If we, readers of the early twenty-first century, could be transported backwards in time to southern Europe in the 470s, how might the vast block of land between the Adriatic and Black Seas have looked to a visitor who had just left Delphi, for instance? What might he (it would inevitably have been a he) have thought as he travelled northwards, in the direction of the Dalmatian coast, or eastwards, to the Thermaic Gulf and beyond, as far as the Black Sea? We divide the region up using maps, but our notional traveller would have had no map in his head. There were no maps of the Balkans, no systematic knowledge; only better-known and more obscure areas. So he would have configured distances in terms of journey days from his point of reference.
This is what the historian Thucydides does in his summary of the Odrysian kingdom of Thrace, when he estimates the distance from Abdera (at the mouth of the River Nestos, on the north Aegean coast), skirting the shoreline to the mouth ofthe Danube, as being four days and nights with a following wind, while an overland journey from Abdera to the Danube would have taken eleven days by the shortest route (2.97.1-2). Presumably he means a journey at speed on foot, but on horseback would have been preferable. Alexander the Great took ten days to reach the Haimos range in spring 335 (Arrian Anabasis 1.1.5), using seasoned troops, but in considerable numbers. The fourth-century historian Theopompos apparently calculated that it would take thirty days to walk the length of Illyrian country; that is, from the Keraunian Mountains that shield the Gulf of Orikos, north of the island of Kerkyra, as far as the head of the Adriatic (Strabon 7.5.9 = FGrHist 115 F 129). The implication is that while most people might travel along the sea route, others who had business in the interior would want to know about inland traffic. The strategic importance of roads was appreciated not just for military purposes (Thuc. 2.98.1: the Odrysian king Sitalkes; 2.100.1-2: Archelaos of Macedon as road builders), but for commercial ones as well (see the waiver of road tolls on the Pistiros inscription: Velkov & Domaradzka 1994; Chankowski & Domaradzka 1999).
The geographical space under consideration here has no boundaries as such. So the scope of this chapter is quite arbitrary. Its limits are the confines created by contemporary written sources, the extended narrative histories ofHerodotos and Thucydides, fragments of other fifth - and fourth-century writers (most but not all of whom lived and worked in Athens), passages in some later Greek and Latin authors, and a small, but significant, and growing, body of inscriptions in Greek. The framework created by these sources does not fully reflect the activities of travellers - sailors, merchants, adventurers, but also ambassadors, even suitors, whose paths, whilst being silent to us, are nevertheless charted by various material and abstract symptoms: presents exchanged (Andronicos 1984: 180-6; Rolle 1985: 485-7; Bouzek & Ondrejova 1987: 91-2; Vasic 1993: 1683, 1687-8; Archibald 1998: 85, and chapters 7, 11); votives deposited in local sanctuaries (Figure 7.1) (Hammond 1967: 428-43; Dakaris 1971; Tsetskhladze 1998b: 53; Domaradzka 2002); the names of distant but important friends commemorated in those of the next generation (Herman 1987: 31-4).
The material culture of the regions under consideration is suffused with elements, ideas and actual imported objects familiar from southern Greece and the Aegean, as well as items that are related to the latter, but differ in varying respects from them. It is clear that we are dealing with a number of different phenomena, across time and space, only some of which are as yet apparent to the modern observer. The archaeology of Greece has been investigated far more intensively and systematically than the material remains of neighbouring areas to the north. So comparison with Greece is an
Figure 7.1 Vetren-Pistiros, Thrace (central Bulgaria): sherd of a Panathenaic amphora wall inscribed ‘Hekataios Di’ (Hekataios, to Zeus), found in a pit in the northern part of the site. Archaeological Museum, Septemvri, API 215; copyright: Z. H. Archibald.
Understandable starting point for investigating these cultures. All the regions encompassed here are at an early stage of archaeological investigation compared with the Aegean as a whole. The land area occupied by the Illyrians, Macedonians, Thracians and Scythians, taking into account only those areas that writers knew something about, is, on a conservative estimate, approximately three times the size of the Greekspeaking Aegean world. Yet research is on a far smaller scale, and far fewer sites are currently being investigated per annum. Analytical techniques, scientific procedures, newer methods of spatial survey have been introduced much more recently than in central and southern Greece. Current assessments of these northern regions are accordingly necessarily provisional. New data, even from a single source, can have considerable impact on the way we interpret the record.
In some cases what we can detect are symptoms of physical exchange, especially the movement of organic produce, detectable from the inorganic containers that are left behind, particularly large storage jars for wine and oil (amphorae), fine ceramic perfume flasks and toilet boxes, as well as other types of inorganic containers (table and kitchenware), glass, marble, ceramic roof tiles, and finished objects in both precious metals (mainly tableware and jewellery) and base metals (bronze and iron tools and weaponry). The physical exchange of commodities did not consist simply of moving consignments from a production centre in place a to a recipient in place b. Nor was the traffic moving in one direction only, or in a simple reciprocal manner. Different rules applied to different commodities. We have as yet only rudimentary notions of how demand and supply were managed, and a great deal would have depended on the organization of transport. Shipwrecks suggest that many different commodities would have travelled together by sea and by river (Stanimirov 2003). This makes it likely that much of the material that did travel was, in effect, ‘down the line’ traffic, commodities manufactured or containers filled elsewhere, travelling with local shippers or carriers, rather than with producers or merchants from source (cf. Horden & Purcell 2000: 137-43, 149-52; cf. below, Chapter 14). Athenian Red Figure and black gloss tableware is ubiquitous in larger settlements throughout the whole northern region, from the second half of the fifth century to the end of the fourth century. But it is equally ubiquitous in similarly sized sites on much of the Greek mainland, throughout the Aegean, and is very widely disseminated in both the eastern and western Mediterranean. These exceptional fabrics generally appear as a variable component of the ceramic repertoire in any northern town or large village location, alongside locally made or regional household pots (Figure 7.2). Chian and Thasian amphorae are found in substantial quantities in lower Macedonia, Thrace and Scythia during the fifth and fourth centuries, dominating the bulk traffic in liquids until they were superseded by Rhodian, Koan and also Pontic, such as Herakleian, production centres, beginning in the final third ofthe fourth century but especially during the third century (Garlan 1999). Chian and Thasian wine jars were equally well known along the Ionian coast of Epeiros and Illyria. Theopompos apparently thought that a subterranean passage must link the Adriatic and Aegean seas (Strabon 7.5.9 = FGrHist 115 F 129 found this hard to believe). The traffic in people - mercenary soldiers, craftsmen, especially masons and metalsmiths, painters, dyers, entertainers (musicians and poets), is harder to detect, though echoes in Greek literature abound (Suda E 3695 Adler; Ailianos Varia Historia 2.21, 13.4: Euripides, Agathon; Ailianos Varia Historia 14.17: Zeuxis at the court of Archelaos of
Figure 7.2 Selection of locally made, regional, and imported Aegean ceramics excavated from a single late fourth - to early third-century bce context at Vetren-Pistiros, Thrace (central Bulgaria). Adjiyska Vodenitsa, D19 [1031]; copyright: Z. H. Archibald.
Macedon; Athenaios 8.345D: epic writer Choirilos of Samos; Plutarch Moralia 177b: Timotheos of Miletos, writer of choral poetry; Athenaios 4.131B-C: entertainers at the wedding of Iphikrates to king Kotys I’s daughter).
Different norms
Most of the ancient writers who give voice to this evidence of interaction, mainly between Aegean Greeks and various natives of the north, approached this topic at a high level of abstraction. Relations are couched in a language and a mythology of difference - different cultural norms, different approaches and expectations, different values. Different norms constituted significant intellectual challenges, and it should come as no surprise to find that writers and poets were preoccupied with questions of norm and variety (Hartog 1988). But such abstract preoccupations are no guide to how individuals and groups succeeded in negotiating the social and commercial links that are manifested in the material and cultural evidence. The taste, even demand, for certain kinds of products of Mediterranean origin in these northern regions shows a considerable openness to these products at a local level. It would be inaccurate to suggest that such taste was widespread. Incoming commodities and luxury goods (originating either in the Aegean or in Continental locations) may well have been socially manipulated by politically astute or powerful individuals. But access to such commodities was not controlled or monopolized, at least not in those areas closer to the coast where systematic fieldwork has taken place over many years. In the rural hinterland of the great waterways that connected the Continental landmasses to the Black Sea, there are traces of communities whose material remains make it hard to decide whether they were immigrant Greeks or indigenous natives (Maslennikov 2001 on the eastern Crimean peninsula; Bylkova 2000 on the lower Dnieper estuary; Okhotnikov 2001 on the lower Dniester).
Uncharted territory
Beyond this peripheral zone, accessible with comparative ease to Mediterranean travellers, lay the Continent of Europe proper. Connections between these much more distant regions and the Mediterranean are still very poorly understood, and tend to be seen through the eyes of a Strabon (7.2.4), that is, agnostically. But although Classical writers virtually ignore the Continent of Europe beyond the Danube, archaeological evidence reflects significant social and technological interchanges between the Mediterranean coastal zone and the Continental interior (Kristiansen 1998, chapters 6 and 7; Bouzek 1997: 108, 110-23, 200-14, 232-51). These contacts were not restricted to occasional high-level embassies, accompanied by ostentatious presents, although such formal meetings are very likely to have taken place. The variety and scope of attested connections indicates numerous less formal contacts, in many separate regions. Perhaps the most visible symptom of such informal connections is the spread of a hard, often grey ceramic fabric made on the fast potter’s wheel. Only a few decades ago it was assumed that this technological development became established, at a range of key centres, in the sixth century or thereabouts (Alexandrescu 1977). But new evidence is consistently pushing this fundamental transformation back into the first half of the first millennium bce (Nikov 1999; Dordevic-Bogdanovic 1999).
Long-distance traffic was, for the most part, sea-borne. The logical way for anyone to travel was by sea. Much of the evidence at our disposal, whether written or archaeological, confirms the vitality of sea-borne relations, and explains the pattern of intensive coastal settlement. The majority of known ancient sites in the north are located on coastal plains or near the estuaries of rivers. There is an ecological explanation for this pattern. The alluvial soils that cover large parts of the coastline around the Balkan peninsula provide good conditions for arable farming. It would be surprising not to find concentrations of population within such areas. But what we
Figure 7.3 Dodona, Epeiros: the sanctuary of Zeus (copyright: C. B. Mee).
Know of prehistoric settlement patterns in the Balkans shows that the ancestors of the Illyrians, Macedonians, Thracians and their neighbours exploited a wide variety of ecological niches deep into the interior of this landmass (Hammond 1967: 476-83, 487-524; Wilkes 1992, 91-104, 126-36; Andrea 1993 with earlier bibliography; Tasic 1999 and other contributions to the same volume). So our notional visitor may have had good reasons for travelling overland, as well as along the coast.
Most of the evidence for inland exchanges is material. Traces of overland human traffic are much rarer in the written sources than reports of maritime transport. Strabon found an account, in the fourth century bce Histories of Ephoros, of how the people of Boiotia were obliged by an oracle to steal a bronze tripod annually, from a local sanctuary, and convey it to the shrine of Zeus at Dodona in Epeiros (Figure 7.3) (FGrHist 70 F 119; Strabon 9.2.4, p. 401). This bizarre tale was intended to explain a well-established custom linking the Boiotians with Dodona (Roesch 1987). Other anecdotes of this kind, when viewed alongside the demonstrable evidence from inscriptions (mainly third - and second-century), show that we should not underestimate the capacity and determination of those who chose, for whatever reason, to travel by road, and to engage with communities at some distance from the coastline. This applies as much to traffic across the Pindos Mountains (cf. Homer Iliad 2.74850; 16.233), or from Macedonia and Thrace as far as the Danube, as it does to traffic between the Epeirotes and Central Greece.
Witnesses and guides
The principal historians, travel writers and geographers of Classical antiquity knew far less about inland areas than they did about the coasts. The tendency of Hellenistic and Roman geographers was to concentrate on the theatres of grand political affairs, which increasingly became congruent with Roman imperial expansion. Regions, such as the Balkans, that were seen by such writers as playing a lesser part in the imperial project attracted less scholarly attention and less active research. As a result, general knowledge about these areas diminished. Our own perception of the Balkans as a geographical region of antiquity is hampered by the absence of a sustained narrative work concentrating on this area. No surviving prose work takes the Balkan interior as its focus. Some sections are missing from Book 7 of Strabon’s Geography, which approximates most closely to a general account of the peninsula. Strabon’s work is partly structured along the lines of practical travel guides, periploi or ‘sailings around’, and thus provides far more information about harbours, headlands and coasts than about inland areas. But his interest in economic resources (as well as material that would contribute to a good read) makes the absence of sections that might have dealt with such matters a serious loss. The historical excerpts from various writers that have survived constitute a mosaic whose pieces can be aligned in different ways. It is hard to give structure to the history of this region, or even to find suitable cues for investigation. Interpretations of the Balkan landmass and its peoples have been even more prone to changing styles and fashions in the hands of individual historians than have other parts of the Aegean and adjacent areas. As the quantity and range of archaeological evidence have increased over the last half century, more coherent arguments have emerged, not just about what gave the region its distinctive characteristics, but about what these areas had in common with their more southerly neighbours.
Historians are more cautious now than they once were about the scientific or objective knowledge to be derived from early narrative texts. Whereas the texts of the founding fathers of Greek history used to be examined according to various criteria of veracity, what contemporary readers are most anxious to discover are the assumptions and preoccupations of the authors, assumptions that shaped the thrust as well as the content of their narratives. Our own concepts of factual knowledge rely on a broad appreciation of what is known and what can be known about other people and places. Fifth-century writers were surrounded by personal and collective stories that incorporated various experiences, as well as what we might call externally referenced facts. But there was no epistemological framework by reference to which systematic information could be evaluated. These stories to some extent floated freely, except insofar as they could be confronted by other stories (esp. Luraghi 2001). Nor should we assume that authors were necessarily anxious to convey the sort of information that we would like to have. Thucydides disciplined his account of the Peloponnesian War with a variety of devices. It would be naive to imagine that he gives anything close to a comprehensive picture. This was not his intention. The absence of key topics from his account, and the structure of certain episodes, suggest that in some respects he was being economical with the range of facts at his disposal (Badian 1993). Herodotos’ digressions on Scythia and Thrace are highly selective, and focus on what he thought to be particular differences between them and communities with which he was more familiar. The effect of his narrative is to render the customs and practices of these peoples even more bizarre and exotic than they might otherwise have appeared to passing travellers. Details were chosen for their specific narrative possibilities. Above all, Herodotos did not try to summarize cumulative data.
What he has to say about the Danube reveals both the strengths and weaknesses of his approach in terms of conveying objective information (cf. Murray 2001: 321):
The Istros (Danube) river arises among the Celts and the polis of Pyrene, cutting Europe across the middle. The Celts are to be found beyond the Pillars of Herakles (as the Greeks called the Straits of Gibraltar) and are neighbours of the Kynetes, who live furthest to the west of any Europeans. The Istros flows through the whole of Europe as far as the Black Sea, near Histria, which was settled by Milesians. For the Istros flows through inhabited country, familiar to many people. (Hdt. 2.33.3)
The information about Histria is unexceptionable, as is the idea that the Danube flows west-east across Europe. But ‘Pyrene’ is surely a transformation of the Pyrenees, just as ‘Carpis’ (Carpathians?) and ‘Alpis’ (Alps?) are taken to be tributaries of the Danube flowing northwards, although ‘beyond the Umbrians’ (4.49.2) is not how we would express the sources of the Danube. (Two rivers, the Brigach and the Breg, unite to form the upper Danube not far from the Swiss and French borders, in Donaueschingen in south-western Germany.) Nor do we get to hear more than this tantalizing but vague snippet about undifferentiated ‘Celts’. Geographical and ethnic imprecision is understandable. The spatial relationships of peoples and places in continental areas were then, and continued to be in later times, rather sketchy. Nevertheless, Herodotos’ bold, if broad-brush, speculations do not invalidate other kinds of information. On the contrary, Herodotos’ descriptions of customary practices, particularly burials, in Thrace as well as Scythia have been abundantly confirmed, though in more varied forms than he indicates. The historian was not being fanciful and did not invent imaginary elements in these particular descriptions of distant regions. But there is a great deal of evidence, known from archaeological sources, that he omits, or side-steps (see Rolle et al. 1998; Reeder 1999; Archibald 1998: 151-76). Provided that we do not expect a one-to-one relationship between Herodotos’ story and the material evidence to which it relates, we are less likely to confuse his narrative vision with historical communities.
Since narrative texts are frequently used as the structural cores around which the history is shaped, it is by no means easy to detect whether texts can be downright misleading. Yet the very paucity of such material with regard to our northern regions demands caution. A key example of misleading rhetoric is the passage in a speech attributed to Alexander the Great at Opis, near the River Tigris, during the summer of 324, in which the king claims that his father Philip exchanged the Macedonians’ skin garments for cloaks, made them city dwellers, and established order on the basis of good laws and customs (Arrian Anabasis 7.9.2; Hatzopoulos 1996: vol. 1
49-50, 431-4, 479-82). Notwithstanding the rhetorical context as well as the late authorship of the passage (whatever its relationship to earlier biographical literature), it has exerted a disproportionate influence on historians, generating the impression that law-making and urban development in general were products of recent administrative changes, rather than of long-term socio-political evolution, as discussed below. Historians exploring these subjects should not merely be encouraged to look at other sources of information. Without the assistance of epigraphy and material remains, the structure and characteristics of northern societies would remain largely opaque.
World History
