M. B. Hatzopoulos (Research Centre for Greek and Roman Antiquity, Athens), “An Old and New Inscription from Mieza: the Constitution of Extensive Landed Properties in the Central Macedonian Plain and the Question of λαοί in Hellenistic Macedonia” dealt with the creation of large estates in Macedonia. It was already well-known that extensive estates were a common feature of the Central Macedonian Plain in Roman times. A new fragment of the already known list of deeds of sale from Mieza, allows us to see how such large estates were created. All ten deeds of sale (actually copies of the official deeds set up by the owner himself) concern acquisitions of land by a certain Zopyros over a period of three years; all parcels of land bought by him were apparently situated in the same area, the northern part of the territory of Mieza; Zopyros obviously attempted to form a continuous extended property, probably larger than the great royal donations in the New Lands. How was such an estate exploited? The general consensus has been that laoi, dependent farmers attached to the land were not and could not be attested in Antigonid Macedonia. However, the well-attested royal practice of transferring populations should have led to caution; now, a new unpublished decree of Kyrrhos explicitly mentions laoi in early-third-century Macedonia.
Cédric Brélaz (École Française d’Athènes), “La langue des indigènes sur le territoire de la colonie romaine de Philippes”, drew attention to the fact that in Philippi, in contrast with the majority of Roman colonies in Greece, where the prevailing language outside the small circle of colonists is Greek, there are several inscriptions of the incolae in Latin. Since practically all such Latin inscriptions belong to persons of Thracian origin, the speaker convincingly argued that the appeal of Latin to these populations was due to the lesser degree of hellenization in the territory of Philippi. This relative appeal of Latin is also attested in other insufficiently hellenized Roman colonies of the Greek East.
Slavica Babamova-Janik (Institute for National History, Skopje), “Personal names of the inhabitants of eastern Paeonia in the Roman period”, dealt with the onomastics of eastern Paeonia. A perusal of old and new inscriptions led her to the conclusion that many names of that area which have been characterized as Thracian should be considered epichoric, part of the local substratum of the Balkan peninsula.
Manuela Mari (Università degli Studi di Cassino), “Epigraphic evidence on the cults of Amphipolis”, provided a full overview of all sources on the cults of Amphipolis. Three main features emerged: a) remnants of the city’s Athenian past persisted into much later periods; b) the number of cults is surprisingly high, surely a testimony to the city’s cosmopolitan and religiously open-minded character; c) personality cult (primarily, but not exclusively, royal cult) was particularly popular.
