Hesiod
would not have recorded this relationship, unless he had believed, probably in
the seventh century, that the Macedones were a greek speaking.The next evidence comes from
Persia. At the turn of the sixth century the Persians described the tribute -
paying peoples of their province in Europe, and one of them was the ‘yauna
takabara’, which meant “Greeks wearing the hat”.
There were
Greeks in Greek city-states here and there in the province, but they were of
various origins and not distinguished by a common hat. However, the Macedonians
wore a distinctive hat, the kausia. We conclude that the Persians believed the
Macedonians to be speakers of greek. Finally, in the latter part of the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus,
visited Macedonia and modified Hesiodus genealogy by making Macedon not a
cousin, but a son of Aeolus, thus bringing Macedon and his descendants firmly into the Aeolic branch of the greek
speaking family.Hesiod, Persia, and Hellanicus had no motive for making a false
statement about the language of the Macedonians, who were then an obscure and
not a powerful people. Their independent testimonies should beaccepted as conclusive.”
pages 12
-13
Quote:
As we have
mentioned in Chapter I, Perdiccas and his brothers came from Argos and
Peloponnese. They were members of the Royal house of Argos, the “Teminidae”,
descendants of Temenus, whose ancestor was Heracles, son of Zeus; it was this
Temenus who led the Dorian tribes into the Argolid and founded Dorian Argos
late in the 12th century. Thus Perdiccas came to Macedonia with the aura of
divine favor, and he could claim that the Temenidae and the Argeadae were both
descended from Zeus and so were diogeneis. To Greeks of the classical period
the Temenid name was well known.
Thus the oracle which was concerned post
eventum with he following of the new capital, Aegeae, by Perdiccas began with
the line “The noble Temenidae have royal rule over a wealth producing land.
Herodotus made a special point of emphasizing that the royal house of Macedonia
was Greek by descent, and Thucydides, who questioned much of what Herodotus
said, concurred with him in calling the Macedonian kings “Temenidae from
Argos”. Almost a century later Isocrates wrote to Philip II, saying “Argos is
your fatherland”, and he asked Philip to emulate his father [Amyntas], the
founder of the monarchy [Perdiccas], and the originator of the family
(Heracles).
page 18
Quote:
The matter
is of only academic interest to a few scholars today. No one in Antiquity
doubted the truth of the clam.
page 19
The
Macedonian State:The Origins, Institutions and History,N. G. L. Hammond ,1989
The
executive board of UNESCO, the United Nations’ cultural agency, on Monday
approved the designation of February 9 as “World Greek Language Day.”
The date
marks the anniversary of the death of Greece’s national poet, Dionysios
Solomos, who passed away in 1857.
“This is an
international recognition of the timelessness, universality, and contribution
of our language to the cultural heritage of humanity. It is a day of joy and
pride,” said Georgios Koumoutsakos, the country’s permanent delegate to UNESCO,
in a statement to the Athens-Macedonian News Agency.
