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That guy is a Cossack i believe. At least that's the pic that came up on Google images when i searched it.
There's no pretending to be Macedonian here mate. It's what my grandparents called themselves, and the land they were born. They were told by their mothers and fathers that they are Macedonians. This is how it works.
Now tell me, are your ancestors Albanians, Turks, Macedonians or Gypsies? Because they sure weren't 'Greek'.
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i think yes
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Don't take the guy for serious, he obviously has some mental problems...
He comes up with the Jirecek line as if somehow, south of that line was god forbidden for non Greeks to settle and live, when in fact, all what Jirecek line represents is the written language on stones, inscriptions and administration.
While the predominance of the Coine Greek is without doubt, there were many Roman colonies and colonists who used the Latin language and non-Greek tribes who never were really Hellenized, apart from the elites who lived in the cities.
The majority of the Barbarians as have been called by the Greeks, Macedonians too for that matter, apart from the ruling elites, didn't live in the cities.
Intact Roman Inscription from Marcus Aurelius' Rule Found in Ancient Thracian City Kabyle in Southeast Bulgaria:
Stele with a knight and Latin inscription, Drama, Macedonia, Greece. Roman civilisation. Drama, Archaeological Museum:
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Btw, nice post on Quora by a guy who knows his stuff:
Source:
Who did the ancient Macedonians say they were descended from?
It would depend on which Macedonians you asked, and when. Macedonia’s relationship with the rest of the Greek world was complicated… very complicated.
Macedon was culturally distinctive. The strong monarchy, the survival of very archaic religious practices and polygamy are all pretty unique to Macedonia. However — or more likely because of that distinctiveness — upper-class Macedon worked very hard at proving its Hellenic credentials. The ruling dynasty claimed to be descendants of the royal family of Argos. Alexander I (who also nicknamed himself “Philhellenos”, “the lover of Greeks”) essentially sued to get himself admitted to the Olympic games as a Greek on the basis of his Argive descent. The Argive story might or might not reflect a real historical truth — but it also illustrates the persistent efforts of the Macedonian upper class to be accepted as Greeks by the rest of the Greek world.
Farther down the social scale, though, the picture is more complicated. Ordinary Macedonians were not unambiguously “Greek.” Even Isocrates — an ardently pro-Macedonian politician — will say that Macedonian king Amyntas III
alone among the Hellenes claimed to rule over a people not of kindred race
and that
the Hellenes were not accustomed to put up with monarchies, while the rest [ie, the Macedonians] were unable to order their life aright without such a form of government
Isocrates, Philip
The kingdom of Macedonia included several different population groups, including Hellenes from the rest of the Greek world but also Illyrians, Thracians and Paeonians. Intermarriage was common — Philip’s mother, for example, was Illyrian; one of his seven wives was Illyrian, and another was Thracian. Macedonian personal names include solidly Greek names (Alexandros, Phillipos) and definitely alien ones (Sabbataras, Zeisalbis, Drohlou)… though the Greek ones cluster at the top of the social scale, and thus in the history books.
Scholars are divided on whether or not ordinary Macedonians once had their own language, or if they always spoke some version Greek. After Alexander’s time Greek seems to have been the primary language, but there remained a lot of uniquely Macedonian words in circulation. It sounds a lot like what we know happened in neighboring Thrace and Illyria: a Greekified upper class ruling over a rural population that included very different languages and cultural touchstones. A country with almost no conventional Greek poleis, run largely by a rural nobility presiding over serf-like peasants, few of whom were closely connected to Hellenism as conventionally understood.
In many ways it was an excellent school for what the Hellenistic world created by Alexander would look like.
So, if you asked a Macedonian for an origin story, a lot would depend on who you asked. The mythological figure Makednos*, who gave his name the people, gets several contradictory backstories. Sometimes he’s a son of Aeolus, which might indicate a connection to the Aeolian Greeks. However sometimes he’s descended from the daughter of Deucalion (the Greek Noah) and thus not, technically, a “Hellene” at all, since the Hellenes claimed descent from Deucalion’s son Hellen — this a good mythological way of indicating a looser kind of cultural kinship. Yet another story (circulated a bit later) makes him a son of Lycaon, king of Arcadia — and, mythologically, a pre-Hellenic inhabitant of central Greece.** It this sounds confusing, it is — and it’s not clear that there really was one widely accepted story. ***
There’s only one well documented story about Macedonian origins. And — no surprise — it’s pretty ambiguous. Herodotus tells it like this:
From Argos fled to the Illyrians three brothers of the descendants of Temenus, Gauanes, Aeropus, and Perdiccas; and passing over from the Illyrians into the upper parts of Macedonia they came to the city of Lebaia. There they became farm servants for pay in the household of the king, one pasturing horses, the second oxen, and the youngest of them, Perdiccas, the smaller kinds of cattle; for in ancient times even those who were 'rulers over men’ were poor in money, and not the common people only.
The queen cooked for them their food herself. And whenever she baked, the loaf of the boy their servant, namely Perdiccas, became double as large as by nature it should be. When this happened constantly in the same manner, she told it to her husband, and he understood that this was a portent and tended to something great. He summoned the farm-servants, and ordered them to depart out of his land. They replied that it was right that before they went forth they should receive the wages which were due.
Now it chanced that the sun was shining into the house down through the opening which received the smoke, and the king when he heard about the wages said, being inspired by a divine power: "I pay you then this for wages, and it is such as you deserve," pointing to the sunlight.
Gauanes and Aeropus, the elder brothers, stood struck with amazement when they heard this, but the boy, who happened to have in his hand a knife, said: "We accept, oh king, that which you gave", and he traced a line with his knife round the sunlight on the floor of the house, and having traced the line round he thrice drew of the sunlight into his bosom, and after that he departed both himself and his fellows….
So the brothers, having come to another region of Macedonia, took up their dwelling near the gardens of Midas the son of Gordias, where roses grow wild which have each one sixty petals and excel all others in perfume. [...] Above the gardens is situated a mountain called Bermion, which is inaccessible because of the cold. Having taken possession of that region, they made this their starting-point, and proceeded to subdue the rest of Macedonia.
Many modern scholars see this as a thin Greek wrapper over an older Paeonian or Thracian solar-god myth. The roses (one of the unique Macedonian words we know of is ἄβαγνα, a rose) and the mention of Midas may be a muddy reference to the Bryges, who lived in what later became Macedonia before some of them moved to Phrygia in modern Turkey. The primary legacy of the story is the sunburst-in-circle device which became the emblem of the Macedonian royal family.
The Macedonian sunburst
TLDR: it’s not obvious that Macedonians were a single people in the contemporary nationalist sense at all. Outside the royal family — who had reasons of their own for emphasizing Greek roots, true or not — there was not a single, simple, universally agreed-on definition of who was a Macedonian, what language or customs that entailed.
“It’s complicated.”
PS At last glance the wiki page actually does .a pretty good job covering the complexities of the topic, on days when it’s not being pulled back and forth by competing claims by modern Greek and Macedonian nationalists. It’s worth pointing out that all of the written sources are (ancient) Greek - as far as we know Macedonian, if it was a distinct language, was never written down.
* It’s symbolic that modern linguists aren’t really sure how to derive “Makednos” from a Greek root. It might be from μηκεδανός… or it might not.
** Arcadia preserved the reputation being “pre-Greek” or at least “primitive” into historic times; the festival associated with Lycaon was rumored in ancient times to have involved human sacrifices. Arcadians were often described as Pelasgians, the pre-Hellenic inhabitants of Greece — though, to be fair, the same is true of Athenians.
Some modern scholars see “Pelasgian” as code for “Mycenaean”, and there are some interesting connections between Macedonian culture and the archaic Mycenaean version (eg, tholos tombs). Argos — the putative Macedonian mother-city — is deeply connected with Mycenaean tradition. However no Linear B writings have ever been found in Macedonia.
*** There’s also a version which has Makednos descending from the Egyptian god Osiris. This is almost certainly something made up by the Ptolemies as a way of connecting themselves with Egyptian tradition. Interestingly in this version the linkage goes through Lycaon, who stands in for the minor Egyptian god Wepwawet who had a wolf’s head — Lycaon is, mythologically, connected with werewolves.
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Good one:
“Now that the wars are coming to an end, I wish you to prosper in peace. May all mortals from now on live like one people in concord and for mutual advancement. Consider the world as your country, with laws common to all and where the best will govern irrespective of tribe. I do not distinguish among men, as the narrow-minded do, both among Greeks and Barbarians. I am not interested in the descendance of the citizens or their racial origins. I classify them using one criterion: their virtue. For me every virtuous foreigner is a Greek and every evil Greek worse than a Barbarian. If differences ever develop between you never have recourse to arms, but solve them peacefully. If necessary, I should be your arbitrator.”
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Cute, but then this,
"... not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from any place that can be named with honors, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave" - Demosthenes, Third Philippic, 31.
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