The Truth About Macedonia & Macedonians
The scope of this article is to show how non-Greek historians accept the fact that Macedonian kings, Alexander the great and his father Philip included, considered themselves and their people to be Hellenes. The few books that I selected are enough to show to those who want to steal part of the Hellenic history that the historians Greeks or non-Greeks, who studied seriously, say the same things about Macedonia and its Hellenic origin.
Of course nobody ever said that Slaves who dwell the northern part of Macedonia have not the right to make their own nation, but they have the obligation to find their roots and respect their own history and the other's as well.
Here are some sections of the books that identify the Macedonians.
1. The story of civilization : part II THE LIFE OF GREECE by Will Durant (2,000,000 copies) published by SIMON AND SCHUSTER
"...From Thrace we move southward into Macedonia, and our cultural circumvolution of Greece is complete. It is a picturesque land, with soil once rich in minerals, plains fertile in grain and fruit, and mountains disciplining a hardy stock that was destined to conquer Greece. The mountaineers and peasants were of mixed race, predominantly Illyrian and Thracian; perhaps they were akin to the Dorians who conquered the Peloponnesus. The ruling aristocracy claimed Hellenic lineage (from Heracles himself), and spoke a dialect of Greek. The earlier capital, Edessa, stood on a vast plateau between the plains that stretched to Epirus and the ranges that reached to the Aegean. Farther east lay Pella, capital-to-be of Philip and Alexander; and near the sea was Pydna, where the Romans would conquer the conquering Macedonians, and win the right to transmit Greek civilization to the Western world..." Page 69-70
"Only freeborn Greeks were allowed to compete in the Olympic games..." Page 213
"...If we would understand Alexander we must always remember that he bore in his veins the drunken vigor of Philip and the barbaric intensity of Olympias. Furthermore, Olympias claimed descent from Achilles. Therefore the Iliad had a special fascination for Alexander; when he crossed the Hellespont he was, in his interpretation, retracing the steps of Achilles; when he conquered Hither Asia he was completing the work that his ancestor had begun at Troy. Through all his campaigns he carried with him a copy of Iliad annotated by Aristotle; often he placed it under his pillow at night beside his dagger, as if to symbolize the instrument and the goal. Leonidas, an austere Molossian, trained the boy's body, Lysimachus taught him letters, Aristotle tried to form his mind...To some extend Aristotle made a Hellene of him...Physically, Alexander was an ideal youth. He was good in every sport... His friends wished him to enter the foot races at Olympia; he answered that he would be willing, if his opponents were kings..." Page 538
"...He (Alexander) broke down the barriers between Greek and 'barbarian' and prepared for the cosmopolitanism of the Hellenistic age; he opened Hither Asia to Greek colonization, and established Greek settlements as far as Bactria;...He broke Greek literature, philosophy, and art to Asia..." Page 552
"Except the blind forces of nature, nothing moves in this world which is not Greek in its origin." Sir Henry Maine Page 667
2. ALEXANDER OF MACEDON 356-323 B.C. A HISTORICAL BIOGRAPHY by Peter Green published by UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA PRESS
"...The men of Lower Macedonia worshipped Greek gods; the royal family claimed descent from Heracles...The Molosian 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..." Page 5
"...He (Alexander 1st) worked hard to get Macedonia accepted as a member of the Hellenic family (mainly by establishing a fictitious link between the Argead dynasty and Argos), and encouraged Greeks to domicile themselves on Macedonian soil, a policy which both Perdiccas and Archelaus followed..." Page 8-9
"...In particular with the grim struggle for the succession still fresh in their minds, they urged - very reasonably - that before leaving Macedonia he should marry and beget an heir. However, the king rejected this motion out of hand, a decision which was to cause untold bloodshed and political chaos after his death. It would be shameful, he told them, for the captain - general of the Hellenes, with Philip's invincible army at his command, to idle his time away on matrimonial dalliance..." Page 152
3. THE NATURE OF ALEXANDER by Mary Renault, published by GEORGE RAINBIRD LIMITED
"...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..." Page 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……" Page 61
4. HISTORY OF THE WORLD by J.M. ROBERTS, published by OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS 1993
"The history of Greece rapidly becomes less interesting after the fifth century. It is also less important. What remains important is the history of Greek civilization and the shape of this, paradoxically, was determined by a kingdom in northern Greece which some said was not Greek at all: Macedon. In the second half of the fourth century it created an empire bigger than any yet seen, the legatee of both Persia and the city-states. It organized the world we call Hellenistic because of the preponderance and uniting force within it of a culture. Greek in inspiration and language. Yet Macedon was a barbarous place, perhaps centuries behind Athens in the quality of its life and culture...Whether this was a state which was a part of the world of Hellenes was disputed; some Greeks thought Macedonians barbarians, though their kings claimed descent from Greek houses (one going back to Heracles) and their claim was generally recognized. Philip himself sought status; he wanted Macedon to be thought of as Greek. When he became regent of Macedon in 359 BC he began a steady acquisition of territory at the expense of other Greek states..." Page 168
"...Alexander was a creative mind, but self-absorbed, obsessed with his pursuit of glory, and something of a visionary. With great intelligence he combined almost reckless courage; he believed his mother's ancestor to be Homer's Achilles and strove to emulate the hero. He was ambitious as much to prove himself in men's eyes - or perhaps those of his forceful and repellent mother - as to win new lands. The idea of Hellenic crusade against Persia undoubtedly had reality for him, but he was also, for all his admiration of the Greek culture of which he had learnt from his tutor Aristotle, too egocentric to be a missionary, and his cosmopolitanism was grounded in an appreciation of realities..." Page 171
5. ALEXANDER THE GREAT by Frank Lipsius, published by SATURDAY REVIEW PRESS, NEW YORK
"The immediate goal of the journey "Alexander's expedition" was to liberate the Greek cities of Asia Minor from Persian rule. The Pan-Hellenic nature of the enterprise was emphasized by the inclusion of Thracian javelin throwers, one thousand Agrianians (whom Alexander particularly valued and kept close to him), fifteen hundred Thessalians and five hundred Cretan archers. The Macedonian troops, the core of the army, numbered twelve thousand infantry and eighteen hundred cavalry. The resolution to avenge Xerxes' conquest of the Greeks one hundred and fifty years before had been Philip's reason for marshalling troops for the expedition..."
All the above books refer to the Macedonians as Hellenes (Greeks). They do the same thing with Athenians, Spartans, Thessalians, Corinthians, Thebeans, etc.
by Stavros Stavridis
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