DATING the ROYAL TOMBS at VERGINA R. Lane Fox
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INTRODUCTION: DATING THE ROYAL TOMBS AT VERGINA R. Lane Fox Macedon dominated Greek history for nearly two centuries. During the past forty years or so it has been at the centre of major new archaeologi- cal and epigraphic discoveries in Greece. The stunning fijinds at Vergina by Manolis Andronicos and his teams began in October 1977 and have been followed both at Vergina and elsewhere in Macedon by decades of discov- eries which have proved hardly less momentous. The linguistic, cultural, institutional, civic and funerary histories of Macedon have been trans- formed, but such has been the pace of discovery and initial publication in Greek that histories in English and other European languages have yet to reflect the new range of knowledge. This volume brings together local and thematic studies by leading Greek archaeologists for the fijirst time and sets them among historical chapters which revisit the reigns and peri- ods most illuminated by the recent fijinds. Major chapters on Pella, Aegae, Aiani, Amphipolis, and Philippi draw together a range of bibliography and archaeological data which has hitherto been unavailable in English. For the fijirst time, a preliminary publication of Philip II’s palace at Aegae appears here, opening so many fascinating perspectives on Philip’s court and what has hitherto been misunderstood as a chapter in the history of Hellenistic architecture and royal style after Alexander the Great. The historical chapters concentrate on eras in which most can be added to, or adjusted in, the great three volumes of N. G. L. Hammond, G. T. Grifffijith, and F. W. Walbank’s A History of Macedonia and R. M. Errington’s short but penetrating History of Macedonia in one volume. Sylvie Le Bohec’s very full study of Antigonos Doson and F. W. Walbank’s enduring classic on Philip V have made it easier to dispense with yet more short chapters on these reigns, thereby helping to keep a long book from becoming even longer. Throughout, I am grateful to M. B. Hatzopoulos for his help in co- ordinating many of the detailed contributions from Greek archaeologists and for contributing distinguished chapters of his own. The primary task of translating the Greek chapters into English was valiantly undertaken by Dr Olympia Bobou. Help in harmonising their bibliography and style was kindly given by Dr J. B. Hainsworth, but the hero behind these aspects of this book is Benjamin Raynor, whose patience and exacting eye caught 2 r. lane fox and harmonised so much throughout. Without him this volume would not exist, a tribute to the dedication of someone who is setting out on a doctoral study of Macedon after Alexander. The fijinal complex stages of correction and co-ordination of the text were carried out with great skill by Elizabeth Ferguson. My own chapters were typed with equal skill by Henry Mason. Such help was made possible by the generous support of Eugene Ludwig and the funds which are administered as his gift through New College, Oxford. His donations have been essential for the organiza- tion and completion of this volume. One question has not been pursued in detail by the contributors, at my request: the dating and attribution of the royal tombs discovered at Aegae-Vergina. So many details about them have come into a clearer focus, more than thirty years after Andronicos’ fijirst discoveries and his tentative hypothesis in 1977 that the double Tomb II is partly the tomb of King Philip II.1 In 2008, M. B. Hatzopoulos published an important critical survey of previously published discussions of this tomb, its occupants, and its individual items.2 This article is the essential starting-point for anyone who now takes up these subjects and their bibliography. However, his paper was already in press when a long re-examination of the question was published independently by Eugene N. Borza and Olga Palagia in 2007.3 The main arguments of their paper were then repeated, concisely, by David W. J. Gill in 2008 in an article whose central purpose is to sort out the weight-standards of various silver items in Tomb II. Borza and Palagia’s arguments are used there to support Gill’s arguments for these silver items’ dating and the dating of the tomb itself.4 In a review in 2010, R. M. Errington has also referred to Borza and Palagia as if they subvert I. Worthington’s recent acceptance of a date for Tomb II under Philip II.5 It is, then, important to subject Borza and Palagia’s increasingly cited 1 M. Andronicos, Vergina: The Royal Tombs and the Ancient City (Athens, 1984) 237 n. 20, explaining that he puts the “Tomb of Philip” in inverted commas because for him, it is still a hypothesis. The best current lists of Macedonian tombs are given by C. Huguenot, La tombe aux Érotes et la tombe d’Amarynthos, Érétrie XIX (Lausanne, 2008) esp. volume II., pp. 29–51 and K. Rhomiopoulou and B. Schmidt-Dounas, Das Palmettengrab in Lefkadia (Mainz, 2010), pp. 119–42. 2 M. B. Hatzopoulos, “The Burial of the Dead (at Vergina) or the Unending Controversy on the Identity of the Occupants of Tomb II,” Tekmeria 9 (2008), 91–118. 3 Eugene N. Borza and Olga Palagia, “The Chronology of the Macedonian Royal Tombs at Vergina,” JDAI 122 (2007), 81–125. 4 David W. J. Gill, “Inscribed Silver Plate from Tomb II at Vergina: Chronological Impli- cations,” Hesperia 77 (2008), 335–58. 5 R. M. Errington, “I. Worthington, Philip II of Macedonia,” Gnomon 81 (2010), 663..