Macedonia History

Book Three sees several changes in Alexander’s administrative choices and style. To date, most of the officers installed by Alexander as he marched through Ionia and the Levant have been Macedonians friends or trustees. The exceptions in the first two books, such as Queen Ada who had surrendered Alinda and “adopted” Alexander (1.23.7-8), stand out because they are so different from his other appointees. Starting with Egypt, though, we begin to see him implementing a structure that separated duties, oftentimes leaving locals or natives in charge politically while trusted assistants were in charge of the military. Alexander rewarded loyalty, even if the allegiances had been to Darius (such as Phrataphernes 3.23.4) or to his opponents (Andronikos, in charge of Greek mercenaries facing Alexander 3.24.4-5). One possible reason for the change in appointments is that Alexander moved from areas that had, at least at one time, a favorable history with the Greeks and into more hostile te...

Macedonians - The contested majority By Nick Anastasovski BROAD CATEGORIES OF identification were commonplace in the Ottoman Balkans. A popular nineteenth–century term to describe Islamicised Macedonians was ‘Turks’. Adhering to the Ottoman concept of religion equating nationality the Ottomans increased the number of ‘Turks’ in Macedonia (in their own population data) to justify their continued rule. Similarly, labels were also broadly used when it came to the Christian population, and Christian Macedonians were also categorized as being a part of other ethnic groups. The central dispute in Macedonia at the end of the nineteenth century concerned the national identity of the Christian Macedonian ethnic element. Typically inhabiting countryside villages, they engaged in an agricultural lifestyle. Regarded by the bulk of commentators as constituting the majority of the population, Macedonians were identified by a number of differing labels. Living within a contested territo...

Regarding the reports that Bulgaria was responsible for the outbreak, he pointed out that the centre of the disturbed area at present was nearly two hundert miles from the Bulgarian frontier and was separated from it by country largely inhabited by Turks. Consequently, he said, it was foolish to say that the movment was aided by bands from Bulgaria, and that it was equally unreasonable to suggest that the arms of the insurgents came from Bulgaria. as a matter of fact, he said, the guns used by the insurrectionists were all of French manifacture, and that most of them had been bought from Turkish officers and men who, receiving no pay, had restored to the sale of their guns and ammunition to obtain money. The insurrection, he said, was entirely a national Macedonian movment organized by the Macedonian Internal Committee, which in itself was proof .....

Today´s Greeks are on a major offensive campaign, with a huge Hellenic brush in their hands, to show the world, especially here in the West, that the Ancient Macedonians were Greeks. Slogans like "Macedonia is Greece", "Macedonians have always been Greek", "Welcome to Macedonia – Greece" and a countless number of other less visible interventions have saturated the media with unprecedented regularity. Such frantic, almost feverish, drive to prove something is telling. What prompted the Greeks, especially after the mid-eighties, to embark on such a monumental task when they had almost more than one hundred years at their disposal to fix the apparent problem with Macedonia and the Macedonians? Several scenarios forcefully enter the picture:  (a) The Green parties in European Parliament and their push for ethnic recognition of minority populations,  (b) Awakening of the ethnic Macedonians in Greece and  (c) Greece´s realization that she i...

Reading the first few chapters of Stacy Schiff's biography Cleopatra puts me in mind of another Cleopatra, the one for whom all the Egyptian Cleopatras were named. She nearly became the first Cleopatra to rule Egypt, more than 250 years before the time of Schiff's book, but died as a result of making the attempt. I am speaking of Alexander the Great's sister Cleopatra, the only full sibling of the great Macedonian king. After Alexander's death she was courted by no fewer than four of his former generals, principally because she could elevate them to near-royal status by marrying them. The last to attempt to wed her was Ptolemy I, already ensconced in Egypt where his descendants would rule for three centuries. For unknown reasons, she accepted him after refusing the others -- but that acceptance provoked a rival general, Antigonus, into ordering her assassination. (Schiff incorrectly states that she was murdered by family members.) Ptolemy built his authority in E...

Macedonian rulers and military figures had non-greek names, and Greek never spread widely among the ordinary people of Macedonia. Alexander's Macedonian troops got their commands in 'Macedonian', and some words of this language survive in Greek historical texts and glossaries. The political ideology of modern Greece sets store by its ancient heritage. The view accepted by most Greek historians is that Phillip and his family were 'Greek' (after all, they spoke Greek) and that, in any case, ancient Macedonian was a form of Greek. In fact the recognised ancient Greek dialects, such as Doric, Ionic and Aeloic, were already so different fom one another that, looking only at their forms and setting aside their cultural  interconnections, modern linguists might well have defined them as separate languages. Macedonian was very different again from any of these. Many scholars outside Greece prefer to say that it was Indo-European (like other languages of the ancient B...

The name generally given to the empire founded by Alexander the Great of Macedon in the countries now represented by Greece and European Turkey, Asia Minor, Egypt, Syria, Persia and eastwards as far as northern India.' The present article contains a general account of the empire in its various aspects. It falls naturally into two main divisions: - I. The reign of Alexander. II. The period of his successors, the " Diadochi " and their dynasties. I. The Reign of Alexander. - At the beginning of the 4th century B.C. two types of political association confronted each other in the lands of the Eastern Mediterranean, - the Persian monarchy with its huge agglomeration of subject peoples, and the Greek city-state. Each had a different principle of strength. The Persian monarchy was strong in its size, in the mere amount of men and treasure it could dispose of under a single hand; the Greek state was strong in its morale, in the energy and discipline of its soldiery. But t...