Modern historians about Macedonia – N.G.L Hammond

 

“Greece and Macedon were akin in blood and culture.” 

 

N.G.L. Hammond , “A History of Greece to 332 B.C.”, Oxford: Clarendon Press (1959),page 651

 

 

Modern historians about Macedonia – Eugene Borza

 

Only recently have we begun to clarify these muddy waters by revealing the Demosthenic corpus for what it is: oratory designed to sway public opinion and thereby to formulate public policy. That elusive creature, Truth, is everywhere subordinate to Rhetoric; Demosthenes’ pronouncements are no more the true history of the period than are the public statements of politicians in any age. 

In the Shadow of Olympus:The Emergence of Macedon, Eugene N. Borza, Princeton University Press,1990,pages 5- 6

This larger Macedon included lands from the crest of the Pindus range to the plain of Philippi and the Nestos River. Its northern border lay along a line formed by Pelagonia, the middle Axios valley and the western Rhodopi massif. Its southern border was the Haliacmon basin, the Olympus range and the Aegean, with the Chalcidic peninsula as peripheral.

 

We thus have a conception of Macedonia both more and less extensive than Hammonds’s - less in that it reduces Emphasis on the north western lands that lie today within the Yugoslav state, but more in that it takes into greater account the territory east of the Axios. It is a definition based on the political development of the Macedonian State over a long period of time,incorporating the territory drained by 3 rivers,adding the Strymon to the Haliacmon and Axios.

In the Shadow of Olympus:The Emergence of Macedon, Eugene N. Borza, Princeton University Press,1990,pages 29 - 31 

“Borza has taken the trouble to know Macedonia: the land, its prehistory, its position in the Balkans, and its turbulent modern history. All contribute…to our understanding of the emergence of Macedon…. Borza has employed two of the historian’s most valuable tools, autopsy and common sense, to produce a well-balanced introduction to the state that altered the course of Greek and Near Eastern history.”

—Waldemar Heckel, Bryn Mawr Classical Review

Modern historians about Macedonia – John Maxwell O’Brien

 

To underline his role as avenger and hegemon of the Corinthian League, and perhaps in the hope that the Athenians would come to share in the fantasy of this as a war of revenge, Alexander selected 300 full sets of armor from dead Persians and ordered them to be sent back to Athens and dedicated to Athena on the Acropolis. The attached inscription read:

“Alexander son of Philip and the Greeks, except the Lacedaemonians,106 set up these spoils from the barbarians dwelling in Asia” (A.1.16.7).

Alexander the Great:The Invisible Enemy by John Maxwell O’Brien, page 62

Modern historians about Macedonia –N. G. L. Hammond

 

 

Quote:

 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 be  accepted 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

Modern historians about Macedonia – William John Woodhouse

 

This was Macedonia in the strict sense, the land where settled immigrants of Greek stock later to be called Macedonians.

William John Woodhouse,The tutorial history of Greece,from the earliest times to the death of Demosthenes,page 402

 

Modern historians about Macedonia – Fergus Millar

 

The importance attached to Hadrian’s institution is best illustrated by an early third-century inscription from  Thessalonica honouring a local magnate, T.Aelius Geminius Macedo [i.e., the Macedonian], who had not only held magistracies and provided timber for a basilica in his own city, and been Imperial  curator of Apollonia,

 

but had been archon of the Panhellenic congress in Athens, priest of the deified Hadrian and president of the eighteenth Panhellenic Games (199/200); the inscription mentions proudly that he was the first archon of the Panhellenic Congress from the city of  Thessalonica.

 

Fergus Millar,The Roman Empire and Its Neighbours (1967), pages 205 - 206

Modern Historians about Macedonia – James S. Romm

 

Eventually the Greek way of war would prove so superior to that of the barbarian world as to enable a largely Hellenic army,led by Alexander the Great,to conquer not only Egypt but most of Asia as well. 

On the War for Greek Freedom:Selections from the ‘Histories’,edited by James S. Romm,translated by Samuel Shirley,page xiii

In the large scheme of things,Xerxes’ analysis was correct, as would be demonstrated by Alexander the Great and his Greco-Macedonian invasion of Asia,150 years down the road. 

On the War for Greek Freedom:Selections from the ‘Histories’,edited by James S. Romm,translated by Samuel Shirley,page 125

Modern Historians about Macedonia – Robin Osborne

 

After that victory Philip imposed his own conditions on the whole Greek mainland, making a treaty with all significant cities except Sparta, the so-called ‘League of Corinth’. This treaty obliged the Greek cities to provide soldiers for Philip’s campaigns, but it did not, contrary to what had been feared at Athens, interfere with the constitutions of the individual cities.

Greek History Classical Foundations Series,Robin Osborne,Routledge,2004,page 127

 

Although Macedonians were accepted as Greek, after some discussion, for the purposes of competing at the Olympic games, and although the language of the Macedonians appears most probably to have been a dialect of Greek related to the dialects of north-west Greek, some Macedonian customs were distinct.

Greek History Classical Foundations Series,Robin Osborne,Routledge,2004,page 127

Modern Historians about Macedonia – Rosalie and Anthony E. David

 

The history of ancient Egyptian civilisation covers a period from c.3100 BC to the conquest of the country by Alexander the Great in 332 BC. Before the Dynastic Period (beginning c.3100 BC), the communities laid the foundations for the later great advances in technological, political, religious and artistic developments; this is generally referred to as the Predynastic Period (c.5000-3100 BC). 

After *Alexander the Great conquered Egypt in 332 BC, the country was ruled by a line of Macedonian Greeks who descended from *Alexander’s general, Ptolemy (who became *Ptolemy I) .The last of this dynasty, *Cleopatra VII, failed to prevent the absorption of Egypt into the Roman Empire in 30 BC, and subsequently Egypt was ruled by Rome as a province.

Rosalie and Anthony E. David, ‘A Biographical Dictionary of Ancient Egypt’,Routledge,1991

 

Modern Historians about Macedonia – Francis Sydney Marvin

 

With the conquests of Alexander the Great more than the dream of Isocrates became actual fact. A Hellene was now lord over a vast tract of Asia. What attitude would the Hellene in these new circumstances take up to the barbarian?

It is interesting that Aristotle had advised Alexander to adopt a markedly different attitude towards Greeks and towards Asiatics. To the Greeks he was to show himself a leader (ἡγεμών), but to the Asiatics a despotic master (δεσπότης).

 Francis Sydney Marvin,‘’Western Races and the World’’,page 57

Modern Historians about Macedonia – A. B. Bosworth

 

Now preparations for storming the city could be pressed ahead. The siege mound was gradually extended towards the walls and Alexander’s military engineers, notably the brilliant Thessalian Diades, constructed the most formidable offensive arsenal yet seen in Hellenic siege warfare.

 

“Conquest and Empire:The Reign of Alexander the Great”, A.B.Bosworth,page 66

 

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