This article is about the Thracian tribe. For the viral cause of pneumonia in sheep, see
visna.
The Maedi (also Maidans, Maedans, or Medi;
Ancient Greek: Μαῖδοι or Μαιδοί) were a
Thracian tribe in antiquity.[1] Their land was called Maedica (Μαιδική).[2]
In historic times, they occupied the area between
Paionia and
Thrace, on the southwestern fringes of Thrace, along the middle course of the
Strymon, between the
Kresna Gorge and the
Rupel Pass (present-day south-western
Bulgaria).[3][4][5]Strabo says that the Maedi bordered eastward on the
Thunatae of
Dardania,[6] and that the
Axius flowed through their territory.[7]
Their capital city was
Iamphorynna,[8] which lay somewhere in the southwest corner of what is now Bulgaria.[9] Some archaeologists posit it in the area between the cities of
Petrich and
Sandanski, but its exact location remains unknown.[10]
They were an independent tribe through much of their history, and the Thracian king
Sitalkes recognized their independence, along with several other warlike "border" tribes such as the
Dardani,
Agrianes, and
Paeonians, whose lands formed a buffer zone between the powers of the
Odrysians on the east and of
Illyrian tribes in the west, while
Macedon was located to the south of Paeonia.
According to
Plutarch,[11] the Maedi rebelled against their Macedonian overlords when King
Philip II of Macedon was besieging
Byzantium in 340 BC. The 16 year old
Alexander the Great who had been left as regent by his father, led an army against the Maedi and founded his first city Alexandroplis.[12]
The ancient historian and biographer
Plutarch describes
Spartacus as "a
Thracian of nomadic stock", in a possible reference to the Maedi.[13] Plutarch also says Spartacus' wife, a prophetess of the same tribe, was enslaved with him.
In 89–84 BC (during the
First Mithridatic War), the Maedi overran Macedon and sacked
Delphi as allies of
Mithridates.[14] It is said that they made a habit of raiding Macedon when a king of Macedon was away on a campaign.[15]Sulla after this ravaged[16] the land of the Maedi.
Aristotle recorded that bolinthos was the Maedan word for a species of wild
aurochses or
wisents that lived in the region.
A number of Maedi emigrated to
Asia minor and were called MaedoBythini[17] (
Greek: Μαιδοβίθυνοι).
^Livy: History of Rome, VII, Books 26-27 (Loeb Classical Library No. 367) by Livy and Frank Gardner Moore, 1943, page 96: "...waste the country and to besiege the city of Iamphorynna, the capital and citadel of Maedica..."
^Hannibal's war: a military history of the Second Punic War, John Francis Lazenby, University of Oklahoma Press, 1998,
ISBN0-8061-3004-0, p.162.
^М. Манов. Ямфорина или Форуна? Опит за проблематизация и локализация. – Археология, 2004, кн.1-2, 107-112.
^The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (Oxford Companions) by M. C. Howatson, 2006,
ISBN0-19-860081-X, page 73: "... of 89-85, when Athens, which had sided with *Mithridates, was sacked and in part destroyed by the Roman general *Sulla [...] Greece suffered severely, both from Sulla and from the barbarian allies of Mithridates, who sacked Delphi..."
^Titus Livius, "...into Macedonia and thence into Thrace and against the Maedi [...] that tribe had been in the habit of making raids into Macedonia, whenever it knew that the king was engaged in a foreign war and the kingdom unprotected."
^Plutarch, Sulla, "Upon these assurances Sulla sent him away, and then himself invaded the country of the Maedi and after ravaging the most of it..."
^The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 3, Part 2: The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and Other States of the Near East, from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries BC by John Boardman, I. E. S. Edwards, E. Sollberger, and N. G. L. Hammond,
ISBN0-521-22717-8, 1992, page 601: "Earlier certain tribes of the Maedi emigrated to Asia minor where they were known by the name of the MaedoBythini..."