From: gd8f@kelvin.seas.Virginia.EDU (Gregory  Dandulakis)
Subject: Re: Scopjian Flag
Organization: University of Virginia
Date: Mon, 16 Nov 1992 22:44:01 GMT


In article <BxtL08.Fs6@gabriel.keele.ac.uk> cla04@seq1.keele.ac.uk (A.T. Fear) writes:
>
>For those not in the know Demosthenes remarked that Philip of Macedon
>was not only not a Greek but not even from a barbarian race that anyone
>could speak well of but a Macedonian. As a skillful orator he is
>unlikely to have used an argument which if the Greek posters are right
>and ancient Macedonians were clearly Greeks would have made him a
>laughing stock in his opponents eyes.


 OK, we've heard your ideas. I know that you try hard to create
 a novel approach, like all of us in research, but please, don't 
 confuse desires with facts. Let's look to the writings of some more
 established historians. Please, if you have counterarguments
 bring them within the scientific community; the vast majority
 of historians, both in numbers and prestige, claim the 
 following:



----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------
The promised copy of recent prominent historical texts 
(1980's) on the matter of the ancient Macedonian language 
is following.

From the probably most respected internationally German 
historian of classic times, Malcolm Errington professor at 
the University of Marburg, and his english translation 
book: "A History of Macedonia", University of California 
Press, Los Angeles, 1990, pp. 3-4:

... That the Macedonians and their kings did in fact speak 
a dialect of Greek and bore Greek names may be regarded 
nowdays as certain. The Macedonian dialect made use of 
many loan words from the languages of their Illyrian and 
Thracian neighbours, a circumstance that does not surprise 
modern philologists but provided ancient opponents of 
Macedonia with "proof" that they could not be Greeks. The 
question of the actual racial origins of the ancient 
Macedonians cannot be answered adequately on the basis of 
the language or of social and religious customs in 
historical times. It is, however, historically an unprof-
itable question, which has only gained in importance in 
modern times because it has been taken up by nationalists 
of all kinds in the Balkans and elsewhere and exploited, 
according to the answer, in the service of territorial and 
other claims.
Ancient allegations that the Macedonians were non-Greeks 
all had their origin in Athens at the time of struggle 
with Philip II. Then as now, a political struggle created 
the prejudice. ...

----------------------------------------------------------
----------------------------------
And from the most reputable worldwide British historian of 
the ancient Greek period, N. G. L. Hammond, professor in 
the University of Bristol, I copy from his book: "The 
Macedonian State", Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1989, pp. 12-
15:

The language of the Macedonians

What language did these "Macedones" speak? The name it-
self is Greek in root and in ethnic termination. It proba-
bly means "highlanders", and it is comparable to Greek 
tribal names such as "Orestai" and "Oreitai", meaning 
"mountain-men". A reputedly earlier variant, 
"Maketai", has the same root, which means "high", as 
in the Greek adjective makednos or the noun mekos. The 
genealogy of eponymous ancestors which Hesiod recorded has 
a bearing on the question of Greek speech. First Hesiod 
made Macedon a brother of Magnes; as we know from in-
scriptions that the Magnetes spoke the Aeolic dialect of 
the Greek language, we have a predisposition to suppose 
that the Macedones spoke the Aeolic dialect. Second, 
Hesiod made Macedon and Magnes first cousins of Hellens 
three sons - Dorus, Xouthus, and Aeolus - who were the 
founders of three dialects of Greek speech, namely Doric, 
Ionic, and Aeolic. Hesiod would not have recorded this 
relationship, unless he had believed, probably in the 
seventh century, that the Macedones were a Greek-speaking 
people. The next evidence comes from Persia. At the turn 
of the sixth century the Persians described the tribute-
paying peoples of their province in Europe, and one of 
them was the "yauna takabara", which meant "Greeks 
wearing the hat". There were Greeks in Greek city-states 
here and there in the province, but they were of various 
origins and not distinguished by a common hat. However, 
the Macedonians wore a distinctive hat, the kausia. We 
conclude that the Persians believed the Macedonians to be 
speakers of Greek. Finally, in the latter part of the 
fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, visited 
Macedonia and modified Hesiods genealogy by making 
Macedon not a cousin, but a son of Aeolus, thus bringing 
Macedon and his descendants firmly into the Aeolic branch 
of the Greek-speaking family. Hesiod, Persia, and 
Hellanicus had no motive for making a false statement 
about the language of the Macedonians, who were then an 
obscure and not a powerful people. Their independent tes-
timonies should be accepted as conclusive.

=================================================================


After all these, and taken into consideration all the already
existing facts, even if the ancient macedonians were not culturally
identical (how could they?) with the southern Greeks, if one modern 
culture can claim unbroken continuity from the ancient macedonians,
this can only be the modern Greek. (DON'T FORGET THE HELLENISTIC
PERIOD: the real cultural impact of the ancient macedonian conquests;
It is a period which gave the language of the New Testament, and which
is readily readable by all the modern Greeks).


Gr
Xref: sparky soc.culture.greek:10747 soc.culture.yugoslavia:9605 soc.culture.europe:9686