Maedi

Geography

Their land was called Maedica (Μαιδική). In historic times, they occupied the area between Paionia and Thrace, on the southwestern fringes of Thrace, along the middle course of the Strymon, between the Kresna Gorge and the Rupel Pass (present-day southwestern Bulgaria). Strabo says that the Maedi bordered eastward on the Thunatae of Dardania, and that the Axius flowed through their territory.

Their capital city was Iamphorynna, which lay somewhere in the southwest corner of what is now Bulgaria. Some archaeologists posit it in the area between the cities of Petrich and Sandanski, but its exact location remains unknown.[[File:PreMacedon.png|thumb|262x262px|The Maedi are visible in this regional map (as "Maidoi").|center]]

Conflict with Macedon

According to Plutarch, the Maedi rebelled against their Macedonian overlords when King Philip II of Macedon was besieging Byzantium in 340 BC. The sixteen-year-old Alexander the Great, who had been left as regent by his father, led an army against the Maedi and founded his first city Alexandroplis.

In 89–84 BC (during the First Mithridatic War), the Maedi overran Macedon and sacked Delphi as allies of Mithridates. It is said that they made a habit of raiding Macedon when a king of Macedon was away on a campaign. Following this, Sulla ravaged the land of the Maedi.

References

References

1. ''The Cambridge Ancient History'', Volume 3, Part 2 by Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards, 1982. [https://books.google.com/books?id=0qAoqP4g1fEC&pg=PA278 p. 278, with n. 33].
2. "Maedi".
3. {{cite Plutarch. Crassus. 8
4. Nic Fields. (2009). "Spartacus and the Slave War 73-71 BC: A Gladiator Rebels Against Rome". Osprey Publishing.
5. [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.04.0062:id=maedica-harpers Harry Thurston Peck, Harpers Dictionary of Classical Antiquities (1898), Maedica]
6. 1-4165-3205-6, p.31.
7. [https://books.google.com/books?id=f4_xAAAAMAAJ&q=maedi+kresna The Cambridge Ancient History: pt. 1. The prehistory of the Balkans; and the Middle East and the Aegean world, tenth to eighth centuries B.C.], Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 601.
8. 0-521-22717-8, p. 601.
9. {{Cite Strabo. vii. p. 316
10. {{Cite Strabo. vii. p. 331
11. Livy: History of Rome, VII, Books 26-27 (Loeb Classical Library No. 367) by Livy and Frank Gardner Moore, 1943, page 96: "...waste the country and to besiege the city of Iamphorynna, the capital and citadel of Maedica..."
12. Hannibal's war: a military history of the Second Punic War, John Francis Lazenby, University of Oklahoma Press, 1998, {{ISBN. 0-8061-3004-0, p.162.
13. М. Манов. Ямфорина или Форуна? Опит за проблематизация и локализация. – Археология, 2004, кн.1-2, 107-112.
14. {{cite Plutarch. Alexander. 9. 1
15. "Alexandrupolis - Livius".
16. The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (Oxford Companions) by M. C. Howatson, 2006, {{ISBN. 0-19-860081-X, page 73: "... of 89-85, when Athens, which had sided with *Mithridates, was sacked and in part destroyed by the Roman general *Sulla [...] Greece suffered severely, both from Sulla and from the barbarian allies of Mithridates, who sacked Delphi..."
17. [https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0158:book=26:chapter=25&highlight=maedi Titus Livius], "...into Macedonia and thence into Thrace and against the Maedi [...] that tribe had been in the habit of making raids into Macedonia, whenever it knew that the king was engaged in a foreign war and the kingdom unprotected."
18. {{cite Plutarch. Sulla. 23 "Upon these assurances Sulla sent him away, and then himself invaded the country of the Maedi, and after ravaging the most of it..."