Ancient quotes on Macedonia

[George S.]

Agumoi and Kalle you are both foolish to assume just because one race of people speaks a language they are of the same race.GUess what GENETIC STUDIES DON"T SHOW THAT GREEKS AND MACEDONIANS ARE THE SAME.YOU should DELIGHT that the closest you COME is THE SUDANESE PEOPLE.WHERE is the genetic STUDIES THAT the greeks AND MACEDONIANS ARE RELATED GENETIC STUDIES DON"T SHOW THAT.SO YOU LOSE ON THAT SCORE.
GETTING back TO MY GREEK SOURCES THAT THE GREEK DGOVT FORGOT TO DESTROY AMONGST OTHER WORKS IT HAS DESTROYED IS THE PROOF OF THE DISTINCTION OF the MACEDONIANS as a RACE TO THE GREEKS.YOU LOSE AGAIN.My soorces are ARRIAN and PLUTARCH
IN these texts is written that macedonians spoke their own language. also alexander wanted the GLORY to be a MACEDONIAN GLORY NOT GREEK.Alexanders army spoke not greek but macedonian.YOU LOse again.What was ALEXANDER known as................................................ .NOT THE GREEK....... THE MACEDONIAN>YOU LOSE the whole argument YOu are brainwashed by your govt to think greeks are macedonians THATS the TRUTHMacedonians you are not.You never were.YOu aren't even greek.
You want to argue with me good i have allready beaten you on your arguments.

[Constellation]

Originally Posted by Philosopher

From the context of the book of Acts, it clearly distinguishes Macedonia from Greece, as both were separate territories.

You are referring to this verse:

Originally Posted by Acts 20.1-2

And after the uproar was ceased, Paul called unto him the disciples, and embraced them, and departed for to go into Macedonia. And when he had gone over those parts, and had given them much exhortation, he came into Greece,

If Macedonia is a region of Greece, then he would have already been in Greece. Instead, it states he was Macedonia, and after he went through Macedonia, he came into Greece.

[makedonche]

Originally Posted by Constellation

You are referring to this verse:



If Macedonia is a region of Greece, then he would have already been in Greece. Instead, it states he was Macedonia, and after he went through Macedonia, he came into Greece.

Well that's it then! If the bible says so, it must be true!!!! End of argument, Greece can go bankrupt now that it has no money or history!

[George S.]

The distinction of macedonian and greek is obvious.Also apparently The apostle luke was a macedonian.If greeks and macedonians were the same why a distinction.?Also it says Lydia was a macedonian.

[Agamoi Thytai]

Originally Posted by Philosopher

Here is excerpt that accurately characterizes the language of the ancient Macedonians:

Badian describes some convincing cases in which Macedonian troops could not follow commands in Greek. For instance, during his argument with Clitus, which led to his good friend's death, at the end Alexander is said to have called for his guards in Macedonian when he felt his life threatened. Badian rejects the idea that this was a reversion to a more primitive part of his psyche, under stress. He prefers the simpler explanation that Alexander used the only language in which his guards could be addressed.

Utter distortion of reality. To begin with, there isn't even a single one quote in any ancient Greek text that reads Macedonians couldn't understand Greek. If that was the case, then why Alexander ordered 30.000 Persian youths to learn Greek? Why in the passage of Arrian's "Indica" I quoted yesterday it reads ordinary Macedonian soldiers communicated in Greek? And how is it that Eurypides and other Greek tragic poets were invited by king Archelaos to Pella and performed some of their plays there? Does it make any sense to perform a theatrical play in front of an audience that doesn't understand the language?
http://books.google.gr/books?id=6iXN...0pella&f=false

http://books.google.gr/books?id=Mfmi...helaos&f=false

As for the Clitus affair, Plutarch who desribes how Alexander "shouted in Macedonian speech" nowhere says Macedonian soldiers couldn't understand Greek. In fact, the Greek word which he uses for "Macedonian speech" is the adverb "Μακεδονιστί" which may denote both to a dialect or a language. Τhat's why English classicists translate it as "speech" instead of "language" or "dialect", it's meaning is dubious. Αdverbs with -ιστί ending usually indicate a dialect, f.i. "Δωριστί" =Dorian dialect.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...%3D*dwristi%2F
Αιολιστί=Aeolic dialect
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...ai%29olisti%2F

Θρακιστί=Thracian dialect (even though Thracian was definitely a separate language).
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...qra%7Ckisti%2F

Watch also this: There is a fragment of a lost work of comic the comic poet Posidippus, in which a character says “You Athenians speak Attic and the rest of us Greeks speak Greek”.

http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o.../posidipos.jpg
And guess where was Posidippus from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posidippus_(comic_poet)

Originally Posted by Philosopher

To establish his case, Badian quotes a surviving papyrus fragment that seems to be the only good source to reveal the facts of the infantry use of Macedonian. This fragment tells of a battle, early in 321 B.C., in which the Greek commander Ambiance faced the Macedonian Neoptolemus with his Macedonian phalanx. Wanting to have the Macedonians join him rather than fight him, Ambiance needed to convince them of his superior position. The story continues:

When Eumenues saw the close-locked formation of the Macedonian phalanx ... he sent Xennias once more, a man whose speech was Macedonian, bidding him declare that he would not fight them frontally but would follow them with his cavalry and units of light troops and bar them from provisions.

Badian tells us that Xennias' name reveals him to be a Macedonian. Since he was with Ambiance he was probably a Macedonian of superior status who spoke both standard Greek and his native language. Ambiance needed this interpreter to transmit his message. This means that the phalanx had to be addressed in Macedonian if they were going to understand. Ambiance did not address them himself, although this was the common way for leaders of the time, nor did he send a Greek. Badian concludes that Greek was a foreign tongue to the Macedonians.

Again groundless assumptions and misinterpretions. In first place the Macedonian site you are quoting from needs some history classes so that they learn the proper names of historic figures they are referring to. There did never exist any Greek commander called Ambiance. They mean Eumenes of Cardia (a Greek colony in Thrace) since his name is also quoted . The incident they are talking about is when Eumenes met for first time during the succesors wars the so-called “Silver-shields”, Alexander’s elite force and convinced them to join his army. Eumenes was the chief secretary of Philip amd later of Alexander and also a commander in the Macedonian army, “the only Greek who commanded a Macedonian unit”, as Roisman writes:
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...tak/eumen1.jpg
Taking into consideration this, it seems higly improbable he didn’t spoke Macedonian, if we accept for the sake of the argument that Macedonian was a separate language from Greek. So he didn’t need to send Xennias, a Macedonian to address them in Macedonian because he couldn’t communicate with them. Read the following passages of his biography by Plutarch, it is more than obvious he could perfectly communicate with Macedonians:
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...tak/eumen9.gif
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...ak/eumen10.gif
Eumenes sent Xennias to the Silver-shields when he met them for first time not because he couldn’t communicate with Macedonians but just out of diplomacy reasons, because he was one of them, so that he could gain their favour. Something he finally managed:
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...tak/eumen2.jpg
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...tak/eumen3.jpg
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...k/eumenes4.jpg
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...ak/eumens5.jpg
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...k/eumenes7.jpg
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...tak/eumen8.jpg
Besides, Macedonians could also communicate in Greek. Look at this passage of Plutarch:

Accordingly, he (Antigonus) sent Hieronymus to make a treaty with Eumenes, and proposed an oath for him to take. This oath Eumenes corrected and then submitted it to the Macedonians who were besieging him, requesting them to decide which was the juster form.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...%3Asection%3D1
This oath was of course written in Greek. So how could Macedonians compare the two different forms of the oath and decide which was the juster if they couldn’t read Greek?
After all, the phrase of Arrian that describes the incident, “Ξεννίας, ανήρ μακεδονίζων τη φωνή” = Xennias, a man of Macedonian speech, doesn’t make it clear whether Macedonian is considered in that context as a distinct language or as Greek dialect. There are similar expressions in other Greek text too, f.i. in this below from Xenophon, there is mentioned someone who was “βοιωτιάζων τη φωνή”:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...3Asection%3D26
which English classicists translate it as “spoke in the Boetian dialect”:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...3Asection%3D26
So if βοιωτιάζων τη φωνή means “in Boetian dialect”, why should not μακεδονίζων τη φωνή mean “in Macedonian dialect” ?

Originally Posted by Philosopher

Similarly, Alexander used Macedonian to address his guards because it was their normal language, and he had to be sure he would be understood.

Instead, the available evidence suggests that Attic Greek was usually spoken in Alexander’s army. Otherwise Alexander would not order the 30000 Persians he enrolled in his army to learn Greek. It would be meaningless if ordinary Macedonian soldiers could not understand Greek, how would they communicate with their Persian comrades in arms? Apart of the incident of Clitus’ murder when Alexander “shouted in Macedonian” there isn’t any other quote mentioning Alexander or other Macedonians speaking Macedonian.

Originally Posted by Philosopher

The Macedonian language was barbarian to the Greeks. That is why Demosthenes wrote:
Do you have any evidence that a Greek was called a barbarian, and not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks?

Yes. Here you are:

And when he was asked again, according to the account given by Hegesander, which were the greatest barbarians, the Boeotians or the Thessalians, Stratonicus said,” The Eleans.
http://books.google.gr/books?id=QthfAAAAMAAJ&pg=PA551

And this one:

Was he not reproaching Pittacus for not knowing how to distinguish words correctly, Lesbian as he was, and nurtured in a foreign tongue?
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...section%3D341c

The original Greek text reads actually “εν φωνή βραβάρω” = in barbarian speech in regards to the Lesbian dialect.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...section%3D341c

As for Demosthenes:

He was generally believed to have received large sums of money from that source in payment for his efforts to check the Macedonians, and indeed Aeschines is said to have referred to this in a speech when he taunted Demosthenes with his venality.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...%3Asection%3D8

Originally Posted by Philosopher

In addition, according to Borza:

Quote:
Moreover, the insistence that Alexander is a Greek, and descendant from Greeks, rubs against the spirit of Herodotus 7.130, who speaks of the Thessalians as the first Greeks to come under Persian submission--a perfect opportunity for Herodotus to point out that the Macedonians were a non Greek race ruled over by Greek kings, something he nowhere mentions.

Herodotus actually says Thessalians were the first Greeks who surrendered themselves to the Persians:

"This he said with regard in particular to the sons of Aleues, the Thessalians who were the first Greeks to surrender themselves to the king . Xerxes supposed that when they offered him friendship they spoke for the whole of their nation.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...%3Asection%3D3

Because Thessalians had already declared their allegiance to Xerxes shortly before he started his Greek campaign:

"Messengers came from Thessaly from the Aleuadae (who were princes of Thessaly) and invited the king into Hellas with all earnestness;"
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...%3Asection%3D2

So when Xerxes later came to Thessaly with his army he said:

“These Thessalians are wise men; this, then, was the primary reason for their precaution, long before when they changed to a better mind, for they perceived that their country would be easily and speedily conquerable.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...%3Asection%3D2

[Agamoi Thytai]

Originally Posted by Constellation

You are referring to this verse:



If Macedonia is a region of Greece, then he would have already been in Greece. Instead, it states he was Macedonia, and after he went through Macedonia, he came into Greece.

This doesn't prove anything. Demosthenes also said in one of his speeches that "Philip is fostering alliances throughout Hellas and the Peloponnese", while the Roman author Pliny states "Hellas beginss at the Corinthian Isthmus and runs north".
http://books.google.gr/books?id=jJBh7BjUlAMC&pg=PA128
Another Roman historian, Appian, writes:

ambassadors were sent to the allied kings, Eumenes, Antiochus, Ariarathes, Masinissa, and Ptolemy of Egypt, also to Greece Thessaly, Epirus, Acarnania, and to such of the islands as they could perhaps draw to their side.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...on%3Dpos%3D371

Does it mean Peloponnesians and Thessalians were not Greek? Hellas proper was actually only central Greece.

[Agamoi Thytai]

Originally Posted by George S.

The apostle luke was a macedonian.

Were did you get this from? Most sources say he was a Greek or may have been a Greek.
http://www.st-luke-medal.com/
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=76
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Apostle_Luke
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09420a.htm

Originally Posted by George S.

Also it says Lydia was a macedonian.

Do you know what Lydia means? Do you know where she was from?
http://biblehub.com/acts/16-14.htm
http://www.keyway.ca/htm2001/20010516.htm
http://catholicstewardship.com/saint...ia-of-philippi

[Constellation]

Originally Posted by Agamoi Thytai

This doesn't prove anything. Demosthenes also said in one of his speeches that "Philip is fostering alliances throughout Hellas and the Peloponnese", while the Roman author Pliny states "Hellas beginss at the Corinthian Isthmus and runs north".
http://books.google.gr/books?id=jJBh7BjUlAMC&pg=PA128

Demosthenes? What does he have to do with the Book of Acts? Did he write it? Is Luke the pen name of Demosthenes?

You can quote all the authors of antiquity you like, but none of them have any value in this regard, as none of them wrote the Book of Acts.

Please, I beg of you, pay very special attention to the following words:

If words have meaning, and if language is used to convey something, than it is not possible to interpret Luke's words otherwise. Macedonia was a region north of Greece.

In addition, nowhere in Luke's writings (including the Gospel of Luke and the Book of Acts) does he ever identify an ethnic Greek with an ethnic tribal name. For example, Luke always uses "Greek" to refer to Greeks (in some instances, “Greek” simply means “non-Jew”).

He never uses "Athenians" or "Corinthians" as ethnic titles. It is always Greek.

However, he uses the phrase "Macedonian" as an ethnic title on a number of occasions in the Book of Acts:

Originally Posted by Acts 19.29

Having caught Gaius and Aristarchus, Macedonians, Paul's fellow-travellers.

Originally Posted by Acts 27.2

and having embarked in a ship of Adramyttium, we, being about to sail by the coasts of Asia, did set sail, there being with us Aristarchus, a Macedonian of Thessalonica...

Remember, Luke did not distinguish Greeks into tribal names. He calls all Greeks “Greek”. Macedonians he calls Macedonians.

When you add it all up, the following can be stated:

Macedonia was a region north of Greece.
Thessaloníki was a city outside of Greece.
Luke calls Macedonians “Macedonians”, and not Greeks. Greeks he called “Greek”.

[Constellation]

Originally Posted by Agamoi Thytai

Were did you get this from? Most sources say he was a Greek or may have been a Greek.
http://www.st-luke-medal.com/
http://www.catholic.org/saints/saint.php?saint_id=76
http://orthodoxwiki.org/Apostle_Luke
http://www.newadvent.org/cathen/09420a.htm

No one knows whether Luke was Greek or Macedonian. He was a gentile. His Greek is considered the purest of the New Testament writers. This may sound impressive, and it may be, but considering all of the other New Testament writers used Greek as a second language, it may not be. Beyond this, it cannot be stated absolutely his ethnicity.

The reason I think George thinks Luke is Macedonian is because in some Slavic Orthodox websites Luke is considered a Slav. Not sure what that means, or how anyone can make this statement.

Do you know what Lydia means? Do you know where she was from?
http://biblehub.com/acts/16-14.htm
http://www.keyway.ca/htm2001/20010516.htm
http://catholicstewardship.com/saint...ia-of-philippi

Lydia was not Macedonian. She lived or resided in Philippi. She was from the land of Lydus, She was from the city of Thyatira, a city of Asia Minor. Her ethnicity is unknown.

[Philosopher]

Originally Posted by Agamoi Thytai

Utter distortion of reality. To begin with, there isn't even a single one quote in any ancient Greek text that reads Macedonians couldn't understand Greek. If that was the case, then why Alexander ordered 30.000 Persian youths to learn Greek? Why in the passage of Arrian's "Indica" I quoted yesterday it reads ordinary Macedonian soldiers communicated in Greek? And how is it that Eurypides and other Greek tragic poets were invited by king Archelaos to Pella and performed some of their plays there? Does it make any sense to perform a theatrical play in front of an audience that doesn't understand the language?
http://books.google.gr/books?id=6iXN...0pella&f=false

http://books.google.gr/books?id=Mfmi...helaos&f=false

As for the Clitus affair, Plutarch who desribes how Alexander "shouted in Macedonian speech" nowhere says Macedonian soldiers couldn't understand Greek. In fact, the Greek word which he uses for "Macedonian speech" is the adverb "Μακεδονιστί" which may denote both to a dialect or a language. Τhat's why English classicists translate it as "speech" instead of "language" or "dialect", it's meaning is dubious. Αdverbs with -ιστί ending usually indicate a dialect, f.i. "Δωριστί" =Dorian dialect.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...%3D*dwristi%2F
Αιολιστί=Aeolic dialect
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...ai%29olisti%2F

Θρακιστί=Thracian dialect (even though Thracian was definitely a separate language).
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...qra%7Ckisti%2F

Watch also this: There is a fragment of a lost work of comic the comic poet Posidippus, in which a character says “You Athenians speak Attic and the rest of us Greeks speak Greek”.

http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o.../posidipos.jpg
And guess where was Posidippus from:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Posidippus_(comic_poet)


Again groundless assumptions and misinterpretions. In first place the Macedonian site you are quoting from needs some history classes so that they learn the proper names of historic figures they are referring to. There did never exist any Greek commander called Ambiance. They mean Eumenes of Cardia (a Greek colony in Thrace) since his name is also quoted . The incident they are talking about is when Eumenes met for first time during the succesors wars the so-called “Silver-shields”, Alexander’s elite force and convinced them to join his army. Eumenes was the chief secretary of Philip amd later of Alexander and also a commander in the Macedonian army, “the only Greek who commanded a Macedonian unit”, as Roisman writes:
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...tak/eumen1.jpg
Taking into consideration this, it seems higly improbable he didn’t spoke Macedonian, if we accept for the sake of the argument that Macedonian was a separate language from Greek. So he didn’t need to send Xennias, a Macedonian to address them in Macedonian because he couldn’t communicate with them. Read the following passages of his biography by Plutarch, it is more than obvious he could perfectly communicate with Macedonians:
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...tak/eumen9.gif
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...ak/eumen10.gif
Eumenes sent Xennias to the Silver-shields when he met them for first time not because he couldn’t communicate with Macedonians but just out of diplomacy reasons, because he was one of them, so that he could gain their favour. Something he finally managed:
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...tak/eumen2.jpg
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...tak/eumen3.jpg
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...k/eumenes4.jpg
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...ak/eumens5.jpg
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...k/eumenes7.jpg
http://i388.photobucket.com/albums/o...tak/eumen8.jpg
Besides, Macedonians could also communicate in Greek. Look at this passage of Plutarch:

Accordingly, he (Antigonus) sent Hieronymus to make a treaty with Eumenes, and proposed an oath for him to take. This oath Eumenes corrected and then submitted it to the Macedonians who were besieging him, requesting them to decide which was the juster form.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...%3Asection%3D1
This oath was of course written in Greek. So how could Macedonians compare the two different forms of the oath and decide which was the juster if they couldn’t read Greek?
After all, the phrase of Arrian that describes the incident, “Ξεννίας, ανήρ μακεδονίζων τη φωνή” = Xennias, a man of Macedonian speech, doesn’t make it clear whether Macedonian is considered in that context as a distinct language or as Greek dialect. There are similar expressions in other Greek text too, f.i. in this below from Xenophon, there is mentioned someone who was “βοιωτιάζων τη φωνή”:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...3Asection%3D26
which English classicists translate it as “spoke in the Boetian dialect”:
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...3Asection%3D26
So if βοιωτιάζων τη φωνή means “in Boetian dialect”, why should not μακεδονίζων τη φωνή mean “in Macedonian dialect” ?

Instead, the available evidence suggests that Attic Greek was usually spoken in Alexander’s army. Otherwise Alexander would not order the 30000 Persians he enrolled in his army to learn Greek. It would be meaningless if ordinary Macedonian soldiers could not understand Greek, how would they communicate with their Persian comrades in arms? Apart of the incident of Clitus’ murder when Alexander “shouted in Macedonian” there isn’t any other quote mentioning Alexander or other Macedonians speaking Macedonian.

I will return to this in a few days time.

Yes. Here you are:

No, not quite. I'm not asking for the barbarian phrase. What I am asking for is whether there are any historical documents that state what Demosthenes wrote "not a Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but a barbarian".

Do you have any document of an ethnic Greek calling another ethnic Greek "not a Greek, nor related to Greeks, but a barbarian". Not the exact phrase, but the overall meaning.

Mind you, I am not asking for a rationalization of Demosthenes' words. I am asking for historic documents of one ethnic Greek calling another ethnic Greek "not a Greek, nor related to Greeks, but a barbarian".

Herodotus actually says Thessalians were the first Greeks who surrendered themselves to the Persians:

"This he said with regard in particular to the sons of Aleues, the Thessalians who were the first Greeks to surrender themselves to the king . Xerxes supposed that when they offered him friendship they spoke for the whole of their nation.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...%3Asection%3D3

Because Thessalians had already declared their allegiance to Xerxes shortly before he started his Greek campaign:

"Messengers came from Thessaly from the Aleuadae (who were princes of Thessaly) and invited the king into Hellas with all earnestness;"
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...%3Asection%3D2

So when Xerxes later came to Thessaly with his army he said:

“These Thessalians are wise men; this, then, was the primary reason for their precaution, long before when they changed to a better mind, for they perceived that their country would be easily and speedily conquerable.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/...%3Asection%3D2

I'm not sure what you just wrote, or how it is applicable to Borza's quote. What Borza is stating is that when Xerxes came to invade "Greece", he rested in Thessaloniki in 481 B.C. Since Thessaloniki is a city of Macedonia, and Macedonia was part of Greece, it would logically follow that Macedonia and the Macedonians would be the first Greeks to submit or surrender to the Persians, not the Thessalians.

Herodotus states, however, that it was Thessaly and the Thessalians who were the first Greeks to submit to the Persians, which would mean that Macedonia was not part of Greece, and Macedonians were not Greeks.