Philippoi has recently persuaded a number of scholars to relocate Mount
Dysoron to the mountains on the eastern margins of the Serres Plain,
rather than to those to the west of it.^48 The inscription does not refer to a
mine, but to forest (hyle: l.10), just after reference to land in Seiraike and
Daineron (l.8). We might expect thefirst to be connected to the area of
Serres. Even if the restoration of the word Dysoron is correct in this
inscription, it does not mean that Mount Dysoron should be relocated
from the western side of the Strymon valley to its far eastern margins.
However imprecise Herodotus’geography of the Strymon estuary may
be, such an interpretation effectively contradicts what the historian says
about the limits of Macedonian power, the location of Bisaltia, and the
technological proximity of Bisaltian and Macedonian regal coins.
The Thasian law on the wine trade should be viewed in the context of
the island community’s pervasive links with the mainland.^49 The‘très
grand cru’of Thasos was protected from competition with other wines
by a law, introducedc. 410 bc, which imposed strict penalties on any ship
owner or captain who should be carrying‘foreign’wines in the area
between the Athos peninsula and Cape Pacheie (l.9). Commissioners of
theēpeiros(control of the taxation regime now being restored), were to
supervise the traffic of commercial shipping and to imposefines. They
were themselves liable to twice thefine if they failed to proceed against an
(^48) Hatzopoulos 1996, II, no. 6, pp. 25–8; the attribution of Mount Dysoron to the
vicinity of Philippoi wasfirst made by L. Missitzis. This was not widely shared until the
theory was revived by Faraguna (1998, 374–6) and Picard (2006, 271–5), and has been since
elaborated by Hatzopoulos (2008a, 14–33, with further bibl.). This new interpretation
departs from this author’s earlier views, but the chief points that convinced him of a
different position have not been answered in the new thesis; see esp. Hatzopoulos-Louko-
poulou 1992, 15–25: based on the evidence of Hdt. 5.17.1–2, Thuc. 2.99.3–6, and two hoards
containing significant quantities of coin originating in the Pangaion area, the Asyut and
Dekadrachm hoards, the authors concluded that up until 480bc, the Macedonian kingdom
reached as far as the River Axios.‘Lower Paionia’, that is, the area on the east banks of
the Axios, extending into the west bank of the lower Strymon valley, remained outside the
kingdom (24). Thereafter, Alexander took possession of this area briefly, in the wake of the
Persian retreat (as suggested in the so-called‘Letter of Philip II’(= [Dem] 12.21). Alexander
I only managed to expand farther eastwards, into Anthemous, Krestonia, and Bisaltia, in
c. 460 bc. Cf. also Hammond,HM II, 102, 114, 120, 138.‘Ce n’est que vers 415, après peut-
être un premier intermède entre 445 et 434/3, que la Bisaltie fut solidement attachée au
royaume, au moins jusqu’àlafin du règne d’Archélaos. Cela explique pourquoi Thucydide,
écrivant sous son règne, parle des peuples dont ils (les Macédoniens)“occupent encore
aujourd 49 ’huiles pays”’. (Hatzopoulos-Loukopoulou 1992, 25, italics are Hatzopoulos’s).
Pouilloux 1954, 212–13; Salviat 1986, 147–54; Brunet 1993;SEG47 (1997) no. 1339;
Grandjean and Salviat 2000, 182–5.
The lure of the northern Aegean 267