Ancient/ non-modern historians on Ancient Macedonia and Macedonians

[Makedonia25]

Ancient historians on Ancient Macedonia

Polybios
"In the past you rivaled the Achaians and the kinsmen Macedonians and their ruler, Philip, about the hegemony and glory, but now that the freedom of the Hellenes is at stake at a war against an alien people (Romans), ...but now if you invite them do not you see that you invite them against your ownself and the whole of Hellas. ...And does it worth to ally with the barbarians against the Epeirotans, the Achaians, the Akarnanians, theBoiotians, the Thessalians, almost all the Hellenes with the exception of the Aitolians who are a wicked nation... So Lakedaimonians it is good to remember your ancestors, ... be afraid of the Romans... and do ally yourselves with the Achaians and Macedonians. And if the most influential amongst yourselves oppose that then stay neutral and do not side with the unjust.
(Polybios 9.37.7-39.7; Speech of Lykiskos, the representative of Akarnania)

"How highly should we honour the Macedonians, who for the greater part of their lives never cease from fighting with the barbarians for the sake of
the security of Hellas? For who is not aware that Hellas would have constantly stood in the greater danger, had we not been fenced by the Macedonians and the honorable ambition of their kings?"
(The Histories of Polybios, IX, 35, 2)


Herodotos

"Now that the men of this family are Hellenes, sprung from Perdiccas, as they themselves affirm, is a thing which I can declare on my own knowledge, and which I will hereafter make plainly evident. That they are so has been already adjudged by those who manage the Pan-Hellenic contest at Olympia"
(Herodotus, The Histories 8.43)

"Tell your king who sent you how his Hellenic viceroy of Macedonia has received you hospitably... "
(Herodotus V, 20, 4)

"Now that these descendants of Perdiccas are Hellenes, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know"
(Herodotus V, 22, 1)


Thoukididis

"The country by the sea which is now called Macedonia... Alexander, the father of Perdiccas, and his forefathers, who were originally Temenidae from Argos"
(Thucididis 99,3)

"In all there were about three thousand Hellenic heavy infantry, accompaniedby all the Macedonian cavalry with the Chalcidians, near one thousand strong, besides an immense crowd of barbarians."
(Thukididis 4.124)


Arrian

"He sent to Athens three hundred Persian panoplies to be set up to Athena in the acropolis; he ordered this inscription to be attached: Alexander son of
Philip and the Hellenes, except the Lacedaemonians, set up these spoils from
the barbarians dwelling in Asia",
(Arrian I, 16, 7)

"Your ancestors invaded Macedonia and the rest of Hellas and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury;... I have been appointed hegemon of the Greeks... "
(Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander II, 14, 4)


Aeschines

....at the congress of the Lakedaimonian allies and the rest of the Hellenes, in which Amyntas, the father of Philip, being entitled to a seat,
was represented by a delegate whose vote was absolutely under his control, he joined the rest of the Hellenes in voting..."
(Aeschines, On the Embassy 32)


Plutarchos

"But he said, `If I were not Alexandros, I should be Diogenes'; that is to say: `If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic, to traverse and civilize every every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the boiunds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to diseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic 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 Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorius Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos...' "
(Plutarchos, On the Fortune of Alexander, 332 a-b)

"Yet through Alexander, Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the gods of the Hellenes ... Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all Asia with Hellenic magistracies ... Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Seleucia, nor Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor the Caucasus a Hellenic 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.'
(Plutarchos Moralia. On the Fortune of Alexander, I, 328D, 329A)

"When he (Alexander the Great) arrived at Ilion he sacrificed to Athena and offered libations to the Heroes."
(Plutarchos, Alexander 15)


Isokratis

"It is your privilege, as one who has been blessed with untrammeled freedom, to consider all Hellas your fatherland, as did the founder of your race."
(Isokratis, To Philip 127)


Pausanias

"They say that these were the tribes collected by Amphiktyon himself in the Hellenic Assembly: ... the Macedonians joined and the entire Phocian race ... In my day there were thirty members: six each from Nikopolis, Macedonia and Thessaly ... "
(Pausanias Phokis VIII, 2 & 4)


Diodorus of Sicily

"Such was the end of Philip ... 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, while the growth of his position was not due so much to his prowess in arms as to his adroitness and cordiality in diplomacy."
(Diodoros of Sicily 16.95.1-2)

"Along with lavish display of every sort, Philip included in the procession statues of the twelve Gods wrought with great artistry and adorned with a
dazzling show of wealth to strike awe to the beholder, and along with these was conducted a thirteenth statue, suitable for a god, that of Philip
himself, so that the king exhibited himself enthroned among the twelve Gods. 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 Hellenes, and had no need of a guard of spearmen."
(Diodoros of Sicily 16.92.5-93.2)

"After this Alexandros left Dareios's mother, his daughters,and his son in Susa, providing them with persons to teach them the hellenic dialect,..."
(Diodoros of Sicily 17.67.1)

"Alexandros 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 Hellenic clothing was quite gone. They had to clothe themselves in materials of the
barbarians,..."
(Diodoros of Sicily 17.94.1-2)


Titus Livius

"Aetolians, Acarnanians, Macedonians, men of the same language"
(T. Livius XXXI,29, 15)

Historical Evidence of the Greekness of Macedonia All the historical sources are agreed on the location of Macedonia: it lay between the Aegean Sea and the Mounts Cambounia, Pieria and Olympus to the south, lakes Ochrid and Prespa and Mounts Bambouna, Skomion (Rila Planina)
and Rhodopon to the north, the river Nestos to the east and the Grammos and Pindus ranges to the west.

The inhabitants of this area (Macedonians) were one of the most ancient Greek tribes. Their closest relatives were the Thessalians and particularly
the Magnesians, with whom they shared Aeolian ancestry. The language they spoke was among the oldest forms of Greek, and it had affinities with the Aeolian, Arcado-Cypriot and Mycenean dialects. The religion of the Madeconians was that of the other Greeks, and their myths and traditions were those found throughout the Greek world (Wells, The Outline of History, Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru, Glimpses of World History).

King Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great - to whom Skopje is currently attempting to attribute a 'Slavomacedonian' (sic) identity - acted not simply as Greeks but as Panhellenic leaders in the sense that they embodied the old idea of the formation of a united Greek state with the amalgamation of the Greek city-states. As Johann Gustav Droysen - among other scholars - points out in his History of Alexander the Great, both Philip and Alexander "brought to the peoples of Asia and implanted in them not the Macedonian culture, which had no independent standing, but the Greek culture".

In subsequent periods, and especially after the appearance in the Balkans of the Slavs and Bulgars (6th and 7th centuries AD), the geographical area of Macedonia as defined above continued to be the bulwark and bastion of the Greek race, just as it had been in antiquity. Polybius calls Macedonia "the advanced line of defence" and pays tribute to the Macedonians for fighting the barbarians ('non-Greeks') to preserve the security of the (other) Greeks" (Polybious, Historiae, Leipzig 1898.). This view is reiterated for the Byzantine period by the French historian Paul Lemerle in his classic work Philippe et la Macedoine Orientale (Paris, 1945).

No mention is made of 'Macedonia' or 'Macedonians' as a distinct ethnological group in any official text of either the recent or the more distant past. Neither the Treaty of Berlin, for example, nor the Treaty of San Stefano which was revoked by it make any reference to such concepts. The
official Turkish census of 1905 gives figures for the populations of Greeks, Bulgarians and "quasi-Bulgarians" in the vilayets of Thessaloniki and
Monastir, where the Greeks were in the majority, but contains no reference to 'Macedonians'-for the simple reason that none of those questioned stated such descent.

[akritas]

The Hellenic troops with him consisted of the Ambraciots, Leucadians, and Anactorians, and the thousand Peloponnesians with whom he came; the barbarian of a thousand Chaonians, who, belonging to a nation that has no king, were led by Photys and Nicanor, the two members of the royal family to whom the chieftainship for that year had been confided. With the Chaonians came also some Thesprotians, like them without a king, some Molossians and Atintanians led by Sabylinthus, the guardian of King Tharyps who was still a minor, and some Paravæans, under their king Oroedus, accompanied by a thousand Orestians, subjects of King Antichus and placed by him under the command of Oroedus. There were also a thousand Macedonians sent by Perdiccas without the knowledge of the Athenians, but they arrived too late. With this force Cnemus set out, without waiting for the fleet from Corinth. Passing through the territory of Amphilochian Argos, and sacking the open village of Limnæa, they advanced to Stratus the Acarnanian capital; this once taken, the rest of the country, they felt convinced, would speedily follow.

[Ptolemy]

Arrian - The Campaigns of Alexander.
Alexander talking to the troops before the battle.
Book 2-7
Penguin Classics.
Page 112.

Translation by Aubrey De Seliucourt.
" ...............There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service -- but how different is theirs cause from ours ! They will be fighting for pay--- and not much of it 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 of Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the tribes of
Asia."

[Ptolemy]

"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."

Caesar, Civil War 111.102.3

General Paulus of Rome surrounded by the ten Commissioners took his official seat surrounded by the whole crowds of Macedonians...Paulus announced in Latin the decisions of the Senate, as well as his own, made by the advice of his council. This announcement was translated into Greek and repeated by Gnaeus Octavius the Praetor-for he too was present."

Livy,XLV

"Of the rivers in the Greek world, the Achelous flows from Pindus, the Inachus from the same mountain; the Strymon, the Nestus, and the Hebrus all three from Scrombrus; many rivers, too, flow from Rhodope.."

Meteorology, BI.13

Polivius Book 9-37

"On its borders a ring of Greek cities was founded by Alexander..."



Book 10-27




"...Annibas put himself under oath to Xenophanis (ambassador of Philip) in front of the all gods that Macedonia and the rest of Hellas have..."


Book 7-9

"...Agelaos from Nafpaktos was the first to address to the king (Philip) and the present allies, wishing to stop the wars between Hellenes..."


Book 5-103



Here Polybius talks about the great Philip II:

“These events convinced Philip of the cowardice and indolence of the Persians compared with his own military efficiency and that of the Macedonians; they also opened his eyes to the size and the magnificence of the prizes to be gained from such a war. Accordingly, no sooner had he obtained the avowed support of the rest of the Greeks for his enterprise than he found a suitable pretext in his ardent desire to avenge the injuries which the Persians had previously invlicted on Greece."

Book 3-6

[Ptolemy]

"Xerxes, having so spoken, held his peace. (SS 1.) Whereupon Mardonius took the word, and said:
....I myself have had experience of these men when I marched against them by the orders of thy father; and though I went as far as Macedonia, and came but a little short of reaching Athens itself, yet not a soul ventured to come out against me to battle.
......But, notwithstanding that they have so foolish a manner of warfare, yet these Greeks, when I led my army against them to the very borders of Macedonia, did not so much as think of offering me battle."

The History of Herodotus Book VII

[Ptolemy]

"It is agreed on by all hands, that on the father's side, Alexander descended from Hercules by Caranus, and from Aeacus byNeoptolemus on the mother's side"
-Plutarch, The Life of Alexander


"The Macedonians boast their descent from Argive kings. Philip will be the arbiter of weal or woe to you. The elder of that name shall give rulers to cities and peoples, but the younger shall lose every honor, and shall die the subject of a western race."
-Appian


"Macedonia whose kings are from Argos, Your good and your bad come in the reign of Philip. One shall create lords for cities and for peoples: The other shall utterly destroy your glory Beaten down by eastern and western men.”
-Pausanias, 7.8


“But Philip dedicated no trophy, either here or for any other of his Greek and barbarian victories: raising trophies was not in Macedonian tradition. The Macedonians say their King Karanos won a battle against a neighbouring ruler called Kisseus and raised a trophy according to the custom of Argos, but a lion from Mount Olympos overturned it and utterly destroyed it. Karanos understood that it was bad policy to begin a perpetual enmity with the barbarian neighbours;”
-Pausanias, 9.40

"Argos is the land of your fathers, and is entitled to as much consideration at your hands as are your own ancestors;"
-Isocrates, To Phillip

"You ought to have remembered that you are not the attendant of and adviser of Cambyses or Xerxes, but of Philip's son, a man with the blood of Heracles and Aeacus in his veins, a man whose forefathers came from Argos to Macedonia, where they long ruled not by force, but by law."


"In this latter place he (Alexander) found political troubles in progress, and settled them, remitting the tribute which the town paid to Darius on the ground that Mallus was a colony of Argos and he himself claimed to be descended from the Argive Heracleidae."

Arrian,

"In this period, sixty-five years before the founding of Rome, Carthage was established by the Tyrian Elissa, by some authors called Dido. About this time also Caranus, a man of royal race, eleventh in descent from Hercules, set out from Argos and seized the kingship of Macedonia. From him Alexander the Great was descended in the seventeenth generation, and could boast that, on his mother's side, he was descended from Achilles, and, on his father's side, from Hercules. "

-Velleius Paterculus, Book I

"...but the Dorians on the contrary have been constantly on the move; their home in Deucalion's reign was Phthiotis and in the reign of Dorus son of Hellen the country known as Histiaeotis in the neighbourhood of Ossa and Olympus; driven from there by the Cadmeians they settled in Pindus and were known as Macedons; thence they migrated to Dryopis, and finally to the Peloponnese, where they got their present name of Dorians."

-Herodotus, Book I, 56


"...Three brothers of the lineage of Temenos came as banished men from Argos to Illyria, Gavganis and Aeropos and Perdikkas, and worked for the king that was there.
When the king learned that when the queen baked the bread of Perdikkas, it doubled its size, than of the the other breads, he considered that as a miracle and ordered the 3 brothers to leave his kingdom. The brothers required their payment. Then the king told them to take the sun as a payment. Gavganis and Aeropos where taken by surprise and the youngest brother, Perdikkas, accepted the offer. He took out his sword, circled it 3 times and took the sun, which he placed in his underarm and left with his brothers..."
-Herodotus VIII,137

"...and that you may tell your king, who sent you, that a Greek, the lord of Macedonia, entertained you royally both with bed and board."
-Herodotus, Book V, 20

"The composition of the fleet was as follows: 16 ships from Lacedaemon, the same number from Corinth as at Artemisium, 15 from Sicyon, 10 from Epidaurus, 5 form Troezen, 3 from Hermione. The people of all these places except Hermione are of Dorian and Macedonian blood, and had last emigrated from Erineus, Pindus, and Dryopis."
-Herodotus, Book VIII ,43


"Assembling in Doberus, they prepared for descending from the heights upon Lower Macedonia, where the dominions of Perdiccas lay; for the Lymcestae, Elimiots, and other tribes more inland, though Macedonians by blood and allies and dependants of their kindred, still have their own separate governments. The country on the sea coast, now called Macedonia, was first acquired by Alexander, the father of Perdiccas, and his ancestors, originally Temenids from Argos.”

“Macedonia was formerly called Emathia,... Caranus also came to Emathia with a large band of Greeks, being instructed by an oracle to seek a home in Macedonia.”
-Justin

During the Byzantine period there was an ‘encyclopaedia’ compiled for scholars. This collection, known as the Suda, has an entry on the legendary founder of Macedonia:
“Karanos”
One of the Heraclids,[1] he gathered an army from Greece and went into Macedonia, which at that time was an obscure place. He ruled there and handed down the rule so that it proceeded in succession all the way down to Philip.”
-The Suda

[Ptolemy]

"And she (Thyia, sister of Hellen) conceived and bare to Zeus who delights in the thunderolt two sons, Magnes and Makedon, rejoicing in horses, who dwell round about Pieria and Olympos."
(Hesiod, Catalogues of Women, fr.3)

"...the Hellenic nation... settled about Pindos under the name Makednon."
(Herodotos 1.56)

"...at the congress of the Lakedaimonian allies and the OTHER Hellenes, in which Amyntas (the king of Macedonia), the father of Philip, being entitled to a seat, was represented by a delegate whose vote was absolutely under his control, HE joined the OTHER Hellenes in voting..."
(Aishines, On the Embassy 32)


"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, while the growth of his position was not due so much to his prowess in arms as to his adroitness and cordiality in diplomacy."
(Diodoros of Sicily 16.95.1-2)

"He (Teleutias, the brother of the Spartan king Agesilaos) dispached envoys to Amyntas, and asked him to hire mercenaries and gain the alliance of the neighboring kings through the payment of money, if he wished to recover his rule." (Xenophon, Hellenika 5.38)


"After Amyntas had been defeated by the Illyrians and forced to pay tribute to his conquerors, the Illyrians, who had taken Philip, the youngest son of Amyntas, as a hostage, placed him in the care of the Thebans."
(Diodoros of Sicily, 16.2.2)

"Along with lavish display of every sort, Philip (II of Macedonia) included in the procession statues of the TWELVE GODS wrought with great
artistry and adorned with a dazzling show of wealth to strike awe to the beholder, and along with these was conducted a thirteenth statue,
suitable for a god, that of Philip himself, so that the king exhibited himself enthroned among the TWELVE GODS. 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 HELLENES, and had no need of a guard of spearmen."
(Diodoros of Sicily 16.92.5-93.2)


"When he (Alexander the Great) arrived at Ilion he sacrificed to ATHENA and offered libations to the Heroes."
(Plutarchos, Alexander 15)

"Alexander (the Great)... after talking to the Thessalians and the other Hellenes,... grabbed his spear with his left hand, shifted his right
hand to pray to the gods, as Kallisthenes reports, wishing, if he is indeed a SON of ZEUS that they SUPPORT the HELLENES. Aristandros, the priest..."
(Plutarchos, Alexander 33)

"There is a MACEDONIAN holiday devoted to DIONY- SOS, to whom Alexander sacrificed every year. But out of negligence, it is said, he sacri- ficed to the DIOSKOUROI first for he had scheduled the sacrifice to the Dioskouroi previously. Well into the celebrations (for Alexander had introduced BARBARIAN elements (i.e., non-Hellenic) in the festivity), there was talk about the Dioskouroi... So several soothsayers attributed the affair to the wrath of Dionysos. And Alexander, persuaded in the end by the Companions (i.e., the Macedonian nobles), did eat and did take some care of himself. And then he carried the sacrifice to Dionysos, for he, too, wished to attribute the disaster to the wrath of the god..."
(Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander 4.8.1-9.5)


"After this Alexandros left Dareios's mother, his daughters, and his son in Susa, providing them with persons to teach them the HELLENIC DIALECT,..."
(Diodoros of Sicily 17.67.1)


"Alexandros 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 HELLENIC CLOTHING was quite gone. They had to clothe themselves in materials of the barbarians,..."
(Diodoros of Sicily 17.94.1-2)

"...so said the military leaders to the camps: `We have made enough war in Persia and conquered Dareios who claimed taxes from the Hellenes, but what are we accomplishing by marching against the Indians, in scary lands and doing things IMPROPER FROM HELLAS? If Alexandros has become full of himself and wishes to be a warrior, and subjugate barbarian peoples why do we follow him? Let him move on alone and engage in wars. Having heard these Alexander separated the Persian host from the MACEDONIANS AND THE OTHER HELLENES and addressed them..."
(`Pseudo-Kallisthenes' 3.1.2-4)


"But he said, `If I were not Alexandros, I should be Diogenes'; that is to say: `If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic, to traverse and civilize every every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push THE BOUNDS OF MACEDONIA to the farthest Ocean, AND to diseminate and shower the BLESSINGS OF HELLENIC 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 Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and DESIRE that VICTORIOUS HELLENES SHOULD DANCE AGAIN in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos...' "
(Plutarchos, On the Fortune of Alexander, 332 a-b)

[akritas]

Nice work perseas and Macedonia25. All these quotes need time and much reading.
Carry on my friends

[nsminc]

Good work perseas!
I wonder how the skops respond to these.

[akritas]

Is considered this king (Philip) began his monarchy with the bad conditions and he conquered the bigger monarchy of Hellenes (Macedonia) increasing the hegemony no so much with the heroism of arms, as long as with the skilful handlings and his diplomacy.
[Dionysios Sikeliotis, 16-95]