death, the afterlife, and commemoration. There are both subtle and more
obvious distinctions between the Thracian, Getic, and Macedonian
forms of dress, which suggest some of the ways in which local élites
reinforced a sense of identity. The two large malefigures on the Agios
Athanasios façade have tunics with vertical, coloured stripes near the
lateral margins, which suggest a particular connotation, perhaps a social
as well as an aesthetic one. They wearfine leather boots with complex
lacing, with straps plaited across the heel as well as over the front of the
foot, a type of footwear that is also shown on the feet of the wreathed
rider approaching the central scene from the left. Leather is a subject to
which I will return below.
In overall terms, thefigures on the façade of the Agios Athanasios
tomb provide a wealth of evidence about appearance and dress in late
classical and early Hellenistic Macedonia. There are visible distinctions
among those represented—who does and who doesn’t wear thekausia;
who does and who does not wear boots; who has a cloak, who has other
garments—that imply social nuances. Nevertheless, the easy familiarity
of thefigures in each other’s company suggests that these distinctions
were easily recognizable, but not particularly formal. Demetrios Polior-
ketes was evidently considered the most ostentatious of Alexander’s
successors. Even he preferred style, variety, and sheer luxury of design
over social formality. Plutarch reports that Demetrios‘possessed an
elaborate wardrobe of hats and cloaks, broad-brimmed hats with double
mitres, and robes of purple interwoven with gold, while his feet were clad
in shoes of the richest purple felt embroidered with gold. One of his robes
had taken many months to weave on the looms: it was a superb piece of
work in which the world and the heavenly bodies were represented. It
was still only halffinished at the time of Demetrius’downfall [288/7bc],
and none of the later kings of Macedon ever presumed to wear it,
although several had a taste for pomp and ceremony.’^59
North Aegean and Pontic grey waresOne example of the dynamics of social tastes in the north Aegean is
represented by a class of grey-faced pottery that gradually became a
ubiquitous phenomenon in thefirst millenniumbc. Grey-faced wares
represent one of the commonest and most widely diffused wheel-made
fabrics throughout the east Balkan region (see Fig. 4.10). In most of the
(^59) Plut.Demetr. 41 (tr. I. Scott-Kilvert).
Thelongue duréein the north Aegean 165