Pella
- a city of remote antiquity in Macedonia, the birthplace of Alexander the Great, now Alaklisi, or Apostolus, Plin. 4, 10, 17, § 34; Liv. 44, 46; 36, 7; 42, 51; Cic. Att. 3, 8, 2.— Hence,
- II Pellaeus, a, um, adj., of or belonging to Pella, Pellaean.
- A Lit.: unus Pellaeo juveni non sufficit orbis, i.e. for Alexander, Juv. 10, 168; also: ductor, Luc. 3, 233: tyrannus, Mart. 9, 44, 7: Pellaeus Eoum qui domuit Porum, Claud. II. Cons. Honor. 373: Pellaeo ponte Niphaten adstrinxit, Sil. 13, 765: Pellaei proles vesana Philippi, Luc. 10, 20.—
- B Transf.
- 1 Macedonian: gladius, Luc. 9, 1073: sarissae, id. 8, 298: aula, Claud. II. Cons. Stil. 32. —
- 2 Alexandrian (because Alexander founded Alexandria, in Egypt): Pellaeae arces, Luc. 9, 153: muri, id. 10, 511: gula (because the Alexandrians were famous gourmands), Mart. 13, 85.—
- 3 In a gen. sense, Egyptian: Pellaei gens fortunata Canopi, Verg. G. 4, 287: puer, i.e. Ptolemy, Luc. 8, 607; also: rex, id. 9, 1016; cf. diadema, id. 5, 60: sceptra, Sil. 11, 383: domus, the palace of the Ptolemies, Luc. 8, 475.
PELLA (Πέλλα, Hdt. 7.123; Thuc. 2.99, 100; Strab. vii. pp. 320, 323, 330, Fr. 22, 23: Ptol. 3.13.39, 8.12.8; Plin. Nat. 4.17; Itin. Anton.; Itin. Hierosol.; Peut. Tab.;Πέλλη, Hierocles), the capital of Macedonia. At the time when Xerxes passed through Macedon, Pella, which Herodotus (l. c.) calls a πολίχνιον, was in the hands of the Bottiaeans. Philip was the first to make Pella, which Amyntas had been obliged to evacuate (Xen. Hell. 5.2.13; comp. Diod. 14.92, 15.19), a place of importance (Dem. de Cor. p. 247), and fixed the royal residence there: there was a navigation from the sea by the Lydias, though the marshes, which was 120 stadia in length, exclusive of the Lydias. (Scyl. p. 26.) These marshes were called BORBOROS (Βόρβορος), as appears from an epigram (Theocrit. Chius, ap. Plut. de Exil. vol. 8. p. 380, ed. Reiske), in which Aristotle is reproached for preferring a residence near them to that of the Academy. Archestratus (ap. Athen. 7. 328a.) related that the lake produced a fish called chromis,o f great size, and particularly fat in summer. From its position on a hill surrounded by waters, the metropolis of Philip, and the birthplace of Alexander (Juven. 10.168; Lucan (Luc. 10.20), soon grew into a considerable city. Had Alexander not been estranged from Macedonia, it would probably have attained greater importance. Antipater lived there as regent of Macedonia, but Cassander spent less of his time at Pella, than at Thessalonica and Cassandreia ; from the time of Antigonus Gonatas till that of Perseus, a period of nearly a century, Pella remained the capital, and was a splendid town. (Liv. 26.25, 37.7, 13.41, 51, 67, 43.43, 44.10.) Livy (Liv. 44.46) has left the following description, derived undoubtedly from Polybius, of the construction of the city towards the lake. Pella stands upon a height sloping to the SW., and is bounded by marshes which are impassable both in winter and summer, and are caused by the overflowing of a lake. The citadel( the word arxi s wanting in our copies of Livy, but seems absolutely necessary both to the sense and the grammar) rises like an island from the part of the marsh nearest to the city, being built upon an immense embankment, which defies all injury from the waters; though appearing at a distance to be united to the wall of the city, it is in reality separated from it by a wet ditch, over which there is a bridge, so that no access whatever is afforded to an enemy, nor can any prisoner whom the king may confine in the castle escape, but by the easily guarded bridge. In the fortress was the royal treasure.I t was surrendered to Aemilius Paullus (Liv. 45.45), and became, according to Strabo (p. 323) and the Itineraries, a station on the Egnatian Way, and a colony. (Plin. l.c.) Dion Chrysostomus (Orat. Tars. Prior. vol. 2. p. 12, ed. Reiske) says that Pella was a heap of ruins; but from the fact that there are coins of the colony of Pella, ranging from Hadrian to Philip, this must be an exaggeration. The name of the city is found as late as the sixth century of our era, as it occurs in Hierocles. It Would seem indeed as if the name had survived the ruins of the city, and had reverted to the fountain, to which it was originally attached; as at a small distance from the village named Neokhóri or Yenikiuy, which has been identified with a portion of the ancient Pella, there is a spring called by the Bulgarians Pel, and by the Greeks Πέλλη. Below the fountain, are some remains of buildings, said to have been baths, and still called τὰ Λουτρά. These baths are alluded to by the comic poet Machon (ap. Athen. 8. 348e.) as producing biliary complaints. Although little remains of Pella, a clear idea may be formed of its extent and general plan by means of the description in Livy, compared with the existing traces, consisting mainly of tumuli.T he circumference of the. ancient city has been estimated at about 3 miles. The sources of the fountains, of which there are two, were probably about the centre of the site; and the modern road may possibly be in the exact line of a main street which traverses it from E. to W. The temple of Minerva Alcidemus is the only public building mentioned in history (Liv.42.51), but of its situation nothing at present is known. Felix Beaujour, who was consul-general at Saloníki (Tableau du Commerce de la Grèce, vol. 1. p. 87), asserted that he saw the remains of a port, and of a canal communicating with the sea. Leake (Northern Greece, vol. iii. pp. 261--266), who carefully went over the ground, could find no traces of a port, of which indeed there is no mention in ancient history: remains of a canal could be seen, as he was told, in summer.
An autonomous coin of Pella has the type of an ox feeding, which explains what Steph. B. (s. v.; comp. Ulpian, ad. Dem. de Fals. Leg. ) reports, that it was formerly called Βουνόμος. (Eckhel, vol. 2. p. 73; Sestini, Mon. Vet. p. 37.) COIN OF PELLA IN MACEDONIA
[E.B.J]PELLA (Πέλλα: Eth. Πελλαῖος).
1.A city of Palestine, and one of the towns of Decapolis in the Peraea, being the most northerly place in the latter district. (Plin. Nat. 5.18. s. 16; Joseph. B. J. 3.3.3.) Stephanus B. (s. v.) calls it a city of Coele-Syria and Ptolemy (Ptol. 5.15.23) also describes it as a city of Decapolis in Coele-Syria. Stephanus adds that it was also called Butis (ἡ Βοῦτις), which appellation seems to be preserved in its modern name El-Budsche. Its name Pella shows that it was either built or colonised by the Macedonians. Pliny describes it as abounding in springs ( aquis divitem,P lin. l. c.). It was taken by Antiochus the Great (Plb. 5.70), and was afterwards destroyed by Alexander Jannaeus, because its inhabitants would not accept the Jewish religion (J. AJ(23). § 3, B.J. 1.4.8); but it was afterwards restored by Pompey. (J. AJ(7). § 4.) Pella was the place to which the Christians of Jerusalem fled before the destruction of the latter city. (Euseb. H. E. 3.5 ; Epiphan. de Mens. et Ponder. p. 171; Reland, Palaestina, p. 924.)
2.A town of Syria, on the Orontes, better known under the name of Apamreia. [APAMEIA No. 1.]
(Πέλλα). (1) An ancient town in Macedonia, in the district Bottiaea, situated upon a lake formed by the river Lydias. Philip the Great made it his residence and the capital of the Macedonian monarchy. It was the birthplace of Alexander the Great. Hence the poets give the surname of Pellaea to Alexandria in Egypt, because it was founded by Alexander the Great, and also use the adjective in a general sense as equivalent to Egyptian. See Macedonia.
(2) A city of Palestine, east of the Jordan, in Peraea. It was the place of refuge of the Christians who fled from Jerusalem before its capture by the Romans.
(3) A city of Syria on the Orontes, afterwards called Apamea (q.v.).
(4) A city of Phrygia. See Peltae.
A city in the region of ancient Bottiaia to which King Archelaus (413-399 B.C.) moved the capital of Macedonia. It was the seat of Philip and the birthplace of Alexander.
Stephanos of Byzantium (s.v. Pella) mentions the pre-history of the place: “Pella of Macedonia was formerly called Bounomos or Bounomeia . . .” In historical times it was first mentioned by Herodotos (7.123) in the description of Xerxes' journey to the Axios river “which is the boundary between Mygdonia and Bottiaiis. The latter has a narrow coastal strip occupied by the cities of Ichnae and Pella.” Later, Thucydides mentions Pella twice, first in the passage about the Macedonians spreading E, before his time, and then in the attack of the Thracians under Sitalces against the Macedonian king Perdiccas, in his own time (Thuc. 2.99.4, 100.4). Southern Greeks took scant notice of Archelaus' activities in the last years of the Peloponnesian War, and laughed at his building of a palace in Pella (Ael., VH 14.17). But in Archelaus' time the painter Zeuxis came to Pella to decorate the palace, and the poet Timotheus also came, and the dramatist Euripides, who wrote the Archelaus there and died in Macedonia. After the time of Archelaus, Pella grew larger, so that in Xenophon's time it was called the “largest of the cities of Macedonia” (Hell. 5.2.13). The statement of Demosthenes (18.68) that Philip grew up “in a small and insignificant village” was a rhetorical exaggeration. Information about Pella is curiously scanty in the time of Philip, Alexander, and the Diadochoi, but from a political and artistic point of view the best days of Pella were probably during the long reign of the philosopher king Antigonos Gonatas (274-239 B.C.).
The only description of Pella which has survived is that of Livy (44.46.4-7), who writes of the capture of the Macedonian capital by Aemilius Paulus after the battle of Pydna, in which Perseus, the last king of Macedonia, was defeated. On the basis of his description, travelers and archaeologists from the end of the 18th through the 19th c. vaguely located Pella at a few visible remains of an ancient city near the town of Agioi Apostoloi, N of the Giannitsa swamp. In the first year after the liberation of Macedonia from the Turks (1912), excavations uncovered the remains of peristyle-type houses, an underground cistern, a hoard of silver coins of Kassander, bronze and iron household implements, bronze bed fittings, etc. A fuller and clearer picture of the topography of the ancient city has only been gained after continuous surface observations which began in 1954.
The most ancient finds from the area, which go back at least to the Bronze Age, came from: (a) fields N of the so-called Baths of Alexander; (b) from a hill W of the town of Palaia Pella; and especially from (c) the top of the Phakos within the former marsh. Test trenches in the latter revealed a prehistoric settlement, like others around the marsh, the best known being that of Nea Nikomedeia, dating to the Early Neolithic period (7th millennium B.C.). The prehistoric settlement on the Phakos may be Bounomos or Bounomeia (Steph. Byz.).
Over 40 test trenches brought Classical and Hellenistic remains to light over the whole area between the Phakos and the towns of Palaia Pella and Nea Pella. This area is about 2 km sq. It was ascertained that the acropolis encompassed a part of a double hill, that is, the hill occupied by the town of Palaia Pella (formerly Haghioi Apostoloi) and another, to the W of it. On the W hill, especially (Sections II and III), some rather scanty remains of important buildings were uncovered. Those which have come to light up to the present are: (a) walls ca. 2 m thick with huge poros orthostates (ca. one m high, under one m thick, up to 2 m long), (b) Ionic and Doric architectural members, the scale of which is shown by a Doric poros capital, dated to the first quarter of the 4th c. B.C. with the side of the abacus one m long, (c) parts of a triangular votive monument of bluish stone, (d) fragments of marble architectural members, statues, etc.
The position and scale of these constructions establish that here on this “W hill” was probably the palace of Archelaus, and the palace complex and temple, perhaps that known from Livy (42.51.2) as the Temple of Athena Alkidemos. It is probable that the fortified peribolos of the palace complex made a part of the acropolis wall and continued the city wall, which is now, however, invisible, since, in all probability, only its foundations and orthostates were of stone, while the upper parts were of mudbrick, which hid the stone parts under a layer of earth when they collapsed.
More striking are the discoveries around the center of the ancient city, N of the Thessalonika-Edessa road (Section I, from which Sections IV and v are separated by the road). Here, about six blocks of buildings were uncovered, constructed according to the Hippodamian system of town planning. One of the blocks had three peristyle courts with stoas and adjoining rooms on all sides, according to the Hellenistic type of house with peristyle. The others had approximately the same arrangement. They are surrounded by roads with a width of ca. 9 m along which are water pipes and drains. Parts of the buildings were at least two-storied, as apparent from the remains of stairs and from architectural fragments such as little columns and pillars. The floors of the ground floor rooms were covered with mosaic pavement, some completely plain, others with a geometric pattern, and others with figures, but all of them made of natural river pebbles. In 1957 the first four figured mosaics were uncovered. These show: (a) Dionysos, naked, on a panther, (b) a lion hunt, perhaps an episode known from the life of Alexander, when he was saved by Krateros, (c) a gryphon tearing a deer apart, and (d) a couple of centaurs, male and female. In 1961 in another block four more mosaic floors were uncovered, one of which is badly damaged. The others show: (a) the rape of Helen by Theseus, (b) a deer hunt with the inscription, “Gnosis made it,” and (c) an Amazonomachy.
In another section near the former marsh (Section VI) a circular floor in the same pebble technique was discovered, mainly decorated with floral motifs, like the mosaics of Verghina.
The buildings with the mosaic floors are dated to around the last quarter of the 4th c. or the beginning of the 3d c. B.C. Some of the peristyle columns and walls have been reconstructed in place. The mosaic floors have been taken up and consolidated, and are in the local museum, except for the mosaic of Gnosis, which remains in situ.
Of the architectural fragments, besides the stone columns, pillars, and parts of a cornice, worth mention are Corinthian pan and cover tiles decorated with palmettes, painted simas from the pediments, etc. Among the tiles, some are stamped with the name of the city in the genitive case (ΠΕΛΛΗΣ. This was the first indisputable evidence, found in 1957, for the site of the Macedonian capital.).
Of the sculpture from the site, the older finds are the most notable: (a) a marble funeral stele taken to the museum at Constantinople and (b) a statue of a horseman, possibly from a pediment, in the Thessalonika Museum. Of the more recent finds the most interesting are: (a) a severe style marble dog, (b) a bronze statuette of Poseidon of the Lateran type. Other small finds are Votive inscriptions (to Asklepios, the Great Gods, Zeus Meilichios, Herakles, the Muses, etc.), funeral inscriptions with bas-relief portraits, some bilingual in Greek and Latin, two unpublished milestones from the Via Egnatia, etc.
Of the pottery, most notable are some red-figure fragments and a class of local pottery which follows on old tradition (the technique is gray Minyan; the decoration early Mycenaean; the handles show its Hellenistic date). A large number of coins, chiefly of bronze, and many small worked pieces of bronze were found. The small finds are mainly kept in the local museum.
BIBLIOGRAPHYG. P. Oikonomos, Πέλλα (1914) 127-48PI; (1915) 237-44PI; id., Νομίσματα τοῦ βασιλέως Κασσάνδρου, Deltion 4 (1918) 1-29I; id., “Bronzen von Pella,” AthMitt 51 (1926) 75-97I; E. Oberhummer, “Pella,” RE XIX (1937) 341-48M; Ph. M. Petsas, “Alexander the Great's Capital,” ILN 2 (Aug. 1958) 197-99; id., “New Discoveries at Pella, Birthplace and Capital of Alexander,” Archaeology 11 (1958) 246-54I; id., “Pella, Literary Tradition and Archaeological Research,” Balkan Studies 1 (1960) 113-28I; id., Πέλλα Μεγ. Ἑλλην.' Εγκυκλοπαιδεία, Συμπλήρωμα Δ', pp. 149-52I; id., “A few Examples of Epigraphy from Pella,” Balkan Studies 4 (1963) 155-70I; id., Pella (1964) MI; id., “Ten Years at Pella,” Archaeology 17 (1964); id., “Pella,” EAA 6 (1965) 16-20I; id., Mosaics from Pella, La Mosaïque Gréco-romain (1965) 41-56PI; id., Χρονικά Ἀρχαιολογικά, Μακεδονικά 7 (1967) 306-7I; id., Ἀρχαιότητες καί Μνημεῖα Κεντρικῆς Μακεδονίας, Deltion 23 (1968) 334-36I; id., Χρονικά Ἀρχαιολογικά1966-67, Μακεδονικά 9 (1969) 170-75I; id., Αἰγαί-πέλλα Θεσσαλονίκη, “Ἀρχαία Μακεδονία,” Α'Διεθνές Συμπόσιον (1970) 220-23PI; X. I. Makaronas, Ἀνασκαφαί Πέλλης1957-1960, Deltion 16 (1960) 72-83PI; Ἀνασκαφή Πέλλης, Deltion 19 (1964) 334-44PI; id., Χρονολογικά Ζητήματα τῆς Πέλλης, “Αρχαία Μακεδονία,” Α'Διεθνές Συμπόσιον (1970) 162-67I; G. Daux, “Chronique des Fouilles 1961,” BCH 86 (1962) 805-131; D. Papaconstantinou-Diamantourou, Pella (1971).
PH. M. PETSASTown on the S slopes of the Gilead ca. 12.8 km SE of Scythopolis (Beisan). It is known from early Egyptian historical texts as Pehal, and evidence indicates that it was also settled in the Iron Age. Veterans of Alexander the Great's army founded the Greek settlement, naming it for the birthplace of Alexander in Macedonia. Polybios (5.70) mentions it among the cities conquered in 218 B.C. by Antiochos the Great, and during the Hellenistic period Pella was known as a center of Greek culture. Alexander Jannaeus conquered it after several futile attempts in 80 B.C., and the inhabitants who refused to convert to Judaism left the city (Joseph. AJ 13.397). Pompey conquered Pella, then freed it and made it part of the Decapolis (AJ 14.75). Gabinius, the procurator of Syria, rebuilt it, and Pliny (HN 5.16.70) mentions its famous spring. The city was destroyed in the war against the Romans in A.D. 66. In the late Roman and Byzantine periods, however, it was an important Christian center.
There are remains of the Israelite, Hellenistic, and early Roman periods, and four churches of the Byzantine era.
BIBLIOGRAPHYF. M. Abel, Géographie de la Palestine II (1938) 405-6; M. Avi-Yonah, The Holy Land (1966) 40, 69, 74, 175.
A. NEGEV- Hdt. 7.123, Paus. 1.16.1