Ancient Macedonian Language Part V

4)RELATIONS BETWEEN THE MACEDONIAN AND OTHER GREEK TRIBES

We have alreadymet various indications of the relations between the Macedonians and other Greek tribes. These relations demonstrate that the Macedonians were a Greek tribe from as early as the Bronze Age.

The Macedonians were bound to the Dorians and the MAgnesians by very close ties of kinship. Their ties with the former are attested by a tradition preserved in Herodotos, corrected by other evidence. They are also implicit in a number of dialect features common to both Doric and Macedonian; the fact that the kings of Sparta and of the MAcedonians offered sacrifices to the Diskouroi; the cult of Pasikrata in Macedonia and in the Doric world (at Selinous, a colony of the Dorian Megarians); and the division of the Temenids into two branches one of which stayed in Macedonia while the other appears in the Dorian Argos.

The relationship between the Macedonians and the Magnesians was familiar to the ancients, for Hesiod portrays Makedon and Magnes as brothers. It is confirmed by the fact that the name of both peoples is derived from the root mak – “high, tall” and by the circumstance that the Macedonians and Magnesians celebrated a festival called the Hetaireidia, unknown elsewhere.

… other material relating Macedonia with other Greek tribes neighbouring Macedonia and with Theseus is deleted ….

CROSS CHECK OF CONCLUSIONS DRAWN FROM THE DIFFERENT CATEGORIES OF EVIDENCE

We have examined in turn
1) the surviving traditions and testimonia concerning the Macedonians
2) the available evidence for the Macedonian tongue
3) what is known today of their religion and ethnology
4) the relations between the MAcedonians and other various Greek tribes.

The valid data under all these headings leads naturally and definitively to the same conclusion: the Macedonians were a GREEK TRIBE. Some of the evidence indeed points to a more specific conclusion: that the MACEDONIANS constituted a distinct GREEK tribe from as early as the Bronze Age