Are there any books written about Ancient Macedon from 800 - 600 BC?

by Mo1980s

Sometimes it feels like the Kingdom of Macedon just sprang into being with Phillip and Alexander. But it's a fact that Macedon has existed since 800 BC at least. Are there any comprehensive works about that period?

Trevor_Culley

Well, strictly speaking the only book I know of that would focus on that time period would be N.G.L. Hammond's A History of Macedonia Volume 1: Historical Geography and Pre-History. That said, it sounds more like you're interested in the historical origins of the Macedonian state than the specific timeframe, so Volume 2 of that series, A History of Macedonia: 550-336 B.C, might be more relevant. Those books are both a bit outdated and frankly pretty dry, so you might also consider In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon by Eugene N. Borza.

it's a fact that Macedon has existed since 800 BC at least.

That's not entirely true, or maybe more accurately not universally accepted. While Macedon didn't just spring into being with Phillip and Alexander III, it kind of did spring into being with Amyntas and Alexander I.

The 800 BC date and the dates associated with every Macedonian King until c. 515 BC are largely the product of conjecture and collating many later historians. The most important figure for assigning those dates was probably Eusebius of Caesarea who tried to portray a timeline of early Macedonian kings in his Universal History in the mid-4th Century AD. He identified Caunus as the founding King of Macedon in the 9th Century BC. That's in line with many other ancient authors, but not all of them. In the 2nd Century AD, Polyaenus identified Argaeus I as the founder of Macedon (identified as the great-grandson of Caunus by others). Neither Caunus nor Argaeus was identified as the founder by any historian before the the 4th Century BC. Prior to that, authors like Herodotus and Thucydides recognized Perdiccas I (typically recognized as Argaeus' father).

Speaking of Herodotus, his Histories contains the oldest written history of Macedon that we know of, but like most of the histories that came after it says very little about the period from Macedon's founding (whenever that was) to the 6th Century BC. No surviving ancient author had any detailed knowledge of the early centuries of Macedonian history, and what they do have to offer is at least partially legend.

Part of the explanation for that can be seen in Herodotus' Histories, Thucydides' History of the Peloponnesian War, and other 5th Century BC writing that described Macedonian territory. Up to the late 6th Century, Macedon was very small, primarily occupying the area between Mount Bermion, Mount Olympus, and Therme (modern Thessaloniki). The early Classical Greek authors describe most of the area that formed the northern, western, and eastern parts of Macedon in later history as Thracian territory.

Both Macedon's borders and its recorded history expanded dramatically as a result of the Persian Empire's brief occupation of coastal southeastern Europe. As a subordinate of Darius I and Xerxes, King Alexander I apparently expanded Macedon's borders and held some position of local authority under the Persian government. In the wake of the Persian withdrawal from Thrace, Greek historians note Alexander expanding his territory into the area that is typically pictured as the core of Classical Macedon and becoming more involved in Greek politics. As a consequence, Macedon features more heavily in Greek histories and became better documented.