Maedi Explained

The Maedi (also Maidans, Maedans, or Medi; Greek, Ancient (to 1453);: Μαῖδοι or Μαιδοί) were a Thracian tribe in antiquity.^[1] Their land was called Maedica (Μαιδική).^[2] 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 south-western Bulgaria).^{[3] [4] [5]} 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,^[6] which lay somewhere in the southwest corner of what is now Bulgaria.^[7] Some archaeologists posit it in the area between the cities of Petrich and Sandanski, but its exact location remains unknown.^[8]

They were an independent tribe through much of their history, and the Thracian king Sitalkes recognized their independence, along with several other warlike "border" tribes such as the Dardani, Agrianes, and Paeonians, whose lands formed a buffer zone between the powers of the Odrysians on the east and of Illyrian tribes in the west, while Macedon was located to the south of Paeonia.

According to Plutarch,^[9] the Maedi rebelled against their Macedonian overlords when King Philip II of Macedon was besieging Byzantium in 340 BC. The 16 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.^[10]

The ancient historian and biographer Plutarch describes Spartacus as "a Thracian of nomadic stock", in a possible reference to the Maedi.^[11] Plutarch also says Spartacus' wife, a prophetess of the same tribe, was enslaved with him.

In 89–84 BC (during the First Mithridatic War), the Maedi overran Macedon and sacked Delphi as allies of Mithridates.^[12] It is said that they made a habit of raiding Macedon when a king of Macedon was away on a campaign.^[13] Sulla after this ravaged^[14] the land of the Maedi. Aristotle recorded that bolinthos was the Maedan word for a species of wild aurochses or wisents that lived in the region.

A number of Maedi emigrated to Asia minor and were called MaedoBythini^[15] (Greek, Modern (1453-);: Μαιδοβίθυνοι).

See also

• List of Thracian tribes

Notes and References

1. The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 3, Part 2 by Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards, 1982. p. 278, with n. 33.
2. 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
3. https://archive.org/details/spartacuswar00stra/page/31 The Spartacus war
4. 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.
5. https://books.google.com/books?id=OGBGauNBK8kC&dq=maedi+thracian+rupel&pg=PA601 The Assyrian and Babylonian empires and other states of the Near East, from the eighth to the sixth centuries B.C.
6. 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..."
7. Hannibal's war: a military history of the Second Punic War, John Francis Lazenby, University of Oklahoma Press, 1998,, p.162.
8. М. Манов. Ямфорина или Форуна? Опит за проблематизация и локализация. – Археология, 2004, кн.1-2, 107-112.
9. Web site: Plutarch • Life of Alexander (Part 1 of 7).
10. Web site: Alexandrupolis - Livius.
11. Book: Nic Fields. Spartacus and the Slave War 73-71 BC: A Gladiator Rebels Against Rome. 2009. Osprey Publishing. 978-1-84603-353-7. 28.
12. The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (Oxford Companions) by M. C. Howatson, 2006,, 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..."
13. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:1999.02.0158:book=26:chapter=25&highlight=maedi Titus Livius
14. https://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus:text:2008.01.0064:chapter=23&highlight=maedi Plutarch, Sulla
15. The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 3, Part 2: The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and Other States of the Near East, from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries BC by John Boardman, I. E. S. Edwards, E. Sollberger, and N. G. L. Hammond,, 1992, page 601: "Earlier certain tribes of the Maedi emigrated to Asia minor where they were known by the name of the MaedoBythini..."