History of Pella Greece - My Favourite Planet

An anecdote concerning King Archelaos is said
to be the oldest joke recorded. It goes like this:

Pella grew with Macedonia as a whole from what Athenians considered a barbarous backwater to being an unprecedented centre of power, commerce and culture. It became the glittering city of its time, with splendours said to rival Athens. Greek craftsmen and artists were imported to design and build it. Zeuxis the painter decorated the royal palace, Euripides the playwright, wrote and produced his last plays here (including The Bacchae), and the musican Timotheos of Miletus and the Athenian tragic poet Agathon also moved to the city.

The first author known to have mentioned Pella was the 5th century BC historian Herodotus (Histories, Book 7, chapter 123), although only as part of a list of cities in areas passed by the Persian fleet during Xerxes' invasion of Greece in 480 BC (see History of Ancient Stageira part 4). According to one ancient source, Herodotus may have lived in the Macedonian capital at the end of his life and been buried here, although this claim is not supported by other ancient authors. [3]

Later the philosopher Aristotle may have taught here, although he is thought to have tutored Alexander the Great and the sons of other nobles in his academy at Mieza, near Naousa [4]. Aristotle's father Nicomachos was a personal physician of King Amyntas III of Macedonia.

Of the extents or limits of Archelaos' dreams we know little, but his ability to gain and consolidate power, shift paradigms and think ahead evidently passed on to Philip II. They were more than just pragmatic warriors, they had vision and they were builders. Archelaos kept the Macedonians united as a proto-nation, held together by ties of blood, religion and mutual interest (what's in it for me and my 3000 favourite cousins?). Philip was able to build on this to extend his dominion, chiefly as a military strategist, to become the first unifier of Greece.

Alexander, in his turn, took on board all the painful lessons his forebears had learned and pushed them into warp drive. His dream was to conquer the world, and he did, or at least an enormous swathe of the known world from the eastern Mediterranean, through Anatolia and the Levant to Egypt, and as far east as northwest India. He created a Greek empire by destroying that of the Persians who had dominated the near east and central Asia for over 200 years.

He died intestate in Babylon in 323 BC. With no will, testament or named successor, his nearest and dearest (the "Diadochi", successors) quickly began murdering each other and grabbing as much of his newly-won empire as they could. That was the end, my friend. Greece fell apart again, and reverted to its ageless and endless ruinous feuds.

Whatever Alexander's dreams may have been for the future his hometown Pella, it rapidly diminished in significance during the carve-up ensuing his death. His mother, Olympia, was not above murdering the competition and their children. Needs must, or carry on the dream?

By the time the Romans moved in, it was relatively easy pickings. They conquered Pella in 168 BC, causing a lot of damage in the process. The city remained occupied for another century or so until it was destroyed by an earthquake.

Meanwhile the lake or inlet on which Pella stood, and to which it owed much of its prosperity, rapidly silted up, leaving it high and dry [see note 1]. So Pella was abandoned and forgotten for nearly 2000 years, except in dusty books, legends and of course dreams.

So what remains of the dream?

Travellers from northern European countries passed through the area in the 18th and 19th centuries, but the exact location of Pella remained uncertain: several scholars thought that the ancient city was at Edessa (then known by its Slavic name Vodena, it was also identified by some as the location of Aigai) or around the ruins known as the "Baths of Alexander", near Nea Pella.

During Byzantine times the village of Pella had become known as Agoi Apostoli (Άγιοι Απόστολοι, Holy Apostles), and in the Ottoman period it was also known by the Macedonian Slavic name Postol (Постол, Свети Апостол, Sveti Apostol, Holy Apostles) and to the Turks as Allah Kilise (God's Church).

Meanwhile, local people at Pella retained many traditions and legends of ancient Pella, and, as Greek archaeologist Photios Petsas was to discover when he arrived here in 1953, several safeguarded in their homes artefacts they had found in the fields. Athanasios Kondrouphis, who had diligently collected local historical information, proved to be a well-spring of knowledge for the professional archaeologists when they started the first systematic excavations here in 1957. [11]

There have been almost continuous excavations underway at the site since 1976, and still the extent of the city is unkown. It requires some imagination to mentally reconstruct how Pella must have looked during its heyday. If a few pillars, foundations and mosaic floors don't seem like much help, try the nearby Pella Museum for more inspiration.