Alexander of Macedon and the Greeks
Gandeto
February 14, 2009
Interesting excerpts
From David Hogart´s Philip and Alexander of Macedon
p.180-81.
The Greek propaganda to portray the ancient Macedonians as Greeks has, in the last decade or so, reached feverish proportions. Enormous amount of energy and capital is being spent to convince the western countries that Alexander the Great and his father Philip were Greeks. There is no shortage of "documents" produced, new stories invented and programs initiated world-wide to educate the public at large of this urgent Greek discovery. The urgency with which they have undertaken this publicity campaign has left many people bewildered as to why there is this sudden and violent outburst of love for a Macedonian King whom nineteen century Greeks regarded as a conqueror of Greece.
Indeed, why such an outpouring of love for the name "Macedonia" and the "Macedonians"? Why now? What prompted today´s Greeks to do a hundred and eighty degree turn around and replace the racial hatred for the Macedonians with love for them; from wanting to expel the Macedonians from Greece to claiming immersion of Macedonians into Greeks; from heaping curses and execrations against the Macedonian people and the Macedonian race to showering them with praises and indulging in frenzied proclamations of love for them now.
Those who are not too deeply involved with the Balkan history and politics may find this Greek overwrought metamorphosis strange and surprising, but those who had the opportunity to follow the Greek nation-building process in the past century or so, will inevitably notice their patented trademark: a chameleonic thievery of other peoples´ land and hijacking of their cultural and ethnic heritage.
Their poisonous Greek tentacles go first for the language people speak. By depriving the masses from using their own language, Greeks incrementally destroy, suffocate and erase the cultural inheritance of the people in question.
The population of ethnic Macedonians in Greece who in the year 1912-13, after the Balkan Wars, found themselves under the Greek occupation, bear witness to this most inhumane treatment perpetrated on a peaceful population.]
In Greece today, there is nothing left from the once vibrant Vlach´s culture; no traces can be found of the Albanian heritage and not even a whisper of a once dominant trademark in the countryside of the ethnic Macedonian culture. To place a permanent imprint on a land they had never owned, Greeks erased all the Macedonian names and replaced them with Greek´s; family and personal names were also changed into Greek sounding ones and the fanatical Greek carnage did not spare even the gravestones of the dearly departed. Common wisdom dictates the following question:
If Macedonia was always Greek, then (a) why was there a compelling reason to change the names (b) why do they feel so constrained to prove that Macedonia is Greece?
Such is the political climate in today´s Greece that deception, cover-up and fabrications are the norm, while tolerance, inclusion of diversity and democratic civility are the exception.
One cannot but wonder how is it possible for modern Greeks to overlook passages in history books where the ancients themselves have clearly stated their preferences and unambiguously proclaimed their ethnic or national affiliations. There are many learned, progressive Greeks, however, who know the truth but these people are quickly suppressed, branded unpatriotic and marginalized. It is dangerous to disagree with and speak against governmental policies on these issues. Their propaganda boldly pushes forward even though the scholarly current of thought goes against it. Please consider the following passage from Livy regarding Greeks´ feelings for King Philip of Macedon and his Macedonians:
The passage below is copied verbatim from Livy's book XXXI.44.]
"Such were the activities of the Romans and of Philip on land during that summer. At the beginning of the same summer, the fleet, commanded by the legate Lucius Apustius, left Corcyra, rounded Cape Malea, and joined King Attalus of Scyllaeum, in the region of Hermoine. Hitherto the resentment of the Athenian community against Philip had been kept in check by fear; but now, with the hope of assistance ready at hand, they gave free rein to their anger. There is never any lack at Athenian tongues ready and willing to stir up the passion of the common people; this kind of oratory is nurtured by the applause of the mob in all free communities; but this is especially true of Athens, where eloquence has the greatest influence. The popular assembly immediately carried a proposal that all statues of Philip and all portraits of him, with their inscriptions, and also those of his ancestors of either sex, should be removed and destroyed; that all feast-days, rites, and priesthoods instituted in honour of Philip or his ancestors should be deprived of sanctity; that even the sites of any memorials or inscriptions in his honour should be held accursed, and that it should not be lawful thereafter to decide to set up or dedicate on those sites any of those things which might lawfully be set up or dedicated on an undefiled site; that whenever the priests of the people offered prayer on behalf of the Athenian people and their allies, their armies and navies, they should on every occasion heap curses and execrations on Philip, his family and his realm, his forces on land and sea, and the whole race and name of the Macedonians".
Now, please, compare and contrast this excerpt from the ancient Greeks with today´s Greeks view of Philip and the Macedonians.
"King Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great - to whom Skopje is currently attempting to attribute a 'Slavomacedonian' (sic) identity - acted not simply as Greeks but as Panhellenic leaders in the sense that they embodied the old idea of the formation of a united Greek state with the amalgamation of the Greek city-states. As Johann Gustav Droysen - among other scholars - points out in his History of Alexander the Great, both Philip and Alexander "brought to the peoples of Asia and implanted in them not the Macedonian culture, which had no independent standing, but the Greek culture".
As one reads such passages, one could not help but wonder, how come Greeks, who have read these same pages, did not find the content and the references objectionable? By what leap of faith can they ingest, digest and subsequently absorb such contrastingly different meanings and perceptions? What process of internalization is at play when confronted with such irrefutable statements? What comforting/disturbing thought, if any, streams through their mind?
Let us focus our attention to the last few sentences from the quote;
"…that whenever the priests of the people offered prayer on behalf of the Athenian people and their allies, their armies and navies,
they should on every occasion heap curses and execrations on Philip, his family and his realm, his forces on land and sea, and the whole race and name of the Macedonians"
Heap curses and execrations on Philip and the whole race and name of the Macedonians means one and only one thing: Greeks had nothing ethnically in common with the ancient Macedonians. No other conclusion is possible. No other interpretation will ever suffice for no other explanation is needed.
Alexander himself says that he conquered Greece and yet today´s Greeks call it "unification". Alexander dismissed the Greeks in 330 B.C., a few years into the campaign, and yet Greeks talk about pan-Hellenic crusade. Peter Green pointedly asked:
"If this was a Hellenic crusade where were the Greeks?" Bryant Bosworth states that Greeks in Asia were noted for their absence from any major battle, and yet Greeks still insist that this was a Greek war of vengeance.
There were more than fifty thousand Greeks with Darius´ army fighting against Alexander and his Macedonians and they still claim that Alexander was their king. While Alexander was fighting in Asia, the Greeks from the mainland were sending envoys to the great king of Persia and fermenting unrest in Greece against the Macedonian regent Antipater. And when the news of his death reached Athens, a day of a national celebration was proclaimed.
How does an everyday Greek come to terms with such glaring discrepancies between what they read in their home-cooked books and what the rest of the world reads and interprets? Perhaps, Greekness is measured in degrees of obedience.
There is a wealth of evidence found of Alexander´s relation with the Greeks. David Hogarth in his ´Philip and Alexander of Macedon´ describes Alexander´s initial encounters with the Persians and their Greek quislings with tempered enthusiasm; but as a brilliant story teller who keeps a few surprises hidden in his pocket, he navigates with a clear purpose in mind. He calls Alexander a boy who is filled with hopes and expectations and as a Captain-General, full of high spirit in a united "Hellenic" front with all his allies. He seems to carry this enthusiasm with passion until Hogarth lowers the boom on you and unmasks Alexander´s pretentious facade of love and respect for the Greeks. He lures you into believing that Alexander carried this Hellenic spirit in earnest until you discover his true hidden feelings and motifs.
At the battle of Granicus Alexander captured close to 2000 Greeks who fought
for the Persian side under their Greek commander Memnon. These poor souls were sent to Macedonia in chains as slaves; the captured loot (armor from the captured Greeks) was sent to Athens.
"The spoil was dedicated as solemn first fruits to the gods of the Greeks and in formal terms Alexander decreed annihilation to those dastard Hellenes who were found opposing in arms the Captain-General of their race."
Modern-day Greeks use this episode—the spoils from Granicus—as proof that Alexander´s conquest of Persia, was indeed a Greek conquest.]
"Scarce two months later at Miletus Alexander again had at his mercy a body of Greeks, equally guilty; he allowed them to surrender on terms, and took them into his service. It is a small matter, but a straw on the stream of events. What had happened since the "Cavalry Battle," to ease the conscience of the Captain-General? In effect enough to make Miletus a point clearly marked in the passing of the enthusiastic boy into the calculating man of affairs."
This point is telling. Greeks on the mainland to whom the "union" was imposed were as willing participants as Alexander was a Hellenic crusader.]
"For those two months had proved to demonstration nothing less than that the maritime states of Hellas, those that alone greatly mattered, were in their hearts not for Alexander, but for his enemies."
Alexander was fully aware of this and his subsequent decisions will reveal his true character towards the Greeks. The campaign was still young and Darius was not defeated yet. The Pan-Hellenic crusade can live to see another day.]
"Two larger islands, Rhodes, Chios, and Lesbos, and nearly all the lesser, kept open ports to the Persian admirals, and the city of Athens had been at no pains to disguise her sympathies. Her continental position and twenty of her ships, held as hostages by the Macedonians, made her warn Pharnabazus off the Pireus; but openly she sat within her walls watching for the first Macedonian reverse, and indeed had sent already, or was about to send soon, an envoy direct to Darius."
Is this how Philip and Alexander "united" the Greek city-states? Is this the Pan-Hellenic crusade against the Persians? Isn´t Athens colluding with Darius behind Alexander´s back?]
"In brief, Alexander had failed entirely to carry Athens with him on the wind of his enthusiasm. He had failed, partly because some of her best spirit survived still, refusing to be comforted for the loss of Empire; partly because she had outlived her heroic period. At that stage of her conscious intellectualism, when oratory and philosophy had become popular diversions, an exuberant Homeric champion struck no true note of admiration. There was felt in Athens no longer any enthusiasm for crusades, and best but a languid interest in the physical excellences of a youth who assumed the Hero and dared kings to battle. She was perhaps, to tell truth, a little wearied with him, and needed only encouragement by an active agitator to express her feelings in open hostility.
Therefore, at Miletus, the first sanguine hour of Alexander´s life has closed, and on the wreck of his exuberant illusions begins to rise a sterner purpose.
Greece must be coerced if she will not be courted. Her command of the sea shall be broken by the capture of the coasts of the Levant, and her people be bent willy nilly to do panhellenic work.
Alexander decided to burn his boats and leave himself stranded in Asia.
Is this the young, enthusiastic Homeric hero who will take the Greeks on vengeance against Persia? Are these the feelings of a Greek king? Ask yourselves the following question: Does Alexander seem and behave like a Greek king? Do you not see as to why he decided to burn his boats? Peter Green says that the Greek allied troops were scraped from the bottom of the barrel and were taken by Alexander in Asia to serve as hostages for the good behavior of the mainland Greeks.]
"This early disillusionment, though it cooled the boy´s spirit all too soon, and when pressed home by much future trouble with the Greeks, embittered him not a little, and forced him to adapt a policy alien to modern sympathy, was in certain ways salutary."
"Much trouble with the Greeks"—sums it all up so eloquently.
It is high noon for all of you propagandists to terminate your illusory thinking that ancient Macedonians were Greeks. You can bully the Republic of Macedonia but you will never, I repeat never, be able to fool the American and the Australian public.
Ancient Macedonians were what they said they were—Macedonians.
Until next time…
From David Hogart´s Philip and Alexander of Macedon
p.180-81.
The Greek propaganda to portray the ancient Macedonians as Greeks has, in the last decade or so, reached feverish proportions. Enormous amount of energy and capital is being spent to convince the western countries that Alexander the Great and his father Philip were Greeks. There is no shortage of "documents" produced, new stories invented and programs initiated world-wide to educate the public at large of this urgent Greek discovery. The urgency with which they have undertaken this publicity campaign has left many people bewildered as to why there is this sudden and violent outburst of love for a Macedonian King whom nineteen century Greeks regarded as a conqueror of Greece.
Indeed, why such an outpouring of love for the name "Macedonia" and the "Macedonians"? Why now? What prompted today´s Greeks to do a hundred and eighty degree turn around and replace the racial hatred for the Macedonians with love for them; from wanting to expel the Macedonians from Greece to claiming immersion of Macedonians into Greeks; from heaping curses and execrations against the Macedonian people and the Macedonian race to showering them with praises and indulging in frenzied proclamations of love for them now.
Those who are not too deeply involved with the Balkan history and politics may find this Greek overwrought metamorphosis strange and surprising, but those who had the opportunity to follow the Greek nation-building process in the past century or so, will inevitably notice their patented trademark: a chameleonic thievery of other peoples´ land and hijacking of their cultural and ethnic heritage.
Their poisonous Greek tentacles go first for the language people speak. By depriving the masses from using their own language, Greeks incrementally destroy, suffocate and erase the cultural inheritance of the people in question.
The population of ethnic Macedonians in Greece who in the year 1912-13, after the Balkan Wars, found themselves under the Greek occupation, bear witness to this most inhumane treatment perpetrated on a peaceful population.]
In Greece today, there is nothing left from the once vibrant Vlach´s culture; no traces can be found of the Albanian heritage and not even a whisper of a once dominant trademark in the countryside of the ethnic Macedonian culture. To place a permanent imprint on a land they had never owned, Greeks erased all the Macedonian names and replaced them with Greek´s; family and personal names were also changed into Greek sounding ones and the fanatical Greek carnage did not spare even the gravestones of the dearly departed. Common wisdom dictates the following question:
If Macedonia was always Greek, then (a) why was there a compelling reason to change the names (b) why do they feel so constrained to prove that Macedonia is Greece?
Such is the political climate in today´s Greece that deception, cover-up and fabrications are the norm, while tolerance, inclusion of diversity and democratic civility are the exception.
One cannot but wonder how is it possible for modern Greeks to overlook passages in history books where the ancients themselves have clearly stated their preferences and unambiguously proclaimed their ethnic or national affiliations. There are many learned, progressive Greeks, however, who know the truth but these people are quickly suppressed, branded unpatriotic and marginalized. It is dangerous to disagree with and speak against governmental policies on these issues. Their propaganda boldly pushes forward even though the scholarly current of thought goes against it. Please consider the following passage from Livy regarding Greeks´ feelings for King Philip of Macedon and his Macedonians:
The passage below is copied verbatim from Livy's book XXXI.44.]
"Such were the activities of the Romans and of Philip on land during that summer. At the beginning of the same summer, the fleet, commanded by the legate Lucius Apustius, left Corcyra, rounded Cape Malea, and joined King Attalus of Scyllaeum, in the region of Hermoine. Hitherto the resentment of the Athenian community against Philip had been kept in check by fear; but now, with the hope of assistance ready at hand, they gave free rein to their anger. There is never any lack at Athenian tongues ready and willing to stir up the passion of the common people; this kind of oratory is nurtured by the applause of the mob in all free communities; but this is especially true of Athens, where eloquence has the greatest influence. The popular assembly immediately carried a proposal that all statues of Philip and all portraits of him, with their inscriptions, and also those of his ancestors of either sex, should be removed and destroyed; that all feast-days, rites, and priesthoods instituted in honour of Philip or his ancestors should be deprived of sanctity; that even the sites of any memorials or inscriptions in his honour should be held accursed, and that it should not be lawful thereafter to decide to set up or dedicate on those sites any of those things which might lawfully be set up or dedicated on an undefiled site; that whenever the priests of the people offered prayer on behalf of the Athenian people and their allies, their armies and navies, they should on every occasion heap curses and execrations on Philip, his family and his realm, his forces on land and sea, and the whole race and name of the Macedonians".
Now, please, compare and contrast this excerpt from the ancient Greeks with today´s Greeks view of Philip and the Macedonians.
"King Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great - to whom Skopje is currently attempting to attribute a 'Slavomacedonian' (sic) identity - acted not simply as Greeks but as Panhellenic leaders in the sense that they embodied the old idea of the formation of a united Greek state with the amalgamation of the Greek city-states. As Johann Gustav Droysen - among other scholars - points out in his History of Alexander the Great, both Philip and Alexander "brought to the peoples of Asia and implanted in them not the Macedonian culture, which had no independent standing, but the Greek culture".
As one reads such passages, one could not help but wonder, how come Greeks, who have read these same pages, did not find the content and the references objectionable? By what leap of faith can they ingest, digest and subsequently absorb such contrastingly different meanings and perceptions? What process of internalization is at play when confronted with such irrefutable statements? What comforting/disturbing thought, if any, streams through their mind?
Let us focus our attention to the last few sentences from the quote;
"…that whenever the priests of the people offered prayer on behalf of the Athenian people and their allies, their armies and navies,
they should on every occasion heap curses and execrations on Philip, his family and his realm, his forces on land and sea, and the whole race and name of the Macedonians"
Heap curses and execrations on Philip and the whole race and name of the Macedonians means one and only one thing: Greeks had nothing ethnically in common with the ancient Macedonians. No other conclusion is possible. No other interpretation will ever suffice for no other explanation is needed.
Alexander himself says that he conquered Greece and yet today´s Greeks call it "unification". Alexander dismissed the Greeks in 330 B.C., a few years into the campaign, and yet Greeks talk about pan-Hellenic crusade. Peter Green pointedly asked:
"If this was a Hellenic crusade where were the Greeks?" Bryant Bosworth states that Greeks in Asia were noted for their absence from any major battle, and yet Greeks still insist that this was a Greek war of vengeance.
There were more than fifty thousand Greeks with Darius´ army fighting against Alexander and his Macedonians and they still claim that Alexander was their king. While Alexander was fighting in Asia, the Greeks from the mainland were sending envoys to the great king of Persia and fermenting unrest in Greece against the Macedonian regent Antipater. And when the news of his death reached Athens, a day of a national celebration was proclaimed.
How does an everyday Greek come to terms with such glaring discrepancies between what they read in their home-cooked books and what the rest of the world reads and interprets? Perhaps, Greekness is measured in degrees of obedience.
There is a wealth of evidence found of Alexander´s relation with the Greeks. David Hogarth in his ´Philip and Alexander of Macedon´ describes Alexander´s initial encounters with the Persians and their Greek quislings with tempered enthusiasm; but as a brilliant story teller who keeps a few surprises hidden in his pocket, he navigates with a clear purpose in mind. He calls Alexander a boy who is filled with hopes and expectations and as a Captain-General, full of high spirit in a united "Hellenic" front with all his allies. He seems to carry this enthusiasm with passion until Hogarth lowers the boom on you and unmasks Alexander´s pretentious facade of love and respect for the Greeks. He lures you into believing that Alexander carried this Hellenic spirit in earnest until you discover his true hidden feelings and motifs.
At the battle of Granicus Alexander captured close to 2000 Greeks who fought
for the Persian side under their Greek commander Memnon. These poor souls were sent to Macedonia in chains as slaves; the captured loot (armor from the captured Greeks) was sent to Athens.
"The spoil was dedicated as solemn first fruits to the gods of the Greeks and in formal terms Alexander decreed annihilation to those dastard Hellenes who were found opposing in arms the Captain-General of their race."
Modern-day Greeks use this episode—the spoils from Granicus—as proof that Alexander´s conquest of Persia, was indeed a Greek conquest.]
"Scarce two months later at Miletus Alexander again had at his mercy a body of Greeks, equally guilty; he allowed them to surrender on terms, and took them into his service. It is a small matter, but a straw on the stream of events. What had happened since the "Cavalry Battle," to ease the conscience of the Captain-General? In effect enough to make Miletus a point clearly marked in the passing of the enthusiastic boy into the calculating man of affairs."
This point is telling. Greeks on the mainland to whom the "union" was imposed were as willing participants as Alexander was a Hellenic crusader.]
"For those two months had proved to demonstration nothing less than that the maritime states of Hellas, those that alone greatly mattered, were in their hearts not for Alexander, but for his enemies."
Alexander was fully aware of this and his subsequent decisions will reveal his true character towards the Greeks. The campaign was still young and Darius was not defeated yet. The Pan-Hellenic crusade can live to see another day.]
"Two larger islands, Rhodes, Chios, and Lesbos, and nearly all the lesser, kept open ports to the Persian admirals, and the city of Athens had been at no pains to disguise her sympathies. Her continental position and twenty of her ships, held as hostages by the Macedonians, made her warn Pharnabazus off the Pireus; but openly she sat within her walls watching for the first Macedonian reverse, and indeed had sent already, or was about to send soon, an envoy direct to Darius."
Is this how Philip and Alexander "united" the Greek city-states? Is this the Pan-Hellenic crusade against the Persians? Isn´t Athens colluding with Darius behind Alexander´s back?]
"In brief, Alexander had failed entirely to carry Athens with him on the wind of his enthusiasm. He had failed, partly because some of her best spirit survived still, refusing to be comforted for the loss of Empire; partly because she had outlived her heroic period. At that stage of her conscious intellectualism, when oratory and philosophy had become popular diversions, an exuberant Homeric champion struck no true note of admiration. There was felt in Athens no longer any enthusiasm for crusades, and best but a languid interest in the physical excellences of a youth who assumed the Hero and dared kings to battle. She was perhaps, to tell truth, a little wearied with him, and needed only encouragement by an active agitator to express her feelings in open hostility.
Therefore, at Miletus, the first sanguine hour of Alexander´s life has closed, and on the wreck of his exuberant illusions begins to rise a sterner purpose.
Greece must be coerced if she will not be courted. Her command of the sea shall be broken by the capture of the coasts of the Levant, and her people be bent willy nilly to do panhellenic work.
Alexander decided to burn his boats and leave himself stranded in Asia.
Is this the young, enthusiastic Homeric hero who will take the Greeks on vengeance against Persia? Are these the feelings of a Greek king? Ask yourselves the following question: Does Alexander seem and behave like a Greek king? Do you not see as to why he decided to burn his boats? Peter Green says that the Greek allied troops were scraped from the bottom of the barrel and were taken by Alexander in Asia to serve as hostages for the good behavior of the mainland Greeks.]
"This early disillusionment, though it cooled the boy´s spirit all too soon, and when pressed home by much future trouble with the Greeks, embittered him not a little, and forced him to adapt a policy alien to modern sympathy, was in certain ways salutary."
"Much trouble with the Greeks"—sums it all up so eloquently.
It is high noon for all of you propagandists to terminate your illusory thinking that ancient Macedonians were Greeks. You can bully the Republic of Macedonia but you will never, I repeat never, be able to fool the American and the Australian public.
Ancient Macedonians were what they said they were—Macedonians.
Until next time…
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