Medi

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Author: Laxman Burdak, IFS (R).
The Maedi are visible in this regional map (as "Maidoi").

Medi or Maedi were a Thracian tribe in antiquity.[1]

Variants

Jat Gotras Namesake

History

In historic times, they occupied the area between Paionia and Thrace, on the southwestern fringes of Thrace, along the middle course of the Strymon, between the Kresna Gorge and the Rupel Pass (present-day south-western Bulgaria).[2][3][4]

Strabo says that the Maedi bordered eastward on the Thunatae of Dardania,[5] and that the Axius flowed through their territory.[6]

Their capital city was Iamphorynna,[7] which lay somewhere in the southwest corner of what is now Bulgaria.[8] Some archaeologists posit it in the area between the cities of Petrich and Sandanski, but its exact location remains unknown.[9]

They were an independent tribe through much of their history, and the Thracian king Sitalkes recognized their independence, along with several other warlike "border" tribes such as the Dardani, Agrianes, and Paeonians, whose lands formed a buffer zone between the powers of the Odrysians on the east and of Illyrian tribes in the west, while Macedon was located to the south of Paeonia.

According to Plutarch,[10] the Maedi rebelled against their Macedonian overlords when King Philip II of Macedon was besieging Byzantium in 340 BC. The 16 year old Alexander the Great who had been left as regent by his father, led an army against the Maedi and founded his first city Alexandroplis.[11]

The ancient historian and biographer Plutarch describes Spartacus as "a Thracian of nomadic stock", in a possible reference to the Maedi.[12] Plutarch also says Spartacus' wife, a prophetess of the same tribe, was enslaved with him.

In 89–84 BC (during the First Mithridatic War), the Maedi overran Macedon and sacked Delphi as allies of Mithridates.[13] It is said that they made a habit of raiding Macedon when a king of Macedon was away on a campaign.[14] Sulla after this ravaged[15] the land of the Maedi. Aristotle recorded that bolinthos was the Maedan word for a species of wild aurochses or wisents that lived in the region.

A number of Maedi emigrated to Asia Minor and were called MaedoBythini[16] (Greek: Μαιδοβίθυνοι).

Jat History

Hukum Singh Panwar (Pauria) [17] writes: Investigations show that the Sobii, Sophites, Kathai & Malli, being cognate tribes, were intimately connected with each other and also with the Gakhars and Taxili (Takasali or the Takkas or Takshakas). Daci (Daki in Jatu dialect) and Dacia of Roman history or Dasyu of Sanskrit or Dasae of Stephen us Byzantinus are Dahae or Tahae of the Chinese, a tribe of the eastern Scythians, the Massagetae. Meds or Medi or Mand or Mind or Mandrueni or Mandueni or Mers or Moedi of Strabo (enemies of Jats) still found in the Rechna and Sindh-Sagar Doabas, were the first Indo-Scythian conquerors of the Punjab from Mandrus river to the South of the Oxus or they were Thracian Getae. The Mogas or Mogars, founder of Moga or Moog-nagar on the east bank of the Jhelam, were the Parthians, descendents of Prithu, an important section of the Sakas. Interestingly, Arjuna, the Pandava hero in the Mahabharata war, is addressed by Krishna, his charioteer friend, as Partha. Prithudaka (modern Pehowa) in the Kurukshetra region was, according to O.P. Bharadvaja (1986: 197f), the original home of Prithus or Parthas. The ancient Parthia must have owed its name to the Parthian emigrants from the eastern part of Sapta Sindhu.

Prof. B.S. Dhillon[18] writes....In the classical writers, the name is found as Medi and Mandueni, and in the Muhammadan writers, as Med and Mand".[19]

Mention by Pliny

Pliny[20] mentions Lake Mieotis and the adjoining nations....We then come to the river Tanais3, which discharges itself into the sea by two mouths, and the banks of which are inhabited by the Sarmatæ, the descendants of the Medi, it is said, a people divided into numerous tribes. The first of these are the Sauromatæ Gynæcocratumeni4 the husbands of the Amazons.

3 Or Don. It flows into the Sea of Azof by two larger mouths and several smaller ones. Strabo says that the distance between the two larger mouths is sixty stadia. several smaller ones. Strabo says that the distance between the two larger mouths is sixty stadia.

4 From the Greek γυναικοκρατουμενοὶ, "ruled over by women." It is not improbable that this name was given by some geographer to these Sarmatian tribes on finding them, at the period of his visit, in subjection to the rule of a queen. Parisot remarks, that this passage affords an instance of the little care bestowed by Pliny upon procuring the best and most correct information, for that the Roman writers had long repudiated the use of the term "Sauromatæ." He also takes Pliny to task for his allusion to these tribes as coupling with the Amazons, the existence of such a people being in his time generally disbelieved.

Mention by Pliny

Pliny[21] mentions The Rivers Cyrus and Araxes....The Tigris and inaccessible mountains surround Adiabene. To the left15 of it is the territory of the Medi, and in the distance is seen the Caspian Sea; which, as we shall state in the proper place, receives its waters from the ocean,16 and is wholly surrounded by the Caucasian Mountains.

15 That is, looking towards the south.

Mention by Pliny

Pliny[22] mentions The Parthian Empire....The other seven kingdoms of Parthia bear the name of the Lower provinces. As to the Parthi themselves, Parthia2 always lay at the foot of the mountains3 so often mentioned, which overhang all these nations. On the east it is bounded by the Arii, on the south by Carmania and the Ariani, on the west by the Pratitæ, a people of the Medi, and on the north by the Hyrcani: it is surrounded by deserts on every side.

3 The so-called Caucasian chain. See c. 16 of the present Book.

Mention by Pliny

Pliny[23] mentions The Parthian Empire....It is requisite in this place to trace the localities of the Medi also, and to describe in succession the features of the country as far as the Persian Sea, in order that the account which follows may be the better understood. Media8 lies crosswise to the west, and so presenting itself obliquely to Parthia, closes the entrance of both kingdoms9 into which it is divided.

It has, then, on the east, the Caspii and the Parthi; on the south, Sittacene, Susiane, and Persis; on the west, Adsiabene; and on the north, Armenia.

8 Media occupied the extreme west of the great table-land of the modern Iran. It corresponded very nearly to the modern province of Irak-Ajemi.

9 The Upper and the Lower, as already mentioned.

References

  1. ↑ The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 3, Part 2 by Iorwerth Eiddon Stephen Edwards, 1982. p. 278, with n. 33.
  2. ↑ The Spartacus war, Barry S. Strauss, Simon and Schuster, 2009, ISBN 1-4165-3205-6, p.31.
  3. ↑ The Cambridge Ancient History: pt. 1. The prehistory of the Balkans; and the Middle East and the Aegean world, tenth to eighth centuries B.C., Cambridge University Press, 1982, p. 601.
  4. ↑ The Assyrian and Babylonian empires and other states of the Near East, from the eighth to the sixth centuries B.C., Volume 3, John Boardman, Cambridge University Press, 1991, ISBN 0-521-22717-8, p. 601
  5. ↑ Strabo. Geographica. Vol. vii. p. 316. Page numbers refer to those of Isaac Casaubon's edition.
  6. ↑ Strabo. Geographica. Vol. vii. p. 331. Page numbers refer to those of Isaac Casaubon's edition.
  7. ↑ Livy: History of Rome, VII, Books 26-27 (Loeb Classical Library No. 367) by Livy and Frank Gardner Moore, 1943, page 96: "...waste the country and to besiege the city of Iamphorynna, the capital and citadel of Maedica..."
  8. ↑ Hannibal's war: a military history of the Second Punic War, John Francis Lazenby, University of Oklahoma Press, 1998, ISBN 0-8061-3004-0, p.162.
  9. ↑ М. Манов. Ямфорина или Форуна? Опит за проблематизация и локализация. – Археология, 2004, кн.1-2, 107-112.
  10. ↑ "Plutarch • Life of Alexander (Part 1 of 7)".
  11. ↑ Alexandrupolis - Livius".
  12. ↑ Nic Fields (2009). Spartacus and the Slave War 73-71 BC: A Gladiator Rebels Against Rome. Osprey Publishing. p. 28. ISBN 978-1-84603-353-7.
  13. ↑ The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature (Oxford Companions) by M. C. Howatson, 2006, ISBN 0-19-860081-X, page 73: "... of 89-85, when Athens, which had sided with *Mithridates, was sacked and in part destroyed by the Roman general *Sulla [...] Greece suffered severely, both from Sulla and from the barbarian allies of Mithridates, who sacked Delphi..."
  14. ↑ Titus Livius, "...into Macedonia and thence into Thrace and against the Maedi [...] that tribe had been in the habit of making raids into Macedonia, whenever it knew that the king was engaged in a foreign war and the kingdom unprotected."
  15. ↑ Plutarch, Sulla, "Upon these assurances Sulla sent him away, and then himself invaded the country of the Maedi and after ravaging the most of it..."
  16. ↑ The Cambridge Ancient History, Volume 3, Part 2: The Assyrian and Babylonian Empires and Other States of the Near East, from the Eighth to the Sixth Centuries BC by John Boardman, I. E. S. Edwards, E. Sollberger, and N. G. L. Hammond, ISBN 0-521-22717-8, 1992, page 601: "Earlier certain tribes of the Maedi emigrated to Asia minor where they were known by the name of the MaedoBythini..."
  17. ↑ Hukum Singh Panwar (Pauria), The Jats:Their Origin, Antiquity and Migrations/The identification of the Jats,p.324
  18. ↑ Prof. B.S. Dhillon: History and study of the Jats/Chapter 3, p.55
  19. ↑ Bhim Singh Dahiya: Jats the Ancient Rulers (A clan study)/Harsha Vardhana : Linkage and Identity, p.219
  20. ↑ Natural History by Pliny Book VI/Chapter 7
  21. ↑ Natural History by Pliny Book VI/Chapter 7
  22. ↑ Natural History by Pliny Book VI/Chapter 29
  23. ↑ Natural History by Pliny Book VI/Chapter 29
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