Page:History of Greece Vol IV.djvu/36

 18 HISTORY OF GREECE. hood of Epidamnus and Apollonia, in both of which doubtless members of that great gens were domiciliated, renders this tale even more plausible than that of an emigration from Argos, The kings of the Epirotic Molossi pretended also to a descent from the heroic JEakid race of Greece. In fact, our means of knowledge do not enable us to discriminate the cases in which these reigning families were originally Greeks, from those io which they were Hellenized natives pretending to Grecian blood. After the foundation-legend of the Macedonian kingdom, we have nothing but a long blank until the reign of king Amyntas (about 520-500 B.C.), and his son Alexander, (about 480 B.C.) Herodotus gives us five successive kings between the founder Perdikkas and Amyntas, Perdikkas, Argaeus, Philippus, Aero- pus, Alketas, Amyntas, and Alexander, the contemporary and to a certain extent the ally of Xerxes. 1 Though we have no means of establishing any dates in this early series, either of names or of facts, yet we see that the Temenid kings, beginning from a humble origin, extended their dominions successively on all sides. They conquered the Briges, 2 originally their neigh- bors on Mount Bermius, the Eordi, bordering on Edessa to the westward, who were either destroyed or expelled from the country, leaving a small remnant still existing in the time of Thucydides at Physka between Strymon and Axius, the Almo- pians, an inland tribe of unknown site, and many of the inte- rior Macedonian tribes who had been at first autonomous. Be- sides these inland conquests, they had made the still more important acquisition of Pieria, the territory which lay between Mount Bermius and the sea, from whence they expelled the original Pierians, who found new seats on the eastern bank of the Strymon between Mount Pangaeus and the sea. Amyntas king of Macedon was thus master of a very considerable territory, 1 Herodot. viii, 1.39. Thucydides agrees in the number of kings, but does not give the names (ii, 100). For the divergent lists of the early Macedonian kings, see Mr. Clinton's Fasti Hellenic!, vol. ii, p. 221. 8 This may be gathered, I think, from Herodot. vii, 73 and viii, 138. Th alleged migration of the Briges into Asia, and the change of their name tc Phrygcs, is a statement which I do not venture to repeat as credible