Were the Ancient Macedonians the same as ancient Greeks.

[Pjeter Pan]

What I mean is were they related by blood or Maybe the Macedonians were influenced by the Greeks and adopted their language, traditions, culture, and became assimilated. In my world history course i asked my teacher if they were the same people like spartans and athenians he said no. What do you guys think?

[Vojnik]

I don't think so. Ancient Macedonians were segregated by Ancient Hellenes and called Barbarians by them. They spoke a similar language, but that does note define who they were.

[Pjeter Pan]

I don't think so. Ancient Macedonians were segregated by Ancient Hellenes and called Barbarians by them. They spoke a similar language, but that does note define who they were.

That's what I think but why did Alexander spread greek culture everywhere he went

[Vojnik]

Hellenism was in the east before Alexanders conquest.

Four hundred years after being incorporated into an imperial framework (that of the Assyrians), an even greater cultural transformation takes place, as the East is subjugated politically – and some would say also culturally - by Alexander the Great and Hellenic culture. The takeover of the East is often described as "Hellenization," a problematic and increasingly criticized term used to describe people and things in the process of "becoming Greek.

Alexander the Great (Hellenistic mosaic)The historical facts of this metamorphosis seem quite straightforward - between 334 and 330 BCE Alexander the Great, coming out of Macedonia, defeats the Persian emperor and brings the word of Greek enlightenment to all of his territories. Soon after Alexander's death, Hellenistic kingdoms mushroom from Egypt to Afghanistan. But why, after being established in place for millennia, did all of the Eastern civilizations capitulate their rich variety of religions, arts, mythologies and philosophies within a few years? Archaeological investigation, at Dor and at other places, tells a more intricate story.

The Phoenicians, well-known for their role in bringing Near Eastern civilization to the Mediterranean, also served as conduits for influences going the other way. Many believe that the Phoenician towns were pre-disposed towards Hellenization before Alexander's conquests, and thereafter served as catalysts for the Hellenization process.

The first Greek imports to Dor date as early as the tenth century BCE. This trickle is greatly enhanced after Assyrian occupation, and, by the fourth century BCE, most of the table ware at Dor is imported from Greece. By the mid-fourth century, Hellenic-type wares are probably locally produced and distributed. Figurines of the Persian period show deities with Greek-type attributes alongside traditional Phoenician 'fertility goddesses' and types associated with the ruling Persian cosmology. straca and graffiti show that the locally spoken language was changing from Phoenician to Greek decades before the political fact of Alexander's conquest. By the Roman era, and perhaps sooner, the inhabitants of Dor sometimes claimed a Greek heritage. Yet most archaeologists would consider that the Dorians behaved in a way that was also Phoenician. Aspects of traditional Phoenician culture persist well into the Hellenistic period and even later, challenging the idea of a Greek cultural hegemony in the East.

http://dor.huji.ac.il/HL_east.html


How did he spread Hellenism when it was already there?

[Gorštak]

Ancient Macedonians make Ancient Greeks as their little bitches.
Alexandar would always put Greeks in first rows that more of them die than Macedonians soldiers.

[wvwvw]

What I mean is were they related by blood or Maybe the Macedonians were influenced by the Greeks and adopted their language, traditions, culture, and became assimilated. In my world history course i asked my teacher if they were the same people like spartans and athenians he said no. What do you guys think?

Ancient Macedonians were a Greek tribe. The fact that your Albanian teacher is teaching you invented myths and historical revisionism as history, in the same way that Africentrists teach myths as history, will never change the fact that Macedonians were a Greek tribe.

We have numerous archaeological inscriptions found - specifically the Pella’s curse tablet of 4th cent BC that are proving that Macedonians spoke a North-West Greek dialect. This is a conclusion which the entirety of the scientific community agrees on.

Can you find me even One (1) NON-GREEK ancient people who applied ALL the following attributes of the ancient Macedonians and the rest of Greeks?

Namely…
1. A Non-Greek people identifying themselves as Greeks.
2. A Non-Greek people considered by others as Greeks.
3. A Non-Greek people having Greek Names.
4. A Non-Greek people speaking Greek language.
5. A Non-Greek people sharing the same religion as Greeks
6. A Non-Greek people having the same heroes as Greeks
7. A Non-Greek people having the same myths as Greeks
8. A Non-Greek people spreading everywhere Greek Language and Culture,
9. A Non-Greek people building Greek cities,
10. A Non-Greek people participating in Pan-Hellenic Games,
11. A Non-Greek people participating in Amphictionies.
12. A Non-Greek peope using the same architecture as Greeks

All these above characteristics were attributed ONLY to Greek people. If you claim that ancient Macedonians were allegedly NOT Greeks, then find us a non-Greek people who shared ALL these characteristics of the Macedonians and the rest of Greeks during Classical Greece.

Who may have 'hellenized' ancient Macedonians, if we we assume, despite proof for the contrary, that they were not a greek tribe ? This is a question that no Albanian/Fyromian could give an answer. Assuming that ancient Macedonians were not speaking Greek the large number of doric and thus non-attic words found in their spoken language, let alone place-names, month-names, attributes to Gods and Godesses, festival names etc seem to zero the probability that Athenians were the ones who hellenized them. The large number of archaic greek words not used by other Greeks of that time preclude any other greek city-state or kingdom of the classic times to be responsible for that alleged 'hellenization'.

Remembering the not so friendly relations between the Macedonians and the Athenians, the vastness of the Macedonian kingdom as opposed to that of the city state of Athens, and its population -Macedonians were able to form sizeable armies, by Greek standards- it is highly unlikely that any other Greek state or Athens could have undertaken such an enormous task and had it completed in a 10-20 year period.

Is it possible [ignoring historic evidence that shows that this was not the case] that Macedonians had spoken a non-greek language before 400BC and within a 10-20 year period every Macedonian was fluent in the attic dialect?
The answer is no, unless one sites as an example the races in Star Trek: The Next Generation (Trademark by Paramount Pictures) who are all fluent in English no matter how alien or young or French for that matter are) Arrhianos presented many instances of Alexander the Great talking to his fellow Macedonian soldiers in greek(attic) and not say, in their supposedly non-greek mother tongue. Wouldn't his soldiers feel more comfortable in their mother tongue (a supposedly non greek one)?

On the other hand, Alexander A' when he initiated his otherwise brief contacts with the Greeks in the South he was able to talk to them in Greek fluently. If Macedonians were to be hellenised in the 4th century BC there would have been no way for Alexander A' to speak greek. If he and his family were the only Greek speakers in Macedonia it would have been highly unlikely that he and his family had retained the ability to speak Greek fluently.

One of the tragedies Euripides first presented in Macedonia was Iphigeneia in Aulis and Ekavi. In Iphigeneia (1400) and Ekavi (1199) "OYPOT' AN FILON / TO BARBARON GENOIT' AN ELLHSIN GENOS / OYD AN DYNAITO", the greek superiority over the Barbarians was highlighted. It would have been be too dangerous for him to express such opinions to a non-greek audience (if Macedonians were not Greek and spoke a non-Greek language). Let alone the fact that the language of his tragedies was Greek.

[wvwvw]

from LIVY. ROME AND THE MEDITERRANEAN
Translated by HENRY BETTENSON
PENGUIN CLASSICS

In the year 200 B.C. the Macedonian King Philip V sent Macedonian ambassadors to the council of the Aetolian League, the 'Panaetolian Congress', to try to prevent the Romans from inducing the Aetolians to change their allegiance from Philip V to the Romans in their 2nd Macedonian War. At the council was also the Roman representative sent by the consul, and also a deputation from the Athenians who were the Romans' allies at this time.A hearing was first given to the Macedonians.

The Macedonian delegates said:

'..........the same reasons which led them (the Aetolians)
to make peace with Philip should lead them to keep that
peace, once it had been established'.
'Or do you prefer' said one of the the delegates, '.......
................ . It is sheer madness to expect anything will
remain in the same state if aliens, more widely separated
from you by language, customs and laws than by distance
over sea and land, obtain control over these parts.
Philip's rule ............. . Allow the foreign legions to settle
down in these parts and take the yoke on your shoulders;
then it will be too late and all in vain to call on Philip as
your ally, when you have the Roman for your lord. The
Aetolians, the Acarnanians, the Macedonians, are divided
or united by unimportant causes that arise from time
to time; with aliens, with barbarians, all Greeks are and
will be for ever at war; for they are enemies not for
reasons which change from day to day, but by nature -
and nature is eternal. But now my speech will end .........'


Livy (Titus Livius), XXXI.28 - XXXI.29
from LIVY. ROME AND THE MEDITERRANEAN
Translated by HENRY BETTENSON

[wvwvw]

"Aetolians, Acarnanians, Macedonians, men of the same language"
T. Livius XXXI, 29, 15 (Loeb, E.T. Sage)

"And she conceived and bore to Zeus, who delights in the thunderbolt, two sons, Magnes and Macedon,
rejoicing in horses, who dwell round about Pieria and Olympus."
(Hesiod, Catalogues of Women and Eoiae 3 [Loeb, H.G. Evelyn-White])

"For in the days of king Deucalion it (i.e. a Makednian tribe) inhabited the land of Phthiotis, then in the time
of Dorus, son of Hellen, the country called Histiaean, under Ossa and Olympus; driven by the Cadmeians
from this Histiaean country it settled about Pindus in the parts called Macedonian; thence again it migrated
to Dryopia, and at last came from Dryopia into Peloponnesus, where it took the name of Dorian."
(Herod. I, 56, 3 [Loeb, A.D. Godley])

"Tell your king (Xerxes), who sent you, how his Greek viceroy (Alexander I) of Macedonia has received
you hospitably."
(Herod. V, 20, 4 [Loeb])

"The country by the sea which is now called Macedonia... Alexander, the father of Perdiccas,
and his forefathers, who were originally Temenidae from Argos"
Thucydides 99,3 (Loeb, C F Smith)

"The Peloponnesians that were with the fleet were ... the Lacedaimonians, ... the Corinthians, ...
the Sicyonians, ... the Epidaurians, ... the Troezenians, ... the people of Hermione there; all these,
except the people of Hermione, were of Dorian stock and had last come from
Erineus and Pindus and the Dryopian region."
(Herod. VIII, 43 {Loeb])

"Three brothers of the lineage of Temenos came as banished men from Argos to Illyria,
Gauanes and Aeropos and Perdiccas."
(Herod. VIII, 137, 1 [Loeb])

"For I (Alexander I) myself am by ancient descent a Greek,
and I would not willingly see Hellas change her freedom for slavery."
(Herod. IX, 45, 2 [Loeb])

"The country by the sea which is now called Macedonia ... Alexander I, the father of Perdiccas (II),
and his forefathers, who were originally Temenidae from Argos."
(Thuc. II, 99, 3 [Loeb, C. F. Smith])

"Argos is the land of your fathers."
(Isoc., To Philip, 32 (Loeb, G. Norlin])

"It is your privilege, as one who has been blessed with untrammeled freedom,
to consider all Hellas your fatherland, as did the founder of your race."
(Isoc., To Philip, 127 [Loeb])


"This is a sworn treaty made between us, Hannibal ... and Xenophanes the Athenian ...
in the presence of all the gods who possess Macedonia and the rest of Greece."
(Pol. Histories, VII, 9, 4 [Loeb, W.R. Paton])

"He sent to Athens three hundred Persian panoplies to be set up to Athena in the acropolis;
he ordered this inscription to be attached: Alexander, son of Philip, and the Greeks,
save the Lacedaimonians, set up these spoils from the barbarians dwelling in Asia."
(Arr. I, 16, 7 [Loeb, P. A. Brunt])

"Your ancestors invaded Macedonia and the rest of Greece and did us great harm, though we had done
them no prior injury; ... (and) I have been appointed leader of the Greeks ..."
(Arr., Anab. Alex. II, 14, 4)

"They say that these were the tribes collected by Amphiktyon himself in the Greek Assembly: ...
the Macedonians joined and the entire Phocian race ... In my day there were thirty members: six each
from Nikopolis, Macedonia and Thessaly..."
(Paus. Phokis VIII, 2 & 4 [Loeb, W. Jones])

"Belistiche, a woman from the coast of Macedonia, won with the pair of foals ... at the hundred
and twenty-ninth Olympics."
(Paus. Eleia VIII, 11 [Loeb])

The speech of Alexander: "Men of Athens...
Had I not greatly at heart the common welfare of Hellas I should not have come to tell you;
but I am myself Hellene by descent, and I would not willingly see Hellas exchange freedom for slavery....
If you prosper in this war, forget not to do something for my freedom; consider the risk I have run,
out of zeal for the Hellenic cause, to acquaint you with what Mardonius intends, and to save you from
being surprised by the barbarians. I am Alexander of Macedon."
(Herodotus, The Histories, 9.45)

[wvwvw]

BBC RADIO 4 – The Rosetta Stone
Listen what the BBC RADIO 4 says about the ethnicity of the Macedonians and Alexander the Great.







"The Macedonian people and their kings were of Greek stock, as their
traditions and the scanty remains of their language combine to testify."
John Bagnell Bury, "A History of Greece to the death of Alexander the
Great", 2nd. Edition (The Modern Library: New York, 1913). J.B. Bury was
a regius professor of Modern History, and a fellow of King's College in
the University of Cambridge.

[Smeagol]

Alexander called himself a Greek so yes.