Pella: a brief history, including the world's oldest joke
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Pella is just a dream city. It started as a dream and returned to the dreamstate, to the stuff of myth and legend all too soon. How many other fabulous cities have suffered this fate one can only guess.
Unlike other great cities of the classical Greek world, such as Athens, Troy, Ephesus or Rhodes, Pella did not grow in stature over centuries due to strategic location, natural resources or the cunning of its inhabitants. It was planted there by one man, flowered rapidly within two generations to become the capital of the known world, then faded and withered almost as quickly.
All that was left was the legend, the dream, until a farmer and amateur archaeologist stumbled upon its remains in 1957.
True, Pella had been a port from time immemorial before King Archelaus moved his capital there from Aigai (Vergina) at the beginning of the 5th century BC. Neolithic settlers had been replaced by Cretans (allegedly), who in their turn had been ousted by Macedonian tribes from the north.
The city's location was on the shore of a lake connected to or an inlet on the Thermaic Gulf (depending on which theory you believe) near Thessaloniki. I found lots of the kind of small seashells normally seen on the coast (now around 30 km away) in the soil of the site. It would be interesting to know whether these were washed up here by the sea during ancient times, or were brought here in sand used for building material. [1]
In moving his court from the hills to a port on the plain, Archelaus (413-399 BC) was bringing his kingdom within easier reach of the rest of Greece, much of which preferred not to think of their Macedonian cousins as Greek at all. If the Macedonians ever had an inferiority complex about this, they were about to overcome it big time.
Thanks to the breathtaking ambition of Archelaus, then Philip II and ultimately his son Alexander The Great, the Macedonians were not only grudgingly allowed into the Greek gang, they became the leaders in a series of moves that makes "The Godfather" look like kindergarten stuff. |
Early Macedonian humour
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An anecdote concerning King Archelaus is said to be the oldest joke recorded. It goes like this:
A talkative barber asked Archelaus how he wanted his hair cut.
"In silence!" was his pithy reply. [2]
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Pella grew with Macedonia as a whole from what Athenians considered a barbarous backwater to being an unprecedented centre of power, commerce and culture. It became the glittering city of its time, with splendours said to rival Athens. Greek craftsmen and artists were imported to design and build it. Zeuxis the painter decorated the royal palace, Euripides the playwright, wrote and produced his last plays here (including "The Bacchae"), and later Aristotle the... well, you know, THE ARISTOTLE, may have taught here. (As every schoolgirl and Oliver Stone fan knows by now, Arisotle was Alexander's tutor.)
Of the extents or limits of Archelaus' dreams we know little, but his ability to gain and consolidate power, shift paradigms and think ahead evidently passed on to Philip II. They were more than just pragmatic warriors, they had vision and they were builders. Archelaus kept the Macedonians united as a proto-nation, held together by ties of blood, religion and mutual interest (what's in it for me and my 3000 favourite cousins?). Philip was able to build on this to extend his dominion, chiefly as a military strategist, to become the first unifier of Greece. Alexander, in his turn, took on board all the painful lessons his forebears had learned and pushed them into warp drive.
Meglomania, poor potty training, too much mama-love or too much sex 'n drugs 'n sirtaki? Who knows. His dream was to conquer the world. And he did. The Persians had been Greece's bogey man since way back. Xerxes? Darius? Tell it to the Spartans. They had to be dealt with, of course. But that wasn't enough for our native of Pella. He had to destroy the ancient enemy's empire root and branch. When he reached the fiend's lair, Persopolis, he burned it real good. Ground zero just ain't the word.
And then he went on, and on, and on. Past the limit of the known world, beyond the ken of Herodotus, beyond the patience of his cohorts, who may be forgiven for wanting to return home to enjoy their booty and fame. What a nutter, what a dreamer.
Alexander died intestate in Babylon in 323 BC. With no will and testament and no named successor, his nearest and dearest (the "Diadochi", successors) quickly began murdering each other and grabbing as much of his newly-won empire as they could. That was the end, my friend. Greece fell apart again, and reverted to its ageless and endless ruinous feuds.
Whatever Alexander's dreams may have been for the future his hometown Pella, it rapidly diminished in significance during the carve-up ensuing his death. His mother, Olympia, was not above murdering the competition and their children. Needs must, or carry on the dream?
By the time the Romans moved in, it was relatively easy pickings. They conquered Pella in 168 BC, causing a lot of damage in the process. The city remained occupied for another century or so until it was was destroyed by an earthquake.
Meanwhile the lake or inlet on which Pella stood, and to which it owed much of its prosperity, rapidly silted up, leaving it high and dry [1]. So Pella was abandoned and forgotten for nearly 2000 years, except in dusty books, legends and of course dreams.
So what remains of the dream?
There have been almost continuous excavations underway at the site since 1976, and still the extent of the city are unkown. It requires some imagination to mentally reconstruct how Pella must have looked during its heyday. If a few pillars, foundations and mosaic floors don't seem like much help, try the Pella Museum over the road for more inspiration.
Text and photos: © David John 2004 - 2010
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Notes and links
1. Pella was abandoned because the river mouth on which it lay silted up. It was actually the mouth of several rivers which drained into the Thermaic Gulf, though not an estuary since the Mediterranean is not tidal. Many other ports such as Ephesus in Anatolia have suffered a similar fate.
The silt carried to the sea by rivers is a natural phenomenon but also results from soil erosion caused by continuous farming. As today in other places in the world, early farmers around the Mediterranean cleared forests and other natural habitats to plant their crops which also used up a considerable amount of water. We also know that Macedonia was a major supplier of timber around the region (it supplied the needs of Athens' navy - its "wooden walls"), and it is highly unlikely that they had an efficient sustainable forestry management policy.
Over centuries, millions of tons of exposed soil were blown away by the wind or washed away by rain, and much of it ended up being dumped in the sea. Since there was no tide to take it away and the ancients had no dredgers, the stuff just lay there and piled up. Much later, The Romans (notably Emperor Claudius) were to come up with ingeniuos and expensive (also in human casualties) engineering methods for clearing harbours, but that's another story.
There has been much work published on this subject, but one of the most interesting discussions I have found on the internet directly relating to Pella is on a website dedicated to fly fishing. No kidding.
"Astraes, the first fly fishing river", an academic paper by Goran Grubic and Andrew Herd, originally published in "The American Fly Fisher", 2001. A very entertaining piece and a great source of information and maps for anybody interested in the history, geology and environment of the area, even if you are not a dedicated angler. Thanks guys.
link: http://www.flyfishinghistory.com/contents.htm
2. "Barbers indeed are generally a talkative race, for people fond of prating flock to them and sit in their shops, so that they pick up the habit from their customers. It was a witty answer therefore of king Archelaus, when a talkative barber put the towel round his neck, and asked him, '"How shall I shave you, O king?' 'Silently,' said the monarch."
Plutarch's Morals (Moralia, Greek Ἠθικά), translated by Arthur Richard Shilleto. XV On talkativeness, § xiii, 122. Bohn's Classical Library, George Bell & Sons, London, 1898.
Quoted in The History of Civilization by Will and Ariel Durant.
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map of Macedonia and the North Aegean Sea
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page 10: Pella photo gallery >
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