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...

 Radio Bulgaria reports in its newsflash section new discoveries in the ancient Macedonian city of Heraclea Sintica The BNR reports as follows: During research and excavation works in the ancient city of Heraclea Sintica in the Rupite near Petritsch area (southwestern Bulgaria), archaeologists repeatedly come across valuable artifacts, including a representation of Alexander the Great, a relief image of a musician, a massive marble sculpture of a bull and a statue associated with the Mithras cult, an inscription from the first century in honor of the emperor Tiberius and a masterfully made statue of a young woman in life size. Archaeologists are convinced that it is the statue of the ancient goddess of victory Nike, as it was found on the site of the Acropolis that houses the city's sanctuaries. The statue has well-preserved wings, but the head is missing. It is believed that the artwork was damaged during the barbarian invasions in the late 3rd century. About Heraclea Sintica...

 Macedonia fought three bitter long wars against the Romans, who set out to conquer the area. In the second Macedonian-Roman War, Titus Quinctius Flamininus fought against the Macedonians, who were led by King Philip V of Macedon into the battlefield. The ancient writer Plutarch wrote a work on Flamininus. In one passage we read an interesting detail. According to Plutarch, the Romans did not come to fight against the Greeks, but against the Macedonians for the Greeks. Philip V ruled over the Greeks, and so the Romans acted as the liberators of the Greeks. We read in Plutarch, Flaminius: It is told of Pyrrhus, that when first, from an adjacent hill or watchtower which gave him a prospect of the Roman army, he descried them drawn up in order, he observed, that he saw nothing barbarian-like in this barbarian line of battle, And all who came near Titus could not choose but say as much of him, at their first view. For they who had been told by the Macedonians of an invader, at the head...

 In our archive we found an old (german) article written by Wolf Oschlies , writing about the archeological site Stobi in Macedonia. Brief profile : Wolf Oschlies (born September 29, 1941 in Königsberg) is a German political scientist and journalist. He lived in Eastern Germany until he graduated from high school and fled to the Western German Republic in 1959. Wolf Oschlies has published numerous publications on the history, politics and culture of Balkan countries. His textbook on the Macedonian language is one of the few German-language textbooks on this language. For years he has been involved in the Munzinger Archive's “Country Profiles” project with articles on Serbia, Macedonia, Montenegro and Moldova, which he is constantly updating. The article was originally published in the Preussische Allgemeine Zeitung (date unfortunately unknown). The Troy of the Balkans Macedonia is a treasure trove for archaeologists. There are over 4,500 archaeological sites in the small Balkan reg...

 Today we quote a short passage from an old church history from the fifth century. This ancient church history was written by the church historian Sozomenos. Brief introduction, who was Sozomenos? Salamanes Hermeias Sozomenos (born around 400 AD, died around 450) was an important church historian of late antiquity, of "Greek" origin. Sozomenos came from a small village with the (today's) name Bait Lahiya in Gaza (then called Bethelia), which at that time belonged to the Eastern Roman Empire (also known as the Byzantine Empire). He had an Orthodox Christian upbringing, had a legal education and was interested in monasticism; he also stayed for some time in the west of the Roman Empire. A church history, Historia Ecclesiastica, dedicated to Theodosius II by Sozomenos is preserved in nine books, of which book 9 is only partially preserved. It deals with the period from 324 to 439 (following Eusebius) and is a not unimportant source for this period. And it is precisely from t...

 The famous mosaic with the battle scene of Alexander the Great vs Darius from the legendary Pompeii is now being spruced up in a seven-month restoration in Naples. Pompeii's famous mosaic of the victory of Alexander III of Macedon over King Darius III. of Persia is to undergo a major restoration project at the National Archaeological Museum of Naples (MANN). The restoration of the monumental and quite famous Alexander mosaic begins at the end of this month and is expected to be completed in July. The 'Alexander mosaic' was rediscovered in 1831 in the House of the Faun in Pompeii. The floor mosaic dates from around 100 BC. And is said to have struck the battle of Issus in southern Anatolia on November 5, 333 BC. Represent the second great battle of Alexander's Persian campaign. The mosaic measures 5.82 x 3.13 meters and is one of the most famous works of the ancient Roman city, which was buried under volcanic ash after the eruption of Vesuvius in AD 79. The upcoming res...

 A German historian, who later drifted into Nazi ideology, compared the defeatet Germany after World War I, to ancient Macedonia in a inflammatory pamphlet against the Americans in the 1920s. The author Joachim Riecker describes this fact in his work: "The secret of freedom is courage: ancient role models in American foreign policy from Theodore Roosevelt to Bill Clinton" (Das Geheimnis der Freiheit ist Mut: antike Vorbilder in der amerikanischen Außenpolitik von Theodore Roosevelt bis Bill Clinton). But first, we take a look about the historian mentioned in the work of Riecker who wrote the anti-American polemics, his name was Ulrich Kahrstedt (excerpts from german Wikipedia). Ulrich Kahrstedt (born April 27, 1888 in Neisse/Silesia; died January 27, 1962 in Göttingen) was a German historian of ancients. After the First World War, in which he was briefly a soldier, from 1916 a civil servant in the War Ministry, he worked full-time for the newly founded DNVP. In 1921 he was a...

Rome and Macedonia fought for almost 70 years in the "Roman-Macedonian Wars" for supremacy over ancient Greece. The Greeks allied themselves with the Romans to free themselves from the "Macedonian yoke". Together with several Greek city-states, the Romans defeated the Macedonians and Greece itself was declared free by the Roman general Flaminius. The occupying power of Rome then divided the kingdom of Macedonia into four parts. The political stance of Macedonia is also often cited as a dispute between Macedonia and Rome, because Macedonia's King Philip V allied himself in 215 BC. with Rome's big rival Hannibal, and Philip the Fifth went into battle as the first Macedonian king against Rome. Also the fact that with the newly created Roman protectorate "Illyricum" there was a direct threat to Macedonia's king at his national borders, so that the alliance between Philip V and Hannibal seems understandable to the geo-political situation at the time...

Macedonian ancient heritage is undeniable (2) With the weakening of the theme system in Byzantium during the second half of the 9th century, and particularly in the 12th, the term Macedonia was being less and less used in its thematic and administrative meaning and under the influence of classicism the term Macedonia in its classic, historical-geographical meaning was being restored.   When did the Slavs start calling themselves Macedonians? Since then, the term was gradually used not only to mark the territory of Macedonia in its ancient meaning, but the use by its inhabitants that they were from Macedonia or that they were Macedonians became more frequent. This nomination was gradually accepted by the new inhabitants, the Slavs, who started naming themselves Macedonians after the territory and the people that they assimilated, according to Dr. Boshkoski. “The relationship between the Slavs and the native Macedonians and their life together is a...

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...