Originally posted by Daskalot
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1)490 BC.After the battle of Marathon,the Athenians erected a monument for their dead with the inscription:
Fighting in the forefront of the Hellenes, the Athenians at Marathon
destroyed the might of the gold-bearing Medes. 490 BC
http://neverfeltbetter.wordpress.com...orld-marathon/ So Ahenians self-identified as Greeks.
2)479 BC Some hours before the battle of Platea,Alexander I stated to the Athenian generals:
"I am myself a Greek by descent,and I would not willingly see Greece exchange freedom for slavery".
Alexander I self-identified as Greek.
3)Early 3th BC century.The ancient Macedonian comic poet Poseidippus of Cassandreia (316-250 BC)
He criticized the Athenians because they said that only their own dialect was pure Greek and Athens was the center of Greece:
“You speak Attic whenever you open your mouth, and the rest of us Greeks speak Greek.Why make such fuss over syllables and sounds,turning your wit into unpleasantness?”
Poseidippus from Cassandreia would not have writen the above if he didn't self-identify as Greek.
4)Late 3rd-Early 2nd BC century.Philip V of Macedonia,around 200BC,addressing to the Aetolians:
"For on many occasions when I and the other Greeks sent embassies to you begging you to remove from your statutes the law empowering you to get booty from booty".
(Note that Philip V was not descending form the Argead dynasty,who claimed argive origin)
5)2nd BC century,during the time of Ptolemy Philometor,(c. 186-145 BC).Ptolemy son of Glaucias,a Macedonian in Alexandria,complains to King Ptolemy that certain Egyptians harassed him because he is Greek:
6) 163 AD.The people of Ephesus decided to make sacred the month that was called by them Artemision, because it was dedicated to the Godess Artemis.There was issued a decree about that,which mentions the following :
"But this is the greatest testimony of the reverence for her that there is a month named after her,Artemision in our city,Artemisios among the Macedonians and the rest of the Greek tribes and their cities".
So there were Greek tribes (or Greek nations,because the text in Greek reads "Hellenica ethne") and Macedonians were included among them.In case you claim the term Hellene was used in 2nd AD century with cultural instead of ethnic meaning,note that in the same inscription there is mentioned that Artemis is honoured "by Greeks and barbarians"
7)The ancient Macedonian author Polyaenus (2 AD cent.)
In the proem of his "Stratagems" he addressed to the Roman coemperors Marcus Aurelius Antoninus and Lucius Verus who were engaged in the Parthian War (163 AD) :
“οὐκ ἀμελῶ συγγράφειν,ὅσα γένοιτ' ἀν ὠφέλιμα ὑμῖν τε αὐτοῖς καί τῇ Ῥωμαίων ἀρχῇ καί τοῖς Ἕλλησιν,ἤν τε πολεμῶμεν ἤν τε τήν εἰρήνην ἄγωμεν”
I don't omit to write,whatever could become helpful to both you personally and Roman rule in general on one hand and the GREEKS on the other,either WE ARE at war or regulating peace treaties
Polyaenus here certainly points out his ethnicity is Greek.Now you need to know some ancient Greek,otherwise you have to trust the reliability of my translation.However,to make you understand my point,the key words are "πολεμῶμεν and "ἄγωμεν",two verbs in first plural person:
Since he mentions in the same sentence both Romans and Greeks alike as those who will be benefited from his work and then he uses the first plural person of the verbs that mean "to be at war" and "to conduct" (negotiations for peace treaty),he clearly identifies with one of the two ethnicities,obviously not with the Romans.
8) 801-812 AD,during the time of the Byzantine emperor Nicephorus I.Emperor Constantine Porphyrogennitus (903-952 AD) wrote that when the Slavs of Peloponnesus rebelled against the Byzantine state, in the reign of Nicephorus I (802-811) nearly two generations after the plague they plundered the houses of their Greek (των Γραικών) neighbors
So this Byzantine emperor aknowledged there were Greeks in 800 AD.
9)Anna Comnena (1083-1153) mentions the existence of Hellenes (with the ethnic meaning of the term) in “the land of the Romans”:
"But one of the Latins hit his helmet with his cross-bow. This cross-bow is a bow of the barbarians quite unknown to the Greeks”.
ήν δε τοιούτος ο ανήρ οίος,ως εν βραχεί μεν ειπείν,ουδείς κατ’ εκείνον ώφθη εν τη των Ρωμαίων γη,ούτε βάρβαρος ούτε Έλλην
“The appearance of that man was such,briefly speaking,that nobody resembled him in the land of the Romans,neither Greek nor barbarian"
In regards to the period from 1237 till late 1700s i've already showed you evidence in my older post,so i shall continue from this point.
10)1790.Greek delegates meet in St Petersburg the Russian empress Catharine,asking for help to throw of the Ottoman yoke.They also ask from her to appoint her grandson Prince Contantine as “King of the Greeks” (Bσιλεύς Ελλήνων).
11)1801.The Austrian historian and statisticist Martin von Schwartner (http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Martin_von_Schwartner)
wrote a statistic of Hungary:
Among the various people who dwelt in Hungary at that time he mentioned Greeks from Macedonia:
Here it is in German,"Die Macedonier oder Neugriechen"
12) 1805.Athanasios Christopoulos (1172-1847) from Kastoria.
He Wrote in 1805 a “Grammar of the Aeolo-Doric,i.e. the currently spoken language of the Hellenes” ( Γραμματική της αιολοδωρικής,ήτοι της ομιλουμένης των Ελλήνων γλώσσας).There was a common tendency among some Greek scholars of that time to consider colloquial Greek as descendand of ancient Aeolic or Doric,as opposed to the “official” language,Koine and katharevousa that derive from Attic.
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