria Kostoglou, Jack Kroll, Louisa Loukopoulou, Mitko Madjarov,Dimitris Matsas, Cathy Morgan, Graham Oliver, Maria-Gabriella Par-issaki, Selene Psoma, Mustafa Sayar, Milena Tonkova. To Ian I owemuch more than gratitude; without him the book could not have beenwritten.


x Acknowledgements

Contents

List of gures, maps and tables xiiiList of Abbreviations xv

1. Introduction 1

2. Herdsmen with golden leavesnarratives and spaces 37

3. Societies and economies 85

4. The longue dure in the north Aegean 129

5. Regionalism and regional economies 193

6. The lure of the northern Aegean 249

7. Dining cultures 271

8. Continuity and commemoration 297

Bibliography 321Index of sources 367General index 374


List of gures, maps and tables

Map 1 The east Balkan and north Aegean area( R. C. Chiverrell/Z. H. Archibald) Frontispiece

1.1 Dion, Macedonia: sanctuary of Isis ( Z. H. Archibald) 91.2 Chalkidike, shing boat ( Z. H. Archibald) 18

2.1 Map of Macedonia from the sixth to second century bc( Z. H. Archibald) 47

2.2 Table showing comparative gures of documented poleis inthe northern Aegean 59

2.3 Chalkidike: wooded slopes ( Z. H. Archibald) 72

3.1 (ac) Bronze coins from Adjiyska Vodenitsa, used as smallchange ( Z. H. Archibald) 102

4.1 Geomorphological changes in the Thermaic Gulf around thelocation of Neolithic Nea Nikomedia, Classical Pella andHellenistic Thessaloniki (redrawn after Ghilardi et al., 2008) 134

4.2 Geomorphological changes in the Thermaic Gulf from the lateClassical period to the early twentieth century ad (redrawnafter Ghilardi et al., 2008) 138

4.3 Country house estate at Tria Platania, Macedonia (redrawnafter Adam-Veleni et al., 2003) 143

4.4 Country house estate at Komboloi, Macedonia (redrawn afterAdam-Veleni et al., 2003) 144

4.5 Country estate at Vrasna, eastern Macedonia (redrawnafter Adam-Veleni et al., 2003) 146

4.6 Country estate near Kozi Gramadi, central Thrace(redrawn after AOR 2009) 148

4.7 Archaeological sites in Bulgarian Thrace investigated in 2006(redrawn after AOR 2006) 151

4.8 Archaeological sites in Bulgarian Thrace investigated in 2010(redrawn after AOR 2010) 153

4.9 Olynthos, house mosaic showing the mounted Bellerophonwith his hunting dog ( Z. H. Archibald) 161

4.10 Greyware cup resembling a skyphos ( Z. H. Archibald) 1664.11 Horse grazing in Septemvri, Bulgaria ( Z. H. Archibald) 185

5.1 Bridge over the River Haliakmon near Aigeai (Vergina)( Z. H. Archibald) 195

5.2 Vineyard in the east Balkan region ( Z. H. Archibald) 1995.3 Distribution of coins from the Thracian Chersonese

(redrawn after Tzvetkova 2008, map 11) 229


5.4 Adjiyska Vodenitsa, near Vetren: approach to the easterngateway from the south-west ( Z. H. Archibald) 232

5.5 Krastevich, plan of the town, showing the storage complex(left); (redrawn after AOR 2010) 235

5.6 Krastevich, plan of the upland sanctuary (redrawnafter AOR 2010) 236

5.7 Istanbul, view of the Bosporus from Topkapi palace, theheart of the ancient city of Byzantion ( Z. H. Archibald) 238

6.1 Thasos, plan of the city area, showing Thracian concentrationsin the early city (Muller 2010, g. 142) 260

6.2 Thasos, plan of the civic area in the sixth century bc, showingthe persistence of districts within the connes of the later city(Muller 2010, g. 145) 265

7.1 Olynthos: view from the South Hill towards the Toronaean Gulf,with olive groves ( Z. H. Archibald) 281

7.2 Cows and herdsmen near Strelcha, central Bulgaria( Z. H. Archibald) 289

7.3 Table showing relative proportions of wild and domesticspecies in selected contexts at Adjiyska Vodenitsa, Vetren(ancient Pistiros), (after Stallibrass 2010) 292

8.1 Adjiyska Vodenitsa, Vetren, tumulus 2 ( Z. H. Archibald) 2988.2 Zhaba Mogila, Strelcha, view of the entrance to the tomb

( Z. H. Archibald) 3018.3 Tumulus of Starosel: masonry krepis surrounding the

earth mound ( Z. H. Archibald) 3028.4 Dion, Macedonia: fourth-century bc temple foundations

( Z. H. Archibald) 3038.5 Vergina, tomb with Ionic faade ( Z. H. Archibald) 307


xiv List of gures, maps and tables

List of abbreviations

Abbreviations for ancient literary sources follow Oxford Classical Dic-tionary3 (1996), xxixliv. Abbreviations for epigraphic sources followSupplementum Epigraphicum Graecum, Index XXXVIXLV (Amster-dam, 1999), 677688. Abbreviations for periodicals follow LAnne Phi-lologique. Other abbreviations are the following:

Adams and Borza W. L. Adams and E. Borza (eds) (1982),Philip II, Alexander the Great and theMacedonian Heritage, Lanham.

AEMY `

20 Chronia AEMY 20 ` , Thessaloniki,2009.

Agoranomia P. van Alfen, (ed.) (2006) Agoranomia:Studies in Money and ExchangePresented to J. H. Kroll, New York.

Alternatives to Athens R. Brock and S. Hodkinson (eds) (2000),Alternatives to Athens. Varieties ofPolitical Organization and Communityin Ancient Greece, Oxford.

Ancient Colonizations H. Hurst and S. Owen (eds) (2005),Ancient Colonizations, Analogy,Similarity, and Difference, London.

AncMac VII Ancient Macedonia. VII. Macedoniafrom the Iron Age to the Death of PhilipII. Papers read at the SeventhInternational Symposium held inThessaloniki, October 1418, 2002,Thessaloniki, 2007.

AOR Archeologicheski Razkopki iProuchvaniya, Bulgarian Academy ofSciences/Institute of Archaeology andMuseum, Soa.

Aperghis G. G. Aperghis (2004), The SeleukidRoyal Economy: The Finances and


Financial Administration of the SeleukidEmpire, Cambridge.

Aphieroma Hammond Ch. Koukouli-Chrysanthaki (ed.)(1997), Aphieroma stonN. G. L. Hammond, Thessaloniki.

Approches R. Descat (ed.) (2006), Approches delconomie hellnistique. Saint-Bertrand-de-Comminges.

Athenaeus and his World D. Braund and J. Wilkins (eds) (2000),Athenaeus and his World, Reading GreekCulture in the Roman Empire, Exeter.

Austin2 M. M. Austin (2006), The HellenisticWorld from Alexander to the RomanConquest. A Selection of Ancient Sourcesin Translation. 2nd edn, Cambridge.

Billows R. A. Billows (1990), Antigonos the One-Eyed and the Creation of the HellenisticState. (Hellenistic Culture and Society 4),Berkeley and Los Angeles.

Bouzek and Domaradzka J. Bouzek and L. Domaradzka (eds)(2005), The Culture of the Thracians andtheir Neighbours. Proceedings of theInternational Symposium in Memory ofProf. Mieczysaw Domaradzki, with aRound Table Archaeological Map ofBulgaria, BAR IS1350, Oxford.

Bresson A. Bresson (2000), La cit marchande,Ausonius 2, Bordeaux.

Bugh ed. G. Bugh (ed.) (2006), The CambridgeCompanion to the Hellenistic World,Cambridge.

CAH2 Cambridge Ancient History, new edition,I. Cambridge, 1970.

CEHGRW W. Scheidel, I. Morris, and R. Saller(eds) (2007), The Cambridge EconomicHistory of the Greco-Roman World,Cambridge.

CH M. Jessop-Price (ed.) (1975), CoinHoards, I. London.

Clarysse and Thompson W. Clarysse and D. Thompson (2006),Counting the People in Hellenistic Egypt,2 vols. Cambridge.


xvi List of abbreviations

Emprunt L. Migeotte (1984), Lemprunt publicdans les cits grecques: Recueil desdocuments et analyse critique, Paris andQubec.

Dossier Pistiros Dossier: nouvelles perspectives pourltude de linscription de Pistiros, BCH123 (1999), 1. tudes.

Erskine 2003 A. Erskine (ed.) (2003), A companion tothe Hellenistic world, Malden Mass. andOxford.

Feyel Chr. Feyel (2006), Les artisans dans lessanctuaires grecs aux poques classiqueet hellnistique travers ladocumentation nancire en Grce,BEFAR 318, Athens.

Fornara Ch. Fornara (ed.) (1983), Archaic Timesto the end of the Peloponnesian War.Translated Documents of Greece andRome, Vol. 1, 2nd edn, Cambridge.

Guerre J. Andreau, P. Briant, and R. Descat(eds) (2000), La guerre dans lesconomies antiques, Saint-Bertrand deComminges.

HellEc I Z. H. Archibald, J. K. Davies,V. Gabrielsen, and G. J. Oliver (eds)(2001), Hellenistic Economies, Londonand New York.

HellEc II Z. H. Archibald, J. K. Davies, andV. Gabrielsen (eds) (2005), Making,Moving and Managing: The New Worldof Ancient Economies, 32331 BC.,Oxford.

HellEc III Z. H. Archibald, J. K. Davies, andV. Gabrielsen, (eds) (2011), TheEconomies of Hellenistic Societies,Oxford.

Horden and Purcell P. Horden and N. Purcell (2000), Thecorrupting sea. A study of Mediterraneanhistory, Malden Mass and Oxford.

HM I N. G. L. Hammond (1972), A History ofMacedonia I, Oxford.

HM II N. G. L. Hammond, and G. T. Grifth,(1979)AHistory ofMacedonia II, Oxford.


List of abbreviations xvii

HM III N. G. L. Hammond, and F. W. Walbank(1988), A History of MacedoniaIII. 336167 B.C., Oxford.

I. Beroea Gounaropoulou, L. andM. B. Hatzopoulos (1998), b . L. bB, Athens.

IGCH M. Thompson, O. Mrkholm andC. M. Kraay (eds) (1973), An Inventoryof Greek coin hoards, New York.

IK Inschriften griechischer Stdte ausKleinasien, Bonn, 1972.

I ThrAeg L. Loukopoulou, A. Zournatzi,M. G. Parissaki and S. Psoma (2005),b B F `

f H H d

(d P ), Athens: K B PB A.

Inventory M. H. Hansen and T. H. Nielsen (eds)(2004), An Inventory of Archaic andClassical Poleis, Oxford.

JEH Journal of Economic history.

Manning and Morris J. Manning and I. Morris (eds) (2005),The Ancient Economy: Evidence andModels, Stanford.

Markets, Households, andCity-States

D. M. Lewis, E. M. Harris, andM. Woolmer (eds) (2014), Markets,Households, and City-States in theAncient Greek Economy, Cambridge.

Mnimi Lazaridi . (1990),

, `, 911 , 1986,Kavalla.

ML R. Meiggs and A. Lewis (1988 [1969]), ASelection of Greek Historical inscriptionsto the end of the Fifth Century B. C.,Oxford.

Networks I. Malkin, Chr. Constantakopoulou, andK. Panagopoulou, (eds) (2009),Greek and


xviii List of abbreviations

Roman Networks in the Mediterranean,Abingdon and New York.

Les quids A. Gardeisen (ed.) (2005), Les quidsdans le monde mditerranen antique,Actes du colloque organis par lcolefranaise dAthnes, le Centre CamilleJullian, et lUMR 5140 du CNRS,Athnes 2628 Novembre 2003, Lattes.

PAA J. S. Traill (1994), Persons of AncientAthens, Toronto.

Pistiros I J. Bouzek, M. Domaradzki and Z.H. Archibald (eds) (1996), Pistiros I:Excavations and Studies, CharlesUniversity, Prague.

Pistiros II J. Bouzek, L. Domaradzka and Z.H. Archibald (eds) (2002), Pistiros II:Excavations and Studies, CharlesUniversity, Prague.

Pistiros III J. Bouzek, L. Domaradzka and Z.H. Archibald (eds) (2007), Pistiros III:Excavations and Studies, CharlesUniversity, Prague.

Pistiros IV J. Bouzek, L. Domaradzka andZ. H. Archibald (eds) (2010), PistirosIV. Excavations and Studies, CharlesUniversity, Prague.

Pistiros et Thasos D. Domaradzki, L. Domaradzka,J. Bouzek, and J. Rostropowicz (eds)(2000), Pistiros et Thasos : structuresconomiques dans la pninsulebalkanique dans le 1er millnaire av.J.-C., Opole.

Reger G. Reger (1994), Regionalism andchange in the economy of independentDelos, 314167 B.C., Berkeley.

RO P. J. Rhodes and R. J. Osborne (eds)(2003), Greek historical inscriptions:404323 BC, Oxford.

Rois, Cits, Ncropoles A.-M. Guimier-Sorbets,M. B. Hatzopoulos, and Y. Morizot (eds)(2006), Rois, Cits, Ncropoles.Institutions, rites et monuments en


List of abbreviations xix

Macdoine, MELETEMATA 45,AthensParis.

Roisman and Worthington J. Roisman and I. Worthington (eds)(2010), A Companion to AncientMacedonia, Malden Mass. and Oxford.

Sboryanovo T. Stoyanov, with Zh. Mihaylova,K. Nikov, M. Nikolaeva, D. Stoyanova,V. Bonev, and K. Madzharov(forthcoming), Sboryanovo III. TheThracian City, Soa.

SEG Supplementum Epigraphicum Graecum.

SEHHW M. I. Rostovtzeff (1941), The social andeconomic history of the Hellenistic world,IIII, Oxford.

Settlement life in Ancient Thrace Poselishten Zhivot v Drevna Trakya,I ed. V. Velkov (1979); II ed. V. Velkov(1982); III ed. D. Draganov (1994); IVed. I. Ilyev (2006).

Stephanphoros K. Konuk (ed.) (2012), Stephanphorosde lconomie antique lAsie mineure,Hommages Raymond Descat,Mmoires 28, Bordeaux.

Thasos, Matires Premires Ch. Koukouli-Chrysanthaki, A. Muller,S. Papadopoulos (eds) (1999), Thasos,Protes yles kai technologia apo tousproistorikous Chronous os semera.Thasos, Matires premires ettechnologie de la prhistoire nos jours,Proceedings of the InternationalColloquium, Limenaria, Thasos, 2629September 1995 (cole franaisedAthnes18th Ephorate of Prehistoricand Classical Antiquities).

The Customs Law of Asia M. Cottier, M. H. Crawford,C. V. Crowther, J.-L. Ferrary,B. M. Levick, O. Salomies, andM. Wrrle (2008), The Customs Law ofAsia, Oxford.

Thrace and the Aegean A. Fol (ed.) (2002), Thrace and theAegean. Eighth International Congress ofThracology, Soa-Jambol, 2529September 2000, Soa.


xx List of abbreviations

Thrace in the Graeco-Roman World A. Iakovidou (ed.) (2007), H - . Thracein the Graeco-Roman World,Proceedings of the Tenth InternationalCongress of Thracology, Komotini-Alexandroupolis, 1823 October 2005,Athens.

Tout vendre, tout acheter V. Chankowski and P. Karvonis (eds)(2012), Tout vendre, tout acheter.Structures et quipements des marchsantiques, Scripta Antiqua 42, Bordeaux.

Walbank, Commentary F. W. Walbank (1957, 1967, 1979), AHistorical Commentary on Polybius,3 vols, Oxford.

Will, Histoire Politique d. Will (1979, 1982), Histoire politiquedu monde hellnistique, 32330 av.J.-C.,Paris (2 vol. 1, 1979; vol. 2, 1982;reprinted with a new preface byP. Cabanes, 2003).


List of abbreviations xxi

1Introduction

THE GEOGRAPHY OF NORTH AEGEAN ECONOMIES

A short history of exploration

When Lon Heuzey directed a mission to northern Greece over twoyears, between 1855 and 1857, he was masterminding a pioneeringventure on several counts. This was the rst coordinated, scienticproject in the region that aimed to document information about import-ant historical locations in a structured way. Heuzeys activities wereconducted under the auspices of the cole franaise dAthnes, foundedin 1846, but his project was funded by the Emperor of France, NapoleonIII. This generous subvention enabled the rst results of his investiga-tions to appear in print promptly, in 1860, with the title: Le mont Olympeet lAkarnanie, exploration de ces deux rgions. In the following year, hewas active again in the eld, with a new programme of excavation closeto the township of Palatitsa (now incorporated into the modern city ofVergina), where Heuzey explored traces of a royal palace below a forti-ed acropolis on the western slopes of the Pierian moutains. The resultsof these subsequent studies were published, in collaboration withH. Daumet, as Mission archologique de Macdoine, in 1876, includinga splendid topographic plan of the ancient remains that he and his teamhad identiedthe palace, cemeteries with individual mound-coveredtombs, and the two closest contemporary settlements, called Koutles andBarbes, overlaid on the irregular terrain, broken by ravines, extendingfrom the mountain slopes down to the River Haliakmon. Heuzeystopographic plan has yet to be superseded. The project in the townshipof Palatitsa, and its immediate environs, was one of the most successfulpieces of targeted investigation in the Balkans before the emergence ofmodern nation states in this area.

The third quarter of the nineteenth century was a critical period in thedevelopment of the institutional background of historical research in the


Aegean and its neighbouring mainland and offshore regions. In the1850s most of the area was still under Ottoman rule, except for the nascentstate of Greece, which at that time consisted of the central part of thepeninsula, roughly south of Euboia, and the Peloponnese. Research inves-tigations in the Balkans north of the Greek state were thus negotiated withOttoman ofcials. Many of the visitors and scholars to the region stillthought of journeys around the Aegean as congenial settings rather thantargets of investigation. Over the next two decades, both the context ofresearch and approaches to it were transformed. The cole franaisecame under the formal scrutiny of the French Acadmie des Inscriptionset Belles Lettres, and its members were now required to provide regularreports of their activities. The second director of the cole franaise,Albert Dumont, was responsible for setting up guidelines for the trainingand research objectives of its members, and of the Bulletin de Corres-pondence Hellnique, in 1877, to disseminate research in the easternMediterranean. He too travelled widely and published a range of mono-graphs that gather documents and data from different parts of theBalkans, including Le Balkan et lAdriatique, Les Bulgares et les Albanais,in 1874, and Inscriptions et Monuments gurs de la Thrace, in 1876. InSoa, the capital of the newly liberated state of Bulgaria, the rstNational Museum was mooted alongside the National Library in1878, although it did not open its doors to the public until 1905,in the former Buyk mosque that still forms the ArchaeologicalMuseums principal interior.1

The twilight years of the Ottoman Empire were a fruitful period forambitious ventures, which aimed to capture geographical and topo-graphical as well as historical data. In the half century prior to the FirstWorld War, and in the wake of the subsequent territorial negotiationsand population transfers ratied at the Treaty of Lausanne in July 1923,scholarly activities ranged widely over the east Balkans. Some, likeG. Perrot, the Czech K. Jireek, or the Austrian Franz Kanitz, operatedindependently or on behalf of national scientic organizations. Membersof the cole franaise were active in the vicinity of Thessaloniki, in thecountryside around Plovdiv, in the middle Maritsa valley, as well as inPhilippi, Kavala, and Thasos (in addition to Delphi, Argos, Delos and

1 Leekley and Efstratiou 1980, 69; 148 for the earliest modern discoveries of ancientremains on Olympos; Vokotopoulou 1985 provides a selection of extracts from early travelaccounts and reports of monuments and inscriptions by, among others, M. Cousinry,W. M. Leake, and M. Demitsas, focusing on the remains of Thessaloniki; Ruseva-Slokoska1993 gives a full account of the foundation of the National Museum in Soa; see alsoNikolov 2006.


2 Introduction

elsewhere in central and southern Greece). Members of the BritishSchool at Athens developed an active programme in the Thermaic Gulfand in central Macedonia during the period 19111918.2

Investigations of historical topography were conducted against abackground of political uncertainty and periodic insecurity. The successof such projects during this period of immense political upheaval seemsastonishing to observers of later generations. The two nal decades of thenineteenth and the rst twenty years of the twentieth century witnessedthe partitioning of the former Ottoman provinces in Europe into newnation states and the emergence of Bulgaria and of the west Balkanpolities that were subsumed, after the Second World War, into Yugo-slavia.3 The upland areas were particularly dangerous for foreign travel-lers, even in peaceful times. Insurgencies and armed conicts disrupted,but did not put an end to scholarship. Historical investigators sometimeshad access to military maps, whose precision was driven by strategicconcerns unconnected with scholarly endeavours. But researchers had tohave a variety of practical skills that are no longer considered especiallyuseful for a historical or archaeological career. Heuzeys ascent of one ofthe southern peaks of Mount Olympos provided valuable technicalinformation for mountaineers over the next half century.4 Transportstill retained the timeless rhythms of the pre-modern era. Travel wasconducted either on horseback, or on mules, or simply on foot. Carriageswere only realistic where there were serviceable metalled roads, whichprovided access between major towns, but most ancient sites were off thebeaten track. An expedition consisted not just of the scholar himself(occasionally herself), but of a whole party of local technicians andguides, who could assist with identication and documentation, as wellas informal protection.5 The strategic interests of various international

2 Casson provides a list of sites investigated in the east Balkans up to the mid 1920s(1926, xxiii; Ch. III, Appendix B, pp. 16874, with map XIX at end). A notable contribu-tion was made by scholars and engineers in the British Salonica Force. Treuil (1996, 410Carte 1) shows prehistoric sites excavated by the fA in the period 18461919, includingPylaia, Thermi, and Gona on the eastern shore of the Thermaic Gulf, with Kostievo,Makur, Ploska Mogila, in the Hebros valley, Raov on the right bank of the Tundja,close to the bend near Kabyle; Grandjean and Salviat 2000, 3841 for Thasos; Waterhouse1986 and Gill 2011 on students of the British School at Athens.

3 Glenny 1999, 13548, 307402.4 Heuzeys description of the ascent assisted in determining which of the peaks was the

highest; eventually this was ascertained as that dubbed Venizelos (Baud-Bovy 1921).5 Philippa-Touchais (1996, 231, g. 7) shows a photograph of Polygnotos Kionaris

standing beside a diligence drawn by a pair of horses, with the archaeologist Charles Picardseated, a horseman in attendance (July 1912, close to Maroneia).


Introduction 3

powers in the Mediterranean region gave historical research particularimmediacy and relevance in this period.

Economy and environment

Economies, historical or contemporary, involve the manipulation ortransformation of material resource. Economic activities also have non-material dimensions, in terms of expertise and technical skills, but thesedo not exist in isolation. In the remote past, skills were intimatelyconnected with the processing and exchange of commodities. In thesecond half of the rst millennium bc, the range of natural resourcesexploited in the Balkanscereals, market gardening, stock rearing,mining, clay extraction for pottery and brick making; leather and otheranimal by-products; textiles and woodwork, as well as a wide range offoodstuffsexpanded and developed on a considerable scale. Theseactivities built on, and ramied from, the practices of earlier prehistory.The consequences of what took place in the rst millennium bc were ofcritical importance for the economic architecture of early MedievalEurope. Byzantion emerged as a key hub of east Mediterranean tradein the nal three centuries of the rst millennium bc, reinforcing thenorthsouth trajectory of trafc between southern Europe and the widerMediterranean, as well as acting as the bridge between Europe and Asia.

Most of this economic activity in the remote past was virtuallyunknown in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century, when therst systematic investigations of the regions early history effectivelybegan. References to the mines and timber resources of Macedon andThrace were familiar to readers of Herodotus and Thucydides, and theearly fourth-century bc inscription from Olynthos, according to whichthe Macedonian king Amyntas III afrmed the rights of local Chalk-idians to export timber as part of a mutual alliance, was published in1883.6 The investigation of Olynthos itself did not begin until the late1920s and study of the Chalkidian peninsula as a whole has had to waituntil the nal decades of the twentieth century.

6 The Thasians drew 80 talents a year from the mine at Skapte Hyle/Syle (Hdt. 6.46.3);the miners of Mount Pangaion were the Satrai, the Pieres, and Odomantoi (Hdt. 7.110, 111,11213). The Athenian tyrant Peisistratos took an interest in the mining activities of thearea (Ar. Ath. Pol. 15.2). The lucrative potential of the mines, and the timber resources ofthe upland zone, were among the motives behind the Athenian siege of Thasos (Thuc.I.100.2). Thuc. 2.97 for the revenues of the Odrysian kings; alliance of Amyntas III and theChalcidians: SIG3 135; Hatzopoulos 1996, II, I; RO 12 (dated 390s380s bc); Millett 2010,4725. Mining resources are discussed in more detail in Ch. 4.


4 Introduction

Without close geographical knowledge, any study of economies isbound to be decient. We need not just to see and comprehend howpeople in the remote past perceived their environment and utilizedwhat they saw, either for their own use, or for exchange with others.We also need to have some means of evaluating how these transform-ations operated in space and time; how clay and stone and ores weretransformed into bricks, masonry, and metal; which commodities movedby mule and cart to the nearest locality, and which travelled for weeksbecause they had special value. None of these mechanistic simulationsis particularly meaningful unless we take a further step and try todiscover why so much human effort was devoted to the cultural mani-festations that give the east Balkan regions their distinctive historicalcharacter. The environment that we discover, as twenty-rst-centuryobservers, was structured through a symbiosis between peoples andtheir landscapes. This is why Heuzeys grand publications, which marrycontours with monumental remains and living communities, still havelasting value.

Since the demise of the Ottoman Empire, the east Balkan region hasbeen trisected by modern state boundaries. The area that constitutes thefocus of this book has therefore been explored, by modern scholars,within three different cultural environments (four if we include theFYROM); three or more independent institutional frameworks, operat-ing, for much of the last century, under starkly differing ideologicalregimes. Until comparatively recently, these regimes constituted separ-ate, virtually vacuum-sealed academic traditions, publishing research indifferent languages and journals, preoccupied with quite distinct abstractproblems, whose direction and colouring was shaped by national Acad-emies of Sciences and national research programmes. The administrativedistrict of Macedonia was incorporated into the Greek state only in 1913,Thrace in 1923. Field research along this coastal strip of the northAegean has caught up with other parts of Greece only since the 1980s.Mapping of the kind undertaken by Heuzey was resource-intensive andgave way, during the twentieth century, to more geographically restrictedprojects. In Bulgaria the energetic studies of the early 1900s, expandingover the next half century, were succeeded in the 1950s by new trends,which drew archaeologists and ancient historians away from topograph-ically orientated eldwork to theoretically inspired approaches, inu-enced by Soviet historical materialism. The project to map the countrysarchaeological sites, set out in a programmatic statement by the partici-pants in a national Conference of Archaeological Societies in 1913,generated a series of volumes until the 1960s, then languished, until it


Introduction 5

was reinstated in a considerably updated form during the 1990s.7 TheGreek local historical societies, whose conscientious accumulation ofinscribed stones and other historical remains formed the nucleus ofcivic museums in the twentieth century, have lacked the institutionalcapacity to undertake signicant topographical projects outside urbancentres.8 Such initiatives seem even less likely today, at a time of eco-nomic crisis, than they did a few decades ago.

THE END OF A ROYAL ECONOMY

When Perseus, king of Macedonia, was defeated in open battle towardsthe end of June 168 bc, the Roman state effectively acquired the power todo with his realm, and with a plethora of Macedonian dependencies,what it wished. By this artless device, the Romans and their Italian allieslevered themselves into a permanent footing on the Greek mainland.9

Until that time, Roman legions or naval ships, and Italian or other alliedtroops, had been sent on campaign to support specic, short-termpolitical objectivesas well as a vestigial protectorate along the coastlineof southern Illyria and northern Epiros, a narrow toe-hold on theAdriatic coast. The victory at Pydna gave the Roman side an unrivallednegotiating advantage. The rules of engagement changed suddenly anddramatically.

There may have been no Italian soldiers stationed in Greece, and noformal or ofcial presence. Yet inter-state decisions were no longer madewithout the approval of the Roman state. Roman intervention in theadministration and internal affairs of the Balkan peninsula over thecourse of the second century bc provides an unusual opportunity tolook closely at the anatomy of this well-watered, generously populatedand resourced region. The importance of this juncture in the expansionof Roman power across the eastern Mediterranean attracted responsesand reections from a variety of ancient authors and modern scholarshiphas accorded it equal prominence. The spotlight of Roman politicalaction soon moved elsewhere, but the concentration of many kinds ofevidence, and the unusual conjunction of very different viewpoints,makes this an unrivalled chance to see behind the veil of inter-statepreoccupations to the way of life of societies that are at once very

7 Domaradzki 2005, 261. 8 Loukopoulou 1989, 2738.9 Eckstein 2010, 5678 and n.3, discusses the Roman understanding of empire c.150 bc;

cf. also Champion 2007.


6 Introduction

much part of what we consider the classical heritage of antiquity and, atthe same time, remain enigmatically mysterious.

The extraordinary material world of ancient cultures around the northAegean shores has shown that these societies enjoyed many of the sametraditions as their more southerly counterparts in central and southernGreece. There are many similarities in cult practices, in the athletic andmilitary training of young men, and in farming practices and other formsof subsistence. There are also signicant differences, particularly notice-able, to modern eyes at least, in the special treatment of certain membersof society after death; and in some forms of social organization, whichvalued individual leadership and provided institutional mechanisms foridentifying leaders, who also had a less immediately apparent but evi-dently substantive role in ritual. The special training for leadershipwithin these societies is often seen, in modern political analyses, as anautocratic tendency,10 perhaps because our own societies have beenmuch preoccupied with the failings of leadership, in times when socialforms have become remarkably complex. Aside from the rhetoricinduced by political disputes, there certainly are some grounds forthinking that the rulers of the north were seen by their contemporariesin other parts of Greece as exceptionally powerful individuals. Such kingscould send letters to Greek cities and expect action in return.11

Yet the forms of leadership that emerged in the north-east Balkansprovided the foundations of the Successor kingdoms of Alexander theGreats realmarguably among the most successful kingdoms of pre-modern times, since they lasted not only for the three centuries leadingup to the Roman Empire, but laid the institutional foundations of theeastern provinces up until the Ottoman conquests.

There is another aspect of leadership in the north-east Balkans that hasreceived less attention, namely the ability to coordinate complex func-tions. The ancient kingdoms of the Balkans encompassed irregular ter-rainmountains draped in thick, impassable forests; distant plains;waterlogged and alluvial coastlines. This topography was hard to exploiteffectively without a clearly coordinated set of organizational structures.Historians draw attention to the timber and mineral deposits of theChalkidic peninsula, of Aegean Thrace or of lower Macedonia. Eventoday it is far from easy to exploit these resources without systematicplanning and coordination. Maps all too easily disguise what the travellerdiscovers at his or her coststeep, tortuous roads, rocky, precipitous

10 Errington 1990, 45; HM II, 160, 162; Mari 2002, 49 with further refs.11 On royal letters see now the volume edited by Yivtach-Firanko, esp. the contributions

by Ceccarelli and Harris (see Harris forthcoming).


Introduction 7

terrain, and inaccessible coastlines. The valuable timber, mineral, andplant resources could not be accessed without developing a partnership;but coordination was hard to achieve without pyramidal social structures.

What made these kingdoms attractive to ambitious Italian merchantsfrom the second century bc onwards was indigenous success in exploit-ing these resources, so clearly apparent in the generous provision ofgilding, silver ornament, and other decorative elaborations of militaryapparel. If the conquerors could decapitate the apex of the pyramid, inthe same way that human societies replaced the pack leader or bell-weather in a herd of animals, they could enjoy the benets that theinfrastructure of command entailed. It is the economic framework ofthese northern kingdoms in their heyday before Roman imperial expan-sion that deserves serious consideration, and what this book seeks toreveal and understand.

Neither Livy, nor his predecessor, Polybius, had much appetite for adispassionate evaluation of what amounted to asset-stripping on abreath-taking scale (6,000 talents in gold and silver from the royaltreasury alone: Plb. 18.35.4).12 Macedon was, quite literally, dismem-bered. The anatomy of this process gives us a clear insight into themethods and tactics deployed by Roman commanders and senatorialadvisors in order to ensure that the former kingdoms assets either passeddirectly under Roman control, or could be effectively diverted for laterexploitation. We can look back at the evolution of Macedonias earliersuccess through the social and cultural connections accumulated overmany centuries with its neighbours; and forwards in time beyond thecircumstances of military disaster. Although Macedonias history afterAlexander the Great is often seen by historians as one of decline (in termsof manpower as well as resources), there are other ways of looking at theevidence which explain the kingdoms prosperity up until Perseus defeat.Nor should we assume that provincial status condemned Macedonia toeconomic stagnation. Rural as well as urban investigations of ancient sites(Fig. 1.1), triggered in part by development work, especially motorwaynetworks, show that the rhythms of economic life were not so simple.

Perseus defeat may have signalled the end of the Macedonian rulinghouse, despite subsequent attempts to revive it. In regional terms this wasthe end of one historical chapter and the opening of another. From thepoint of view of the regions inhabitants, it was an unlooked-for intrusionthat could, indeed had to be accommodated. Whatever the advantagesthat the Roman authorities enjoyed immediately after Pydna, these

12 See the analysis in Gruen 1982.


8 Introduction

gradually dissipated over time. The Via Egnatia, one of the great arterialhighways of the Roman Empire, which began at Dyrrachion on theAdriatic coast, extending across the Pindhos range to Thessalonika onthe Thermaic Gulf, and thence parallel with the Aegean shoreline,eventually joined up with Byzantion. It was conceived in the aftermathof experiences during the Second Macedonian War against Perseusfather, Philip V, when Roman troops had trouble moving overland inthe mountainous terrain of Pindhos, although the main period of con-struction probably began in the third quarter of the second century bc.The chief purpose of the road was therefore to convey troops quickly andeasily from Italy or the Adriatic coast into the Balkans. Once the roadhad been built, it recongured human dynamics within the continentalarea. With the extension of Roman power in Illyria, and up to theDanube in the rst century bc, the principal theatre of military oper-ations moved northwards, while administrative and commercial trafcdominated the Via Egnatia. Italian and Roman merchants, negotiatores,and civic ofcials, whose names proclaim their high social standing, aredocumented in cities positioned along the road, such as Edessa, Herak-leia Lynkestis, Beroia, and Philippi. There appears to be a direct connec-tion between the route of the Via Egnatia and these social networks.13

Fig. 1.1. Dion, Macedonia: sanctuary of Isis, second century ad. Dion was rstidentied for modern scholarly purposes by Colonel William Leake during areconnoitre in 1806, when he noted the citys fortications and various still-visible monuments. Lon Heuzey followed in 1855 and 1861. Giorgios Sotiriadisbegan systematic excavation on behalf of the University of Thessaloniki in 1928,which still sponsors current investigations.

13 Walbank 1985 and 2002b; Fasolo 2003; Lolos 2009; cf. also Sve 2005.


Introduction 9

The road was of course a creation of the Roman imperial authorities.Yet its course encapsulates the close underlying connections betweenlower Macedonia and the Aegean coast of Thrace that preceded Romanexpansion. A prior route network can be traced back at least to the roadbuilt by Persian armies under the Great Kings Dareios and Xerxes in therst two decades of the fth century bc. The ecology of communitiesalong this coastline presupposes tracks and roads linking settlements onthe sea with those farther inland.

CONCEPTUALIZING ROYAL ECONOMIES

Monarchic economy is one of the four forms of economic managementidentied by the pseudo-Aristotelian pamphlet [Ar.] Oeconomica, andthe most important of the four in the authors view. This document isreally a sketch of what were perceived by some contemporaries as the mainscal tools of crown authority.14 It is not therefore the best starting pointfor understanding the interplay of ambitions, aspirations, and achieve-ments in real time scenarios. Close study of epigraphic documents hasmade it easier to understand how kings interacted with cities and otherpolitical entities in the nal three centuries bc. Documents from Macedo-nia and Thrace are beginning to t the rulers of these kingdoms into thepatterns of policy exhibited by other Hellenistic monarchs.15

The Macedonians had a good deal in common, culturally, socially, andeconomically, not only with their southerly Greek neighbours, but alsowith their eastern counterparts in Thrace. Before his eventual capture,Perseus was apparently planning to ee to the Odrysian king Kotys (Livy45.6). Polybius tells us that Kotys was a likeable man, which suggests thathe was personally rather better known within Greek and Macedoniancircles than the surviving sources imply (27.12; cf. Livy 42.67.3). TheOdrysian cavalry played a loyal part in supporting Perseus forces atPydna. Moreover, Livy tells us that even before hostilities emerged withRome, Kotys was (42.29) secretly on the side of Perseus. Notwithstand-ing Philip Vs invasion of central Thrace in 204 bc, both Philip V andPerseus maintained strong relations with the Odrysian princes andtheir kin, conrmed by at least one known marriage alliance. This

14 Van Groningen 1933; Descat 2003; Brodersen 2006.15 Bringmann and von Steuben 1995, 11085; 23334 (Samothrace); pp. 55051 (Index

5.1, Argeadae; 5.2, Diadochen); Hatzopoulos 1988a; 1996, I, 33459, 3619, 371460,1999b; Archibald 2010.


10 Introduction

acknowledgement opens a new understanding of the Balkan strategy ofthe last Antigonid rulers.

Kings could impose taxes on their subjects. We know something aboutthe kinds of taxes that Macedonian and Thracian rulers did impose andthese provide the outlines of how general revenues were raised on behalfof the central authorities.16 Tax details nevertheless provide only astarting point. Scholarly interest has focused heavily on military expend-iture. The military campaigns of the Macedonian and Thracian kingsform the substance of narrative histories, so this bias is not surprising.Economic information appears only sporadically in such accounts.17

Nevertheless, ancient rulers lacked many of the tools that have beendeveloped since the Middle Ages to regulate the terms of loans, controlows of capital, and, in particular, to enforce scal policies. Ultimately,the only sanction a ruler had against a recalcitrant entity was brute force.As Philip II and his later namesake Philip V found, this tactic could beineffective, if not counter-productive. Cities with strong maritime linkscould resist military attack, given the right extra-territorial support.18

Even when vulnerable to arbitrary pressure from central authorities,cities and looser community structures within the east Balkans couldand did develop their own economic networks, because of the segmen-tary nature of ancient trading relationships (see Continental trade,below). Rulers might appropriate harbour dues from successful commer-cial political units, a technique also adopted by Roman authorities whentheir portorium charges were similarly exacted. They did not usuallyintervene, however, to dictate with whom commerce might betransacted.

The capacity of Macedonian and Thracian rulers to facilitate theprovision of scarce resources is an aspect of power that has received farless attention than their military, not to say predatory, activities. Thedocumentary record is rather different for cities within these two king-doms, as compared with other areas of the eastern Mediterranean, partlybecause the nature of the relationship between rulers and cities wasdifferent in the core areas directly administered by kings. In the case ofMacedonia and of the Odrysian kingdom of Thrace, formal negotiationsbetween rulers and cities within their territories (as reected in inscribedtexts) were required principally in cases where the negotiating authoritieswere in some sense heterodox. Thus we nd Amyntas III negotiating analliance with the Chalkidians of Olynthos in the document referred to

16 See Ch. 2 for more detailed analysis and discussion.17 See for example the comments of Millett 2010, 4725.18 See eg. Avram 2003; Gabrielsen 2007; Archibald forthcoming b/.


Introduction 11

above. Similarly, a successor of Kotys I outlined in a decree recorded onthe so-called Pistiros inscription the terms on which merchants fromThasos, Apollonia, and Maroneia could operate in the emporion ofPistiros and other emporia, named and unnamed.19 Hatzopoulos hascharacterized the distinction in Macedonian territory as that between theOld kingdom and the Macedonian commonwealth. Yet our modernconcepts of Macedonian territory rely far more than we may care toadmit on the seemingly arbitrary divisions effected in 167 bc by AemiliusPaullus and his Roman ofcials (Livy 45.29). From the point of view oftheir southerly neighbours, the territorial dimensions of the Macedonianand Thracian kingdoms appear to have been unstable, highly dynamic,and altogether rather unclear. What is more, when Thracian rulers wereacting in close cooperation with their Macedonian peers, as occurred inthe 330s, and again under Philip V and Perseus, much of Thrace south ofthe Danube also seems to have been aligned with Macedonian policy.This apparent ambiguity about territory means that we need to take acloser look at the nature of territorial power and consider what therelationship was between the region as a whole and the economies ofkingdoms, cities, and other entities.

REGIONAL ECONOMIES OF THE NORTH AEGEAN

Exploring regional approaches

It is one thing to consider Macedonia, the template in organizational andpolitical terms for the Hellenistic kingdoms of Alexander the GreatsSuccessors; in what sense, however, do the other parts of the east Balkansconstitute a region that can be explored as a coherent economic phe-nomenon? The area considered in this book explores several hetero-geneous political entities, which changed over the time span withinits scope. In addition to Macedonia, there were several princelyentities in Thrace, including the long-lived Odrysian kingdom, andindependent territorial polities, including native ones of the interior, aswell as Greek-speaking civic communities along the Aegean and BlackSea coastlines.

Regional approaches to the ecologies of the Mediterranean past haveproved to be a fruitful way of enhancing our understanding of historical

19 SEG xliii, 486; xlvi, 872*; xlvii, 1101; Velkov and Domaradzka 1994; Chankowski andDomaradzka 1999; see further Chs. 2 and 5.


12 Introduction

economies. A number of different approaches have been pursued inrecent studies. Horden and Purcell have used the term denite placesas a means of redening the nexus of human behaviours within fourregional zonesthe Biqa, southern Etruria, Cyrenaica, and Melosemphasizing the progressive fragmentation that can, in practice, bediscerned as the warp and weft of behavioural patterns. Their focus hasbeen concentrated at least as much on perceptions of difference, asidentied by travellers, whether witnesses from remote times, or morerecent observers, as it has traced the material imprint of conscioustransformations of the landscapes sketched.20 Reger has identied threeseparate trajectories along which regional and inter-regional economicconnections can be explored, namely geography, ethnicity, and polity.21

Historians and geographers have not abandoned the conceptual connec-tion between regions as topographic units, and certain cultural forms ofexpression that coincide with these notional territorial entities. There is,nevertheless, a conscious emphasis in these studies on the complexbehavioural patterns that can reinforce a sense of congruence betweenregions and their inhabitants, either amongst the inhabitants themselves,or as articulated by observers. Fluctuating powers, migrating groups, andgraduated changes of cultural practice have served to modify the humanand constructed textures of Mediterranean as of other regions, sowingmultiplicity and heterogeneity. This heterogeneity has, in turn, providedthe fuel for innovation and further cultural transformations. If we acceptthat changing congurations within a given landscape can become thesubject of regional enquiry, it is evident that the boundedness of theregion in question can be dened in a variety of ways. The contents ofthis book provide one framework, following a pattern of interconnec-tions that is especially prominent within the ve centuries explored. Thisframework could in principle be enlarged, to include parts of westernTurkey (since the Bosporus was in the rst millennium bc, as it remainstoday, a bridge between Europe and Asia); northwards, to include theCarpathian Basin, as well as the Danube estuary; or westwards, as far asthe Adriatic. The connections with these wider territories are acknow-ledged under different topics in the following chapters. The justicationfor concentrating on the east Balkans is partly a matter of historical

20 Horden and Purcell, 5388; coincidentally, their Map 31A corresponds in essence, ifnot in the exact contours selected there, with the area covered in these pages; cf. Purcell andHorden 2005; Millett considers that Macedonia ought, in principle, to be a good candidatefor such a regional approach (2010, 483).

21 Reger 2011; cf. also Reger 1994; Oliver 2006a; Elton and Reger 2007, 1314; Reger2013a; 2013b.


Introduction 13

coherence and partly a reection of current research, which has exposedthe trajectories explored here most clearly. In future other congurationsmay well be revealed alongside them.

The east Balkannorth Aegean region

In the case of the east Balkans, evidence for the intersection of historicalwith ecological and economic dynamics is surprisingly rich and varied.We may include the direct political links between the kingdoms ofMacedonia and Thrace; those between individual cities; and betweencities and kingdoms. Political connections are rather better representedat inter-state level than those of a more local kind.22 More distantcontacts evidently required a more transparent, lasting set of signiers;hence the production of documents in stone, which record alliances,agreements, and the terms applicable to them. Local exchanges operatedwithin the parameters of various higher-level agreements, so can rarelybe tracked in a direct way, except by certain kinds of inorganic objects, orby the existence of routes and tracks that were indispensible to trafc.One of the single most powerful material indications of trafc across thisregion is the distribution of wine amphorae from the island of Thasos.23

Thasian wine was among the four most widely distributed varieties in theeastern Mediterranean between the fourth and second centuries bc.Current analyses of the volume of this trafc, and of its destinations,suggests that the east Balkan region, from lower Macedonia in the west tothe Danube estuary in the far north-east, formed a regular, if uctuatingpattern of recipients and partners for many centuries. The broad param-eters conditioning this trafc were shaped by Aegean-wide trading rela-tions. Changes within the large-scale conditions of trade facilitated theemergence of these regional markets in the rst place and also deter-mined the demise of this trafc in the second century bc. What did theThasians exchange for wine? The answers to this question have varied ashistorians and archaeologists have increasingly rened their knowledgeof local production and brought a wider range of activities into consider-ation. These answers will be reconsidered later in this chapter.

Modern ways of thinking about the history of the Balkan peninsula arestrongly shaped by the regions organization in Roman Imperial times.Pausanias, whose Guide to Greece is undoubtedly the most complete and

22 Reger 2011, 3689; for an earlier analysis of the internal trafc of the Odrysiankingdom, see Archibald 1998.

23 Tzochev 2010, and forthcoming.


14 Introduction

articulate work of scholarship to present Greek culture in its settingduring the Imperial period, did not travel farther north than the districtof Phocis. His survey of monuments and sanctuaries, both those surviv-ing in his day and those long gone, occasionally refers to people andplaces outside the purview of his itinerary.24 Thessaly, Macedonia,Thrace, and Epirus are nevertheless rare entries. The rst part of Book7 of Strabos Geography, which, according to the opening chapter (7.1.1,C289) covered the landmass of the European interior from the RiverRhine to the Don and the Sea of Azov, provides a sketch of someprominent peoples within this enormous area, including Germans, Thra-cians, the inhabitants of the lower Danube, the western approaches of theBlack Sea, and Epirus. After 7.7.12, in the midst of a section that exploredsouthern Epirus, culminating in an account of the oracle at Dodona(7.7.910), the narrative comes to a halt. The later sections, whichexplored Macedonia and the southern parts of Thrace, are missing, andthe reader must bear in mind that the disconnected fragments that areappended to the surviving sections are little more than citations of theGeographer in other, later authors, and lack the coherence of a sustainedexposition. We do not have the guiding hand of a witness, who can offera distinct narrative, providing a window onto these northern localities,whose formal defeat freed Italians from the burden of any form of tributeat a stroke (Cicero, de Ofc. 2.76; Pliny NH 33.56).

New research directions

Given the fragmentary nature of the written evidence, it has beentempting for historians to limit their investigations to coastal settlementswhere a representative sample of epigraphic documents can be demon-strated. The difculty with this approach is that it elides the deephinterlands that provided the fundamental resource base for such har-bour towns.25

During the last thirty years the enigmatic pall has begun to lift fromour limited modern impressions of this region. Material discoveries,particularly the recovery of intact and extremely wealthy tombs inlower Macedonia and in inland Thrace, have generated popular interestand stimulated much-needed research grants. The new information baseis not conned to the socially better-off. Environmental and spatial data

24 e.g. the pillar and urn commemorating the supposed tomb of Orpheus outside Dion(9.30.7); cf. 6.20.18, 9.17.7, 30.412.

25 See Reger (2013b) for reections on this very topic.


Introduction 15

offer a far broader canvas against which to make sense of the entrancesand exits that narrative histories proffer. What is more, new discoverieshave not been conned to material culture. Important textual evidence,including the papyrus fragments from one rich burial at Derveni, north-east of Thessaloniki, and a growing body of inscriptions in Greek, offer arich and articulate resource independent of the kinds of narrativeaccount already referred to.

Much of the scholarly as well as popular interest in the region has beenpreoccupied with the identities and cultural associations of the commu-nities to which the material evidence and documents belonged. Were theMacedonians Greeks? In what sense did Macedonian and Thraciansocieties share features in common with their Greek-speaking neigh-bours to the south? These questions are difcult to answer, because theyhave been formulated according to xed assumptions about past iden-tities that are rarely disconnected from questions about identity andownership in the present. Perhaps these and similar questions need tobe reformulated before satisfactory answers can be produced. In themeantime, we may consider the consequences of the dissemination ofthe Greek language throughout the peninsula and the ways in which thiscommunication tool provided access to a new community of culturalpractices, new kinds of knowledge, and above all, a greatly enhancedsocial network.26

The material culture of the Balkans invites economic questions along-side cultural ones. Where did the wealth of these rich northern societiescome from? What happened to their wealth once Roman military per-sonnel and administrators had created a new institutional framework forthe regions inhabitants? The coastline of the north Aegean and thegeological formations of central Thrace contain some of the most sig-nicant mineral resources of the eastern Mediterranean that wereexploited in antiquity. Mount Pangaion was the single most importantsource of precious metals in the north Aegean. Competition for itswealth explains why so many different agents attempted to monopolize

26 For my purposes the Greek world is, broadly speaking, the vast area (describedbelow) within which Greek was, or became, the principal language of the upper classes. . . . InEurope the dividing line began on the east coast of the Adriatic, roughly where the same [19thmeridian east of Greenwich] cuts the coast of modern Albania, a little north of Durazzo (theancient Dyrrachium, earlier Epidamnus); and from there it went east and slightly north,across Albania, Yugoslavia and Bulgaria, passing between Soa (the ancient Serdica) andPlovdiv (Philippopolis) and joining the Danube at about the point where it turns north belowSilistra on the edge of the Dobrudja. (De Ste Croix, G. E. M. 1981, 78). This process wasalready well under way by the fourth century bc, judging by the widespread evidence ofgrafti (See further Ch. 2).


16 Introduction

access to it. The proximity of timber for shipbuilding constituted anothermajor attraction. The principal waterways and overland coastal plainsenabled corn and human resources to be transported with comparativeease from the continental interior. The same areas were used for inten-sive horse and cattle rearing, and were therefore among the most valu-able sources of large breeds of animal stock. Seen from this perspective,close study of older evidence can yield new information. Nevertheless,some of the innovative cultural phenomena that we now recognize inMacedonia, Thrace, and the Propontis would have been hard to identifywithout the discoveries of recent decades.

Urban development in the east Balkan region during the late twentiethand start of the twenty-rst century makes it easier to understand what thestructures of everyday life were like in classical antiquity, in part becausemodern development also leads to the discovery of ancient remains, butalso because we can conceive other ways of landscape use that may bedirectly applicable to the remote past. The comparative underdevelopmentof large parts of the west and east Balkans in early modern and morerecent times has encouraged the creation of historical models of settlementin antiquity that make rural and ephemeral forms of community life thedominant ones. This tendency has encouraged a perception that socialunits in the northern Balkans were fundamentally different from those inthe rest of the peninsula and islands. A visitor to the Aegean islandsrecognizes congruence between the indigenous style of dry stone architec-ture in picturesque harbour towns and the nucleated pattern of stonepaved streets in ancient civic communities. It is rather more difcult tosee what the relationship is between modern towns in the Balkan interiorand their ancient predecessors. What would such towns have been like?Recent research suggests that although the ecology of the north favoured arather different set of social congurations from those of central andsouthern Greece, the observable differences may have been much lessmarked than the terminology of poleis and other forms of communityorganization imply. Until quite recently many scholars assumed thatclassical city-states were absent from the north, except for a limitednumber of colonial foundations strung out around the coast from lowerMacedonia to the Black Sea.27 After all, when geographers of the fth andfourth centuries bc described these regions, they referred most frequentlyto poleis in the coastal areas and had little to say about what was happeningfarther inlandor so it appears at rst glance.

27 Compare the description of cities in Macedonia by Papazoglou 1988, 37 and n.1 andHammond inHM II, 615 on the one hand, with Hatzopoulos 1996, I, 49123, esp. 10523;Hatzopoulos and Paschidis 2004 on the other.


Introduction 17

CONTINENTAL TRADE

The ancient coastal harbour towns of the north Aegean (Fig. 2.2) weredominated by a commercial network of Greek-speaking ship-owners,captains, and agricultural producers providing for them. In order tounderstand the close relationship of the former to the inhabitants ofthe continental hinterland, whether westwards, towards Macedonia, ornorthwards, into Thrace, we should begin not with the periploi that traceport-to-port trafc, but with Thucydides analysis of the interdepend-ence between inland communities and coastal ones:

those who live inland, or off the main trade routes, ought to recognise thefact that, if they fail to support the maritime powers, they will nd it muchmore difcult to secure an outlet for their exports, and to receive in returngoods which are imported to them by sea. (Thuc. 1.120.2)

Thucydides put these words into the mouths of the Corinthian delegatesto the congress that took place at Sparta in 432 bc, on the eve of thePeloponnesian war. The people whom the Corinthians wanted theirfellow delegates to pay special attention to were the Athenians, whosecollective policies were consciously intended to restrict traders fromMegara. On the other hand, the warning was intended to remind inlandcities of the Peloponnese that Corinth was the largest and most activeregional exchange centre. Whatever the precise reasons for this celebrated

Fig. 1.2. A shing boat at anchor on the Sithonia peninsula of Chalkidike.


18 Introduction

spat, it was perfectly possible for one state to deny another access to itsmarkets, because commercial transactions between states were predi-cated on a system of mutual agreements to trade. Individual traders froma partner state could then operate freely under these previously agreedterms.28

We think rst of all about trading agreements between Greek-speak-ing states, because much of the surviving written evidence for tradingagreements reects transactions between such partners. However, thereis no reason to believe that commercial agreements (synthkai) of thiskind were concluded only with Greek-speaking communities. The Greekalphabet was used by many non-Greeks in the Iberian peninsula for avariety of local languages besides Greek, to say nothing of the diffusion ofPhoenician scripts. The inland distribution of such scripts makes it clearthat the received picture of predominantly coastal users of Greek isfalse.29 In the same way, some of the north Aegean and Hellespontineharbours developed an international prole, which allowed traders frommany different parts of southern Europe and the Aegean to conducttransactions. Kyzikos and Byzantion became the best-known commer-cial centres of the northern periphery of the Mediterranean, with aninternational reputation. Although it is hard to point out documentaryevidence of transactions with the cities and communities of the contin-ental interior, the clearest evidence is in the wide, capillary-like distribu-tion of nds that have a distinct commercial prole. Kyzikene electrumstaters enjoyed a wide circulation in the Black Sea, continental Thrace,and western Asia Minor. We know much less about its port history.Byzantion, on the other hand, was an entrept for inland communitieson either side of the Bosporus, as well as a port for ships travellingthrough the Straits. Much of the direct documentary evidence belongsto the nal three centuries bc. But its origins go back to much earliertimes (Hdt. 4.144.2).30 The long-term success of the network of taxstations on both shores of the Bosporus, and of Byzantion in particular,accounts in part for the extraordinary rise of this city. The process bywhich it began to develop its assets can be traced from the later years ofthe Peloponnesian war down to the introduction of the Tax Law of Asiain the rst century bc. Byzantion began to develop a regional strategy inthe fourth century bc, as it gradually loosened the hold previouslyimposed on it by the Athenian navy. During the third century, Byzantion

28 Bresson 2000a, 11630, for a detailed exposition of the political mechanisms andfurther discussion of this key text.

29 See the discussion and detailed distribution maps in de Hoz 2010.30 See further Chs 2 and 3; Archibald forthcoming b/.


Introduction 19

enhanced this strategy by encouraging the Northern League of citieswith shared economic interests.

Trafc in antiquity was, for the most part, local trafc. Analyses oftransport patterns in Egyptian papyri demonstrate that most journeyswere local journeys.31 In terms of global transport dynamics, even in theearly nineteenth century only a tenth of the trafc in commoditiestravelled by water, because the great majority of journeys involvedshort distancescarting foodstuffs from elds to barns and mills; fuelto households; livestock to market.32 This near constant hum of carts andbeasts of burden is what made more complex, strategically driven jour-neys possible. Those who owned animals in the countryside had to investresource in order to maintain their beasts. Sheep and pigs might be kepton marginal land, but cattle and horses require pasture and water, andare consequently among the most expensive forms of livestock. Therewas little point in keeping such animals, unless they paid their way.Hiring out cattle and horses for traction or for private travel was theeasiest and the most exible way to maintain them, as commentators formany historical periods agree.33 Whether we consider the historicalnarratives of Herodotus, or Thucydides, or Xenophon, or the historiansof Alexander the Great; the iconography of royal and civic coins, theimagery of private monuments, or excavated osteological remains, themessage that these sources convey is clear. Horses and cattle were highlyprominent in the economies of Macedonia and Thrace. They providedthese societies with resources in transport and communications thattheir less well-endowed neighbours could not, indeed did not competewith.

The focus of this book is not on a single political entity or kingdom, buton a network of socially and politically interdependent and interlinkedunits. The kingdom of Macedonia under the Argead and Antigoniddynasties was politically and culturally orientated not only to its southernneighbours but also north-eastwards, towards Thrace, the Propontis andBlack Sea coastline. Argead Macedonian and Odrysian Thracian rulerscompeted for inuence along the Aegean littoral, the principal harbours ofwhich were dominated by wealthy families of merchants and landownerswhose primary afliations were overseas. The affairs of these port cities,and of offshore islands such as Thasos and Samothrace, became deeplyengaged with their continental hinterlands. Whilst stressing their pedigree

31 Adams 2007, 1034, 11995; Adams 2012, 21840.32 Archibald (forthcoming a/), citing Braudel 1982, 3502 on road trafc volumes in

Europe between 1800 and the 1820s.33 Adams 2007, 2812, 2879; cf. Chandezon 2005.


20 Introduction

as offshoots from major civic centres in Aegean Greece, these portsconducted close trading relations with their continental neighbours,many of whom spoke local dialects or languages unrelated to Greek.There may well have been a greater degree of shared vocabulary betweenthese communities, particularly along the coastal lowlands, as a result oflong-term cultural communication and commodity exchange. Greek wasthe lingua franca of commerce in the region, and those engaged incommerce are likely to have been Greek speakers, whether as bilingualor multilingual agents. There was a stronger incentive for non-Greekspeakers to learn Greek than the other way around. This might alsoexplain why the civic histories in these ports seem to reect little of thecommercial activity that is so evident in their material culture and in thetastes and preferences of their non-Greek neighbours. Monoglot Greeksliving or working in the port towns had to negotiate with non-Greekspeakers through interpreters. This was the experience of Xenophon,who, as an Athenian mercenary captain of a Peloponnesian army, givesa unique insight into the busy comings and goings of Thracian regionaladministrators and opportunistic commercial travellers, as well as ofsoldiers of fortune.34

A LEARNED QUARTET: MICHAEL ROSTOVTZEFF,ANDREW SHERRATT, VELIZAR VELKOV,

AND MANOLIS ANDRONIKOS

The Balkan region has not played a prominent part in handbooks andgeneral studies of ancient Mediterranean economies. Southern Greece,particularly the islands of the southern Aegean, Athens, and the Pelo-ponnese, often appear as case studies. Northern Greece, Macedonia, andthe Straits have rarely been included. The inaccessibility of materialpublished in local languages is perhaps partly to blame. A more signi-cant inuence on the selection of suitable examples has been the concep-tual history of Europe, which has most often been subdivided in apolarized scheme, whether between east and west, or north and

34 Book 7 of Xenophons Anabasis reveals the permeability of south-eastern Thrace totravellers. Herakleides of Maroneia (Anab. 7.3.1619, 4.2, 5.2, 45, 68, 911, 6.2, 41, 7.41;Stronk 1995, ad loc.) is given a rather dubious prole as a money-grubbing go-between, butthis may have more to do with Xenophons own self-justication than with any basis inreality.


Introduction 21

south.35 Nevertheless, the north has certainly not been neglected byscholarship. Four individuals are singled out here to illustrate the kindsof trajectories that research into the economic history of the region hastaken in the last century. Each of them has played a signicant role, notonly in shaping scholarly perceptions of this sector of the ancientMediterranean hinterland, but also in developing specic methodologies.These different approaches provide a useful starting point for consider-ing how a history of northern economies can be written.

Rostovtzeff and the grand narrative

Although Michael Rostovtzeff s Social and Economic History of theHellenistic World has more often been invoked, in recent times, as theanti-type, rather than the prototype of scholarship on ancient economies,the example he set of combining different types of data, epigraphic andarchaeological, as well as literary and historical, continues to provide amodel of the primary resource base with which historians should beginan enquiry of historically remote economies. Indeed, this has even beencalled the only way forward (Horden and Purcell, 32). The Russianhistorian gave far more prominence to Macedonia and Thrace in hismagisterial history than many subsequent writers on the Aegean area.His knowledge of Cyrillic scripts and of Slav languages made the sourcematerial accessible, but this familiarity also made him sensible of thepossibilities that the limited evidence available at that time could offer.The problems that historians have since identied with Rostovtzeff sapproach have less to do with his materials, and more to do with hisconceptual framework. His economic history is couched in a politicalnarrative, which is, in essence, the political history of a subset of theagents concerned:

The history of the commercial relations between Greece (especially Ioniaand Athens) and Thrace is similar [to the Bosporan kingdom]. Thraceexported to Greece through the colonies of the Euxine (Apollonia andMesembria) and those on the Aegean coast (especially Abdera, Maronea,Aenus, and Amphipolis), large quantities of the same products as wereexported from South Russia (chiey grain and sh) and of metals andtimber as well. The imports from Thrace in the early years were probablybalanced by exports of wine and olive oil from Greece. But the Greek citiesof the Thracian coast very soon became notable centres of wine production,

35 Horden and Purcell provide an extensive discussion, which has not been supersededin subsequent debates (2000, 925).


22 Introduction

and the Thracians themselves were from an early date expert viticultural-ists. It is therefore highly probable that from very early times the exports ofGreece to the Greek cities of Thrace and to Thrace itself consisted chiey ofolive oil and manufactured goods. (Rostovtzeff, SEHHW, 111).

Rostovtzeff assumed that the principal driver in these economic relationswas the city of Athens: Athens supported, if not created, the Odrysiankingdom, as it had the Bosporan kingdom (ibid.). This argument needsto be unpicked. The Athenians had the most powerful navy in theAegean after the Persian Wars, and continued to enforce policies favour-able to themselves for much of the fourth as well as the fth century bc.But there is no evidence that the Athenians helped to create the stateentities of Thrace and the Bosporan kingdom. This assumption, whichmay have more to do with the experience of nineteenth-century imperi-alist policies in the region than with ancient realities, has been shown tobe the weakest part of his interpretation.36 On the other hand, hisappreciation of local ecologies, which included the native domesticationof vines and the production of wine, are only beginning to be re-evaluated, with the scientic study of organic remains (see Chapters 6and 7). He was right to draw attention to the intrinsic advantages of theresource base that was available in the north, and of how these resourceswere exploited, both independently and in conjunction with traders, whowere in many cases Greek traders. Here Rostovtzeff s approach is mostclearly in tune with the tenor of current international research pro-grammes in the Black Sea area.37

Nevertheless, Rostovtzeff s was a rather complex attitude to thesenorthern regions and his cultural interpretations changed as he movedduring the 1920s from his Russian origins, and university post atSt. Petersburg, to Yale, via a brief sojourn at Oxford. For Rostovtzeffthe Russian professor, the Bosporan kingdom was a deeply oriental place.Subsequently, for Rostovtzeff the exile, it became a place imbued with theGreek genius.38 Yet the achievements he ascribed to an energetic bour-geoisie form the real focus of criticism by fellow historians, rather thanhis assumptions about a generalized form of cultural superiority that hasyet to receive objective treatment.39

36 Archibald 1998, Ch. 4; Archibald 2001, 3805; Bresson et al. 2007; and esp. Mller2010, 1920; cf. 2366.

37 Bresson et al. 2007 and other contributions to the same volume.38 Mller 2010, 19 and nn.4244, citing Bowersock 1993. Rostovtzeff also spent time at

the University of Wisconsin in Madison before moving to Yale. (I am grateful to Gary Regerfor this additional link in Rs North American itinerary).

39 Horden and Purcell, 32; Archibald 2001, 382; Mller 2010, 19.


Introduction 23

In their magnicent and immensely erudite survey of history of, not in,the Mediterranean, Horden and Purcell have rejected Rostovtzeff s socio-economic construction as an obsolete relic of early twentieth-centuryscholarship. Their argument relies partly on a perceived contrast betweenhis grandly interactionist conception and an ecologizing one. Whilsttheir own approach is avowedly ecological, they reject the tendency of theAnnaliste school of history, whose practitioners have so consistentlyattempted to unite geographical with historical approaches, towards asomewhat dogmatic substitution of analysis for narrative; statistics forimpressions; comparativism and methodological self-consciousness fornave positivism; and, above all, as bets a broadly sociological approach,a concentration on the anonymous masses instead of conspicuous indi-viduals, and on continuities and regularities instead of rapid changes.40

Rostovtzeff s narrative consciously or unconsciously comprised a deter-ministic tendency that merges, ironically perhaps, with the geographicaldeterminism that Horden and Purcell have criticized so trenchantly. TheHellenistic world tended to decay in Rostovtzeff s imagination, and thecity of Rome reshaped the inner forces of the eastern half of her Empire toprevent decay and restore peace.41 Whatever we think of the politicalnarrative encapsulated in this vision, it does not begin to describe theeconomic relationships within the region, even for the latter end of theve centuries under consideration in this book. An economic narrativewill not necessarily coincide with the kind of grand political narrativeespoused by Rostovtzeff. Ultimately, his single, overarching explan

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