Macedonia History

 We actually know almost nothing about Lucius Ampelius, the author of the Liber Memoralis . Nevertheless, his work has survived the years and is accessible to us. He is the author of the textbook of ancient mythology, geography, and history, and that's pretty much all we know about him—and, of course, that he was a Roman who lived either in the time of Trajan or Constantine. Researchers therefore consider a rather long period of more than two hundred years in which he could have lived—according to Wikipedia, from 98 to 337 AD. But, let's turn to his work Liber Memorialis and jump straight into chapter six, which could be titled "On the Planet Earth". There, Ampelius lists various "most well-known peoples" in a list that, according to him, represents three inhabited continents out of a total of four: Africa (located between the Tanais and the Nile), Libya (between the Nile and the Gulf of Gades), and Europe (between the Strait and the Tanais). We quote the f...

  It has been a while since the historian Stephen G. Miller sent out a "cry for help". Macedonia is Greek, and it must stay that way - was his story!  In a circular letter he tried to persuade other historians and academics to jump on his horse. At first, some did so, but nowadays his attempt is almost forgotten. Only almost, because some Greek nationalists still use his (poor) action at the time and the website he founded as the basis for their "arguments". But Miler's attempt was criticized among scholar. Open criticism hit him in the German media. Uwe Walter sharply criticized this call in a column in the FAZ, the German historian described Miller's call as an "embarrassing historical-political call". The British academic of Swiss origin Andreas Willi also criticized Miller's approach and the "arguments" he put forward. And indeed, politics was the motivation for the American PHD Miller to write this (embarrassing) appeal. His appe...

 For the first time in North America, Macedonian archaeological artifacts will be exhibited at the international exhibition “The First Kings of Europe”, presenting artistic excellence in the field of social and religious forms characteristic of various stages of prehistory. The exhibition The First Kings of Europe is the result of the initiative of the Field Museum from Chicago and cooperation with the Institute and Museum - Bitola, the Gevgelija Museum and the Institute and Museum - Prilep. The national coordinator of the exhibition is Goce Naumov, who made a selection of several Neolithic, Neolithic and Iron Age objects found at the Vrbjanska Chuka, Shuplevec and Milci sites. These objects, along with hundreds of other artifacts from 23 Balkan museums, show the gradual social development of prehistoric communities that gradually transformed from egalitarian tribal organizations in the Neolithic to the first European kingdoms in the Balkan Iron Age. – The exhibition is initiated b...

 For most of early Macedonian history, kings struggled constantly to maintain their independence while simultaneously striving to assert their preeminence over the local dynasts. Macedonia consisted of two distinct geographical regions: Lower Macedonia, which supported a large agricultural population, and Upper Macedonia, mountainous hinterlands which held extensive forests and rich mineral deposits. In antiquity, neither Macedonians nor Greeks considered the Macedonians to be Greek. Macedonian and Greek culture had little in common. Most Macedonians were farmers or seminomadic pastoralists living in scattered villages. War and hunting were central to the life of a Macedonian noble. The monarchy was the central institution of Macedonian society. Macedonian kings were autocrats, but they were not all-powerful. In the late sixth century BC, Amyntas I made an alliance with Persia and the kingdom was shielded from attack by its neighbors. In the fifth century, Alexander I, Perdiccas I...

 "The sommon Macedonian soldier was proud not to be a Greek", this quote comes from the work 'Alexander the Great' by Philip Freeman. Even in the introduction on page 5, Freeman invalidates a number of newfangled myths that arose about the language of the Macedonians in the course of the Greek struggle for the inheritance of Macedonia: The language of the Macedonians differed from the Greeks, the Macedonians from the Upper Regions and according to Freeman, the "Lowland farmers" spoke a common language that separated them from the Greeks in the south. As a result, they are to be seen as an independent people. So we read: Though the pastoral Macedonians of the mountains differed from the lowland farmers in many ways, they shared a common language that defined them as a single people - and separated them from the Greeks to the south. The Macedonian tongue was so far removed from the Greek of Athens or Sparta that it may as well have been a different language en...

 King Philip II of Macedonia (father of Alexander the Great) was the guarantor for Macedonia's rise, as well as for the later glory that his son Alexander III of Macedonia would reap. When Philip defeated the allied Hellenes at Chaironeia with Alexander's help, it marked a turning point in the history of the "Greek world". From then on the Greeks were led by a stranger: King Philip II of Macedonia, as the "Hegemon of the Corinthian League". In the Corinthian League, Philip gathered all the Greeks he had defeated - The Corinthian League was a federation of states that consisted of the defeated Greeks. Almost all city-states were "united" under the the federal government of the Macedonian king. Macedonia, on the other hand, was not a member of the Confederation. Philipp, however, let himself be determined as the hegemon, as he was the  winner on the battlefield. The German philosopher Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel reported on these events in his work...

 In a PDF attachment from the German Friedrich-Ebert Foundation we find, let's say, a document in German language by Greek professor Vassiliki Georgiadou entitled " The transition of Greece from dictatorship to democracy Superficial coming to terms with the past and resistance to modernization " (original title: Der Übergang Griechenlands von der Diktatur zur Demokratie. Oberflächliche Vergangenheitsaufarbeitung und Modernisieungswiderstände). Briefly about the author :  Vassiliki Georgiadou is Associate Professor of Political Science at the Institute for Political Science and History at Panteion University in Athens, capital of Greece. She studied political science in Athens (Panteion University), politics and political sociology in Münster (Germany). She also received her doctorate from the University of Münster. ...historically incorrect argument that Macedonia is exclusively Greek... On page 10 of the document you can find and read an almost unbelievable statement, if...

 In his work "History of Greece Vol. 12" (published 1875) Georg Grote wrote, that "The basis of Philip’s character was Macedonian, not Greek!" Who was Georg Grote? George Grote (born November 17, 1794 in Clay Hill near Beckenham, now London, † June 18, 1871 in London) was an English ancient historian. ... Elected to Parliament for London in December 1832, he joined the radical party and surrendered. especially the introduction of the secret ballot for the task, which he proposed every year. However, since he did not succeed in defeating the resistance of the Conservatives and a large part of the Whigs, he resigned his mandate in 1841 and resigned from banking a year and a half later, only to concentrate on drafting his History of Greece (London 1846 -56, 12 vols. Plus 2nd vol. Excursions; 5th ed. 1883, 12 vols .; German, 2nd ed., Berlin 1880, 4 vols .; the sections mythology and antiquities specially translated from it by T. Fischer, Leipzig 1856-60, 4 vols.), Which...

 In the inaugural dissertation "Studies on War and Power Formation in Early Hellenism" (Justus Liebig University, Giessen) we find an important reference to the constant question of whether the ancient Macedonians were actually Greeks, as the modern Greek propaganda claims.  This construction that a foreign king was leader of a Greek league is an absolute novelty In section "5.2.4" Personal union" we read the following passage about the father of Alexander the Great, Phillip II of Macedon: ... The area to which the Argead kings had been of special interest even before Philip was Thessaly, the bridging land between the Hellas of the great Poleis and Macedonia. The rule over Thessaly meant security to the south and was at the same time an offensive position, a gateway against Thebes or Athens, both of which had appeared as intervention powers in Macedonia. But Thessaly had more to offer than just its strategic location; Thessaly had a powerful cavalry, but also a...

When the houses in Athens were still made of clay, Bylazora already had a palace, say archaeologists who explored Macedonia's ancient cities. Where is the capital of the independent state of Paeonia, whose inhabitants had a strong culture and left significant material remains on the territory of present-day Macedonia? The location of Bylazora near the village of Knezje in Sveti Nikole (in eastern Macedonia, in the Ovče Pole plateau) was first carried out by the archaeologist and professor Ivan Mikulčić. Archaeological excavations have been carried out on the site over the past two decades, which has produced many interesting scientific discoveries. The site was explored by archaeologists from the Texas Foundation for Archaeological and Historical Research (TFAHR), the Institute for Art History and Archeology of the Faculty of Arts in Skopje in collaboration with the National Museum of Sveti Nikole. The latest research was led by Professor Dragi Mitrevski from the Institute of Art H...

A podcast published on Bavarian state run Radio "Bayrischer Rundfunk" talks about Alexander the Great. "The Macedonian who conquered the world" is the title of the podcast. The podcast was part of the series called "Radiowissen" (Radio Knowledge) and was broadcasted online and via the broadcasters radio channel "Bayern 2" in october 2018. Part of the podcast is German historian Dr. Alexander Free from the Ludwig Maximilians University in Munich. First of all he explains in the introduction, that authentic sources are hard to find, when we talk about the "Great Macedonian King". As Free says:  The main reason why the world-storming Macedonian king is so difficult to grasp is that unfortunately not a single authentic source has been preserved from the days of Alexander. All ancient evidence of his life and work dates from the Roman Empire. Historians like Arrian, Plutarch, Diodor, Curtius Rufus or Iustin used original sources that were st...

Although the ancient Macedonians had no independent dramatic tradition of their own, from the late fifth century onwards successive Macedonian kings began to sponsor Greek theater productions and professionals with real enthusiasm. Indeed, their patronage was crucial to the post-classical development of the ancient theater into a more international performance. Down to the middle of the fourth century, Macedon remained an unstable and weak realm, a remote kingdom of unrealized potential on the northern frontier of the Hellenic world. It is perhaps understandable that this out-ofthe-way region is only occasionally represented in surviving Greek tragedies, and features on the traditional “tragic map” only indistinctly.  “If the Macedonians exploited philhellenism, that was for unique Macedonian purposes and reasons” While a well-established narrative does detail the extraordinary fourth-century transformation of Macedonia into the great imperial power of the age,...

One of the steps in the Scientific Method of Investigation is the publication of your obtained results. This is done, so that others by repeating the same experiment using same methodology may independently arrive to the same conclusion and verify whether it is true what you have accomplished with your own hypothesis. Once many independent laboratories—through their scientific research—confirm your results, then, the hypothesis that you have proposed becomes accepted and your findings acknowledged.  I have said before, and I stand by my assertions that: (a) Macedonia was never a part of any ancient Greek city-state, nor were the ancient Macedonians ever considered by the ancient Greeks or by themselves, to be Greek. (b) Macedonia was never a member of any Hellenic League. Macedonia was not a member of the Greek Amphictyonic League either. Fact is that membership into these leagues was reserved for Hellenes only. And since Macedonians were not considered Hellenes, they we...

As I mentioned in an earlier post, the paradoxical figure of Alexander continues to emerge in Book Three. I wanted to look a little at Alexander’s relationship with the Greeks, leading to the dismissal of Greek troops at Ecbatana (3.19.5-8) and the burning of the royal palace of Persepolis (3.18.10-12). The relationship between Alexander and the Greeks proved to be a combination of admiration and distrust, a balancing act aiming for gentle subjugation—Appendix M by James Romm provides a great summary of the relationship over time. Alexander did more to spread Greek culture to the world, yet he was also responsible for the slaughter of a tremendous number of Greek civilians and troops in addition to undermining liberty in many of the city/states. The Theban revolt (1.7-9) laid bare the feelings of some Greek leaders. Footnote 1.7.11b highlights the divergence between the histories of Arrian and Diodorus, although according to Diodorus the Thebans did more than hurl` insults a...