STYMBARA
(Styberra) Yugoslavia.
A large
city in the middle of the Pelagonian plain showing Greek
form and influence (triangular plan, ca. 550 x 220 m).
It lay on the river Erigon (now the Vardar) and the road
from Stobi to Herakleia Lynkou, near the present-day
village of Čepigovo. Its origins go back to the late archaic
period, and it was continually inhabited from then until
late antiquity. Still visible are the city walls and the excavated gymnasium.
Strabo mentions the city, as does Livy, who tells us
that in 200 B.C. the Roman army fighting Philip V turned
to the N from Lynkos (Herakleia) and came to Stubera,
where it could get wheat. Further on he mentions the
city as the Macedonian base during Perseus' struggle with
the Illyrians in 169. Stymbara is also mentioned in the
work by the Ravenna Geographer (4.9.2). From the
many inscriptions it is to be concluded that it belonged
to the circumscription of Deuriopos, that it was included
in the tribus Scaptia, and that the conventus civium
Romanorum was to be found in it. The lists of city
epheboi for the years 190, 203, 206, and 223 survive,
enabling us to calculate that in the 2d c. the city had
some 20,000 free inhabitants. A few marble statues are
of artistic worth. The base is extant for the statue of
Septimius Silvanus Nichomachus, member of a family
which produced a few Macedonarchs and a consul. The
city may have been destroyed in an earthquake.
BIBLIOGRAPHY
N. Vulić,
Spomenik 98 (1941-48) Nos.
390-92
I; F. Papazoglu, “Jedan nov natpis iz Čepigova,”
Živa antika 3 (1953); id.,
Makedonski gradovi u rimsko doba (1957); D. Vučković-Todorović, “Styberra, antike
Ansiedlung im Dorfe Čepigovo in der Umgebung von
Prilep,”
Archaeologia Iugoslavica 4 (1963)
MPI; I. Mikulčić,
Pelagonija u svetlosti arheoloških nalaza (1966).
J. SASEL
