much part of what we consider the classical heritage of antiquity and, at
the same time, remain enigmatically mysterious.
The extraordinary material world of ancient cultures around the north
Aegean shores has shown that these societies enjoyed many of the same
traditions as their more southerly counterparts in central and southern
Greece. There are many similarities in cult practices, in the athletic and
military training of young men, and in farming practices and other forms
of subsistence. There are also significant differences, particularly notice-
able, to modern eyes at least, in the special treatment of certain members
of society after death; and in some forms of social organization, which
valued individual leadership and provided institutional mechanisms for
identifying leaders, who also had a less immediately apparent but evi-
dently substantive role in ritual. The special training for leadership
within these societies is often seen, in modern political analyses, as an
autocratic tendency,^10 perhaps because our own societies have been
much preoccupied with the failings of leadership, in times when social
forms have become remarkably complex. Aside from the rhetoric
induced by political disputes, there certainly are some grounds for
thinking that the rulers of the north were seen by their contemporaries
in other parts of Greece as exceptionally powerful individuals. Such kings
could send letters to Greek cities and expect action in return.^11
Yet the forms of leadership that emerged in the north-east Balkans
provided the foundations of the Successor kingdoms of Alexander the
Great’s realm—arguably among the most successful kingdoms of pre-
modern times, since they lasted not only for the three centuries leading
up to the Roman Empire, but laid the institutional foundations of the
eastern provinces up until the Ottoman conquests.
There is another aspect of leadership in the north-east Balkans that has
received less attention, namely the ability to coordinate complex func-
tions. The ancient kingdoms of the Balkans encompassed irregular ter-
rain—mountains draped in thick, impassable forests; distant plains;
waterlogged and alluvial coastlines. This topography was hard to exploit
effectively without a clearly coordinated set of organizational structures.
Historians draw attention to the timber and mineral deposits of the
Chalkidic peninsula, of Aegean Thrace or of lower Macedonia. Even
today it is far from easy to exploit these resources without systematic
planning and coordination. Maps all too easily disguise what the traveller
discovers at his or her cost—steep, tortuous roads, rocky, precipitous
(^10) Errington 1990, 4–5;HM II, 160, 162; Mari 2002, 49 with further refs.
(^11) On royal letters see now the volume edited by Yivtach-Firanko, esp. the contributions
by Ceccarelli and Harris (see Harris forthcoming).
Introduction 7