Modern Historians about Macedonia - Charles Gates

 

 

 

 Alexander, son of Philip the Macedonian

 

 

 

“Philip II came to power in Macedonia in 359 BC. Althought speaking a dialect of Greek, the Macedonians lay on the fringes of Greek culture and had contributed little to Greek political, socio-economic and artistic life.”

 

 Charles Gates,Ancient Cities:The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, Greece, and Rome,page 269

“With Alexander’s conquests, West Asia and Egypt were brought into the fold of Greek culture. The newly formed Greek kingdoms of the Hellenistic period would be much influenced, however, by the Near Eastern and Egyptian cultures they were now controlling. ”

 

Charles Gates,Ancient Cities:The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, Greece, and Rome,page 270
 

 

 

 

Bilkent University:Charles Gates received his Ph.D. in Classical Archaeology from the University of Pennsylvania (1979) and taught at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill before joining the faculty at Bilkent in 1990. 

His teaching and research interests include Greek archaeology; Cilicia, Cyprus, and the Levant in the first millennium BC; and Byzantine art and archaeology. 

He is the author of Ancient Cities: The Archaeology of Urban Life in the Ancient Near East and Egypt, Greece, and Rome, 2nd edn (London & New York: Routledge, 2011). 

A member of the Kinet Höyük excavation project since 1993, he works primarily on the site's Iron Age and Persian and Hellenistic levels.

 

 

 

 

 

Modern Historians about Macedonia - Lucilla Burn

 

The language spoken by ordinary Macedonians, as opposed to the ruling family, seems at most times to have been a dialect form of Greek. The elite communicaed both with itself and with other elites in standard, probably Attic Greek.

 

Lucilla Burn, “Hellenistic art: from Alexander the Great to Augustus”,page 28

Lucilla Burn

The Hellenistic Age was a new era of Greek civilization that began with the death of Alexander the Great in 323 B.C. and lasted until the Roman emperor Octavian defeated the last independent Hellenistic monarch, Cleopatra VII of Egypt, in 31 B.C. The book traces the development of a distinctive new Hellenistic culture, which was shaped both by artists who spread innovations across the Mediterranean region and by rival monarchs who commissioned luxury articles and sponsored elaborate city developments.

 

This cross-pollination produced great diversity in artistic subjects, techniques, and materials. Alongside sculptures of mythic Greek figures appeared those of new gods, such as the Egyptian Serapis, as well as depictions of common people, such as fishermen and nursemaids. Artists produced works of widely varying sizes, from the colossal statue of Apollo at Rhodes, to pocket-sized table decorations. Technical virtuosity flourished in the fields of pottery, glass, and jewelry.

 

In this illuminating survey, the author argues for a new appreciation of the advances and range of Hellenistic art and the influence it continued to exert on Mediterranean culture into the first centuries of the new millennium.

Modern Historians about Macedonia – Alan Fildes

 

Alexander the Great is one of the most celebrated figures of classical  antiquity. 

 

Born in a remote kingdom in northern Greece, as one of several royal sons,Alexander displayed leadership abilities at an early age and carved out a role for himself as heir to the Macedonian throne.Following the death of his father,Philip II,Alexander III secured the whole of Greece and prepared to lead its allied states against the massive Persian empire.

Alan Fildes and Joann Fletcher, Alexander the Great, Son of the Gods, page 6

 

 

Everywhere he went, Alexander founded Greek cities. By the time he died he ruled over the greatest empire the world has ever seen-an empire composed of millions of ethnically diverse peoples were united by a common Greek tongue.

 

 Alan Fildes and Joann Fletcher, Alexander the Great,Son of the Gods,page 7

 

 

Located in the northern extremity of Greece, and cut off from its neighbours by its mountainous terrain, ancient Macedonia’s relative isolation produced a distinctly seperate culture. Although the Macedonians spoke a Greek dialect, worshipped Greek gods and traced their nation’s origins from Olympian gods, their customes and northern Doric accent were markedly different from those of the people of the rest of Greece, who saw the Macedonia as a largely insignificant, backward monarchy, to be looked upon with suspicion, Yet this was the kingdom that produced Alexander the Great, the most powerful ruler Greece would ever know.

 

Alan Fildes and Joann Fletcher, Alexander the Great, Son of the Gods, page 12