Modern historians on the Ancient Macedonians and ancient Macedonia

[Ptolemy]

Dr. Manning postulated as to how an outsider like Ptolemy would go about successfully governing a land like Egypt. Reviewing the hierarchy of officials in Ptolemaic Egypt, [Greek elite, regional officials, military, Egyptian priests, local officials and scribes, and finally locally insulated communities], Dr. Manning noted that choosing to work within the hierarchy rather than changing it was a major factor in the success of the Ptolemaic dynasty.

Though little known and only slightly researched, the Ptolemies founded and built a city south of Abydos, called Ptolemais. It came into existence about the same time Alexandria was founded and being built. The city was the southern most Greek city in the Ancient world. It had a Greek city structure, and acted as the "southern capital". Diodorus describes it as having 100,000 inhabitants. Dr. Manning suggested that it probably had a population closer to 50,000, but even that number describes a large city in the ancient world. Ptolemy founded the city and settled Greek administrators there. This governmental structure presumably saw to the building of the new temples below Thebes. Strangely, the city has never been excavated and never published

It has been estimated that the arable land available was trebled during the Ptolemaic period. 137 Greek villages are estimated to have existed in the Faiyum. Many of the papyri we have from the Ptolemaic period come from the Faiyum villages, having been used to stuff mummies, or as foundations in the creation of cartonnage mummy cases. Most papyri written in Demotic have come from the Faiyum as well. By the 7th Century BC, Demotic was the business language for the Egyptian mercantile strata of the population

On temple walls, the Ptolemaic kings are represented as Egyptians, even though it is known that they never actually wore Egyptian style clothing. Thus, it might be asked, "why did the Greeks go to such lengths to portray themselves as Egyptians?" Clearly, they had to position themselves to run Egypt effectively. The best way to do that was to be "more Egyptian than the Egyptians".

Twilight of the Gods: Economic Power in Ptolemaic Egypt, American Research Center in Egypt, Northern California

[Ptolemy]

Herodotos' fascination with ethnicity permeates his Histories, which is regarded as the world's earliest extant anthropological study as much as its earliest extant history. Rosalind Thomas, in "Ethnicity, Genealogy, and Hellenism in Herodotus" (213-233), chooses four cases -- the Macedonians, the Spartans, the Athenians, and the Ionians -- and finds in each a polemic. Different criteria for defining Greekness emerge: genealogy plays a role, but is undercut by overlayering of genealogies linking east and west; language plays a role, as does religious practise; self-perception also appears. Herodotos' own ethnic liminality (from a mixed Carian-Dorian Greek city, writing in the Ionic dialect), as well as that of what we might call his temporal/social space (in the interculturation zone between the Persian Empire and the Greek world), poised between the traditional aristocratic stress on genealogy and the culturally-focused shifts of the fifth century, explains his preoccupation and his articulations. He should provide the benchmark for "oppositional" ethnicity but refuses to do so, with his mixing of family trees and constant discussion of cultural traits exchanged across the east/west divide.

Irad Malkin examines the role of the outsider's view on Epirus in his "Greek Ambiguities: Between 'Ancient Hellas' and 'Barbarian Epirus'" (187-212). Epirus provides an interesting parallel to Macedon in that the ancient sources reflect the full spectrum of attitudes about its ethnicity: it is Greek (having good genealogical links through the Nostoi), it is primitive Greek (how "we" used to be); it is barbaros (customs alien to those of the Corcyran and Corinthian colonists on the coast

" In the Later Classical, Hellenistic and Roman periods, a definition focussed more on education and lifestyle suited the increased scope of the Greek world. Readily acquired features such as speaking Greek or knowing Greek history were the basis of what is called the "cultural" basis of ethnic definition. A parallel global shift from high to low value attached to (mythical) descent also occurs: a sense of hereditary kinship through a common ancestor is fundamental to early ethnic expression but is essentially gone by the Roman Imperial period, when the Roman projections of Greek ethnicity were based largely on a kind of nostalgia for the "glories of Greece" that is, for the distant, itself almost heroic, past

rad Malkin (ed.), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity. Center for Hellenic Studies Colloquia, 5. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2001. Pp. 418

[Ptolemy]

The literary evidence for these early years is sparse, but what there is seems to accord with archaeological opinion that the Macedonian tribes ousted the indigenous peoples of the area and established themselves at Aegae near the Thermaic Gulf where they coalesced into an identifiable nation. Scholarship has long been divided on the question of whether these people were really Greeks—certainly the Greeks at the time were reluctant to give them status as true Hellenes. The Macedonian language has not survived in any extant text, but their personal and place names, and the names of their gods strongly suggest a Greek dialect. Scholars are now more or less agreed that they were one group of many Dorian tribes that had made their way into Greece from the Balkans in successive waves probably from as early as the eleventh century BC

Occupation: The Policies and Practices of Military Conquerors
Book by Eric Carlton; Routledge, 1992, page 55

[Ptolemy]

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 -yes, even the creative achievements of non-Greeks such as that of Zeno who founded the school of Stoicism.

The Greek State Book by Victor Ehrenberg; Barnes and Noble, 1960, p. 135

[Ptolemy]

I fear that I have not been wholly consistent in my use of the term “Macedonian.” For the record, let me state that I believe Macedonians, ancient and modern, are Greeks. But it is also a fact that ancient Macedonians distinguished themselves from Greeks, as the Greeks distinguished themselves from Macedonians. A Texan is an American, but many Americans see Texans in a class by themselves. The Welsh and the Cornish stand in an ambiguous relationship with the English, as do Ukrainians with Russians, Austrians with Germans, Alsatians with the French. The list is endless. Americans of English ancestry speak the same language as the English, only differently. They admire English culture, but grudgingly. They want to be English in some situations, but not in others.

Ptolemy of Egypt
Book by Walter M. Ellis; Routledge, 1994 , page x

[Ptolemy]

But this very distinction sealed Mycenae's fate. Hardly a decade later ( 468 B.C.), the jealous Argives besieged and took the place, and the inhabitants were scattered, -- some to Cleonae, some to Keryneia in Achaea, others as far as Macedonia.

The Mycenaean Age: A Study of the Monuments and Culture of Pre-Homeric Greece Book by J. Irving Manatt, Chrestos Tsountas; Houghton Mifflin, 1897. page 17

[Ptolemy]

His Macedonians murmured at his Oriental dress and manners, but Alexander was always a Greek at heart, the lines of Homer always rang in his ears, and he fancied himself a reincarnation of Achilles pursuing his Phrygian Hectors over the dusty plains of Troy.

The Glory That Was Greece: A Survey of Hellenic Culture & Civilization
Book by J. C. Stobart; Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd., 1911, page 243

Oriental life and language continued, but in the towns and for purposes of government both the language and the civilisation were Greek. Thus Alexander had done his work. He had actually added the whole of Asia Minor, Phœnicia, and Egypt to the Greek world. Curious traces of Hellenism are found even in distant India.

The Glory That Was Greece: A Survey of Hellenic Culture & Civilization
Book by J. C. Stobart; Sidgwick & Jackson Ltd., 1911, page 244

[Melbourne Patriot]

This is my first post, I have been reading this site for months, and its information like this presented in this thread that brings me back time and time again. History and truth will prevail in the end and everyone knows that the history and truth of Macedonia lies in its hellenic history!

[Ptolemy]

. The first foundation of a monarchy which was destined to rise to such a height of power was laid by Caranus, a descendant of Hercules, who led a colony from Ar'gos to the province of Æ'mathia, which borders on the Therma'ic gulf. 3. His descendants continually enlarged their dominions by subjecting or expelling several of the neighbouring tribes; but when the Persians were about to invade Greece, the then ruler of Macedon was obliged to purchase safety by becoming tributary to Darius.

Pinnock's Improved Edition of Dr. Goldsmith's History of Greece
Book by Oliver Goldsmith, William Pinnock, W. C. Taylor; Charles Desilver, 1857 , p. 242

[Ptolemy]

1. Early history to Alexander the Great. In the centuries after the *Dorian Invasion (c. 1100 BC) many new peoples entered Macedonia. In historical times the royal house traced its descent from the mythical Temenus, king of Argos, who was one of the *Heracleidae, and more immediately from Perdiccas I, who left Argos for Illyria, probably in the mid-seventh century BC, and from there captured the Macedonian plain and occupied the fortress of Aegae (Vergina), setting himself up as king of the Macedonians. Thus the kings were of largely Dorian Greek stock (see PHILIP (1)); they presumably spoke a form of Dorian Greek and their cultural tradition had Greek features. Whether or not the Macedonian people spoke a Greek dialect or a foreign tongue is still a matter of debate, but such evidence as exists suggests that they spoke a distinctive dialect of Greek, perhaps related to Aeolic. However, other Greeks persisted in saying that the Macedonians were not full *Hellenes (see below and also INDO-EUROPEAN). The kings were chosen by the assembly from those of the royal line who showed ability to command; they ruled directly over the Macedonian people of the coast; to some extent they controlled the Illyrian hilltribes of the west and north, but never brought them completely under direct rule.

The importance of Macedonia in Greek history begins with the accession to power of Philip II and culminates in the reign of his son Alexander the Great; for this period of Macedonian history (359-323 BC)

The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature
Book by M. C. Howatson; Oxford University Press, 1989, page 339