Μακεδονικός Τάφος της Κρίσεως - Mieza,the so-called macedonian tomb of Jugdment

 

Από τους σημαντικότερους και καλύτερα διατηρημένους μακεδονικούς τάφους, που έχουν έλθει στο φως μέχρι σήμερα, είναι αυτός ''της Κρίσεως'', ένα από τα ταφικά μνημεία της αρχαίας Μίεζας, που είχαν κατασκευασθεί στην πορεία του αρχαίου δρόμου που ένωνε την πόλη με την πρωτεύουσα του μακεδονικού βασιλείου, την Πέλλα. Οφείλει την ονομασία του στη μοναδική για την αρχαία τέχνη ζωγραφική παράσταση που τον διακοσμεί και έχει ως θέμα την κρίση του νεκρού. Χρονολογείται στο τελευταίο τέταρτο του 4ου αι π.Χ. και ξεχωρίζει ανάμεσα στους μακεδονικούς τάφους για τις μνημειώδεις διαστάσεις του και την επιβλητική του πρόσοψη.

 

Το μνημείο ανήκει στον τύπο του διθάλαμου μακεδονικού τάφου με καμαρωτή στέγη και καλυπτόταν με χωμάτινο τύμβο που είχε ύψος 1,50 μ. και διάμετρο 10 μ. Η πρόσοψή του είναι διώροφη, συνδυάζει το δωρικό με τον ιωνικό ρυθμό και δίνει την εντύπωση αρχαίου διώροφου κτηρίου με αετωματική επίστεψη. Ο ''πρώτος όροφος'' είναι δωρικού ρυθμού με τέσσερις ημικίονες (τετράστυλο πρόπυλο με παραστάδες στις άκρες), επάνω στους οποίους στηρίζεται το δωρικό γείσο. Αποτελείται από τρίγλυφα και ένδεκα μετόπες, που διατηρούν τμηματικά την πολυχρωμία τους και διακοσμούνται με ένα πολύ γνωστό θέμα, την αναμέτρηση των Κενταύρων με τους Λαπίθες. Ταινία με σταγόνες και γραπτή ζώνη με άνθη και έλικες διαχωρίζουν τις μετόπες από την ιωνική ζωφόρο που ακολουθεί. Το θέμα του διακόσμου της είναι κάποια μάχη των Ελλήνων εναντίον των Περσών, ενώ είναι χαρακτηριστικό ότι οι μορφές που τη συνθέτουν είναι ανάγλυφες (stucco). Πάνω από το γείσο αναπτύσσεται ο ''δεύτερος όροφος'' της πρόσοψης. Αποτελείται από έξι μικρούς ιωνικούς ημικίονες με ύψος 1,46 μ., ανάμεσα στους οποίους υπάρχουν διαστήματα διαμορφωμένα ως ψευδόθυρες. Το αέτωμα πρέπει να διέθετε γραπτή διακόσμηση, όπως προκύπτει από διάφορα θραύσματα που έχουν έλθει στο φως. Ανάμεσα στις ακραίες παραστάδες και στους δωρικούς ημικίονες, που πλαισιώνουν τη θύρα, υπάρχουν τέσσερις ζωγραφικοί πίνακες, οι οποίοι αποτελούν ενιαία σύνθεση που απεικονίζει τη σκηνή της κρίσης του νεκρού. Ο νεκρός πολεμιστής οδηγείται από τον ψυχοπομπό Ερμή στους κριτές του Κάτω Κόσμου, Αιακό και Ραδάμανθυ, θέμα εξαιρετικά σπάνιο στην εικονογραφία, αλλά γνωστό από τον πλατωνικό διάλογο ''Γοργίας''. Από τον τρόπο απόδοσης των μορφών προκύπτει ότι δύο ζωγράφοι συμμετείχαν στη διακόσμηση του τάφου. Ο προθάλαμος, αν και δεν έχει ανασκαφεί πλήρως, φαίνεται ότι δεν διέθετε γραπτές παραστάσεις. Αντίθετα, ο νεκρικός θάλαμος με την αρχιτεκτονική διάρθρωση των τοίχων θυμίζει έντονα τις εσωτερικές όψεις σπιτιών της Πέλλας και της Δήλου. Διαθέτει τοιχοβάτη, κυρίως τοίχο, παραστάδες στις γωνίες, θριγκό και καμαρωτή στέγη. Βαθύ γαλάζιο, κόκκινο και λευκό είναι τα χρώματα που έχουν χρησιμοποιηθεί στο θάλαμο, ενώ ιωνικά κυμάτια, ρόδακες και ταινίες διακοσμούν τα διάφορα αρχιτεκτονικά μέλη.

 

Ο τάφος της Κρίσεως εντοπίσθηκε τυχαία το 1954 κατά τις εργασίες διάνοιξης επαρχιακού δρόμου και ανασκάφηκε από τον καθηγητή Φώτιο Πέτσα κατά τα έτη 1954-1964. Είχε υποστεί σοβαρές φθορές ήδη από την αρχαιότητα, τόσο στην καμάρα του προθαλάμου όσο και στην πρόσοψη. Εργασίες συντήρησης των κονιαμάτων και δομικής αποκατάστασης της πρόσοψης έγιναν το 1998, παράλληλα με ανασκαφή από τη Λ. Στεφανή, ενώ σήμερα βρίσκεται σε εξέλιξη το έργο ανάδειξης του μνημείου, που προβλέπει και νέα πρόσβαση για άτομα με ειδικές ανάγκες.

 

Συντάκτης

Ε. Ψαρρά, αρχαιολόγος 

 

 

 

One of the most important and best-preserved Macedonian tombs discovered so far is the so-called Tomb of Judgement. Its name derives from the painted representation of the judgement of the dead, unique in antiquity. The tomb lies with other similar funerary monuments along the road connecting the town of Mieza with Pela, the capital of the Macedonian Kingdom. Dated to the last quarter of the fourth century BC, it has a particularly imposing facade and is the largest known Macedonian tomb.

 

The monument is a typical double-chambered Macedonian tomb with barrel-vaulted ceilings, buried under a tumulus 1.50 metres high and 10 metres in diameter. The two-storeyed fa?ade, which combines both Doric and Ionic styles, is crowned by a pediment and gives the impression of a two-storeyed building. The 'ground floor' is Doric with four engaged columns in antis supporting a Doric entablature of triglyphs and metopes. The eleven metopes preserve part of their polychrome decoration with representations of the battle of the Centaurs and Lapiths, a popular theme. A band of pegs and another with painted flowers and volutes separate the metopes from the Ionic frieze above. This bas-relief frieze with stucco figures depicts a battle between Greeks and Persians. The 'second storey' has six Ionic engaged columns, 1.46 metres high, alternating with false doors, and was surmounted by a pediment. The pediment, of which only fragments survive, had painted decoration. On the 'ground floor', between the antae and the engaged columns are four painted panels representing the judgement of the deceased. The dead soldier is lead by Hermes Psychopompos ('guide of the souls') before the judges of the Underworld, Aiakos and Rhadamanthys. This theme, known from Plato's Gorgias, is extremely rare in iconography. Differences in the rendering of the figures indicate that two painters worked on the composition. The ante-chamber, though not fully excavated, does not appear to have had painted decoration. The interior of the burial chamber, however, with its ornate architectural features recalls the houses at Pella and Delos. It has a toichobate, a wall proper, antae at each corner, an entablature and a vaulted ceiling. The walls are painted deep blue, red and white, and the architectural members are decorated with painted Ionic kymatia, rosettes and bands.

 

The Tomb of Judgement was discovered during road construction in 1954 and was excavated by Professor Photios Petsas in 1954-1964. Both the ante-chamber and the facade were severely damaged in antiquity. The monument was re-excavated in recent years by L. Stephani and restored in 1998. An access ramp for visitors with ambulatory difficulties is currently under construction.

 

Author

I. Psarra, archaeologist

 

 

Modern Historians about Macedonia – René Grousset

 

✍Quote:

 

The Macedonian conquest gave Hellenic civilization, as a priceless compensation, at least the domination of Asia; and we know what a stimulus to the Greek spirit was this encounter, in the Alexandrian syncretism, with the genius of the East.

 

Unhappily, after a hundred years of splendid progress, the Alexandrianism which, in the third century, had presided over the hellenization of the East, suffered a reversal: the Greek spirit was in turn invaded by oriental ideas. Euclid and Aristarchus had lived at Alexandria, but it was also at Alexandria that the neo-Platonists and gnostics lived. Lucian’s outbursts of laughter (in the second century A.D.) were the last protest of the critical spirit against the return of the murkiest pagan mysticism.

 

Furthermore, when Alexander had made the Greeks masters of the East, they transferred to it their own inability to unite.

 

The Macedonia of the Antigonids, the Syria of the Seleucids and the Egypt of the Ptolemies, like Athens, Sparta and Thebes before them, wore themselves out in an inconclusive struggle which made them fall, one by one, an easy prey to the foreigner — in this case to the Romans.

 

Not with impunity had the Græco-Macedonian dynasties assumed the mantle of the old oriental despots.

 

René Grousset, A. Patterson ‘The Sum of History’, 1951,page 10

 

✍Quote:

 

Similar uncertainty surrounds the personality of Alexander. Should we see in him the agent of the Hellenic League about to Hellenize Asia? Or the Macedonian whom the Orient had won over and divested of Greek civilization to the point of making him a Son of Ammon and Great King?

 

Both personalities were present in him. And the whole drama of his brief life lay in the contrast between them. When he forced the passage of the Granicus, he came to Asia, like Agesilaus before him, to take vengeance for the invasion of Xerxes. His first act was to deliver Ionia. He went on to give Hellenism the coasts of the eastern Mediterranean, Syria, and Egypt; that is, the European façade of Asia. And this part of all his conquests was the only one to prove really lasting. Egypt and Syria remained part of Hellas for nine hundred and seventy years after his day, and western Anatolia for sixteen and a half centuries.

 

On the other hand, east of the Euphrates, on the Persian plateau afterwards conquered by Alexander, Hellenism maintained its hold for barely two centuries. And it was there that the Macedonian, for the eight years of life left to him, began to strip himself of his Greek inheritance.

 

‘The Sum of History’,page 153

 

✍Quote:

 

If the Macedonian kingdoms of Greater Greece had left no other proof of their activity, they would have done enough for ancient civilization by giving it the masters of Epictetus and Marcus Aurelius.

 

‘The Sum of History’,page 156

 

✍Quote:

 

One of the sons of Antiochus the Great, Antiochus Epiphanes, tried to react ( 175-164 B.C.). How are we to judge him? The superior strength of the Romans made it impossible for him to secure the triumph of Hellenism by force of arms. But the expansion of Greek nationality was the whole raison d’étre of the Seleucids. Antiochus Epiphanes was therefore obliged to undertake the conquest of the oriental soul by introducing Hellenism to the native peoples.

 

‘The Sum of History’,page 157

 

✍Quote:

 

It was the Byzantine Empire which was to realize Alexander’s idea -Macedonian Panhellenism — in face of an Asia in revolt, and realize it for the Greeks.

 

‘The Sum of History’ ,page 159 

Modern historians about ancient Macedonia - Richard Billows

Macedon was a region which had lagged behind the rest of the Greek world socially, economically, and culturally, failing to develop the polis or city-state institutions characteristic of the most advanced regions of Greece, but remaining instead a tribal society ruled by kings and dominated by a land-owning aristocracy.Indeed,there is some question as to whether Macedon should at this time be counted as part of the Greek world at all, for it has been doubted whether the Macedonians were a Greek-speaking people, on the basis of a few passages in ancient sources that appear to speak of a Macedonian “language”.These passages can equally well be understood to refer to a Macedonian “dialect,” however, and though it cannot at present be formally proved that the Macedonians were Hellenic in race and language, I think it highly likely that they were, for three reasons: the overwhelming majority of personal names known to have been used by Macedonians were good Greek names; the names of the months in the Macedonian calendar were basically Greek in form; and the religion of the Macedonians was largely the same as that of the Greeks, with Zeus, Herakles, and Dionysos being particularly prominent.

The Macedonians, then, were probably a Greek people (though certainly with an admixture of Illyrians and Thracians) akin in language and culture to their neighbors to the south and west, the Thessalians and Epeirots.Like the Epeirots, they were divided into several tribes and ruled over by a tribal monarchy. The main division in Macedon was between the lowland Macedonians, living in the plains of Pieria, Bottiaia, and the Amphaxitis, and the highland Macedonians, who were themselves divided into a number of “cantons”: from south to north, Tymphaia, Elimiotis, Orestis, Eordaia, Lynkos, and Pelagonia .The kings came from a royal family known as the Argeadai, who claimed descent from Herakles, but the Argead house was rooted in lower Macedon and the cantons of upper Macedon had dynastic families of their own who frequently claimed to rule as independent kings over their own regions.Like the Thessalians, the Macedonians never developed beyond the aristocratic form of society typical of early Greece and probably depicted in Homer’s epics.

The Homeric appearance of certain elements of Macedonian society has been widely noted; the chief of these elements is the so-called hetaireia, an institution which bound together the king and the nobility: it was the privilege and duty of the nobles to attend the king as his hetairoi (companions) both in war and peace, as cavalry fighters and officers, or as councillors and boon companions.That this institution was deeply rooted in Macedon is shown by the existence of a religious festival named the Hetairidia, and it is clear that the hetairoi formed a noble class of major importance in the state.Although as chief priest, chief judge, commander in chief, and political leader, the king embodied the state, he was constrained in practice to function in consultation with his hetairoi.

 

 Thus the chief organ of state policy was the synedrion or council of the king and his friends, in which the king took the lead and made the decisions, but would find it hard to decide against a consensus of his nobles.In particular, actions against the lives of leading members of the hetairos class could normally be risked by a king only with strong backing from his friends, and at times the king might prefer to hand over the decision on a capital charge against a great noble to the synedrion of his friends.The basis of the social and economic standing of the hetairos class was clearly landed wealth: Theopompos tells us that the 800 hetairoi of Philip II, for example, owned as much land as the 10,000 wealthiest men of the rest of Greece put together (FGrH, no. 115 F 225b). Being proprietors of great estates gave them an inherited status within their regions, and hence in the kingdom as a whole. In particular,like the Thessalian nobility, the Macedonian hetairoi raised horses on their estates, and provided the cavalry forces of the Macedonian state, riding in to support the king in time of war, each noble with a mounted following of his own.

Since Macedon before the time of Philip II had no significant infantry force, but relied almost exclusively on cavalry for its defense, their domination of the cavalry gave the Macedonian nobility great political influence.This was especially true when a weak king was on the throne, when factions of nobles often coalesced around other members of the royal house claiming the throne and reduced the state to near anarchy.

 

“Antigonus the One-Eyed” By Richard Billows,pages 18-20