inhabitants; they quarrelled among themselves because, says Polybius
(31.2.12),‘they were unaccustomed to democratic and representative
government... they preferred of course the more primitive institutions
of their own monarchy and the Macedonian people at arms.’This may
have been what Polybius thought of Macedonian regional administra-
tion; but it is a view that singularly fails, not only to illuminate
how Macedonia was organized under the kings, but why Macedonians
liked the former regional structures created under their Argead and
Antigonid rulers. Polybius‘never shows anyunderstandingof what
mattered to a Macedonian, he judges Macedonian policy invariably in
terms of Achaean advantage.’^136 Frank Walbank’s admission of the
ancient historian’s blind spot deserves serious reflection, because
regional organization is crucial to an understanding of how the mon-
archies of Macedonia and Thrace operated in practice, and how we
should view the links between central and local decision-making. Polyb-
ius, like Athenian orators such as Demosthenes and Demades, could only
see kings as autocraticfigure-heads. They failed to see how kings could
also be managers and coordinators in regions where the distances
between one major population centre and another, and especially
between one lowland area and another, could be substantial, separated
as they were by mountains, forests, and lakes. The effective exploitation
of such regions was necessarily different from the experience of central
and southern Greeks, inured to intense competition over territorial
resources. The clearest indication of these royal coordinating functions
is reflected in the Pistiros inscription, whose regulations are predicated
on the existence of inter-regional roads, tolls (and, what is more import-
ant, the remission of tolls), as well as legal mechanisms, the overall
coordination of which can only have been put in place by supraregional
authorities, in this case, the Odrysian princes. Kings could underwrite
major infrastructure projects, such as roads and ports, including river-
side installations. The implementation of royal enactments fell to
regional subordinates. Regional administration was the key component
to the success of any central organization. Far from being rivals to power,
regional administrators were the real force behind crown authority.
Kings might circulate within their kingdoms, but regional administrators
were the day-to-day decision-makers, policemen, and dispensers of
justice. The scarcity of documentary evidence is not a sufficient reason
for doubting that this echelon of power existed. Regional power was
autocratic and seigneurial, emerging from the princedoms of the archaic
(^136) Walbank 1970, 305 [2002a, 105], 306–7 [2002a, 106].
246 Regionalism and regional economies