In which ancient city of Macedonia did Kotys serve as the head of the adolescents 20 centuries ago? And how can we still know it today? The magic of retrieving antiquities from the earth during an excavation becomes stronger when a find bears a legible inscription, which provides us with direct information about the life and society of a city that is long lost.
The rectangular marble plaque (ΜΘ 2667) is preserved in excellent condition and was the façade of a built pedestal of a statue or a similar monument. It was found in 1961 in a rescue excavation south of the modern village Kalamoto, Municipality of Lagadas, rebuilt in a later ancient tomb. The engraving style of the letters dates it to the early imperial years (c. 100 AD).
The plaque preserves an honorary inscription in 28 verses, framed by a triple, engraved frame. The first six verses mention that the adolescents (ephevoi) of the city's gymnasium dedicated this monument to their gymnasiarch, Titus Flavius Apollonius, son of Andronicus, in return for the donation of the necessary quantity of olive oil for the teenagers who practiced sports in the city’s Gymnasium. The dedication took place when Kotys, son of Kotys, was head of the ephevoi. Then follows a list of names and patronymic names of 64 teenagers, engraved in smaller letters in three vertical columns of unequal width.
The ancient city that has been partially excavated very close to the site where this marble plaque was found, has been identified with ancient Kalindoia, thanks to another inscription containing a list of priests and a reference to its name. Its name derives from the ancient verb καλινδέομαι, meaning to roll around, and is a reference to the meadows in the area that were suitable for horse breeding. We do not know when Kalindoia was founded, but certainly before 422 BC, as its name appears first in the list of independent cities of the Bottiaeans (of northern Chalikidiki) who signed a treaty of alliance with the Athenians in that year. Less than a century later, we learn that the region of Kalindoia has been subordinated to the Macedonian state, but retains the status of a city. In Roman times the city continued to have the status of a city (the politarchs, the voule and the ecclesia are mentioned in inscriptions) and was a center of worship of the emperor, as excavations of the last twenty years have shown.
A peculiarity of the city seems to have been its mixed population, a fact that is evident in the names of the teenagers in the inscription we present. Thus, we find names with Panhellenic spread (Apollonius, Hieron, Telephos), Greek names that are mainly found in Macedonia (Androneikos, Philip, Archelaos) and non-Greek names, Thracian to a large extent (Kotys, Teres, Patoumasses), or Latin (Titus, Flavius, Valerius). Mixed marriages were not restricted either, as many adolescents have parents of racial origins different from the one indicated by their name (e.g. Karverenthes son of Paramonos, Patoumasses son of Philip, Dioscorides son of Gavdion).
The phenomenon is also indicative of the tolerance and social equality that prevailed in Macedonia during the Roman imperial period, which allowed adolescents of different origins to co-practice in civic gymnasia and even be introduced into public offices (such as that of “ephevarchos”), to an extent not conceivable in earlier periods.
You may see the inscribed plaque in the exhibition "In Macedonia from the 7th century BC to Late Antiquity", section "Education – Sports".
