Pydna

It had two great merits.

It was central and it was strong, as strong as Aigai, far stronger than Pydna, and more central than either for a monarch whose long arm reached from Amphipolis to Pegasai.

It was also in direct communication with the sea, distant about fifteen miles by the marshes and the Lydias.

In short, with no claims to beauty or grandeur or healthiness, Pella formed a strong central useful capital, thoroughly characteristic of a common-sense monarchy whose right was might.

By these means he gained a footing among the Thracian tribes as far as Mount Hymus, while he attained an object by which he set even greater store as a true-blooded Hellene, for his claims to that title were publicly acknowledged at Olympia, and his victories in the stadium celebrated by the Hellenic Pindar.

Yet the difficulties of Alexander did not cease, but rather increased, when danger no longer threatened Greece from the side of Persia.

He had removed his capital from Aegae to Pydna, a step nearer to the Hellenes, whom he admired so much.

But close to Pydna lay Methoni, an independent Greek city, while to the eastward in Chalcidice, as far as the Strymon, were numerous Hellenic colonies, whose sympathies drew them naturally to the south rather than the west, to Hellas, not to Macedon, and which after the Persian wars recognized in the maritime Athens their natural leader and protectress.

For Theophrastus, in his work On Royalty, tells how, when Hiero sent horses to compete at Olympia and set up a sort of booth there with very costly decorations, Themistocles made a speech among the assembled Hellenes, urging them to tear down the booth of the tyrant and prevent his horses from competing.

And Thucydides says that he made his way across the country to the sea and set sail from Pydna, no one of the passengers knowing who he was, until, when the vessel had been carried by a storm to Nexus, to which the Athenians at that time were laying siege, he was terrified and disclosed himself to the master and the captain of the ship, and partly by entreaties, partly by threats, actually declaring that he would denounce and vilify them to the Athenians as having taken him on board at the start in no ignorance but under bribes, in this way compelled them to sail by and make the coast of Asia.

Of his property, much was secretly abstracted for him by his friends and sent across the sea to Asia.

But the sum total of that which was brought to light and confiscated amounted to one hundred talents, according to Theopompus.