From: cla02@keele.ac.uk (R. Wallace)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia,soc.culture.europe
Subject: Re: Macedonian World Congress
Date: 18 Dec 92 17:33:33 GMT
Organization: Keele University, England
X-Newsreader: TIN [version 1.1 PL6]

SAS (sachz@montebello.ecom.unimelb.EDU.AU) wrote:

Now, this is really fun! I've deleted the prologue, to save space, and I
will only comment on those points which are in my own area of expertise.

But, before I start, I should say that I don't think that any of this
has any bearing on the rights or wrongs of the recognition of
Macedonia/Skopje. It would be nice if this discussion could be conducted
without abuse or hysteria on either side.
: 
: 
:    The people of Macedonian affirm that:
: 
:  1) The ancient Macedonians were a distinct European people,
:     conscious and proud of their nationality, their customs, their
:     language, and their name. The same applies to their descendants
:     today.

It is certainly true that the ancient Macedonians were very proud and
conscious of being Macedonians. You might say the same of the Athenians,
Thebans, Corinthians etc. etc. In other words, this doesn't prove what
you want it to.
: 
:  2) The ancient Macedonians regarded the Greeks as neighbours not as
:     kinsmen. 
Have we any evidence at all of what Macedonians (before Philip) thought
of their neighbours to the south?

The Greeks treated the Macedonians as foreigners
:     ("barbarians") whose native language was Macedonian not Greek.

When it suited them. Otherwise not. 
: 
:  3) Macedonian was never a region of Greece. On the contrary, Greece
:     was often subject to Macedonia. In 1913, Greece and her Balkan
:     allies partitioned Macedonia, and if today a portion of
:     Macedonian belongs to Greece, it is by virtue of an illegal
:     partition of the whole and occupation of a part of Macedonia.
: 

I take this to be an assertion, not an argument.
           
: These assertions will be shown to be true in the eyes of history.
: 
: 
: 
: MACEDONIANS AND GREEKS THROUGH THE AGES
: 
:    Throughout antiquity, the Chasia and Kamvounia mountains, Mount
: Olympus, and the vale of Tempe separated Macedonia from Greece.
: On the north, Macedonia extended as far as the Vardar watershed and
: along the Struma and Mesta valleys, past the city of Blagoevgrad to
: the sources of the Bistrica River in the Rila Mountain in today's
: Bulgaria. Macedonia covered a land area of c. 26,000 square miles.
: 

This is really a rather tendentious statement. Yes, you can say that this
particular area is Macedonia at a particular period. But you need
further argument to establish that it was therefore not Greece. In any
case, I doubt whether statements like this are verifiable. What do you
mean by Macedonia? The realm of whoever was in control in Pella? Or
what? And how do you know. Look at any decent classical atlas and you
will see that the author will usually take the cowards way out and make
the Macedonian border very fuzzy for most periods..

:    In the course of the second pre-Christian millennium, the ancient
: Greeks descended in several migratory waves as goatherds and
: shepherds from the interior of the Balkans into Greece. Some passed
: through the Morava-Vardar Valley and across the plain of Thessaly on
: their way south, while others went south through Epirus. More recent
: scholars point to Asia minor as the original Greek homeland.

Do we know that the early Greek migrants were goatherds and shepherds? I
expect they were, among other things, but you really do need evidence. 
: 
:    There is no evidence that prehistoric Macedonia was ever occupied
: by Greeks.

In fact there is no real evidence of early Greeks anywhere except
Greece, which is an embarrasing drawback of all migration theories. This
argument could be used to prove that they weren't anywhere! Which can't
be true! Of course, this argument won't even begin to stand up unless
you begin with the assumption that the Macedonians were not Greek, i.e.
the very point you are trying to prove (a logical fallacy known as a
petitio principii, I believe).
: 
:    The Bronze Age Mycenaean Greek civilization, names so after the
: city of Mycenae on the Peloponnesus, thrived from c. 1400 to 1100
: B.C. in mainly Greece and on the Aegean islands. Archaeological
: finds from Macedonia are meagre and sporadic; scholars believe that
: ancient Macedonia lay beyond the cultural and ethnic borders of
: Mycenaean Greece.

Not really. There's not a lot of evidence, so we don't really know what
to believe. 
: 
:    The ancient Macedonians claimed kinship with the Illyrians,
: Thracians, and the Phrygians, not with the Greeks. In fact, the
: Brygians of Macedonia were believed to be the European branch of the
: people who in Asia Minor were known as the Phrygians.
: 

It is certainly true that they would claim kinship with anyone if it
suited them (just as the Jews claimed kinship with the Spartans : 1
Maccabees 12), but equally they did from time to time claim to be Greek.

:    Ancient Macedonia was home to many tribes and nations.

I think it probably was a very mixed area 

 Homer did
: not know the Macedonians by this name. 

The names used in the Homeric poems are often different from those used
in classical times.

Of the many Macedonia
: peoples, Homer only mentions the Paeones who lives in the heart of
: Macedonia. In the Trojan War, the Paeones joined the besieged
: Trojans, an indication that they were not Greeks. 

Did anyone ever believe that the Paeonians were either Macedonian or
Greek? They were subdued by Philip, but did not for that 
reason become Macedonians.

Greek and other
: historians frequently mention the Brygians. Their name derives from
: the Macedonian word 'breg', "hill/mountain". The Brygians were the
: "hillsmen" of Macedonia. Another remarkable people were the
: Mygdones, who lived in Aegean Macedonia, in Asia Minor, and in Upper
: Mesopotamia.

The Mygdonians lived in the north of Chalcidice, and were not considered
to be Macedonians. I think there is some confusion here (and elsewhere)
between the lands of the Macedonians, the conquests of Philip, the Roman
province of Macedonia, and various other administrative units called
Macedonia throughout history.
: 
:    Greek migrants came to Macedonia, Thrace, and Illyria after they
: had exhausted the possibilities of settlement in Asia Minor, Italy,
: France, Spain and Scythia, known today as Ukraine and Russia. 

This whole paragraph is extraordinarily fishy! The first sentence tries
to suggest (doesn't it?) that the Greek colonists only came to this
region as a last resort. Well, the dating of Greek colonies is very
difficult, and changes constantly as new archaeological evidence comes
to light, but I think the colonies in the northern Aegean came in about
the middle of the colonising process. Certainly the colonies in France,
Spain, and North Africa are probably later.

Some
: famous ancient Greeks went to Macedonia and Thrace in search of
: livelihood or adventure. These included Pythagoras, Euripides,
: Herodotus, and Aristotle's ancestors. 

There is a confusion here between colonisation (Aristotle's forebears)
and individual visitors.

However, the Greeks did not
: consider Macedonia especially attractive for permanent settlement.

I know of no evidence for this. If it is attempting to suggest that the
northern Aegean colonies were tentative or insecure, it is simply false.

: Neither did the Macedonians welcome them as openheartedly as did the
: Italians and Scythians. 

Some Greek colonies had a very rough time in Italy and the Black Sea!

Perhaps Aristotle who left Macedonia while
: still a young man would have never gone back had the Macedonia King
: Philip II (360-366 B.C.) not hired him to be his son's tutor. 

But Aristotle did not come from Macedonia, but Stageira! His family had
worked for the Macedonian court, but that is employment, not domicile.

In any
: case, by the middle of the fourth pre-Christian century, Greek
: settlers were expelled from Macedonia, their cities, including
: Aristotle's native Stagira, razed to the ground by Philip, and
: Aristotle died in exile in Greece.
:
Much of this is untrue. The Greek colonies in the north were conquered
by Philip, and some of them indeed were very badly treated, but by no
means all. Most went on as usual, under macedonian control. I don't
expect they liked it, but they were still there. Aristotle died an
exile, but from Athens (from which he had been driven by anti-Macedonian
feeling) not from Stageira; indeed, he had successfully used his
influence with Philip to get his native city reinstated.
 
:    The ancient Macedonians regarded the Greeks as potentially
: dangerous neighbours, never as kinsmen. 

Now, how do you know this?

The Greeks unanimously
: stereotyped the Macedonians as "barbarians" and treated them in the
: same bigoted manner in which they treated all non-Greeks. 

Some did, but it was not unanimous.

[I have omitted discussion of the evidence of Herodotus and Demosthenes
which has already been worked over exhaustively in these groups; neither
provide conclusive proof one way or the other] 
: 
:    The Macedonian "barbarian" defeated Greece at the battle of
: Chaeronea in August 338 B.C. and appointed himself "Commander of the
: Greeks." The date is commonly takes as the end of Greek history and
: the beginning of the Macedonian era.
: 
:         [Greece did not regain its independence until 1827 A.D.]
: 
:    Greeks prospered under the Macedonians, but they prospered in
: Egypt and West Asia, not in Greece and not in Macedonia. Though the
: Macedonians expelled the Greeks from Macedonia and Thrace, 

Simply untrue

they
: permitted them to settle throughout their vast empire in Asia and
: Africa. Antiochia and Alexandria, to name just the two most
: important cities established by Macedonians, grew into great
: cosmopolitan metropolises where Europeans, Africans, and Asians
: traded goods, ideas, and insults conversing mainly in Greek, the
: 'lingua franca' (common language) of the Macedonian empire.
: 
:    Other significant historical signposts include:
: 
:  * Greece was conquered by Macedonia at the battle of Chaeronea
:    in 338 B.C.
: 
:  * Both Macedonia and Greece were annexed by the Romans to their
:    empire after the battle of Pydna in 168 B.C.
: 
:  * Under the Romans, the Greeks continued to prosper in the Levant,
:    Asia Minor, and Egypt, less so in Greece and not at all in
:    Macedonia. While the Romans did not establish any province by the
:    name of Greece or Hellas, 

They called their Greek province Achaea. So what? (I guess they took the
name fom the Achaean league).

:    there were two Macedonia's in their
:    Empire: 'Macedonia Prima', known today as the Aegean Macedonia, and
:    'Macedonia Salutaris', known today as the Vardar and Pirin
:    Macedonias. The two Macedonian provinces formed the Diocese of
:    Macedonia, to which the Romans attached all of modern Greece and
:    Albania. 

Are the periods getting confused a bit here perhaps? The Romans did
various things to Macedonia, and had various administrative units of
that name. I think I had better leave this to Andy fear, who is a Roman
Historian, but I don't think you can draw any conclusion about the
cul;tural ethnic or linguistic nature of an area from waht the Romans
chose to call it. They were playing their own game.

Latin was the official language in Roman Macedonia, from
:    168 B.C. until the demise of Roman rule at the end of the sixth
:    Christian century.

Only I think in sense that |Latin was the official language everywhere!
Philippi and thessalonica were certainly Greek speaking.
: 
:  * After the establishment of Christianity, the Macedonians and
:    Greeks shed their ethnicity in favour of the new identity as
:    Christian and Roman citizens. Those who spoke Latin called
:    themselves 'Romani'. Those who spoke Greek, whether they were
:    Macedonians, Greeks, Armenians, or Arabs, referred to themselves
:    as 'Rhomaioi', a Greek word for Romans. Those who used Slavic
:    language were known as 'Slovene'.
: 
:  * In the sixth century, the Paeones, now called Slavs,

nonsense! Where had they been in the meantime? Answer: probably where
they had always been!

:    came back
:    and captured all of Macedonia from the East Romans, with the
:    exception of a few coastal cities. Macedonia maintained its
:    independence and resisted attacks by the Armenian and Syrian
:    dynasties who held power in New Rome (Byzantium) and by the
:    shamanist and nomadic Bulgars who roamed the steppes of the
:    Dobrudja with their herds. Since the sixth century, the native
:    Macedonian language had been the dominant speech of the land. It
:    was first systematized in the middle of the ninth Christian
:    century by SS. Cyril and Methodius, the apostles of the Slavs who
:    were born in Thessalonica, Solun. The Macedonian language has
:    functioned as the principal literary, liturgical, and colloquial
:    language of Macedonia ever since.

I think the origin of the Slavs is out of my period! I don't think,
however, that any serious philologist believes that any Slav language
was spoken in this area in antiquity.
: 
[I've omitted the bits about the Byzantine period, though they do seem
to me somewhat tendentious - but let others take that up]

: 
: MACEDONIAN AND OTHER LANGUAGES
: 
:    During the reign of Alexander the Great, the Macedonians spoke
: their own native language.

[I've left out the bit about Alexander speaking in Macedonian, because I
think that has been argued as far as we can on this group]
: 
:    Like Illyrian and Thracian, ancient Macedonian was not recorded in
: writing. However, on the basis of about a hundred glosses,
: Macedonian words noted and explained by Greek writers, some
: place-names from Macedonia, and a few names of individuals, most
: scholars believe that ancient Macedonian was a separate
: Indo-European language. 

Untrue. Some good scholars believe that Macedonian was not close to the
Greek dialects we know. Other, equally good, believe that it was a form
of Greek. Most sit on the fence. I belive that probably it was a sort of
Greek; Andy Fear thinks it was not. But I expect we would both agree
that there is not enough evidence for certainty on either side. This
statement is just a discreditable as statements by Greek netters that
everyone but a fool or a liar knows that Macedonian was Greek.

Evidence from phonology indicates that the
: Macedonian language was distinct from Greek and closer to the
: Thracian and Illyrian languages.

Perhaps, but you can argue the other way.
: 
:    Linguistic continuity between the ancient and modern Macedonians
: is shown by the survival of Philip's original native name. Philip
: was known abroad as 'Philippos'. The native Macedonian and Thracian
: form of his name 

Are you saying that Thracian was a Slav language?

was recorded in the name of the Thracian town which
: he has conquered and named 'Pulpudeva', "the city of Philip". 

If this is Thracian, how do you know that it was also Macedonian?

In the
: language of its Slavic citizens it is known today as 'Plovdiv'.
: The cosmopolitan form of the city's name is 'Philipopolis',  a
: learned rendering of the native name. Another example of this
: continuity involves the ancient capital of Macedonia, Edessa. The
: Macedonians knew this city as 'Voden' long before linguists
: discovered that the Slavic name was a translation of the original
: name and that both meant "watertown." The Greeks, on the other
: hand, unless they study linguistics, do not know the meaning of the
: name.

So? This sort of thing is not unusual. And there is no dispute that
Macedonian was incomprehensible to Southern Greeks.
[the rest is beyond my province, or already argued to death]

Now, a general point. I have protested before about Greeks defending
their government's opposition to the recognition of Macedonia/Skopje
(which I believe to be a grave mistake) by using bad history. The same
applies with the arguments here. Whatever happened two and a half
thousand years ago is an irrelevance to the problems of the region
today. Creating historical fantasies doesn't help. Leave that to boring
academics like me and andy Fear!

Richard Wallace

: 
: 
Newsgroups: soc.culture.yugoslavia,soc.culture.bulgaria,soc.culture.greek