In 184bcPhilip V had attacked Amadokos, the then king of Thrace,
and had defeated and taken him prisoner. Polybius implies that these
actions of Philip’s also served Byzantine interests, because Thracian
authorities had in effect superseded the Celtic ruler Cavarus as masters
of the hinterland beyond Byzantion.^78 One of Philip’s daughters was
married to a Teres of Thrace (Diod. 32.15.7). These rather sketchy and
very incomplete references from the lost books of Polybius’Histories
offer no real leads in trying to understand Philip V’s relationship with
Amadokos, or with his Thracian neighbours in general. Frank Walbank
interpreted Philip’s strategy during the late 180sbcin Thrace as part of
an attempt (along with his equally obscure negotiations with the Bas-
tarnae in the area of the Danube, and with the Scordisci, also in the far
north), to create the‘first Balkan empire’.^79 The complexities of this
narrative and the syncopated nature of the events that survive from
Polybius’account make it hard to understand exactly what the purpose
of Philip’s campaign was. Walbank was interested in the politics of
Balkan relations, rather less so in the economic implications of Philip’s
strategy.Yet,althoughPhilip’s itinerary has only left brief references in
later authors, it does offer an insight into what it was that political
leaders knew and were interested in, as well as their general desires of
aggrandizement.
Our principal source is Livy, drawing on the now unavailable books of
Polybius, who tells us that in seven days, having marched from Stobi
against the Maidoi in the Strymon valley, Philip reached the foot of a
mountain called Haimos. He was responding, it seems, to reports that,
on ascending this mountain, the Danube, the Black Sea, the Adriatic,
and the Alps could all be seen. Attempts to identify which mountain, or
range, Philip may have climbed have not met with great success.^80 This
story seems to pick up some of the elements of a wider belief, circulat-
ing since the time of the historian Theopompos, if not earlier, in the
extraordinary views that could be gained from climbing the highest
Balkan peaks.^81 There is no mountain from which the Adriatic and the
(^78) Philip’s attack and capture of Amadokos: Plb. 22.14.12; Livy (P) 39.35.4; Walbank
identified Amadokos either as a king of the Astai, or of the Kainoi (Walbank 1940, 237 n.5);
Will,Histoire Politique 2, 252–3 for the general context;HM III, 468–71; Eckstein 2008, 350.
(^79) Walbank 1940, 246.
(^80) Livy refers to Mount Donax farther on (Livy (P) 40.58.2); Walbank, who thought that
the identity of‘Haimos’should be determined by the distance from Stobi, opted for Mount
Vitosha (= Skombros, also mentioned by Thucydides, 2. 96.4), following W. Leake.
(^81) Thucydides makes the overland journey from Abdera to the Danube take 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
172 Thelongue duréein the north Aegean