Ancient sources about Macedonia as a Greek Land

in Alexander the Great, Ancient Historians, ancient macedonian ethnicity, Ancient Macedonian History / by Admin / on March 16, 2007 at 4:36 pm /

Ancient Sources

1.Quote:

Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece“.

Strabo, VII, Frg. 9 (Loeb, H.L. Jones)

*Strabo, the famous ancient geographer makes it more than clear to everybody that ancient Macedonia, without doubt, IS A PART OF GREECE.

Quote:

“Your ancestors invaded Macedonia and the rest of Greece and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury;… I have been appointed hegemon of the Greeks… “

Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander II, 14, 4 (Loeb, P. A. Brunt);

*Alexander the Great here, verifies also that Ancient Macedonia was a part of Greece.

Quote:

“They say that these were the clans collected by Amphictyon himself in the Greek assembly… The Macedonians managed to join and the entire Phocian race… In my day there were thirty members: six each from Nikopolis, Macedonia, and Thessaly – and from the Boeotoi that were the first that departed from Thessalia and that’s when they were called Aioloi – two from each of the Phokeis and Delphi, one from the ancient Dorida, the Lokroi send one from the Ozoloi and one from the ones living beyond Evoia, one from the Evoeis. From the Peloponnesians, one from Argos, one from Sikion, one from Korinthos and Megara, one from Athens…”

[Pausanias, Description of Greece, Phocis Book VIII, 4]

*Again, only Greeks participated in Amphictyonies. Macedonians as Greeks took part also.

Quote:

“…he (Alexander) inflicted punishment on the Persians for their outrages on all the Greeks, and how he delivered us all from the greatest evils by enslaving the barbarians and depriving them of the resources they used for the destruction of the Greeks, pitting now the Athenians and now the Thebans against the ancestors of these Spartans, how in a word he made Asia subject to Greece.”

[Polybius, Book IX, 34, 3]

*He “made Asia Subject to Greece”. Another irrefutable evidence that Macedonia was part of Greece.

Quote:

11] Then there came ambassadors to Lacedaemon from11 Acanthus and Apollonia, which are the largest of the cities in the neighbourhood of Olynthus. And when the ephors heard with what object they had come, they brought them before the Lacedaemonian assembly and the allies. [13] Thereupon Cleigenes of Acanthus spoke as follows: “Men of Lacedaemon and of the allied states, we think you are unaware that a great danger is springing up in Greece. To be sure,12 almost all of you know that Olynthus is the largest of the cities on the coast of Thrace. These Olynthians, in the first place, attached to themselves some of the cities with the provision that all should live under the same laws and be fellow-citizens, and then they took over some of the larger cities also. After this they undertook, further, to free the cities of Macedonia from Amyntas, king of the Macedonians.

Xenophon Hellenica V.2.12

*The ambassadors of Akantos and Apollonia declared “a great danger is springing up in Greece”. From what follows can be concluded Macedon and Amyntas are part of Greece.

Quote:

and the Athenians were not ready to concede the leading position AMONG the Greeks to Macedon.

[Diodorus of Sicily, 17.3.2]

*Another evidence coming from Diodorus of Sicily proving that Macedon was a greek land.

Quote:

The 38th book contains the completion of the disaster of the Hellenes. For though both the whole of Hellas and her several parts had often met with mischance, yet to none of her former defeats can we more fittingly apply, the name of disaster with all it signifies than to the events of my own time. In the time I am speaking of a comon misfortune befell the Peloponnesians, the Boiotians, the Phokians, the Euboians, the Lokrians, some of the cities on the Ionians Gulf, and finally the Macedonians.”

[Polyvius 38.8]

*Polyvius here proves that Macedonia was a part of Hellas.

Quote:

Such was the end of Philip … He had ruled 24 years. He is known to fame as one who with but the slenderest resources to support his claim to athrone won for himself the greatest empire AMONG the Hellenes, while the growth of his position was not due so much to his prowess in arms as to his adroitness and cordiality in diplomacy.”

(Diodoros of Sicily 16.95.1-2)

*Diodorus’ quote “greatest empire among the Hellenes” says it all.

Quote:

“Caesar judged that he must drop everything else and pursue Pompey where he had betaken himself after his flight, so that he should not be able to gather more forces and renew, and he advanced daily as far as he could go with the cavalry and ordered a legion to follow shorter stages. An edict had been published in Pompey’s name that all the younger men in the province (Macedonia), both GREEKS and Roman citizens, should assemble to take an oath.”

(Civil War 111.102.3]

*Since Macedonia was a Greek land, it would be populated by Greeks.

10.

Quote:

“Of the rivers in the Greek world, the Achelous flows from Pindus, the Inachus from the same mountain; the Strymon, the Nestus, and the Hebrus all three from Scrombrus; many rivers, too, flow from Rhodope..”

[Meteorology, BI.13]

*The rivers of Macedonia was certainly “rivers of the Greek world”.

11.

Quote:

Annibas put himself under oath to Xenophanis (ambassador of Philip) in front of the all gods that Macedonia and the rest of Hellas have…”

[Polyvius, Book 7-9]

*The treaty of alliance between Philip V of Macedonia and Hannibal. Again another proof Macedonia was part of Hellas.

12.

Quote:

“Xerxes, having so spoken, held his peace. (SS 1.) Whereupon Mardonius took the word, and said:
….I myself have had experience of these men when I marched against them by the orders of thy father; and though I went as far as Macedonia, and came but a little short of reaching Athens itself, yet not a soul ventured to come out against me to battle.
……But, notwithstanding that they have so foolish a manner of warfare, yet these Greeks, when I led my army against them to the very borders of Macedonia, did not so much as think of offering me battle.”

[The History of Herodotus Book VII]

*Mardonius, the Persian general, as all Persians considered Macedonia part of Greece.

13.

Quote:

Is considered this king (Philip) began his monarchy with the bad conditions and he conquered the bigger monarchy of Hellenes (Macedonia) increasing the hegemony no so much with the heroism of arms, as long as with the skilful handlings and his diplomacy.

[Dionysios Sikeliotis, 16-95]

*The bigger Monarchy of Hellas was Macedonia.

14.

A Persian inscription dating from 513 BCE records the European peoples who were, at that date, subject to the Great King. One of these people is described as Yauna Takabara, meaning ‘Ionians wearing the hat’. The Persians, like other eastern peoples of antiquity, are known to have applied the term ‘Ionians’ to all Greeks; on the other hand the Macedonian hat (kausia) was very distinctive from the hats of the other Greeks, but Persians knew Macedonia was a part of Greece since Macedonians were Greeks themselves.