Aigai

Vergina is a small town in northern Greece, part of Veria municipality in Imathia, Central Macedonia. Vergina was established in 1922 in the aftermath of the population exchanges after the Treaty of Lausanne and was a separate municipality until 2011, when it was merged with Veroia under the Kallikratis Plan.

Vergina is best known as the site of ancient Aigai (Αἰγαί, Aigaí, Latinized: Aegae), the first capital of Macedon. In 336 BCE Philip II was assassinated in Aigai's theater and his son, Alexander the Great, was proclaimed king.

Some important finds were made in 1977 when the burial sites of several kings of Macedon were found, including the tomb of Philip II which had not been disturbed or looted, unlike so many of the other tombs there.

It is also the site of an extensive royal palace. The archaeological museum of Vergina was built to house all the artifacts found at the site and is one of the most important museums in Greece.

From 1000 BCE the area within 7 km (4.3 miles) of the later city was already intensively occupied by villages forming an important population center, as shown by archaeology since 1995, and similar to other ancient Greek cities' development.

In the 7^th century BCE, the Temenids' dominance led to the Macedonians expanding and subduing local populations until the end of the 6^th century BCE, and establishing the dynasty at Aigai.

Ancient sources give conflicting accounts of the origins of the Argead dynasty. Alexander I is the first truly historic figure and, based on the line of succession, the beginnings of the Macedonian dynasty have been traditionally dated to 750 BCE. Herodotus says that the Argead dynasty was an ancient Greek royal house led by Perdiccas I who fled from Argos in about 650 BCE.

Aigai is the name of several ancient cities derived from the name of a legendary founder, Aegeus, but also etymologized as "city of goats" (from αἴξ, aíks, "goat") by Diodorus Siculus, who reports it was named so by Perdiccas I who was advised by the Pythian priestess to build the capital city of his kingdom where goats led him.

From archaeology it now seems certain that Aigai developed and remained until the end an organized collection of villages and without a regular plan spatially representing the aristocratic structure of tribes centered on the power of the king. Indeed, Aigai never became a large city and most of its inhabitants lived in surrounding villages. The walled asty (acropolis) was built at the center of Aigai.

From Aigai the Macedonians spread to the central part of Macedonia and displaced the local population of Pierians.

From 513 to 480 BCE Aigai was part of the Persian Empire, but Amyntas I managed to keep its relative independence, avoid satrapy and extend its possessions. In the first half of the 5^th century BCE Aigai became the capital of Macedonia, the most important northern Hellenic state. Life reached unseen levels of luxury and to meet the needs of the court merchants from all over the ancient world brought to Aigai valuable goods including perfume, carved ornaments and jewelry. The city wall was built in the 5^th century, probably by Perdiccas II. At the end of the 5^th century Archelaus I brought to his court artists, poets, and philosophers from all over the Greek world; for example, it was at Aigai that Euripides wrote and presented his last tragedies.

At the beginning of the 4^th century BCE, Archelaus transferred the Macedonian capital northeast to Pella on the central Macedonian plain. Nevertheless, Aegae retained its role as the sacred city of the Macedonian kingdom, the site of the traditional cult centers, a royal palace and the royal tombs. For this reason it was here that Philip II was attending the wedding of his daughter Cleopatra to King Alexander of Epirus when he was murdered by one of his bodyguard in the theater. His was the most lavish funeral ceremony of historic times held in Greece. Laid on an elaborate gold and ivory deathbed wearing his precious golden oak wreath, the king was surrendered, like a new Hercules, to the funeral pyre.

The bitter struggles between the heirs of Alexander in the 3^rd century adversely affected the city; in 276 BCE Gallic mercenaries of Pyrrhus plundered many of the tombs.

After the overthrow of the Macedonian kingdom by the Romans in 168 BCE, both old and new capitals were destroyed, the walls pulled down and all buildings burned. In the 1^st century CE, a landslide destroyed what had been rebuilt (excavations establish that parts were still inhabited then). In the 2^nd to 5^th centuries CE the population gradually moved down from the foothills of the Pierian range to the plain, and all that remained was a small settlement whose name alone Palatitsia (palace) indicated its former importance.

The modern settlement of Vergina was established in 1922, between two preexisting villages, "Kutlesh" (Κούτλες, Koútles) and "Barbes" (Μπάρμπες, Bármpes), formerly part of the Ottoman Beylik of Palatitsia. In the 19^th century, both Kutlesh and Barbes were Greek villages in the Ber Kaza of the Ottoman Empire. Several inhabitants of the two villages took part in the Greek uprising of 1821. Alexander Sinve (Les Grecs de l'Empire Ottoman. Etude Statistique et Ethnographique) wrote in 1878 that 120 Greeks lived in Barbas. According to the statistics of Vasil Kanchov ("Macedonia. Ethnography and Statistics"), in 1900, 60 Greek Christians lived in Kutlesh and 50 in Barbes. The town of Vergina was settled in the course of the population exchange between Greece and Turkey following the Treaty of Lausanne, by Greek families from Asia Minor. The name "Vergina" was a suggestion by the metropolitan of Veroia, chosen from a legendary queen Vergina (Bergina), who was said to have ruled somewhere north of the Haliacmon and to have had her summer palace near Palatitsia. Vergina was a separate municipality from 1922 until 2011, when it was incorporated into Veroia. The population of Vergina municipality as of 2011 was 2,464, of whom 1,242 lived in Vergina proper.

The Archaeological Site of Aigai is a UNESCO World Heritage Site.

All pictures are © Dr. Günther Eichhorn, unless otherwise noted.