As a stocky Thessalian merchant from Farsalos arrives in a small town seeking shelter, he is led to a building where he is welcomed by a servant-like elderly man. After Kloppas introduces himself, he finds it strange that the old man does not tell him his own name. Still, Kloppas brushes off a dark foreboding feeling and settles in to listen to the man's tales about his clan, tribe, and the wars that sometimes break out in his land. It is not long before Kloppas learns the man's name-Anaxarhos-and of incredible times gone by. Kloppas becomes mesmerized by stories that lead him through years of history full of as much suffering as glory. Throughout the retellings, the Argead-Timenid creation and expansion of the ancient Macedonian state comes alive again as it is revealed how members of the House of Agis and other prominent lords worked together through their rivalry with the Greek city-states as well as the Persian wars, the Ilyrian and Thracian dangers, and the glory days of Philip II and Alexander the Great. Makedonia is the historical tale of an ancient people's struggles to survive as the tables of fortune continuously turn from 700 BCE to beyond 323 BCE.