Historical truth on the ancient Macedonians

MODERN SCHOLARS ON MACEDONIA

The number of modern scholars whose opinions are that ancient Macedonians were Greeks is overwhelming. Below are excerpts of some texts from the academia. We’ve only included a small amount in order not to tire the reader.

George Cawkwell, Emeritus Fellow, University College, Oxford:
“The Macedonians were Greeks.”
(“Philip of Macedon”, Faber & Faber, London, p. 22)

Francois Chamoux, French historian:
“Such a glorious ancestry was in the eyes of Greeks the hallmark of the Greek 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.”
(“Hellenistic Civilization”, Blackwell Publishing Professional, 2002, p.8, 9)

Peter Green, British classical scholar:
“Macedonia as a whole was tended to remain in isolation from the rest of the Greeks…”
(“Alexander the Great”, p. 20)

N.G.L. Hammond, British scholar and expert on Macedon:
“As Members of the Greek race and speakers of the Greek language, the ancient Macedonians shared the ability to create political forms.”
“Greece and Macedon were akin in blood and culture”
“All in all, the language of the Macedonians 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.”
(“A History of Macedonia” Vol. ii, 550-336 BC)

Nicholas Hammond, British scholar and expert on Macedon :
“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…”
(“Philip of Macedon” Duckworth Publishing, February 1998)

Otto Hoffmann, German linguist:
“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 civilisation. 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.”
(“Die Makedonen, Ihre Sprache und Ihr Volkstum”, Göttingen)

Vilho Harle, Finnish academic:
“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 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 pan-Hellenic unity possible.”
(“Ideas of Social Order in the Ancient World”, 1998)

Donald P. Ryan, U.S. archaeologist:
“During the next 13 years, Alexander, or “Alexander the Great” as he is regularly referred to, conquered an immense area that comprised the largest empire in ancient times. Persia was added to Greece as was Asia Minor, Syria/Palestine, and lands extending all the way to the Indus River. Everywhere the conquering Greeks went, they instilled their Greek culture in a process that we might call “Hellenization”. Greek religion, thought, and science were passed along, most importantly, the Greek language was instituted as the official means of communication.”
(“The Complete Idiot’s Guide to Ancient Egypt”)

“Philip II of Macedon was anxious to pacify and unify Greeks at any cost. “
(Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece, Routledge, 2006)

Richard A. Gabriel, U.S. historian:
“Philip II of Macedonia (382-336 B.C.E.), father of Alexander the Great, unifier of Greece, author of Greece’s first federal constitution, founder of the first territorial state with a centralized administrative structure in Europe, forger of the first Western national army, the first great general of the Greek imperial age, and dreamer of great dreams, was one of the greatest captains in the history of the West. “
(“Great Captains of Antiquity”, p. 84)

“Ancient allegations that the Macedonians were non-Greek all had their origin in Athens at the time of the struggle with Philip II.”
“Macedonian horsemen together with those  of their Thessalian neighbours were later regarded as the best in GREECE” 
(Malcom Errington ,”A History of Macedonia”, ,Philipps-Universitat in Marburg, Germany, University of California Press, 1993)

David George Hogarth, English archaeologist and scholar:
“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 Greek than the Greeks.”
“Macedonia was inhabited by sturdy gentry and peasantry all composed of the same racial elements as the Greeks.”
(“Philip and Alexander of Macedon”, pp.9-10)

Robert Morkot, British historian:
“In the northwest, the peoples of Molossis (Epirus 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.”
(“The Penguin Historical Atlas of Ancient Greece”, Penguin Publishing USA, January 1997)

Sarah B. Pomeroy, Stanley M. Burstein, Walter Donlan , Jennifer Tolbert Roberts:
“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.”
(“Ancient Greece. A Political, Social, and Cultural History”, Oxford University Press, USA, 1998)

Ulrich Wilcken, German historian:
“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.”
(“Alexander the Great”, p. 22)

W. J. Woodhouse, Australian historian:
“This was Macedonia in the strict sense, the land where settled immigrants of Greek stock later to be called Macedonians.”
(“The tutorial history of Greece, to 323 B.C.: from the earliest times to the death of Demosthenes”, p.216, University Tutorial Press)

“The latest archaeological findings have confirmed that Macedonia took it’s name from a tribe of tall, Greek-speaking people, the Makednoi…”
(Nigel Guy Wilson, Encyclopedia of Ancient Greece, 2009)

“The Macedonians were originally one of several Greek tribes living on the northern frontier of the Hellenic world”.
(Katheryn A. Bard, U.S. professor of archaeology, “Encyclopaedia of the Archaeology of Ancient Egypt”, p. 460, 1999)

Eugene Borza, Emeritus Professor of Greek, Penn State University:
“Ancient Macedonians are of north-western Greek stock”.
“Origin of the Macedonians lies in the pool of proto Greek speakers who migrated out of the Pindus mountains.”
“Ancient Macedonians originated from the same population pool as other Greek peoples.”

Richard Stoneman, Honorary Professor of Greek, Exeter University:
“The ancient Macedonians were racially Greek.”
“In favour of the Greek identity of the Macedonians is what we know of their language: the place-names, names of the months and many of the personal names, especially royal names, which are Greek in roots and form. This suggests that they did not merely use Greek as a lingua franca, but spoke it as natives (though with  a local accent which turned Philip into Bilip, for example)”

Dr Stephen Batchelor, Lecturer in Classics and Ancient History:
“Macedonia was – and still is – a territory of northern Greece. The Ancient Macedonians were of Greek origin and spoke a broader rougher dialect of Greek.”
(‘The Ancient Greeks for Dummies’)

Professor Donald Kagan, Yale University, USA:
“We know the ancient Macedonians were fundamentally Greeks. That is to say they were Greek speakers and ethnically they were Greeks.”
(Yale University Courses, Lecture 24, Introduction to Ancient Greek History: Twilight of the Polis and the rise of Macedon: Philip, Demosthenes and the Fall of the Polis, 2007)

Ian Worthington, English historian and archaeologist:
“Not much need to be said about the Greekness of ancient Macedonia: it is undeniable.”
(“Philip II of Macedon”, Yale University, 2008)

Robin Lane Fox, Historian, Oxford University, UK:
“Macedonia is a Greek speaking Kingdom in northern Greece, populated by people using Greek names, Greek months of the year, worshipping Greek gods. Those who live in Skopje (FYROM) and say that that is Macedonia, are as ignorant and outrageous as if someone was to say Oxford University was in Belarus and Oxford was in Minsk!”

Bury & Meiggs (1985) “A History of Greece”, page 415
“The Macedonian people and their kings were of Greek stock, as  their traditions and the scanty remains of their   language combine to testify.”

H. Bengston  (1988) “A History of Greece: from the beginnings  to the Byzantine era”, page 186.
“They [Macedonians] should be included in the group of North-West Greek  tribes“

Jonathan M. Hall (1998) “Ethnic identity in Greek antiquity” Cambridge University Press: 
“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.”

Walter M. Ellis (1994) “Ptolemy of Egypt”, Page X
“I fear that I have not been wholly consistent in my use of the term “Macedonian”. For the record, let me state that I believe Macedonians, ancient and modern, are Greeks”

Alan Fildes , “Alexander the Great, son of the gods”, page 12:
“Although the Macedonians spoke a Greek dialect, worshiped Greek gods and traced their nation’s origins from Olympian gods, their customs and northern Doric accent were markedly different from those of the people of the rest of Greece, who saw the Macedonia as a largely insignificant, backward monarchy”

Archaeological Institute of America (1948):
“The Macedonians were Greeks in contradistinction to Barbarians, but they lived on the periphery of the Greek world, far removed in space and spirit from the rest of Greeks.”

Benjamin I. Wheeler, “Alexander the Great: The Merging of East and West in Universal History”:
“That the Macedonians were Greek by race there can be no longer any doubt. They were the northernmost fragments of the race left stranded behind the barriers”.

J.R. Hamilton, “Alexander the Great”: “That the Macedonians were of Greek stock seems certain”.

Joseph M. Bryant, “Moral codes and social structure in ancient Greece”:
“The Macedonians were of Greek stock, though for centuries they had remained outside the mainstream of Hellenic civilization”.

N. Jayapalan, “Comprehensive study of Aristotle”:
“This was Macedonia in the strict sense the land where settled those immigrants of Greek stock afterwards called Macedonians”.