The 'Hellenization' argument contradiction

[Ptolemy]

Whenever the issue of ancient Macedonian greekness arises, i notice the same contradiction over and over. Until now as we all know all the archaeological inscriptions found and mostly Pella's curse tablet of 4th cent. BC, which is generally believed to be the oldest ancient 'Macedonian' text we have, are proving that Macedonians spoke a dialect related to North-West Greek, and this is a something the entirety of the scientific community agrees on.

Now, if archaeologists discover eg. an inscription written in a different language, and its older than the existing ones, this is obviously evidence that Macedonia had a language/dialect which was not greek.

But if they dont, as they havent found all these decades, this is only taken as evidence, that ancient Macedonia was simply 'Hellenized'.

In other words, according to what people claim, if they find archaeological discoveries, older than the existing in a different language that's proof Macedonia wasnt greek and if they dont, its proof Macedonia was 'hellenized' therefore it wasnt greek again.

Same contradiction exists with other arguments i read every now and then about Alexander declaring in every chance he was given that he was greek. The explanation of some is usually that Alexander was doing "propaganda".

All these examples, mean exactly, nothing at all could be accepted as evidence that Macedonians were of greek origin since only evidence that they were not is counted.

It is logical that in order to perform a genuine discussion of a theory people must permit the possibility of evidence that would count against it. If you do not, the discussion cannot be genuine or constructive, because a discussion that is run with the presumption that nothing could count as a failure of a point is no real discussion at all, but rather its a joke.

Beware of the above guys, next time anyone will use the "Hellenization" argument against you.

[Flipper]

That is good retoric

[akritas]

In spite of the political turbulence and chaos of the 4rth BC, Hellas was poised on its most triumphant period: the Hellenistic age. The word, Hellenistic(founder of this was the German Goustav Droysen), is derived from the word, Hellene, which was the Greek word for the Greeks. The Hellenistic age was the "age of the Greeks; during this time, Greek culture and power extended itself across the known world.

While the classical age of Greece produced great literature, poetry, philosophy, drama, and art, the Hellenistic age "hellenized" the world. At the root of Hellenism were the conquests of Philip of Macedon and his son, Alexander. However, the Macedonians did more than control territory; they actively exported Greek culture: politics, law, literature, philosophy, religion, and art. This was a new idea, exporting culture, and more than anything else this exporting of culture would deeply influence all the civilizations and cultures that would later erupt from this soil: the Romans, the Christians, the Jewish diaspora, and Islam.

Macedon all during the age of the Hellenic city-states was an anomaly: it was a Hellenic kingdom. Located north-east of the Greek mainland and northwest of Asia Minor, Macedon was firmly entrenched on the European continent. The Macedonians were the Greeks who had to contend, then, with all the European tribes, many of which were war-like. So the Macedonians served as a kind of buffer for the Greeks, as the faithful Greeks who stood between the tribal Europeans and the Greek city-states. For all that, the Macedonians were deeply unappreciated by their fellow Greeks; they were looked on as no better than barbarians themselves, particularly since they had never developed or adopted the polis.

The Macedonians were ruled by a king, much like the Mycenean kings. The king came to power through inheritance, but first had to be approved by the army. Beneath the king was an aristocracy of nobles who had a limited amount of power; like all monarchies that shared power with an aristocracy, the balance of power frequently shifted from the king to the nobles and back again. Into this situation, at the peak of the political chaos roiling the Greek world to the south, stepped a powerful king who unified the country of Macedon and set his sights on conquering the whole of the Greek world: Philip of Macedon.

Despite the constant conflict, the Hellenistic world was an incredibly prosperous one. Alexander and his successors had liberated an immense amount of wealth from the Persian empire, and with this new wealth in circulation the standard of living rose dramatically. Each of the empires embarked on building projects, on scholarship, on patronage of the arts, and on literature and philosophy. The Ptolemies built an enormous library in their capital city of Alexandria, and sponsored the translation of a host of religious and literary works into Greek.

This period really marked the first international culture in western, middle eastern, and north African history.

The Greeks imported their culture: political theory, philosophy, art, and literature all over the known civilized world. This culture would greatly alter the culture and religion of the Mediterannean. But the flow of culture worked in the opposite direction as well; non-Greek ideas and non-Greeks flowed into Greece (and Italy). They took with them their religions, their philosophies, science, and culture; in this environment, eastern religions in particular began to take hold in the Greek city-states both in the east and in Greece. Among these religions was Zoroastrianism and Mithraism; in later years, this international environment would provide the means for the spread of another eastern religion, Christianity.


This process of the "hellenization" ("making Greek") of the world took place largely in the urban centers the Greeks began to zealously build. While the Greeks had for a long time believed that monarchy was a sign of barbarity, they had to come to terms with the reality of their new form of government. So they compromised. While they accepted the monarchy, the set about building somewhat independent poleis that had the structure of the polis without its political independence. The growth of these cities provoked massive migrations from the Greek mainland, as Greeks settled in these new, far-flung poleis to assume lucrative positions in the military and administration.

Spread from Italy to India, from Macedonia to Egypt, Greek culture was the most significant of its times. The mighty empires of the Greeks hung onto this vast amount of territory for almost three centuries. Slowly, however, a new power was rising in the west, steadily building its own, accidental empire. By the time of Christ, the great Greek empires of the Hellenistic world had been replaced and unified once more into a single empire under the control of an Italian people, the Romans.

[Amyntas]

Originally Posted by Ptolemy

Whenever the issue of ancient Macedonian greekness arises, i notice the same contradiction over and over. Until now as we all know all the archaeological inscriptions found and mostly Pella's curse tablet of 4th cent. BC, which is the only ancient 'Macedonian' text we have, are proving that Macedonians spoke a dialect related to North-West Greek, and this is a something the entirety of the scientific community agrees on.
)

Correction: According to Professor Ivo Hajnal (University of Innsbruck) there exist at least 2 macedonian texts. One is the Pella curse tablet and the other one is another tablet found in Arethousa in 1997. The Arethousa tablet however took some damage trought the ages. Epigraphical Database: SEG 47:885

[akritas]

Peter Green, Badian, Borza e.t.c. never had the ability to ANSWER in
simples questions or doubts. These doubts can be repudiated by the following remarks:

1. It is difficult to believe that, at that time, a Greek royal household was in a position to conquer and rule over an alien people which spoke a different language, while surrounded by a local military aristocracy-also speaking a different language-which never desired to remove the foreign ruler, It is not only nalve to accept such an idea, it would also compel us to accept a fact for which one could not easily supply an analogy from some other country.
2. Even if we do accept this rather improbable fact, what should have happened as a natural consequence would have been the linguistic assimilation of the Greek royal household by its subjects, and never the reverse. What always happens in the history of the nations is the linguistic absorption of the foreign rulers by the local people.Even when the rulers comprise an entire nation , it is sufficient for them to be less in number.
3. Even if the Macedonian kings did impose Greek on their subjects as a foreign language, it would have been impossible for the people to learn it so quickly, and not to preserve ,their own language side by side with it, which, as we know today, always happens in such cases, and impossible also for such a thing to escape the attention of Titus Livy, the Roman historian, who mentions that in the 3rd century B.C. the Macedonians spoke the same language as the (Greek) Aetolians and Acarnanians

These observations very much discredit any suspicion that the Greek kings of Macedonia could have made Greek speakers of a foreign people at such an early period, when there existed neither schools, nor printing, nor church. What would be able to dispose conclusively of this idea would be nothing other than a text written in the ancient Macedonian dialect-i.e. the dialect which the Macedonians spoke before they supposedly became Greek speakers, but unfortunately this does not exist. </SPAN>

All the ancient inscriptions from the depths of the Macedonian earth which have come to light under the archaeologists trowel belong to the era when the Macedonian kings had already made Attic the official dialect of their nation. To date, it has not been possible to find anywhere an inscription, even of one single phrase, written before the 5th century B.C.; that is to say, before the time when the Macedonians supposedly became speakers of Greek.

How are we to explain this?

It is entirely improbable that the Macedonians did not write in the 6th century B.C., since the Greek script was by then already known to peoples further to the north of them. it her, therefore, the old Macedonian inscriptions were all carved onto some perishable material and have disappeared without trace in the passage of time; or we must keep hoping that somewhere, they too await the archaeological pickaxe or the farmer's plough to drag them into the light of day.



MACEDONIANS had only GREEK names and spread GREEK civilization ONLY as I said in my previous post.

Is that Hellenization ?

if yes I challenge to ANYONE to show me any NOT GREEK that spread from
the MACEDONIANS ?

[Flipper]

Originally Posted by Giourkas

Correction: According to Professor Ivo Hajnal (University of Innsbruck) there exist at least 2 macedonian texts. One is the Pella curse tablet and the other one is another tablet found in Arethousa in 1997. The Arethousa tablet however took some damage trought the ages. Epigraphical Database: SEG 47:885

Add now the Derveni papyrus. It is not pure macedonian but it is mixed with Attic. When Pella katadesmos was found the linguists agreed that more than one finding is needed to hammer the pre-attic language. Nowadays we have 3 and that is why ancient macedonian received an iso code and was classified as ancient Greek.

[Flipper]

Generally, if the same logic used by some, was applied to a mathematical problem, it would have never been accepted. Why do then some people in the history community, which is a part of the scientific community accept such statements?

[Euklid]

Originally Posted by Flipper

Generally, if the same logic used by some, was applied to a mathematical problem, it would have never been accepted. Why do then some people in the history community, which is a part of the scientific community accept such statements?

Because of the benefit of the doubt.

[Flipper]

Originally Posted by Euklid

Because of the benefit of the doubt.

Correct. The "Homer" was a woman theory and other controversial theories gave publicity to people that hadn't received it before.

But as an engineer/mathematician that is scientifically unacceptable

A nice approach of correct represantation of reality is the following story:

1 matematician, 1 biologist and 1 filosopher are crossing Brittain by train. They see a black sheep somewhere.

The Biologist says: The ships in this area of Brittain are black.
The Filosopher says: "Wrong, the sheep in this part of Brittain are black in the one side. (Because the men never saw the other side)
The Mathematician says: You're both wrong! In this part of Brittain there is at least ONE sheep that is black at least in one of its sides.

[Euklid]

LOL, Flipper, good example.