History of Macedonia

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Macedonia

Hesoid records a Greek myth tracing their origins back to Macedon, the son of Zeus and of Thyia, daughter of Deucalion, the survivor of the flood. Pindar, Herodotus and other ancient writers say the earliest ancestors of the Dorians were the Makednoi ( Macedonians) who migrated from Doris to Pindos, more precisely from the Lakmos region. Its obvious that the Dorians took their name from Doris, where they formed themselves into one ethnic group by the union of the local inhabitants and the newcomers, it can be said that the name Makednoi and the mention of Pindos as their original homeland do not refer to the whole of the Dorian tribe but just to one of its component groups. Hylleis, one out of the three groups of the Dorians had settled in present day Sterea Hellas earlier.

Ancient texts containing echoes of fragments of a very old lost epic about Aigimios say that the Dorians stood in danger of attack by the Lapiths, that the king of the Dorians, Aigimios, sought the help of Heracles in return for the reward mentioned above, and that Heracles repulsed the Lapiths and established the Dorians in a region from which he had driven out the Dryopians. IT follows that the race which was led by Aigimios and helped by Heracles was not yet the Dorians but the Macedonians. Heracles here is no more that the representative of a people in central Stera Hellas. One of the texts mentioned above says that Aigimios people at the time of the Lapith attacks were in Histiaiotis, others imply that they had already reached the northern part of present day Sterea Hellas. The second version must be the earlier one , because it tallies with the mention of the alliance of the people who are represented by Heracles. The mention of the Lapiths as enemies of the Dorians, i.e. the Macedonians, does not conflict with this version since, as we have seen , there are traces of Lapith settlements in the Spercheios Valley. The Dorians were divided into three tribes. First the Hylleis, Dymanes and Pamphyloi. The eponymous heroes of the Dymanes and the Pamphyloi wee believed to be the sons of Aigimios who had led the Dorians to Doris. The eponymous hero of the Hylleis was said to be the son of Heracles who had acquired one third of Aigimios kingdom for helping him against the Lapiths.

The monarchs of Macedonians origin claimed to be derived from Heracles and the name of their dynasty from Argos, so that they called themselves Argeads and boasted of pure Greek decent. The court religion was manifestly Hellenic, including cults of Zeus Hetairides and Heracles Kynagidas. Before the seventh century Greek monarch Perdiccas I penetrated to the coastland, the region had become a target for colonization by the other Greek city states. Thus we enter the Archaic age. The state form of Macedonia was unusual. In one way a federal state composed of autonomous Macedonian tribes subject to the central authority Orestai, Elimeiotai and Lynkestai, but yet also an ethnos with a strong, though democratic monarchy, and a society of farmers and stock breeder very capable of defending their land against all foreign invaders. Macedonia evolved with the passage of the centuries into a power of world-wide influences and prestige during that period.