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AMERICAN JOURNALOF ARCHAEOLOGYTHE JOURNAL OF THE ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF AMERICA

This review article is The Archaeological Institute of America and was originally pub-lished in AJA117(4):599608. This reprint is supplied to the primary author for personal,non-commercial use only, following the terms stipulated by the AJAEditor-in-Chief. Thedefinitive electronic version of the article can be found at www.jstor.org/stable/10.3764/aja.117.4.0599.

Volume 117 Number 4 October 2013www.ajaonline.org


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ARCHAEOLOGICAL INSTITUTE OF AMERICA

2013

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599

Some Comprehensive New Publicationson Ancient Macedonia

BERYL BARR-SHARRAR

American Journal of Archaeology117 (2013) 599608

REVIEW ARTICLE

Das Palmettengrab in Lefkadia, by KaterinaRhomiopoulouand Barbara Schmidt-Dounas, with achapter byHariklia Brecoulaki(AM-BH21). Pp. 166,figs. 18, b&w pls. 33, color pls. 19, maps 8. Philipp

von Zabern, Darmstadt 2010. 59.90. ISBN 978-3-0053-4206-3 (cloth).

Brills Companion to Ancient Macedon: Studiesin the Archaeology and History of Macedon,

650 BC300 AD, edited byRobin J. Lane Fox. Pp.xiii + 642, figs. 73, map 1. Brill, Leiden and Bos-ton 2011. $251. ISBN 978-90-04-20650-2 (cloth).

A Companion to Ancient Macedonia, edited byJoseph RoismanandIan Worthington(Blackwell Com-panions to the Ancient World). Pp. xxvi + 668, figs.4, pls. 28, maps 10. Wiley-Blackwell, Chichester,England, and Malden, Mass. 2010. $199.95. ISBN978-1-4051-7936-2 (cloth).

Heracles to Alexander the Great: Treasures

from the Royal Capital of Macedon, a Hel-

lenic Kingdom in the Age of Democracy, ed-ited byAngeliki Kottaridi. Pp. 271, figs. 268, maps 3.

Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archeology, Ox-ford 2011. $45. ISBN 978-1-85444-254-3 (paper).

Au royaume dAlexandre le Grand: La Mac-

doine antique, edited bySophie Descamps-Lequime,with Katerina Charatzopoulou. Pp. 728, figs. 620.Muse du Louvre, Paris 2011. $108. ISBN 978-2-35031-340-5 (cloth).

As excavation in northern Greece has slowed dur-ing the countrys economic crisis, scholars of ancientMacedon have worked to catch up with the publica-tion of finds long uncovered; offered new insights andreconsidered old concerns about the archaeology andhistory of the kingdom; and, through two major exhibi-

tions, shared with the public at large some of the better-known and some of the lesser-known objects from thearchaeologically rich geographical area that it covered.

Some 25 km northwest of Verginathe ancientMacedonian royal city of Aegaein the vicinity of an-cient Mieza, where Aristotle is traditionally said to havetaught the young Alexander the Great, are Lefkadiaand the Tomb of the Palmettes. A large, stone-built,two-chambered tomb with vaulted ceilings coveredby an earth tumulus, the Tomb of the Palmettes is anexample of the most grandiose and sophisticated typeof grave found in ancient Macedonia, the so-calledMacedonian tomb. Systematically excavated and re-stored under the direction of Rhomiopoulou from1971 to 1973, its official publication in the volumeDasPalmettengrab in Lefkadiais a welcome event.

Named for the brilliantly colored palmettes paintedto appear three-dimensional that cover the ceiling ofthe antechamber, the tomb was unfortunately foundpillaged by intruders who broke through the vaultedroof. Left behind in the burial chamber, however, wasa group of beautifully crafted small ivories represent-ing more than 20 human figures and horses. Rhomio-poulou and Schmidt-Dounas date the tomb to 320300B.C.E. based on analyses of the architecture, the ap-plied Ionic facade carved in poros stone and enhancedby plaster and paint, the painting of two monumentalsemireclining figures in the pediment, the masonrystyle of both chambers, and the unique ceiling of theantechamber, as well as the ivories and some potteryfragments from the area behind the tomb believed tohave been a pyre.

Rhomiopoulous four chapters describe the excava-tion and restoration (ch. 1), discuss the wall paintings

(ch. 3) and small finds (ch. 4), and provide a conclud-ing summary (ch. 5). Schmidt-Dounas presents anextensive chapter on the architecture (ch. 2) and aseries of 11 informative appendices (which constitutech. 7). (The appendices amplify earlier catalogues ofMacedonian tombs but have now been supersededby extensive new catalogues and a concordance by

2013 Archaeological Institute of America


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BERYL BARR-SHARRAR600 [AJA 117

von Mangoldt.)1 Excellent color plates, black-and-white photographs, and instructive drawings augmentthe texts. Chapter 6, by Brecoulaki, reveals the resultsof a scientific investigation of the painted decoration,accompanied by figures, tables, and color photo-micrographs.

Since 1993, it has been acknowledged that the high-ly individualistic character of the known Macedonianchamber tombs reveals little or no morphologicaldevelopment among them and that any sequentialdating in architectural terms is therefore impossible.2

Schmidt-Dounas places the origin of the Macedoniantomb in Aegae during the third quarter of the fourthcentury B.C.E., pointing out that the king and the ar-istocracy around him controlled sufficient means inthe years before the Asian conquest of Alexander tofinance burials in such expensive vaulted tombsnot,as some would have it, only afterward.

Rhomiopoulou identifies the bearded man and

mature woman painted in vivid colors on the plastersurface of the pediment, oriented with their headsmeeting near the center, as Pluto/Hades and Perse-phone. Hades, who gazes at his bride, holds the keyto the underworld, while Persephone rests her chinon her hand, holding a fold of her veil to her broad,impassive face in a gesture that survives in Roman wallpainting. Rhomiopoulou places the two figures in thecontext of a cult of Hades and a belief in an afterlifethat existed on a local level in Mieza and is impliedby other Macedonian tomb paintings.

In chapter 4 (Kleinfunde), Rhomiopoulou dividesher catalogue of the surviving ivories into two groups

based on size and subject matter. The first includes23 carved heads (e.g., fig. 1), of which most are male(one bearded and helmeted) but at least two are fe-male (one a bust), together with parts of male bodiesand horses, as well as some ornaments. The secondgroup comprises pieces of smaller dimensions, in-cluding Erotes, a herm, a partly vegetal female figure,and floral and other ornaments. While some of thesmaller decorative elements conceivably belonged toa container for ashes, the ivory figural elementshu-man, horse, and mythicalalong with both clear andcolored glass elements and 141 bronze nailscamefrom the wooden kline (or klinai?) that originally

stood deep in the burial chamber near a rectangularstone platform that may have held an ash receptacle.

Forty-one tombs in ancient Macedonia containingivories of this naturecist graves as well as Macedo-nian chamber tombsare listed with an appendix ref-erence or bibliography (99). Like those from PhilipsTomb at Vergina/Aegae,these ivories were compo-nents of figures completed in other materialswood,plaster, gold foilin frieze-like compositions on thesides of klinai. Many retain original gilding and/orpaint. The larger compositions were organized inscenes involving horses (battle or hunting); the small-er, in Dionysian scenes. In dating the ivory heads fromthe Tomb of the Palmettes to the end of the fourth cen-tury, Rhomiopoulou contrasts the intensity of feeling

1Von Mangoldts (2012, 1:63377) Katalog B: Makedo-nische Kammergrber includes 145 Macedonian vaultedchamber tombs in Greece (cat. nos. B1145), another 56in Turkey (cat. nos. B146201), and six in Cyprus (cat. nos.B2027), with extensive descriptions, dates, and bibliogra-phies. Von Mangoldts (2012, 1:395406) Appendix D is aconcordance listing the 207 tombs in Katalog B with the des-

Fig. 1. Ivory head of a young man from the Tomb of the Pal-mettes, Lefkadia, ht. 0.038 m (courtesy K. Rhomioupoulou).

ignations used for them by authors of earlier publications; hisAppendix B lists 59 Macedonian chamber tombs in the Bal-kans and the area of the Black Sea (1:38190). For full publica-tion of the Tomb of the Erotes in Eretria (von Mangoldt 2012,1:13539, cat. no. B50), see Huguenot 2008. I owe knowledgeof both publications, with gratitude, to Stella Miller-Collett.

2 First pointed out by Miller-Collett in Miller 1993, 2.



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NEW PUBLICATIONS ON ANCIENT MACEDONIA2013] 601

conveyed by their swelling forms and movement tothe Late Classical idealizing of those from Vergina/

Aegae (97).Such outstanding evidence of the extensive and

highly skilled manipulation of ivory in the productionof klinai from fourth-century Macedoniafound as

well in the elaborate ceremonial shield from PhilipsTombsuggests that it would be prudent to hesitatebefore accepting recent arguments that Pausanias was

wrong to describe the Macedonian royal portraits byLeochares for the Philippeion in Olympia as chrys-elephantine.3 It is entirely plausible that these statuesof Philip II, his son Alexander, his wife Olympia, andhis parents, Amyntas III and Eurydice, were compos-ites of ivory, gold, and marblewith faces and othercomponents of ivory and gold but supportive lowerparts of stone. This would be an assemblage technique

without known parallels.4The composition of the statues in the Philippeion

is mentioned briefly in the second publication underreview, Brills Companion to Ancient Macedon. In The

Arts at Vergina-Aegae, the Cradle of the MacedonianKingdom, one of 28 chapters in a volume by 19 au-thors, Saatsoglou-Paliadeli expresses no doubt aboutPausanias description. Reaffirming her identificationof the heavily draped marble female from the Sanctu-ary of Eukleia at Aegae, dated stylistically to 350325B.C.E., as a copy of the chryselephantine Eurydice, sheintroduces the fragment of a base in reuse in an EarlyChristian basilica discovered since her initial publica-tion of the statue. Her comments significantly updateher earlier hypothesis about its base. Paspalas, in his

essay in Brills Companionon classical art in Macedonia,refers only to the earlier hypothesis (188), a discrep-ancy that should have been corrected in the final ed-iting. This newly discovered base fragment preservesthe queens name and patronymic on a lateral side,suggesting Eurydice stood at the right end of an ex-tensive monument that may have supported marble

versions of the entire Philippeion group (28182).Like Schmidt-Dounas, Saatsoglou-Paliadeli places

the origin of the Macedonian tomb in Aegae. She re-minds the reader that even before the discovery thereof the earliest known Macedonian tombEurydicesTomb, which has been dated to ca. 344/3 B.C.E.based on associated pottery andwhich has two vaultedchambers but is completely enclosed5Andronikos

had suggested the crucial innovation from the stone-built cist grave with its horizontal roof was the barrel

vault (289). This advanced technique, chosen for itssuperior structural strength to support the tumulusof earth that traditionally covered the burial, was fol-lowed by the addition of an entrance in an impressivebut nonstructural facade.6 The logic of such a develop-ment seems unambiguous.

In another chapter ofBrills Companion,The Palaceof Aegae, Kottaridi shares discoveries made duringher recent excavations of the remains of this enormouspalatial structurecovering 12,500 m2 the date of

which has been controversial.7 Kottaridi believes the

palace, including the west peristylethought earlierto represent a secondary building phasewas com-pleted by 336 B.C.E., with some restructuring in theHellenistic period. Kottaridi understands this vastedifice as a public space, not a residence for the roy-al family. She identifies 16 banquet halls with spacefor 224 couches, or more than 400 diners, and openspaces large enough to hold several thousand people.

Various surviving elements are later, including terra-cotta roof tiles and antefixes dated to 315310 B.C.E.and some Roman-era stone relief fragments from thetholos room removed to the Muse du Louvre in the19th century.8 However, if Kottaridis foundation date

proves sustainable, the implications are of great signifi-cance not only for the study of architecture but also foran understanding of the nature of Philip IIs kingship.

In two successive chapters, Lane Fox addresses thesomewhat problematic date of Philip IIs accession,his ambitions, and his self-presentation as king. He as-sesses Philips great wealth from mining initiatives, hisavailable manpower, and the organization of his army(which increased threefold from 358 to 338 B.C.E.), as

3 Schultz 2007, 22021.4

Others have suggested this. For references, see Schultz2007, 231 nn. 1067.5 The associated potteryfragments of three Panathena-

ic amphoras with an archons name (Lykiskos) and traces ofburningis illustrated in Kottaridis Heracles to Alexander theGreat(149, fig. 168), reviewed below. Von Mangoldt (2012,1:29194) dates the tomb (cat. no. B135) at or shortly before340 B.C.E.

6Andronikos 1987, 13; Saatsoglou-Paliadeli 2004, 1124.See von Mangoldt (2012, 2:pl. 112.5) for an excavation pho-tograph that shows the exterior of the Tomb of Eurydice

with its low, rectangular front wall.7

Kottaridis footnotes include bibliographic referencesfrom Heuzey and Daumet (1876) forward. Earlier interpre-tations suggested that the palace was probably built duringthe reign of Antigonos Gonatas (277239 B.C.E.). When Kot-taridis excavations began, there was, surprisingly, a completeabsence of dairies and photographs from earlier excavations(298 n. 4).

8 Descamps-Lequimes Au royaume dAlexandre le Grand(un-der review here) includes the tholos fragments (3046) andpalace antefixes and tiles (30711) in the Louvre.



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well as some of the complexities of his rule, includingtaxation and civic organization. Lane Fox characterizesPhilip IIwho tripled the size of the kingdom of Mace-don through his conquests and annexations, unitingpeople of great diversitynot as a military chieftain orthe dominant Argead but as king of the Macedonians

(360). This distinctive designation, Lane Fox believes,is appropriate to the political and social organization ofPhilips sphere of influence, his gift giving and honorsreceived, and his royal style (35966).

As his introduction to the volume, Lane Fox makesa refreshingly rational case for the burial in Tomb IIat Vergina/Aegae of Philip II in 336 B.C.E., methodi-cally disputing the arguments asserted by Borza andPalagia to assign it to Philip III (Arrhidaeus) in 316/5B.C.E.9 Following Hammond, Lane Fox suggests thatthe approximately 25-year-old female whose ashes areburied in the antechamber is Meda, a Getic-Scythianprincess whose ritual suicide after the kings assassina-

tion would explain her youthful death.10 It seems likelythat the hunt painting on the facade of Tomb II, withits image of a seemingly early teenage Alexander, isthe close adaptation of an earlier work on view in theroyal palace.11While, if this is so, it cannot date thetomb, what is significantly apparent is its appropriate-ness to the burial of Philip II. Philip is represented asa mature and vigorous hunter on horseback in directconfrontation with a lion. His son and successor, Al-exander, is not only prominently nearby but placedin the center of the painting, wearing a green laurel

wreath added by the copyist to signify his new (andadult) royal status as king.12 The copyist may well have

been the artist of the original.13Lane Fox suggests the earlier nearby cist grave,Tomb I, is that of one of the wives of Philip II: Phila,

an Elimiote (only possibly Nicesipolis, a Thessalian)(7). The iconography of the Abduction of Persephonefresco that covers 3 m of a long wall, its significanceamplified by the images of the mourning Demeterand the three Fates on adjacent walls, seems a strongindication of burial preparation for the young woman

and neonate found in it. The painted ambiance of thetomb enhances the likelihood that the archaeologistDrougous consistent identification of the male bonesas those of a tomb robber is correct.14

Drougous chapter in Brills Companionpresents aconcise history of excavations at Aegae (with a bib-liography), and other chapters by Greek archaeolo-gists also provide invaluable up-to-date informationabout Macedonian sites and cities for the wide read-ership intended. Akamatis writes on Pella; Koukouli-Chrysanthaki, on Amphipolis and Philippi; Tsigarida,on cities in Chalcidice; and Adam-Veleni, on Thessa-loniki. All include ample references to previous publi-

cations. Karamitrou-Mentessidis important chapter onthe historical and geographical context of the archaicand classical site of Aiani, capital of Elimiotis, a districtoccupying the southern part of Upper Macedonia, isthe first publication in English of much of this mate-rial. She appends a bibliography of her own 42 reportsin Greek on the site.

Hatzopoulos presents two chapters of general intro-duction to Macedonian studies. One reviews the studyof ancient Macedonia; the other discusses the historyof the region and its inhabitants. A third chapter byHatzopoulos, Macedonians and Other Greeks, with alengthy bibliography and suggestions for further read-

ing, may be considered provocative by those scholarswho challenge the Greek credentials of the ancientMacedonians. In the longue dure, the essential point

9 Borza and Palagia 2007. The most recent commentator,von Mangoldt (2012, 1:27980, cat. no. B129 [Vergina IV,Philippsgrab]), concludes that a date in the third quarter ofthe fourth century is usserst wahrscheinlich.

10 Scythian women followed the custom of suttee. Medasfather, Cothelas, was said to have brought her to the Mace-donian court bearing many gifts (Hammond 1994, 182 [withancient literary references]).

11 The heroic royal hunt is a very likely subject for palace

decoration. For a recent discussion of the hunt painting onthe facade of Philips Tomb as a traditional expression of theroyal Macedonian image, see Franks 2012.

12While the four spool salt cellars from the tomb have beencompared by Rotroff to examples from the Athenian Agoradated to 325295 B.C.E., the nature of the export market for

Attic pottery has not been examined. Some Athenian pottersmay have had exclusive relationships with the fourth-centuryMacedonian market and sent quality products there beforethe shapes became current in Athens. Such exclusivity wasperhaps also characteristic for Athenian producers of silver

plate, some of whom may have dealt directly with the palace.13Any use of a cartoon has left no evidence, and incised

guidelines are few (Saatsoglou-Paliadeli 2004, 3940, fig. 8,pls. 6a, b). The original prototype may have been croppedon the right, as suggested by Saatsoglou-Paliadeli (2004), andeven on the left, for adaptation of the frieze to the availablespace and the central placement of Alexander. For an ap-preciation of the Vergina hunt painting that includes scien-tific information about its realization, see Brecoulaki 2006,

1:10333.14 Drougou 2005, 247. Phila was one of Philips earliest

wives; her brother Machatas may well have been the donor ofthe partially gilded silver strainer found in Philips Tomb.The strainer is inscribed on the underside of the flange withthe name Machatas in the genitive form, indicating own-ership. Lane Fox mentions the strainer in Brills Companion(32), and Green (1982) considered it to be a strong piece ofevidence toward the burial in that tomb of Philip II; see also

Andronikos 1984, 148, fig. 108.



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is the Macedonians projection of themselves overcenturies (and extensive geographical areas) as theartistic and intellectual representatives of Greek cul-ture. Hatzopoulos final contribution is a chapter oncivic institutions in pre-Roman Macedonia, The Cit-ies. Mari presents one chapter on archaic and Early

Classical Macedonia and another on traditional Greekreligious cults and beliefs in Macedonia. In the chap-ter 399369 BC, Lane Fox reevaluates early fourth-century Argead politics and the succession of kings,and in The 360s he suggests Philip II inherited aneven weaker Macedon than many historians have out-lined. Kremydi offers a history of Macedonian coinageand finance; Psoma focuses on the history of the rela-tionship of the kingdom of Macedon to the ChalcidicLeague; and Loukopoulou gives a succinct summaryof Macedonia in Thrace from Philip IIs conquest in342 B.C.E. until the creation of a separate ProvinciaThracia under Roman rule in 46 C.E. Lane Fox, in his

sixth and final contribution, discusses the reign of An-tigonos Gonataswhose dynasty finally achieved con-trol of Macedonia by 277 B.C.E.and what is knownabout the rule of Gonatas son Demetrios II. Ma thengives a vivid account of Court, King, and Power in

Antigonid Macedonia, pointing out what was simi-lar to other Hellenistic royal courts (e.g., the Friendsof the King, distinctly not patterned after the ArgeadHetairoi) and what was specifically Macedonian. Ar-chaeological evidence attests that the luxury cultureof Macedonian elites, which Ma calls a diffused orradiated version of court culture (53942), existedinto the third century, though it must be remembered

that Macedonian burials from the second half of thefourth century are to date by far the richest.15Besides Saatsoglou-Paliadelis chapter on the arts

at Aegae and Karamitrou-Mentessidis on the BronzeAge through Early Classical material from Aiani, thecomprehensive chapter by Paspalas deals mostly withthe Classical period but includes a few archaic mar-bles. Palagia presents a chapter on Hellenistic art inMacedonia, and Stefanidou-Tiveriou discusses the sig-nificant but less well-known art of the Roman period,168 B.C.E.337 C.E. The final chapter in the volume,a contribution by Kyrtatas, is a concise discussion ofearly Christianity in Macedonia, where Paul and his

associates are believed to have visited in the mid firstcentury C.E.Philip II looms large in Brills Companionin unsur-

prising agreement with the conspicuous change inMacedonian studies over the last 30 yearsthat is,

the shift toward focusing on Philips own achieve-ments rather than those of his son Alexander theGreat. A similar emphasis can be found in BlackwellsA Companion to Ancient Macedonia, where even Gilleyand Worthington, authors of a chapter dedicated to

Alexander, conclude that the title of greatest king

of Macedonia arguably belongs not to Alexander butto Philip (205). The most important difference be-tween Blackwells volume and Brills is the nature ofthe scholarly team in Blackwells, which includes noGreek scholars or archaeologists and thus no reportsfrom excavations. While Brills emphasis is largely ar-chaeological, the essays in Blackwells are mostly onliterary and historical subjects. Thus, while there issome inevitable overlap in those areas of literatureand history also discussed in Brills, the two books arenot in the broadest sense competitors.

The contributors to Blackwells Companion, includ-ing some well-known scholars of ancient Macedonia,

are from the United States, Canada, the United King-dom, Germany, Bulgaria, Poland, and Japan. Authorsin both Companions annotate generously, althoughfew in Blackwells include references to recent pub-lications in Greek. Only three of the essays in BrillsCompanionconclude with a bibliography; all authorsin Blackwells publication contribute a bibliographicessay, and there is a 51-page inclusive bibliography atthe end of that volume. Both volumes have indexes.Brills has a single color map; Blackwells has 10 de-tailed monochrome maps. The illustrations in Brillsare greater in number and higher in quality.

BlackwellsCompanionpresents 27 essays divided into

seven parts: Preamble, Evidence, Macedonia andMacedonians, History, Neighbours, Politics, Soci-ety, Economy and Culture, and After Rome. Essayson the history of the early Temenid kings (Sprawski),on classical Macedonia from Alexander I to PerdiccasIII (Roisman), and on Philip II (Mller) precede theone on Alexander the Great by Gilley and Worthingtonin History, and three follow: Alexanders Succes-sors to 221 B.C.E. (Adams), Macedonia and Rome,221 B.C.E.146 C.E. (Eckstein), and ProvinciaMace-donia (Vanderspoel). Mller does not discuss theburial in Philips Tomb at Vergina/Aegae but im-plies a preference by her reference to Worthingtons

published arguments elsewhere that the occupant isPhilip II (183).16Adams thinks the evidence points toPhilip III (214 n. 7).

The preamble in Blackwells Companionis by Anson,who remarks on the more critical view of Alexander

15 See Zimi (2011), with special attention to ch. 4,Chronology.

16Worthington 2008, appx. 6.



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the Great now held by ancient historians and intro-duces many of the issues discussed in the volume. Inpart 2, Rhodes presents literary and epigraphic evi-dence up to the Roman conquest, and Dahmen exam-ines Macedonian numismatic evidence, coinage thatfirst became the province of the king with the reign

of Alexander I (498454 B.C.E.). In part 3, Thomasilluminates the physical character of the kingdom,and Engels writes about Macedonians and Greeks.Engels essay might be expected to be the antithesis ofHatzopoulos Brills Companionchapter on the subjectof Macedonian identity, but the author comes to onlyprovisional and entirely mixed conclusions. Pertinentto the subject is the essay subsequent to Engels in

which Asirvatham describes the changing perceptionof Macedonians over the course of antiquity.

Part 5 (Neighbours) covers Macedonias relation-ship to Illyria and Epirus (Greenwalt), Thessaly (Gran-inger), Thrace (Archibald), and Persia (Olbrycht).

Part 6 includes essays on Macedonian kingship (King),social customs and institutions (Sawada), women(Carney), religion (Christesen and Murray), the army(Sekunda), the political economy (Millett), classicalart to 221 B.C.E. (Hardiman),17 and Hellenistic andRoman art from 221 B.C.E. to 337 C.E. (Kousser).

In the final section of Blackwells Companion(AfterRome), Snively discusses Macedonia in late antiquity.The volume ends, somewhat surprisingly, with a discus-sion by the anthropologist Danforth on the history ofthe political quarrel between Greece and the state thatemerged with the breakup of Yugoslavia, proclaimedin 1993 by the United Nations the Former Yugoslav

Republic of Macedonia. Danforth has been studyingthe conflict for 20 years, and some readers may be madeaware for the first time of the origin and extent of theMacedonian question in modern Balkan politics.

The catalogues of two recent exhibitions on ancientMacedoniaKottaridis Heracles to Alexander the Greatand Descamps-Lequimes Au royaume dAlexandre leGrandhave different characteristics, and the exhi-bitions themselves served different goals. The Ash-molean Museums exhibition, Heracles to Alexander theGreat, focused on excavations at Vergina/Aegae and

was overseen by Kottaridi, director of the 17th Epho-rate of Prehistoric and Classical Antiquities. Kottaridi

wrote five of the 18 chapters in the catalogue, as wellas an appendix on the Aegae palace that she greatlyexpanded for Brills Companion.

The exhibition opened with the Ashmoleans 53cm high Roman marble statuette of Heracles, legend-ary forefather of the Temenid dynasty of Macedoniankings. What followed was an impressive display of ma-terial from Vergina/Aegae dating from the middleof the second millennium to the late fourth century

B.C.E., most of it displayed outside Greece for the firsttime. There were 552 objects, many of them illustratedin a catalogue well organized for their discussion inextended essays. Catalogue numbers in photographcaptions indicate entries in the List of Exhibits at theend of the volume; the entries include measurements,excavation context (perhaps not often enough), anddate (frequently stylistic or, inevitably, general). The

volume also includes a select glossary of terms, a bib-liography, and a note suggesting some bibliographicsources for excavation reports. Both the textual con-tent and the high-quality photographs make this areadable and highly informative publication.

The most recent find in the exhibition was a spec-tacular gold oak wreath discovered in 2008 in an un-marked late fourth-century burial in the area of theSanctuary of Eukleia and the agora of Aegae (fig. 2).It was found together with the remains of a young manin a gold pyxis placed in a cylindrical bronze vessel. Ina chapter in the catalogue on the royal presence in theagora (ch. 14), Saatsoglou-Paliadeli, the excavator ofthe burial, suggests it may be that of Heracles, the ille-gitimate son of Alexander III and Barsine. Heracles wasa teenager when murdered on the orders of Cassander.

While the exhibition was to some extent organizedby funerary assemblages (notably the pyre associated

with the Tomb of Eurydice), there were also themes:the world of the king, royal women, the royal banquet.Pertinent to the royal banquet, Drougous chapter inthe catalogue discusses some of the metal vessels inthe exhibition (ch. 13). These include a fifth-centurysilver omphalos phiale from the rich archaic burial ofthe Lady of Aegae (ca. 500 B.C.E.) and selected ves-sels from later burials. Drougous well-illustrated text,

with enlarged photographic details, is characteristicof the entire catalogue.

Lane Fox, Hatzopoulos, and Kremydi present chap-ters in Heracles to Alexander the Great related to theirlonger contributions in Brills Companion, and Brecou-

laki writes about the Vergina/Aegae tomb paintings.Musgrave and Prag address Bartsiokas earlier dispu-tation of their identification of the human remains in

17 Perhaps a misprint, but if not, a misunderstanding, is Hardimans interpretation of the genitive form of the Thessalian nameAstioun in the inscription on the rim of the Derveni krater as indication of an original by Astioun (516). The genitive form of thename denotes ownership; it does not identify the artist of the krater. The krater was owned by a man named Astioun, either at thetime of its production in the second quarter of the fourth century B.C.E. or at the time it was buried, ca. 330 B.C.E.



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Philips Tomb as those of Philip II. (Bartsiokas chal-lenge to the authors offered support to scholars who

believed the tomb was that of Philip III Arrhidaeus.)18Kountouri discusses the significance of Mycenaeanweapons found in the area of Sphekia and of alabastraand locally made Mycenaean-type ceramic vessels fromburials at Aegae. Graekos discusses trade from the Iron

Age to the late fourth century B.C.E. and also pres-ents a chapter on war and hunting. The fragmentarystone sculpture group from Vergina/Aegaea hunterin a chitoniskosand an aggressive boar with an attack-ing dog clinging to its back, carved from the samestone as the boar (fig. 63 in Heracles to Alexander theGreat)was displayed in the exhibition near a photo-graph of the hunt painting from Philips Tomb. Kot-

taridi has dated this unusual sculpture group stylisti-cally to 340320 B.C.E. Among the extensive materialdiscussed in Kottaridis chapters, the most surprisingto exhibition visitors may have been a group of someof the 26 life-sized, partially moldmade, hollow maleand female clay heads found in a female burial of

ca. 480 B.C.E. at Vergina/Aegae (e.g., fig. 3). Kottaridisuggests they were placed on wooden poles to form

xoanafor use in a burial ceremony and subsequentlythrown into the tomb.Pella, which served as administrative capital of the

kingdom from about the end of the fifth century andwas called the greatest of the cities in Macedoniain the fourth century by Xenophon (Hell. 5.2.13),is discussed in a short but comprehensive chapterby the excavator Lilimpaki-Akamati. Galanakis, the

Ashmolean Museum exhibition curator in 2011 anda collaborative editor of the catalogue, contributed adetailed chapter on the 160 years of archaeological re-search at Vergina. It begins with Lon Heuzey (18311922), a member of the cole Franaise dAthnes,

whose early finds from Macedonia were prominentlydisplayed in the exhibition at the Muse du Louvreand are presented in its catalogue, discussed below.

Walker, keeper of antiquities at the Ashmolean Mu-seum and also a collaborative editor of the catalogue,offers a concluding chapter on the Roman heritage of

18Bartsiokas 2000.

Fig. 2. Gold oak wreath discovered in 2008 in a late fourth-century B.C.E. cremation burial in the area of the agoraand Sanctuary of Eukleia at Vergina/Aegae (courtesy A. Kottaridi).



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the palace at Aegae. Walker suggests there must havebeen interim Hellenistic architectural designs thattransmitted features from the fourth-century palaceto Early Roman imperial constructions that, like the

Kaisareion built by Julius Caesar at Alexandria, sharefunctional ideas with it.The volume Au royaume dAlexandre le Grand from

the Muse du Louvre, with 728 pages and 29 x 24 x15 cm in size, is a tour de force accompanying what

was another superior exhibition. The number of ob-jects on display was well more than 400 and includedmany objects from Vergina/Aegae shown earlierin the same year at the Ashmolean. But the Louvreexhibition extended its reachboth geographicallythroughout ancient Macedonia and chronologicallyinto the Imperial Roman period. Thus, besides richmaterial from the Bronze Age through the Hellenistic

period, on display were numerous surviving Romanmarblesstatue heads, statuettes, sarcophagi, votivemonuments, and funerary monumentsall derivedfrom sites in ancient Macedonia and either borrowedfrom northern Greek museums (Veroia, Dion, Thessa-

loniki, Pella, Kozani, Florina) or permanently housedin the Louvre itself.

Prominent among material belonging to the Louvreis what remains of the double-story Thasian marble

colonnade, popularly named Las Incantadas, withhigh-relief figures of Greek myth carved on both sidesof the upper columns (57688). Much of this monu-ment, erected in Thessaloniki in the second centuryC.E., was removed to France over a period of years af-ter legal acquisition in 1864 by an envoy of NapoleonIII. It was presented in the exhibition in a dramaticrestoration. The catalogue includes photographs ofall the elements, 17th- and 18th-century drawings ofthe colonnade in situ, and an essay by Louvre restorerLaugier and historian Sve.19This, and much of the Ro-man material in the exhibition, is available in chapter8 of the catalogue, Une re nouvelle: La Macdoine

antique sous domination romaine.After a series of nine short introductory essays by ar-chaeologists and historians, Descamps-Lequime, chiefconservator of the department of Greek, Etruscan,and Roman antiquities at the Louvre, introduces in

Fig. 3. Life-sized male clay heads from a female burial of ca. 480 B.C.E. at Vergina/Aegae (courtesy A. Kottaridi).

19The authors suggest a date of the middle or third quarter of the second century C.E.



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chapter 1 (La dcouverte de la Macdoine antique)some of the exhibited objects from ancient Macedo-nia belonging to the Louvre. Her essay recounts therelevant French activity from the end of the 18th tothe beginning of the 20th century. French consularpresence in Thessaloniki prior to Heuzeys missions

resulted in the acquisition of numerous objectsnotably, in 1833, an impressive colossal marble portraithead of Caracalla transported from Philippi to theorthodox church in Drama a century earlier. Excava-tions by the archaeological service of the French armyin 19171918 uncovered Macedonian necropoleis of

various dates and contributed ceramics, weapons, andsmall objects in bronze and gold. Much of this was ondisplay for the first time, as was the Caracalla head(667). All are well illustrated in this chapter.

Better known is the material of late fourth- to earlythird-century B.C.E. date excavated by Heuzey andarchitect Pierre Jrome Honor Daumet in the early

1860s. On display were major elements from the earlythird-century two-chambered vaulted Macedoniantomb at Korinos, near Pydna. They included the mar-ble front of a funerary bed carved in relief and paintedto resemble a kline of gilded wood and ivory with aMolossian dog reclining underneath (813). Whilethe Korinos material appears in chapter 1, architec-tural elements brought to France from the late fourth-century Heuzey Macedonian tomb at Vergina/Aegae(then called Palatitsia) are catalogued in chapter 7,La religion et la mort aux poques classique et hell-nistique. Augmenting photographs and texts of bothtombs excavated by Heuzey are detailed drawings and

watercolors by Daumet. This chapter also includes fu-nerary stelae, votive reliefs, and relevant marble andterracotta sculptures, as well as gold wreaths, jewelry,and ceramics from various burials of that period. Whilethe separation of the elements from the two relatedtombs into chapters more than 400 pages apart mayseem somewhat arbitrary, perusal of the catalogue re-

veals that its overriding organization is the integrationof material together with meaningful texts.

The exhibition was conceived and directed byDescamps-Lequime as a collaborative effort betweenFrance and Greece, and collaboration is strikingly ap-parent in the catalogue. More than 90 authors are rep-

resented, with Greek archaeologists, historians, andspecialists outnumbering their French colleagues byroughly three to one. Too numerous for more than afew to be mentioned by name, the authors each con-tribute one or more of the 418 catalogue entries and/or one or more of the essays; the language is consis-tently French. The opportunity to see the Louvresmaterial from ancient Macedonia in the context ofhundreds of objects (many discovered in the last few

decades) in Greek museums was justification enoughfor the exhibition. All objects and architectural ele-ments appear in the catalogue with generous texts,bibliography, and high-quality photographs. Explana-tory photographs and drawings, both historical andnew, add further information, and the reader will be

grateful to find footnotes close to the texts.After the fir st chapter, another four proceed

chronologically. Chapter 2, from prehistory throughthe sixth century B.C.E., catalogues gold from Sindosamong much else. Chapter 3, covering the fifth tofourth centuries, presents the extensive gold orna-ments found decorating the remains of the Lady of

Aegae, including her gilded silver sandal soles, in aburial dated to ca. 500 B.C.E. In this chapter is thematerial removed from the Aegae/Vergina palace siteand brought to France by Heuzey and Daumet in 1876:large Ionic crowning blocks and bases; fragments of asmaller Ionic order; and the Roman fragments from

the tholos and tiles and antefixes dated to 315310B.C.E. (mentioned above). By way of introduction,Saatsoglou-Paliadeli outlines the excavation historyof the palace, with particular reference to the tholosor exedra in its later, Roman phase, and Kottaridi dis-cusses recent excavations. Pertinently, Chrysostomoureviews in this chapter what is so far known about thepalace at Pella. Chapter 4 covers the Hellenistic pe-riod to the beginning of the second century B.C.E.but includes earlier material discovered in later gravecontexts.

Chapter 5, titled La socit macdonienne auxpoques classique et hellnistique, includes essays

on, and material relevant to, athletic education, lit-erature and philosophy, music and dance, and thetheater in Macedonia. Also within this chapter is anessay, titled Le monde des femmes: Parure, vie do-mestique et objets du quotidien, introducing a rangeof domestic objects, jewelry, and terracotta figurinesof high quality. Two more essays in this chapter areconcerned with lunivers masculin:the symposium andthe hunt in Macedonia. Yet another essay presents therural world. Chapter 6 introduces still more objectsdiscovered in classical and Hellenistic Macedonia, withessays and entries now organized by material: archi-tecture, major painting, mosaic, sculpture, coroplastic

material, ceramics, toreutics, gold jewelry, glass, ivo-ries, and works in alabaster. It closes with an essay byBlond and Muller discussing the possibility of localMacedonian artisanal and commercial production,significant indications of which are at present limitedto Pella. After chapter 7 (discussed above) and chap-ter 8 on Roman Macedonia, the final chapter (ch. 9)is dedicated to Alexander the Great and his legendand includes the catalogue entries for the exhibited



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B. BARR-SHARRAR, NEW PUBLICATIONS ON ANCIENT MACEDONIA608

portraits and statuettes of Alexander in the Louvreand the Archaeological Museum of Pella.

There are two appendices in Au royaume dAlexandrele Grand, the first a useful alphabetical list of archaeo-logical sites with photographs and maps. The secondis an introduction by Sideris to the exhibitions virtual-

reality reconstruction of the House of Dionysos inPella, supervised by Sideris in association with theFondation du Monde Hellnique. The bibliographyis extensive, and the two indices are essential.

The five publications in this review cover most ofthe major developments and bibliographies pertain-ing to ancient Macedonia over the last 3040 years.Of relevance, especially to Au royaume dAlexandre leGrand, is the catalogue of a current exhibition on viewthrough 2013 at the Archaeological Museum of Thes-saloniki titled Archaeology Behind Battle Lines: In Thessa-loniki of the Turbulent Years, 19121922.20 The authorsof the 15 essays in the catalogue are mostly Greek, but

Shapland from the British Museum writes about theBritish Salonika Force collection in that museum, andFarnoux, director of the cole Franaise dAthnes,presents an essay on archaeology and the ArmedOrient. All texts are in both Greek and English.The same dual-language presentation can be foundin Threpteria: Studies on Ancient Macedonia.21 This is a

volume of 25 essays on ancient Macedonia written bymembers of the university community and membersof the Ephorates of Prehistoric and Classical Antiqui-ties of Macedonia. The inclusion of English texts inthese publications suggests they are directed towardand intended for the academic community at large.

institute of fine arts

new york university

311 east 72nd street

new york, new york 10021

[email protected]

Works Cited

Adam-Veleni, P., and A. Koukouvou. 2012. ArchaeologyBehind Battle Lines: In Thessaloniki of the Turbulent Years19121922. Exhibition catalogue. Thessaloniki: Archae-ological Museum of Thessaloniki.

Andronikos, M. 1984. Vergina: The Royal Tombs and the An-cient City.Athens: Ekotike Athenon S.A.

. 1987. Some Reflections on the MacedonianTombs. BSA82:116.

Bartsiokas, A. 2000. The Eye Injury of King Philip II andthe Skeletal Evidence from the Royal Tomb II at Ver-gina. Science288(5465):51114.

Borza, E.G., and O. Palagia. 2007. The Chronology of theMacedonian Royal Tombs at Vergina.JdI122:81125.

Brecoulaki, H. 2006. La peinture funeraire de Macedoine:Emplois et fonctions de la couleur IVeIIe s. av. J.-C. 2 vols.

Meletemata 48. Athens and Paris: Centre de Recherchesde lAntiquit Grecque et Romaine, Fondation Nationalede la Recherche Scientifique and De Boccard.

Drougou, S. 2005. : . 237. Athens: Archaeological Society at Athens.

Franks, H.M. 2012. Hunters, Heroes, Kings: The Frieze of TombII at Vergina. Ancient Art and Architecture in Context3. Princeton: American School of Classical Studies at

Athens.Green, P. 1982. The Royal Tombs of Vergina: A Histori-

cal Analysis. In Philip II, Alexander, and the MacedonianHeritage, edited by W.L. Adams and E.N. Borza, 12951.

Washington D.C.: University Press of America.Hammond, N.G.L. 1994. Philip of Macedon. Baltimore: The

Johns Hopkins University Press.

Heuzey, L.A., and H. Daumet. 1876. Mission archologiquede Macdoine. Paris.

Huguenot, C. 2008. La Tombe aux rotes et la tombe dAmaryn-thos. 2 vols. Eretria 19. Gollion, Switzerland: Infolio.

Miller, S. 1993. The Tomb of Lyson and Kallikles: A PaintedMacedonian Tomb. Mainz: Philipp von Zabern.

Saatsoglou-Paliadeli, C. 2004. : -. . 231. Athens: Archae-ological Society at Athens.

Schultz, P. 2007. Leochares Argead Portraits in the Philip-peion. InEarly Hellenistic Portraiture, edited by P. Schultzand R. von den Hoff, 20533.Cambridge: CambridgeUniversity Press.

Tiverios, M., P. Nigdelis, and P. Adam-Veleni, eds. 2012.

Threpteria: Studies on Ancient Macedonia. Thessaloniki:

Aristotle University of Thessaloniki.von Mangoldt, H. 2012. Makedonische Grabarchitektur: Die

Makedonischen Kammergrber und ihre Vorlufer. 2 vols.Tbingen: Wasmuth.

Worthington, I. 2008. Philip II of Macedonia. New Haven:Yale University Press.

Zimi, E. 2011. Late Classical and Hellenistic Silver Plate fromMacedonia. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

20Adam-Veleni and Koukouvou 2012. 21 Tiverios et al. 2012.


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