Were Ancient Macedonians and Epirotans really Greek?

[Lek]

In Strabo's geoghraphy they are mentioned as non-Greek. Epirotans related to the Ilyrians and the Macedonians to the Thracians.

[Sikeliot]

Greeks, Illyrians, and Thracians would have all been similar.

[Smeagol]

Pretty sure Macedonians participated in the Panhellenic Games though.

[Coolguy1]

All the evidence points to them being Greek speakers. Why they were considered by some as barbarians is because their societies were not formed around the polis, but villages.



All major scholars agree that Macedonians were Greek speakers, and the fact that people still deny this disregarding the vast linguistic, toponymic, and onomastic evidence bewilders me. Could the Macedonians and Epirots have had Illyrian and Thracian influence? Of course they could, they were neighbors after all.

[Kamal900]

Pretty sure Macedonians participated in the Panhellenic Games though.

Which only ethnic Greeks are allowed to participate, yes.

[Coolguy1]

A great lecture on the ancient Macedonians by a Yale professor,

Introduction to Ancient Greek History: Lecture 24 Transcript

Professor Donald Kagan: I have a title for today's talk. I call it, "Philip, Demosthenes and the Fall of the Polis," and I read that to you because it's always useful to remember that while we look back on these events and know their outcome and can assign to them a special significance, let's never forget they didn't know that they were on the brink of the end of the independent polis. In fact, I'm sure if you came along in 362 after that battle it would never have occurred to you that that whole fundamental arrangement of the world that had been sort of in place, to some degree, perhaps as far back as the eighth century was going to change its character very sharply, and that although there would still be poleis that would be going on, it might seem in the same old way, even after the Macedonian conquest, the fact was that none of them ever again really was autonomous in the sense of to be fully in control of its own fate both in terms of the internal constitution and also, more importantly or at least the one that was most in danger, the capacity to engage in international relations freely and to be free to make their own foreign policy.

So, as I say, it's going to be a very major change but it's something that they don't know they're in the middle of watching. Well, in 359 a man called Philip became King of Macedon. We know the Macedonians were fundamentally Greeks. That is to say, they were Greek speakers and ethnically, if there is such a thing, they were Greek. But they were so far out of the mainstream of the development of the Greek poleis that we have been examining this semester that many, many Greeks, perhaps most of them, didn't think of them as being Greek. When Greeks thought about what it was to be a Greek they thought about more than the fact that they spoke the Greek language, they thought fundamentally--if you get to Aristotle you see how thoroughly true this is, it had to do with a culture, a way of life and that way of life was based upon the independent polis.

Well, Macedon did not have such a structure. The Greeks called the Macedonians an ethnos, a tribal group is what that sort of means. We use the word "nation" somehow to translate ethnos and that's okay. The word "nation" itself, you remember, comes from the Latin word which means to be born; people who are born of the same stock. But for the Greeks it had a different meaning; it was people who participated in the culture that they designated as Hellenic and they thought the Macedonians fell outside of that. There were no poleis in the Macedonian kingdom. It was something that we might call feudal. That is to say, yes there was a monarch, but there were powerful noblemen who were practically independent and who owed only a limited allegiance to the king and who were really the dominant figures in the state for most of the history prior to the appearance of Philip.

On the other hand, the king was an important and powerful character so that you have--this was true of European feudal states at certain periods in their development. On the one hand, the fundamental society was based upon great lords, great noblemen, barons, but there was a king and he was not inconsequential. That's the situation that pertained in Macedon. In a certain sense, if a Greek had looked at Macedonian society prior to Philip, he might have described it as Homeric, and you'll be familiar with that. Sure, there were guys called basileus, but they were not really the rulers over the barons, these great noblemen in their kingdom. They thought of it as uncivilized in the technical sense.

If you don't live in a polis, a city, as they understood it, then you are not civilized; you are part of an ethnos and that's the term they used of the tribal societies all around them, Illyrians, Scythians, they were all from an ethnos. The Macedonians, on the other hand, claimed very proudly and powerfully, and insistently that they were Greeks; they were Hellenes, and they probably invented a myth of their descent. Indeed, not merely from Greeks but from the real Greeks, that is to say the Argives, who were the leading people in the time of Homer's poetry and they claimed direct descent from Agamemnon and the other Argive kings. We hear about various Macedonian monarchs of some importance prior to Philip, back at the time of the Persian War, Alexander the first played an interesting and shady role between the Greeks and the Persians. During the Peloponnesian War we hear of a King Perdiccas, who also played a role shifting between the Spartans and the Athenians.

You can read the entire lecture here:

http://openmedia.yale.edu/projects/i...nscript24.html

Or watch it instead,

[Laberia]

Pretty sure Macedonians participated in the Panhellenic Games though.

Even some Illyrians partecipated. This don't make them Greeks. We have to ask the opinion of the ancient greeks about this question. Both, Macedonians and Epirotes were considered by ancient Greeks, barbarians.
Who was a barbarian back in antiquity?
From Oxford English Dictionary:
2. Hist. a. One not a Greek

The problem is that the neogreeks, who have nothing in common with ancient greeks apart the fact that they live in the same territory but they are a mix of many populations with zero ancient greek blood in their veins claim that all this populations are greek. It's part of their chauvunist ideology called Megaliidea, the Great Idea. Of course, they have also the support of their masters.
During the middle ages with the names Macedonians and Epirotes were called the Albanians. For example in the Kingdom of Napoli there was an regiment, exclusively composed from Albanians, called Macedonian Regiment. There are many examples.
The truth? When the neogreeks will stop with their chauvinistic ideology and their claims for the land of other nations, we will learn what's the truth.

[Laberia]

Greeks, Illyrians, and Thracians would have all been similar.

No, this are the theories of this retard Sinan Ziriç. This people were different.

[Queen B]

When you speak Greek, you participate in the Olympic games, you consider yourself Greek, you fight for Greece, etc, then , what else you could be ?

[Coolguy1]

When you speak Greek, you participate in the Olympic games, you consider yourself Greek, you fight for Greece, etc, then , what else you could be ?

Albanian, isnt it obvious?