Maroneia
The recognition of‘dispersed’or dynamic forms of urban organization
may help us to understand the history of Maroneia. One of the best
known historical centres of the north Aegean throughout the second half
of thefirst millenniumbc, classical Maroneia has evaded investigators on
the ground. Hellenistic and Roman inscriptions show that from the third
centurybconwards, and probably from the fourth, Maroneia occupied
the southernflanks of Mount Ismaros, long associated with the Ismarian
wine echoed in a verse of Archilochos (fr. 2.2) at the hilltop named after
Agios Charalambos. The oldest continuous activity in the area dating
from thefirst millenniumbcis on the acropolis of Agios Giorgios,^70 a
fortified acropolis slightly to the east of Agios Charalambos. In a recent
re-assessment of the topographical evidence for ancient Maroneia,
Louisa Loukopoulou and Selene Psoma have underscored the fact that,
of the known historical Greek communities between the River Nestos
and Mount Ismaros, only Abdera and Hellenistic to Roman Maroneia
have been securely located, whereas Dikaia, Stryme, and the pre-Hellen-
istic site of Maroneia have not. Their systematic revision of the evidence
suggests that the urban concentration around Agios Charalambos
reflects a later phase in the city’s history, when this exceptionally rich
community expanded from what may have been its original focus on the
Molyvoti peninsula, separated from it by Lake Mitrikon (identified as
Lake Ismaris), to include the hilltop of Agios Charalambos with the bay
below it, and, in all probability, territory farther east, encroaching on the
Samothrakianperaia.^71
A number of different models of urbanization have historically been
adopted in discussing territories north of the Aegean. Some of the best
known examples, such as Olynthos, in Chalkidike (Fig. 2.3),^72 or Ad-
jiyska Vodenitsa (‘Pistiros’), or Seuthopolis, in eastern Thrace,^73 were the
result of planned investments, involving the mobilization of royal and
collective resources, although we know little about exactly how these
rather remarkable developments were put into practice. Early Hellenistic
cases ofsynoikismos, the merging of earlier, smaller social units, provide
(^70) Loukopoulou and Psoma 2008b, 59–62, with bibl.
(^71) Loukopoulou and Psoma 2008b, 69–81, 86figs 9–12 (inscribed lead weights of
Maroneia from Molyvoti); cf. Psoma 2008, 130–7, on the centres of Samothrakianperaia.
Karadima and Psoma have presented the coin evidence from Agios Charalambos, which
reinforces the interpretation postulated above (2007, 291–8).
(^72) Cahill 2002 with refs.
(^73) Adjiyska Vodenitsa as ancient Pistiros: see Ch. 1 n.19 and Ch. 5 nn.89–90; Seuthopo-
lis: Dimitrov and Chichikova 1978; Stoyanov 2006, 85; K. Dimitrov 2011, 101–12.
Herdsmen with golden leaves—narratives and spaces 71