Quotes About Macedonia

QUOTES ABOUT MACEDONIA
On ancient Macedonian history
Ancient Sources
Geographers
 Afterwards they added races for chariots and pairs of foals, and for single foals with rider. It
is said that the victors proclaimed were: for the chariot and pair, Belistiche, a woman from the
seaboard of Macedonia; for the ridden race, Tlepolemus of Lycia. Tlepolemus, they say, won
at the hundred and thirty-first Festival [Olympics], and Belistiche at the third before this.
o Pausanias, "Description of Greece", 5.8.11
 The Phocians were deprived of their share in the Delphic sanctuary and in the Greek
assembly, and their votes were given by the Amphictyons to the Macedonians.
o Pausanias, "Description of Greece", 10.3.3
 They say that Amphictyon himself summoned to the common assembly the following tribes
of the Greek people: Ionians, Dolopes, Thessalians, Aenianians, Magnesians, Malians,
Phthiotians, Dorians, Phocians, Locrians who border on Phocis, living at the bottom of Mount
Cnemis. But when the Phocians seized the sanctuary, and the war came to an end nine years
afterwards, there came a change in the Amphictyonic League. The Macedonians managed to
enter it, while the Phocian nation and a section of the Dorians, namely the Lacedaemonians,
lost their membership, the Phocians because of their rash crime, the Lacedaemonians as a
penalty for allying themselves with the Phocians.
o Pausanias, "Description of Greece", 10.8.2
 The Amphictyons today number thirty. Nicopolis, Macedonia and Thessaly each send six
deputies; the Boeotians, who in more ancient days inhabited Thessaly and were then called
Aeolians, the Phocians and the Delphians, each send two; ancient Doris sends one.
o Pausanias, "Description of Greece", 10.8.4
 There remain of Europe, first, Macedonia and the part of Thrace that are contiguous to it and
extend as far as Byzantium; secondly, Greece; and thirdly, the Islands that are close by.
Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece, yet now, since I am following the nature and shape
of the place geographically, I have decided to classify it apart from the rest of Greece and to join
it with that part of Thrace ...
o Strabo, "Geography", VII, Frg. 9, Loeb
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 The Aegean sea washes Greece on two sides: first, the side that faces towards the east
and stretches from Sunium, towards the north as far as the Thermaic Gulf and
Thessalonica a Macedonian city ...; and secondly, the side that faces towards the south, I mean
the Macedonian country, extending from Thessaloniceia as far as the Strymon.
o Strabo, "Geography", 7.7.4-5
 Three classes inhabited the city (Alexandria in Egypt): first the Egyptian or native stock of
people, who were quick-tempered and not inclined to civil life; and secondly the mercenary
class, who were severe and numerous and intractable...; and, third, the tribe of the Alexandrians,
who also were not distinctly inclined to civil life, and for the same reasons, but still they were
better than those others, for even though they were a mixed people, still they were Greeks by
origin and mindful of the customs common to the Greeks.
o Strabo, "Geography", 17.1.12-13
 “What is now called Macedonia was in earlier times called Emathia. And it took its
present name from Macedon, one of its early chieftains. And there was also a city emathia close
to the sea. Now a part of this country was taken and held by certain of the Epeirotes and the
Illyrians, but most of it by the Bottiaei and the Thracians. The Bottiaei came from Crete
originally, so it is said, along with Botton as chieftain. As for the Thracians, the Pieres inhabited
Pieria and the region about Olympus; the Paeones, the region on both sides of the Axius River,
which on that account is called Amphaxitis; the Edoni and Bisaltae, the rest of the country as far
as the Strymon. Of these two peoples the latter are called Bisaltae alone, whereas a part of the
Edoni are called Mygdones, a part Edones, and a part Sithones. But of all these tribes the
Argeadae, as they are called, established themselves as masters, and also the Chalcidians of
Euboea; for the Chalcidians of Euboea also came over to the country of the Sithones and jointly
peopled about thirty cities in it, although later on the majority of them were ejected and came
together into one city, Olynthus; and they were named the Thracian Chalcidians.
o Strabo, "Geography", book 7, Fragm 11
Historians
 He also buried the Persian commanders and the Greek mercenaries who were killed fighting
on the side of the enemy. But as many of them as he took prisoners he bound in fetters and sent
them away to Macedonia to till the soil, because, though they were Greeks, they were fighting
against Greece on behalf of the foreigners in opposition to the decrees which the Greeks had
made in their federal council. To Athens also he sent 300 suits of Persian armour to be hung up
in the Acropolis as a votive offering to Athena, and ordered this inscription to be fixed over
them, "Alexander, son of Philip and all the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians", present
this offering from the spoils taken from the foreigners inhabiting Asia".
o Arrian, "Anabasis Alexandri", I, 16, 7
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 Our enemies are Medes and Persians, men who for centuries have lived soft and luxurious
lives; we of Macedon for generations past have been trained in the hard school of danger and
war. Above all, we are free men, and they are slaves. There are Greek troops, to be sure, in
Persian service - but how different is their cause from ours! They will be fighting for pay - and
not much of at that; we, on the contrary, shall fight for Greece, and our hearts will be in it.
As for our foreign troops - Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, Agrianes - they are the best and
stoutest soldiers in Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the
tribes of Asia. And what, finally, of the two men in supreme command? You have Alexander,
they - Darius!
o Alexander the Great addressing his troops prior to the battle of Issus. Arrian,
"Anabasis Alexandri", II, 7
 Your ancestors came to Macedonia and the rest of Greece and did us great harm, though
we had done them no prior injury. I have been appointed leader of the Greeks, and wanting to
punish the Persians I have come to Asia, which I took from you ...
o Alexander's letter to Persian king Darius in response to a truce plea. Arrian,
"Anabasis Alexandri", II, 14, 4
 He (King Philip) wanted as many Greeks as possible to take part in the festivities in honour
of the gods, and so planned brilliant musical contests and lavish banquets for his friends and
guests. Out of all Greece he summoned his personal guest-friends and ordered the members of
his court to bring along as many as they could of their acquaintances from abroad.
o Diodorus Siculus, "Histories", 16.91.5-6
 Every seat in the theater was taken when Philip appeared wearing a white cloak and by his
express orders his bodyguard held away from him and followed only at a distance, since he
wanted to show publicly that he was protected by the goodwill of all the Greeks, and had no
need of a guard of spearmen.
o Diodorus Siculus, "Histories", 16.93.1
 Such was the end of Philip (II, king of Macedonia) ...He had ruled 24 years. He is known to
fame as one who with but the slenderest resources to support his claim to a throne won for
himself the greatest empire among the Greeks, while the growth of his position was not due so
much to his prowess in arms as to his adroitness and cordiality in diplomacy.
o Diodorus Siculus, "Histories", 16.95.1-2
 These races, Ionian and Dorian, were the foremost in ancient time, the first a Pelasgian and
the second a Hellenic (Greek) people. The Pelasgian race has never yet left its home; the
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Hellenic has wandered often and far. For in the days of king Deucalion it inhabited the land of
Phthia, then the country called Histiaean, under Ossa and Olympus, in the time of Dorus son of
Hellen; driven from this Histiaean country by the Cadmeans, it settled about Pindus in the
territory called Macedonian; from there again it migrated to Dryopia, and at last came from
Dryopia into the Peloponnese, where it took the name of Dorian.
o Herodotus, " Histories", 1.56, ed. A. D. Godley
 Tell your king (Xerxes), who sent you, how his Greek viceroy ( Alexander I) of Macedonia
has received you hospitably.
o Herodotus, " Histories", 5.20.4 ,Loeb
 Now that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself
chance to know and will prove it in the later part of my history.
o Herodotus, " Histories", 5.22.1, ed. A. D. Godley
 Alexander ( I of Macedon), however, proving himself to be an Argive, was judged to be a
Greek. He accordingly competed in the furlong race and tied step for first place.
o Herodotus, " Histories", 5.22.2, ed. A. D. Godley
 The following took part in the war: from the Peloponnese, the Lacedaemonians provided
sixteen ships; the Corinthians the same number as at Artemisium; the Sicyonians furnished
fifteen ships, the Epidaurians ten, the Troezenians five, the Hermioneans three. All of these
except the Hermioneans are Dorian and Macedonian and had last come from Erineus and Pindus
and the Dryopian region. The Hermioneans are Dryopians, driven out of the country now called
Doris by Herakles and the Malians.
o Herodotus, " Histories", 8.43.1, ed. A. D. Godley
 Men of Athens ... In truth I would not tell it to you if I did not care so much for all Greece;
I myself am by ancient descent a Greek, and I would not willingly see Greece change her
freedom for slavery. I tell you, then, that Mardonius and his army cannot get omens to his
liking from the sacrifices. Otherwise you would have fought long before this. Now, however, it
is his purpose to pay no heed to the sacrifices, and to attack at the first glimmer of dawn, for he
fears, as I surmise, that your numbers will become still greater. Therefore, I urge you to prepare,
and if (as may be) Mardonius should delay and not attack, wait patiently where you are; for he
has but a few days' provisions left. If, however, this war ends as you wish, then must you take
thought how to save me too from slavery, who have done so desperate a deed as this for the sake
of Greece in my desire to declare to you Mardonius' intent so that the barbarians may not attack
you suddenly before you yet expect them. I who speak am Alexander the Macedonian.
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o The speech of Alexander I of Macedonia when he was admitted to the Olympic
games, Herodotus, " Histories", 9.45, ed. A. D. Godley
 The Aetolians, the Acarnanians, the Macedonians, men of the same speech, are united
or disunited by trivial causes that arise from time to time; with aliens, with barbarians, all
Greeks wage and will wage eternal war; for they are enemies by the will of nature, which
is eternal, and not from reasons that change from day to day...
o Titus Livius, "History of Rome", Book XXXI, 29.15
 Yet through Alexander (the Great) Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the gods of the
Greeks ... Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all
Asia with Greek magistracies ... Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its
Seleucia, nor Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor the Caucasus a Greek city,
for by the founding of cities in these places savagery was extinguished and the worse element,
gaining familiarity with the better, changed under its influence.
o Plutarch, " Moralia: On the Fortune of Alexander", I, 328d, 329a Loeb
 If it were not my purpose to combine foreign things with things Greek, to traverse and
civilize every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the
bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to disseminate and shower the blessings
of Greek justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the
luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are,
forgive me, Diogenes, that I imitate Heracles, and emulate Perseus, band follow in the footsteps
of Dionysus, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorious Greeks
should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage
mountain tribes beyond the Caucasus.
o Plutarch, " Moralia: On the Fortune of Alexander", I, 332a-b, Loeb
 What spectator ... would not exclaim ... that through Fortune the foreign host was prevailing
beyond its deserts, but through Virtue the Greeks were holding out beyond their ability? And if
the ones (i.e., the enemy) gains the upper hand, this will be the work of Fortune or of some
jealous deity or of divine retribution; but if the others (i.e., the Greeks) prevail, it will be Virtue
and daring, friendship and fidelity, that will win the guerdon of victory? These were, in fact, the
only support that Alexander had with him at this time, since Fortune had put a barrier between
him and the rest of his forces and equipment, fleets, horse, and camp. Finally, the Macedonians
routed the barbarians, and, when they had fallen, pulled down their city on their heads.
o Plutarch, " Moralia: On the Fortune of Alexander", II, 344 e-f, Loeb
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 In the presence of Zeus, Hera, and Apollo: in the presence of the Genius of Carthage, of
Heracles, and Iolaus: in the presence of Ares, Triton, and Poseidon: in the presence of the gods
who battle for us and the Sun, Moon, and Earth; in the presence of Rivers, Lakes, and Waters: in
the presence of all the gods who possess Macedonia and the rest of Greece: in the presence of
all the gods of the army who preside over this oath.
o Polybius, "Histories", VII, 9.2-3, Loeb
 Surely it would have been much more dignified and fairer to include Philip's achievements
in the history of Greece than to include the history of Greece in that of Philip.
o Polybius, "Histories", VIII, 11.4, Loeb (Statement on Theopompus)
 How highly should we honor the Macedonians, who for the greater part of their lives never
cease from fighting with the barbarians for the sake of the security of Greece? For who is not
aware that Greece would have constantly stood in the greater danger, had we not been fenced by
the Macedonians and the honorable ambition of their kings?
o Polybius, "Histories", IX, 35.2, Loeb
 Then your rivals in the struggle for supremacy and renown were the Achaeans and
Macedonians, peoples of your own race, and Philip was their commander.
o Polybius, "Histories", IX, 37.7, Loeb
 For in their anxiety to get the better of Philip and humiliate the Macedonians, they have
without knowing it invoked such a cloud from the west as may, perhaps, at first only cast its
shadow on Macedonia, but in time will be the cause of great evil to all Greece.
o Polybius, "Histories", IX, 37.10, Loeb
 Holy shadows of the dead, I'm not to blame for your cruel and bitter fate, but the accursed
rivalry which brought sister nations and brother people, to fight one another. I do not feel happy
for this victory of mine. On the contrary, I would be glad, brothers, if I had all of you standing
here next to me, since we are united by the same language, the same blood and the same
visions.
o Alexander the Great addressing the dead Greeks of the battle of Chaeronia. Curtius
Rufus, "Historia"
 The country on the sea coast, now called Macedonia, was first acquired by Alexander (I), the
father of Perdiccas, and his ancestors, originally Temenids fromArgos.
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o Thucydides, " The Peloponnesian War", London, 2.99.3, J. M. Dent, New York, E. P.
Dutton, 1910
 Now Alexander [the Great], when he had taken Gaza, made haste to go up to Jerusalem [...]
And when the Book of Daniel was showed him wherein Daniel declared that one of the Greeks
should destroy the empire of the Persians, he supposed that himself was the person intended.
[The Bible verses showed Alexander might be Daniel 7:6; 8:3-8, 20-22; 11:3. Some or all of
them are plain predictions of his conquests and successors.]
o Flavius Josephus' "Antiquities of the Jews" Book 11, Chapter 8, Paragraphs 4&5
Military commanders
 Caesar judged that he must drop everything else and pursue Pompey where he had betaken
himself after his flight, so that he should not be able to gather more forces and renew, and he
advanced daily as far as he could go with the cavalry and ordered a legion to follow shorter
stages. An edict had been published in Pompey's name that all the younger men in the
province (Macedonia), both Greeks and Roman citizens, should assemble to take an oath.
o Julius Caesar, "Civil War", 111.102.3
Orators
 For at a congress of the Lacedaemonian allies and the other Greeks, in which Amyntas, the
father of Philip, being entitled to a seat, was represented by a delegate whose vote was
absolutely under his control, he joined the other Greeks in voting to help Athens to recover
possession of Amphipolis. As proof of this I presented from the public records the resolution of
the Greek congress and the names of those who voted.
o Aeschines, "On the Embassy", 32
 Argos is the land of your fathers.
o Isocrates, "To Philip", 5.32, Loeb
 Therefore, since the others are so lacking in spirit, I think it is opportune for you to head the
war against the King; and, while it is only natural for the other descendants of Heracles, and for
men who are under the bonds of their polities and laws, to cleave fondly to that state in which
they happen to dwell, it is your privilege, as one who has been blessed with untrammeled
freedom, to consider all Greece your fatherland, as did the founder of your race, and to be
as ready to brave perils for her sake as for the things about which you are personally most
concerned.
o Isocrates, "To Philip", 5.127, Loeb
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.
 ... all men will be grateful to you: the Greeks for your kindness to them and the rest of the
nations, if by your hands they are delivered from barbaric despotism and are brought under the
protection of Greece.
o Isocrates, "To Philip", 5.154, Loeb
Poets
 And she conceived and bore to Zeus, who delights in the thunderbolt, two sons, Magnes and
Macedon, rejoicing in horses, who dwell round about Pieria and Olympus.
o Hesiod, "Catalogues of Women and Eoiae", 3, Loeb, H.G. Evelyn-White
Miscellaneous
 (16:9) And a vision appeared to Paul in the night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and
prayed him, saying, Come over into Macedonia, and help us. [...] (17:1) Now when they had
passed through Amphipolis and Apollonia, they came to Thessalonica, where was a synagogue
of the Jews: (17:2) And Paul, as his manner was, went in unto them, and three sabbath days
reasoned with them out of the scriptures, [...] (17:4) And some of them believed, and consorted
with Paul and Silas; and of the devout Greeks a great multitude, and of the chief women not a
few. [...] (17:10) And the brethren immediately sent away Paul and Silas by night unto Berea:
who coming thither went into the synagogue of the Jews. (17:11) These were more noble than
those in Thessalonica, in that they received the word with all readiness of mind, and searched
the scriptures daily, whether those things were so. (17:12) Therefore many of them believed;
also of honourable women which were Greeks, and of men, not a few.
o New Testament (Holy Bible KJV), Acts of the Apostles 16:9; 17:1-2, 4, 10-12
Modern Sources
Archaeologists
 Greek epigraphic monuments created before definitive Roman domination of our area
are to be found in modest quantity.
o Vera Bitrakova Grozdanova, FYROM archaeologist, "Hellenistic Monuments in S.R.
Macedonia", Skopje, 1987, p. 130
 Macedonia and Epirus were the buffers of Greece in Europe ...
o R. M. Cook, British archaeologist, "The Greeks until Alexander", 1962, p. 23
 At the end of the Early Iron Age kings still reigned in Argos, Messenia, Epirus and
Macedonia, and at Sparta there was the curious system of two co-regnant kings. But most Greek
states were governed by aristocracies with annual magistrates of limited functions and a
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permanent council, whether hereditary or chosen ...
o R. M. Cook, British archaeologist, "The Greeks until Alexander", 1962, p. 65
 Herodotus stated quite clearly that Perdiccas, the first recorded king of Macedonia, and
his descendants were Greeks and there is no reason why we should not take the Father of
History's word on this fundamental point..
o John Crossland, British archaeologist and Diana Constance, "Macedonian Greece",
p.16, W.W. Norton & Company (September 1982)
 Tradition held the other element to be Hellenic, and no one in the fourth century seriously
questioned its belief.
o David George Hogarth, "Philip and Alexander of Macedon", p.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.
o David George Hogarth, "Philip and Alexander of Macedon", p.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 [...] Archelaus patronized Athenian poets and Athenian drama and
commissioned Euripides to dramatize the deeds of his Argive ancestors [...] "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.
o David George Hogarth, "Philip and Alexander of Macedon", pp.9-10
 We are not to be amazed that in the archaeological material of Pelagonia we have a rarely
great wealth of reflections of all pronounced cultural events in the relations between
middle-Danubian and Graeco-Aegean world [...] In a such great chronological distance in the
life of ancient Pelagonia two stages are visible: development and existence in the frames of
Hellenic culture and later the Roman one.
o Ivan Mikulčić, FYROM archaeologist, "Pelagonija", Skopje, 1966, p.2, p.4
 The star of Vergina applies to the 3rd Century BC northern Greece - a very different
situation, not related to the 21st Century AD. I think it's modern politics, and we're
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witnessing the use of an archaeological symbol for history that it's really not related to.
o Bajana Mojsov, FYROM archaeologist, "BBC News (2004), When archaeology gets
bent, BBC World Service, 2004, The World Today programme", Accessed 12 October
2006
 Here we notice that in Acts [of the Apostles] the term "Hellenes" (or "Greeks") is used with
noteworthy propriety: the people of Thessalonica, of Berea, of Ephesus, of Iconium. and of
Syrian Antioch are spoken of as Hellenes. Those were all cities which had no claim to be
Roman, except in the general way of being parts of the Roman provinces Macedonia, Galatia,
and Syria. They were counted Greek cities, and reckoned themselves as such.
o William Mitchell Ramsay, "Historical Commentary on First Corinthians", p.34
 With the end of Iron Age III, i.e. with the total Hellenisation of material culture, the
prehistory of Macedonia ends.
o Vojislav Sanev, FYROM archaeologist, "Prehistory of S.R. Macedonia", Skopje 1977,
p.13
Diplomats
 Soon after Athens had reached the height of its glory under Pericles in the Fifth Century, B.
C., and had started on its decline, the rise of Macedon under Philip carried Greek influence
into new regions. The glory of Athens had been based upon sea power, but the conquests of
Macedon were the work of land armies— Philip invented the invincible phalanx. Upon Philip's
death his son, Alexander the Great, set forth to conquer the whole of the then known world, and
as that world in his day lay to the east, his marches were in that direction. In a few years he had
overrun the fertile plains and opulent cities of Asia Minor, Syria, Mesopotamia, and Persia, and
had carried his conquests to the gates of Delhi. In all the cities in the intervening countries he
left large garrisons of Greek soldiers. In many of these countries he founded flourishing new
cities. In every place his soldiers were followed by large colonies of Greek civilians. The result
was that the whole of western Asia, and of what we call the Near East, including Asia Minor
Egypt, Palestine, Syria, Babylonia, Mesopotamia, Persia, and northwestern India, was saturated
with the Greek influence and with Greek colonies.
o Henry Morgenthau, "I was sent to Athens", Doubleday, Doran & Company, inc
(1929)
 The imagination of these conquered peoples was dazzled by the introduction of Greek art,
literature, philosophy, and public works. Though the successors of Alexander were unable to
maintain the political control of the lands he conquered, and though successive waves of Roman,
Arabian, and Tartar conquests swept over these lands in succeeding centuries, none of the later
conquerors has been able wholly to eradicate the influence of Greek culture, nor to exterminate
that element of population which was of Greek blood.
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o Henry Morgenthau, "I was sent to Athens", Doubleday, Doran & Company, inc
(1929)
Historians
 Philip II, at least from the time of his victory over Phocis, Athens, and their allies in 346,
prepared to proclaim himself the champion of a United Greece against the barbarians.
o Ernst Badian, "Cambridge history of Iran", p. 421
 Our understanding of the Macedonians' emergence into history is confounded by two events:
the establishment of the Macedonians as an identifiable ethnic group, and the foundation of their
ruling house. The "highlanders" or "Makedones" of the mountainous regions of western
Macedonia are derived from northwest Greek stock; they were akin both to those who at
an earlier time may have migrated south to become the historical "Dorians", and to other
Pindus tribes who were the ancestors of the Epirotes or Molossians. That is, we may suggest
that northwest Greece provided a pool of Indo-European speakers of Proto-Greek from which
were drawn the tribes who later were known by different names as they established their
regional identities in separate parts of the country... First, the matter of the Hellenic origins of
the Macedonians: Nicholas Hammond's general conclusion (though not the details of his
arguments) that the origin of the Macedonians lies in the pool of proto-Greek speakers who
migrated out of the Pindus mountains during the Iron Age, is acceptable.
o Eugene N. Borza, "Makedonika", Regina Books, Claremont CA
 Only recently have we begun to clarify these muddy waters by revealing the
Demosthenean 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.
o Eugene N. Borza, "In The Shadow of Olympus", pp. 5-6, Princeton University Press
 There is no doubt that this tradition of a superimposed Greek house was widely believed by
the Macedonians [...] There was a persistent, well attested tradition in antiquity that told of a
group of Greeks from Argos -descendants of Temenus, kinsman of Heracles- who came to
Macedonia and established their rule over the Makedones, unifying them and providing a royal
house.
o Eugene N. Borza, "In The Shadow of Olympus", p. 80, Princeton University Press
 "There is no reason to deny the Macedonians' own traditions about their early kings and the
migration of the Makedones [..] The basic story as provided by Herodotus and Thucydides,
minus the interpolation of the Temenid connections, undoubtedly reflects the Macedonians'
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own traditions about their early history.
o Eugene N. Borza, "In The Shadow of Olympus", p. 84, Princeton University Press
 Their daughter, who would be the half-sister of Alexander the Great and, later the wife of
Cassander, was appropriately named Thessalonike, to commemorate Philip's victory in
Thessaly. In 315 Cassander founded at or near the site of ancient Therme the great city
that still bears her name.
o Eugene N. Borza, "In The Shadow of Olympus", p.220, Princeton University Press
 Alexander ruled the world as his father had ruled Macedon, concentrating power in his own
hands and office to his Companions. In nationality the Companions remained overwhelmingly
Hellenic.
o A.B. Bosworth, professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of
Western Australia, "Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great",
Cambridge University Press, Reissue Edition, March 1993
 It [Corinthian League] comprised states, which were each bound to Macedon by bilateral
treaties; and it was perfectly natural that they should create a general alliance under the
leadership of the Macedonian king, acting as the spiritual successors of the Hellenic
League of 480 BC.
o A.B. Bosworth, professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of
Western Australia, "Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great",
Cambridge University Press, Reissue Edition, March 1993
 The prime example of a change in status is the case of Aspendus in Pamphylia. The degree
of Hellenism there has been questioned in recent years, but Alexander certainly regarded the
city as Greek, There seems to have been no doubt about the Aeolic origins of the barbaric
population of Side (cf. Air. 1.26.4). The Aspendians, who at least used a dialect, which was
recognizably Greek, were granted citizen rights at Argos in the latter part of the fourth century,
as kinsmen and (probably) colonists, and the people of Cilician Soli who also claimed Argive
origins were given privileged access to the assembly. They were certainly regarded as Hellenic
communities and Alexander will have treated them as such, as he did the people of Mallus,
whose Argive origins inspired his generosity (Arr. 11.5.9) [...] Alexander himself seems to
have made little distinction in his last years between Greeks of Europe or Asia, or even between
Greeks and Barbarians.
o A.B. Bosworth, professor of Classics and Ancient History at the University of
Western Australia, "Conquest and Empire: The Reign of Alexander the Great",
Cambridge University Press, Reissue Edition, March 1993
13
 Macedonian kings were proud of their Greek blood, and it was only jaundiced
opponents like Demosthenes the Athenian who ventured to call them "barbarians." They
claimed descent from Herakles through the Dorian Kings of Argos, and they learned the tales of
Troy and of Odysseus, and the songs of the Greek lyric poets, as they learned their letters. Fifty
years before Alexander was born, a King of Macedon had been proud to give a home to the aged
"modernist" playwright, Euripides, eighty years old and sick and tired of a democracy which
had led Athens into defeat and revolution, and whose philistines accused Euripides of preaching
atheism and immorality …
o A. R. Burn, "Alexander the Great and the Hellenistic Empire", Macmillan, 1948, p.4
 Macedonia (or Macedon) was an ancient, somewhat backward kingdom in northern Greece.
Its emergence as a Hellenic (Greek) power was due to a resourceful king, Philip II (359-336),
whose career has been unjustly overshadowed by the deeds of his son, Alexander the Great.
o Mortimer Chambers, Professor of History at the University of California at Los
Angeles, "The Western Experience", p. 79, Mortimer Chambers et al, Alfred A. Knopf,
New York, 2nd edition, 1997
 Such a glorious ancestry was in the eyes of Greeks the hallmark of the Hellenic
persona of the king of Macedon, who could, on the other hand, rely on fidelity of the people
from which he had sprung. The Greek cities did not feel that they were allying with a barbarian,
since for generations the Macedonian dynasty had been allowed, as Greeks, to take part in
the Olympic games, where they won prizes [...] In Greece proper nevertheless, there remained
a number of people like Demosthenes, who had in no way renounce their hatred of
Macedon. They did not lack the means to take action: the new king of Persia, Darius III
Codomannus, whose reign started in 336, anxious to war off the threat of a Macedonian
invasion, liberally distributed among the Greeks funds that were to buy consciences and cover
the expenses of war against Alexander.
o Francois Chamoux, French historian, "Hellenistic Civilization", Blackwell
Publishing Professional, 2002, p.8, 9’’
 To a certain extent the Macedonian monarchy had already been a unifying element in
Greek history, even before the conquests of Alexander.
o Michael Crawford, Fergus Millar, Emilio Gabba, "Sources for Ancient History", p.
12, Cambridge University Press
 We have for the first time a standard of Macedonian royal burial by which to judge other
rich tombs. We have much new information on the military equipment of the era. We have a
whole new chapter in the history of Greek tomb paintings, a fragmentary field but one which
throws unique and contemporary light on the whole lost achievement of Greek free painting.
14
o Michael Crawford, Fergus Millar, Emilio Gabba, "Sources for Ancient History", p.
181, Cambridge University Press
 The king of the Macedonians was now a member of the Synhedrion, whose decrees had to
be expressly ratified by the individual states. These Hellenistic Leagues, directed by Macedon,
rounded off a process of which the general unity is unmistakable, quite apart from all that was
conditioned by the time and the special circumstances of each case.
o Victor Ehrenberg, "The Greek State", Methuen, (July 2000), p.120
 For the Greeks of the third century B.C., it is true, the Hellenistic world was only an
extension of the earlier Greek world; that in itself is perhaps sufficient justification for
including the present discussions under the one general title. There is more to add. It was
Greeks who most strongly determined the general spirit and the cultural form of the
Hellenistic age. It was the Greek spirit which, nourished and merged in the stream of
Greek evolution, took over the local influences.
o Victor Ehrenberg, "The Greek State", Methuen, (July 2000), p.135
 Alexander and the Macedonians carried Greek civilization into the East. It is, I believe,
a historical fact that a command was issued by the king to the Greek states to worship him as a
god; with this the monarchy took a new form, which went far beyond the Macedonian or
Persian model, and which was destined to have immense importance in world history. How far
Alexander deliberately tried to Hellenize the East remains uncertain; but the outcome
certainly was that he opened up the world to a Greek.
o Victor Ehrenberg, "The Greek State", Methuen, (July 2000), p.139
 Ancient allegations that the Macedonians were non-Greeks all had their origin in Athens at
the time of the struggle with Philip II. Then as now, political struggle created the prejudice. The
orator Aeschines once even found it necessary, in order to counteract the prejudice vigorously
fomented by his opponents, to defend Philip on this issue and describe him at a meeting of the
Athenian Popular Assembly as being 'Entirely Greek'. Demosthenes' allegations were lent on
appearance of credibility by the fact, apparent to every observer, that the life-style of the
Macedonians, being determined by specific geographical and historical conditions, was different
from that of a Greek city-state. This alien way of life was, however, common to western
Greeks of Epiros, Akarnania and Aitolia, as well as to the Macedonians, and their
fundamental Greek nationality was never doubted. Only as a consequence of the political
disagreement with Macedonia was the issue raised at all.
o Malcolm Errington, "A History of Macedonia", University of California Press,
February 1993
15
 The Molossians were the strongest and, decisive for Macedonia, most easterly of the three
most important Epirote tribes, which, like Macedonia but unlike the Thesprotians and the
Chaonians, still retained their monarchy. They were Greeks, spoke a similar dialect to that of
Macedonia, suffered just as much from the depredations of the Illyrians and were in
principle the natural partners of the Macedonian king who wished to tackle the Illyrian
problem at its roots.
o Malcolm Errington, "A History of Macedonia", University of California Press,
February 1993
 … demonstrate that not even the forces of nature could thwart the advance of the Great King.
The most northerly Greek state, the Kingdom of Macedon, had already submitted to Xerxes'
envoys: Thessaly did not resist either.
o Colin McEvedy, "The New Penguin Atlas of Ancient History: Revised Edition", p. 62
 The Macedonian kings, who maintained that their Greek ancestry traced back to Zeus,
had long given homes and patronage to Greece's most distinguished artists.
o Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.48
 But Alexander was stressing his link with Achilles ... Achilles was also a stirring Greek hero,
useful for a Macedonian king whose Greek ancestry did not stop Greeks from calling him
a barbarian.
o Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.60
 No man, and only one hero, had been called invincible before him, and then only by a poet,
but the hero was Heracles, ancestor of the Macedonian kings.
o Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.71
 To his ancestors (to a Persian's ancestors) Macedonians were only known as 'yona
takabara', the 'Greeks who wear shields on their heads', an allusion to their
broad-brimmed hats.
o Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.104
 As for the hired Greeks in Persian service, thousands of the dead were to be buried, but the
prisoners were bound in fetters and sent to hard labour in Macedonia, because they had fought
as Greeks against Greeks, on behalf of barbarians, contrary to the common decrees of the
Greek allies.
16
o Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.123
 Alexander son of Philip and the Greeks, except the Spartans ..., as Sparta did not consider it
to be her fathers' practice to follow, but to lead.
o Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.123
 In spirit, Alexander made a gesture to the Lydians' sensitivities, though his Greek crusade
owed them nothing as they were not Greeks.
o Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.128
 Alexander was not the first Greek to be honoured as a god for political favour...
o Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.131
 Macedonia as a whole was tended to remain in isolation from the rest of the Greeks ...
o Peter Green, "Alexander the Great", page 20
 ...for the first time he (Phillip) started to understand how Macedonia's outdated institutions
of feudalism an aristocratic monarchy so despised by the rest of Greece.
o Peter Green, "Alexander the Great", page 24
 The men of Lower Macedonia worshipped Greek gods; the royal family claimed descent
from Heracles. … The Molossian dynasty of Epirus, on the marches of Orestis and Elimiotis,
claimed descent from Achilles, through his grandson Pyrrhus - a fact destined to have
immeasurable influence on the young Alexander, whose mother Olympias was of Molossian
stock ...
o Peter Green, "Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography"
 In particular with the grim struggle for the succession still fresh in their minds, they urged -
very reasonably - that before leaving Macedonia he should marry and beget an heir. However,
the king rejected this motion out of hand, a decision which was to cause untold bloodshed and
political chaos after his death. It would be shameful, he told them, for the captain - general of
the Hellenes, with Philip's invincible army at his command, to idle his time away on
matrimonial dalliance...
o Peter Green, "Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography"
17
 In less than four years he had transformed Macedonia from a backward and primitive
kingdom to one of the most powerful states in the Greek world.
o Peter Green, "Alexander of Macedon, 356-323 B.C.: A Historical Biography"
 That the origin of this new population should be the supposed Dorian of northwest Greece
seemed to be confirmed by the early appearance of cist graves at Kalbaki in Epeiros,
Kozani, Vergina and Khaukhitsa in Makedonia.
o Jonathan M. Hall, Professor of Ancient Greek History at the University of Chicago,
"Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity", Cambridge University Press, 1998
 At the end of the bronze age a residue of Greek tribes stayed behind in Southern Macedonia
[...] one of these, the "Makedones" occupied Aegae and expanded into the coastal plain of
lower Macedonia which became the Kingdom of Macedon; their descendants were the
Macedonians proper of the classical period and they worshipped Greek gods. The other
Greek tribes became intermingled in upper Macedonia with Illyrians, Paeonians and
Thracians[...] in the early 5th century the royal house of Macedon, the Temenidae was
recognized as Greek by the Presidents of the Olympic Games. Their verdict was and is decisive.
It is certain that the Kings considered themselves to be of Greek descent from Heracles son
of Zeus. "Macedonian" was a strong dialect of very early Greek which was not intelligible
to contemporary Greeks.
o Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "A History of Greece to 323 BC",
Cambridge University, 1986 (p 516)
 Philip was born a Greek of the most aristocratic, indeed of divine, descent ... Philip was
both a Greek and a Macedonian, even as Demosthenes was a Greek and an Athenian ...
The Macedonians over whom Philip was to rule were an outlying family member of the
Greek-speaking peoples.
o Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "Philip of Macedon" Duckworth Publishing,
February 1998
 As subjects of the king the Upper Macedonians were henceforth on the same footing as the
original Macedonians, in that they could qualify for service in the King's Forces and thereby
obtain the elite citizenship. At one bound the territory, the population and wealth of the kingdom
were doubled. Moreover since the great majority of the new subjects were speakers of the West
Greek dialect, the enlarged army was Greek-speaking throughout.
o Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "Philip of Macedon" Duckworth Publishing,
18
February 1998
 The terms for the Phocians were mild by Greek Standards (one Greek state proposed the
execution of all the men) disarmament, division into village-settlements, payment of all
indemnity to Apollo and expulsion from the Amphictiony. In their place the Macedonians
were elected members. The two votes of Phocis on the council were transferred to the
Macedonian state.
o Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "The Genius of Alexander the Great", p.18,
Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd (November 26, 2004)
 The Balkan situation was far from secure, with the Odrysians and Scythians only recently
defeated and with the Triballi still defiant. Yet Philip was confident of success in the interest
of the Greek-speaking world and of Macedonia in particular.
o Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "The Genius of Alexander the Great", p.21,
Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd (November 26, 2004)
 What Clearhos saw there was the familiar features of his Greek world far to the west: a
Macedonian palace, Rhodian porticoes, coan funerary monuments, Athenian propylaea,
Delian houses, Megarian bowls, Corinthin tiles, and Mediterranean amphorae.
Traditionally Greek but cosmopolitan and eclectic this city provided a fitting home for the
easternmost copy of the Delphic maxims.
o Frank L. Holt, "Thundering Zeus: The Making of Hellenistic Bactria", p. 44
 King Philip of the northern Greek kingdom of Macedon perfected this system, and his
son, Alexander the Great, used it to conquer Greece and the Persian Empire.
o Archer Jones, American historian, "The Art of War in Western World" (University of
Illinois Press, 2000), p. 21
 ... for with Alexander the stage of Greek influence spread across the world.
o John Pentland Mahaffy, "Alexander's Empire", p. 8
 Hadrian... also founded a temple of `Zeus Panhellenios', and established Panhellenic games
and an annual Panhellenic assembly of deputies from all the cities of Greece and all those
19
outside which could prove their foundation from Greece;... 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 [Makedon] , 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.
That was one side of the picture, the development of Greek civilization and the conscious
celebration of its unity and prosperity. In the native populations of the East it produced mixed
feelings, nowhere better exemplified than the conversation of three Rabbis of the second
century ...
o Fergus Millar, "The Roman Empire and its Neighbours," 2nd ed. (London:
Duckworth, 1981), pp.205-206
 For their part, the fifth-century Macedonian kings used their newfound wealth to pursue
their twin goals of winning recognition for themselves as Greeks and Hellenizing the life of the
royal court.
o Sarah B. Pomeroy, Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan , Jennifer Tolbert Roberts,
"Ancient Greece. A Political, Social, and Cultural History", Oxford University Press,
USA, 1998, p. 376
 In its marginal status it [Macedonia] bore some resemblance to the less urbanized areas of
Greece such as Achaea and Aetolia. It resembled them as well in the fact that it preserved earlier
and less sophisticated political structures and like them it suffered from internal disunity. Both
the land and its population had the potential under favorable conditions of developing a state
whose power far exceeded other Greek powers [...] It [Macedonia] was a strategically
important centre of routes leading northwards out of Greece towards the Danube.
o Michael M. Sage, American historian, "Warfare in Ancient Greece", Routledge.
p.162
 Little is known of the Macedonian army before the reign of Philip II. Certainly, the area
which the earlier Macedonian kings drew their recruits was limited only to lowland Macedonia.
The only effective arm appears to have been cavalry. These horsemen, generally acknowledged
as the best in Greece, were drawn from the local nobility [...] The only really effective infantry
in this period appears to have been drawn from southern Greeks settled within Macedonia's
borders who fought as hoplites.
o Michael M. Sage, American historian, "Warfare in Ancient Greece", Routledge,
pp.163-164
20
 Philip first cut the ground from under it by uniting the nation in his Corinthian League [...]
In this manner Philip united all Greeks (with the single exception of Sparta) into a League
of states, and so for the first time in history created a Greek unified state.
o Ulrich Wilcken, "Alexander the Great"
 When we take into account the political conditions, religion and morals of the
Macedonians, our conviction is strengthened that they were a Greek race and akin to the
Dorians. Having stayed behind in the extreme north, they were unable to participate in the
progressive civilization of the tribes which went further south ...
o Ulrich Wilcken, "Alexander the Great", p. 22
 This was Macedonia in the strict sense, the land where settled immigrants of Greek
stock later to be called Macedonians.
o W. J. Woodhouse, Australian historian, "The tutorial history of Greece, to 323 B.C. :
from the earliest times to the death of Demosthenes", p.216, University Tutorial Press,
1904, (reprinted 1944)
Miscellaneous
 Certain proto-populations occupying distinct areas of the Balkans could be distinguished on
the territories of the cultural groups: in western part of the Balkans the proto-Illyrians, in the
east the proto Thracians, in the south the Hellenes (i.e: Greeks), in the northern part of the
Balkans the proto Daco-Moesians and in the southwest of the Central Balkans the proto Bryges.
o "Arheologija" magazine, No 1, Skopje 1995, "Bryges on the central Balkans in the
2nd and 1st millennium b.c." (summary)
 The latest archaeological findings have confirmed that Macedonia took its name from
a tribe of tall, Greek-speaking people, the Makednoi (ma(e)kos = length). They shared the
same religious beliefs as the rest of the Hellenic world but up until the Classical period
remained outside the cultural and political development of the southern city states [...] Yet
"vulgar" Macedonians were not unanimously accepted by "refined" southern Greeks, especially
by Athenians, as brethren. Occasionally they were classified as "barbarians". This was not due
to some latent but still distinguishable Thracian and Paeonian cultural influences or to
local linguistic peculiarities. To a certain extent Athenian reluctance could be attributed to
the Macedonian’s rough manners, their monarchic government, and their delayed
appearance on the scene. But the main source of antipathy was more than a century of
conflict over eastern Macedonia, Thrace, the Chalcidice colonies, and, of course, the final
21
victorious military involvement of Macedonia in southern affairs from 350 B.C. onwards
which signaled the end of the Classical period.
o "Encyclopaedia of Greece and Hellenic Tradition", Volume 2, Edited by Graham
Speake, Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2000, pg 972
 During the early archaic period at the Macedonian territory, the Dorian tribal groups came
across over the Pindos mountain, to the area of today's North-Western Greece and parts of
the southern Republic of Macedonia [FYROM]. They established several early principalities
partially by chasing away the local Paeonian tribes. Those tribal groups were the ancient
Macedonians.
o "Macedonian Heritage" magazine for History, Art, History, Archaeology and
Ethnology. Skopje, FYROM, No 1, july 1996, p.5
 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 [...] 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.
o "The Cambridge History of Africa" edited by J. D. Fage, pp. 105-106
 By Demosthenes the interval was spent rallying Greek opinion against 'The barbarian', as he
unjustly and inaccurately called the Macedonian (the near-Greekness of whose culture is now
revealed in a clearer light by such archaeological finds as the painted frescoes at Vergina,
uncovered in 1977). That Demosthenes propagandist and political efforts almost succeeded is
shown by the closeness of Philips' final victory on the field at Chaeronea.
o "The Oxford Illustrated History of Greece and the Hellenistic World" edited by John
Boardman, Jasper Griffin, Oswyn Murray, p.148
 In 350 BCE Philip of Macedonia united Greece under Macedonian rule. His son
Alexander, surnamed the Great, in turn conquered the entire Persian empire uniting Greece
with the Ancient Near east.
o Steven Bayme, "Understanding Jewish History: Text and Commentaries", Ktav
Publishing House (July 1997), p.50
22
 The city-states of ancient Greece established colonies in almost every part of of their known
world. Later Alexander of Macedonia through his conquests spread Hellenic culture both
east to Asia and south to Egypt. One of the lesser-known legacies of Alexander's excursions
is the Greeks who stayed in northern India, ruling there for twenty generations.
o Benjamin J. Broome, Professor of Communication, "Exploring the Greek Mosaic: A
Guide to Intercultural Communication in Greece", p.27
 The Macedonians were of Greek stock, as their traditions and remains of their
language prove.
o Thomas Kelly Cheyne, "Encyclopaedia biblica: A critical dictionary of the literary;
political and religious history, the archaeology, geography, and natural history of the
Bible"
 The idea of the city-state was first challenged by the ideal of pan-Hellenic unity supported
by some writers and orators, among which the Athenian Isocrates (436-338) became a leading
proponent with his Panegyrics of 380 suggesting a Greek holy war against Persia. However,
only the rise of Macedonia made the realization of Panhellenic unity possible.
o Vilho Harle, Professor of International Relations at University of Lapland in Finland,
"Ideas of Social Order in the Ancient World", p. 24
 Although the Macedonians, whose territory occupied the area around present-day
Thessaloniki in northern Greece, considered themselves part of the Greek cultural sphere,
many Greeks regarded them with contempt. In the eyes of the Greeks, the Macedonians
were a mere offshoot of the original stock. They spoke a Greek dialect, to be sure, but they
were led by a backward monarchy and their nobles.
o Manfred F.R. Kets de Vries, Dutch author, researcher and clinical professor of
leadership development, "Are Leaders born or Are they made?: The case of Alexander
the Great", Karnac Books (June 2004)
 Philip, on campaign in Thrace, got the news along with two other messages. His general,
Parmenion, had soundly defeated the Illyrians in the west; and his racehorse had won at the
Olympic Games. The right of Olympic entry was a prized inheritance of the kings of
Macedon. The Games were only open to Greeks; and Macedonians were not recognized in
the south as the offshoots of the original stock, which in fact they were. They were
regarded as semi-barbarous (the actual term 'barbarian' was reserved for Persians) and
the royal house had just scraped in on the strength of a remote Argive ancestry. For Philip,
to whom acceptance in the Greek world was a lifelong dream, this news may have been the
23
most welcome item of the three ...
o Mary Renault, English writer, "The Nature of Alexander", p. 28-29
 The wedding plans were resplendent. High ranking guests and state envoys were invited
from all over Greece, as befitted Philip's of pan Hellenic war leader. Festival games in
honour of the twelve Olympian gods were to be dedicated at a ceremony in the theatre at
Aegae, near modern Edessa, the ancient capital ...
o Mary Renault, English writer, "The Nature of Alexander", p. 61
 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.
o Martin Sicker, political scientist, "The Pre-Islamic Middle East", p.99, Praeger
Publishers (April 30, 2000)
 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.
o Martin Sicker, political scientist, "The Pre-Islamic Middle East", p.100, Praeger
Publishers (April 30, 2000)
24
 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 [...] 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.
o Martin Sicker, political scientist, "The Pre-Islamic Middle East", p.102, Praeger
Publishers (April 30, 2000)
 Paeonians, a people who during the first millennia b.c inhabited border area between the
three great paleobalkanic peoples - Illyrians, Thracians and Hellenes. (i.e: Greeks)
o Fanica Veljanovska, FYROM anthropologist, "An Attempt at Anthropological
Definition of the Paeonians", Skopje, 1994
On ancient Macedonian language
Modern Sources
Archaeologists
 The first Greek-speaking people in the southern Balkan Peninsula arrived in
Macedonia, Thessaly, and Epirus sometime after 2600 B.C. and developed, probably due
to the extreme mountainous nature of the country, their several different dialects.
o David Noel Freedman, "The Anchor Bible Dictionary", Doubleday, 1992, p. 1093
Historians
 Here we have seen that their early history is still largely an open question. They may have
had Greek origins: Whatever process produced the Greek-speakers (of that is how one
defines "Greek") who lived south of Olympus may have also produced the Makedones
who wandered out of the western mountains to establish a home and a kingdom in Pieria.
o Eugene N. Borza, "In The Shadow of Olympus", pp. 277-278, Princeton University
Press
 The Macedonian people and their kings were of Greek stock, as their traditions and the
scanty remains of their language combine to testify.
o John Bagnell Bury, "A History of Greece to the Death of Alexander the Great", 2nd
ed. (1913)
25
 That the Macedonians and their kings did in fact speak a dialect of Greek and bore
Greek names may be regarded nowadays as certain.
o Malcolm Errington, "A History of Macedonia", University of California Press,
February 1993
 He was still in a world of Greek gods and sacrifices, of Greek plays and Greek
language, though the natives might speak Greek with a northern accent which hardened
'ch' into 'g','th' into 'd' and pronounced King Philip as Bilip.
o Robin Lane Fox, "Alexander the Great", p.30
 Cleopatra VII would have described herself as a Greek. Whatever the racial ingredients
of her Macedonian ancestors, her language, like theirs (though they had spoken a dialect),
was Greek and so was her whole education and culture.
o Michael Grant, "From Alexander to Cleopatra: The Hellenistic World", Scribner
Paper Fiction
 That the Macedonians were of Greek stock seems certain. The claim made by the Argead
dynasty to be of Argive descent may be no more than a generally accepted myth, but
Macedonian proper names, such as Ptolemaios or Philippos, are good Greek names, and the
names of the Macedonian months, although differed from those of Athens or Sparta, were also
Greek. The language spoken by the Macedonians, which Greeks of the classical period found
unintelligible, appears to have been a primitive northwest Greek dialect, much influenced by the
languages of the neighboring barbarians.
o J.R. Hamilton, Australian historian, "Alexander the Great", Hutchinson, London,
1973
 The toponyms of the Macedonian homeland are the most significant. Nearly all of them are
Greek.
o Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "The Macedonian State" (1989)
 Hesiod first mentioned 'Makedon', the eponym of the people and the country, as a son of
Zeus, a grandson of Deukalion, and so a first cousin of Aeolus, Dorus, and Xuthus; in other
words he considered the 'Makedones' to be an outlying branch of the Greek-speaking
tribes, with a distinctive dialect of their own, "Macedonian".
o Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "Oxford Classical Dictionary", 3rd ed.
(1996), pp.904,905
26
 All in all, the language of the Macedones was a distinct and particular form of Greek,
resistant to outside influences and conservative in pronunciation. It remained so until the
fourth century when it was almost totally submerged by the flood tide of standardized
Greek.
o Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "A History of Macedonia" Vol ii, 550-336
BC
 There were two parts of the Greek-speaking world at this time which did not suffer from
revolution and did not seek to impose rule over the city states. In Epirus there were three
clusters of tribal states, called Molossia, Thesprotia and Chaonia [...]the other part of the
Greek-speaking world extended from Pelagonia in the north to Macedonia in the south. It
was occupied by several tribal states, which were constantly at war against Illyrians,
Paeonians and Thracians.
o Nicholas Geoffrey Lemprière Hammond, "The Genius of Alexander the Great", p.11,
Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd (November 26, 2004)
 Macedonians had their own language related to Greek, but the members that dominated
Macedonian society routinely learned to speak Greek because they thought of themselves and
indeed all Macedonians as Greek by blood.
o Thomas R. Martin, "Ancient Greece: From Prehistoric to Hellenistic Times", Yale
University Press, p. 188
 Certainly the Thracians and the Illyrians were non-Greek speakers, but in the northwest, the
peoples of Molossis (Epirot province), Orestis and Lynkestis spoke West Greek. It is also
accepted that the Macedonians spoke a dialect of Greek and although they absorbed other
groups into their territory, they were essentially Greeks.
o Robert Morkot, British historian, "The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece",
Penguin Publishing USA, January 1997
 ... despite ancient and modern controversies it seems clear that the Macedonians as a
whole were Greek-speakers. While the elite naturally communicated with other elites in
standard, probably Attic, the ordinary Macedonians appear to have spoken a dialect of
Greek, albeit with load-words from Illyrian and thracian which gave ammunition to their
denigrators [...] if proof needed of the sophistication of Macedonia at this time, one may bring
forward the fragments of the earliest surviving Greek literary papyrus, a carbonized book-roll
found in a tomb-group of c. 340-320 at Derveni near Thessaloniki. It preserves parts of a
philosophical text on Presocratic and Orphic cosmology composed around 400, and surely had a
religious significance for the man in whose funeral pyre it was placed. The Derveni roll
provides evidence for a high level of culture among the aristocracy.
27
o Graham Shipley, English historian, " The Greek World After Alexander", Routledge,
p.111
Linguists
 Before the times of the national unity installed by the Macedonians around the middle
of the 4th century BC, Greece was composed of many regions or city states [...] That they
[Dorians] were related to the North-West Dialects (of Phocis, Locris, Aetolia, Acarnania and
Epirus) was not perceived clearly by the ancients.
o Sylvain Auroux, French linguist, "History of the Language Sciences: I. Approaches
to Gender II. Manifestations", p.439
 The nucleus of the Macedonian vocabulary consists of words which have exact
correspondence in Greek. The importance of these words and the archaic phonological character
of Macedonian lead to the conclusion that these are not borrowings but inherited words: this fact
is confirmed by the genetic unity of Macedonian and Greek. Moreover, the numerous lexical
and phonological isoglosses in Macedonian and the different Greek dialects confirm the
supposition of genetic unity.
o Vladimir Ivanov Georgiev, Bulgarian linguist, "Introduction to the History of the
Indo-European Languages", Sofia 1981, p. 169
 Whoever does not consider the Macedonians as Greeks must also conclude that by the
6th and 5th centuries BC the Macedonians had completely given up the original names of
their nation - without any need to do so - and taken Greek names in order to demonstrate
their admiration for Greek civilization. I think it not worth the trouble to demolish such a
notion; for any hypothesis of historical linguists which is put forward without taking into
account the actual life of a people, is condemned as it were out of its own mouth.
o Otto Hoffmann, German linguist, "Die Makedonen, Ihre Sprache und Ihr Volkstum",
Göttingen, 1906
 And now after supervising the ancient Macedonian linguistic thesaurus we are posting the
decisive question, if what is adding to the Macedonian language its character, are the hellenic or
the barbarian elements of it, the response can not be of any doubts. From the 39 "languages"
that according to Gustav Mayer their form was "completely alien" has been proven after this
research of mine, that 10 of them are clearly Hellenic, with 4 more possibly dialectical forms of
common hellenic words, so from the entire collection are remaining only 15 words appearing to
be justifiable or at least suspected of anti-hellenic origins. Adding to those 15, few others which
with regards their vocals could be hellenic, without till now being confirmed as such, then their
number, in comparison to the number of pure hellenic ones in the Macedonian language, is so
small that the general Hellenic character of the Macedonian linguistic treasure can not be
doubted.
28
o Otto Hoffmann, German linguist, "Die Makedonen, Ihre Sprache und Ihr Volkstum",
Göttingen, 1906
 The names of the genuine Macedonians and those born of Macedonian parents, especially
the names of the elit class and nobles, in their formation and phonology are purely Greek.
o Otto Hoffmann, German linguist, "Die Makedonen, Ihre Sprache und Ihr Volkstum",
Göttingen, 1906
 For a long while Macedonian onomastics, which we know relatively well thanks to history,
literary authors, and epigraphy, has played a considerable role in the discussion. In our view the
Greek character of most names is obvious and it is difficult to think of a Hellenization due
to wholesale borrowing. ‘Ptolemaios’ is attested as early as Homer, ‘Ale3avdros’ occurs next to
Mycenaean feminine a-re-ka-sa-da-ra- ('Alexandra'), ‘Laagos’, then ‘Lagos’, matches the
Cyprian 'Lawagos', etc. The small minority of names which do not look Greek, like ‘Arridaios’
or ‘Sabattaras’, may be due to a substratum or adstratum influences (as elsewhere in Greece).
Macedonian may then be seen as a Greek dialect, characterized by its marginal position and by
local pronunciations (like ‘Berenika’ for ‘Ferenika’, etc.). Yet in contrast with earlier views
which made of it an Aeolic dialect (O. Hoffmann compared Thessalian) we must by now think
of a link with North-West Greek (Locrian, Aetolian, Phocidian, Epirote). This view is supported
by the recent discovery at Pella of a curse tablet (4th cent. BC) which may well be the first
'Macedonian' text attested (provisional publication by E.Voutyras; cf. the Bulletin Epigraphique
in Rev.Et.Grec.1994, no.413); the text includes an adverb ‘opoka’ which is not Thessalian. We
must wait for new discoveries, but we may tentatively conclude that Macedonian is a dialect
related to North-West Greek.
o Olivier Masson, French linguist, "Oxford Classical Dictionary:Macedonian
Language", 1996
 The problem of the nationality of the Macedonians has been studied a great deal. Otto
Hoffman with linguistics as his starting point solved it correctly and decisively when he
accepted that the Macedonians were Greeks.
o F. Munzer, German linguist, "Die Politische Vernichtung des Griechentums", Leipzig
1925, p. 4
 The Ancient Macedonian language:
The ancient language of the Macedonian kingdom in N. Greece and modern Macedonia
[FYROM] during the later 1st millennium BC. Survived until the early 1st millenniumAD. Not
to be confused with the modern Macedonian language [FYROM Slavic], which is a close
relative of the Slavic Bulgarian.
o Eastern Michigan University, The Linguist List
29
Miscellaneous
 The evidence for the language of the Macedonians has been reviewed and discussed by
Kalleris and Hammond, Griffith, and many others, all contending that it was a dialect of
Greek. The increasing volume of surviving public and private inscriptions makes it quite
clear that there was no written language but Greek. There may be room for argument over
spoken forms, or at least over local survivals of earlier occupancy, but it is hard to imagine
what kind of authority might sustain that. There is no evidence for a different
"Macedonian" language that cannot be as easily explained in terms of dialect or accent.
o "Cambridge Ancient Histories", Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998
 As a Macedonian [Philip] was looked down upon by the more refined Athenians, but they
shared the same Hellenistic culture. How deep this went is evident in aesthetically the least
spectacular, but politically the most explosive, of the finds in Vergina. In the Great Tumulus
above Philip's tombs, which was raised by the invading Galatians in 274 BC, the archaeologists
found fragments of no fewer than seventy-five funeral monuments, or “stelai”. The names on
these were entirely Greek, save two, which appeared to be Hellenized versions of Thracian and
Phoenician names. The implication is that Philip's Macedonia was thoroughly Hellenized, an
outpost of classical Greek culture...
o Robert Fox, journalist and a writer on defence issues, "The Inner Sea: The
Mediterranean and its People", Sinclair- Stevenson, London 1991 (p 229-230)
On medieval Macedonian history
Medieval Sources
Roman Emperors
 That much I can say, without endless talking and without becoming tiresome, that she
[Eusebia] is of a family line that is pure Greek, from the purest of Greeks, and her city is
the metropolis of Macedonia.
o Julian, "Praise For The Empress Eusebia", p. 147'
Modern Sources
Historians
 It was the Byzantine Empire, which was to realize Alexander's idea - Macedonian
Panhellenism -in face of an Asia in revolt, and realize it for the Greeks.
o René Grousset, A. Patterson, "The Sum of History", p. 159
30
 The province of Thessalonica (Saloniki) had, together with Greece, been awarded to the
warlike Marquis Boniface of Montferrat with the royal title. It comprised the greater part of
ancient Macedonia and Boniface carried his victorious arms into Greece, where he
everywhere divided the conquered territories among his knights; but having perished in a
skirmish with the Bulgarians, in 1207, his kingdom was invaded by the Greek despot,
Theodore of Epirus who was received with open arms by the Greeks, and crowned
emperor at Thessalonica in 1222.
o Adolphus Louis Koeppen, Danish historian, "The World in the Middle Ages: An
Historical Geography, with Accounts of the Origin", Appleton, p.409
On modern Macedonian history
On the Former YugoSLAV Republic of “Macedonia”’s History
Diplomats
 Journalist: What is your opinion for the problem in which Greece has to accept the name
Macedonia, which the Skopje Government (FYROM) is trying to implement?
Henry Kissinger: Look, I believe that Greece is right to object and I agree with Athens. The reason
is that I know history which is not the case with most of the others including most of the
Government and Administration in Washington. The strength of the Greek case is that of the
history which I must say that Athens have not used so far with success.
o Henry Kissinger, Management Centre Europe, Paris, 19 June 1992
 For Macedonia [FYROM] to be recognized as an independent state, it would be
necessary to change its name [...] It is historically proven that the Yugoslavian Democracy of
Macedonia was created by Stalin, Tito and Dimitrov, aiming at the stealthy removal of a
large part of Northern Greece. This Democracy was used during the period 1944-1949 in
order to destabilise Greece.
o Thomas Niles, US Ambassador, statement on the 23rd June 1992 to the
SubCommittee of US Congress, Eleutherotypia newspaper, June 24, 1992
 Since the Bulgarian idea, as it is well known to all, is deeply rooted in Macedonia, I
think it is almost impossible to shake it completely by opposing it merely with the Serbian
idea. This idea, we fear, would be incapable, as opposition pure and simple, of suppressing
the Bulgarian idea. That is why the Serbian idea will need an ally that could stand in
direct opposition to the Bulgarianism and would contain in itself the elements which could
attract the people and their feelings and thus sever them from Bulgarianism. This ally I see
in the Macedonism or to a certain extent in our nursing the Macedonian dialect and
Macedonian separatism.
31
o Stoyan Novakovich, Serbian diplomat, Novakovich's dispatch to the Serbian Minister
of Education in 1888
 We are not related to the northern Greeks who produced leaders like Philip and
Alexander the Great. We are Slavs and our language is closely related to Bulgarian. There
is some confusion about our identity.
o Gyordan Veselinov, (Referring to the citizens of FYROM) Ottawa Citizen, February
24, 1999
 We do not claim to be descendants of Alexander the Great ...; Greece is Macedonia's
[FYROM’s] second largest trading partner, and its number one investor. Instead of opting for
war, we have chosen the mediation of the United Nations, with talks on the ambassadorial level
under Mr. Vance and Mr. Nimetz ... we are Slavs and we speak a Slav language.
o Ljubica Achevska, FYROM Ambassador to the US, reply to a question about the
ethnic origin of the people of FYROM, January 22, 1999
Historians
 It is the national identity of these Slav Macedonians that has been the most violently
contested aspect of the whole Macedonian dispute, and is still being contested today. There is no
doubt that they are southern Slavs; they have a language, or a group of varying dialects, that is
grammatically akin to Bulgarian but phonetically in some respects akin to Serbian, and which
has certain quite distinctive features of its own ... In regard to their own national feelings, all
that can safely be said is that during the last eighty years many more Slav Macedonians seem to
have considered themselves Bulgarian, or closely linked to Bulgaria, than have considered
themselves Serbian, or closely linked to Serbia (or Yugoslavia). Only the people of the Skopje
region, in the north west, have ever shown much tendency to regard themselves as Serbs. The
feeling of being Macedonians, and nothing but Macedonians, seems to be a sentiment of fairly
recent growth, and even today is not very deep-rooted.
o Elisabeth Barker,"Macedonia, Its Place in Balkan Power Politics". Westport, CT:
Greenwood Press. 1980. pp. p. 10. ISBN 0313225877.
 ... and Uskub, the great majority of the population is Slavic, [...] the middle ages until
1913 called themselves and were called by their neighbors Bulgarians.
o George Hubbard Blakeslee, "The Journal of International Relations"
 Modern Slavs, both Bulgarians and Macedonians [of FYROM], cannot establish a link
with antiquity, as the Slavs entered the Balkans centuries after the demise of the ancient
Macedonian kingdom. Only the most radical Slavic factions—mostly émigrés in the United
States, Canada, and Australia—even attempt to establish a connection to antiquity [...] The
twentieth-century development of a Macedonian ethnicity, and its recent evolution into
32
independent statehood following the collapse of the Yugoslav state in 1991, has followed a
rocky road. In order to survive the vicissitudes of Balkan history and politics, the Macedonians
[FYROM Slavs], who have had no history, need one. They reside in a territory once part of a
famous ancient kingdom, which has borne the Macedonian name as a region ever since and was
called ”Macedonia” for nearly half a century as part of Yugoslavia. And they speak a language
now recognized by most linguists outside Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece as a south Slavic
language separate from Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian. Their own so-called
Macedonian ethnicity had evolved for more than a century, and thus it seemed natural and
appropriate for them to call the new nation “Macedonian” and to attempt to provide some
cultural references to bolster ethnic survival.
o Eugene N. Borza, "Macedonia Redux", in "The Eye Expanded: life and the arts in
Greco-Roman Antiquity", ed. Frances B Tichener & Richard F. Moorton, University of
California Press, 1999
 Macedonia was also an attempt at a multicultural society. Here the fragments are just about
holding together, although the cement that binds them is an unreliable mixture of propaganda
and myth. The Macedonian language [FYROM Slavic] has been created, some rather misty
history involving Tsar Samuel, probably a Bulgarian, and Alexander the Great, almost certainly
a Greek, has been invented, and the name Macedonia has been adopted. Do we destroy these
myths or live with them? Apparently these “radical Slavic factions” decided to live with their
myths and lies for the constant amusement of the rest of the world ..."
o T.J. Winnifrith, "Shattered Eagles, Balkan Fragments", Duckworth,1995.
 The [Slav-] Macedonian nationalists quite simply stole all of Bulgarian historical
argument concerning Macedonia, substituting Macedonian for Bulgarian ethnic tags in
the story. Thus Kuber formed a Macedonian tribal alliance in the late seventh century; Kliment
and Naum were Macedonians and not Bulgarians; the medieval archbishop-patriarchate of
Ohrid, which Kliment led, was a Macedonian, not a Bulgarian independent church, as shown by
the persistence of Glagolitic letters in the region in the face of the Cyrillic that were spawned in
Bulgaria; and the renowned Samuil led a great Macedonian, rather than a western Bulgarian,
state against Byzantium (giving Slav Macedonia its apex in the historical sun).
o Dennis P. Hupchick, "Conflict and Chaos in Eastern Europe", Palgrave Macmillan,
1995.
 The obviously plagiarized historical argument of the [Slav-] Macedonian nationalists for a
separate Macedonian ethnicity could be supported only by linguistic reality, and that worked
against them until the 1940s. Until a modern Macedonian literary language [FYROM Slavic]
was mandated by the socialist-led partisan movement from [S.R.] Macedonia in 1944, most
outside observers and linguists agreed with the Bulgarians in considering the vernacular spoken
by the Macedonian Slavs as a western dialect of Bulgarian.
o Dennis P. Hupchick, "Conflict and Chaos in Eastern Europe", Palgrave Macmillan,
33
1995.
Miscellaneous
 The history of the construction of a Macedonian national identity does not begin with
Alexander the Great in the fourth century B.C. or with Saints Cyril and Methodius in the
ninth century A.D. as Macedonian nationalist [FYROM Slav] historians often claim.
o Loring Danforth, "The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational
World", Princeton Univ Press, (December 1995), p.56
 Finally, Krste Misirkov, who had clearly developed a strong sense of his own personal
national identity as a Macedonian and who outspokenly and unambiguously called for
Macedonian linguistic and national separatism, acknowledged that a Macedonian national
identity was a relatively recent historical development.
o Loring Danforth, "The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational
World", Princeton Univ Press, (December 1995), p.63
 The political and military leaders of the Slavs of Macedonia at the turn of the century
seem not to have heard Misirkov's call for a separate Macedonian national identity; they
continued to identify themselves in a national sense as Bulgarians rather than
Macedonians.
o Loring Danforth, "The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational
World", Princeton Univ Press, (December 1995), p.64
 Whether a [Slav-] Macedonian nation existed at the time or not, it is perfectly clear that
the communist party of Yugoslavia had important political reasons for declaring that one
did exist and for fostering its development through a concerted process of nation building,
employing all the means at the disposal of the Yugoslav state.
o Loring Danforth, "The Macedonian Conflict: Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational
World", Princeton Univ Press, (December 1995), p.66
 I have even met people who believe there is a special race which they call 'Macedonian',
whose 'cause' they wish to aid. The truth is, that in a district which has no official frontiers, and
never has had any stable ones, there are people of six races, who, as we have seen, all have
causes to be considered [...] I shall speak only of the part I have stayed in- the districts of Lakes
Ochrida and Prespa. Here there are Greeks, Slavs, Albanians, and Vlahs. Of Turks, except
officials and such of the army as may be quartered on the spot, there are few. The Albanians, I
believe, are all Moslem. Should there be any Christians they would be officially classed as
Greeks. A large part of the land near Lake Prespa is owned by Moslem Albanians as "chiftliks"
(farms).
34
o Edith Durham, "The Burden of the Balkans", (1905), p. 76
 Some will ask why I speak of breaking away from the Bulgarians when in the past we
have even called ourselves Bulgarians and when it is generally accepted that unification
creates strength, and not separation.
 We are Bulgarians, more Bulgarians than the Bulgarians in Bulgaria themselves.
 And, anyway, what sort of new Macedonian nation can this be when we and our
fathers and grandfathers and great-grandfathers have always been called Bulgarians?
o Krste Misirkov, "On Macedonian Matters", Macedonian Review Editions 1974,
(Sofia 1903)
 As a Bulgarian, I would willingly return to Bulgaria, if there is a need of a scientific
research of the fate of the Bulgarian lands, especially in Macedonia.
o Krste Misirkov, "Diary 5 July to 30 August 1913", Sofia-Skopje, 2008, Published by
State Agency "Archives" of the Republic of Bulgaria & State Archive of the FYROM, p.
168
 In Macedonia there are Greeks, Bulgarians and Turks.
o Petko Karavelov, former Prime Minister of Bulgaria, in the Greek newspaper
"Empros", in the paper of 19th December of 1897.
 But even stranger is the name Macedonians, which was imposed on us only 10 to 15
years ago by outsiders, and not as something by our own intellectuals ... Yet the people in
Macedonia know nothing of that ancient name, reintroduced today with a cunning aim on
the one hand and a stupid one on the other. They know the older word: "Bugari",
although mispronounced: they have even adopted it as peculiarly theirs, inapplicable to
other Bulgarians. You can find more about this in the introduction to the booklets I am
sending you. They call their own Macedono-Bulgarian dialect the "Bugarski language",
while the rest of the Bulgarian dialects they refer to as the "Shopski language".
o Kuzman Shapkarev, in a letter to Prof. Marin Drinov of May 25, 1888 (Makedonski
pregled, IX, 2, 1934, p. 55; the original letter is kept in the Marin Drinov Museum in
Sofia, and it is available for examination and study)
 But the Bulgarians, from the palace down to the meanest hut, have always been animated by
that racial and national idea. The annexation of Eastern Roumelia in 1885 was a great step in
the direction of its realization. And it was to carry that programme to completion that Bulgaria
35
made war against Turkey in 1912. Her primary object was the liberation of the Bulgarians in
Macedonia and their incorporation in a Great Bulgaria. And the Treaty of Partition with
Servia seemed, in the event of victory over Turkey, to afford a guarantee of the accomplishment
of her long-cherished purpose. It was a strange irony of fate that while as a result of the
geographical situation of the belligerents Bulgaria, at the close of the war with Turkey, found
herself in actual occupation of all European Turkey from the Black Sea up to the River Struma
and beyond,--that is, all Thrace to Chataldja as well as Eastern Macedonia--her allies (Bulgaria's)
were in possession of the bulk of Macedonia, including the entire triangle she had planned to
inject between the frontiers of New Servia and New Greece!
o American educationist Jacob Gould Schurman, The Balkan Wars: 1912-1913, [1].
 For three weeks the Partisan National Liberation Committee had been busy creating, on
paper, the new Yugoslavia. Twice Tito had flown to Moscow, conferred with Stalin and the
Peoples' Commissar for Foreign Affairs Vlacheslav M. Molotov [...] The new power at once
began to expand. Yugoslav Macedonians insisted that Yugoslavia's new Macedonian district
should include not only Bulgarian Macedonia but Greek Macedonia.
o TIME Magazine, December 4, 1944
 Though once the heart of the empire of Alexander the Great, (Macedonia) has been for
centuries a geographical expression rather than a political entity, and is today inhabited by an
inextricable medley of people, among whom the Serbs, now Yugoslavs, are certainly the least
numerous. But a "Federal Macedonia" has been projected as an integral part of Tito's plan
for a federated Balkans...taking Greek Macedonia for an outlet to the Aegean Sea through
Salonica.
o THE NEW YORK TIMES, July 10, 1946
 During the occupation[...]a combined effort was made to wrest Macedonia from
Greece[...]an effort that allegedly continues, although in altered form [...] The main
conspirational activity in Macedonia today appears to be directed from Skopje.
o THE NEW YORK TIMES, July 16, 1946
 The possible creation of a Macedonian free state within Greece to amalgamate with
Marshal Tito's Federated Macedonia State, with is capital in Skopje [...] would fulfill the
Slavic objectives of re-uniting the ... province of Macedonia under Slavic rule, giving
access of the sea to Bulgaria and Yugoslavia.
o THE NEW YORK TIMES, July 26, 1946
 According to most reliable information, a secret meeting was held yesterday at Comi in
36
southern Bulgaria [...] to draw up plans for a general rising in Greek Macedonia, with the
ultimate object of incorporating that region with Salonica in an autonomous Macedonia under
Yugoslav hegemony.
o THE NEW YORK TIMES, August 19, 1946
 The Secretary of State to Certain Diplomatic and Consular Officers
The following is for your information and general guidance, but not for any positive action at this
time:
The Department has noted with considerable apprehension increasing propaganda rumors and
semi-official statements in favor of an autonomous Macedonia, emanating principally from
Bulgaria, but also from Yugoslav Partisan and other sources, with the implication that Greek
territory would be included in the projected state. This Government considers talk of
Macedonian "nation", Macedonian "Fatherland", or Macedonia "national consciousness" to
be unjustified demagoguery representing no ethnic nor political reality, and sees in its present
revival a possible cloak for aggressive intentions against Greece.
The approved policy of this Government is to oppose any revival of the Macedonian issue as related
to Greece. The Greek section of Macedonia is largely inhabited by Greeks, and the Greek people
are almost unanimously opposed to the creation of a Macedonian state. Allegations of serious Greek
participation in any such agitation can be assumed to be false. This Government would regard as
responsible any Government or group of Governments tolerating or encouraging menacing or
aggressive acts of "Macedonian Forces" against Greece.
The Department would appreciate any information pertinent to this subject which may come to your
attention.
Department of State
o U.S STATE DEPARTMENT Foreign Relations Vol. VIII Washington D.C. Circular
Airgram (868.014/26 Dec. 1944)
 On November 4, 2004, two days after the re-election of President George W. Bush, his
administration unilaterally recognized the “Republic of Macedonia”. This action not only
abrogated geographic and historic fact, but it also has unleashed a dangerous epidemic of
historical revisionism, of which the most obvious symptom is the misappropriation by the
government in Skopje of the most famous of Macedonians, Alexander the Great [...] We do not
understand how the modern inhabitants of ancient Paionia (FYROM), who speak Slavic – a
language introduced into the Balkans about a millennium after the death of Alexander – can
claim him as their national hero. Alexander the Great was thoroughly and indisputably
Greek. His great-great-great grandfather, Alexander I, competed in the Olympic Games where
participation was limited to Greeks [...] We call upon you, Mr. President, to help - in whatever
ways you deem appropriate - the government in Skopje to understand that it cannot build
a national identity at the expense of historic truth. Our common international society cannot
37
survive when history is ignored, much less when history is fabricated.
o From the "Letter to President Barack Obama", signed by 350 international scholars.
 A Slavic-speaking people, todays ethnic Macedonians [of FYROM], are descendants of
Slavs who settled in the Balkans during the seventh century AD.
o Karen Dawisha, Bruce Parrott, "Politics, Power and the Struggle for Democracy in
South-East Europe (Democratization and Authoritarianism in Post-Communist
Societies)", Cambridge University Press, 1997
 Despite the efforts of the post-1945 Macedonian [FYROM Slavic] historiography to
represent Delchev as a Macedonian separatist rather than a Bulgarian nationalist, Delchev
himself has stated: "... We are Bulgarians and all suffer from one common disease [e.g., the
Ottoman rule]" and "Our task is not to shed the blood of Bulgarians, of those who belong to the
same people that we serve".
o Victor Roudometof, American professor of sociology; "Collective memory, national
identity, and ethnic conflict: Greece, Bulgaria, and the Macedonian question",
Greenwood Publishing Group, 2002, ISBN 0275976483, p. 79
Politicians
 We belong to the same Slav people.
o Slobodan Casule, (born 1945), Foreign Minister of FYROM, to the Foreign Minister
of Bulgaria Solomon Pasi, in an interview to "Utrinski Vesnik" of Skopje on December
29,2001.
 We are Slavs who came to this area in the sixth century (AD) ... we are not descendants
of the ancient Macedonians.
o Kiro Gligorov, (first democraticaly elected president of FYROM, referring to the
citizens of his country), Foreign Information Service Daily Report, Eastern Europe,
February 26, 1992
 We are Macedonians but we are Slav Macedonians. That's who we are! We have no
connection to Alexander the Greek and his Macedonia. The ancient Macedonians no longer
exist, they had disappeared from history long time ago. Our ancestors came here in the 5th and
6th century (AD).
o Kiro Gligorov, (first democratically elected president of FYROM, referring to the
citizens of his country), Toronto Star, March 15, 1992
38
 The idea that Alexander the Great was something that belonged to our history was in the
minds of some extremist political groups only! These groups were insignificant the first years of
our independence, but the big problem is that the old Balkan Nations have been used to be
legitimized through their history. In the Balkans, if you want to be recognized as a Nation, you
need to have history 3000 years old. So since you made us invent a history, we invented it! (…)
You forced us to the arms of the extreme nationalists who today claim that we are direct
descendants of Alexander the Great!
o Denko Maleski, first Minister of foreign affairs of FYROM (1991 to 1993) and
ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997, in an interview to Greek TV
channel Mega, November 2006
 Why are we ashamed and flee from the truth that whole positive [Slav-] Macedonian
revolutionary tradition comes exactly from exarchist part of Macedonian people? We shall not
say a new truth if we mention the fact that everyone, Gotse Delchev, Dame Gruev, Gjorche
Petrov, Pere Toshev - must I list and count all of them - were teachers of the Bulgarian
Exarchate in Macedonia.
o former Prime Minister and Vice President of FYROM, Ljubčo Georgievski, 2007, in
his book "С лице към истината" ("Facing the truth").
 For many years, since the decade of the '90s, we have been making efforts so that the name
“Republic of Macedonia” [FYROM] is not recognized, because no nation should steal the
history and symbols of another nation.
o Australian politician, Mike Rann, Eleftherotypia newspaper, May 05, 2007
 We are not stating by accident that Josip Broz Tito is Jesus Christ for Macedonia [FYROM],
a father and a mother for Macedonia. Because we have, in that time, after NOB, for the first
time created a [Slav-] Macedonian alphabet, a Macedonian television, a Macedonian state, a
language, a passport, an identity card, a university for the first time, a Macedonian academy for
the first time. We, communists, have created the Macedonian Orthodox church.
o Slobodan Ugrinovski (Слободан Угриновски), politician of the FYROM and the
current leader of the left-wing political party Union of Tito's Left Forces, "Tito e Isus
Hristos za Makedonija" ("Tito is Jesus Christ for Macedonia [FYROM]"), A1 TV,
FYROM May 04 2009.
 "Liberal minds living within our side of the border, would certainly not feel ashamed of their
own Slavic language, or the fact that their basic identity, just like the language, is Slavic, instead
of establishing a variety of racist theories about antiquity and some super-humans from which
we originate".
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o Denko Maleski, first Minister of foreign affairs of FYROM (1991 to 1993) and
ambassador to the United Nations from 1993 to 1997, in an interview to Radio Free
Europe, March 30 2013
On Macedonia (Greece) History
Diplomats
 The Greek War of Independence, which came to a successful conclusion in 1832, affected
less than one half of the Greeks in the Turkish Empire. It did not bring freedom to the Greeks of
Macedonia and Thrace, of Crete and the Aegean Islands, nor to the more than two million
Greeks in Asia Minor and Constantinople.
o Henry Morgenthau, "I was sent to Athens", Doubleday, Doran & Company, inc
(1929)
 When the Turks and the Bulgarians left, Macedonia remained a purely Greek region.
o Henry Morgenthau, "I was sent to Athens", Doubleday, Doran & Company, inc
(1929)
Miscellaneous
 The borders between Greece and Serbia were defined in 1913 on the basis of the advances
of the armies of the two nations during the first Balkan war. The border between Greece and
Bulgaria was defined at the Treaty of Bucharest. Since then, the borders of the three nations had
remained the same. Macedonia, a region mostly of Greece since ancient times, was divided
into three perhaps even four parts, with Greece keeping the largest portion of about 50%,
then-Yugoslavia receiving about 35%, Bulgaria about 10% and a small percentage
eventually ending in Albania. The Greek people on the portion of the Macedonia part in
Greece have been there since time immemorial -- over more than forty centuries before the
Slavs arrived. The language spoken in the Greek region since antiquity is Greek, whereas
the language of the former-Yugoslavia portion is a Slavic dialect of Bulgarian (Marline
Simons, The New York Times, February 3, 1992). As a matter of fact, the portion of Macedonia
in then-Yugoslavia was part of the Eastern Branch of the Roman Empire. The people who ruled
over Serbia spoke Greek. Constantinople was their headquarters. Their main trade was to the
South and East...
o Joseph C. Harsch, American journalist, "The Christian Science Monitor", January
29, 1992
 Journalist: Do you believe that the uprising in Macedonia will be suppressed soon?
Stournaras: There is no uprising in Macedonia. Noone from the inhabitants has rebelled against
the rulers of the region. There is an incursion of Bulgarian gunmen and other brigands and
nothing more. Do you believe that these low-numbered Bulgarians will be able to conquer
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Macedonia or force the inhabitants to rebel? [...] In one clash in Panitze, outside of Serres, a
few months ago where the notorious Delchev was murdered and 52 Bulgarians were arrested,
only 2 Bulgarians managed to escape and the rest were killed. This of course has no meaning
anymore, because through the fuss they managed to create, many believe now in Europe
that Macedonian question is actually Bulgarian question.
o Interview of Greek consul in Serres, Stournaras, in the Greek newspaper "Empros"
in the paper of 21 August of 1903. (Stournaras was an eye-witness of Ilinden uprising
and he is talking here about the uprising.)
Politicians
 For all of us who love History, and know History, Macedonia is as Greek as the Acropolis.
o Mike Rann, Eleftherotypia newspaper, May 05, 2007
On modern Macedonian language
Linguists
 The (modern) Macedonian language [FYROM Slavic] is actually an artifact produced
for primarily political reasons.
o Vittore Pisani (1899-1990), Italian linguist, "Il Macedonico, Paideia, Rivista
Letteraria di informazione bibliografica", vol. 12, p. 250 (1957)
 [Slav-] Macedonian national conscience and from that conscientious promotion of
Macedonian [FYROM Slavic] as a written language, first appears just in the beginning of our
century and is strengthened particularly during in the years between the two world wars.
o Friedrich Scholz, "Slavische Etymologie", 1966, p.61
 Macedonian [FYROM Slavic] is Bulgarian typed on a Serbian type-writer.
o Otto Kronsteiner, “Der Zerfall Jugoslawiens und die Zukunft der makedonischen
Literatursprache: Der späte Fall von Glottotomie?”, Herausgeber Schriftenreihe Die
slawischen Sprachen, Erscheinungsjahr 1992, Seiten 142-171
Miscellaneous
 Macedonian [FYROM Slavic] is similar to Bulgarian and is sometimes been regarded as a
variety of that language.
o "Encyclopedia of Bilingualism and Bilingual Education", Colin Baker, Sylvia Prys
Jones, p. 415
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 From a strictly linguistic point of view Macedonian [FYROM Slavic] can be called a
Bulgarian dialect, as structurally it is most similar to Bulgarian.
o "Encyclopedia of Language and Linguistics", R.E.Asher, J.M.Y.Simpson (editors),
1994, vol.1, p.429
 I call these songs Bulgarian and not Slavic, because if someone today should ask the
Macedonian Slav "what are you?" he would be immediately be told: "I am Bulgarian"
and would call his language "Bulgarian".
o Stefan Verkovich, Bosnian folklorist, "Folk Songs of the Macedonian Bulgarian", Vol.
1, 1860
 The ethnic Macedonians [FYROM Slavs] and the Macedonian language [FYROM Slavic]
are a result of a Comintern conspiracy.
o Venko Markovski, Yugoslavian writer, poet and Communist politician (who in 1945
participated in the Commission for the Creation of the Macedonian [FYROM Slavic]
Alphabet) in an interview for Bulgarian National Television on 31/12/1987. Mitewa,
Yulia (2001), "ИДЕЯТА ЗА ЕЗИКА В МАКЕДОНСКИЯ ЛИТЕРАТУРЕН КРЪЖОК —
ЕСТЕТИЧЕСКИ И ИДЕОЛОГИЧЕСКИ АСПЕКТИ", Veliko Tarnovo: Litera
Note: Words between “[ ]” brackets, like [FYROM Slavic] are not part of the original quotes.
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Quotations from Classical Sources Relating to Macedonia
Indisputable evidence that ancient Macedonians were Greek
(other translation variants)
"Trifling causes occasionally unite and disunite the Aetolians, Acarnanians, and Macedonians, men
speaking the same language. With foreigners, with barbarians, all Greeks have, and ever will have,
eternal war: because they are enemies by nature, which is always the same, and not from causes
which change with the times."
(T. Livius XXXI, 29, 15 [ed. D. Spillan, A.M., M.D., Cyrus Evans])
"And she conceived and bore to Zeus, who delights in the thunderbolt, two sons, Magnes and
Macedon, rejoicing in horses, who dwell round about Pieria and Olympus."
(Hesiod, Catalogues of Women and Eoiae 3 [Loeb, H.G. Evelyn-White])
"For in the days of king Deucalion it (i.e. a Makednian tribe) inhabited the land of Phthiotis, then in
the time of Dorus, son of Hellen, the country called Histiaean, under Ossa and Olympus; driven by
the Cadmeians from this Histiaean country it settled about Pindus in the parts called Macedonian;
thence again it migrated to Dryopia, and at last came from Dryopia into Peloponnesus, where it took
the name of Dorian."
(Herod. I, 56, 3 [Loeb, A.D. Godley])
"Tell your king (Xerxes), who sent you, how his Greek viceroy (Alexander I) of Macedonia has
received you hospitably."
(Herod. V, 20, 4 [Loeb])
"Now, that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to
know."
(Herod. V, 22, 1 [Loeb])
"The country by the sea which is now called Macedonia... Alexander, the father of Perdiccas, and
his forefathers, who were originally Temenidae from Argos"
(Thucydides 99,3 (Loeb, C F Smith)
"But Alexander (I), proving himself to be an Argive, was judged to be a Greek; so he contended in
the furlong race and ran a dead heat for first place."
(Herod. V, 22, 2)
"The Peloponnesians that were with the fleet were ... the Lacedaimonians, ... the Corinthians, ... the
Sicyonians, ... the Epidaurians, ... the Troezenians, ... the people of Hermione there; all these, except
the people of Hermione, were of Dorian and Macedonian stock and had last come from Erineus and
Pindus and the Dryopian region."
(Herod. VIII, 43 {Loeb])
"Three brothers of the lineage of Temenos came as banished men from Argos to Illyria, Gauanes
and Aeropos and Perdiccas."
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(Herod. VIII, 137, 1 [Loeb])
"For I (Alexander I) myself am by ancient descent a Greek, and I would not willingly see Greece
change her freedom for slavery."
(Herod. IX, 45, 2 [Loeb])
"The country by the sea which is now called Macedonia ... Alexander I, the father of Perdiccas (II),
and his forefathers, who were originally Temenidae from Argos."
(Thuc. II, 99, 3 [Loeb, C. F. Smith])
"Argos is the land of your fathers."
(Isoc., To Philip, 32 (Loeb, G. Norlin])
"It is your privilege, as one who has been blessed with untrammeled freedom, to consider all Greece
your fatherland, as did the founder of your race."
(Isoc., To Philip, 127 [Loeb])
" ... all men will be grateful to you: the Greeks for your kindness to them and the rest of the nations,
if by your hands they are delivered from barbaric despotism and are brought under the protection of
Greece."
(Isoc., To Philip, 154 [Loeb])
"This is a sworn treaty made between us, Hannibal ... and Xenophanes the Athenian ... in the
presence of all the gods who possess Macedonia and the rest of Greece."
(Pol. Histories, VII, 9, 4 [Loeb, W.R. Paton])
"How highly should we honor the Macedonians, who for the greater part of their lives never cease
from fighting with the barbarians for the sake of the security of Greece? For who is not aware that
Greece would have constantly stood in the greater danger, had we not been fenced by the
Macedonians and the honorable ambition of their kings?"
(Pol. Hist., IX, 35, 2 [Loeb])
"And Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece."
(Strab. VII, Frg. 9 [Loeb, H.L. Jones])
"He sent to Athens three hundred Persian panoplies to be set up to Athena in the acropolis; he
ordered this inscription to be attached: Alexander, son of Philip, and the Greeks, save the
Lacedaimonians, set up these spoils from the barbarians dwelling in Asia."
(Arr. I, 16, 7 [Loeb, P. A. Brunt])
"Your ancestors invaded Macedonia and the rest of Greece and did us great harm, though we had
done them no prior injury; ... (and) I have been appointed leader of the Greeks ..."
(Arr., Anab. Alex. II, 14, 4)
"They say that these were the tribes collected by Amphiktyon himself in the Greek Assembly: ... the
Macedonians joined and the entire Phocian race ... In my day there were thirty members: six each
from Nikopolis, Macedonia and Thessaly..."
(Paus. Phokis VIII, 2 & 4 [Loeb, W. Jones])
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"Yet through Alexander (the Great) Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the gods of the
Greeks ... Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all Asia
with Greek magistracies ... Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Seleucia, nor
Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor the Caucasus a Greek city, for by the
founding of cities in these places savagery was extinguished and the worse element, gaining
familiarity with the better, changed under its influence."
(Plut. Moralia. On the Fortune of Alexander, I, 328D, 329A Loeb, F.C. Babbitt)
"Men of Athens ... Had I not greatly at heart the common welfare of Greece I should not have come
to tell you; but I am myself Hellene by descent, and I would not willingly see Greece exchange
freedom for slavery... If you prosper in this war, forget not to do something for my freedom;
consider the risk I have run, out of zeal for the Hellenic cause, to acquaint you with what Mardonius
intends, and to save you from being surprised by the barbarians. I am Alexander of Macedon."
(the speech of Alexander I when he was admitted to the Olympic games, Herodotus, The Histories,
9.45)