age. We glimpse this caste in the late archaic coinage of the Pangaion
area, where rulers’names appear on coin legends alongside ethnic ones
(notably Getas of the Edoni; Bisaltai, Tyntenoi, Oreskioi, Zaielioi, and
others); and to some extent in regional prosopography (Arrabaios, king
of the Lynkestians: Thuc. 4.79.2, 83.1). The persistence of regional
names—Emathia, Pieria, Almopia, Amphaxitis, Eordaia, Tymphaia,
Lynkos, Elimeia, and others, including those east of the River Axios:
Mygdonia, Krestonia, Anthemous, shading into similar ethnic names in
Thracian-speaking areas, the land of the Odomantians, Sintians, Bessoi,
and Odrysians—in short, all the regional levies called up by King Sitalkes
in 429bc, and the Macedonian levies that responded, provide ample
evidence of how regional organization was articulated.^137 The marriage
between Sitalkes’nephew Seuthes to King Perdikkas of Macedon’s
daughter Stratonike, the diplomatic resolution of this invasion, illustrates
the critical role of princes and princesses in government. This was the
upside of dynastic diplomacy, even if factions and feuds were the
downside.
Hatzopoulos has attempted to sketch the evolution of Macedonia’s
regional infrastructure, which eventually emerged as four districts, prob-
ably from the time of Philip II, although the nature of these four divisions
remains problematic.^138 If these really were similar to the Roman div-
isions, as he suggests, then it is hard to see why Livy goes to such lengths
(45.29.4–9) to describe how the new regions were to be arranged, and
Polybius’remarks about the negative response of Macedonians to these
divisions demand some explanation. There was undoubtedly novelty in
the two easternmost districts, where parts of Thrace and Paionia were to
be incorporated. We have much to learn about how the regalmerides
operated over time.
Maria Gabriella Parissaki has recently reviewed the districts of Thrace,
thestrategiai, that are documented in a range of late republican and early
imperial inscriptions, principally dedications, which show how the pre-
conquest Thracian élite was incorporated into the new Roman adminis-
trative machinery that came to constitute the foundations of Roman
provincial administration.^139 One of the difficulties that has beset stu-
dents of Thracianstrategiaiis thefluctuating number of these regional
divisions. The reordering of epigraphic alongside historical data has
enabled Parissaki to propose a new hypothesis about regional organiza-
tion in Thrace. The earliest system that can be discerned from the
(^137) Thuc. 2.99–101; Archibald 1998, 107–11.
(^138) Hatzopoulos 1996, I, 231–60. (^139) Parissaki 2009.
Regionalism and regional economies 247