Zebedee wrote:
Xenophon wrote:
Not at all. Once again I never said anything like this. What you are doing is setting up a “Straw Man” argument. The arguer invents a caricature of the position advocated – a ‘straw man’ –that is easily refuted, but is not the position actually put forward. It is a logical fallacy you repeatedly use.
Then refute it.
What the.....? It appears you failed to understand what I said (again)
Setting up a “straw man”, simply so you have something to knock down, typically quoting an opponent's words out of context—i.e., choosing quotations that misrepresent the opponent's actual position( a fallacy in itself), or oversimplifying an opponent's hypothesis, then attacking this oversimplified version.
In this thread, you have more than once committed the above. E.g:
“
What you're suggesting is someone sat there and said, "We're going to do a Thracian floorplan, fill it with very Greek sculpture and art, and top it off with a huge monumental lion". That's not how it works. The blending would be seen elsewhere.”
You, the arguer, have set out something I never said, even putting it in ‘quote’ marks as if I had. It is an example of a gross misrepresentation of my position. Then you refute, not what I say, but rather the false statement you yourself invented. Easy peasy !
Demonstrate that cultural transmission works in the way you want it to. Remove your own hypothesis from the discussion for a moment. How does Greek cultural transmission become apparent in Thracian tombs etc? How does Thracian cultural transmission show up in the Greek speaking world? Let's take your hypothesis a stage further. Let's assume it is as you propose (bits and bobs of each culture creating a unique Amphipolitan culture). Wouldn't it show up in other tombs? In the city itself? What evidence is there for that?
I’m not going to embark on a huge digression on cultural transmission – start another thread if you want to discuss such a vast subject! I will just briefly say, as an example, that from the 6 C the Greek and Thracian worlds came into repeated contact, and of course there was massive cultural transmission. In Athens for example, Thracian influence became all-pervasive - Thrace affected military tactics, fashion, politics, social mores, art, religion – the worship of the Thracian goddess Bendis (likened to Artemis) became the only officially permitted foreign cult, even becoming an official Athenian festival called the Bendideia etc – so Thrace influenced pretty much every aspect of Athenian life.
Conversely, Thrace was heavily influenced by Athens, and one need look no further than Thracian tombs to see examples – Athenian pottery, Athenian-made silverware, the use of Caryatids etc.
What other tombs? So far we have only Kasta. As to what is left of Amphipolis, elements of Greek, Athenian and Macedonian ( and Roman!) cultural influences abound....
The Amphipolitans themselves were largely a hybrid people of mixed Thracian-Athenian race, as I related earlier.....( see previous posts), and in such a population, some form of hybrid culture is inevitable. One need only check out the archaeological museum......
Here's an alternate hypothesis. What if this is the heroon of Rhesos. A cult site in an abandoned Thracian graveyard. Initially perhaps a tumulus over cremated remains laid there by Hagnon, but marked as sacred by the initial Athenian colonists who perform cult there at the end of a sacred way leading back to the city walls. Many years later that cult site is expanded. It remains a tumulus, a grave at its heart, but it's styled to blur the lines between monumental Macedonian tomb, as suiting a city with so many of the veterans of the Persian campaigns, the Homeric mound with monumental lion to be seen by travellers from afar, and a temple for a Greek chthonic deity. It matches ideas about Rhesos as a prophet of Bacchus laid to rest in a cavern at the foot of the mountains which are the source of the city's wealth and around which his spirit wanders. The city even goes so far to embrace its legendary founder by surrounding him with the walls of their own city, by moving the walls.
There's no evidence to prove that. But it's a fun story to spin and isn't actually provable either way at the moment. Kind of like conjuring things into empty spaces.
My turn to nitpick !
Originally, following the prophecy I quoted earlier, Hagnon sent men to Troy who dug up the grave of Rhesus by night and took away the bones. Having laid the bones in a purple chlamys, they brought them to the Strymon river. The barbarians who occupied the place forbade them to cross the river, but Hagnon made a truce for three days, sent the barbarians away and during the night crossed the Strymon with his army and buried the bones of Rhesus near the river. [Polyaenus]
Such a site must have been prone to flooding, so the grave might well have been moved, and where better than the Kasta hill ( not a tumulus) which had been a Thracian cemetery since time immemorial. Later, as Amphipolis flourished, the magnificent Hellenistic Heroon/tomb was constructed to honour its ultimate original Hero founder/’Oikistes’.
What is your source for thinking the Amphipolitans moved their walls to encompass the Kasta hill?
Yes, religious. No, not Macedonian Tombs - contrast to Vergina, this is different isn't it? Contrast and compare to Samothrace as well (Ptolemy II's grand entrance). Yes, oracle, could go Apollo but the tripod is sacred to Dionysos too - useful thing to keep in mind. 
