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..."

Alexander mounting Bucephalus - c. 1904

Alexander the Great (356-323 BC) mounting his horse Bukephalon, by Vincenzo Gemito (1852-1929). Year c. 1904, Naples - Italy. Original title in Italian: Alessandro a cavallo di Bucefalo.

 

Insignias of King Constantine I of Greece

A magnificent star-sapphire set in the hilt of the richly chased and ornamented sword given by the Macedonian Greeks of USA to King Constantine of Greece, on Easter Day, 1913, as a talisman designed to assure good fortune and long life to the sovereign, as well as prosperity to the state over which he rules. Another talismanic embellishment of the sword was an inlaid didrachm of Alexander the Great; it is a well-known fact and one frequently recorded by ancient and medieval writers, that the coins of this monarch were often treasured up as amulets or talismans.

Author: magicmountaion

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.

Arnold J. Toynbee - Quotes

Arnold J. Toynbee was eminent British historian, born in London on 14 April 1889. His most famous magnum opus is the A Study of History, in which the author traces the development and decay of all of the major world civilizations in the historical record. He was Professor at King's College London (as Professor of Modern Greek and Byzantine History), the London School of Economics and the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) in Chatham House. Toynbee worked for the Political Intelligence Department of the British Foreign Office during World War I and served as a delegate to the Paris Peace Conference in 1919. His approach belongs to Comparative history. 

On his journey in Macedonia and Morea, in the book The Western Question in Greece and Turkey, Toynbee has stated: 

"For ten days I walked about in the Morea... 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)