Lychnidos, the city known today as Ohrid, reached its greatest flourishing during the Late Hellenistic and Early Imperial periods. In those ancient times, when Rome ruled the world, over Lychnidos reigned the Pax Romana — a peace that was not silence, but rather the very breath of life. Its people lived freely, a libera gens. Although distant from the echoing march of the legions, Lychnidos was situated along the Via Egnatia, the great artery linking East and West. Along that road passed merchants bearing silk, sages carrying books, and poets with their verses — each leaving behind a word, a thought, a glimmer of light. Prosperity and the city’s connections with the civilised world nurtured a rich spiritual and creative life, and a higher level of communication with exalted values. In the city’s theatre, carved into the hillside like an open heart, audiences watched comedies, tragedies, musical performances, and various spectacles staged by local or travelling troupes. Near the theatre, at today’s Upper Gate (Gorna Porta), lay the Forum — the square where the plebs gathered to discuss the affairs of the city and of the Empire. South of the theatre probably stretched the Gymnasion, where the youth of Lychnidos and of all Dassaretia competed in diverse athletic disciplines. Enjoying the blessings of the so-called “Roman peace,” the wealthier strata of Lychnidos’ citizens during the Early Imperial era adopted the fashions of the time and assimilated the Roman way of life. Many among them held important roles in the city administration and in the council of Dassaretia, headquartered in Lychnidos. Numerous inscriptions attest to the prestige to which the wealthy Lychnidians aspired, competing to display their power and to perform acts of public benefaction. One inscription speaks of Marcus Aurelius D…, described as an “excellent ducenarius,” who bestowed upon his native city a grand construction. Perhaps it was he who adapted the theatre into an arena for gladiatorial games, where the citizens of Lychnidos and other inhabitants of the Empire delighted in the contests between men and wild beasts. Throughout Dassaretia, fame was also enjoyed by Democritus, an exceptional scholar of grammar, and by the Dassaretian Vitellius, “wise and endowed with multifaceted artistic talent,” who was particularly celebrated in Thessaloniki, where he is believed to have lived and created for a time. As the ancient pagan civilisation waned and the Christian philosophy of life began to ascend, on the plateau of the high hill — today known as Plaošnik — the sacred site where once stood the temple with statues of the pagan deities Dionysus, Ares, and Heracles, was transformed into the home of magnificent Christian basilicas. The old inscriptions fell silent, yet their stones were built into the walls of a new world. The same fate befell the statues erected by the Dassaretians in honour of their distinguished fellow citizen. Two statues, the inscriptions tell us, once stood in his honour — perhaps more, now scattered through time as witnesses to a man of knowledge and virtue, a man who belonged both to Lychnidos and to eternity. That celebrated citizen was Aurelius Crates, son of Ptolemaios. So renowned was he for his learning that his fame reached distant Athens, where the Athenians erected a statue to him in the Asclepieion on the Acropolis. Did he, besides his education at the Gymnasion of Lychnidos, perhaps also study in Athens? Perhaps that is why, amid the marble and sunlight of Hellas, the name of a man from Lychnidos shone with everlasting honour. His erudition and virtues so distinguished him that both the Dassaretians and the city of Lychnidos decided to raise statues in his honour — πάσης ἀρετῆς ἕνεκεν (“for all his virtues”). Upon that stone was inscribed not merely the glory of one man, but the very spirit of Lychnidos — a city that gave birth to minds capable of bridging worlds.

                                                                                                                Kalina Kuzman Dodevska