Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/35

 TEMENID KINGS OF MACEDONIA. 17 poverty as to be compelled to serve the petty king of the town Lebaea in the capacity of shepherds. A remarkable prodigy happening to Perdikkas, foreshadows the future eminence of his family, and leads to his dismissal by the king of Lebaea, fiom whom he makes his escape with difficulty, by the sudden rise of a river immediately after he had crossed it, so as to become impassable by the horsemen who pursued him. To this river, as to the saviour of the family, solemn sacrifices were still offered by the kings of Macedonia in the time of Herodotus. Perdik kas with his two brothers having thus escaped, established him self near the spot called the Garden of Midas on Mount Bermius, and from the loins of this hardy young shepherd sprang the dynasty of Edessa. 1 This tale bears much more the marks of a genuine local tradition than that of Theopompus. And the origin of the Macedonian family, or Argeadse, from Argos, appears to have been universally recognized by Grecian inquir- ers, 2 so that Alexander the son of Amyntas, the contemporary of the Persian invasion, was admitted by the Hellanodikae to contend at the Olympic games as a genuine Greek, though his competitors sought to exclude him as a Macedonian. The talent for command was so much more the attribute of the Greek mind than of any of the neighboring barbarians, that we easily conceive a courageous Argeian adventurer acquiring to himself great ascendency in the local disputes of the Macedo- nian tribes, and transmitting the chieftainship of one of those tribes to his offspring. The influence acquired by Miltiades among the Thracians of the Chersonese, and by Phormion among the Akarnanians (who specially requested that, after his death, his son, or some one of his kindred, might be sent from Athens to command them), 3 was very much of this character : we may add the case of Sertorius among the native Iberians. In like man- ner, the kings of the Macedonian Lynkestae professed to be descended from the Bacchiadre 4 of Corinth; and the neighbor- 1 Herodot. viii, 137-138. ' Herodot. v, 22. Argeadue, Strabo, lib. vii, Fragm. 20, ed. Tafcl, which may probably have been erroneously changed into JEgeadaj (Justin, vii, 1 ). 3 Thucyd. iii, 7 ; Herodot. vi, 34-37 : compare the story of Zalmoxis among the Thracians (iv, 94). 4 Strabo, vii, p. 326. VOL. IV. 20C.