Risto Stefov
November 01, 2008
This is a response to the Australian Macedonian Advisory Council in regards to the article entitled “Risto Stefov and the falsification of Ancient Macedonian history” published on October 29, 2008 at this link:
My reply to you is “Two can play that game!” I too can provide you with just as many arguments that the Ancient Macedonians WERE NOT Greek. BUT!
It is irrelevant, at least to me, if Modern Greeks claim that the Ancient Macedonians were Greeks or not, what is relevant here is that the Modern Greeks are not related to the Ancient Greeks or to the Ancient Macedonians. They call themselves “Greeks” but have nothing to do with the ancient Greeks or Ancient Macedonians because underneath their modern artificial Greek veneer is nothing more than Albanians, Vlachs, Turks and Macedonians, the same variety of Balkanites that exists throughout the entire southern Balkans. But, if they insist on accusing me of falsifying Ancient Macedonian history, then here is my rebuttal:
“The modern Greek claim — that the ancient Macedonians were Greek — is politically motivated and is not supported by historical evidence. This political mythology was created in the late 19th century to advance territorial claims against Ottoman Macedonia. In its current incarnation it is used by Greece as an excuse to discriminate against its Macedonian minority.” (Gandeto)
“I. What were a people’s origins and what language did they speak?
From the surviving literary sources (Hesiod, Herodotus, and Thucydides) there is little information about Macedonian origins, and the archaeological data from the early period is sparse and inconclusive. On the matter of language, and despite attempts to make Macedonian a dialect of Greek, one must accept the conclusion of the linguist R. A. Crossland in the recent CAH, that an insufficient amount of Macedonian has survived to know what language it was. But it is clear from later sources that Macedonian and Greek were mutually unintelligible in the court of Alexander the Great. Moreover, the presence in Macedonia of inscriptions written in Greek is no more proof that the Macedonians were Greek than, e.g., the existence of Greek inscriptions on Thracian vessels and coins proves that the Thracians were Greeks.
II. Self-identity: what did the Macedonians say or think about themselves?
Virtually nothing has survived from the Macedonians themselves (they are among the silent peoples of antiquity), and very little remains in the Classical and Hellenistic non-Macedonian sources about Macedonian attitudes.
III. What did others say about the Macedonians?
Here there is a relative abundance of information from Arrian, Plutarch (Alexander, Eumenes), Diodorus 17-20, Justin, Curtius Rufus, and Nepos (Eumenes), based upon Greek and Greek-derived Latin sources. It is clear that over a five-century span of writing in two languages representing a variety of historiographical and philosophical positions the ancient writers regarded the Greeks and Macedonians as two separate and distinct peoples whose relationship was marked by considerable antipathy, if not outright hostility.
IV. What is the nature of cultural expressions as revealed by archaeology?
As above we are blessed with an increasing amount of physical evidence revealing information about Macedonian tastes in art and decoration, religion, political and economic institutions, architecture and settlement patterns. Clearly the Macedonians were in many respects Hellenized, especially on the upper levels of their society, as demonstrated by the excavations of Greek archaeologists over the past two decades. Yet there is much that is different, e. g., their political institutions, burial practices, and religious monuments.
I will argue that, whoever the Macedonians were, they emerged as a people distinct from the Greeks who lived to the south and east. In time their royal court — which probably did not have Greek origins (the tradition in Herodotus that the Macedonian kings were descended from Argos is probably a piece of Macedonian royal propaganda) — became Hellenized in many respects, and I shall review the influence of mainstream Greek culture on architecture, art, and literary preferences.
Finally, a look at contemporary Balkan politics. The Greek government firmly maintains that the ancient Macedonians were ethnic Greeks, and that any claim by the new Republic of Macedonia (The Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia) to the name “Macedonia” and the symbols of ancient Macedonia is tantamount to an expropriation of Greek history. Moreover, it is claimed that there is no such thing as a distinct Slavic Macedonian identity and language separate from Bulgaria and Serbia.
I shall review the evidence for the existence of a modern Macedonian ethnicity with reference to my recent work in a Macedonian ethnic community in Steelton, Pennsylvania. Both the gravestones in a local cemetery and US census reports from the early twentieth century provide evidence that émigrés from Macedonia who lived and died in Steelton in the early twentieth century considered themselves to be distinct from their Serbian and Bulgarian neighbours.” (Eugene Borza)
Speaking of Eugene Borza, the American Philological Association refers to Eugene Borza as the “Macedonian specialist”. In the introductory chapter of “Makedonika” by Carol G. Thomas, Eugene Borza is also called “the Macedonian specialist”, and his colleague Peter Green describes Eugene’s work on Macedonia as “seminal.”
Please read what P. Green thinks of Borza’s approach to the studies of ancient history, and of his method of abstraction of truth: “Never was a man less given to the kind of mean-spirited odium philologicum that so often marks classical debate. Gene could slice an argument to pieces while still charming its exponents out of the trees.”
Ernst Badian from Harvard University writes: “It is chiefly Gene’s merit that recognizably historical interpretation of the history of classical Macedonia has not only become possible, but it is now accepted by all historians who have no vested interest in the mythology superseded by Gene’s work. Needless to say, I welcome and agree with that approach and have never disagreed with him except on relatively trivial details of interpretation.”
Here are some excerpts from Borza’s writings regarding the Ancient Macedonians and the Ancient Greeks.
On the matter of distinction between Greeks and Macedonians:
1) “Neither Greeks nor Macedonians considered the Macedonians to be Greeks.”
On the composition of Alexander’s army:
2) “Thus we look in vain for the evidence that Alexander was heavily dependent upon Greeks either in quantity or quality.”
3) “The pattern is clear: the trend toward the end of the king’s life was to install Macedonians in key positions at the expense of Asians, and to retain very few Greeks.”
4) “The conclusion is inescapable: there was a largely ethnic Macedonian imperial administration from beginning to end. Alexander used Greeks in court for cultural reasons, Greek troops (often under Macedonian commanders) for limited tasks and with some discomfort, and Greek commanders and officials for limited duties. Typically, a Greek will enter Alexander’s service from an Aegean or Asian city through the practice of some special activity: he could read and write, keep figures or sail, all of which skills the Macedonians required. Some Greeks may have moved on to military service as well. In other words, the role of Greeks in Alexander’s service was not much different from what their role had been in the services of Xerxes and the third Darius.”
On the policy of hellenization with Alexander’s conquest of Asia and the Greek assertion that he spread Hellenism:
5) “If one wishes to believe that Alexander had a policy of hellenization – as opposed to the incidental and informal spread of Greek culture – the evidence must come from sources other than those presented here. One wonders – archaeology aside – where this evidence would be.”
On the issue of whether Alexander and Philip “united” the Greek city-states or conquered them:
6) “In European Greece Alexander continued and reinforced Philip II’s policy of rule over the city-states, a rule resulting from conquest.”
On the ethnic tension between Macedonians and Greeks:
Referring to the episode of Eumenes of Cardia and his bid to reach the throne: “And if there were any doubt about the status of Greeks among the Macedonians the tragic career of Eumenes in the immediate Wars of succession should put it to rest. The ancient sources are replete with information about the ethnic prejudice Eumenes suffered from Macedonians.”
7) “The tension at court between Greeks and Macedonians, tension that the ancient authors clearly recognised as ethnic division.”
On Alexander’s dismissal of his Greek allies:
8) “A few days later at Ecbatana, Alexander dismissed his Greek allies, and charade with Greece was over.”
On the so called Dorian invasion:
9) The theory of the Dorian invasion (based on Hdt. 9.26, followed by Thuc. I.12) is largely an invention of nineteenth-century historography, and is otherwise unsupported by either archaeological or linguistic evidence.”
10) “The Dorians are invisible archeologically.”
11) “There is no archaeological record of the Dorian movements, and the mythic arguments are largely conjectural, based on folk traditions about the Dorian home originally having been in northwest Greece.
12) “The explanation for the connection between the Dorians and the Macedonians may be more ingenious than convincing, resting uncomfortably on myth and conjecture.”
On the Macedonian own tradition and origin:
13) “As the Macedonians settled the region following the expulsion of existing peoples, they probably introduced their own customs and language(s); there is no evidence that they adopted any existing language, even though they were now in contact with neighbouring populations who spoke a variety of Greek and non-Greek tongues.”
On the Macedonian language:
14) “The main evidence for Macedonian existing as separate language comes from a handful of late sources describing events in the train of Alexander the Great, where the Macedonian tongue is mentioned specifically.”
15) “The evidence suggests that Macedonian was distinct from ordinary Attic Greek used as a language of the court and of diplomacy.”
16) “The handful of surviving genuine Macedonian words – not loan words from Greek – do not show the changes expected from Greek dialect.”
On the Macedonian material culture being different from the Greek:
17) “The most visible expression of material culture thus far recovered are the fourth – and third-century tombs. The architectural form, decoration, and burial goods of these tombs, which now number between sixty and seventy, are unlike what is found in the Greek south, or even in the neighbouring independent Greek cities of the north Aegean littoral (exception Amphipolis). Macedonian burial habits suggest different view of the afterlife from the Greeks’, even while many of the same gods were worshipped.”
18) “Many of the public expressions of worship may have been different.”
19) “There is an absence of major public religious monuments from Macedonian sites before the end of the fourth century (another difference from the Greeks).”
20). “Must be cautious both in attributing Greek forms of worship to the Macedonians and in using these forms of worship as a means of confirming Hellenic identity.”
21) “In brief, one must conclude that the similarities between some Macedonian and Greek customs and objects are not of themselves proof that Macedonians were a Greek tribe, even though it is undeniable that on certain levels Greek cultural influences eventually became pervasive.”
22) “Greeks and Macedonians remained steadfastly antipathetic toward one another (with dislike of a different quality than the mutual long-term hostility shared by some Greek city-states) until well into the Hellenic period, when both the culmination of hellenic acculturation in the north and the rise of Rome made it clear that what these peoples shared took precedence over their historical enmities.”
23) “They made their mark not as a tribe of Greek or other Balkan peoples, but as ‘Macedonians’. This was understood by foreign protagonists from the time of Darius and Xerxes to the age of Roman generals.”
24) “It is time to put the matter of the Macedonians’ ethnic identity to rest.
No matter how hard Modern Greeks try to prove otherwise, there is always more than one side to their story!
To be continued.
Many thanks to J.S.G. Gandeto for his contribution to this article.
You can contact the author at [email protected]
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