Location: 130 km North of Amman Map
For the first time, the name of Pella was sounded by Herodotus
when describing the campaign of the Persian king Xerxes to
Greece in 480 BC.; Herodotus called Pella a city located in the
region of Bottia, inhabited by the Bottia tribe.
Stefan from Byzantium in his geographical treatise remarked:
before Pella in Macedonia was called Bounomos or Bounomeya.
During the reign of the Macedonian king Alexander I (498–454
BC), the lands of Macedonia rapidly expanded to the north and
east due to the crowding out and absorption of the Thracian and
other tribes. Under the son of Alexander I, King Perdiccas II,
Pella was already part of Macedonia, and the Bottia tribe moved
to the Halkidiki Peninsula. When the Thracian king Sithalk
invaded Macedonia in the 2nd half of the 5th century BC. e., the
Macedonians took refuge in a few fortresses, making partisan
attacks against the enemy. Perhaps it was then that Perdiccas II
decided to make Pella, located in a sheltered place, almost in
the center of Ematia, its capital.
It is not known who exactly and when he transferred the capital
of Macedonia from the sacred Aegs to Pella, but at least the son
of Perdiccas, the Macedonian king Archelaus (413-399 BC) built a
magnificent palace there, for the painting of which he invited a
famous Greek artist Zeusxis. Euripides was buried here.
At the beginning of the IV century BC. Pella became the largest
city of Macedonia, the place where its kings lived, although the
former capital of Aigu continued to carry out ritual functions.
The Macedonians at that time called the cities relatively small
fortresses, and they themselves, unlike the rest of the Greeks,
lived mainly in rural areas. The heyday of Pella, judging by
archaeological finds, occurred at the end of the IV century BC.
e., under the successors of Alexander the Great. After the
accession to the throne, the great conqueror himself spent
several months in Macedonia.
The only description of the city in the II century BC. left by
Titus Livy:
“The consul with all the troops left Pidna, the next day he was
at Pella and set up a camp a mile from the city, stood there for
several days, considering the location of the city from all
sides, and was convinced that the kings of Macedonia had settled
here for nothing: Pella stands on a hill looking at at winter
sunset; swamps around it, impassable either in summer or in
winter, are spilled by rivers. Fakos Fortress rises like an
island among the marshes in the place where they come closest to
the city; she stands on a huge embankment that can withstand the
gravity of the walls and not suffer from the moisture of the
swamps that encircle it. From a distance it seems that the
fortress is connected to the wall of the city, although in fact
they are separated by a moat with water, and connects the bridge
so that the enemy would not come near, and any captive
imprisoned by the king could not escape otherwise than through
the bridge, which is easier just guard. There, in the fortress,
there was a royal treasury ... "
After the Roman conquest of Macedonia in the II century BC. e.
Pella for some time remained the center of one of the four
administrative districts into which the Romans divided
Macedonia, but then the center was moved to the more
conveniently located city of Thessaloniki, and the former
capital of the Macedonian kings was abandoned. In 180, Lucian
called Pella a small town with a small number of inhabitants.
The fortress among the swamps could not stand the test of
peacetime. At the beginning of the 1st century BC e. an
earthquake destroyed the city. In 30 BC e. during the reign of
Augustus, a Roman colony was founded west of the ruined city on
the site of the modern village of Nea Pela. In the early
Christian period, there existed a city identified with the
mentioned Procopius of Caesarea fortification "Basilica of
Aminta" ("Βασιλικά Αμύντου"), restored by Justinian I (527-565).
Natural changes in the landscape also contributed to the
oblivion of Pella. Pella was founded as a port on the shores of
Thermaikos Gulf. The huge amount of alluvium carried by rivers
(mainly the Aksios (Vardar) and Alyakmon rivers), as a result of
long-term accumulation (accumulation) in the shallow Gulf of
Thermaikos formed the vast Thessaloniki plain. Pella became a
port on Lake Janice and had access to the Aegean Sea through the
Ludias River. In the years 1928-1932 the lake was dried up.
Currently, Pell is separated from the sea by approximately 30
kilometers of land.