FYROMija
08-28-2008, 03:04 PM
Ethnicity and Cultural Policy at Alexanders Court
Makedonika 1995 (pp.149-58) by Eugene Borza
In the more than half a century since William Woodthorpe Tarn proclaimed the "Brotherhood of
Mankind,"1 there has been a narrowing interpretation of Alexander the Great's vision. Recent scholarship
has replaced most of Alexander's Grand Plans with "minimalist" interpretations.
Tarn's conception of homonoia was never accepted by some scholars, and within five years of its
publication in the Cambridge Ancient History, Ulrich Wilcken attacked it as unsupported by the evidence.2
Despite Wilcken's criticism, Tarn's views of Alexander as a social philosopher settled into the public
consciousness, and into some scholarly opinion, as well.3
It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that the full force of criticism turned on Tam. The
"revisionist" school of Alexander historiography, led by Ernst Badian, was characterized by severe source
criticism and proved that the "homonoic" vision of Alexander was mainly a product of Tarn's unacceptable
squeezing of sources. An analysis of the language of Arrian at 7.11.9-the famous prayer of reconciliation at
Opis-shows that, in comparison with uses of similar constructions elsewhere in Arrian, the "concord" or
"harmony" referred to in Alexander's prayer4 is limited to the Persians and Macedonians and is not
inclusive of the whole human race.5
What was left of Alexander's Grand Plan was an idea introduced by Wilcken in 1931 to replace
Tarn's World Brotherhood.6 Wilcken argued that, while the king had no intention of uniting all the races of
Europe and Asia into a great concord, he did, in fact, attempt to join the ruling peoples of those continentsthe
Macedonians and Persians-into a commonality of shared power. This view-called "Fusion" has
persisted for more than a half century, generally accepted at one time by many persons, myself included.
But in 1978 A.B. Bosworth presented a paper at a meeting of the Association of Ancient
Historians, the full version of which appeared in the Journal of Hellenic Studies (1980) under the title
"Alexander and the Iranians." Bosworth argued persuasively that there was little evidence even for a fusion
between Persians and Macedonians. In an analysis of Alexander's activities toward the end of his life-where
most of the evidence for Fusion has seemed to reside-Bosworth showed, for example, that nearly all the
Iranian auxillaries incorporated into the army were kept as separate units. The Asians were used mainly as
a political counterweight to threaten Macedonians who were disaffected from their king. Other evidence for
uniting the races of Europe and Asia must be seen as ad hoc solutions to immediate problems, not as a part
of a general Policy.7
I accept the views of Bosworth on this issue. But what are we left with? Has the position about
Alexander's Grand Scheme become so minimalist as to leave nothing but a piece of military history and a
serendipitous adventure story?
1 1.Tarn in CAH 6 (1926), Proc. of the British Academy (1933), and Alexander the Great (Cambridge,
1948), esp. 2: 399 ff. Earlier versions of the present paper were presented at the 1989 annual meeting of the
Friends of Ancient History in Baltimore, and at the 1990 meetings of the Pacific Coast Branch of the
American Historical Association in Salt Lake City. I wish to thank Ernst Badian, Ian Morris, and Edward
Anson, who were commentators at those meetings, for their suggestions, criticism and encouragement.
What appears here is part of a continuing larger study of ethnicity in the administration of Alexander. I am
pleased to offer it in its present form as a tribute to my teacher, Stewart Oost, who neither admired
Alexander nor believed he had any impulse beyond conquest.
2 E.g., Alexander der Grosse (1931), English trans. by G. C. Richards, notes by E. N. Borza (New York,
1967), 22 1.
3 E.g., C.A. Robinson, "The Extraordinary Ideas of Alexander the Great," AHR 62 (1957) 326-44.
4 The publication by Stadter and Boulter of a microform concordance to Arrian has greatly simplified
textual analysis of this type.
5 The version Arrian gives us probably is verbatim or near-verbatim of what Alexander actually said. Of
course, one must consider seriously that whatever Alexander said may not have been what he intended,
which is one of the main points of the present paper.
6 Alex. the Great (1967) 246-56.
7 Bosworth's views have not persuaded everyone, especially those for whom old habits die hard; e.g.
N.G.L. Hammond in Alexander the Great. King, Commander and Statesman (1980) and elsewhere.
There is, in fact, one surviving theme that runs through the literature and is also one of the most
enduring public views of the great king's achievement: Alexander spread Greek civilization by means of his
passage through Asia. It is this perception of Alexander's mission that forms the subject of the present
essay.
Caution must be the methodological byword. One must make a clear distinction between what our
ancient sources believed was Alexander's thinking on the matter of hellenism, and what Alexander himself
actually accomplished. Ancient writers, like modern ones, wrote with the advantage of hindsight. They
understood that western Asia was transformed as the result of Alexander's passage. They also knew that
Alexander and his court were in many respects quite highly hellenized. It was thus easy to connect the two
in a cause-and effect relationship. (On this issue, scholarly method seems not to have advanced very much
during the past eighteen centuries.)
Let us, therefore, set aside for the moment our recognition of Alexander's great achievement of
conquest, and our knowledge that his passage resulted in, among other things, the establishment of Greek
culture in its Hellenistic form around the eastern rim of the Mediterranean, and that this remained an
enduring cultural feature of the region until the Islamic conquests. Let us, instead, review the evidence to
see precisely what Alexander intended in the way of hellenization, and what he consciously instituted as
policy.
First, the matter of the Hellenic origins of the Macedonians: Nicholas Hammond's general
conclusion (though not the details of his arguments)8 that the origin of the Macedonians lies in the pool of
proto-Greek speakers who migrated out of the Pindus mountains during the Iron Age, is acceptable. As for
the Macedonian royal house, the Argead dynasty was probably indigenous, the story of their Temenid
Greek origin being part of the prohellenic propaganda of King Alexander 1. This is a position I have
already argued in print and do not wish to take up further here.9
Whatever the truth about the origins of the Macedonian people and their royal house, it does not
affect what follows. We have suspected from literary sources for some time that the Macedonian court had
become highly hellenized. at least by the time of King Archelaus at the end of the fifth century B.C. And
now the recent remarkable discoveries of Greek archaeologists working at Vergina and elsewhere confirm
the cultural debt owed by the Macedonian gentry to the Greeks who lived in the south. There can be no
remaining doubt about the degree to which at least some Macedonians on the highest levels shared a
version of Greek culture.
Moreover, Alexander himself, tutored by Aristotle and raised in a court in which a manifestation
of hellenism was a component of diplomacy, was a lover of Greek culture. But we must make a distinction
between Alexander's personal predilections-his cultural baggage, as it were-and what he intended as policy.
Whether Alexander had a strategic policy for his empire is a matter that cannot be considered here.
The question is complex and tangled in source problems, and one often despairs that it can ever be
answered. But it may be possible to examine the evidence for hellenization. That is, did Alexander
consciously attempt to hellenize, keeping in mind, of course, the distinction mentioned above between his
personal cultural attitudes and what he intended for others to do?
Of the cultural features of Alexander's court, very little need be said. The king's train included a
number of Greeks, and court practices were often hellenized,10 resulting from the influence of Greeks in the
king's train and also from those features of Macedonian life already hellenized. Although it is undeniable
that a Macedonian court somewhat hellenized may have influenced policy and helped spread Greek culture,
it is difficult to prove. One suspects that the extent to which Greek culture was propagated in this manner
was as a byproduct of imperial conquest and administration rather than as the result of direct policy. On this
point we look forward to the development of Greek frontier studies comparable to the successful
accomplishments of our colleagues in Roman frontier studies. The recent work of Frank Holt on the
Bactrian frontier, for example, suggests that Greek culture in the early Hellenistic period did not permeate
8 As expressed in History of Macedonia I and II (Oxford, 1972-79) passim, and more recently in The
Macedonian State (Oxford 1989) chap. 1.
9 See my "Origins of the Macedonian Royal House," Hesperia, Suppl. 19 (1982) 7-13, [see article 5 in this
volume] and In the Shadow of Olympus. The Emergence of Macedon (Princeton, 1990) 80-84 and 110-13.
10 E.g., the Macedonian version of the symposium; see my "The Symposium at Alexander's Court,"
Archaia Makedonia 3 (1983) 4555, [see article 9 in this volume] and "Anaxarchus and Callisthenes.
Academic Intrigue at Alexander's Court," Ancient Macedonian Studies in Honor of Charles F. Edson
(Thessaloniki, 1981) 73-86 [see article 10 in this volume].
native traditions very deeply, a conclusion similar to that reached by Stanley Burstein in his study of
Egyptian Mero.11
None of this adds up to a policy of hellenization. Perhaps we can see something in the relationship
between Alexander and the Greeks themselves. There is one feature of Alexander's administration that has
not been much examined, and that is the ethnicity of the persons who surrounded the king. If, for example,
it could be shown that Greeks were often selected to hold important posts in imperial administration, one
might conclude that that very selection and Alexander's dependence upon those Greeks were tantamount to
a policy of hellenization.
What was the role of the Greeks associated with Alexander during his Asian campaign? What
military or administrative assignments were they given? How close were they to the king? Of needs we turn
to that magisterial data bank of Alexander's reign, the Das Alexanderreich of Helmut Berve, published
nearly seven decades ago, but still the most useful compilation of prosopographical evidence relating to the
Macedonian conqueror. What follows is based on a computer-assisted study of Alexander's associates,
using the data from Berve, with some corrections and modifications. The computer was used to organize
several categories of information about these persons, such as ethnic background and cursus honorum. A
simple sort and list routine enabled the extraction of information about the individuals according to
category. The two categories of information used here are: (1) ethnic origin, and (2) the offices or
commands held by persons according to ethnicity.
What follows are some of the conclusions arising from this study of ethnicity, with the following
caveats: first, there are a number of persons in Berve's list whose origin is uncertain. I have taken this
problem into account, although the number is too small to affect much the outcome of the study. Second, I
believe that one can make valid ethnic distinctions among the peoples of antiquity. The ancient authors
themselves did so regularly, and such distinctions are a necessary component of my method.
On the matter of distinctions between Greeks and Macedonians in particular, I accept the general
view expressed by Ernst Badian in his paper, "Greeks and Macedonians."12 Badian showed that in
antiquity, neither Greeks nor Macedonians considered the Macedonians to be Greek. The ethnic
distinctions in the present study are: mainland Greek, Asian and island Greek, Macedonian, other Balkan,
Persian, other Asian, and a small miscellaneous category for the remainder.
Of the nearly 850 persons listed by Berve, 275 are either certainly or probably ethnic Greeks. Of
this number, 126 persons are not associated with Alexander's train, and thus outside present concerns. Of
the 149 which remain, sixty-nine-nearly half-are court figures not associated with administration. They are
there mainly for what one might call cultural" reasons. They include sophists, physicians, actors, athletes,
musicians, jugglers and other entertainers, and a variety of hangers-on.
Eighty names remain. Of these three are of uncertain ethnic origin. Twenty-four Greeks serve the
king in a variety of administrative tasks: some are envoys, some are clerks, some financial officers, some
act as the king's agents in local places. They pop in and out of the historical record as Alexander sees the
need to employ them. More of these Greeks are Asian than European. Beyond that there is no pattern or
apparent policy. The king uses these people because he finds it expedient to exploit individual skills.
The remaining fifty-three Greeks serve specific military functions. Of these, the extraordinary
number of twenty-two names are attached to a single unit, the allies from Orchomenos, who are dismissed
along with the other Greek allies in 330 B.C. Fourteen other Greeks hold naval appointments, either as ship
commanders on the Hydaspes fleet, or in conjunction with Nearchus' ocean voyage.
Four Greeks are in charge of mercenary units, and nine others have unspecified, low-level military
assignments. Seven have duties that did not take them beyond Egypt, where a number remained to carry on
administrative tasks.
In summary, of the 149 known Greeks with official connections to the king, only thirty-five to
forty held positions of rank-some as officers, some as administrators, but only a handful in top positions.
A look at Alexander's satrapal appointments reveals a similar pattern. We know of fifty-two
different persons who held satrapies in Alexander's empire over a dozen years. Of these, twenty-four were
Persians and Asians, a number of them continuing in posts held earlier under Darius. Twenty-three
Macedonian satrapal appointments were made, nearly the same number as Asians. There are only five
11 F.L. Holt, Alexander and Bactria, Mnemosyne Suppl. 104 (Leiden, 1988), and the papers of Holt and
Burstein in Hellenistic History and Culture, ed. Peter Green (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992).
12 Macedonia and Greece in Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Times. Studies in the History of Art 10,
ed. B. Barr-Sharrar and E.N. Borza (Washington, 1982) 33-51.
Greeks who held satrapies. Of these, Nearchus (Berve #544) and perhaps Sibyrtius (#703) were Cretan,
Stasenor (#719) was a Cypriote, Cleomenes (#431) was from Naucratis in Egypt, and Thoas (#376) was
from Magnesia on the Meander. No mainland Greek ever held a satrapy in Alexander's empire.
An examination of the satrapal offices held at the time of Alexander's death shows that of the
twenty-four known satraps, six were easterners, fifteen were Macedonian and three were Greek, in this
case-stretching the ethnic definition Nearchus (#544) and Sibyrtius (#703) of Crete, and Cleomenes (#431)
of Egypt The pattern is clear: the trend toward the end of the king's life was to install Macedonians in key
positions at the expense of Asians, and to retain very few Greeks.
Similarly, of the twenty-four garrison commanders mentioned in Arrian, twenty-one are
Macedonian, two are Indian and only one is Greek-Lycidas (#475), who was left in charge of mercenaries
in Egypt.
Alexander's inner circle, his hetairoi, would appear to replicate the pattern. Of the sixty-five or so
men named as hetairoi, nine are Greek, including three mainlanders. Of the nine, four owed their positions
to life-long connections with Macedon: Nearchus (#544) and the brothers Erygius (#302) and Laomedon
(#464) were in fact raised as Macedonians, and Demaratus (#253) of Corinth had been associated with the
court, since the time of Philip II.
Thus we look in vain for the evidence that Alexander was heavily dependent upon Greeks either in
quantity or quality. We learn that rather few Greeks beyond the sycophants and entertainers at court were
associated with the king either in his inner circle or in important military and administrative positions.13
There is one exception, however, the faithful and competent Greek grammateus Eumenes (#317) of Cardia,
but he may be the exception that proves the rule. And if there were any doubt about the status of Greeks
among the Macedonians, the tragic career of Eumenes in the immediate Wars of Succession should put it to
rest. The ancient sources are replete with information about the ethnic prejudice Eumenes suffered from
Macedonians.14
There is one other aspect of Alexander's Greek policy, and that is his formal relationship with the
Greek cities of Europe and Asia. In European Greece Alexander continued and reinforced Philip 11's policy
of rule over the city-states, a rule resulting from conquest. As for the island Greeks and the cities of Asia
Minor, their status under the reigns of Philip and Alexander has been much debated.15 Fortunately, for my
purposes, the status of these cities, whether as members of Philip II's panhellenic league or as independent
towns, is not crucial, as they were in fact all treated by Alexander as subjects. Much of the debate on the
issue, while interesting and occasionally enlightening, has sometimes obscured a simple reality: Greeks on
both sides of the Aegean were subject to the authority of the king of Macedon.
13 There are limits to such a statistics-based argument. We are prisoners of the evidence that has survived,
and my use of statistics in this fashion recognizes that the tiny number of Greeks who played important
roles in Alexander's court is relative to the total number of names that have survived. Some persons friendly
to my conclusions have suggested that I should consider using some modern statistical techniques to
determine the possible total number of those who served Alexander in administrative and other capacities
by extrapolating from the evidence we have. I have thought seriously about this, but am unable to develop a
sound historical method by which I can make something from nothing. I do not know whether the
ethnicities of those who served Alexander would be the equivalent of what was determined from Berve's
prosopography, should I attempt to establish some total numbers. Only in the case of the satrapal
appointments can we be reasonably certain that we have close to total numbers; in the case of the satrapies
the pattern of a tiny number of Greeks relative to the total is confirmed. One must act prudently on this
issue and report what the evidence says, while admitting that it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine
the extent to which the surviving evidence is an accurate reflection of the actual total numbers.
14 E.g., Plut. Eum. 3.1; 8.1; 18.1; Diod. 18.60.1-3, 62.7 and 19.13.1-2. For present purposes I have not cited
several pieces of anecdotal evidence from the sources on Alexander that establish the continuing tension at
court between Greeks and Macedonians, tension that the ancient authors clearly recognized as ethnic
division. A fuller version of this study will consider these incidents to support my view that Greeks and
Macedonians did not get along very well with one another and that this ethnic tension was exploited even
by the king himself.
15 E. Badian, "Alexander and the Greeks of Asia," Ancient Society and Institutions. Studies Presented to
Victor Ehrenberg (Oxford, 1966) 3796. Also see, e.g., V. Ehrenberg, Alexander and the Greeks (Oxford,
1938) 1-51; Tarn, Alexander 2: App. 7; and AJ. Heisserer, Alexander the Great and the Greeks. The
Epigraphic Evidence (Norman, 1980), conclusions at 230-37.
The conclusion is inescapable: there was a largely ethnic Macedonian imperial administration
from beginning to end. Alexander used Greeks at court for cultural reasons, Greek troops (often under
Macedonian commanders) for limited tasks and with some discomfort, and Greek commanders and
officials for limited duties. Typically, a Greek would enter Alexander's service from an Aegean or Asian
city through the practice of some special activity: he could read and write, keep figures or sail, all of which
skills the Macedonians required. Some Greeks may have moved on to military service as well. In other
words, the role of Greeks in Alexander's service was not much different from what their role had been in
the service of Xerxes and the third Darius.
If one wishes to believe that Alexander had a policy of hellenization-as opposed to the incidental
and informal spread of Greek culture-the evidence must come from sources other than those presented here.
One wonders-archaeology aside-where this evidence would be.
We have seen that not only has the idea of World Brotherhood been put to rest and the idea of a
Fusion of Persian and Macedonian ruling classes made doubtful, but that the value of Greeks to Alexander
for policy reasons cannot be sustained by evidence. In short, there is no World Brotherhood, no Fusion, and
no evidence of a policy of hellenization, if that hellenization were intended to be accomplished through the
medium of ethnic Greeks.
read this will use you...
Theo7
08-29-2008, 04:41 AM
Ethnicity and Cultural Policy at Alexanders Court
Makedonika 1995 (pp.149-58) by Eugene Borza
EUGENE BORZA
Modern Slavs, both Bulgarians and Macedonians, cannot establish a link with antiquity, as the Slavs entered the Balkans centuries after the demise of the ancient Macedonian kingdom. Only the most radical Slavic factionsmostly migrs in the United States, Canada, and Australiaeven attempt to establish a connection to antiquity [...] The twentieth-century development of a Macedonian ethnicity, and its recent evolution into independent statehood following the collapse of the Yugoslav state in 1991, has followed a rocky road. In order to survive the vicissitudes of Balkan history and politics, the Macedonians, who have had no history, need one. They reside in a territory once part of a famous ancient kingdom, which has borne the Macedonian name as a region ever since and was called Macedonia for nearly half a century as part of Yugoslavia. And they speak a language now recognized by most linguists outside Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece as a south Slavic language separate from Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian. Their own so-called Macedonian ethnicity had evolved for more than a century, and thus it seemed natural and appropriate for them to call the new nation Macedonia and to attempt to provide some cultural references to bolster ethnic survival.
* Eugene N. Borza, "Macedonia Redux", in "The Eye Expanded: life and the arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity", ed. Frances B Tichener & Richard F. Moorton, University of California Press, 1999
Our understanding of the Macedonians' emergence into history is confounded by two events: the establishment of the Macedonians as an identifiable ethnic group, and the foundation of their ruling house. The "highlanders" or "Makedones" of the mountainous regions of western Macedonia are derived from northwest Greek stock; they were akin both to those who at an earlier time may have migrated south to become the historical "Dorians", and to other Pindus tribes who were the ancestors of the Epirotes or Molossians. That is, we may suggest that northwest Greece provided a pool of Indo-European speakers of Proto-Greek from which were drawn the tribes who later were known by different names as they established their regional identities in separate parts of the country... First, the matter of the Hellenic origins of the Macedonians: Nicholas Hammond's general conclusion (though not the details of his arguments) that the origin of the Macedonians lies in the pool of proto-Greek speakers who migrated out of the Pindus mountains during the Iron Age, is acceptable.
* Eugene N. Borza, "Makedonika", Regina Books, Claremont CA
Here we have seen that their early history is still largely an open question. They may have had Greek origins: Whatever process produced the Greek-speakers (of that is how one defines "Greek") who lived south of Olympus may have also produced the Makedones who wandered out of the western mountains to establish a home and a kingdom in Pieria.
* Eugene N. Borza, "In The Shadow of Olympus", pp. 277-278, Princeton University Press
Loring M Danforth
The history of the construction of a Macedonian national identity does not begin with Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C. or with Saints Cyril and Methodius in the ninth century A.D. as Macedonian nationalist historians often claim.
* Loring Danforth, "The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World", Princeton Univ Press, (December 1995), p.56
The political and military leaders of the Slavs of Macedonia at the turn of the century seem not to have heard Misirkov's call for a separate Macedonian national identity; they continued to identify themselves in a national sense as Bulgarians rather than Macedonians.
* Loring Danforth, "The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World", Princeton Univ Press, (December 1995), p.64
Finally, Krste Misirkov, who had clearly developed a strong sense of his own personal national identity as a Macedonian and who outspokenly and unambiguously called for Macedonian linguistic and national separatism, acknowledged that a Macedonian national identity was a relatively recent historical development.
* Loring Danforth, "The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World", Princeton Univ Press, (December 1995), p.63
Whether a Macedonian nation existed at the time or not, it is perfectly clear that the communist party of Yugoslavia had important political reasons foe declaring that one did exist and for fostering its development through a concerted process of nation building, employing all the means at the disposal of the Yugoslav state.
* Loring Danforth, "The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World", Princeton Univ Press, (December 1995), p.66
Extreme Macedonian nationalists, who are concerned with demonstrating the continuity between ancient and modern Macedonians, deny that they are Slavs and claim to be the direct descendants of Alexander the Great and the ancient Macedonians. The more moderate Macedonian position, generally adopted by better educated Macedonians and publicly endorsed by Kiro Gligorov, the first president of the newly independent Republic of Macedonia, is that modern Macedonians have no relation to Alexander the Great, but are a Slavic people whose ancestors arrived in Macedonia in the sixth century AD.
*Loring M. Danforth Department of Sociology and Anthropology, Bates College, Lewiston, Maine
N. G. L. Hammond
At the end of the bronze age a residue of Greek tribes stayed behind in Southern Macedonia [...] one of these, the "Makedones" occupied Aegae and expanded into the coastal plain of lower Macedonia which became the Kingdom of Macedon; their descendants were the Macedonians proper of the classical period and they worshipped Greek gods. The other Greek tribes became intermingled in upper Macedonia with Illyrians, Paeonians and Thracians[...] in the early 5th century the royal house of Macedon, the Temenidae was recognized as Greek by the Presidents of the Olympic Games. Their verdict was and is decisive. It is certain that the Kings considered themselves to be of Greek descent from Heracles son of Zeus. "Macedonian" was a strong dialect of very early Greek which was not intelligible to contemporary Greeks.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprire Hammond, "A History of Greece to 323 BC", Cambridge University, 1986 (p 516)
Philip was born a Greek of the most aristocratic, indeed of divine, descent... Philip was both a Greek and a Macedonian, even as Demosthenes was a Greek and an Athenian...The Macedonians over whom Philip was to rule were an outlying family member of the Greek-speaking peoples.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprire Hammond, "Philip of Macedon" Duckworth Publishing, February 1998
As subjects of the king the Upper Macedonians were henceforth on the same footing as the original Macedonians, in that they could qualify for service in the King's Forces and thereby obtain the elite citizenship. At one bound the territory, the population and wealth of the kingdom were doubled. Moreover since the great majority of the new subjects were speakers of the West Greek dialect, the enlarged army was Greek-speaking throughout.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprire Hammond, "Philip of Macedon" Duckworth Publishing, February 1998
The first sentence of the actual Life of Alexander lives up to Plutarch's warning words. 'Alexander's descent, as a Heraclid on his father's side from Caranus, and as an Aeacid on his mother's side from Neoptolemus, is one of the matters which have been completely trusted.' While the Heraclid and Aeacid descent went unquestioned by ancient writers, the citation of Caranus as the founding father in Macedonia and so analogous to Neoptolemus in Molossia was not only controversial but must have been known to be controversial by Plutarch. For he was conversant with the histories of Herodotus and Thucydides. which had looked to Perdiccas as the founding father in Macedonia. Caranus was inserted as a forerunner of Perdiccas in Macedonia only at the turn of the fifth century: he appeared as such in the works of fourth-century writers, such as Marsyas the Macedonian historian (FGrH 135/6 i- 14) who on my analysis was used by Pompeius Trogus (Prologue 7 'origines Macedonicae regesque a conditorc gentis Carano'). Thus the dogmatic statement of Plutarch, that Caranus was the forerunner, should have been qualified, if he had been writing scientific history. But because the statement conveyed a belief which Alexander certainly held in his lifetime it was justified in the eyes of a biographer and in the eyes of those who were more concerned with biographical background than with historical facts. If Plutarch had been challenged, he would no doubt have claimed that his belief was based on his own wide reading of authors who had studied the origins of Macedonia and provided 'completely trusted' data.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprire Hammond, "Sources for Alexander the Great: An Analysis of Plutarch's 'Life' and Arrian's 'Anabasis Alexandrou'", p.5, Cambridge Classical Studies
The terms for the Phocians were mild by Greek Standards (one Greek state proposed the execution of all the men) disarmament, division into village-settlements, payment of all indemnity to Apollo and expulsion from the Amphictiony. In their place the Macedonians were elected members. The two votes of Phocis on the council were transferred to the Macedonian state.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprire Hammond, "The Genius of Alexander the Great", p.18, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd (November 26, 2004)
The Balkan situation was far from secure, with the Odrysians and Scythians only recently defeated and with the Triballi still defiant. Yet Philip was confident of success in the interest of the Greek-speaking world and of Macedonia in particular.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprire Hammond, "The Genius of Alexander the Great", p.21, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd (November 26, 2004)
What language did these Macedones speak? The name itself is Greek in root and in ethnic termination. It probably means highlanders, and it is comparable to Greek tribal names such as `Orestai' and `Oreitai', meaning 'mountain-men'. A reputedly earlier variant, `Maketai', has the same root, which means `high', as in the Greek adjective makednos or the noun mekos. The genealogy of eponymous ancestors which Hesiod recorded [] has a bearing on the question of Greek speech. First, Hesiod made Macedon a brother of Magnes; as we know from inscriptions that the Magnetes spoke the Aeolic dialect of the Greek language, we have a predisposition to suppose that the Macedones spoke the Aeolic dialect. Secondly, Hesiod made Macedon and Magnes first cousins of Hellen's three sons - Dorus, Xouthus, and Aeolus-who were the founders of three dialects of Greek speech, namely Doric, Ionic, and Aeolic. Hesiod would not have recorded this relationship, unless he had believed, probably in the seventh century, that the Macedones were a Greek speaking people. The next evidence comes from Persia. At the turn of the sixth century the Persians described the tribute-paying peoples of their province in Europe, and one of them was the `yauna takabara', which meant `Greeks wearing the hat'. There were Greeks in Greek city-states here and there in the province, but they were of various origins and not distinguished by a common hat. However, the Macedonians wore a distinctive hat, the kausia. We conclude that the Persians believed the Macedonians to be speakers of Greek. Finally, in the latter part of the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, visited Macedonia and modified Hesiod's genealogy by making Macedon not a cousin, but a son of Aeolus, thus bringing Macedon and his descendants firmly into the Aeolic branch of the Greek-speaking family. Hesiod, Persia, and Hellanicus had no motive for making a false statement about the language of the Macedonians, who were then an obscure and not a powerful people. Their independent testimonies should be accepted as conclusive.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprire Hammond, "The Macedonian State" p.12-13
The toponyms of the Macedonian homeland are the most significant. Nearly all of them are Greek.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprire Hammond, "The Macedonian State" (1989)
Hesiod first mentioned 'Makedon', the eponym of the people and the country, as a son of Zeus, a grandson of Deukalion, and so a first cousin of Aeolus, Dorus, and Xuthus; in other words he considered the 'Makedones' to be an outlying branch of the Greek-speaking tribes, with a distinctive dialect of their own, "Macedonian".
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprire Hammond, "Oxford Classical Dictionary", 3rd ed. (1996), pp.904,905
All in all, the language of the Macedones was a distinct and particular form of Greek, resistant to outside influences and conservative in pronunciation. It remained so until the fourth century when it was almost totally submerged by the flood tide of standardized Greek.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprire Hammond, "A History of Macedonia" Vol ii, 550-336 BC
There were two parts of the Greek-speaking world at this time which did not suffer from revolution and did not seek to impose rule over the city states. In Epirus there were three clusters of tribal states, called Molossia, Thesprotia and Chaonia[...]the other part of the Greek-speaking world extended from Pelagonia in the north to Macedonia in the south. It was occupied by several tribal states, which were constantly at war against Illyrians, Paeonians and Thracians.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprire Hammond, "The Genius of Alexander the Great", p.11, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd (November 26, 2004)
The language spoken by these early Macedonians has become a controversial issue in modern times. It seems not to have been so in antiquity. As we have seen, Hesiod made Magnes and Macedon first cousins of the Hellenes, and he therefore regarded them as speakers of a dialect (or dialects) of the Greek language. That he was correct in the case of the Magnetes has been proved by the discovery of early inscriptions in an Aeolic dialect in their area of eastern Thessaly. Then, late in the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, who visited the court of Macedonia, made the father of Macedon not Zeus but Aeolus, a thing which he could not have done unless he knew that the Macedonians were speaking an Aeolic dialect of Greek. A remarkable confirmation of their Greek speech comes from the Persians, who occupied Macedonia as part of their conquests in Europe c.510-480. [...] Disagreements over this issue have developed for various reasons. In the second half of the fifth century Thucydides regarded the semi-nomadic, armed northerners of Epirus and western Macedonia as "barbarians", and he called them such in his history of events in 429 and 423. The word was understood by some scholars to mean "non-Greek-speakers" rather than "savages." They were shown to be mistaken in 1956, when inscriptions of 370-68, containing lists of Greek personal names and recording in the Greek language some acts of the Molossians, were found at Dodona in Epirus. This discovery proved beyond dispute that one of Thucydides "barbarian" tribes" of Epirus, the Molossians, was speaking Greek at the time of which he was writing. Demosthenes too called the Macedonians "barbarians" in the 340s. That this was merely a term of abuse has been proved recently by the discovery at Aegae (Vergina) of seventy-four Greek names and one Thracian name on funerary headstones inscribed in Greek letters.
*Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprire Hammond, "The Miracle That Was Macedonia", Palgrave Macmillan (September 1991)
ULRICH WILCKEN
Philip first cut the ground from under it by uniting the nation in his Corinthian League[...]In this manner Philip united all Greeks (with the single exception of Sparta) into a League of states, and so for the first time in history created a Greek unified state.
*Ulrich Wilcken, "Alexander the Great"
When we take into account the political conditions, religion and morals of the Macedonians, our conviction is strengthened that they were a Greek race and akin to the Dorians. Having stayed behind in the extreme north, they were unable to participate in the progressive civilization of the tribes which went further south...
* Alexander the Great, p. 22
Mary Renault
Philip, on campaign in Thrace, got the news along with two other messages. His general, Parmenion, had soundly defeated the Illyrians in the west; and his racehorse had won at the Olympic Games. The right of Olympic entry was a prized inheritance of the kings of Macedon. The Games were only open to Greeks; and Macedonians were not recognized in the south as the offshoots of the original stock, which in fact they were. They were regarded as semi-barbarous (the actual term 'barbarian' was reserved for Persians) and the royal house had just scraped in on the strength of a remote Argive ancestry. For Philip, to whom acceptance in the Greek world was a lifelong dream, this news may have been the most welcome item of the three...
Mary Renault, English writer, "The Nature of Alexander", p. 28-29
The wedding plans were resplendent. High ranking guests and state envoys were invited from all over Greece, as befitted Philip's of pan Hellenic war leader. Festival games in honour of the twelve Olympian gods were to be dedicated at a ceremony in the theatre at Aegae, near modern Edessa, the ancient capital...
Mary Renault, English writer, "The Nature of Alexander", p. 61
Hugh Pulton
The three peoples in Macedonia with the longest claim to continuity are the Greeks, the Vlachs (possibly descendants of Romanized elements of the original Thracians) and the Albanians who claim descent from the ancient Illyrians.
The Slavs, an Indo-European people originating in east-central Europe, had begun to cross the Danube into the Balkans by the 6th cent AD.
In the 7th cent combined assaults of Slavs and Proto-Bulgarians, a Turkic people from the area between the Urals and Volga who had come via the steppes north of the Caspian Sea, led to the founding of the first Bulgarian state in 681.
In 864, under the direction of their leader Boris, the Proto-Bulgarians converted en masse to Christianity and this greatly helped them coalesce with the Slavs, who had already been converted.
Thus by the end of the 9th century they were as one people speaking a Slav-based language (although modern Slav Macedonians historians in Skopje claim that the Macedonia Slavs have always been a separate people from those in Bulgaria).
[Hugh Pulton, Who are the Macedonians, page 4]
The conversion of the Slavs to Christianity was greatly helped by the pioneering work of two Greek brothers from Salonika, the Saints Constantine (who took the name Cyril on becoming a monk) and Methodius. They codified the Slav dialects of the Slavs Living in the vicinity in order to aid the evangelisation of these people. This was the so-called Church Slavonic or Old Bulgarian , originally written in the Glagolithic script.
[Hugh Pulton, Who are the Macedonians, page 19]
In Yugoslav Macedonia the new authorities quickly set about consolidating their position. The new nation needed a written language, and initially the spoken dialect of northern Macedonia was chosen as the basis for the Macedonian language. However, this was deemed too close to Serbian and the dialects of Bitola-Veles became the norm.(1) These dialects were closer to the literary language of Bulgaria but because the latter was based on the eastern Bulgarian dialects, it allowed enough differentiation for the Yugoslavs to claim it as a language distinct from Bulgarian-a point which Bulgaria has bitterly contested ever since(2). In fact the differentiation between the Macedonian and Bulgarian dialects becomes progressively less pronounced on an east-west basis. Macedonian shares nearly all the same distinct characteristics which separate Bulgarian from other Slav languages lack of cases, the post-positive definite article, replacement of the infinitive form, and preservation of the simple verbal forms for the past and imperfect tenses-but whether it is truly a different language from Bulgarian or merely a dialect of it is a moot point.
The alphabet was accepted on 3 May 1945 and the orthography on 7 June 1945, and the first primer in the new language appeared by 1946, in which year a Macedonian Department in the Faculty of Philosophy at the University of Skopje was also founded.
A grammar of the Macedonian literary language appeared in 1952, and the Institute for the Macedonian Language "Krste P' Misirkov" was founded the following year. Since the Second world 'war the new republic has used the full weight of the education system and the bureaucracy to make the new language common parlance, and indeed it is noticeable that old people still tend to speak a mixture of dialects which include obvious Serbianisms and Bulgarianisms, while those young enough to have gone through the education system in its entirety speak_ a 'purer' Macedonian.
In addition, io the new language, the new republic needed a history and this was quickly reflected in the new school textbooks. Here again bitter resentment was caused in Bulgaria since-the Macedonian historical figures are also claimed by Bulgaria as Bulgarian heroes, e g- the medieval emperor Samuil whose empire was centred around lake Ochrid and Gotse Delchev one of the leaders of the abortive rising of 1903 in Macedonia-Macedonian textbooks even hint at Bulgarian complicity in his death at the hands of the Ottomans (3)
Such a policy needed careful massaging and concealment. AsBulgarians pointed out, in the museum of the SR Macedonia it was not possible to see original works by the likes of the Miladinov brothers, who had been in the forefront of Slav consciousness in the mid-nineteenth century, and were now claimed to be Macedonian as opposed to Bulgarian: in some of their works they clearly stated that they were Bulgarians. Suitably edited versions in the new language were promoted to boost the new line, and similar methods were used for a host of other leaders in the nineteenth century Bulgarian revival process who came from Macedonia. Similar editing was done on the history of VMRO with, so Bulgarians claimed, unnatural emphasis on the thought and activity of the so-called 'left' autonomist wing, despite its actually being a small minority within VMRO' and its views were now claimed to support a Macedonian nationality separate from the Bulgarians(4).
[Hugh Pulton, Who are the Macedonians, page 116-117]
DAVID G. HOGARTH
The king [of macedon] was chief in the first instance of a race of plain-dwellers, who held themselves to be, like him, of Hellenic stock.
* David George Hogarth, "Philip and Alexander of Macedon", p.8
From Alexander I, who rode to the Athenian pickets the night before Plataea and proclaimed himself to the generals their friend and a Greek, down to Amyntas, father of Philip, who joined forces with Lacedaemon in 382, the kings of Macedon bid for Greek support by being more Hellenic than the Hellenes[...] Archelaus patronized Athenian poets and Athenian drama and commissioned Euripides to dramatize the deeds of his Argive ancesto[...] "Macedonia" therefore, throughout historical times until the accession of Philip the Second, presents the spectacle of a nation that was no nation, but a group of discordant units, without community of race, religion, speech or sentiment, resultant from half-accomplished conquest and weak as the several sticks of the faggot in the fable.
* David George Hogarth, "Philip and Alexander of Macedon", pp.9-10
Tradition held the other element to be Hellenic, and no one in the fourth century seriously questioned its belief.
*David George Hogarth, "Philip and Alexander of Macedon", p.5
Martin Sicker
The Greek leaders perceived the sudden resurgence of Persian power in the region as a new and significant challenge to their interests. To gain support for an activist policy, some attempted to redefine the nature of the Greek-Persian conflict from one of straightforward geopolitics to the more emotional issue of pan-Hellenism. For such proponents of a continuation of the struggle the issue was no longer merely the matter of the defense of the Greek city-states. The Persian challenge was now characterized as a conflict of principle, of Hellenic culture and civilization against Asiatic barbarism in an unrelenting struggle for survival. They advocated a crusade to be carried out by a unified Greek nation that was to include all that partook of Greek civilization. However, the traditional leadership of Athens and the other prominent city-states, exhausted by the long external and internal wars, were unable to mobilize the support necessary for an effective response to the Persian challenge. Nonetheless, the pan-Hellenic crusade was soon to be undertaken, but not by Athens. It was Macedonia that was to impose its own leadership on Greece and undertake the renewed struggle against Persia in the name of the Hellenes.
Martin Sicker, political scientist, "The Pre-Islamic Middle East", p.99, Praeger Publishers (April 30, 2000)
After successfully annexing Thessaly and Thrace, Philip was widely acknowledged as the natural leader of a Hellenic alliance. The venerable Isocrates saw Philip as the man that Greece needed to deal with a chronic demographic problem that menaced its future. He argued that Greece was plagued by overpopulation, which produced large numbers of men suitable for military service who wandered about, without loyalty to any city, selling their services to anyone who could pay for them and thereby posing a constant menace to the stability of the country. What was needed, he suggested, was a new country that might be colonized by Greece's surplus population. This new land would have to be conquered from Persia, and Philip of Macedon, who was already successfully challenging the Persians in a contest for control of the European shores of the Hellespont, was clearly the only one who might be able to annex all Anatolia to the Hellenic world.
Martin Sicker, political scientist, "The Pre-Islamic Middle East", p.100, Praeger Publishers (April 30, 2000)
Philip had no illusions about the stability of the Common Peace, given the turbulent history of the Greek city-states, their competitiveness, and their general reluctance to sacrifice their freedom of action even for the common good. Moreover, he was a Macedonian, from the backwater of the Greek world [...] A Persian offer of 300 talents was privately accepted by Demosthenes, who employed it for purposes compatible with mutual Athenian-Persian interests in thwarting Macedonian ascendancy.
Martin Sicker, political scientist, "The Pre-Islamic Middle East", p.102, Praeger Publishers (April 30, 2000)
PETER GREEN
Macedonia as a whole was tended to remain in isolation from the rest of the Greeks...
* Peter Green, "Alexander the Great", page 20
...for the first time he (Phillip) started to understand how Macedonia's outdated institutions of feudalism an aristocratic monarchy so despised by the rest of Greece.
* Peter Green, "Alexander the Great", page 24
The men of Macedonia worshipped Greek gods; the royal family claimed descent from Heracles. .The Molossian dynasty of Epirus, on the marches of Orestis and Elimiotis, claimed descent from Achilles, through his grandson Pyrrhus - a fact destined to have immeasurable influence on the young Alexander, whose mother Olympias was of Molossian stock...
* Peter Green, "Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography"
In less than four years he had transformed Macedonia from a backward and primitive kingdom to one of the most powerful states in the Greek world.
* Peter Green, "Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography"
Philip II, at least from the time of his victory over Phocis, Athens, and their allies in 346, prepared to proclaim himself the champion of a United Greece against the barbarians.
* Ernst Badian, "Cambridge history of Iran", p. 421
A.B. Bosworth
Alexander ruled the world as his father had ruled Macedon, concentrating power in his own hands and office to his Companions. In nationality the Companions remained overwhelmingly Hellenic.
*A.B. Bosworth, professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Western Australia, "Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great", Cambridge University Press, Reissue Edition, March 1993
It [Corinthian League] comprised states, which were each bound to Macedon by bilateral treaties; and it was perfectly natural that they should create a general alliance under the leadership of the Macedonian king, acting as the spiritual successors of the Hellenic League of 480 BC.
*A.B. Bosworth, professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Western Australia, "Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great", Cambridge University Press, Reissue Edition, March 1993
The prime example of a change in status is the case of Aspendus in Pamphylia. The degree of hellenism there has been questioned in recent years, but Alexander certainly regarded the city as Greek, There seems to have been no doubt about the Aeolic origins of the harbariscd population of Side (cf. Air. 1.26.4). The Aspendians, who at least used a dialect, which was recognizably Greek, were granted citizen rights at Argos in the latter part of the fourth century, as kinsmen and (probably) colonists, and the people of Cilician Soli who also claimed Argive origins were given privileged access to the assembly. They were certainly regarded as Hellenic communities and Alexander will have treated them as such, as he did the people of Mallus, whose Argive origins inspired his generosity (Arr. 11.5.9)[...] Alexander himself seems to have made little distinction in his last years between Greeks of Europe or Asia, or even between Greeks and Barbarians
*A.B. Bosworth, professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Western Australia, "Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great", Cambridge University Press, Reissue Edition, March 1993
Robin Lane Fox
The Macedonian kings, who maintained that their Greek ancestry traced back to Zeus, had long given homes and patronage to Greece's most distinguished artists.
Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.48
But Alexander was stressing his link with Achilles... Achilles was also a stirring Greek hero, useful for a Macedonian king whose Greek ancestry did not stop Greeks from calling him a barbarian.
Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.60
He was still in a world of Greek gods and sacrifices, of Greek plays and Greek language, though the natives might speak Greek with a northern accent which hardened 'ch' into 'g','th' into 'd' and pronounced King Philip as Bilip.
Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.30
No man, and only one hero, had been called invincible before him, and then only by a poet, but the hero was Heracles, ancestor of the Macedonian kings.
Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.71
To his ancestors (to a Persian's ancestors) Macedonians were only known as 'yona takabara', the 'Greeks who wear shields on their heads', an allusion to their broad-brimmed hats.
Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.104
As for the hired Greeks in Persian service, thousands of the dead were to be buried, but the prisoners were bound in fetters and sent to hard labour in Macedonia, because they had fought as Greeks against Greeks, on behalf of barbarians, contrary to the common decrees of the Greek allies.
Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.123
Alexander son of Philip and the Greeks, except the Spartans..., as Sparta did not consider it to be her fathers' practice to follow, but to lead.
Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.123
Alexander was not the first Greek to be honoured as a god for political favour...
Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.131
A. R. Burn
Macedonian kings were proud of their Greek blood, and it was only jaundiced opponents like Demosthenes the Athenian who ventured to call them "barbarians." They claimed descent from Hrakles through the Dorian Kings of Argos, and they learned the tales of Troy and of Odysseus, and the songs of the Greek lyric poets, as they learned their letters. Fifty years before Alexander was born, a King of Macedon had been proud to give a home to the aged "modernist" playwright, Euripides, eighty years old and sick and tired of a democracy which had led Athens into defeat and revolution, and whose philistines accused Euripides of preaching atheism and immorality
A. R. Burn, "Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Empire", Macmillan, 1948, p.4
He [Alexander] was a great reader, too. He had been early caught by the glamour of the Tale of Troy, like most Greek boys; and he never grew weary of it. As far as the Oxus and the Indus, he carried with him his personal copy of the Iliad...
A. R. Burn, "Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Empire", Macmillan, 1948, p.11
Otto Hoffmann
Whoever does not consider the Macedonians as Greeks must also conclude that by the 6th and 5th centuries BC the Macedonians had completely given up the original names of their nation - without any need to do so - and taken Greek names in order to demonstrate their admiration for Greek civilization. I think it not worth the trouble to demolish such a notion; for any hypothesis of historical linguists which is put forward without taking into account the actual life of a people, is condemned as it were out of its own mouth.
Otto Hoffmann, German linguist, "Die Makedonen, Ihre Sprache und Ihr Volkstum", Gttingen, 1906
And now after supervising the ancient Macedonian linguistic thesaurus we are posting the decisive question, if what is adding to the Macedonian language its character, are the hellenic or the barbarian elements of it, the response can not be of any doubts. From the 39 "languages" that according to Gustav Mayer their form was "completely alien" has been proven after this research of mine, that 10 of them are clearly Hellenic, with 4 more possibly dialectical forms of common hellenic words, so from the entire collection are remaining only 15 words appearing to be justifiable or at least suspected of anti-hellenic origins. Adding to those 15, few others which with regards their vocals could be hellenic, without till now being confirmed as such, then their number, in comparison to the number of pure hellenic ones in the Macedonian language, is so small that the general hellenic character of the Macedonian linguistic treasure can not be doubted.
Otto Hoffmann, German linguist, "Die Makedonen, Ihre Sprache und Ihr Volkstum", Gttingen, 1906
In final analysis it is possible that the name VYRGINON KRASTWNOS is of Thracian origins, while independent remains the name DIRVE[...] All the other names are beautiful, clear Greek constructions and only two of them NEOPTOLEMOS and MELEAGROS could have been loans from the Greek Mythology.
Otto Hoffmann, German linguist, "Die Makedonen, Ihre Sprache und Ihr Volkstum", Gttingen, 1906
The names of the genuine Macedonians and those born of Macedonian parents, especially the names of the elit class and nobles, in their formation and phonology are purely Greek.
Otto Hoffmann, German linguist, "Die Makedonen, Ihre Sprache und Ihr Volkstum", Gttingen, 1906
Victor Ehrenberg
For the Greeks of the third century B.C., it is true, the Hellenistic world was only an extension of the earlier Greek world; that in itself is perhaps sufficient justification for including the present discussions under the one general title. There is more to add. It was Greeks who most strongly determined the general spirit and the cultural form of the Hellenistic age. It was the Greek spirit which, nourished and merged in the stream of Greek evolution, took over the local influences.
Victor Ehrenberg, "The Greek State", Methuen, (July 2000), p.135
Alexander and the Macedonians carried Greek civilization into the East. It is, I believe, a historical fact that a command was issued by the king to the Greek states to worship him as a god; with this the monarchy took a new form, which went far beyond the Macedonian or Persian model, and which was destined to have immense importance in world history. How far Alexander deliberately tried to Hellenize the East remains uncertain; but the outcome certainly was that he opened up the world to a Greek.
Victor Ehrenberg, "The Greek State", Methuen, (July 2000), p.139
Malcolm Errington
Ancient allegations that the Macedonians were non-Greeks all had their origin in Athens at the time of the struggle with Philip II. Then as now, political struggle created the prejudice. The orator Aeschines once even found it necessary, in order to counteract the prejudice vigorously fomented by his opponents, to defend Philip on this issue and describe him at a meeting of the Athenian Popular Assembly as being 'Entirely Greek'. Demosthenes' allegations were lent on appearance of credibility by the fact, apparent to every observer, that the life-style of the Macedonians, being determined by specific geographical and historical conditions, was different from that of a Greek city-state. This alien way of life was, however, common to western Greeks of Epiros, Akarnania and Aitolia, as well as to the Macedonians, and their fundamental Greek nationality was never doubted. Only as a consequence of the political disagreement with Macedonia was the issue raised at all.
Malcolm Errington, "A History of Macedonia", University of California Press, February 1993
That the Macedonians and their kings did in fact speak a dialect of Greek and bore Greek names may be regarded nowadays as certain.
Malcolm Errington, "A History of Macedonia", University of California Press, February 1993
The Molossians were the strongest and, decisive for Macedonia, most easterly of the three most important Epirote tribes, which, like Macedonia but unlike the Thesprotians and the Chaonians, still retained their monarchy. They were Greeks, spoke a similar dialect to that of Macedonia, suffered just as much from the depredations of the Illyrians and were in principle the natural partners of the Macedonian king who wished to tackle the Illyrian problem at its roots.
Malcolm Errington, "A History of Macedonia", University of California Press, February 1993
-----------
During the next 13 years, Alexander, or "Alexander the Great" as he is regularly referred to, conquered an immense area that comprised the largest empire in ancient times. Persia was added to Greece as was Asia Minor, Syria/Palestine, and lands extending all the way to the Indus River. Everywhere the conquering Greeks went, they instilled their Greek culture in a process that we might call "Hellenization". Greek religion, thought, and science were passed along, most importantly, the Greek language was instituted as the official means of communication[...] Within a few years, a general named Ptolemy established a dynasty that would rule Egypt for close to 300 years. These were Greek, not Egyptian, rulers of Egypt. Yet they retained most of the roles and obligations of their pharaonic predecessors, albeit with a distinctly Hellenistic favor. All of Ptolemy's male successors bore his name, and altogether there would be fifteen Greek rulers of Egypt with the name Ptolemy. This is why this era of Greek rule is often referred to as the "Ptolemaic Period".
Donald P. Ryan, "The Complete Idiot's Guide to Ancient Egypt", pp. 198-199
demonstrate that not even the forces of nature could thwart the advance of the Great King. The most northerly Greek state, the Kingdom of Macedon, had already submitted to Xerxes' envoys: Thessaly did not resist either.
Colin McEvedy, "The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History: Revised Edition", p. 62
King Philip of the northern Greek kingdom of Macedon perfected this system, and his son, Alexander the Great, used it to conquer Greece and the Persian Empire.
Archer Jones, American historian, "The Art of War in Western World" (University of Illinois Press, 2000), p. 21
Since so little is known about the early Macedonians, it is hardly strange that in both ancient and modern times there has been much disagreement on their ethnic identity. The Greeks in general and Demosthenes in particular looked upon them as barbarians, that is, not Greek. Modern scholarship, after many generations of argument, now almost unanimously recognizes them as Greeks, a branch of the Dorians and NorthWest Greeks who, after long residence in the north Pindus region, migrated eastwards. The Macedonian language has not survived in any written text, but the names of individuals, places, gods, months, and the like suggest strongly that the language was a Greek dialect. Macedonian institutions, both secular and religious, had marked Hellenic characteristics and legends identify or link the people with the Dorians. During their sojourn in the Pindus complex and the long struggle to found a kingdom, however, the Macedonians fought and mingled constantly with Illyrians, Thracians, Paeonians, and probably various Greek tribes. Their language naturally acquired many Illyrian and Thracian loanwords, and some of their customs were surely influenced by their neighbours[...] To the civilized Greek of the fifth and fourth centuries, the Macedonian way of life must have seemed crude and primitive. This backwardness in culture was mainly the result of geographical factors. The Greeks, who had proceeded south in the second millennium, were affected by the many civilizing influences of the Mediterranean world, and ultimately they developed that very civilizing institution, the polis. The Macedonians, on the other hand, remained in the north and living for centuries in mountainous areas, fighting with Illyrians, Thracians, and amongst themselves as tribe fought tribe, developed a society that may be termed Homeric. The amenities of city-state life were unknown until they began to take root in Lower Macedonia from the end of the fifth century onwards.
John V.A. Fine, American historian, "The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History", Harvard University Press, 1983, pgs 605-608
It was he (Philip II) who accustomed this people of shepherds and peasants to urban life, who subdued the belligerent barbarian neighbours, opened up access to the sea and the country itself to Hellenic culture. For the Greeks, however, the Macedonians always remained "barbaroi", never recognized by the Hellenes as cultural equals, not even when on the crest of world dominion[...] In the cultural gulf between Greeks and Macedonians the question of Macedonian national origin was never more than of secondary importance in antiquity. For modern scholars the evidence from names - there is not a single sentence extant from the language of the Old Macedonians - tilts the scales in favour of the view that includes the Macedonians among the Greeks. The theory, therefore, advocated by the student of Indo-European linguistics, P.Kretschner , that the Macedonians were of Graeco-Illyrian hybrid stock, is not to be regarded as very probable. So the majority of modern historians, admittedly with the noteworthy exception of Julius Kaerst , have argued correctly for the Hellenic origin of the Macedonians. They should be included in the group of the North-West Greek tribes. This does not, however, discount the statement of Thucydides (II 99) that the Macedonians were related to the Epirotes from possibly having an element of truth. From the point of view of history it is more important that a century of isolation in the country which bears their name moulded the Macedonians into a distinctive social, political and anthropological unit, developing their essential features from within, and without domination by Hellenic influence. Thus the character of the Macedonian people had long since been moulded when, in the great power struggle between Athens and Philip, the hate-filled orations of Demosthenes repeatedly emphasized the divisive features between Greeks and Macedonians.
Hermann Bengtson, "History of Greece", University of Ottawa Press, 1988. Chapter 10 Philip of Macedonia, pgs 185-186
The Macedonians were Greeks. Their language was Greek, to judge by their personal names and by the names of the months of the calendar; Macedonian ambassadors could appear before the Athenian assembly without needing interpreters; in all Demosthenes' sneers about their civilization there is no hint that Macedonians spoke other than Greek. But it was a distinct dialect not readily intelligible to other Greeks; linguistically as geographically, Macedonia was remote from the main stream of Greek life. King Alexander 'the Philhellene' had been allowed to compete in the Olympic Games only after his claim to being Greek had been fortified by the claim that the Macedonian ruling house had originated in Argos in the Peloponnese, which really conceded that those who sneered at Macedonia as 'barbarian' were right. The sneers went on. The sophist Thrasymachus at the end of the fifth century referred even to king Archelaus as a 'barbarian.' Isocrates in the fourth no less than Demosthenes spoke of the Macedonians as 'barbarians.' The truth was that Macedon was as culturally backward as it was linguistically remote, and even the exact Thucydides classed it as 'barbarian.' Archelaus began to change all this and to make clear the Greekness of his country. It was under him that the city of Pella began to be not only the 'greatest city in Macedonia' but also a show-place which Greeks desired to visit, a centre of Greek culture. Archelaus was a generous patron of the arts, and the leading literary figures of the age were happy to reside at his court. Euripides spent his last years in Macedon, and wrote there the Bacchae and the Archelaus. At Dium in the foothills of Mount Olympus a Macedonian Olympic Festival was instituted which included a drama competition. There must have been as appreciative audience. Under Archelaus, Macedon had ceased to be a cultural backwater.
George Cawkwell, Emeritus Fellow, University College, Oxford, "Philip of Macedon", Faber & Faber, London, 1978, p. 22
Soon after Athens had reached the height of its glory under Pericles in the Fifth Century, B. C., and had started on its decline, the rise of Macedon under Philip carried Greek influence into new regions. The glory of Athens had been based upon sea power, but the conquests of Macedon were the work of land armies Philip invented the invincible phalanx. Upon Philip's death his son, Alexander the Great, set forth to conquer the whole of the then known world, and as that world in his day lay to the east, his marches were in that direction. In a few years he had overrun the fertile plains and opulent cities of Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia, and had carried his conquests to the gates of Delhi. In all the cities in the intervening countries he left large garrisons of Greek soldiers. In many of these countries he founded flourishing new cities. In every place his soldiers were followed by large colonies of Greek civilians. The result was that the whole of western Asia, and of what we call the Near East, including Asia Minor Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Babylonia, Mesopotamia, Persia, and northwestern India, was saturated with the Greek influence and with Greek colonies.
Henry Morgenthau, "I was sent to Athens", Doubleday, Doran & Company, inc (1929)
The Macedonian people and their kings were of Greek stock, as their traditions and the scanty remains of their language combine to testify.
John Bagnell Bury, "A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great", 2nd ed. (1913)
For a long while Macedonian onomastics, which we know relatively well thanks to history, literary authors, and epigraphy, has played a considerable role in the discussion. In our view the Greek character of most names is obvious and it is difficult to think of a Hellenization due to wholesale borrowing. Ptolemaios is attested as early as Homer, Ale3avdros occurs next to Mycenaean feminine a-re-ka-sa-da-ra- ('Alexandra'), Laagos, then Lagos, matches the Cyprian 'Lawagos', etc. The small minority of names which do not look Greek, like Arridaios or Sabattaras, may be due to a substratum or adstratum influences (as elsewhere in Greece). Macedonian may then be seen as a Greek dialect, characterized by its marginal position and by local pronunciations (like Berenika for Ferenika, etc.). Yet in contrast with earlier views which made of it an Aeolic dialect (O.Hoffmann compared Thessalian) we must by now think of a link with North-West Greek (Locrian, Aetolian, Phocidian, Epirote). This view is supported by the recent discovery at Pella of a curse tablet (4th cent. BC) which may well be the first 'Macedonian' text attested (provisional publication by E.Voutyras; cf. the Bulletin Epigraphique in Rev.Et.Grec.1994, no.413); the text includes an adverb opoka which is not Thessalian. We must wait for new discoveries, but we may tentatively conclude that Macedonian is a dialect related to North-West Greek.
Olivier Masson, French linguist, "Oxford Classical Dictionary:Macedonian Language", 1996
Cleopatra VII would have described herself as a Greek. Whatever the racial ingredients of her Macedonian ancestors, her language, like theirs (though they had spoken a dialect), was Greek and so was her whole education and culture.
Michael Grant, "From Alexander to Cleopatra: The Hellenistic World", Scribner Paper Fiction
That the Macedonians were of Greek stock seems certain. The claim made by the Argead dynasty to be of Argive descent may be no more than a generally accepted myth, but Macedonian proper names, such as Ptolemaios or Philippos, are good Greek names, and the names of the Macedonian months, although differed from those of Athens or Sparta, were also Greek. The language spoken by the Macedonians, which Greeks of the classical period found unintelligible, appears to have been a primitive northwest Greek dialect, much influenced by the languages of the neighboring barbarians.
J.R. Hamilton, Australian historian, "Alexander the Great", Hutchinson, London, 1973
The problem of the nationality of the Macedonians has been studied a great deal. Otto Hoffman with linguistics as his starting point solved it correctly and decisively when he accepted that the Macedonians were Greeks.
F. Munzer, German linguist, "Die Politische Vernichtung des Griechentums", Leipzig 1925, p. 4
The evidence for the language of the Macedonians has been reviewed and discussed by Kalleris and Hammond, Griffith, and many others, all contending that it was a dialect of Greek. The increasing volume of surviving public and private inscriptions makes it quite clear that there was no written language but Greek. There may be room for argument over spoken forms, or at least over local survivals of earlier occupancy, but it is hard to imagine what kind of authority might sustain that. There is no evidence for a different "Macedonian" language that cannot be as easily explained in terms of dialect or accent.
"Cambridge Ancient Histories", Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998
Macedonians had their own language related to Greek, but the members that dominated Macedonian society routinely learned to speak Greek because they thought of themselves and indeed all Macedonians as Greek by blood.
Thomas R. Martin, "Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times", Yale University Press, p. 188
...despite ancient and modern controversies it seems clear that the Macedonians as a whole were Greek-speakers. While the elite naturally communicated with other elites in standard, probably Attic, the ordinary Macedonians appear to have spoken a dialect of Greek, albeit with load-words from Illyrian and thracian which gave ammunition to their denigrators[...] if proof needed of the sophistication of Macedonia at this time, one may bring forward the fragments of the earliest surviving Greek literary papyrus, a carbonized book-roll found in a tomb-group of c. 340-320 at Derveni near Thessaloniki. It preserves parts of a philosophical text on Presocratic and Orphic cosmology composed around 400, and surely had a religious significance for the man in whose funeral pyre it was placed. The Derveni roll provides evidence for a high level of culture among the aristocracy.
Graham Shipley, English historian, " The Greek World After Alexander", Routledge, p.111
Herodotus stated quite clearly that Perdiccas, the first recorded king of Macedonia, and his descendants were Greeks and there is no reason why we should not take the Father of History's word on this fundamental point..
John Crossland, British archaeologist and Diana Constance, "Macedonian Greece", p.16, W.W. Norton & Company (September 1982)
Macedonia (or Macedon) was an ancient, somewhat backward kingdom in northern Greece. Its emergence as a Hellenic (Greek) power was due to a resourceful king, Philip II (359-336), whose career has been unjustly overshadowed by the deeds of his son, Alexander the Great.
Mortimer Chambers, Professor of History at the University of California at Los Angeles, "The Western Experience", p. 79, Mortimer Chambers et al, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 2nd edition, 1997
This was Macedonia in the strict sense, the land where settled immigrants of Greek stock later to be called Macedonians.
W. J. Woodhouse, Australian historian, "The tutorial history of Greece, to 323 B.C. : from the earliest times to the death of Demosthenes", p.216, University Tutorial Press, 1904, (reprinted 1944)
To Greek literary writers before the Hellenistic period the Macedonians were "barbarians". The term referred to their way of life and their institutions, which were those of the ethne and not of the city-state and it did not refer to their speech. We can see this in the case of Epirus. There Thucydides called the tribes barbarians but inscriptions found in Epirus have shown conclusively that the Epirotic tribes in Thucydides' lifetime were speaking Greek and used names which were Greek. In the following century "barbarian" was only one of the abusive terms applied by Demosthenes to Philip of Macedon and his people.In passages which refer to the Macedonian soldiers of Alexander the Great and the early successors there are mentions of a Macedonian dialect, such as was likely to have been spoken in the original Macedonian homeland. On one occasion Alexander called out to his guardsmen in Macedonian (Makedonisti) as this (viz. the use of Macedonian) was a signal (symbolon) that there was a serious riot. Normally Alexander and his soldiers spoke the standard Greek, the koine and that was what the Persians who were to fight alongside the Macedonians were taught. So the order in Macedonian was unique, in that all other orders were in the koine it is satisfactorily explained as an order in broad dialect, just as in a Highland Regiment a special order for a particular purpose could be given in broad Scots by a Scottish officer who usually spoke the Kings English.The use of this dialect among themselves was a characteristic of the Macedonian soldiers (rather than the officers) of the King's Army. This point was made clear in the report nor in itself dependable of the trial of a Macedonian officer before an Assembly of Macedonians, in which the officer (Philotas) was mocked for not speaking in dialect. In 521 when a non-Macedonian general, Eumenes, wanted to make contact with a hostile group of Macedonian infantrymen, he sent a Macedonian to speak to them in the Macedonian dialect, in order to win their confidence. Subsequently, when they and other Macedonian soldiers were serving with Eumenes, they expressed their affection for him by hailing him in the Macedonian dialect (Macedonisti). He was to them one of themselves. As Curtius observed "not a man among the Macedonians could bear to part with a jot of his ancestral customs". The use of this dialect was one way in which the Macedonians expressed their apartness from the world of Greek city-states.
Ian Worthington, Professor of Greek History at the University of Missouri-Columbia, "Alexander the Great", p.21, Routledge, 2002
The city-states of ancient Greece established colonies in almost every part of of their known world. Later Alexander of Macedonia through his conquests spread hellenic culture both east to Asia and south to Egypt. One of the lesser-known legacies of Alexander's excursions is the Greeks who stayed in northern India, ruling there for twenty generations.
Benjamin J. Broome, Professor of Communication, "Exploring the Greek Mosaic: A Guide to Intercultural Communication in Greece", p.27
The Macedonians were of Greek stock, as their traditions and remains of their language prove.
Thomas Kelly Cheyne, "Encyclopaedia biblica;: A critical dictionary of the literary; political and religious history, the archaeology, geography, and natural history of the Bible"
Although the Macedonians, whose territory occupied the area around present-day Thessaloniki in northern Greece, considered themselves part of the Greek cultural sphere, many Greeks regarded them with contempt. In the eyes of the Greeks, the Macedonians were a mere offshoot of the original stock. They spoke a Greek dialect, to be sure, but they were led by a backward monarchy and their nobles.
Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries, Dutch author, researcher and clinical professor of leadership development, "Are Leaders born or Are they made?: The case of Alexander the Great", Karnac Books (June 2004)
Such a glorious ancestry was in the eyes of Greeks the hallmark of the Hellenic persona of the king of Macedon, who could, on the other hand, rely on fidelity of the people from which he had sprung. The Greek cities did not feel that they were allying with a barbarian, since for generations the Macedonian dynasty had been allowed, as Greeks, to take part in the Olympic games, where they won prizes[...]In Greece proper nevertheless, there remained a number of people like Demosthenes, who had in no way renounce their hatred of Macedon. They did not lack the means to take action: the new king of Persia, Darius III Codomannus, whose reign started in 336, anxious to war off the threat of a Macedonian invasion, liberally distributed among the Greeks funds that were to buy consciences and cover the expenses of war against Alexander.
Francois Chamoux, French historian, "Hellenistic Civilization", Blackwell Publishing Professional, 2002, p.8, 9
We have for the first time a standard of Macedonian royal burial by which to judge other rich tombs. We have much new information on the military equipment of the era. We have a whole new chapter in the history of Greek tomb paintings, a fragmentary field but one which throws unique and contemporary light on the whole lost achievement of Greek free painting.
Michael Crawford, Fergus Millar, Emilio Gabba, "Sources for Ancient History", p. 181, Cambridge University Press
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Diodorus
Such was the end of Philip (II, king of Macedonia) ...He had ruled 24 years. He is known to fame as one who with but the slenderest resources to support his claim to a throne won for himself the greatest empire among the Hellenes (Greeks), while the growth of his position was not due so much to his prowess in arms as to his adroitness and cordiality in diplomacy.
*Diodorus Siculus, "Histories", 16.95.1-2
He (King Philip) wanted as many Greeks as possible to take part in the festivities in honour of the gods, and so planned brilliant musical contests and lavish banquets for his friends and guests. Out of all Greece he summoned his personal guest-friends and ordered the members of his court to bring along as many as they could of their acquaintances from abroad.
*Diodorus Siculus, "Histories", 16.91.5-6
Every seat in the theater was taken when Philip appeared wearing a white cloak and by his express orders his bodyguard held away from him and followed only at a distance, since he wanted to show publicly that he was protected by the goodwill of all the Greeks, and had no need of a guard of spearmen.
*Diodorus Siculus, "Histories", 16.93.1
After this Alexander left Dareius's mother, his daughters, and his son in Susa, providing them with persons to teach them the Greek language, and marching on with his army on the fourth day reached the Tigris River.
*Diodorus Siculus, "Histories", 17.67.1
Alexander observed that his soldiers were exhausted with their constant campaigns. ... The hooves of the horses had been worn thin by steady marching. The arms and armour were wearing out, and the Greek clothing was quite gone. They had to clothe themselves in materials of the barbarians,...
*Diodorus Siculus, "Histories", 17.94.1-2
Plutarch
If it were not my purpose to combine foreign things with things Greek, to traverse and civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings of Greek justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me, Diogenes, that I imitate Heracles, and emulate Perseus, band follow in the footsteps of Dionysus, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Greeks should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Caucasus.
*Plutarch, " Moralia: On the Fortune of Alexander", I, 332a-b, Loeb
What spectator... would not exclaim... that through Fortune the foreign host was prevailing beyond its deserts, but through Virtue the Hellenes were holding out beyond their ability? And if the ones (i.e., the enemy) gains the upper hand, this will be the work of Fortune or of some jealous deity or of divine retribution; but if the others (i.e., the Greeks) prevail, it will be Virtue and daring, friendship and fidelity, that will win the guerdon of victory? These were, in fact, the only support that Alexander had with him at this time, since Forune had put a barrier between him and the rest of his forces and equipment, fleets, horse, and camp. Finally, the Macedonians routed the barbarians, and, when they had fallen, pulled down their city on their heads.
*Plutarch, " Moralia: On the Fortune of Alexander", II, 344 e-f, Loeb
And it is said that when he took his seat for the first time under the golden canopy on the royal throne, Demaratus the Corinthian, a well-meaning man and a friend of Alexander's, as he had been of Alexander's father, burst into tears, as old men will, and declared that those Hellenes were deprived of great pleasure who had died before seeing Alexander seated on the throne of Dareius.
*Plutarch, "Parallel Lives: Alexander", 37.7, Loeb
Yet through Alexander (the Great) Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the gods of the Greeks ... Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all Asia with Greek magistracies ... Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Seleucia, nor Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor the Caucasus a Greek city, for by the founding of cities in these places savagery was extinguished and the worse element, gaining familiarity with the better, changed under its influence.
*Plutarch, " Moralia: On the Fortune of Alexander", I, 328d, 329a Loeb
Herodotus
Men of Athens... In truth I would not tell it to you if I did not care so much for all Hellas (Greece); I myself am by ancient descent a Greek, and I would not willingly see Hellas change her freedom for slavery. I tell you, then, that Mardonius and his army cannot get omens to his liking from the sacrifices. Otherwise you would have fought long before this. Now, however, it is his purpose to pay no heed to the sacrifices, and to attack at the first glimmer of dawn, for he fears, as I surmise, that your numbers will become still greater. Therefore, I urge you to prepare, and if (as may be) Mardonius should delay and not attack, wait patiently where you are; for he has but a few days' provisions left. If, however, this war ends as you wish, then must you take thought how to save me too from slavery, who have done so desperate a deed as this for the sake of Hellas in my desire to declare to you Mardonius' intent so that the barbarians may not attack you suddenly before you yet expect them. I who speak am Alexander the Macedonian.
*The speech of Alexander I of Macedonia when he was admitted to the Olympic games, Herodotus, " Histories", 9.45, ed. A. D. Godley
Tell your king (Xerxes), who sent you, how his Greek viceroy ( Alexander I) of Macedonia has received you hospitably.
*Herodotus, " Histories", 5.20.4 ,Loeb
These races, Ionian and Dorian, were the foremost in ancient time, the first a Pelasgian and the second a Hellenic people. The Pelasgian race has never yet left its home; the Hellenic has wandered often and far. For in the days of king Deucalion it inhabited the land of Phthia, then the country called Histiaean, under Ossa and Olympus, in the time of Dorus son of Hellen; driven from this Histiaean country by the Cadmeans, it settled about Pindus in the territory called Macedonian; from there again it migrated to Dryopia, and at last came from Dryopia into the Peloponnese, where it took the name of Dorian.
*Herodotus, " Histories", 1.56, ed. A. D. Godley
Now that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know and will prove it in the later part of my history.
*Herodotus, " Histories", 5.22.1, ed. A. D. Godley
Titus Livius
The Aitolians, the Akarnanians, the Macedonians, men of the same speech, are united or disunited by trivial causes that arise from time to time; with aliens, with barbarians, all Greeks wage and will wage eternal war; for they are enemies by the will of nature, which is eternal, and not from reasons that change from day to day...
*Titus Livius, "History of Rome", Book XXXI, 29.15
Pausanias
The Phocians were deprived of their share in the Delphic sanctuary and in the Greek assembly, and their votes were given by the Amphictyons to the Macedonians.
*Pausanias, Description of Greece", 10.3.3
They say that Amphictyon himself summoned to the common assembly the following tribes of the Greek people:--Ionians, Dolopes, Thessalians, Aenianians, Magnesians, Malians, Phthiotians, Dorians, Phocians, Locrians who border on Phocis, living at the bottom of Mount Cnemis. But when the Phocians seized the sanctuary, and the war came to an end nine years afterwards, there came a change in the Amphictyonic League. The Macedonians managed to enter it, while the Phocian nation and a section of the Dorians, namely the Lacedaemonians, lost their membership, the Phocians because of their rash crime, the Lacedaemonians as a penalty for allying themselves with the Phocians.
*Pausanias, "Description of Greece", 10.8.2
Pseudo-Kallisthenes
Now you fear punishment and beg for your lives, so I will let you free, if not for any other reason so that you can see the difference between a Greek king and a barbarian tyrant, so do not expect to suffer any harm from me. A king does not kill messengers.
* As quoted in the Historia Alexandri Magni of Pseudo-Kallisthenes, 1.37.9-13
Youths of the Pellaians and of the Macedonians and of the Hellenic Amphictiony and of the Lakedaimonians and of the Corinthians and of all the Hellenic peoples, join your fellow-soldiers and entrust yourselves to me, so that we can move against the barbarians and liberate ourselves from the Persian bondage, for as Greeks we should not be slaves to barbarians.
* As quoted in the Historia Alexandri Magni of Pseudo-Kallisthenes, 1.15.1-4
Isocrates
Therefore, since the others are so lacking in spirit, I think it is opportune for you to head the war against the King; and, while it is only natural for the other descendants of Heracles, and for men who are under the bonds of their polities and laws, to cleave fondly to that state in which they happen to dwell, it is your privilege, as one who has been blessed with untrammeled freedom, to consider all Hellas (Greece) your fatherland, as did the founder of your race, and to be as ready to brave perils for her sake as for the things about which you are personally most concerned.
*Isocrates, "To Philip", 5.127, Loeb
Argos is the land of your fathers.
*Isocrates, "To Philip", 5.32, Loeb
... all men will be grateful to you: the Hellenes (Greeks) for your kindness to them and the rest of the nations, if by your hands they are delivered from barbaric despotism and are brought under the protection of Hellas.
*Isocrates, "To Philip", 5.154, Loeb
Polybius
In the presence of Zeus, Hera, and Apollo: in the presence of the Genius of Carthage, of Heracles, and Iolaus: in the presence of Ares, Triton, and Poseidon: in the presence of the gods who battle for us and the Sun, Moon, and Earth; in the presence of Rivers, Lakes, and Waters: in the presence of all the gods who possess Macedonia and the rest of Greece: in the presence of all the gods of the army who preside over this oath.
*Polybius, "Histories", VII, 9.2-3, Loeb
How highly should we honor the Macedonians, who for the greater part of their lives never cease from fighting with the barbarians for the sake of the security of Greece? For who is not aware that Greece would have constantly stood in the greater danger, had we not been fenced by the Macedonians and the honorable ambition of their kings?
*Polybius, "Histories", IX, 35.2, Loeb
Surely it would have been much more dignified and fairer to include Philip's achievements in the history of Greece than to include the history of Greece in that of Philip.
*Polybius, (Statement on Theopompus), "Histories", VIII, 11.4, Loeb
Then your rivals in the struggle for supremacy and renown were the Achaeans and Macedonians, peoples of your own race, and Philip was their commander.
*Polybius, "Histories", IX, 37.7, Loeb
For in their anxiety to get the better of Philip and humiliate the Macedonians, they have without knowing it invoked such a cloud from the west as may, perhaps, at first only cast its shadow on Macedonia, but in time will be the cause of great evil to all Greece.
*Polybius, "Histories", IX, 37.10, Loeb
Julius Caesar
Caesar judged that he must drop everything else and pursue Pompey where he had betaken himself after his flight, so that he should not be able to gather more forces and renew, and he advanced daily as far as he could go with the cavalry and ordered a legion to follow shorter stages. An edict had been published in Pompey's name that all the younger men in the province (Macedonia), both Greeks and Roman citizens, should assemble to take an oath.
Julius Caesar, "Civil War", 111.102.3
Strabon
The Aegean sea washes Greece on two sides: first, the side that faces towards the east and stretches from Sunium, towards the north as far as the Thermaean Gulf and Thessaloniceia, a Macedonian city...; and secondly, the side that faces towards the south, I mean the Macedonian country, extending from Thessaloniceia as far as the Strymon.
*Strabon, "Geography", 7.7.4-5
There remain of Europe, first, Macedonia and the part of Thrace that are contiguous to it and extend as far as Byzantium; secondly, Greece; and thirdly, the Islands that are close by. Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece, yet now, since I am following the nature and shape of the place geographically, I have decided to classify it apart from the rest of Greece and to join it with that part of Thrace...
*Strabon, "Geography", VII, Frg. 9, Loeb
Three classes inhabited the city (Alexandria in Egypt): first the Aegyptian or native stock of people, who were quick-tempered and not inclined to civil life; and secondly the mercenary class, who were severe and numerous and intractable...; and, third, the tribe of the Alexandrians, who also were not distinctly inclined to civil life, and for the same reasons, but still they were better than those others, for even though they were a mixed people, still they were Greeks by origin and mindful of the customs common to the Greeks.
*Strabon, "Geography", 17.1.12-13
Arrian
Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves. There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service - but how different is their cause from ours! They will be fighting for pay - and not much of at that; we, on the contrary, shall fight for Greece, and our hearts will be in it. As for our foreign troops - Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, Agrianes - they are the best and stoutest soldiers in Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the tribes of Asia. And what, finally, of the two men in supreme command? You have Alexander, they - Darius!
*Alexander the Great addressing his troops prior to the battle of Issus. Arrian, "Anabasis Alexandri", II, 7
Your ancestors came to Macedonia and the rest of Hellas and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury. I have been appointed leader of the Greeks, and wanting to punish the Persians I have come to Asia, which I took from you...
*Alexander's letter to Persian king Darius in response to a truce plea. Arrian, "Anabasis Alexandri", II, 14, 4
He also buried the Persian commanders and the Greek mercenaries who were killed fighting on the side of the enemy. But as many of them as he took prisoners he bound in fetters and sent them away to Macedonia to till the soil, because, though they were Greeks, they were fighting against Greece on behalf of the foreigners in opposition to the decrees which the Greeks had made in their federal council. To Athens also he sent 300 suits of Persian armour to be hung up in the Acropolis as a votive offering to Athena, and ordered this inscription to be fixed over them, "Alexander, son of Philip and all the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians", present this offering from the spoils taken from the foreigners inhabiting Asia".
Arrian, "Anabasis Alexandri", I, 16, 7
Curtius Rufus
Holy shadows of the dead, Im not to blame for your cruel and bitter fate, but the accursed rivalry which brought sister nations and brother people, to fight one another. I do not feel happy for this victory of mine. On the contrary, I would be glad, brothers, if I had all of you standing here next to me, since we are united by the same language, the same blood and the same visions.
*Alexander the Great addressing the dead Greeks of the battle of Chaeronia. Curtius Rufus, "Historia"
Josephus
And when the book of Daniel was showed to him (Alexander the Great) wherein Daniel declared that one of the Greeks should destroy the empire of the Persians, he supposed that himself was the person intended.
*Josephus, Antiquities of the Jews, Book 11.8.5, trans. William Whiston
Thucydides
The country on the sea coast, now called Macedonia, was first acquired by Alexander (I), the father of Perdiccas, and his ancestors, originally Temenids from Argos.
*Thucydides, " The Peloponnesian War", London, 2.99.3, J. M. Dent, New York, E. P. Dutton, 1910
Ptolemy
I know that I am mortal by nature and ephemeral, but when I trace at my pleasure the windings to and fro of the heavenly bodies, I no longer touch earth with my feet. I stand in the presence of Zeus himself and take my fill of ambrosia.
*Ptolemy, Penned in the margins.
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Every ethnic Macedonian who does not claim Albanian or Serbian origin has the right to declare a Bulgarian origin. This is an individual act in accordance with the historical reality of our common ethnic origin.
*Stefan Nikolov, Bulgarian diplomat
We are not related to the northern Greeks who produced leaders like Philip and Alexander the Great. We are Slavs and our language is closely related to Bulgarian. There is some confusion about our identity.
*Gyordan Veselinov, Macedonia's Ambassador to Canada
We are Slavs who came to this area in the sixth century (AD)... we are not descendants of the ancient Macedonians.
*Kiro Gligorov, Former President of FYR Macedonia
We are Macedonians but we are Slav Macedonians. That's who we are! We have no connection to Alexander