They were the ancient world’s ultimate social climbers.
In one generation, the Macedonians emerged from Greece’s rustic northern fringes to rule most of the world they knew, funded by the loot of the Persian Empire.
In the process, and particularly in the bloodbath that followed Alexander the Great’s death at age 33 in 323 B.C., they set new standards for ambition, bloody intrigue and excess that remained unrivalled until the more colorful periods of Imperial Rome.
The recent discovery of a cavernous underground tomb in Amphipolis in northern Greece, dating to the twilight of Alexander’s reign, has revived interest in the Macedonians.
Scientists have opened the second phase of their excavation of the vast 4th-century B.C. burial mound in Amphipolis in search of more tombs and bodies.
During the first search of the site, which was built shortly after Alexander the Great’s death, researchers found and dug up a tomb containing a skeleton.
Greek Culture Minister Costas Tasoulas visited the burial mound in northern Greece on Saturday to announce the new phase of the exploration.
Geophysicists are scanning the site to see if there are other structures besides the splendid, three-chamber tomb found in August. The area being scanned is about one-seventh of the total of 5 acres that the mound covers.
One goal is to try to calculate the skeleton’s gender and age. Identifying it may never be possible, even if its DNA is checked, said Lina Mendoni, the culture ministry’s general secretary.
Speculation on the identity has been rife among experts, including speculation that it was Alexander’s mother, widow, son, half-brother, or Nearchos, one of Alexander’s closest aides and an Amphipolis native.
Meanwhile, archaeologists are still uncovering multicolored decorations found inside the dug-up tomb. Lasers will be used to study them, Mendoni said.
In the late 1970s, a lavishly furnished tomb in northern Greece belonging to Alexander’s father, Philip II — under whom Macedonian expansion began — was found.
And in recent decades, archaeologists in northern Greece have also excavated the old Macedonian royal seat of Aigai, with its palace and cemeteries, and the later capital at Pella, where Alexander was born.
Alexander’s Greek armies, which combined heavy infantry formations armed with the formidable Sarissa pike and elite cavalry units, won him an empire stretching from modern Greece to India, where he only stopped because his exhausted veterans decided enough was enough.
But historians also highlight the charismatic youth’s political skills and vision, which sought to establish social cohesion in the conquered lands through cultural, ethnic and religious tolerance — the last, remarkably, by a man who shocked his fellow Greeks by demanding honors hitherto reserved for the gods.
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