Sep 26, 2025
Phiiippi, Greece (by Magda)
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Phiiippi, Greece (by Magda)
Neal Street, Philippi, West Virginia.
and later -
Pharsalus haunts Philippi haunts Pharsalus haunts Philippi (Carrhae is also there)
all i can say is that the roman matron in book 1 of pharsalia crying out that she sees philippi broke something open in my brain and i have since then been obsessed with the ghosts of battles haunting each other both forwards and backwards in time
Philippi Theater (Macedonia, Greece)
And my parents for scale to where I was. Yes I know theaters like Epidaurus are famous and for a good reason but I wanted to show this underrated gem of later years in antiquity.
By the way my mother and I (I at the top, her at the bottom of the theater) were talking normally. I didn't raise my voice not even for one decibel. We communicated perfectly.
My drawing of Marcus Antonius holding up a cookie Marcus Antonius. Bring back the republic.
Popular history seems to like the idea that Alexander named so many cities after himself as an act of vanity. Was this actually a strategy to legitimize his reign, propaganda for his new regime, or was this just a common feature of Antiquity (both Greek and Asian)?
Cities Named Alexandria
I’ll go with Door Number Three.
As funny as some of the “Alexandria” memes are…after the first 20, they get old. I do enjoy memes, but far too many about Alexander involve the multiplicity of “Alexandria”s. The others are often puns on Alexander “the Great”…again, funny if it’s one or two. Not-so-funny after you’ve seen the umpteenth. But yes, much of this is cultural expectation + Daddy + vanity.
First, the number is often exaggerated. Plutarch claimed 70, but that’s way too high. And of those we can verify, several were founded after he died by Successors making use of his name. The number of verified cities ranges from the teens to about twenty, maybe a few more. roughly half on the eastern side of the Tigris. Why does that matter? They’re hill forts, not “cities.” Most didn’t last any length of time, either. Nor, I suspect, were they meant to. Alexander was making an attempt to formalize a border with these outposts, then peopled them with veterans he needed to retire because they were wounded or too old.
Most of these cities had an additional epithet to indicate where they were. So “Alexandria Eschate” meant “Alexandria the Farthest,” which today is probably Khujand in Tajikistan. It actually lasted as distinctively Greek down to the first century BCE. That owed a lot to the Greco-Baktrian kingdom that emerged from the eastern carcass of the Seleucid Kingdom. Alexandria Arachosia, called in the medieval period “Alexandria of the East,” is, today, Kandahar, Afghanistan. There are even a few cities not named after himself, such a Bucephaleia, after his horse. But another was named just “Nikaia”—victory.
But of note is that many of these had a military purpose, or which a few later took on a life of their own. But far more of them went “poof” over time and we have no idea where they actually were. Later Successors also used their own names for cities, such as Lysimachia, Antioch, Kassandreia, and Seleucia. And even their wives! Apama got a city of her very own (Apamea). As did Thessalonike (Thessaloniki).
Alexander wasn’t the first to do this. His father founded two cities, one that still bears his name: Philippi, but also Philippolis (Plovdiv). The later even recently got a new archaeological park in Bulgaria. (The article is hysterical, as apparently people turned out to take pictures of the local soccer/futbol star, rather than the archaeological site.) In any case, as in so much else, Alexander was following in his father’s footsteps.
Peter Fraser did the standard text on this, The Cities of Alexander the Great (1996), so now 30 years old. Some recent archaeology has added correctives, but if you’re really curious, that’s the place to start. War in these areas has tended to halt much archaeology, and the historiographic (e.g., textual) problems (unaffected by modern political struggles) are laid out well in his work.
"This is how history is made."
Philippi - Rome (2007)
Macedon was an ancient kingdom located in the north of the Greek peninsula first inhabited by the Mackednoi tribe who, according to Herodotus, were the first to call themselves 'Hellenes' (later applied to all Greeks) and who gave the land their name. The kingdom was founded c. 7th century BCE by Caranus who seems semi-mythical and named after the god Makedon (also given as Makednos, Macedon), a son of Zeus. For centuries, the Mackednoi had little to do with southern Greece and the Greeks considered them barbarians who were useful only for the raw materials their region provided, especially timber for shipbuilding. The Mackednoi, for their part, held the Greeks in equal contempt. During the Persian invasion of 480 BCE, Macedonia was under Persian rule and compelled to provide troops for the invading force. Their participation on the Persian side does not seem to have worsened the poor relations between Macedonia and southern Greece in any way. Following the Greek victory and expulsion of the Persians, Macedon preferred to remain aloof from the rest of Greece and the squabbles and fighting which constantly took place between the Greek city-states and the southern states did the same with Macedon. All of this changed under the rule of King Phillip II (r. 359-336 BCE) who systematically brought the southern Greek city-states under his control. After Philip's assassination in 336 BCE his throne passed to his son, Alexander the Great (r. 336-323 BCE), who would spread Greek culture and civilization across the known world of antiquity. Macedon fell out of favor with southern Greece after the death of Alexander in 323 BCE with many Greeks resenting Macedonian rule and virulent antagonism expressed toward anything even remotely Macedonian. Macedon continued as an autonomous and powerful kingdom until it was annexed by Rome, along with the rest of Greece, c.146 BCE.