The Kingdom of Philoktetes: Northern Greece in the Age of Homer

The poetry of Homer imagines a multitude of Greek “kingdoms” that sent ships and men to fight at Troy, listed in a famous Catalogue in Book Two of the Iliad. Many of the cities named have Bronze Age remains, verified through archaeology, while other places may be mere memories or fantasies of the past. North of Thessaly, both names and tales peter out, but recent archaeological field work and historical research seek to expand the Mycenaean world into the north Aegean, in mythology and reality. Excavations conducted at Methone in Pieria since 2003 have revealed the long and rich local histories of human activity in northern Greece, from the Bronze Age through Early Iron Age Greek colonization and the growth of Macedon.