EMA´THIA
EMA´THIA (
Ἠμαθίη), a district which the Homeric poems
Il. 14.226) couple with Pieria as lying between the Hellenic cities of Thessaly and Paeonia and Thrace.
The name, was in primitive times assigned to the original seats of the Temenid dynasty of Edessa.
It comprehended that beautiful region beyond the Haliacmon and on the E. side of the Olympene ridge, which is protected on all sides by mountains and marshes, at a secure but not inconvenient distance from the sea. Emathia, which had received the gift of three magnificent positions for cities or fortresses in
Vérnia, Niaústa, and
Vodhená, and possessing every variety of elevation and aspect,--of mountain, wood, fertile plain, running water, and lake,--was admirably adapted to be the nursery of the monarchy of Macedonia.
It appears from Justin (
7.1) that part of Emathia was occupied by the Briges, who were expelled from thence by the Temenidae; and Herodotus (
8.138), in stating that the gardens of Midas, their king, were situated at the foot of Mount Bermius, seems to show that their position was round Beroea.
Emathia, in later times, had more extensive boundaries than those which Homer understood; and Ptolemy (
3.13.39) advanced its limits to the right bank of the Axius. Polybius (
24.8.4) and Livy (
40.3), who is his transcriber in this place, assert, in contradiction to the notice in the
Iliad, that Emathia was formerly called Paeonia, but this
[p. 1.824]may be reconciled by supposing that previously it had been inhabited by the. Paeonian race.
Emathia was, after the Roman conquest, included in the third region of Macedonia, and contained the following cities:--BEROEA, CITIUM, AEGAE, EDESSA, CYRRHUS, ALMOPIA, EUROPUS, ATALANTA, GORTYNIA, and
IDOMENE (Leake,
Northern Greece, vol. iii. pp. 442-447.)
[
E.B.J]
