The Macedonian King Archelaos (413-399 B.C.), according to his contemporary Thukydides, the Athenian historian of the Peloponnesian War who knew the North Aegean well, built castles, forts and straight roads in the country and also invested more in war equipment – horses, armour and other weapons – than all his predecessors put together. Nevertheless, Arrian, the historian of Alexander the Great viewing Macedonia about two generations later, gained the impression that before the time of Philip II (359-336) the Macedonians led the life of poor shepherds and were a target of continual attacks from their neighbors. Safe frontiers and the affluence of an urban civilization were first attained under Philip II. 

In the transformations of the Classical world from Alexander to the end of the Roman Empire, the politics of the Greek polis underwent crucial changes. Yet, the city retained a vibrant urban political culture. These essays explore that culture and seek to explain the continued importance of city politics in the changing political environments of antiquity. The contributors question long-established interpretative traditions and seek to establish new ways of understanding the politics of the Greek city after the Classical age.

(c) 2011 Peeters Publishers | Series: Groningen-Royal Holloway Studies on the Greek City after the Classical Age 

In the past 35 years our archaeological and epigraphic evidence for the history and culture of ancient Macedon has been transformed. This book brings together the leading Greek archaeologists and historians of the area in a major collaborative survey of the finds and their interpretation, many of them unpublished outside Greece. The recent, immensely significant excavations of the palace of King Philip II are published here for the first time. Major new chapters on the Macedonians' Greek language, civic life, fourth and third century BC kings and court accompany specialist surveys of the region's art and coinage and the royal palace centres of Pella and Vergina, presented here with much new evidence. This book is the essential companion to Macedon, packed with new information and bibliography which no student of the Greek world can now afford to neglect.