Preservation of American Hellenic History
Preservation of American Hellenic History
by Jason C. Mavrovitis
Kastoria is south of the Via Egnatia, the ancient road that started at Dyrrhachium, modern day Durazzo on the Adriatic Sea, continued north of Lake Ohrid, southeast to Thessaloniki and east along the shore of the north Aegean to Constantinople. Access from Kastoria to the Via Ignatia was through mountain passes west and north of the lake.(11)
Alexander the Great led his army through these passes in 335 B.C., past Keletron and Argos Orestikon, as they force marched 250 miles south from his victory at Pelium to put down a revolt at Thebes. Arriving there he consolidated his position as leader of the Greek city-states, and then crossed the Hellespont to begin his conquest of Persia.(12)
The Roman consul P. Sulpicius Galba captured Kastoria in 200 B.C. It existed without much note in Roman and Byzantine times, though in the sixth century A.D. it was named Justinianopolis after the Emperor Justinian. Five hundred years later in 1083 the Norman adventurer Robert Guiscard took it from a small Anglo-Saxon(13) garrison that held it for the Byzantine Empire. Robert's son, Bohemund, controlled all of Macedonia and Thessaly, but lost it in war and retreated to the Adriatic. His father, Robert, returned to northern Greece to capture Corfu. As fate would have it he died of plague before he attained the crown he sought, that of Byzantium.(14)
The 12th century Byzantine emperors of Nicaea(15) contested Macedonia's lands. After massive incursions southward Serbian Tsars took and held Kastoria from 1331 to 1380. The Ottomans then conquered the region and held it from 1385 to 1912.
Over the centuries the lake, identified with the city, became known as Lake Kastoria. However it retains still its formal name, Orestiada. Bands of Bulgarian, Vlach and Albanian migrants entered the region and settled in small villages, especially in the mountains circling the lake to the west (toward Albania) and to the north. The dominant linguistic, cultural and religious influences immediately surrounding the lake were then, and are now Greek. There were Turks in the region and a large population of Jews in Kastoria proper. In the seventeenth century Kastoria became a flourishing fur trading center.
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