Ancient Macedonians

The expansion of ancient Macedon up to the death of Phillip II

The Macedonians (Template:Lang-el, Makedónes) were an ancient people inhabiting the alluvial plain around the rivers Haliacmon and lower Axius in the northeastern part of the Greek peninsula. Although they comprised numerous tribes, the kingdom of Macedon, established by the 8th or 7th century BC, is mostly associated with the Argeads, both the name of the ruling dynasty and a Macedonian tribe. Traditionally ruled by independent families, the Macedonians seem to have accepted Argead rule by the time of Alexander I of Macedon. Under Philip II they are credited with numerous military innovations which led to the exploits of Alexander the Great, the establishment of numerous realms from the Diadochi and the inauguration of the Hellenistic civilization.

Origins

Ancient sources

In Greek mythology, Makednos was the mythical progenitor and eponymous ancestor of the Macedonians. According to Hesiod's Catalogue of Women, Makednos was the son of Zeus and Thyia, the daughter of Deucalion and Pyrrha, and brother of Magnes. On the other hand, Hellanicus of Lesbos' later genealogy lists Makednos as the son of Aeolus, the founder of the Aeolian tribe, and thus a grandson of Hellen, the mythological patriarch of the Hellenes.

Herodotus, in his work Histories, talks about the origin of the Macedonian royal house, the Argead dynasty, from the city of Argos, in the Peloponnese, and the lineage of Temenus, a descendant of Heracles, thus they were also known as Temenids. He also writes that the Macedonians were a Greek tribe from which the Dorians originated; in another part, Alexander I of Macedon is presented to name himself the Greek viceroy of Macedonia while speaking to the Persians and also being by ancient descent a Greek while speaking to the Athenians.

Pausanias, in his work Description of Greece, states that the Macedonians took part in the Amphictyonic League, which was an association of ancient Greek tribes formed to protect a specific temple or sacred place. In 356 BC, when Phocians captured and sacked Delphi and a sacred war was declared against them, they were expelled from the league and their two votes were given to Macedonians who had helped to defeat them.

Polybius, in his work The Histories, describes the treaty made between Hannibal and Philip V of Macedon, clearly stating that Macedonia was a part of what he perceived as Greece and that Macedonians were Greeks. He also includes in his work the speech of Lyciscus the Acarnanian who, addressing to Cleonicus and Chlaeneas, the Aetolian envoys at the assembly of Sparta, refers to the racial kinship between Aetolians, Achaeans and Macedonians.

Livy, in his work The History of Rome, states that the Macedonians spoke the same language as the Aetolians and the Acarnanians, although trivial causes occasionally unite or disunite them, because Greeks always fight each other.

Participation in panhellenic events

A passage in book five of Herodotus' Histories concerns the exclusion of Macedonians from panhellenic events such as the ancient Olympic Games, where only Greeks were allowed to participate. In 504 or 500 BC, the Macedonian king Alexander I attempted to participate in the Olympic Games but was met with resistance by some competitors, who regarded him as non-Greek. According to Herodotus, Alexander argued that his family was of Greek Argive descent and the Hellanodikai (literally judges of the Greeks) validated his claim to enable participation of Macedonians in Olympic events. Other kings of Macedonia such as Archelaus I and Philip II, as well as commoners, also took part in the Games.

Additionally, a 5th century BC inscription found in royal tomb at Vergina shows evidence that Macedonian kings competed in Argive Heraean games. Amyntas III in 371 BC took also part in a Panhellenic congress, concerning Amphipolis. From the age of Perdiccas III 365 BC onwards, who served as Theorodokos, participation of Macedonian athletes in Panhellenic Games and festivals became common.

Atticisation in the 5th to 4th centuries

Macedon was heavily Atticised from the time of Alexander the Great. Moreover, there are indications that there were pan-Hellenic influences in the Macedonian kingdom as early as the 5th century BC. King Archelaus established the new capital at Pella, a festival in honor of Zeus at Dion, a city right next to Mt. Olympus, and welcomed southern Greek intellectuals into the kingdom. Athenian playwrights such as Euripides and Agathon and the famous painter Zeuxis all were influential in the early kingdom. Euripides wrote his last two tragedies at Archelaus' court.

Modern discussions

In 19th century scholarship, some scholars argued that the Macedonians possibly had an Illyrian or Thracian rather than a Greek origin. Professor William Mitchell Ramsay considered the Macedonians as a tribe of Thrace, the land north-east of Greece, akin to the Thracians. George Rawlinson, stated that the Macedonians were a mixed race, not Paionians, Illyrians or Thracians, but of the three, closest with the Illyrians. Various "mixed" scenarios (e.g. Greco-Illyrian) have also been proposed.

Following the archaeological discoveries of the 20th century, numerous modern scholars now advocate that the ancient Macedonians were of Greek origin which to this day remains the most common consensus. Systematic excavations at Aiani since 1983 have brought to light finds that attest the existence of an organised city from the 2nd millennium BC to 100 BC. The excavations have unearthed the oldest pieces of black-and-white pottery, characteristic of the tribes of northwest Greece, discovered so far. Found with Μycenaean sherds, they can be dated with certainty to the 14th century BC. The findings also include some of the oldest samples of writing in Macedonia, among them inscriptions bearing Greek names like Θέμιδα (Themida). The inscriptions demonstrate that the society of Upper Macedonia spoke and wrote Greek before the 5th century BC. Other scholars, such as Nicholas Hammond, argue that the language of the ancient Macedonians was a pure but specific form of Greek until 4th century BC when it was eventually amalgamated with common Greek.

For the last two centuries, scholars have often been preoccupied with the question of whether the Macedonians were from the outset a Greek (albeit a peripherally Greek) tribe, or distinct ethnos which subsequently became Hellenized. However, such ‘simple attempts of defining "Macedonians" ..by purely linguistic, ethnic, constitutional, social or religious criteria', based on uncritical interpretations of contemporary sources and origin myths, have been shown to be “highly problematic”. Rather than trying to affirm a distinct point of view, more recent approaches regard that Hellenic and Macedonian ethnic identities “should be regarded as extremely complex and fluid social constructions which surely deserve further study” The formation of a Macedonian ethnos went hand in hand with an emerging Macedonian kingdom negotiating its role in greater Balkan political climate It is clearly observable that, on the one hand, Greeks, into the fourth century, did not see the Macedonians as “brothers”; on the other hand, the Macedonian Royal family always maintained that they were Greek, and were generally, but not unanimously, accepted as such. Indeed, Macedonian’s possessed an eclectic mix of linguistic and cultural features, incorporating both Greek and non-Greek elements. Despite the ambivalent nature of their identity, Anon has suggested that Macedonians were certainly part of a ‘broader Greek cultural world at least by the 5th century”,. Borza's analysis on the matter of identity was "what matters most is that they made their mark not as Greeks, or a different Balkan people, but as Macedonians".

Geographic location

Regarding the Macedonians' geographic origins, one theory suggests that they occupied the mountainous area of Orestis, near present-day Kastoria, and the valley of the Haliacmon river, in the first millennium BC. From 8th century BC or early 7th century BC, Macedonians expanding eastward subjugated and expelled the earlier Illyrian, Thracian and Paeonian populations, as well Greek settlers, or mingled with them.

Language

Main article: Ancient Macedonian language

The Pella curse tablet (Greek katadesmos): from Prof. Radcliffe G. Edmonds III, Bryn Mawr College.

Due to the fragmentary attestation various interpretations are possible about the ancient Macedonian language. The Attic Greek was standardized as the language of the court, formal discourse and diplomacy from at least the time of Archelaus at the end of the 5th century BC. The tongue of the area's inhabitants, prior to the 5th century BC, is attested in some hundred words from various glosses, mainly those of Hesychius of Alexandria, as well as placenames, personal names and local inscriptions.

The sample of original Macedonian words has been proved insufficient so far to show what the Macedonian language was. The majority of the words are Greek, several inscriptions have revealed some tendencies toward Doric Greek and Aeolic Greek; on the other hand, there can be found some Illyrian and Thracian elements. The Pella curse tablet, which was found in 1986 at Pella and dates to the mid-4th century BC or slightly earlier, is believed to be the only attested text in Macedonian. The language of the tablet is harsh but a distinctly recognizable form of a Northwest Greek idiom of Doric: the tablet, therefore, has been used to support the argument that ancient Macedonian was a Doric dialect.

See also

• Macedonia (ancient kingdom)
• Ancient Macedonian language
• List of ancient Macedonians
• List of ancient Macedonians in epigraphy
• Ancient Greece

Bibliography

• N. G. L. Hammond, A History of Macedonia: 550-336 B.C, Oxford University Press, 1979
• N. G. L. Hammond, A History of Macedonia: 336-167 B.C, Oxford University Press, 1988
• Robert Malcolm Errington, A History of Macedonia, University of California Press, 1990
• Borza, Eugene N. (1992). In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon. Princeton University Press. ISBN 0691008809. {{cite book}}: Invalid |ref=harv (help)

External links

• Twilight of the Polis and the rise of Macedon (Philip, Demosthenes and the Fall of the Polis). Yale University courses, Lecture 24. (Introduction to Ancient Greek History)