enhanced this strategy by encouraging the‘Northern League’of cities
with shared economic interests.
Traffic in antiquity was, for the most part, local traffic. Analyses of
transport patterns in Egyptian papyri demonstrate that most journeys
were local journeys.^31 In terms of global transport dynamics, even in the
early nineteenth century only a tenth of the traffic in commodities
travelled by water, because the great majority of journeys involved
short distances—carting foodstuffs fromfields to barns and mills; fuel
to households; livestock to market.^32 This near constant hum of carts and
beasts of burden is what made more complex, strategically driven jour-
neys possible. Those who owned animals in the countryside had to invest
resource in order to maintain their beasts. Sheep and pigs might be kept
on marginal land, but cattle and horses require pasture and water, and
are consequently among the most expensive forms of livestock. There
was little point in keeping such animals, unless they paid their way.
Hiring out cattle and horses for traction or for private travel was the
easiest and the mostflexible way to maintain them, as commentators for
many historical periods agree.^33 Whether we consider the historical
narratives of Herodotus, or Thucydides, or Xenophon, or the historians
of Alexander the Great; the iconography of royal and civic coins, the
imagery of private monuments, or excavated osteological remains, the
message that these sources convey is clear. Horses and cattle were highly
prominent in the economies of Macedonia and Thrace. They provided
these societies with resources in transport and communications that
their less well-endowed neighbours could not, indeed did not compete
with.
The focus of this book is not on a single political entity or kingdom, but
on a network of socially and politically interdependent and interlinked
units. The kingdom of Macedonia under the Argead and Antigonid
dynasties was politically and culturally orientated not only to its southern
neighbours but also north-eastwards, towards Thrace, the Propontis and
Black Sea coastline. Argead Macedonian and Odrysian Thracian rulers
competed for influence along the Aegean littoral, the principal harbours of
which were dominated by wealthy families of merchants and landowners
whose primary affiliations were overseas. The affairs of these port cities,
and of offshore islands such as Thasos and Samothrace, became deeply
engaged with their continental hinterlands. Whilst stressing their pedigree
(^31) Adams 2007, 103–4, 119–95; Adams 2012, 218–40.
(^32) Archibald (forthcoming a/), citing Braudel 1982, 350–2 on road traffic volumes in
Europe between 1800 and the 1820s.
(^33) Adams 2007, 281–2, 287–9; cf. Chandezon 2005.
20 Introduction