Alexander I of Molossia and the creation of Apeiros

Abstract

and the creation of Apeiros Old and New Histories of Epeiros and MolossiaEpeiros, sometimes ‹Apeiros› in the sources, was a region in the northwest of the ancient Balkan peninsula. 1 It ran roughly from the Gulf of Ambrakia in the south to Apollonia in the north, and as far inland as the Pindos mountain range. 2 Epeiros was a region of substantial political and ethnic variety. For instance, Thucydides (2. 80. 5-6), when relating the local forces campaigning with the Spartan admiral Knemos in Akarnania in the summer of 429, describes a variety of ‹barbarian› contingents from Epeiros, some coming from communities with kings (Molossians, Atintanians, Parauaians, Orestians) and others kingless (Chaonians, Thesprotians). Three of these ethne came to dominate the region in the fourth, third, and second centuries: the Molossians, the Thesprotians, and the Chaonians. The Molossians and their ruling house, the Aiakids, appear most frequently in our standard narratives: Olympias, mother of Alexander the Great, and Pyrrhos, enemy of Rome, were both Aiakids. 3 But these and other larger groups were themselves made up of many smaller communities, whose ethnics appear in the epigraphic record. 4 We know little enough about the nature and membership of ethne in this region, either the larger groups or the smaller ones which together constituted them. The ethnos is now generally thought of not as a primitive form of community based on immutable blood ties, but as a form of political and social organisation common in certain regions and perhaps constituted as a geographical unit and locus of local identification, rather than as a descent All dates BC. I would like to thank Robin Osborne, Peter Thonemann, Aneurin Ellis-Evans, and Matthew Hosty, who all read and commented on drafts of this piece, as well as the editors and reviewer for Chiron who made many helpful suggestions.