Site Catalog Name: Olynthus

Description:

The urban history of Olynthus can be divided into fairly distinct periods. There is an early phase, little known either historically or archaeologically; the rebellion from Athens of 432 BC and the anoikismos ("moving inland"), in which the populations of some of the neighboring Chalcidian cities moved inland to Olynthus to form a larger and more defensible city; the growth of Olynthus and of the Chalcidic state in the fourth century, and finally the destruction of the city by Philip of Macedon in 348 BC.

In the Neolithic period there was a small settlement on the South Hill. No Bronze Age remains are preserved on the site, but nearby Agios Mamas was inhabited during that era. Archaic occupation begins in about the seventh century, when a town was founded on the South Hill (Olynthus, 5, 15-61).

At some point this town was taken, according to Herodotus, by the Bottiaeans, a local tribe which had been driven here by the Macedonians (Hdt. 8.127). Together with the other towns in the area, Olynthus supplied troops and ships to Xerxes in 480. But during the Persian retreat from Greece in 479 BC, Artabazus besieged and captured the city, suspecting that it would revolt from the King (Hdt. 8.127; Hdt. 7.122). Artabazus probably did not kill all the Bottiaeans living at Olynthus, since they seem to have been an important element of the citizen body later on, and even minted their own coinage in parallel with the Chalcidic. The archaeological remains from this early period, down to the last third of the fifth century, are exclusively concentrated on the South Hill.

In 432 BC, in the face of Athenian aggression, Perdiccas, the king of Macedon, persuaded a number of Chalcidic cities to move inland and form a single, fortified city at Olynthus (Thuc. 1.58). This anoikismos, or "moving inland," is generally thought to have been the impetus behind the expansion of the old town of Olynthus on the South Hill onto the broad, flat-topped hill to the north, and the laying out of a new grid-planned section of the city there. It is thus the most critical single event in the urban history of Olynthus.

At some time before 382, the Chalcidians formed a League with Olynthus as its capital (see Xen. Hell. 5.2.11-20). Various dates have been proposed, from before 479 BC, to 432 BC, to the end of the fifth century. The nature of this League, whether a true confederacy of independent poleis or a single unitary state with a single set of laws and citizenship, is also debated (see Olynthus, 9, 115; Zahrnt 1971, 80-84).

Olynthus was sacked and burned by Philip of Macedon in 348 BC, and this destruction is responsible for the unusually fine preservation of the houses and their contents (Dem. 9.11; Dem. 9.26; Dem. 19.267; Diod. Sic. 16.52ff.). A number of houses showed evidence of intense burning; most contained large numbers of objects still in situ on the floors. Evidence of the siege and fighting at the walls and in the city was quite widespread: slingbullets and arrowheads, many bearing the names of Philip and his generals, were found throughout the site, particularly on the east side of the South Hill.

A small area of the site at the north end of the North Hill was reoccupied after 348 BC: early Hellenistic coins were found in considerable numbers there, as well as in the public buildings which were apparently robbed by the late settlers. There has been some doubt about how complete the abandonment was in recent years, and it has been claimed that most of the site was reoccupied after Philip's destruction. This author's analysis of the coins and other data from the site, however, suggests that while a small area was undoubtedly reoccupied, the greater part of the site was definitively abandoned.

The site was excavated in four seasons between 1928 and 1939 by D.M. Robinson. Recent excavations and restorations are being undertaken by Dr. J. Vokotoulou.

Olynthus, vols. 1-14; J.W. Graham, Hesp. 22-23 (1953-54); Mabel Gude, History of Olynthus (Johns Hopkins Studies in Archaeology 17, 1933); Zahrnt 1971; N. Cahill, PhD diss. (UC Berkeley, 1991)

(Nick Cahill)

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