Hellenism NEVER exists, its all greek falsifications !!!

[Bratot]

Damn, how we are able to read Serbian or Croatian, Russian, Bulgarian... it must be some conspiracy behind it.

And what the heck these videos has to do with this topic or with the post of SoM ?


Demos, hun... are you Vasilije maybe... or you want to explain what exactly you understood from the first video?

[Demos]

Damn, how we are able to read Serbian or Croatian, Russian, Bulgarian... it must be some conspiracy behind it.

And what the heck these videos has to do with this topic or with the post of SoM ?


Demos, hun... are you Vasilije maybe... or you want to explain what exactly you understood from the first video?

In case you missed it, the first video has subtitles in English.

[Bratot]

It does...my bad indeed. That still doesnt explain your videos.

[Venom]

Am I blind or is the video too big for my 22 inch monitor? I can't see subtitles on the first video?

[AMINTA]

Ethnicity and Cultural Policy at Alexander’s Court
Makedonika 1995 (pp.149-58) by Eugene Borza

In the more than half a century since William Woodthorpe Tarn proclaimed the "Brotherhood of
Mankind,"1 there has been a narrowing interpretation of Alexander the Great's vision. Recent scholarship
has replaced most of Alexander's Grand Plans with "minimalist" interpretations.
Tarn's conception of homonoia was never accepted by some scholars, and within five years of its
publication in the Cambridge Ancient History, Ulrich Wilcken attacked it as unsupported by the evidence.2
Despite Wilcken's criticism, Tarn's views of Alexander as a social philosopher settled into the public
consciousness, and into some scholarly opinion, as well.3
It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that the full force of criticism turned on Tam. The
"revisionist" school of Alexander historiography, led by Ernst Badian, was characterized by severe source
criticism and proved that the "homonoic" vision of Alexander was mainly a product of Tarn's unacceptable
squeezing of sources. An analysis of the language of Arrian at 7.11.9-the famous prayer of reconciliation at
Opis-shows that, in comparison with uses of similar constructions elsewhere in Arrian, the "concord" or
"harmony" referred to in Alexander's prayer4 is limited to the Persians and Macedonians and is not
inclusive of the whole human race.5
What was left of Alexander's Grand Plan was an idea introduced by Wilcken in 1931 to replace
Tarn's World Brotherhood.6 Wilcken argued that, while the king had no intention of uniting all the races of
Europe and Asia into a great concord, he did, in fact, attempt to join the ruling peoples of those continentsthe
Macedonians and Persians-into a commonality of shared power. This view-called "Fusion" has
persisted for more than a half century, generally accepted at one time by many persons, myself included.
But in 1978 A.B. Bosworth presented a paper at a meeting of the Association of Ancient
Historians, the full version of which appeared in the Journal of Hellenic Studies (1980) under the title
"Alexander and the Iranians." Bosworth argued persuasively that there was little evidence even for a fusion
between Persians and Macedonians. In an analysis of Alexander's activities toward the end of his life-where
most of the evidence for Fusion has seemed to reside-Bosworth showed, for example, that nearly all the
Iranian auxillaries incorporated into the army were kept as separate units. The Asians were used mainly as
a political counterweight to threaten Macedonians who were disaffected from their king. Other evidence for
uniting the races of Europe and Asia must be seen as ad hoc solutions to immediate problems, not as a part
of a general Policy.7
I accept the views of Bosworth on this issue. But what are we left with? Has the position about
Alexander's Grand Scheme become so minimalist as to leave nothing but a piece of military history and a
serendipitous adventure story?
1 1.Tarn in CAH 6 (1926), Proc. of the British Academy (1933), and Alexander the Great (Cambridge,
1948), esp. 2: 399 ff. Earlier versions of the present paper were presented at the 1989 annual meeting of the
Friends of Ancient History in Baltimore, and at the 1990 meetings of the Pacific Coast Branch of the
American Historical Association in Salt Lake City. I wish to thank Ernst Badian, Ian Morris, and Edward
Anson, who were commentators at those meetings, for their suggestions, criticism and encouragement.
What appears here is part of a continuing larger study of ethnicity in the administration of Alexander. I am
pleased to offer it in its present form as a tribute to my teacher, Stewart Oost, who neither admired
Alexander nor believed he had any impulse beyond conquest.
2 E.g., Alexander der Grosse (1931), English trans. by G. C. Richards, notes by E. N. Borza (New York,
1967), 22 1.
3 E.g., C.A. Robinson, "The Extraordinary Ideas of Alexander the Great," AHR 62 (1957) 326-44.
4 The publication by Stadter and Boulter of a microform concordance to Arrian has greatly simplified
textual analysis of this type.
5 The version Arrian gives us probably is verbatim or near-verbatim of what Alexander actually said. Of
course, one must consider seriously that whatever Alexander said may not have been what he intended,
which is one of the main points of the present paper.
6 Alex. the Great (1967) 246-56.
7 Bosworth's views have not persuaded everyone, especially those for whom old habits die hard; e.g.
N.G.L. Hammond in Alexander the Great. King, Commander and Statesman (1980) and elsewhere.
There is, in fact, one surviving theme that runs through the literature and is also one of the most
enduring public views of the great king's achievement: Alexander spread Greek civilization by means of his
passage through Asia. It is this perception of Alexander's mission that forms the subject of the present
essay.
Caution must be the methodological byword. One must make a clear distinction between what our
ancient sources believed was Alexander's thinking on the matter of hellenism, and what Alexander himself
actually accomplished. Ancient writers, like modern ones, wrote with the advantage of hindsight. They
understood that western Asia was transformed as the result of Alexander's passage. They also knew that
Alexander and his court were in many respects quite highly hellenized. It was thus easy to connect the two
in a cause-and effect relationship. (On this issue, scholarly method seems not to have advanced very much
during the past eighteen centuries.)
Let us, therefore, set aside for the moment our recognition of Alexander's great achievement of
conquest, and our knowledge that his passage resulted in, among other things, the establishment of Greek
culture in its Hellenistic form around the eastern rim of the Mediterranean, and that this remained an
enduring cultural feature of the region until the Islamic conquests. Let us, instead, review the evidence to
see precisely what Alexander intended in the way of hellenization, and what he consciously instituted as
policy.
First, the matter of the Hellenic origins of the Macedonians: Nicholas Hammond's general
conclusion (though not the details of his arguments)8 that the origin of the Macedonians lies in the pool of
proto-Greek speakers who migrated out of the Pindus mountains during the Iron Age, is acceptable. As for
the Macedonian royal house, the Argead dynasty was probably indigenous, the story of their Temenid
Greek origin being part of the prohellenic propaganda of King Alexander 1. This is a position I have
already argued in print and do not wish to take up further here.9
Whatever the truth about the origins of the Macedonian people and their royal house, it does not
affect what follows. We have suspected from literary sources for some time that the Macedonian court had
become highly hellenized. at least by the time of King Archelaus at the end of the fifth century B.C. And
now the recent remarkable discoveries of Greek archaeologists working at Vergina and elsewhere confirm
the cultural debt owed by the Macedonian gentry to the Greeks who lived in the south. There can be no
remaining doubt about the degree to which at least some Macedonians on the highest levels shared a
version of Greek culture.
Moreover, Alexander himself, tutored by Aristotle and raised in a court in which a manifestation
of hellenism was a component of diplomacy, was a lover of Greek culture. But we must make a distinction
between Alexander's personal predilections-his cultural baggage, as it were-and what he intended as policy.
Whether Alexander had a strategic policy for his empire is a matter that cannot be considered here.
The question is complex and tangled in source problems, and one often despairs that it can ever be
answered. But it may be possible to examine the evidence for hellenization. That is, did Alexander
consciously attempt to hellenize, keeping in mind, of course, the distinction mentioned above between his
personal cultural attitudes and what he intended for others to do?
Of the cultural features of Alexander's court, very little need be said. The king's train included a
number of Greeks, and court practices were often hellenized,10 resulting from the influence of Greeks in the
king's train and also from those features of Macedonian life already hellenized. Although it is undeniable
that a Macedonian court somewhat hellenized may have influenced policy and helped spread Greek culture,
it is difficult to prove. One suspects that the extent to which Greek culture was propagated in this manner
was as a byproduct of imperial conquest and administration rather than as the result of direct policy. On this
point we look forward to the development of Greek frontier studies comparable to the successful
accomplishments of our colleagues in Roman frontier studies. The recent work of Frank Holt on the
Bactrian frontier, for example, suggests that Greek culture in the early Hellenistic period did not permeate
8 As expressed in History of Macedonia I and II (Oxford, 1972-79) passim, and more recently in The
Macedonian State (Oxford 1989) chap. 1.
9 See my "Origins of the Macedonian Royal House," Hesperia, Suppl. 19 (1982) 7-13, [see article 5 in this
volume] and In the Shadow of Olympus. The Emergence of Macedon (Princeton, 1990) 80-84 and 110-13.
10 E.g., the Macedonian version of the symposium; see my "The Symposium at Alexander's Court,"
Archaia Makedonia 3 (1983) 4555, [see article 9 in this volume] and "Anaxarchus and Callisthenes.
Academic Intrigue at Alexander's Court," Ancient Macedonian Studies in Honor of Charles F. Edson
(Thessaloniki, 1981) 73-86 [see article 10 in this volume].
native traditions very deeply, a conclusion similar to that reached by Stanley Burstein in his study of
Egyptian Meroë.11
None of this adds up to a policy of hellenization. Perhaps we can see something in the relationship
between Alexander and the Greeks themselves. There is one feature of Alexander's administration that has
not been much examined, and that is the ethnicity of the persons who surrounded the king. If, for example,
it could be shown that Greeks were often selected to hold important posts in imperial administration, one
might conclude that that very selection and Alexander's dependence upon those Greeks were tantamount to
a policy of hellenization.
What was the role of the Greeks associated with Alexander during his Asian campaign? What
military or administrative assignments were they given? How close were they to the king? Of needs we turn
to that magisterial data bank of Alexander's reign, the Das Alexanderreich of Helmut Berve, published
nearly seven decades ago, but still the most useful compilation of prosopographical evidence relating to the
Macedonian conqueror. What follows is based on a computer-assisted study of Alexander's associates,
using the data from Berve, with some corrections and modifications. The computer was used to organize
several categories of information about these persons, such as ethnic background and cursus honorum. A
simple sort and list routine enabled the extraction of information about the individuals according to
category. The two categories of information used here are: (1) ethnic origin, and (2) the offices or
commands held by persons according to ethnicity.
What follows are some of the conclusions arising from this study of ethnicity, with the following
caveats: first, there are a number of persons in Berve's list whose origin is uncertain. I have taken this
problem into account, although the number is too small to affect much the outcome of the study. Second, I
believe that one can make valid ethnic distinctions among the peoples of antiquity. The ancient authors
themselves did so regularly, and such distinctions are a necessary component of my method.
On the matter of distinctions between Greeks and Macedonians in particular, I accept the general
view expressed by Ernst Badian in his paper, "Greeks and Macedonians."12 Badian showed that in
antiquity, neither Greeks nor Macedonians considered the Macedonians to be Greek. The ethnic
distinctions in the present study are: mainland Greek, Asian and island Greek, Macedonian, other Balkan,
Persian, other Asian, and a small miscellaneous category for the remainder.
Of the nearly 850 persons listed by Berve, 275 are either certainly or probably ethnic Greeks. Of
this number, 126 persons are not associated with Alexander's train, and thus outside present concerns. Of
the 149 which remain, sixty-nine-nearly half-are court figures not associated with administration. They are
there mainly for what one might call “cultural" reasons. They include sophists, physicians, actors, athletes,
musicians, jugglers and other entertainers, and a variety of hangers-on.
Eighty names remain. Of these three are of uncertain ethnic origin. Twenty-four Greeks serve the
king in a variety of administrative tasks: some are envoys, some are clerks, some financial officers, some
act as the king's agents in local places. They pop in and out of the historical record as Alexander sees the
need to employ them. More of these Greeks are Asian than European. Beyond that there is no pattern or
apparent policy. The king uses these people because he finds it expedient to exploit individual skills.
The remaining fifty-three Greeks serve specific military functions. Of these, the extraordinary
number of twenty-two names are attached to a single unit, the allies from Orchomenos, who are dismissed
along with the other Greek allies in 330 B.C. Fourteen other Greeks hold naval appointments, either as ship
commanders on the Hydaspes fleet, or in conjunction with Nearchus' ocean voyage.
Four Greeks are in charge of mercenary units, and nine others have unspecified, low-level military
assignments. Seven have duties that did not take them beyond Egypt, where a number remained to carry on
administrative tasks.
In summary, of the 149 known Greeks with official connections to the king, only thirty-five to
forty held positions of rank-some as officers, some as administrators, but only a handful in top positions.
A look at Alexander's satrapal appointments reveals a similar pattern. We know of fifty-two
different persons who held satrapies in Alexander's empire over a dozen years. Of these, twenty-four were
Persians and Asians, a number of them continuing in posts held earlier under Darius. Twenty-three
Macedonian satrapal appointments were made, nearly the same number as Asians. There are only five
11 F.L. Holt, Alexander and Bactria, Mnemosyne Suppl. 104 (Leiden, 1988), and the papers of Holt and
Burstein in Hellenistic History and Culture, ed. Peter Green (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992).
12 Macedonia and Greece in Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Times. Studies in the History of Art 10,
ed. B. Barr-Sharrar and E.N. Borza (Washington, 1982) 33-51.
Greeks who held satrapies. Of these, Nearchus (Berve #544) and perhaps Sibyrtius (#703) were Cretan,
Stasenor (#719) was a Cypriote, Cleomenes (#431) was from Naucratis in Egypt, and Thoas (#376) was
from Magnesia on the Meander. No mainland Greek ever held a satrapy in Alexander's empire.
An examination of the satrapal offices held at the time of Alexander's death shows that of the
twenty-four known satraps, six were easterners, fifteen were Macedonian and three were Greek, in this
case-stretching the ethnic definition Nearchus (#544) and Sibyrtius (#703) of Crete, and Cleomenes (#431)
of Egypt The pattern is clear: the trend toward the end of the king's life was to install Macedonians in key
positions at the expense of Asians, and to retain very few Greeks.
Similarly, of the twenty-four garrison commanders mentioned in Arrian, twenty-one are
Macedonian, two are Indian and only one is Greek-Lycidas (#475), who was left in charge of mercenaries
in Egypt.
Alexander's inner circle, his hetairoi, would appear to replicate the pattern. Of the sixty-five or so
men named as hetairoi, nine are Greek, including three mainlanders. Of the nine, four owed their positions
to life-long connections with Macedon: Nearchus (#544) and the brothers Erygius (#302) and Laomedon
(#464) were in fact raised as Macedonians, and Demaratus (#253) of Corinth had been associated with the
court, since the time of Philip II.
Thus we look in vain for the evidence that Alexander was heavily dependent upon Greeks either in
quantity or quality. We learn that rather few Greeks beyond the sycophants and entertainers at court were
associated with the king either in his inner circle or in important military and administrative positions.13
There is one exception, however, the faithful and competent Greek grammateus Eumenes (#317) of Cardia,
but he may be the exception that proves the rule. And if there were any doubt about the status of Greeks
among the Macedonians, the tragic career of Eumenes in the immediate Wars of Succession should put it to
rest. The ancient sources are replete with information about the ethnic prejudice Eumenes suffered from
Macedonians.14
There is one other aspect of Alexander's Greek policy, and that is his formal relationship with the
Greek cities of Europe and Asia. In European Greece Alexander continued and reinforced Philip 11's policy
of rule over the city-states, a rule resulting from conquest. As for the island Greeks and the cities of Asia
Minor, their status under the reigns of Philip and Alexander has been much debated.15 Fortunately, for my
purposes, the status of these cities, whether as members of Philip II's panhellenic league or as independent
towns, is not crucial, as they were in fact all treated by Alexander as subjects. Much of the debate on the
issue, while interesting and occasionally enlightening, has sometimes obscured a simple reality: Greeks on
both sides of the Aegean were subject to the authority of the king of Macedon.
13 There are limits to such a statistics-based argument. We are prisoners of the evidence that has survived,
and my use of statistics in this fashion recognizes that the tiny number of Greeks who played important
roles in Alexander's court is relative to the total number of names that have survived. Some persons friendly
to my conclusions have suggested that I should consider using some modern statistical techniques to
determine the possible total number of those who served Alexander in administrative and other capacities
by extrapolating from the evidence we have. I have thought seriously about this, but am unable to develop a
sound historical method by which I can make something from nothing. I do not know whether the
ethnicities of those who served Alexander would be the equivalent of what was determined from Berve's
prosopography, should I attempt to establish some total numbers. Only in the case of the satrapal
appointments can we be reasonably certain that we have close to total numbers; in the case of the satrapies
the pattern of a tiny number of Greeks relative to the total is confirmed. One must act prudently on this
issue and report what the evidence says, while admitting that it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine
the extent to which the surviving evidence is an accurate reflection of the actual total numbers.
14 E.g., Plut. Eum. 3.1; 8.1; 18.1; Diod. 18.60.1-3, 62.7 and 19.13.1-2. For present purposes I have not cited
several pieces of anecdotal evidence from the sources on Alexander that establish the continuing tension at
court between Greeks and Macedonians, tension that the ancient authors clearly recognized as ethnic
division. A fuller version of this study will consider these incidents to support my view that Greeks and
Macedonians did not get along very well with one another and that this ethnic tension was exploited even
by the king himself.
15 E. Badian, "Alexander and the Greeks of Asia," Ancient Society and Institutions. Studies Presented to
Victor Ehrenberg (Oxford, 1966) 3796. Also see, e.g., V. Ehrenberg, Alexander and the Greeks (Oxford,
1938) 1-51; Tarn, Alexander 2: App. 7; and AJ. Heisserer, Alexander the Great and the Greeks. The
Epigraphic Evidence (Norman, 1980), conclusions at 230-37.
The conclusion is inescapable: there was a largely ethnic Macedonian imperial administration
from beginning to end. Alexander used Greeks at court for cultural reasons, Greek troops (often under
Macedonian commanders) for limited tasks and with some discomfort, and Greek commanders and
officials for limited duties. Typically, a Greek would enter Alexander's service from an Aegean or Asian
city through the practice of some special activity: he could read and write, keep figures or sail, all of which
skills the Macedonians required. Some Greeks may have moved on to military service as well. In other
words, the role of Greeks in Alexander's service was not much different from what their role had been in
the service of Xerxes and the third Darius.
If one wishes to believe that Alexander had a policy of hellenization-as opposed to the incidental
and informal spread of Greek culture-the evidence must come from sources other than those presented here.
One wonders-archaeology aside-where this evidence would be.
We have seen that not only has the idea of World Brotherhood been put to rest and the idea of a
Fusion of Persian and Macedonian ruling classes made doubtful, but that the value of Greeks to Alexander
for policy reasons cannot be sustained by evidence. In short, there is no World Brotherhood, no Fusion, and
no evidence of a policy of hellenization, if that hellenization were intended to be accomplished through the
medium of ethnic Greeks.

http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/AncientMacedonia/NoHellenization.pdf

[Pelister]

How many Greeks in Alexanders army ?


Of the nearly 850 persons listed by Berve, 275 are either certainly or probably ethnic Greeks. Of
this number, 126 persons are not associated with Alexander's train, and thus outside present concerns. Of
the 149 which remain, sixty-nine-nearly half-are court figures not associated with administration. They are
there mainly for what one might call “cultural" reasons. They include sophists, physicians, actors, athletes,
musicians, jugglers and other entertainers, and a variety of hangers-on.
Eighty names remain. Of these three are of uncertain ethnic origin. Twenty-four Greeks serve the
king in a variety of administrative tasks: some are envoys, some are clerks, some financial officers, some
act as the king's agents in local places. They pop in and out of the historical record as Alexander sees the
need to employ them. More of these Greeks are Asian than European. Beyond that there is no pattern or
apparent policy. The king uses these people because he finds it expedient to exploit individual skills.
The remaining fifty-three Greeks serve specific military functions. Of these, the extraordinary
number of twenty-two names are attached to a single unit, the allies from Orchomenos, who are dismissed
along with the other Greek allies in 330 B.C. Fourteen other Greeks hold naval appointments, either as ship
commanders on the Hydaspes fleet, or in conjunction with Nearchus' ocean voyage.
Four Greeks are in charge of mercenary units, and nine others have unspecified, low-level military
assignments. Seven have duties that did not take them beyond Egypt, where a number remained to carry on
administrative tasks.

In summary, out of 850 people closest to Alexander, there are only 149 known Greeks with official connections to the king, and only thirty-five to
forty held positions of rank-some as officers, some as administrators, but only a handful in top positions.A look at Alexander's satrapal appointments reveals a similar pattern.

[TerraNova]

Ethnicity and Cultural Policy at Alexander’s Court
Makedonika 1995 (pp.149-58) by Eugene Borza

In the more than half a century since William Woodthorpe Tarn proclaimed the "Brotherhood of
Mankind,"1 there has been a narrowing interpretation of Alexander the Great's vision. Recent scholarship
has replaced most of Alexander's Grand Plans with "minimalist" interpretations.
Tarn's conception of homonoia was never accepted by some scholars, and within five years of its
publication in the Cambridge Ancient History, Ulrich Wilcken attacked it as unsupported by the evidence.2
Despite Wilcken's criticism, Tarn's views of Alexander as a social philosopher settled into the public
consciousness, and into some scholarly opinion, as well.3
It was not until the 1950s and 1960s that the full force of criticism turned on Tam. The
"revisionist" school of Alexander historiography, led by Ernst Badian, was characterized by severe source
criticism and proved that the "homonoic" vision of Alexander was mainly a product of Tarn's unacceptable
squeezing of sources. An analysis of the language of Arrian at 7.11.9-the famous prayer of reconciliation at
Opis-shows that, in comparison with uses of similar constructions elsewhere in Arrian, the "concord" or
"harmony" referred to in Alexander's prayer4 is limited to the Persians and Macedonians and is not
inclusive of the whole human race.5
What was left of Alexander's Grand Plan was an idea introduced by Wilcken in 1931 to replace
Tarn's World Brotherhood.6 Wilcken argued that, while the king had no intention of uniting all the races of
Europe and Asia into a great concord, he did, in fact, attempt to join the ruling peoples of those continentsthe
Macedonians and Persians-into a commonality of shared power. This view-called "Fusion" has
persisted for more than a half century, generally accepted at one time by many persons, myself included.
But in 1978 A.B. Bosworth presented a paper at a meeting of the Association of Ancient
Historians, the full version of which appeared in the Journal of Hellenic Studies (1980) under the title
"Alexander and the Iranians." Bosworth argued persuasively that there was little evidence even for a fusion
between Persians and Macedonians. In an analysis of Alexander's activities toward the end of his life-where
most of the evidence for Fusion has seemed to reside-Bosworth showed, for example, that nearly all the
Iranian auxillaries incorporated into the army were kept as separate units. The Asians were used mainly as
a political counterweight to threaten Macedonians who were disaffected from their king. Other evidence for
uniting the races of Europe and Asia must be seen as ad hoc solutions to immediate problems, not as a part
of a general Policy.7
I accept the views of Bosworth on this issue. But what are we left with? Has the position about
Alexander's Grand Scheme become so minimalist as to leave nothing but a piece of military history and a
serendipitous adventure story?
1 1.Tarn in CAH 6 (1926), Proc. of the British Academy (1933), and Alexander the Great (Cambridge,
1948), esp. 2: 399 ff. Earlier versions of the present paper were presented at the 1989 annual meeting of the
Friends of Ancient History in Baltimore, and at the 1990 meetings of the Pacific Coast Branch of the
American Historical Association in Salt Lake City. I wish to thank Ernst Badian, Ian Morris, and Edward
Anson, who were commentators at those meetings, for their suggestions, criticism and encouragement.
What appears here is part of a continuing larger study of ethnicity in the administration of Alexander. I am
pleased to offer it in its present form as a tribute to my teacher, Stewart Oost, who neither admired
Alexander nor believed he had any impulse beyond conquest.
2 E.g., Alexander der Grosse (1931), English trans. by G. C. Richards, notes by E. N. Borza (New York,
1967), 22 1.
3 E.g., C.A. Robinson, "The Extraordinary Ideas of Alexander the Great," AHR 62 (1957) 326-44.
4 The publication by Stadter and Boulter of a microform concordance to Arrian has greatly simplified
textual analysis of this type.
5 The version Arrian gives us probably is verbatim or near-verbatim of what Alexander actually said. Of
course, one must consider seriously that whatever Alexander said may not have been what he intended,
which is one of the main points of the present paper.
6 Alex. the Great (1967) 246-56.
7 Bosworth's views have not persuaded everyone, especially those for whom old habits die hard; e.g.
N.G.L. Hammond in Alexander the Great. King, Commander and Statesman (1980) and elsewhere.
There is, in fact, one surviving theme that runs through the literature and is also one of the most
enduring public views of the great king's achievement: Alexander spread Greek civilization by means of his
passage through Asia. It is this perception of Alexander's mission that forms the subject of the present
essay.
Caution must be the methodological byword. One must make a clear distinction between what our
ancient sources believed was Alexander's thinking on the matter of hellenism, and what Alexander himself
actually accomplished. Ancient writers, like modern ones, wrote with the advantage of hindsight. They
understood that western Asia was transformed as the result of Alexander's passage. They also knew that
Alexander and his court were in many respects quite highly hellenized. It was thus easy to connect the two
in a cause-and effect relationship. (On this issue, scholarly method seems not to have advanced very much
during the past eighteen centuries.)
Let us, therefore, set aside for the moment our recognition of Alexander's great achievement of
conquest, and our knowledge that his passage resulted in, among other things, the establishment of Greek
culture in its Hellenistic form around the eastern rim of the Mediterranean, and that this remained an
enduring cultural feature of the region until the Islamic conquests. Let us, instead, review the evidence to
see precisely what Alexander intended in the way of hellenization, and what he consciously instituted as
policy.
First, the matter of the Hellenic origins of the Macedonians: Nicholas Hammond's general
conclusion (though not the details of his arguments)8 that the origin of the Macedonians lies in the pool of
proto-Greek speakers who migrated out of the Pindus mountains during the Iron Age, is acceptable. As for
the Macedonian royal house, the Argead dynasty was probably indigenous, the story of their Temenid
Greek origin being part of the prohellenic propaganda of King Alexander 1. This is a position I have
already argued in print and do not wish to take up further here.9
Whatever the truth about the origins of the Macedonian people and their royal house, it does not
affect what follows. We have suspected from literary sources for some time that the Macedonian court had
become highly hellenized. at least by the time of King Archelaus at the end of the fifth century B.C. And
now the recent remarkable discoveries of Greek archaeologists working at Vergina and elsewhere confirm
the cultural debt owed by the Macedonian gentry to the Greeks who lived in the south. There can be no
remaining doubt about the degree to which at least some Macedonians on the highest levels shared a
version of Greek culture.
Moreover, Alexander himself, tutored by Aristotle and raised in a court in which a manifestation
of hellenism was a component of diplomacy, was a lover of Greek culture. But we must make a distinction
between Alexander's personal predilections-his cultural baggage, as it were-and what he intended as policy.
Whether Alexander had a strategic policy for his empire is a matter that cannot be considered here.
The question is complex and tangled in source problems, and one often despairs that it can ever be
answered. But it may be possible to examine the evidence for hellenization. That is, did Alexander
consciously attempt to hellenize, keeping in mind, of course, the distinction mentioned above between his
personal cultural attitudes and what he intended for others to do?
Of the cultural features of Alexander's court, very little need be said. The king's train included a
number of Greeks, and court practices were often hellenized,10 resulting from the influence of Greeks in the
king's train and also from those features of Macedonian life already hellenized. Although it is undeniable
that a Macedonian court somewhat hellenized may have influenced policy and helped spread Greek culture,
it is difficult to prove. One suspects that the extent to which Greek culture was propagated in this manner
was as a byproduct of imperial conquest and administration rather than as the result of direct policy. On this
point we look forward to the development of Greek frontier studies comparable to the successful
accomplishments of our colleagues in Roman frontier studies. The recent work of Frank Holt on the
Bactrian frontier, for example, suggests that Greek culture in the early Hellenistic period did not permeate
8 As expressed in History of Macedonia I and II (Oxford, 1972-79) passim, and more recently in The
Macedonian State (Oxford 1989) chap. 1.
9 See my "Origins of the Macedonian Royal House," Hesperia, Suppl. 19 (1982) 7-13, [see article 5 in this
volume] and In the Shadow of Olympus. The Emergence of Macedon (Princeton, 1990) 80-84 and 110-13.
10 E.g., the Macedonian version of the symposium; see my "The Symposium at Alexander's Court,"
Archaia Makedonia 3 (1983) 4555, [see article 9 in this volume] and "Anaxarchus and Callisthenes.
Academic Intrigue at Alexander's Court," Ancient Macedonian Studies in Honor of Charles F. Edson
(Thessaloniki, 1981) 73-86 [see article 10 in this volume].
native traditions very deeply, a conclusion similar to that reached by Stanley Burstein in his study of
Egyptian Meroë.11
None of this adds up to a policy of hellenization. Perhaps we can see something in the relationship
between Alexander and the Greeks themselves. There is one feature of Alexander's administration that has
not been much examined, and that is the ethnicity of the persons who surrounded the king. If, for example,
it could be shown that Greeks were often selected to hold important posts in imperial administration, one
might conclude that that very selection and Alexander's dependence upon those Greeks were tantamount to
a policy of hellenization.
What was the role of the Greeks associated with Alexander during his Asian campaign? What
military or administrative assignments were they given? How close were they to the king? Of needs we turn
to that magisterial data bank of Alexander's reign, the Das Alexanderreich of Helmut Berve, published
nearly seven decades ago, but still the most useful compilation of prosopographical evidence relating to the
Macedonian conqueror. What follows is based on a computer-assisted study of Alexander's associates,
using the data from Berve, with some corrections and modifications. The computer was used to organize
several categories of information about these persons, such as ethnic background and cursus honorum. A
simple sort and list routine enabled the extraction of information about the individuals according to
category. The two categories of information used here are: (1) ethnic origin, and (2) the offices or
commands held by persons according to ethnicity.
What follows are some of the conclusions arising from this study of ethnicity, with the following
caveats: first, there are a number of persons in Berve's list whose origin is uncertain. I have taken this
problem into account, although the number is too small to affect much the outcome of the study. Second, I
believe that one can make valid ethnic distinctions among the peoples of antiquity. The ancient authors
themselves did so regularly, and such distinctions are a necessary component of my method.
On the matter of distinctions between Greeks and Macedonians in particular, I accept the general
view expressed by Ernst Badian in his paper, "Greeks and Macedonians."12 Badian showed that in
antiquity, neither Greeks nor Macedonians considered the Macedonians to be Greek. The ethnic
distinctions in the present study are: mainland Greek, Asian and island Greek, Macedonian, other Balkan,
Persian, other Asian, and a small miscellaneous category for the remainder.
Of the nearly 850 persons listed by Berve, 275 are either certainly or probably ethnic Greeks. Of
this number, 126 persons are not associated with Alexander's train, and thus outside present concerns. Of
the 149 which remain, sixty-nine-nearly half-are court figures not associated with administration. They are
there mainly for what one might call “cultural" reasons. They include sophists, physicians, actors, athletes,
musicians, jugglers and other entertainers, and a variety of hangers-on.
Eighty names remain. Of these three are of uncertain ethnic origin. Twenty-four Greeks serve the
king in a variety of administrative tasks: some are envoys, some are clerks, some financial officers, some
act as the king's agents in local places. They pop in and out of the historical record as Alexander sees the
need to employ them. More of these Greeks are Asian than European. Beyond that there is no pattern or
apparent policy. The king uses these people because he finds it expedient to exploit individual skills.
The remaining fifty-three Greeks serve specific military functions. Of these, the extraordinary
number of twenty-two names are attached to a single unit, the allies from Orchomenos, who are dismissed
along with the other Greek allies in 330 B.C. Fourteen other Greeks hold naval appointments, either as ship
commanders on the Hydaspes fleet, or in conjunction with Nearchus' ocean voyage.
Four Greeks are in charge of mercenary units, and nine others have unspecified, low-level military
assignments. Seven have duties that did not take them beyond Egypt, where a number remained to carry on
administrative tasks.
In summary, of the 149 known Greeks with official connections to the king, only thirty-five to
forty held positions of rank-some as officers, some as administrators, but only a handful in top positions.
A look at Alexander's satrapal appointments reveals a similar pattern. We know of fifty-two
different persons who held satrapies in Alexander's empire over a dozen years. Of these, twenty-four were
Persians and Asians, a number of them continuing in posts held earlier under Darius. Twenty-three
Macedonian satrapal appointments were made, nearly the same number as Asians. There are only five
11 F.L. Holt, Alexander and Bactria, Mnemosyne Suppl. 104 (Leiden, 1988), and the papers of Holt and
Burstein in Hellenistic History and Culture, ed. Peter Green (Berkeley and Los Angeles, 1992).
12 Macedonia and Greece in Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Times. Studies in the History of Art 10,
ed. B. Barr-Sharrar and E.N. Borza (Washington, 1982) 33-51.
Greeks who held satrapies. Of these, Nearchus (Berve #544) and perhaps Sibyrtius (#703) were Cretan,
Stasenor (#719) was a Cypriote, Cleomenes (#431) was from Naucratis in Egypt, and Thoas (#376) was
from Magnesia on the Meander. No mainland Greek ever held a satrapy in Alexander's empire.
An examination of the satrapal offices held at the time of Alexander's death shows that of the
twenty-four known satraps, six were easterners, fifteen were Macedonian and three were Greek, in this
case-stretching the ethnic definition Nearchus (#544) and Sibyrtius (#703) of Crete, and Cleomenes (#431)
of Egypt The pattern is clear: the trend toward the end of the king's life was to install Macedonians in key
positions at the expense of Asians, and to retain very few Greeks.
Similarly, of the twenty-four garrison commanders mentioned in Arrian, twenty-one are
Macedonian, two are Indian and only one is Greek-Lycidas (#475), who was left in charge of mercenaries
in Egypt.
Alexander's inner circle, his hetairoi, would appear to replicate the pattern. Of the sixty-five or so
men named as hetairoi, nine are Greek, including three mainlanders. Of the nine, four owed their positions
to life-long connections with Macedon: Nearchus (#544) and the brothers Erygius (#302) and Laomedon
(#464) were in fact raised as Macedonians, and Demaratus (#253) of Corinth had been associated with the
court, since the time of Philip II.
Thus we look in vain for the evidence that Alexander was heavily dependent upon Greeks either in
quantity or quality. We learn that rather few Greeks beyond the sycophants and entertainers at court were
associated with the king either in his inner circle or in important military and administrative positions.13
There is one exception, however, the faithful and competent Greek grammateus Eumenes (#317) of Cardia,
but he may be the exception that proves the rule. And if there were any doubt about the status of Greeks
among the Macedonians, the tragic career of Eumenes in the immediate Wars of Succession should put it to
rest. The ancient sources are replete with information about the ethnic prejudice Eumenes suffered from
Macedonians.14
There is one other aspect of Alexander's Greek policy, and that is his formal relationship with the
Greek cities of Europe and Asia. In European Greece Alexander continued and reinforced Philip 11's policy
of rule over the city-states, a rule resulting from conquest. As for the island Greeks and the cities of Asia
Minor, their status under the reigns of Philip and Alexander has been much debated.15 Fortunately, for my
purposes, the status of these cities, whether as members of Philip II's panhellenic league or as independent
towns, is not crucial, as they were in fact all treated by Alexander as subjects. Much of the debate on the
issue, while interesting and occasionally enlightening, has sometimes obscured a simple reality: Greeks on
both sides of the Aegean were subject to the authority of the king of Macedon.
13 There are limits to such a statistics-based argument. We are prisoners of the evidence that has survived,
and my use of statistics in this fashion recognizes that the tiny number of Greeks who played important
roles in Alexander's court is relative to the total number of names that have survived. Some persons friendly
to my conclusions have suggested that I should consider using some modern statistical techniques to
determine the possible total number of those who served Alexander in administrative and other capacities
by extrapolating from the evidence we have. I have thought seriously about this, but am unable to develop a
sound historical method by which I can make something from nothing. I do not know whether the
ethnicities of those who served Alexander would be the equivalent of what was determined from Berve's
prosopography, should I attempt to establish some total numbers. Only in the case of the satrapal
appointments can we be reasonably certain that we have close to total numbers; in the case of the satrapies
the pattern of a tiny number of Greeks relative to the total is confirmed. One must act prudently on this
issue and report what the evidence says, while admitting that it is difficult, if not impossible, to determine
the extent to which the surviving evidence is an accurate reflection of the actual total numbers.
14 E.g., Plut. Eum. 3.1; 8.1; 18.1; Diod. 18.60.1-3, 62.7 and 19.13.1-2. For present purposes I have not cited
several pieces of anecdotal evidence from the sources on Alexander that establish the continuing tension at
court between Greeks and Macedonians, tension that the ancient authors clearly recognized as ethnic
division. A fuller version of this study will consider these incidents to support my view that Greeks and
Macedonians did not get along very well with one another and that this ethnic tension was exploited even
by the king himself.
15 E. Badian, "Alexander and the Greeks of Asia," Ancient Society and Institutions. Studies Presented to
Victor Ehrenberg (Oxford, 1966) 3796. Also see, e.g., V. Ehrenberg, Alexander and the Greeks (Oxford,
1938) 1-51; Tarn, Alexander 2: App. 7; and AJ. Heisserer, Alexander the Great and the Greeks. The
Epigraphic Evidence (Norman, 1980), conclusions at 230-37.
The conclusion is inescapable: there was a largely ethnic Macedonian imperial administration
from beginning to end. Alexander used Greeks at court for cultural reasons, Greek troops (often under
Macedonian commanders) for limited tasks and with some discomfort, and Greek commanders and
officials for limited duties. Typically, a Greek would enter Alexander's service from an Aegean or Asian
city through the practice of some special activity: he could read and write, keep figures or sail, all of which
skills the Macedonians required. Some Greeks may have moved on to military service as well. In other
words, the role of Greeks in Alexander's service was not much different from what their role had been in
the service of Xerxes and the third Darius.
If one wishes to believe that Alexander had a policy of hellenization-as opposed to the incidental
and informal spread of Greek culture-the evidence must come from sources other than those presented here.
One wonders-archaeology aside-where this evidence would be.
We have seen that not only has the idea of World Brotherhood been put to rest and the idea of a
Fusion of Persian and Macedonian ruling classes made doubtful, but that the value of Greeks to Alexander
for policy reasons cannot be sustained by evidence. In short, there is no World Brotherhood, no Fusion, and
no evidence of a policy of hellenization, if that hellenization were intended to be accomplished through the
medium of ethnic Greeks.

http://www.historyofmacedonia.org/AncientMacedonia/NoHellenization.pdf

Ok...you presented Borza's view about the relationship between ancient Macedonians and ancient Greeks.(i say other ancient Greeks)

Why does this have anything to do with YOU?

Let's see his opinion about the link between ancient Macedonians...and YOU.




Some of the highlights...

"On the other hand ,the Macedonians are a newly emerged people in search of the past to help legitimize their precarious present as they attempt to establish their singular identity in a Slavic world dominated historically by Serbs and Bulgarians."

newly emerged people...?

"The twentieth-century development of a Macedonian ethnicity....
In order to survive the vicissitudes of Balkan history and politics, the Macedonians who have no history,need one (!!!!)"

UPS!!!


"Modern Slavs,both Bulgarians and Macedonians cannot establish a link with antiquity,as the Slavs entered the Balkans centuries after the demise of the ancient Macedonian kingdom.
Only the most radical Slavic factions-mostly emigres in the US,Canada ,and Australia-even attempt to establish a connection to antiquity."

hMM.....


"During medieval and modern times,Macedonia was known as a Balkan region inhabited by ethnic Greeks,Albanians,Vlachs,Bulgarians,Jews,and Turks"


...hmm...according to Mr.Borza ,somebody is missing.(Apparently not ethnic Greeks-he obviously disagrees with you that ethnic Greeks do not exist...)

"Their own so-called Macedonian ethnicity had involved for more than a century,and thus it seemed natural and appropriate for them to call the new nation "Macedonia". "


I would avoid expressing myself so...i would feel that i would hurt your feelings.

-------------------------------------------------------------
By MR.E.BORZA

-The Eye Expanded Life and the Arts in Greco-Roman
-Macedonia Redux

[TrueMacedonian]

Not only the Germans, but the England also

Who stole from who, an excellent comparison check it:

http://vbb.blog.com.mk/node/150317

Greece is so fast in accusing other nations for "stealing history" that she forgets that she is the one that actually stole a symbol of another nation- an old English flag:



Whoops! Who's the real thief now?


Left: The flag used on the ships of the colonial English Honourable East India Company established in 1600; Right: The modern Greek flag initialy adopted in 1822. So, Greece nicked a foreign flag, changed the colors.. and Voila! We have a flag! Before you disagree, count the number of the stripes, both flags have 9. The Greeks claim that they represent the 9 sylables of their Independence War motto: "Elefteria i Thanatos!" ("Freedom or Death!"). Why should a 17 century English flag also have exactly 9 stripes then? The Greek cross in the canton is evidently stolen from the red English St. George's cross and re-painted in white. Shame...



The East India Company flag changed over time. There has been much debate and discussion regarding the number of stripes on the flag and the order of the stripes. Historical documents and paintings show many variations from nine to thirteen stripes, with some images showing the top stripe being red and others showing the top stripe being white. In any case, its obvious that the whole concept of this flag was stolen by Greece and incorporated in its modern flag.


Maybe this deserved a whole new thread

OMG but the flag is "greek" no no no no you lie Bratot you damn propagandist Excellent stuff Bratot. Droysen gave them the concept of 'Hellenism' and they ran with it.

[TrueMacedonian]

Ok...you presented Borza's view about the relationship between ancient Macedonians and ancient Greeks.(i say other ancient Greeks)

Why does this have anything to do with YOU?

Let's see his opinion about the link between ancient Macedonians...and YOU.




Some of the highlights...

"On the other hand ,the Macedonians are a newly emerged people in search of the past to help legitimize their precarious present as they attempt to establish their singular identity in a Slavic world dominated historically by Serbs and Bulgarians."

newly emerged people...?

"The twentieth-century development of a Macedonian ethnicity....
In order to survive the vicissitudes of Balkan history and politics, the Macedonians who have no history,need one (!!!!)"

UPS!!!


"Modern Slavs,both Bulgarians and Macedonians cannot establish a link with antiquity,as the Slavs entered the Balkans centuries after the demise of the ancient Macedonian kingdom.
Only the most radical Slavic factions-mostly emigres in the US,Canada ,and Australia-even attempt to establish a connection to antiquity."

hMM.....


"During medieval and modern times,Macedonia was known as a Balkan region inhabited by ethnic Greeks,Albanians,Vlachs,Bulgarians,Jews,and Turks"


...hmm...according to Mr.Borza ,somebody is missing.(Apparently not ethnic Greeks-he obviously disagrees with you that ethnic Greeks do not exist...)

"Their own so-called Macedonian ethnicity had involved for more than a century,and thus it seemed natural and appropriate for them to call the new nation "Macedonia". "


I would avoid expressing myself so...i would feel that i would hurt your feelings.

-------------------------------------------------------------
By MR.E.BORZA

-The Eye Expanded Life and the Arts in Greco-Roman
-Macedonia Redux

Ahem... http://www.macedoniantruth.org/forum...read.php?t=673

I can give you a bunch of links to click but I prefer you to click this one before you start cumming in your pants about re-verting back to questioning our identity.

[Daskalot]

Borza is an Expert on Ancient Macedonia, his knowledge of more recent times are fairly good but not perfect, in "Macedonian Redux" he does in fact smack you in the head quite hard, but somehow you missed most of his article and you just skipped ahead to the ending of it..... would you like to read the first part?

here it is.....

Sixteen

Macedonia Redux

Eugene N. Borza

A nation is a group of people united by a common error about their ancestry and a common dislike of their neighbors.
ROBERT R. KING, Minorities under Communism

An essay on modem political culture in a volume devoted to reciprocity in life and art in the ancient world may require a word or two of explanation. The theme of what follows is the modem rebirth of ancient Macedonia as a symbol of nationalism in a part of the Balkans that has been a killing ground in recent times. Many contemporary observers have attempted to reinvent the ancient history of the region in order to fit the necessities of their own lives and the vagaries of modem Balkan politics. It is a distorted reflection of the past, which, in its warped form, serves a purpose useful beyond the romantic antiquarianism of the classroom, the tourist path, and the museum. Midst the great body of Peter Green’ s scholarship on literature, art, and the history of antiquity, one must not lose sight of the fact that he is one of our most perceptive observers of modem Greece, having lived among Greeks for several years, and having understood them better, perhaps, than they might have wished. Green’s essays in publications such as the New York Review, the New Republic, and the Times Literary Supplement are a rich source of insight for anyone who not only wishes to know something about contemporary Greece, but also requires some understanding of the issue of continuity and discontinuity between the past and present. 1 I hope that he will accept this essay in the spirit he has expressed in his own work on like subjects.

In the spring of 1993 I taught an undergraduate senior seminar to History majors, the topic of which was “Ethnic Minorities and the Rise of National States in the Modem Balkans.” We examined the status of minorities following the founding of Serbia (1815), Greece (1832), Bulgaria (1878), Albania (1913), and Yugoslavia (1918). Not long into the semester I asked my American students to identify their own ethnic backgrounds. One young woman said proudly that she was “Macedonian.” Grist for my mill. I asked her what that meant: was she Greek or Slav? She answered that she was Macedonian, and certainly not Greek, although she pointed out that she had spent most of her school life pretending that she was Greek, for, whenever her teachers asked about her ethnic background and she answered “Macedonian,” they responded, ”Oh, you must be Greek.” Now, as an honors student and a senior at a major university, she had stopped pretending she was Greek, and took my seminar in part to help her learn something about her Slavic Macedonian background.

Her family lived near a decaying central Pennsylvania mill town called, appropriately, Steelton. About halfway through the semester, the student told me that she had visited her church cemetery in Steelton, and that she had seen a number of gravestones on which the deceased had been identified as having been born in “Macedonia.” I asked what the dates of burial were, and she said “Oh, the 1950s.” “Not good enough,” I responded, ”Next time you visit, look for earlier dates,” knowing that by the 1950s it would not be unusual for birthplaces to be given as “Macedonia” in light of the federal status of Macedonia as a Yugoslav Republic. About two weeks later my student informed me that she had seen gravestones of the 1930s with the Macedonian identification. I jumped at the chance. “I’m going to pay you a visit in Steelton,” I told her. “Find some old-timer in your church, and let’s go looking for gravestones.”

Steelton is located along the Susquehanna River, just south of Harrisburg. The deteriorated mills, now largely deserted, stretch along the river, separated from a dilapidated old working-class community by a highway. Affluence has lured many people into the suburbs of Harrisburg a few miles away, and the houses and people who remain have clearly seen better times. The town climbs a bluff from the river. The higher parts are marked by greenery, better kept and larger homes, and bits of parkland. On the summit of one of the highest bluffs is an open, grassy area of several acres, the site of the Baldwin cemetery. Within lie the remains of immigrants who escaped the violence and poverty of Balkan life generations ago to seek economic well-being in the mills of Steelton.

The old woman who accompanied us knew the history of the cemetery and the churches whose members were buried there. One of the first things that struck me was that, by and large, the deceased who were identified as Serbs, Bulgarians, or Macedonians were buried in separate parts of the cemetery. In death, they sought the separation that sometimes eluded them in life. The old Macedonian woman had little but contempt for the Serbs, many of whom she had known, but she sometimes appeared confused by the distinctions between Macedonians and Bulgarians. For until the establishment of the Macedonian Autocephalous Orthodox Church in 1967, 2 the Macedonians belonged to either the Bulgarian Orthodox Church or tothe “Macedonian-Bulgarian” Orthodox Church described on a few gravestones. Indeed, the Macedonian community in Steelton had apparently experienced internal division over whether their priests should most legitimately have been trained in Macedonia or in Bulgaria.

We picked our way past hundreds of gravestones, stopping to take photographs 3 and looking for earlier dates. Some stones were engraved in Latin letters, most in Cyrillic. A few decrepit headstones had been replaced With new ones, but most were original, and I mused that my old teachers of epigraphy would have been pleased that many of the techniques used to examine ancient inscribed stones were useful in this twentieth-century American cemetery.

Nearly all the deceased had been born in the southwestern Macedonian town of Prilep, about forty miles northeast of the Greek frontier above Florina. Several stones appeared With death dates in the 1920s, and a few in the ‘teens. We halted at the edge of the cemetery, where the hillside had begun to collapse into a valley. I was told that the earliest gravestones had fallen away down the slope, and that the presence of snakes and ticks made the descent perilous. I was satisfied, for at my feet was an intact gravestone With the name of the deceased who had been born in “Prilep, Macedonia” in 1892, and who had died in Steelton in 1915. I was stunned. Here was clear evidence of a man who died in a central Pennsylvania mill town only two years after the Second Balkan War, and was identified at his burial as a Macedonian.4

A subsequent trip to the cemetery in 1995 confirmed and enlarged the data base. I now have 30 gravestones in my photo file, the most interesting one of which was discovered in my 1995 visit. It is a simple, weather-worn headstone With the name of the deceased followed by (in English) “Mace-done [sic] died Sep. 20, 1906 At Steelton Pa.”5 Thus, six years before the First Balkan War in which the region of Macedonia was detached from the Ottoman Empire by Serb, Greek, and Bulgarian armies, the reality of Macedonia/Macedonian already existed among Macedonian immigrants in central Pennsylvania.
All of which is confirmed by reference to the 1920 United States census report from Steelton.6 The census-taker collected data from about 250 persons who lived along Main Street in Steelton. Of the total 76 claimed to have been born in “Macedonia,” and to have “Macedonian” as their mother tongue.7 All 76 listed their parents as having been born in “Macedonia,” With “Macedonian” as their mother tongue. Thus 228 persons were identified by a U.S. census taker in 1920 on a single street in Steelton as having a Macedonian connection.

In the second century B.C. the Romans ended the independence of the five-century-old kingdom of the Macedonians. During that period the Macedonians had emerged from the Balkan backwater to a prominence unanticipated and much heralded. Under the leadership of Philip II, the Macedonians conquered and organized the Greek city-states as a prelude to Alexander the Great’s conquest of the Persian Empire. Macedon continued to produce talented kings during the Hellenistic era, sufficient to threaten the new Roman order in the East, and perhaps even Italy itself.

The Macedonian kingdom was absorbed into the Roman Empire, never to recover its independence. During medieval and modem times, Macedonia was known as a Balkan region inhabited by ethnic Greeks, Albanians, Vlachs, Serbs, Bulgarians, Jews, and Turks. With the collapse of Ottoman rule in Europe in the early twentieth century, Greeks, Bulgarians, and Serbs fought for control of Macedonia, and when the final treaty arrangements were made in the 1920s, the Macedonian region had been absorbed into three modem states: Greece, Bulgaria, and Yugoslavia. Despite population exchanges, ethnic minorities were preserved in all states, for example, Slavs and Turks in Greek Macedonia and Thrace, Albanians, Bulgarians, and Greeks in Yugoslav Macedonia, Greeks in Albania, and Greeks and Turks in southwestern Bulgaria (Pirin Macedonia). Thus, recent claims based on ethnic conformity and solidarity notwithstanding, the region of Macedonia has, until well into the twentieth century, housed Europe’s greatest multiethnic residue, giving its name to the mixed salad, “macédoine.”

Peaceful ethnic pluralism has not been a common feature of Balkan life, save under authoritarian regimes such as the Ottoman and Hapsburg Empires and Yugoslavia under Tito. Attempts to establish ethnic purity in the region have varied from simple legal and religious restrictions against cultural expression to outright violence, as in the case of the Bosnian “ethnic cleansing” campaign of the 1990s. In modern Greece the purification device is “Hellenization,” the absorption of non-Hellenes into the general Hellenic culture. In the forefront of the Hellenization movement has been the Orthodox Church, centered in the Greek partriarchate at Constantinople. 8 Its centuries-old effort to Hellenize the non-Hellenic Orthodox population of the Balkans was in keeping with the long-standing tradition of the Greek Church as the repository and protector of ancient Hellenism and Hellenic Christianity. Its success in this regard can be measured by the custom of the Turks, in their census reports, of identifying all Orthodox, without respect to ethnicity, as Greek, that is, adherents of the Church centered in Constantinople. With the growth of Serbian and Bulgarian nationalism, the Patriarchy unsuccessfully opposed the establishment of autonomous Serbian and Bulgarian churches in the nineteenth century, as it has the Macedonian church in the twentieth.

The emergence of a Macedonian nationality is an offshoot of the joint Macedonian and Bulgarian struggle against Hellenization. With the establishment of an independent Bulgarian state and church in the 1870s, however, the conflict took a new turn. Until this time the distinction between “Macedonian” and “Bulgarian” hardly existed beyond the dialect differences between standard “eastern” Bulgarian and that spoken in the region of Macedonia,9 and, while there had been disputes over which dialect should be the literary language, the arguments were subordinated to the greater struggle against Hellenization. By 1875, however, the first tracts appeared favoring a Macedonian nationality and language separate from standard Bulgarian,10 and the conflict had been transformed from an anti-Hellenization movement into a Bulgarian-Macedonian confrontation.

The region of Macedonia was freed from Turkish rule by the Balkan Wars (1912-13), and it was partitioned among Serbia (the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats, and Slovenes in 1918, then Yugoslavia after 1929), Bulgaria, and Greece. Both Macedonian nationalism and a literary language continued to develop, despite the hostility of the three states that now laid claim to the region. 11 Serbs and Bulgarians continued to regard Macedonian as a dialect, not a real language, although, as Thomas Magner once pointed out, the decision about when a dialect becomes a language is sometimes a political, not a linguistic, act.12 The Greeks, under provisions of the Treaty of Sèvres (1920), were obligated to permit education and cultural outlets in native tongues for the minorities under Greek administration. Accordingly, a Macedonian grammar was produced in Athens in 1925,13 but never used because of an anti-Slav political climate in Greece in the late 1920s and 1930s, and Greek governments have prohibited the public and private use of Macedonian ever since.14

Taken from “The Eye Expanded”, chapter 16 “Macedonian Redux” by Eugene N. Borza, page 249-254, 1999.

http://www.macedoniantruth.org/2008/06/22/macedonian-redux-by-eugene-n-borza-1999/#more-160

[Risto the Great]

TN, directly underneath the points you have highlighted in Borza's text. The following text appears:

For contemporary Greeks, however, it is a different matter, as it is an article of faith among most of them that the ancient Macedonians were Greek.

So, the people who continued to be native to the region cannot be ancient Macedonians. But the Asians from Anatolia can have faith in the fact that they are of the same stock as ancient Macedonians?

When Borza embraces the DNA discussions along with a rejection of the increasingly disputed Slavic Migration Theory, he will ask "What is Macedonian on you?" to the modern Greeks. But he has said that in a way already.

Have faith my friend, have faith.

[TerraNova]

TN, directly underneath the points you have highlighted in Borza's text. The following text appears:
So, the people who continued to be native to the region cannot be ancient Macedonians. But the Asians from Anatolia can have faith in the fact that they are of the same stock as ancient Macedonians?

Why r u confused?
He says it's a faith that ANCIENT Macedonians were Greeks.
Since he believes the opposite.

He doesnt speak about constructed Greek ethnic identity,but Macedonian.

I tell you ...this guy would be attacked more than me if he was here...)) (by the self declared pseudo-historians)

Also he disagrees with you in "continuing" to be native,since he says that you are NOT connected to the ancients.

When Borza embraces the DNA discussions along with a rejection of the increasingly disputed Slavic Migration Theory, he will ask "What is Macedonian on you?" to the modern Greeks. But he has said that in a way already.

Yes yes...inside ultra nationalistic forums ,science is disputed.No surprise.
Go on with fairy tails of Alexander's tomb in Belasitsa mt,and aliens ,as well as weird tries to connect ancient Macedonian words with Slavonic...
pathetic.

[Risto the Great]

TN, I think you better go back to English school.
Here, read it again:

For contemporary Greeks, however, it is a different matter, as it is an article of faith among most of them that the ancient Macedonians were Greek.

Just to help you on your path to enlightenment, if it is an "article of faith", it means "Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence".

Seriously, what will you do if/when the Slavic migration theory is rejected?
And another question, what makes you think you are more connected to ancient Macedonians than me?

[TerraNova]

TN, I think you better go back to English school.
Here, read it again:
Just to help you on your path to enlightenment, if it is an "article of faith", it means "Belief that does not rest on logical proof or material evidence".

Seriously, what will you do if/when the Slavic migration theory is rejected?
And another question, what makes you think you are more connected to ancient Macedonians than me?

Since English is almost your mother language...you ll make me wonder about tour ability to understand...
Borza comments what modern Greeks believe about ancient Macedonians.
In other passages he comments about the Hellinization of Macedonians the following 1000 years after Philip and Alexander.

On the other hand he believes you DIDN'T "continue to be natives".
B)
Slavic migration....
So...what are you asking me..?How will i react to scientific truth if it's different?I will reconsider my view.

What about you?How do you react ,in the fact that at the moment the scientific truth IS that Slavic migrations happened?
How do you react to the current REALITY?
By expecting this reality to change....?


First of all i wasn't the first to put this "link to antiquity issue"...but you...doubting about my right to be called Macedonian.
For me the whole matter is about your try to gain the exclusivity and monopoly of the term Macedonia .

C)Now...if you insist on "historical arguments"...you must realize that this is your weak point.
If you insist on asking me how am i more connected to ancient Macedonians i ll tell you this:
ALL historians (even those who don't believe Macedonians were initially a Greek tribe) accept that Macedonians as a distinct tribe/ethnic group disappeared =assimilated to the rest of the Greek speaking Orthodox Christians,the 700 years (that's 7 centuries!) that followed the conquest of their state by the Romans.
As did the Epirots,the Boetians but also the Carians,the Lydians,..etc etc

These descendants of the Greek speaking Orthodox (ex my family) could be found when nationalism rose in the Balkans (19th cent) ,although they were pushed south after the coming of the Slavs in the 7th cent.

Is that understandable?

PS-I would repeat ,that i find "historical link to antiquity" a nonsense.
I just answer to this level,cause otherwise you would think you re right abt it

[Risto the Great]

I was excited to see you had edited your text, because I really was not sure what you were on about. I note little improvement.

In other passages he comments about the Hellinization of Macedonians the following 1000 years after Philip and Alexander.

I can see theories like this excite you. How many of those filthy slavs came into Macedonia after those "1000" years you mention? Surely your golden slavic migration theory tells us exactly how many of those filthy little buggers came into Macedonia. Surely the theory has been fleshed out to an extent that it is comprehensive and meaningful, not just some German wishful thinking. It is clear that the next 1500 years was the Slavic time to shine in Macedonia and represented the clear majority in the region.

These descendants of the Greek speaking Orthodox (ex my family) could be found when nationalism rose in the Balkans (19th cent) ,although they were pushed south after the coming of the Slavs in the 7th cent.

Is that understandable?

This is very clear. The Greek speakers were found in the 19th century but were pushed out in the 7th century. This sounds more like a disease than a nationality.

PS-I would repeat ,that i find "historical link to antiquity" a nonsense.

You should.