Archaeology: Alexander's Place

In his bitter orations against Philip II, Demosthenes painted Macedonia as a barbarous country. But archaeologists are now discovering that Alexander the Great's birthplace, Pella, the capital of Macedonia, was a city of such culture and opulence that it may have ranked with Athens itself. That possibility was long masked not only by Greek scorn for the Macedonians, but also by the fact that the Romans destroyed Pella in 168 B.C. Gradually covered by layers of dirt, ancient Pella's precise location became unknown.

In the modern village of Pella (24 miles northwest of Salonika), a Greek farmer was digging...

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