Macedonian period

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  • Stevce
    Member
    • Jan 2016
    • 200

    Macedonian period

    Regarding the term "Hellenism" put forward by Droysen, the late N.G.L. Hammond, an international recognized expert on Ancient Macedonia argued for a substitution of the term "Hellenism" or "Hellenistic period" with "Macedonian period" in his Foreword in the book: "The Macedonian War Mashine" by David Karunanithy, Pen and Sword, 2013:
    "The Macedonian Army" is a very extensive subject. For the Army was almost commensurate with the Macedonian State in the time of Philip and Alexander, Sections of the army continued to be the dominant factor in the subsequent period. That period has been called the "Hellenistic" period, which implies a decline from the "Hellenic" period. It should be called correctly the "Macedonian" period, in which Macedonian commanders and sections of the Macedonian army set up and maintained individual States."
    Quiet clear in favor for "Macedonian period", I have to admit.
    As I understand the argument of Hammond, he argues that the political and military power being in the hands of Macedonians for over 300 years, justifies that the period should bear also their name.
  • Stevce
    Member
    • Jan 2016
    • 200

    #2
    From Dragan Pavlovic

    What concerns the first, in all five secondary biographies of Alexander the Great (Arrian, Plutarch, Justinus, Curtius Ruffus and Diodorus) Macedonians and Hellenes are described as two distinct and to an important extent, antagonistic entities. There, Macedonian supremacy is apparently evident. Not because they imposed themselves just militarily, but because through the state organizations and through other forms of state administration and social institutions, they made those states keep Macedonian impact. In spite of clear intention of Allexander to create one very much different world of brotherhood and unity. His world probably was not such.

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    • Stevce
      Member
      • Jan 2016
      • 200

      #3
      he 5 secondary biographies of the Alexander III of Macedonien were based on the today almost completely lost primary biographies by the contemporary authors. Those were certainly biased. (Lionel Pearson: The Lost Histories of Alexander the Great: American Philological Association (Philological Monographs, 20.), 1960.) The secondary biographies were written 300 years later, when the Macedonian “language” was, if spoken at all, was spoken probably only by the surviving members of the royal Macedonian dynasties (Cleopatra VII being may be the last one, as Plutarch reports in the “Life of Antony”). They could have been biased as well, although Macedonia did not exist then practically any more and that bias could not be in the essence a political one. These secondary biographies, well I do not intend to give citations here, you just have to read them to see how Hellenes and Macedonians are presented. They are in fact in quite explicit way ALMOST not “about Hellenes” at all. Those biographies speak about Macedonians. Sorry, this just could not be disputed.

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      • Stevce
        Member
        • Jan 2016
        • 200

        #4
        Link attached https://www.researchgate.net/post/Wa...enistic_states

        From Barry Turner

        The 'acquistion' of Alexander the Great as a Greek hero is a product of modern Greek political ideology and would have been unfathomable to Alexander himself. This is largely based on the fact that both Alexandros and Philippos are both Greek names and that the Royal Macedonian household spoke Greek. Language itself is not a sufficient marker of nationality in the ancient world. The Greeks spoke a variety of dialects (Doric, Ionic and Aeolic to name the main ones) that most modern linguists consider so different to each other that they qualify as languages themselves, yet all of these were 'Greeks'.

        Diogenes summed this up well. When asked where he was from he did not give as his answer as Sinope, his birthplace. Instead he said he was Kosmopolites meaning literally of the cosmos. By this statement he denied that he was of any particular Polis and exonerated himself of any responsibilities to one.
        Alexander was the ultimate cosmopolitan in life style happy to assimilate any culture he came across while simutanoeusly remaining Hellene. John is almost certainly right, If he had lived longer and conquered India he would have adopted the culture and beliefs of their civilizations too.
        Last edited by Stevce; 08-23-2019, 02:32 PM.

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        • Stevce
          Member
          • Jan 2016
          • 200

          #5
          It is a fact that history is continually rewritten, there is no final history except perhaps in the detail. This thread demonstrates adequately that the 'histories' written in the last 2,300 years are uncertain. Most are written as propaganda to bolster modern chauvinism. Others are mistaken interpretations and many are simply partially understood. The reality is no one knows what the Greeks and Macedonians really thought about nationhood.

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          • Stevce
            Member
            • Jan 2016
            • 200

            #6
            Greece like any nation state today owes its national charcteristics to its past but its past is not defined by the sentiments of those who lived in later times. In the 18th century Greek literature contained little in the way of panegyrics for Philip and Alexander, they were seen as conquerors of the Greeks, not themselves 'of the Greeks'. Macedonians are a fine example with first assimilating to Greek culture and later to very other culture they encountered and ultimaletly conquered.
            Last edited by Stevce; 08-23-2019, 02:25 PM.

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            • Stevce
              Member
              • Jan 2016
              • 200

              #7
              By the first century AD the Macedonians become indistinguishable from the Hellens. Their language was lost. Even the roots of the words of Macedonian language are uncertain and some 156 “greecisized” glosses are proposed*. How similar the language to the Hellenic language was, is not decided. The languages of the same language family may be quite incompréhensible to each other.
              *Kalléris, Jean. Les Anciens Macédoniens, étude linguistique et historique. Institut français d'Athènes, 1988.

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              • Stevce
                Member
                • Jan 2016
                • 200

                #8
                From John Holmes

                And Philip's Macedonia, which include some people who spoke Macedonian and plenty who spoke Thracian or various other obscure and forgotten languages, was the furthest thing from a "nation." As for Alexander, he saw himself as Macedonian when convenient, Greek when convenient, Persian when convenient, and if he'd lived a little longer might have conquered much of India and discovered that he was Indian and converted to Hinduism.
                "Macedonians" and "Macedonian language" mean one thing now in the 21st Century, when you have a Slavic Macedonian language and people, and something totally different in the time of Alexander. The nature of the Macedonian language is now basically unknown, and the nature of the Macedonian people little better, best guess being that they were a multi-ethnic population under the rule of Philip of Macedon.
                That Macedonia now and Macedon then have the same name is a historical accident due to continuity of the Roman Empire with its geographical designations for nearly two millenia. Indeed that is almost true of Greece as well, as the re-establishment of the Greek language in a population on the Greek mainland that was mostly Slavic during much of the Dark Ages was an ideological/cultural production of the Byzantine Empire. The heartland of Greek language and culture during much of the history of the Byzantine Empire was the area around Constantinople and Anatolia, i.e. the country now known as Turkey. DNA analysis of the populations of Greece and Turkey might have interesting results. Be it noted that Greek was the lingua franca of commerce, and to some degree the Greeks were a mercantile "middleman minority" in the Balkans under the Ottoman Empire, like the Jews.
                Last edited by Stevce; 08-23-2019, 02:31 PM.

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