Stymbara
STY´MBARA (Στύμβαρα, Strab. 7. p. 327; Στυβέρρα, Plb. 28.8.8; Stubera, Liv. 31.39, 43.20, 22), a town on the frontier of regal Macedonia, which is by some assigned to Deuriopus, and by others to Pelagonia, which in the campaign of B.C. 400 was the third encampment of the consul Sulpicius; it must be looked for in the basin of the Erigon. (Leake, Northern Greece, vol. 3. p. 306.)
[E.B.J]A large city in the middle of the Pelagonian plain showing Greek form and influence (triangular plan, ca. 550 x 220 m). It lay on the river Erigon (now the Vardar) and the road from Stobi to Herakleia Lynkou, near the present-day village of Čepigovo. Its origins go back to the late archaic period, and it was continually inhabited from then until late antiquity. Still visible are the city walls and the excavated gymnasium.
Strabo mentions the city, as does Livy, who tells us that in 200 B.C. the Roman army fighting Philip V turned to the N from Lynkos (Herakleia) and came to Stubera, where it could get wheat. Further on he mentions the city as the Macedonian base during Perseus' struggle with the Illyrians in 169. Stymbara is also mentioned in the work by the Ravenna Geographer (4.9.2). From the many inscriptions it is to be concluded that it belonged to the circumscription of Deuriopos, that it was included in the tribus Scaptia, and that the conventus civium Romanorum was to be found in it. The lists of city epheboi for the years 190, 203, 206, and 223 survive, enabling us to calculate that in the 2d c. the city had some 20,000 free inhabitants. A few marble statues are of artistic worth. The base is extant for the statue of Septimius Silvanus Nichomachus, member of a family which produced a few Macedonarchs and a consul. The city may have been destroyed in an earthquake.
BIBLIOGRAPHYN. Vulić, Spomenik 98 (1941-48) Nos. 390-92I; F. Papazoglu, “Jedan nov natpis iz Čepigova,” Živa antika 3 (1953); id., Makedonski gradovi u rimsko doba (1957); D. Vučković-Todorović, “Styberra, antike Ansiedlung im Dorfe Čepigovo in der Umgebung von Prilep,” Archaeologia Iugoslavica 4 (1963) MPI; I. Mikulčić, Pelagonija u svetlosti arheoloških nalaza (1966).
J. SASEL