The Polycentric Museum of Aigai (Vergina)| Into the Heart of Ancient Macedonia

 

This UNESCO-protected archaeological wonder preserves not just the palatial tombs of Philip II and other members of Macedonian royalty but also the integrity of a solemn burial mound and a museum within the tumulus.

 

It contains four palatial tombs (including those of Philip II and Alexander the Great’s teenage son, Alexander IV) and some of the most astonishing finds from Macedonian history: the gold larnax containing Philip’s bones (emblazoned with the Macedonian sun), his massive armour and the golden wreath he wore on his funeral pyre, almost luminous in the dimmed lighting, among them.

 

DiscoverGreece.com 

Modern Historians about Macedonia – Kathryn A. Bard

 

The Macedonians were originally one of several Greek tribes living on the northern frontier of the Hellenic world.”

 

“The relatively remote geographical situation of the Macedonians contributed to their retention of a social organization different from the rest of Greeks”

 

Encyclopedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt By Kathryn A. Bard, pages 553-554

Modern Historians about Macedonia – J.D.Fage

 

✍️ Quote:

 

Persian rule in Egypt was not to survive long, but its overthrow was not the work of Egyptians. In 336 BC a Greek army,led by Alexander III (Alexander the Great) king of Macedonia invaded the Persian empire.

 

📖  “The Cambridge History of Africa” edited by J. D. Fage, page 105

 

✍️Quote:

 

It would be easy to see in this, the formal establishment of Greek rule in Egypt, the logical culmination of three centuries of Greek influence and patronage. But, except in so far as the earlier involvement of Greeks in Egyptian affairs prepared the Egyptians psychologically to accept Greek rule...

 

📖 “The Cambridge History of Africa” edited by J. D. Fage, page 106 

Modern historians about Macedonia – Max Cary

 

“The future relations between the two peoples had been irrevocably fixed by Alexander’s Anabasis, which destined them to work together in close co-operation as joint rulers of the East, and eventually to be blended into one Nation.“

Max  Cary, A History of the Greek World from 323-146 B.C. page 10

 

 

In 197 he re-entered Thessaly and forced a battle on the field of Cynoscephalae. In this encounter the Macedonian heavy infantry proved that in a solid front-to-front charge not even the Roman legions could hold, but that, once thrown out of order or taken in flank, it became helpless. While one Macedonian Phalanx charged right home, another broke itself up by its own impetus and became an easy prey to the enemy; and the victorious division, without cavalry support on the flanks, was enfiladed and cut to pieces by the succcessful Roman wing wheeling upon it. This was the first decisive victory of  Romans over Greeks  in a set battle on a large scale; but it sufficed definitely to establish Roman ascendancy in Greece.

Max  Cary, “A History of the Greek World from 323-146 B.C.”, page 191 

A History of the Greek World from 325 to 146 B.C.

by  Cary Max ,publication date:1932

Description

A History of the Greek World from 323 to 146 B.C. (1951) looks at the period of Greek history from the Macedonian to the Roman conquests. It contains a narrative of the political history of the Hellenistic states; a description of their statecraft, war-craft and economic practice; and a summary of later Greek achievement in the fields of art, literature, science, philosophy and religion. 

Routledge 

Modern historians about Macedonia – Mark Grossman

 

“When Alexander was just a child, his father was making Macedon (Now Macedonia in northern Greece) into one of the Greatest Greek city-states, as well as the dominant power in the Balkans.”

 

Mark Grossman,World Military Leaders:A Biographical Dictionary,page 11

“...he was tutored by Aristotle,the great Greek orator and educator,whom Philip called to Pella.”

Mark Grossman,World Military Leaders:A Biographical Dictionary,page 12

Modern historians about Macedonia – Nigel Guy Wilson

 

“The latest archaeological findings have confirmed that Macedonia took it’s name from a tribe of tall, Greek-speaking people, the Makednoi ( = lenght )”

 

“Philip II of Macedon was anxious to pacify and unify Greeks at any cost… His dream was fulfilled by his son Alexander III the Great,who in no more than 12 years at the head of a Greek army occupied a major part of then known world from the Aegean Sea to the frontiers of India “

 

Nigel Guy Wilson, Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece,page 439

Modern historians about Macedonia – R. M.Cook

 

Macedonia and Epirus were the buffers of Greece in Europe...

 

The Greeks Until Alexander [Ancient Peoples and Places series],1962  by R. M. Cook,page 23

Modern historians about Macedonia – Walter M. Ellis

 

I fear that I have not been wholly consistent in my use of the term “Macedonian.” For the record, let me state that I believe Macedonians, ancient and modern,are Greeks .

Ptolemy of Egypt,Walter M. Ellis, Routledge, 1994

In less than twelve years Alexander conquered the Persian  empire,a region that included the modern countries of Turkey,Syria,Lebanon,Israel,Egypt,Iraq,Iran,Afghanistan,Pakistan,and parts of former Soviet Turkestan and Uzbekistan.His empire also included a relatively united Greece,the work of his father,Philip II.

Ptolemy of Egypt,Walter M. Ellis, Routledge, 1994,page 1

Ptolemy was the creator of the longest lasting of the Hellenistic kingdoms. He created a state whose cultural importance was unparalleled until the coming of Rome. He encouraged the erection of the Pharos Lighthouse, one of the seven wonders of the ancient world, as well as creating a library which eventually contained the greatest collection of books until relatively recent times. Ptolemy's institution of higher learning, the Museum, gave birth to the greatest advancements in science before the seventeenth century of our own era.

In this work, the first biography of Ptolemy in any language, Professor Ellis charts Ptolemy's extraordinary achievements in and beyond Egypt in the context of the fragmentation of Alexander's enormous empire and the creation of the Hellenistic state.

 

From the publisher

Modern Historians about Macedonia – Martin Sicker

 

The Greek leaders perceived the sudden resurgence of Persian power in the region as a new and significant challenge to their interests. To gain support for an activist policy, some attempted to redefine the nature of the Greek-Persian conflict from one of straightforward geopolitics to the more emotional issue of pan-Hellenism. For such proponents of a continuation of the struggle the issue was no longer merely the matter of the defense of the Greek city-states. The Persian challenge was now characterized as a conflict of principle, of Hellenic culture and civilization against Asiatic barbarism in an unrelenting struggle for survival. They advocated a crusade to be carried out by a unified Greek nation that was to include all that partook of Greek civilization. However, the traditional leadership of Athens and the other prominent city-states, exhausted by the long external and internal wars, were unable to mobilize the support necessary for an effective response to the Persian challenge. Nonetheless, the pan-Hellenic crusade was soon to be undertaken, but not by Athens. It was Macedonia that was to impose its own leadership on Greece and undertake the renewed struggle against Persia in the name of the Hellenes .

The Pre-Islamic Middle East, Martin Sicker, 2000,page 99

After successfully annexing Thessaly and Thrace, Philip was widely acknowledged as the natural leader of a Hellenic alliance. The venerable Isocrates saw Philip as the man that Greece needed to deal with a chronic demographic problem that menaced its future. He argued that Greece was plagued by overpopulation, which produced large numbers of men suitable for military service who wandered about, without loyalty to any city, selling their services to anyone who could pay for them and thereby posing a constant menace to the stability of the country. What was needed, he suggested, was a new country that might be colonized by Greece’s surplus population. This new land would have to be conquered from Persia, and Philip of Macedon, who was already successfully challenging the Persians in a contest for control of the European shores of the Hellespont, was clearly the only one who might be able to annex all Anatolia to the Hellenic world. 

The Pre-Islamic Middle East, Martin Sicker, 2000,page 100

 

Philip had no illusions about the stability of the Common Peace, given the turbulent history of the Greek city-states, their competitiveness, and their general reluctance to sacrifice their freedom of action even for the common good. Moreover, he was a Macedonian, from the backwater of the Greek world .

The Pre-Islamic Middle East, Martin Sicker, 2000,page 100

 

A Persian offer of 300 talents was privately accepted by Demosthenes, who employed it for purposes compatible with mutual Athenian-Persian interests in thwarting Macedonian ascendancy  

The Pre-Islamic Middle East, Martin Sicker, 2000,page 102

Modern historians about Macedonia – David George Hogarth

 

 

Tradition held the other element to be Hellenic, and no one in the fourth century seriously questioned its belief.

 

“Philip and Alexander of Macedon” by David G. Hogarth,page 5

 

 

The king [of macedon] was chief in the first instance of a race of plain-dwellers, who held themselves to be, like him, of Hellenic stock…

 

“Philip and Alexander of Macedon” by David G. Hogarth, page 8

 

From Alexander I, who rode to the Athenian pickets the night before Plataea and proclaimed himself to the generals their friend and a Greek, down to Amyntas, father of Philip, who joined forces with Lacedaemon in 382, the kings of Macedon bid for greek support by being more Hellenic than the Hellenes.

 

“Philip and Alexander of Macedon” by David G. Hogarth, page 9-10

 

 

Archelaus patronized Athenian poets and Athenian drama and commisioned Euripides to dramatize the deeds of his Argive ancestor.

 

 

“Philip and Alexander of Macedon” by David G. Hogarth, page 10

 

 

“Macedonia” therefore, throughout historical times until the accession of Philip the Second, presents the spectacle of a nation that was no nation, but a group of discordant units, without community of race, religion, speech or sentiment, resultant from half-accomplished conquest and weak as the several sticks of the faggot in the fable.

 

“Philip and Alexander of Macedon” by David G. Hogarth, page 10 

Modern historians about Macedonia – Thomas R. Martin

 

Philip never achieved his goal of conquering Persia, because he was murdered in 336, before he could begin that quest. It was his son, Alexander the Great (ruled 336–323 b.c.), who astonished the world by making Philip’s dream come true. 

 

 

Alexander’s awe-inspiring conquests reached from Greece to the western border of India and convinced him that he had achieved the status of a god. 

 

 

Alexander died unexpectedly in 323, before he had a mature heir to succeed him as king of Macedonia and without having put into place a permanent restructuring of governance in Greece to suit the new political conditions of the world in the late fourth century b.c.

 

 Thomas R.Martin,“Ancient Greece From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times”  (1996) ,pages 221-223

Modern Historians about Macedonia - John Morris Roberts

 

“The Macedonians spoke Greek and attended Hellenic festivals; their kings claimed to be descented from Greek families- from Achilles, the great Achaean hero of the Iliad, no less.” 

 John.M. Roberts, “A Short History of the World”,Oxford University Press, New York, 1993 ,page 124

 

“Alexander was a passionate Hellene.

He revered the memory of Achilles his supposed ancestor,and carried with him on his campaigns a treasured copy Homer.He had been tutored by Aristotle.”

John.M.Roberts,“A Short History of the World”,Oxford University Press, New York, 1993 ,page 125

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.