History Of Macedonia - World Encyclopaedias about Macedonia

World Encyclopaedias about Macedonia - Oxford Dictionary of Classical World

in Ancient Macedonian History, Ancient Macedonian Kings, FYROM Propaganda, Linguistics, Macedonian Culture, Modern Historians, Skopjan Propaganda / by Admin / on March 27, 2008 at 1:21 pm /

OXFORD DICTIONARY OF THE CLASSICAL WORLD, Page 441
2005, 2007, Oxford University Press Macedonia links the Balkans and the Greek peninsula. Four important routes converge on the Macedonian plain. Hesiod considered the ‘Macedones’ to be an outlying branch of the Greek-speaking tribes, with a distinctive dialect of their own. He gave their habitat as “Pieria and Olympus”. A new dynasty, the Temenids, ruling the Macedonians, founded their early capital at Aegae c.650 BC, and thereafter gained control of the coastal plain as far as the Axius. The Persian occupation of Macedonia 512-479 BC brought benefits. Xerxes gave Alexander (1) I control over western Upper Macedonia; and after Xer¬xes’ flight Alexander gained territory west of the Strymon. His claim to be a Temenid, descended from Heracles and related to the royal house of Argos, was recognized at Olympia; he issued a fine royal coinage and profited from the export of ship-timber.
The potential of the Macedonian kingdom was realized by Philip II. By defeating the northern barbarians and incorporating the Greek-speaking Upper Macedonians he created a superb army (see ARMIES, GREEK), which was supported economically by other peoples who were brought by conquest into the enlarged kingdom: Illyrians, Paeonians, and Thracians—with their own non-Greek languages— and Chalcidians (see CHALCIDICE) and Bottiaeans, both predominantly Greek-speaking, He created a united kingdom from many tribes and nations by a policy of tolerance and assimilation. His son Alexander (2) the Great, inheriting the strongest state in eastern Europe, carried his conquests to the borders of Afghanistan and Pakistan. Later the conquered territor¬ies split up into kingdoms ruled mainly by Macedonian royal families, which fought against one another and contended for the original Macedonian kingdom. In 167 BC Rome defeated Macedonia and split it into four republics; and in 146 BC it was constituted a Roman province. Thereafter its history merged with that of the Roman empire.From Philip II onwards the Macedonian court was a LEADING CENTRE OF GREEK CULTURE, and the policies of Alexander and his Successors (“Dia-dochi”) spread the Greek-based ‘Hellenistic’ culture in the east, which continued to flourish for centuries after the collapse of Macedonian power. See COLONIZATION, HELLENISTIC ; HELLENISM and HELLENIZATION.”