Modern historians about Macedonia – Ian Worthington

 

At its height the Macedonian Empire of the later fourth century B.C. stretched from Greece in the west to India (present-day Pakistan and Kashmir) in the east, including Syria, the Levantine coast, and Egypt (Map 5).

By contrast the Athenians’ fifth-century empire at its height included over 160 allies from as far afield as Italy and Sicily to Asia Minor, but it could not measure up to the size of the Macedonian. Yet, while Macedonia and Athens were imperial powers, there were signifcant differences in how they achieved their empires and even what we mean by empire in this period, which we need to bear in mind as we examine the reigns of Philip and Alexander.

Ian Worthington,By the Spear,Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Rise and Fall of the Macedonian Empire, page 1

"Nonetheless, ancient writers, from Hesiod in the eighth century to Herodotus and Thucydides in the fifth, and even to Strabo in the early first century A.D., accept that the Macedonians were Greek and so Greek speaking. When Athenian ambassadors visited the court at Pella or Macedonian envoys visited Athens, neither side needed interpreters, whereas Greeks needed interpreters to understand the Illyrians, for example. 

Moreover, the written archaeological evidence discovered in Macedonia is all in Greek, Macedonian proper names are Greek, and the correct term for the people—Makedones—is Greek in root and ethnic terminations and may have meant “Highlanders.”Even Macedonian religion is more Greek than anything else—the Macedonians particularly revered Zeus, Dionysus, and Heracles. 

Ian Worthington,By the Spear, Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Rise and Fall of the Macedonian Empire,pages 20-21