Ancient Greek settlement in the northwest of Thessaly
Aeginium (Latin) or Aiginion () was an ancient Greek settlement in the northwest of Thessaly. By the 19th century, evidence of its existence had been reduced to scant mention in several literary fragments from the encyclopedic classical authors: Strabo, Livy, Ptolemy, Pliny the Elder, Stephanus of Byzantium. It appeared to have been troublesome to the Roman Republic. Julius Caesar said it was "over against Thessaly." Strabo said it was at "the confluence of the Ion River with the Peneus, which was in Thessaly. Pliny the Elder said it was in Pieria, but he didn't say which. Ptolemy gave coordinates, but his coordinates produce a map that is grossly distorted. In short, no one knew any longer where Aeginium had been, or how long it had been there. The same case was true of Agassae, which seemed to be equally troublesome to Rome.
The discovery of Aeginium.
The surveys of William Leake.
Fortuitously William Martin Leake in 1835 was able to publish the results of some military intelligence surveys he had made in Greece 1804 - 1810. The Duke of Wellington was head of the British army at that time. They were anticipating a campaign in Greece against the French forces under Napoleon. The British had the support of the Ottoman Empire (but not for long). Leake was to survey the place.
Events did not turn out as expected. In essence the British were more in support of the rebellious Greeks than the Ottomans desired. The revolution that followed was aided and abetted by the British. In the conflict of 1807 Leake was interned by the pasha of Greece. The Ottomans preferred to lease out their colonial holdings to the highest bidder, who would then hire mercenaries (bashi bazouks) to keep order. Greece was being policed by Albanian troops, who did not endear themselves or the Turks.
Leake was soon free. He was impressed into service to negotiate with the Turks. In 1815 he retired as a colonel to pursue a scientific and literary career. Meanwhile, the Greek revolution transpired. When it was over at last a newly independent Greece was created in 1832. Leake now felt free to release the results of his surveys as travel journals. These became a major historical source of unimpeachable credibility. His style is reminiscent of Pausanias (geographer).
Geography of northern Greece.
Leake wrote a multi-volume work describing northern Greece. He never defined northern Greece, however. His table of contents covers Epirus, Aetolia, Acarnania, Macedonia, Illyria and Thessaly. As modern Greece has been patched together since then from various territorial units by various agencies, the term Northern Greece has come to have different meanings in different contexts.
There are some commonalities. Thrace and Macedonia are always northern Greece, to which Epirus is often joined. The fact that Thessaly is often split points to geophysical reasons for the split. Those reasons are anciently impassible contiguous mountain ranges consisting of Mount Olympus, the Pierian Mountains, the Vermio Mountains, and others, trending NW to SE from Mount Pindus to the Thermaic Gulf. In ancient times that gulf extended northwestward to the feet of the mountains, leaving the settlements of Lower Macedonia squeezed onto the shore. Over the succeeding two millennia that part of the gulf became a lake. In modern times the lake was filled leaving a river through it, while the resulting infilled space became the plain of central Macedonia. Representing extra new land, it is gradually becoming urbanized.
This barrier offers some natural defense of the country. There are holes in it, however. The main one is the Pineios River. It flows W-E from Mount Pindus parallel to and south of the mountain barrier to transect it on the east through the Vale of Tempe. Subsequently, it reaches the southernmost part of the Macedonian Plain and enters the Thermaic Gulf. The most obvious course from Macedonia to Thessaly is through the vale. Consequently, the vale was well-fortified.
Against a larger army defending the vale was a waste of time. The Pineius valley had another end reachable from high passes over the mountains and especially from Epirus, leading down the river into the plains of Upper Thessaly. This is the route used by the army of Xerxes I in 480 BC.
Byzantine city of Stagoi.
The plains of Upper Thessaly were not available to invaders via the upper Peneius for free, so to speak. They were also heavily defended. On the left bank of the Peneios at the entrance to the plain is a raised massif of vertical, chimney like formations called Meteora. At the base of Meteora is the city of Kalabaka, which bears a Turkish name. Over the centuries the tops and sides of these natural towers have been the sites of monastery enclosures.
A common anti-Turkish sentiment is that the first of these aerial monastics were escaping the Turks. This view does not conform to the dates and types of historical events. Constantinople was occupied by its first Turkish conqueror, the 21-year-old Mehmed II, in 1453. Considered the Alexander of his day, he declared himself Roman Emperor. Invited to dinner, the prelate intimated that he was probably expected to perform the difficult task of stepping down. The new emperor, who seemed to have a way with words, replied that he was being asked to do something harder, to stay. The emperor was then recognized by the Eastern Orthodox Church. The Catholics, however, began treating accession of Mehmed as the final end of the Roman Empire. The Turks on the whole preferred to leave Christianity in place, including the churches and monasteries. Greece was just as Christian at the end of Ottoman rule as it had been at the beginning.
The Byzantine church had its own name for the city: στάγοι, a plural. There were no Turkish assaults on the place, and no refugees seeking the protection of the rocks, unless from the world in general. Monks had been seeking shelter in caves there since before the 12th century. In the 12th the churches of Stagoi began to build monasteries in the heights, starting with the Church of Panagia Doupiane, which built the monastery of Panagia Doupiane in the heights above the city. The practice found favor among the churchmen of Thessaly and expanded from there. In 1340 Athanasius the Meteorite founded and named Monastery of Great Meteoron, innovating the second word, to mean "the great up-in-the-air," with a spiritual significance as well as a physical.
It is frequently mentioned in the Roman wars in Greece. It was given up to plunder by L. Aemilius Paulus in 167 BCE for having refused to open its gates after the Battle of Pydna. It was here that, during the civil war between Pompey and Julius Caesar, that the latter in his march from Apollonia effected a junction with Gnaeus Domitius Calvinus. Later, the town was called by the name Stagos which was translated to Kalabaka.
Its modern location is tentatively assigned to a site in Nea Koutsoufliani in the municipality of Kalabaka. William Martin Leake found an inscription at Kalabaka, in which Aeginium is mentioned.
References.
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Sources.
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