Were Ancient Macedonians Greek?

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Macedonians, like other Greek city states and kingdoms, decided that resisting the Persians is futile, so they succumbed without battle. Like Denmark in WWII

Also it was Philip who dreamed of the Greeks invading Persia as a revenge. Greeks. Not Macedonians or Athenians -who had suffered most that any other city states.

Mythology some times give some useful info, in that occasion mythology doesn't say anything about titans or cyclopes or gods, it says about Greek settlers who built their kingdom in an area later called Macedonia.

"Alexander (son) of Philip, and the Greeks apart from the Lacedaemonians", as the epigram goes :)

The Spartans would never agree to be part of a campaign which did not have them as the leader.

Btw, Thessaly and Boiotia did not fight the Persians either in their invasions, would that make them non-greek too? :mischief:
 
Yep, Philip was assassinated before making his dream true. So Alexander led the attack.

I am curious why none claims the Cypriots to be Phoenicians who converted to our culture. Perhaps because they didn't do something great ?
 
Macedonians, like other Greek city states and kingdoms, decided that resisting the Persians is futile, so they succumbed without battle. Like Denmark in WWII

That may be so, but my point is that people probably only began thinking of themselves as 'Greeks' at the time of the Persian Wars, as an ideological construct to create unity in the alliance against Persia. The Macedonians, having not been members of that alliance, probably did not share that ideological baggage. The other elements of panhellenic identity were the games, especially the Olympics - in which Macedonians traditionally did not compete - and the Homeric epics, which similarly do not have any mention of Macedonians. So I think it's unlikely that the average Macedonian would have seen himself as Greek, or indeed seen any value in that status. I do think you're right to say that Macedonian royals wanted others to see them as Greek, though - see below.

Mythology some times give some useful info, in that occasion mythology doesn't say anything about titans or cyclopes or gods, it says about Greek settlers who built their kingdom in an area later called Macedonia.

The same flavour of mythology also says that the Athenians sprung out of the ground and that the Romans came as refugees from the destruction of Troy. As I said, this sort of mythology has little value as actual history - a Roman legend with just as much 'validity' claims that they were originally Greeks, for example - but it does tell you how the people telling the stories thought about themselves. So it's interesting that the Macedonian royal family sought to gain Hellenic legitimacy by claiming descent from Argos. To use it as actual 'fact', though, is just cherrypicking the elements which fit your existing interpretation, which isn't good practice at all.

Thessaly and Boiotia did not fight the Persians either in their invasions, would that make them non-greek too

See above - I don't believe that actually categorising these groups as 'Greek' or 'non-Greek' has any value, beyond saying that when we study the Greeks, we choose to include these people and not those people. So the question is best phrased in terms of self-definition and definition by others. See above for why I think that those people probably considered themselves as Greeks: in the case of Boeotians, this is particularly true because of the heavy involvement of Orchomenos and Thebes in the affairs of Attica and the Peloponnese from the Bronze Age into the Classical period. Macedonia, by contrast, was largely an isolated affair until the time of Philip.
 
[...] See above for why I think that those people probably considered themselves as Greeks: in the case of Boeotians, this is particularly true because of the heavy involvement of Orchomenos and Thebes in the affairs of Attica and the Peloponnese from the Bronze Age into the Classical period. Macedonia, by contrast, was largely an isolated affair until the time of Philip.

Philip made his kingdom relevant as an entirely direct result of being seen as Greek enough to warrant his state to be part of the third Amphictyonic league (those were leagues formed mostly to protect the autonomous state of Delphoi, and not allow Phocaea to control it). Philip (and Macedonia) would have likely remained a port-less backwater in the Greek north if he did not get Thessaly awarded in that war.
Which is also the reason why the wife of general Kassander, a close relative (daughter) of Philip and his dynasty, was named Thessalonike, signifying the massive importance of that victory (nike) at Thessaly ;) Kassander founded Thessalonike after his wife's name, around 2300 years ago.
 
The Amphictyonic League was a religious grouping, bear in mind, rather than a political one, and entirely centred in these times on Dephi - which, as you point out, Philip had just joined the 3rd Sacred War to 'protect'. I would argue that what Philip did was more using the Sacred War as a distraction to expand into Thessaly. The received story is that the Thessalaians appealed to him to help them in the war, after which his army occupied most of their territory and he was awarded the archonship of Thessaly out of 'gratitude' - which smacks to me more of the 'goodwill' of Attalus and Prasutagus 'gifting' their kingdoms posthumously to Rome. It is certainly notable that his actions in Thessaly involved reorganisation by mass settlement of cities by Macedonians and similarly mass exiles of the locals. The votes awarded to him in the Amphictyonic League were those of the expelled Phocians.

Rather than the ports of Thessaly - much more important in Medieval and modern times than in the pre-Roman period - I'd argue that what made Philip able to expand into Greece was his conquest of the mines of Pangaion and Crenides, which gave him the revenue that fuelled his later conquests, though of course his own remarkable military ability and diplomatic daring allowed this itself to come about. Certainly, he threatened Athens by land as soon as he had taken Thessaly, and the ports had little impact in his successful invasion.
 
^Well yeah, and you wouldn't really call the Fatimids to take part in a crusade either. If Macedonia was seen as another type of barbarian non-greek kingdom like the celtic areas to the north of it in the time of the diadochoi, they would not have been invited to any such league at all (it is not even as if they had considerable power; they weren't Persia covertly helping Sparta in the peloponnesian war).
That Philip was after Thessaly makes perfect sense, i did not argue he had to be in the league out of personal religious reason, and i doubt the rest of the states were there for that either.
 
I agree with the second part of that, but my point is that his 'Greekness' had little to do either with his involvement in the war or subsequent acceptance by the League. In fact, I think the first part is totally wrong - the Macedonians were invited into the League because they were the rulers of Thessaly and in a position to menace Delphi: they were much safer on the inside and predictable than on the outside and not. They got into the war because Thessaly needed a strong neighbour to save it from Pherae, at which point I don't think anyone was seriously scrutinising their Hellenic credentials - though equally I don't think the Thessalaians expected the ensuing events.
 
Sitalkas said:
The English is a unique occasion because it's not a race of its own, rather a mix o Celts-Angles-Saxons-Normans and other.

It's hard to talk with you because you don't care about the meaning of words, and you also don't know how ethnogenesis works.

By the way, Angles, Saxons and Early Normans were all Germanics. Just like Spartans, Athenians and Syracuseans were all Greeks.

And how much Celtic ancestry the English have is actually disputed. It is even disputed how much Celtic ancestry "Celts" in Britain had.

One thing is certain - English culture adopted very little from Celtic culture. English language has almost no Celtic loanwords as well.

I'm not sure why do you think that Greeks were (and still are) less mixed than the English. Actually looking at Y-DNA indicates the opposite.

He also wrote about the Scythians and the Dacians, did he mention their Greek origin? No, because they were not Greeks.

It has nothing to do with origins but with language they spoke. Scythian and Dacian languages were completely different from Greek.

Scythian was one of languages of the Iranian language family. Dacian belonged to Daco-Thracian language family.

The Seleucids wasn't a civilization, they were Macedonians ruling a vast area in Asia, fighting other Macedonians.

Your use of word "civilization" is even more careless and random than your use of word "race"... :dunno:

I believe that if the founder of the Macedonian Dynasty was from Argos, then all his descendants have Greek origins too.

So the royal dynasty probably had Greek origins. What percentile of total population of Macedon was its royal dynasty? 0,001% ???
 
Fine, I correct the word "civilization" with the word "race". Again the summary is the same. They were Macedonians/ Greeks who were ruling a foreign territory. Like the Palmyrene empire; They were Romans controlling the Levant.

Just as me classifying Normans and Angles/Saxons as not race-relevant harass you, it harass us to claim that Macedonians are not Greeks.

Once again, I said that he took the time to do research because he strongly believed that they were Greeks. If he had suspicions of other races being of Greek origin, he would have mentioned it.


One doesn't settle an area on its own, just with his wife and children, and expects to have a kingdom soon. He obviously had settlers from Argos too, searching for a place to farm the land or feed their sheep
 
He obviously had settlers from Argos too, searching for a place to farm the land or feed their sheep.

The same situation was in Alexander's Empire and in Hellenistic Kingdoms later. A lot of Greeks settled there.

Check how many cities Alexander founded (most were named "Alexandria"). Greek immigrants settled there.

Yet you - for some unknown to me reason - claim that those were two different situations.

One doesn't settle an area on its own, just with his wife and children, and expects to have a kingdom soon.

I'm not sure why do you think that kings create realms. Often they simply get thrones of already existing realms.

Fine, I correct the word "civilization" with the word "race".

"Races" imply that you can easily distinguish people of different races. Most Europeans look similar to each other.

Like the Palmyrene empire; They were Romans controlling the Levant.

Since 212 AD every free adult male in the Roman Empire was a Roman. Both in legal status and in terms of culture.

In language not everyone was a Roman (Latin-speaker), but most of them perhaps already were.

I suggest you check birthplaces of Roman Emperors. You will see that many originated from regions like Iberia or Levant.
 
The same situation was in Alexander's Empire and in Hellenistic Kingdoms later. A lot of Greeks settled there.

Check how many cities Alexander founded (most were named "Alexandria"). Greek immigrants settled there.

Yet you - for some unknown to me reason - claim that those were two different situations.

Uh... Argos of the archaic age did not exactly have the means to move non-citizens or others non-tied to it, en masse, to another area- let alone in the scale that Alexaner the Great could. It could move its own people, part of the population of Argolis, who wanted to move or had to, etc. The two indeed are two almost entirely different situations.

You are essentially claiming that since Athens could create oversea colonies in the late archaic era, so could some concurrent village in the Danube.
 
I don't get you...

How what you describe is linked with what I describe?

I said that settlers from Argos, thus Greeks, build a kingdom in a couple of centuries.

You say about colonies that were built by Greeks for other reasons than founding a new kingdom.. trading, supplying troops on expeditions, getting valuable resources etc
 
Uh... Argos of the archaic age did not exactly have the means to move non-citizens or others non-tied to it, en masse, to another area- let alone in the scale that Alexaner the Great could. It could move its own people, part of the population of Argolis, who wanted to move or had to, etc. The two indeed are two almost entirely different situations.

You are essentially claiming that since Athens could create oversea colonies in the late archaic era, so could some concurrent village in the Danube.

This is a response to Sitalkas because it was him, not me, who claimed that Argos carried out colonization of Macedon. Sitalkas claimed that there was Greek colonization in Macedon but no such thing in Alexander's World. The reality was exactly the opposite, as your post also suggests.

You say about colonies that were built by Greeks for other reasons than founding a new kingdom

So according to you the Persian Empire continued to exist ???

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By the way:

What is your opinion about the "Greekness" of slaves and other non-citizen inhabitants of Ancient Athens, Sparta, etc.? Were those non-citizens Greeks or not? Were those slaves Greeks or not? They were majority of population and most of modern Greeks in the Peloponnese or elsewhere descend from them.
 
^You make no sense. I claimed what Sitalkas did, namely that Argos could only make a colony by using its own people of Argolis. Contrary to Alexander who had a massive campaign and virtually all of Greece in control, and thus could colonise a vast number of places anyway.
Difference being that Argos would colonise Macedonia with Argeans.

And remember that you yourself asked me why i claimed your thread here is about antagonism. So maybe you should not post semi-random stuff after you run a 2min google search or something, cause the people bothering to reply to you do so only if they have read about the topics.
 
Since 212 AD every free adult male in the Roman Empire was a Roman. Both in legal status and in terms of culture.

That's certainly not true. Culture varied widely across the empire, and in areas with established local hierarchies Roman control was more of an incidental nuisance than a fundamental element of their identity. I've written at length on the relationship between ordinary people, local elites and the Roman state elsewhere.
 
Culture varied widely across the empire

Yes, about as much as across the Holy Roman Empire in the Middle Ages.

But there were certainly many common cultural elements for entire Roman Empire -and this is what I was referring to. When you look at spatial organization of Roman towns and cities, for example, then you can see great similarities even between towns located in two opposite, farthest corners of the Empire. You could take a bath in a Roman thermae or in a Roman balnea in both Egypt and Britain. You could watch gladiator fights in both Mesopotamia and Iberia. Pantheon of gods (including the divine Emperor himself) was also the same across the Empire, even though in various regions different gods had an elevated status.

And in the end, Christianity became the state religion of the Empire.

Latin was also spoken by majority of Late Roman Empire's inhabitants - best evidence for which is the extent of Romance languages.

All Romance languages originated from Latin, which diverged into regional dialects after spreading into the Empire, and after the Empire collapsed.
 
Again a brief response, but most of that was only true within a few miles of reasonably-sized towns. Also note that Latin never displaced Greek in the East, or indeed the many smaller, local languages.
 
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