Portraits of the Ptolemies - Paul Stanwick

Portraits of the Ptolemies,

Greek Kings as Egyptian Pharaons by Paul Edmund Stanwick

University of Texas press, 2002.


"The Ptolemies of Egypt had a unique vantage point. From their fabled capital of Alexandria, these Greek rulers, looked north to Greece, east to Asia, west to Rome, and south to Egypt..."

Walter M. Ellis about term 'Macedonian'

The author in the book "PTOLEMY OF EGYPT", explains the usage of term 'Macedonian' in his book:

"...I fear that I have not been wholly consistent in my use of the term “Macedonian.” For the record, let me state that I believe Macedonians, ancient and modern, are Greeks. But it is also a fact that ancient Macedonians distinguished themselves from Greeks, as the Greeks distinguished themselves from Macedonians. A Texan is an American, but many Americans see Texans in a class by themselves. The Welsh and the Cornish stand in an ambiguous relationship with the English, as do Ukrainians with Russians, Austrians with Germans, Alsatians with the French. The list is endless. Americans of English ancestry speak the same language as the English, only differently. They admire English culture, but grudgingly. They want to be English in some situations, but not in others.

The "backward" Macedonians were suddenly thrust into a position of leadership over the Greeks, who, from the Macedonian point of view, had not done a very good job of governing themselves. The Macedonians embraced Greek culture and their own role as leaders, but, at the same time, they must have felt slightly superior to the mighty Greeks, who had fallen so far so fast. These contradictions may not be rational, but nor are they unusual."

Walter M. Ellis, Ptolemy of Egypt, London 1994, Routledge, pg. ix.

Source: History of Macedonia through ages

Alexander the Great - Richard Stoneman

Excerpt from the book "Alexander the Great" by Richard Stoneman, explaining the different opinions of modern scholars about the ethnic origin of ancient Macedonians:

"It has often been considered that Alexander – if the detail of the speech is authentic – overstates the case. There were cities in Macedon before Philip, and there was culture, too, as we shall see. But these sentences reflect the perception of the Greeks further south, that the Macedonians were a rustic, backward – even ‘barbarian’ – people. The charge of ‘barbarism’ requires explanation. The term was used by Greeks to describe any people who did not speak Greek – whose language sounded (to them) like ‘bar-bar’. Were the Macedonians Greeks?

Scholarly opinion remains divided over the issue, and there is little enough direct evidence to draw on. Against the Greek identity of Macedonians is the Greek prejudice described above, and best-evinced by Demosthenes’ invectives against Philip in the course of the latter’s conquests; but Demosthenes, seeing himself as a defender of Athenian liberty, had an axe to grind. The other piece of evidence is the complaint made by Alexander against Philotas in the course of his trial for conspiracy: that he did not deign to address the court ‘in Macedonian’ but insisted on showing off in Greek. And Alexander is at least once said to have addressed his troops ‘in Macedonian’.

Those who favour the view that the Macedonians were Greeks regard this as evidence, not for a separate Macedonian language, but for the use of dialect in certain circumstances, comparable to the use of Scots in a British regiment consisting largely of Scots.

In favour of the Greek identity of the Macedonians is what we know of their language: the place-names, names of the months and personal names, which are without exception Greek in roots and form. This suggests that they did not merely use Greek as a lingua franca, but spoke it as natives (though with a local accent which turned Philip into Bilip, for example). The Macedonians’ own traditions derived their royal house from one Argeas, son of Macedon, son of Zeus, and asserted that a new dynasty, the Temenids, had its origin in the sixth century from emigrants from Argos in Greece, the first of these kings being Perdiccas. This tradition became a most important part of the cultural identity of Macedon. It enabled Alexander I (d.452) to compete at the Olympic Games (which only true Hellenes were allowed to do); and it was embedded in the policy of Archelaus (d.399) who invited Euripides from Athens to his court, where Euripides wrote not only the Bacchae but also a lost play called Archelaus.(Socrates was also invited, but declined.) It was in keeping with this background that Philip employed Aristotle – who had until then been helping Hermias of Atarneus in the Troad to rule as a Platonic ‘philosopher-king’ – as tutor to his son, and that Alexander grew up with a devotion to Homer and the Homeric world which his own kingship so much recalled, and slept every night with the Iliad under his pillow.

The Macedonians, then, were racially Greek. The relation might be not so much that of British and Scots as of Germans and Austrians; but in the case of Macedon it was the smaller partner which effected the Anschluss, as Philip’s reign was devoted to gaining control not only of the northern Aegean but of the city-states of mainland Greece, too."

Richard Stoneman, Alexander the Great, London 1997, p. 11-12.

The Western Question - 1922

The Western Question in Greece and Turkey,

A Study in the Contact of Civilisations by Arnold J. Toynbee

London - Bombay - Syndey 1922

 

"In the northeastern provinces of Turkey, the massacre of Armenians by Moslems has been endemic since 1895; in Macedonia the mutual massacre of Greeks, Bulgars, Serbs, and Albanians since about 1899; and after the Balkan Wars the plague of racial warfare spread—with the streams of Moslem refugees—from Macedonia to Thrace and Western Anatolia." (pg. 17)

"The Khilafat movement is also part of that wave of sentiment which moves Modern Greeks to think of themselves as the special heirs of Pericles or Alexander, or to overload their language with reminiscences of Thucydides and Homer." (pg. 29)

"Lysimachus was one of Alexander’s generals and heirs, and he laid out Ephesus at a moment when all Asia, from the Aegean to the Pamirs, had been opened to Greek enterprise by Alexander’s conquests." (pg. 149)

"Then there are the conquests of Alexander—jubilantly trumpeted by the Greek Press of all parties in 1921, whenever their troops advanced. The ‘Gordian Knot’ was to be cut once again by General Papulas! They forgot that Alexander had not after all out witted the oracle. Whoever untied the knot was to rule Asia. Alexander cut it, and destroyed the Persian Empire (which had tied the Middle East together for two centuries) without founding another. His enduring achievements were negative. By overthrowing the Oriental world-state he threw open the Middle East to Hellenic civilisation, but he did not permanently annex to his ancestral kingdom of Macedonia either Western Anatolia or any other of the vast territories which he overran. After his death, Western Anatolia was fought over for more than a century by rival Powers—a Greek kingdom at Antioch, pushing up north-westward along the modern route of the Baghdad Railway; a Greek kingdom in the Balkans, first in Thrace and then in Macedonia, which never secured any hold; a Greek kingdom in Egypt, operating coastwise from overseas; local Powers like Pergamon (a revived Lydia) and the city-states of Cyzicus and Rhodes; and the immigrant Galatian tribesmen. In the midst of this political anarchy, Hellenic civilisation only made progress in Anatolia because there was no counter-influence like Islam in the field against it (the civilisations of Mesopotamia and Egypt being remote and by that time enfeebled). Moreover, even this cultural progress was comparatively slight until it was assisted by the Roman conquest and political unification of the country." (pg. 222)

"For ten days I walked about in the Morea, sleeping in the villagers’ houses, talking with them over the evening meal, and continuing the conversation on the mountain-tracks next morning; and afterwards I made a more rapid excursion into Western Macedonia. The Morea was the heart of ‘Old Greece’ and had been solidly Royalist. The Greeks of Macedonia had only been united to the Kingdom after the Balkan War, and, like most of their newly liberated kinsmen, had been supporters of Mr. Venizelos. The Moreots are provincials, the Macedonians— linked up with the West by railway more than a generation ago—are comparatively in touch with the world." (pg. 243)

Discovered by Marsyas Periandrou

Art of Strategy - Partha Bose

Alexander the Great's,

Art of Strategy by Partha Bose

"...Macedonians believed their kings were direct descendants of the Greek gods who lived atop Mount Olympus, which on a clear day could be seen from Pella..."

Greek Pictures - J. P. Mahaffy (1890)

"Greek Pictures; drawn with pen and pencil" by J. P. Mahaffy (1890)

Philip and Alexander of Macedon, 1897

"Philip and Alexander of Macedon, Two Essays in Biography" by David G. Hogarth (1897).

Discovered by Marsyas Periandrou

The Virtues of War - Steven Pressfield

The Virtues of War - Steven Pressfield

A Manual of Ancient History - 1840

A Manual of Ancient History, particularly with regard to the constitutions, the commerce, and the colonies, of the states of antiquity. By A. H. L. Heeren, 1840

History of Egypt by James Wilson, 1805

THE HISTORY OF EGYPT; from earliest accounts of that country, till the expulsion of the French from Alexandria, in the year 1801. By JAMES WILSON, D. D. Minister of Falkirk. In three volumes.

EDINBURGH:

Printed for Archibald constable & co. Edinburgh and Longman, Hurst, Rees, and Orme, London.

1805

According to the James Wilson (Minister of Falkirk), most soldiers of Alexander's army were from Greece and Macedon, it's excellent excerpt for Slavomacedonian propagandists, to prove that Macedonia and Greece are mentioned separately. According to their logic this is proof that Macedonia wasn't part of Greece.
[JAMES WILSON, The History of Egypt - Vol. I, Edinburgh 1805, pg. 238]

But what's ethnicity of ancient Macedonians, and Alexander's soldiers, according to James Wilson, and from which ethnicity were inhabitants of ancient Macedonia?
[JAMES WILSON, The History of Egypt - Vol. I, Edinburgh 1805, pg. 251]

Other excerpts from the book of Falkirk's Minister:
[JAMES WILSON, The History of Egypt - Vol. I, Edinburgh 1805, pg. 58]
[JAMES WILSON, The History of Egypt - Vol. I, Edinburgh 1805, pg. 222]
[JAMES WILSON, The History of Egypt - Vol. I, Edinburgh 1805, pg. 223]
[JAMES WILSON, The History of Egypt - Vol. I, Edinburgh 1805, pg. 236]
[JAMES WILSON, The History of Egypt - Vol. I, Edinburgh 1805, pg. 264]
[JAMES WILSON, The History of Egypt - Vol. I, Edinburgh 1805, pg. 269]

Discovered by M. P.

The Spirit of Laws, by Montesquieu (1748)

Charles-Louis de Secondat, baron de La Brède et de Montesquieu (18 January 1689 – 10 February 1755), generally referred to as simply Montesquieu, was a French social commentator and political thinker who lived during the Enlightenment. He is famous for his articulation of the theory of separation of powers, which is taken for granted in modern discussions of government and implemented in many constitutions throughout the world. He was largely responsible for the popularization of the terms feudalism and Byzantine Empire.

De l'Esprit des Lois (The Spirit of the Laws) was originally published anonymously in 1748 and quickly rose to a position of enormous influence. In France, it met with an unfriendly reception from both supporters and opponents of the regime. The Catholic Church banned l'Esprit – along with many of Montesquieu's other works – in 1751 and included it on the Index of Prohibited Books. It received the highest praise from the rest of Europe, especially Britain.

On Alexander's Empire and ethnicity of Diadochi (successors of Alexander's empire), he stated the following:

[MONTESQUIEU, The Spirit of Laws - Vol. I, translated by Thomas Nugent, London 1766, pg. 156]
[MONTESQUIEU, The Spirit of Laws - Vol. I, translated by Thomas Nugent, London 1766, pg. 157]
[MONTESQUIEU, The Spirit of Laws - Vol. I, translated by Thomas Nugent, London 1766, pg. 157]
[MONTESQUIEU, The Spirit of Laws - Vol. I, translated by Thomas Nugent, London 1766, pg. 158]
[MONTESQUIEU, The Spirit of Laws - Vol. I, translated by Thomas Nugent, London 1766, pg. 158]
[MONTESQUIEU, The Spirit of Laws - Vol. I, translated by Thomas Nugent, London 1766, pg. ]
[MONTESQUIEU, The Spirit of Laws - Vol. II, translated by Thomas Nugent, London 1766, pg. 39]
[MONTESQUIEU, The Spirit of Laws - Vol. II, translated by Thomas Nugent, London 1766, pg. 43]
[MONTESQUIEU, The Spirit of Laws - Vol. II, translated by Thomas Nugent, London 1766, pg. 45]
[MONTESQUIEU, The Spirit of Laws - Vol. II, translated by Thomas Nugent, London 1766, pg. 47]
[MONTESQUIEU, The Spirit of Laws - Vol. II, translated by Thomas Nugent, London 1766, pg. 47]
[MONTESQUIEU, The Spirit of Laws - Vol. II, translated by Thomas Nugent, London 1766, pg. 51]

Discovered by Marsyas Periandrou