A FORGOTTEN Ancient Kingdom in the Balkans

It was a kingdom on the edge of ancient Greece that was swimming in silver and gold, helped Alexander conquer the known world, had people living in the middle of lakes, and occasionally even had bouts of frog rain. Like everything else in the Balkans, it's also a major point of contention in an ongoing ethno-nationalist dispute, so that's fun. This is the story of the forgotten ancient kingdom of Paeonia, and the proud line of kings who once ruled it. But most of all, it's the story of a small nation's centuries-long struggle for independence against some of the most renowned conquerors in history. This is the first episode in a series on fascinating forgotten kingdoms from around the world, so stay tuned. Paeonia was the land of a mysterious people called the Paeonians, occupying what is now northern Greece, western Bulgaria, and especially North Macedonia. They were initially made up of several independent tribes, but most of them later united under the rule of a single line of kings, so that's why I'm covering them in this video. We don't know where exactly they came from, and it's possible that they were a mix of the Illyrians who lived west of them, and the Thracians who lived east of them. Strabo instead proposed that they are the descendants of Phrygians, and Herodotus even suggested that they were descendants of the Trojans. That's probably because Homer mentioned that the Paeonians actually fought alongside the Trojans against the Greeks during the Trojan War. One of the Paeonian leaders, Asteropeus, meaning lightning, was the only warrior on the Trojan side that could make Achilles bleed. The Paeonians never really wrote anything down, so the main sources of information on them are Greek authors like these, along with what can be gleaned from the coins their kings produced and archaeology. But we do know that Paeonian life was dominated by different river valleys. Paeonia encompassed the whole Axios river valley, now known as Vardar, and the valleys east of it as far as the Strymon river, now known as the Struma. Another important river to them was the Astybos or Bregalnica river, because they anointed their kings in its water. It's also been claimed that a whopping 20,000 unexcavated Paeonian tombs, including those of their kings, lie along a certain 36-kilometer stretch of it, nicknamed the Valley of Kings. I wonder where they got that from. Paeonia's possible capital, the lost city of Astybos, was also on it. It had another possible capital, though, the city of Bylazora, near the modern village of Nezhe. The Paeonians also had many other cities, despite their tribal origins, but that's just what the Kingdom of Paeonia ruled. Before its existence and the Persian invasions, the Paeonians ruled far more territory. In the 6th century, they made their way as far east as the city of Perinthus in Thrace, on the Sea of Marmara, which they fought a war with and subjugated. They also ruled regions to the south, too, like Macdonia, Crestonia, Pieria, and Pelagonia. Even Amathia, the heartland of Macedon, was once called Paeonia, according to Polybius. But around 512 BC, Paeonia was invaded by the Persian Empire under Darius the Great, which considerably weakened them. Later, under pressure from the Thracians and the growing Kingdom of Macedon, the territory ruled by the Paeonians was considerably reduced. The Paeonians did bravely gather together to resist the Persian invasion, but they were defeated without ever engaging them in battle. They had gathered along the coastal route to Paeonia, thinking that that would be where the Persians would attack, but the Persians chose to go along a different route to Paeonia, through the highlands, and took their cities without any resistance. With nothing to defend anymore, really, the Paeonian warriors just dispersed and surrendered. After this, Herodotus claims, King Darius had a bit of a Stalin moment and deported two whole tribes of Paeonians, called the Syriopaeans and the Paeoplei, to Phrygia. According to Herodotus, the whole reason Darius launched the invasion in the first place was because he was amazed to see a hard-working Paeonian woman carrying a pitcher on her head, leading a horse to drink, and spinning flax all at the same time. But that's probably just a bogus justification for it. Luckily, the deported Paeonians managed to flee back to Paeonia during the Ionian Revolt. That didn't mean there weren't Paeonians among the ranks of the Persian army during Xerxes's invasion of Greece in 480 BC, though. You know, the one from 300. Plus, plenty of the Paeonians were never subdued by the Persians, despite their best efforts. Like the Agrianes tribe, the lake dwellers around Praseod Lake, and the people living in the region around the silver-rich Pangean Mountains. Herodotus gives us a neat glimpse into the rather idyllic lives led by the lake dwellers. They lived in the middle of the lake, in houses built on platforms made of tall wooden piles, like other prehistoric settlements found throughout Europe, and they were only connected to land by a narrow bridge. Each hut had a trapdoor leading down to the lake, and fish were so abundant that people could just open their trapdoors, lower down a basket into the water, and boom presto, the basket would be full of fish in no time. The lake dwellers also ensured their continued existence in an interesting way. Each man had a bunch of wives, and for each wife, he'd plant three trees on a special mountain that would eventually be used to make more wooden piles to stick into the lake to make more houses on. Isn't that genius? But enough about the lake dwellers, because Paeonia was about to get its first kings. The first of the Paeonian tribes to have kings seems to be the Derones. We know that thanks to the coins they've left us, which bear legends naming their kings. Unfortunately, their names are all we know about them. During the Persian occupation, different Paeonian tribes started minting silver coins to pay Persian taxes and to trade with them, since Paeonia held highly prized silver mines around Mount Pangeum and the Zlatovo-Kotovo region. Paeonia was also crazy rich in gold, and according to Strabo, Paeonian farmers found nuggets of gold just by plowing their land. These Derones minted some of the heaviest silver coins ever produced in the ancient world at the lost, silver-rich city of Damastion near Illyria. These Deronian coins have been found as far away as Syria and Egypt, all bearing the Paeonian's beloved sun motif, which I'll get into later. But the story of Paeonia's main line of kings really starts around the time of the famous Philip of Macedon, when they were a real pain in his ass. Paeonia was under Macedon's thumb for a while after the Persians left, but a line of Paeonian kings emerged in the confusion after Philip's older brother, King Proticus III, was killed in a disastrous battle in 359 BC. One of the first threats Philip had to face after coming to the throne, out of many, were the Paeonians pillaging his land under their new king, Agis. Philip initially bribed the Paeonians to maintain peace, but after Agis died sometime in the winter of 359 and 358 BC, he immediately attacked them and forced them to acknowledge their allegiance to the Macedonians. We know a bit more about Agis' successor, Lachaius, who reigned from 358 to 340 BC. He tried to regain Paeonia's full independence by forming a coalition with the Thracians and the Illyrians, who had also taken a beating from Philip. But while they were still gathering their forces, Philip struck terror into them somehow and compelled them to join forces with the Macedonians. This is possibly the same revolt that was crushed by the Macedonian general Parmenio on the day Alexander the Great was born in 356 BC. This defeat resulted in Paeonia once again becoming a subordinate vassal of Macedon, but it remained semi-autonomous and kept its kings. A fragmentary inscription from Athens also shows that the Athenians had allied themselves with the members of this short-lived coalition. Except on the inscription, Lachaius is called Lepaeus. Unlike Agis, Lachaius minted plenty of coins, like this tetradram. The head on the obverse isn't actually him, it's the god Apollo. The reverse depicts Hercules fighting the Nemean lion. These tetradrams might serve as further proof of Lachaius' fight against Philip, since they were struck in two different weight standards, the lighter Thraco-Macedonian standard and the heavier Attic standard, which might have been used because Athens was helping him against Philip. And there's a reason why Lachaius put Apollo's face all over his coins. In the 5th and 4th centuries BC, the Paeonians were subject to increased Hellenic influence and adopted the Greek pantheon, with Apollo becoming their principal deity. This might be because the solar cult, possibly from the north, played a central role in Paeonian life. Maximus of Tyre even wrote that they worship the sun as a small round disc affixed to a pole, and solar motifs are found on many of their bronze artifacts and pottery. The most exceptional example of the former is probably the large solar disc found on the chest of Paeonia's female version of King Tut. She's thought to be a priestess, and her rich grave, found at the Lysissandol site in 1997, contained some 400 beautiful bronze objects. This also included a mysterious cup, decorated with wings on a chain, that may have been used to heat poppy tar, creating intoxicating vapor, something done to modern times in North Macedonia. The Paeonians also adopted the cult of Dionysus, who they called Dryalis, Artemis, and Sybil. Anyways, Lycaeus was in turn succeeded by a guy called Petraus, who ruled Paeonia from 340 to 315 BC, while his neighbor, Alexander the Great, was off conquering the known world. But there were plenty of Paeonians in Alexander's army, like a unit of horsemen commanded by a Paeonian prince named Ariston, who might have been Petraus's brother. These horsemen fought bravely at the famous Battle of Gaugemela. Beforehand, they were mainly used as scouts, but right before the main battle, they defeated a large force of Persian cavalry. Afterwards, there's no mention of them, so they were either sent back home or were destroyed. But there was a light infantry unit made up of Paeonians called the Agrianes, which remained with Alexander. The reverses on the tetradrams Petraus minted show a cavalryman riding down a foot soldier, which has been interpreted as a Paeonian horseman killing a Persian soldier at Gaugemela. But it's possible that this foot soldier was actually supposed to represent a Macedonian, since he seems to be holding a Macedonian-type shield. This sort of makes sense, considering that Petraus may have unsuccessfully sought independence from Macedon, like his predecessor, between 331 and 323 BC, while Alexander was off in Asia. But there was another Paeonian king who showed way more loyalty to Alexander, a guy called Langaris, king of the Agrianes tribe. He had been loyal to Philip and helped out Alexander by attacking and defeating an Illyrian tribe from the Dalmatian mountains known as the Atariate. This tribe was poised to attack Alexander while he was marching back to Macedon after a campaign around the Danube, and for his help, Alexander rewarded Langaris with presents and great honors. This included the promise of his half-sister Sinanes' hand in marriage, an offer Langaris unfortunately couldn't take up, because he soon fell ill and dropped dead. I'm not sure how the Agrianes gained their independence, or if Langaris had a successor, but the next Paeonian king after Petraus was his son, Otoleon. He ruled from 315 to 285 BC, and became well-respected among his more famous Greek contemporaries. During his reign, he had to fend off a horde of 20,000 Atariate, but with the help of the new viceroy-turned-king of Macedon, Cassander, he was able to resettle them around the same special mountains the lake dwellers got their wood from. Otoleon was also held in pretty high regard by the famous enemy of Rome, Pyrrhus of Epirus, and we know that because he married Otoleon's daughter. Otoleon was even granted Athenian citizenship, because he was a real fan of the city and treated its people well. Around the same time as that, he joined a coalition, including Pyrrhus and Pharaoh Ptolemy I, to drive King Demetrius the Besieger out of Macedon, which went successfully, despite how good a nickname the guy had. Otoleon put the head of Athena on most of his coins and prancing horses on the reverses, but he also minted coins modeled off of Phillips and Alexander's. They even had Alexander's name on them instead of his own until 306 or 305, when several of the generals that had ripped Alexander's empire apart made themselves kings. Unfortunately, Otoleon's death and the chaos that followed marked the end of the Kingdom of Paeonia's prosperity. That's because Otoleon's son and successor, Ariston, was deposed by King Lysimachus of Thrace during his first day on the job, while he was having dinner right after the ritual bath inaugurating his reign. Otoleon's closest confidant, some asshat named Zermo de Gestus, also showed Lysimachus a huge hoard of Paeonian treasure, which had been hidden under a river called the Sargentius. And you know it was good because they really went all out to hide it. The prisoners who buried it were even murdered so they couldn't tell anyone where it was. And of course, after Lysimachus stole this coveted treasure, Lysimachus annexed Paeonia. But that wasn't the end for the Kingdom of Paeonia, and the worst was still yet to come. Around 280 BC, Paeonia was ravaged by the Gauls under their chief Brennus, who had left the middle Danube plains and was headed towards Greece. A king named Leon, who might have been a younger son of Otoleon, came to the throne in 278 or 277 and ruled until maybe 250. Under his rule, the devastated and impoverished realm recovered. Leon, unlike his predecessors, just minted bronze coins, only 12 of which survive. They seem to be a continuation of Otoleon's tetrabowls, since they both have Dionysus on the obverse, and a lion, an animal sacred to Apollo, on the reverse. Since Paeonia's territorial, economic, and political power had greatly diminished since the Gallic invasion, they were probably intended for local usage in a limited area. Leon's son and successor was Dropeon, who ruled from around 250 to 230 BC, and he wound up being the last of Paeonia's kings. Under him, the Paeonians were reorganized into a Paeonian League or Koinon. To show off their independence, Dropeon sent a bronze bull's head as a gift to the Oracle of Delphi. This bull was probably actually a bison, since Greek writers described them as bulls with the manes of horses. These authors note that when these bisons were chased, they released a long trail of dung so acrid that it could burn its pursuers like fire or even kill them. The Paeonians called these foul-smelling beasts monopos, and since their language is long extinct, it's one of the only Paeonian words we know. Another weird natural phenomenon found in Paeonia was frog rain, according to the 2nd century BC historian Heraclitus Lembus. He claimed that the numbers of frogs raining down on Paeonia reached almost apocalyptic proportions. The streets were full of them, and even people that shut their houses to the outside found that frogs wound up in everything they ate. All the water was contaminated, you couldn't even step anywhere without stepping on heaps of frogs, and the smell of all the dead frogs was unbearable, so the people supposedly just fled the country. Anyways, back to Dropeon. An equestrian statue in honor of him was also erected by the Paeonian League at Olympia, as attested by a statue base found there in 1877, which stresses how he was the League's founder. Like his father, he just issued bronze coins for local usage, but 122 of his have survived. These feature the head of Zeus, and even his own head! Early in Dropeon's reign in 249 BC, the Macedonian king Antigonus Gennatus seems to have partially conquered Paeonia. He even consolidated his power by building a city named Antigonia on the Axeis, which is now the town of Negatino. But it was only after 230 BC that the kingdom of Paeonia ceased to exist as a political unit, while Macedonia and the kingdom of Dardania to the north competed over its land. That was until 217, when Paeonia was finally absorbed into the kingdom of Macedon. Its king, Philip V, conquered by Lazora, probably held by Dardanians at the time, and in doing so secured Macedonia's northern border from Dardanian reign. Afterwards, Paeonia became a Macedonian province, or strategia, governed by a guy named Didus. I don't know what happened to Dropeon or his court. They seem to have just disappeared into the mists of time. Macedonia itself would soon be annexed by the growing Roman Republic, and after losing the Third Macedonian War in 168, it was split into four different republics. Paeonia was divided between the Second and Third Republics since the Axios River formed the border between them. After the Fourth Macedonian War, the republics were gotten rid of, and it was just absorbed into the new province of Macedonia. One paper says that this was the end of Paeonia as a geographical and ethnic concept, but it still sort of lingered on. The late Roman emperor, Julian the Apostate, even name-dropped Paeonia in a work he wrote in 362 AD. But by about 400 AD, around the advent of the Eastern Roman Empire, Paeonia had just become a geographical term. So how does this all tie into modern Balkan politics? Well, the Greeks have always been super pissed that North Macedonia calls itself Macedonia, because they insist that the North Macedonians are either just Paeonians or recent Slavic arrivals. Some Greeks also believe the kingdom of Paeonia was a Greek kingdom. On the other hand, the North Macedonians believe that because Paeonia wound up being fully absorbed into Macedonia, and because their country was within Macedonia's borders, they have every right to call themselves Macedonia. I'll let you decide who's right, because I don't want a headache today. Anyways, that's the end of the video. I hope you enjoy, and stay tuned for more Forgotten Kingdoms from around the world!