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The Hellenicity of the “barbarian” Macedonians

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    Posted: 11-Jan-2009 at 11:59

The Hellenicity of the “barbarian” Macedonians

Parts of the Phillip ivory shield that found in Vergina Tomb. You can see clearly the two Pan-Hellenic symbols in ancient Greece: The 16th Sun/Star(Vergina Sun) and the Meander(Greek key). The shield itself can be found in the museum of Vergina in Central Macedonia of Greece

DEFINITION OF THE “HELLENICITY” AND “BARBARIAN”

The invention of a barbarian antitype provided a completely new mechanism for defining the Hellenic identity. During the Archaic period, Hellenic self-definition was ”aggregative”. That is to say, it was constructed by evok­ing similarities with peer groups which were then cast in terms of ficticious kin relationships within the 'Hellenic Genealogy'. Hellenicity was defined contrary through differential comparison with a barbarian out-group. At this point, however, some qualification is necessary. By oppositional self-definition, Jonathan Hall means simply that perceived differences served as a basis for the construction of a specifically Hellenic identity. [1]

Hall argues at greater length in his books and articles in the 5th century, mainly as a consequence of the Persian Wars, the definition of Greek identity evolved from an “aggregative” no inclusive conception based on fictitious descent from the eponymous Hellen and expressed in forged genealogies (which may leave outside not only Macedonians and Magnetes, but also other goups such as Arcadians or Aitolians) into an “oppositional” one, turned against out-groups, relegating thus (fictitious) community of blood to the same level –if not to an inferior one (vide infra)– as linguistic, religious and cultural criteria. In this perspective there is not much sense in opposing a putative compact, homo­geneous and immutable “Greekness” to the contested identities of groups such as the Aitolians, Locrians, Acarnanians, Thesprotians, Molossians, Chaones, Atintanias, Parauaians Orestians, Macedonians.

The Greek tribes quickly noticed that they did not speak the same tongue as their neighbours, and used the term "βάρβαρος" ("barbarian") for them, with the meanings "uncultured", "uncivilized" or "speaker of a foreign language". The term βάρβαρος is thought to be onomatopoeic in origin: "bar-bar"—i.e. stammering—may have been how the speech of foreign peoples sounded to Greek speakers. [2]


BARBARIAN IDENTIFICATION FROM THE ANCIENT GREEKS

According to several ancient writers named as barbarians all those who spoke a different tongue [Polybius, "History", 9-38-5; Strabo, "Geographica", 7-7-4; Herodotus, "Histories", book I, 56 and II, 158]

Discrimination between Hellenes and barbarians lasted until the 4th century BC. Euripides thought it plausible that Hellenes should rule over barbarians, because the first were destined for freedom and the other for slavery.[ Iphigeneia at Aulis, 1400 ]

Aristotle came to the conclusion that "the nature of a barbarian and a slave is one and the same".[Republic,I,5]

Aristophanes calls the illiterate supervisor a "barbarian" who nevertheless taught the birds how to talk.[The Birds, 199] The term eventually picked up a derogatory use and was extended to indicate the entire lifestyle of foreigners, and finally coming to mean "illiterate" or "uncivilized" in general. Thus "an illiterate man is also a barbarian".[The Clouds, 492 ]

According to Dionysius of Halicarnassus (1st cent BC), a Hellene differed from a barbarian in four ways: refined language, education, religion, and the rule of law. In more detailing defined Hellenicity yas speaking the Greek language, having a Greek way of life, acknowledging the same gods and having fitting, reasonable laws. [Roman Antiquities, 1, 89, 4]

Isocrates declared in his speech Panegyricus: "So far has Athens left the rest of mankind behind in thought and expression that her pupils have become the teachers of the world, and she has made the name of Hellas distinctive no longer of race but of intellect, and the title of Hellene a badge of education rather than of common descent."[Panegyricus, 50]

Racial differentiation faded away through the teachings of Stoics, who distinguished between nature and convention and taught that all men have equal claim before God and thus by nature cannot be unequal to each other. In time, Hellene, to use the words of Isocrates, became a trait of intellect, not race.

Alexander the Great's conquests consolidated Greek influence in the East by exporting Greek culture into Asia and permanently transformed education and society in the region.

Greek education became identified with noble upbringing. Paul of Tarsus (a non Greek) considered it his obligation to preach the Gospel to all men, "Hellenes and barbarians, both wise and foolish".[Epistle to the Romans, 1, 14 ]



THE MACEDONIANS

The beginnings of Macedonian history are shrouded in complete darkness. There is keen controversy on the ethno­logical problem, whether the Macedonians were Greeks [3] or not [4]. Linguistic science has at its disposal a very limited quantity of Macedonian words, and the archaeological ex­ploration of Macedonia has hardly begun. And yet when we take into account the political conditions, religion and morals of the Macedonians, our conviction is strengthened that they were a Greek race and akin to the Dorians. Having stayed behind in the extreme north, they were unable to participate in the progressive civilization of the tribes which went further south, and so, when in the time of the Persian Wars they emerged on the horizon of the other Greeks, they appeared to them as non-Greeks, as barbarians.

When Alexander I of Macedon, who, though a vassal of Xerxes, had in the Persian War given many proofs of his sympathy with the Greek cause, desired to take part in the Olympic Games, to which only Hellenes had access, he was at first refused as a barbarian, and it was only when by a bold fiction he traced back the pedigree of his house, the Argeadae, to the Heraclid Temenus of Argos, that he was admitted as a competitor. Since then the kings of Mace­donia passed with the Greeks as Hellenes, and as descend­ants of Heracles; but, as before, so afterwards, the people were regarded as barbarianseven by Isocrates in his 'Philip'though in the meantime many kings had done much for the introduction of Greek culture into their country. Even in Philip's day the Greeks saw in the Macedonians a non-Greek foreign people, and we must remem­ber this if we are to understand the history of Philip and Alexander, and especially the resistance and obstacles which met them from the Greeks. The point is much more important than our modern conviction that Greeks and Macedonians were brethren; this was equally unknown to both, and therefore could have no political effect. [5]

Quite apart from the local separation of the two peoples, the barbaric impression which the Macedonians made on the Greeks is explained by the close relationship in which the Macedonians lived for centuries with their barbarian neighbours, the Illyrians in the West, and the Thracians in the East. A strong Illyrian and Thracian influence can thus be recognized in Macedonian speech and manners. These however are only trifles compared with the Greek character of the Macedonian nationality; for example, the names of the true full-blooded Macedonians, especially of the princes and nobles, are purely Greek in their formation and sounds. [6]

Above all, the fundamental features of Macedonian poli­tical institutions are not only Greek but primitive Greek, a Homeric Greek. The old patriarchal monarchy over people and army lasted here down to the days of Philip and Alexander, a monarchy such as had once existed in all Greek tribes, until it had to give way to aristocratic forms of government under the dissolving influence of the Polis. One of the factors which explain the tenacious retention of the old monarchy is that the progressive idea of the Polis had not entered Macedonia. Another point is that the power of the king, who was supreme general, judge and priest, was tem­pered by the fact that the old Greek community in arms, in whose eyes the king was primus inter pareswhich had once existed in primitive times among the Greeksmain­tained itself down to Alexander's day, and beyond, in the assembly of the army, which was possessed of definite privi­leges. But the Argeads were not at first lords of the whole Mace­donian nation. Originally the tribes of Upper Macedonia, the Lyncestae, Orestae and Elimiotae had their own princes or kings. Tedious struggles were necessary to incor­porate them into the Macedonian state, and it is likely that the mediatisation of these princely houses was only com­pleted under Philip, by whose hand the unified Mace­donian state was thus constituted. [7]


THE HELLENICITY OF THE MACEDONIANS

Jonathan Hall proceeds to a penetrating analysis of the shifting definitions of Hellenicity in Herodotus, Thucydides and Isocrates, our main sources for the evolution of the concept in the Classical period. About Thucydides in particular he writes that, contrary to Herodotus, he did not view Greeks and barbarians “as mutually exclusive categories” but as “opposite poles of a single, linear continuum”. Thus, the inhabitants of north-western Greece “are ‘barbarian’ not in the sense that their cultures, customs, or behavior are in direct, diametrical opposition to Greek norms but rather in the sense that their seemingly more primitive way of life makes them “Hellènes manqués”. [8] [9]

Hall challenges the view that Macedonia was marginal or peripheral in respect to a Greek centre or core, for the simple reason that such a Greek hard core never existed, since “‘Greekness’ is constituted by the totality of multifocal, situationally bound, and self-conscious negotiations of identity not only between poleis and ethne but also within them”, and because a view such as this “assumes a transhistorically static definition of Greekness” [10]

Jonathan Hall in his conclusions affirm the doubts about the possibility of answering the question concerning the “nationality” of the ancient Mace­donians. “To ask whether the Macedonians ‘really were’ Greek or not in anti­quity“, he writes, “is ultimately a redundant question given the shifting semantics of Greekness between the sixth and fourth centuries B.C. What cannot be denied, however, is that the cultural commodification of Hellenic identity that emerged in the fourth century might have remained a provincial artifact, confined to the Balkan peninsula, had it not been for the Mace­donians” [11]

There is also one more element which confirms the Hellenicity of the Macedonians. The epigraphic evidence of recent decades has also yielded a vast number of personal names. These are not only purely Greek from the very start, but also have a distinct local character which precludes the possibility of their being borrowed from the colonies on the coast. Epigraphic data of capital linguistic interest which have become available only after the Center of Hellenic Studies Colloquium of 1997 from Professor Miltiadis Hatzopoulos and important recent monographs and articles which seem not to have been accessible in the United States, if known, would have provided additional arguments and prevented some minor inaccuracies. [12]

Other epigraphic unique evidence are the “theorodokoi” catalogues which precisely list the Greek states (among them and Macedonia) visited by the theoroi, the sacred envoys, of the Pan-Hellenic sanctuaries and invited to participate through official delegations in sacrifices and contests celebrated in those sanctuaries. [13]


CONCLUSION

The question “Had the Macedonians an Hellenic consciousness ?” or "Were the Macedonians Greeks ?" perhaps needs to be chopped up further. The Macedonian kings emerge as Greeks by namely shared blood, and personal names indicate that Macedonians generally moved north from Greece. The kings, the elite, and the generality of the Macedonians were Greeks by criteria of religion and language. Macedonian customs were in certain respects unlike those of a normal polis, but they were compatible with Greekness, apart, perhaps, from the institutions which I have characterized as feudal. The crude one-word answer to the question has to be "yes."


NOTES
[1]- Jonathan Hall, Hellenicity, 2002, page 179
[2]- Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd Edition, 1989, "barbarous"
[3]- Ulrich Wilcken in “ Ancient Greek History” and in “Alexander The Great” - N.G.L. Hammond, Wallbank and Errington in three volumes “History of Macedonia”- Ian Worthington in his last book “Philip of Macedonia” e.t.c.
[4]- E. Badian, “Greeks and Macedonians”, in Beryl Bar-Sharrar – E. N. Borza (eds.), Macedonia and Greece in Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Times and in “Herodotus on Alexander I of Macedon: A Study in some Subtle Silences”, in S. Hornblower (ed.), Greek Historiography,-E. N. Borza, in “the Shadow of Olympus” and in “The Emergence of Macedon”.
[5]- Volume “Macedonia: 4000 years of Greek History”, article from Sakellariou
[6]- Jean Kalleris, Les Anciens Macedoniens. Etude linguistique et historique
[7]- Ulrich Wilcken in “Ancient Greek History”, Greek edition, page 213
[8]- Irad Malkin (editor), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity, Harvard Univeristy 2001, Contested Ethnicities: Perceptions of Macedonia within Evolving Definitions of Greek Ethnicity, page 169-172
[9]- Miltiadis Hatzopoulos, Macedonian Identities, Patakis publishing, 2008, Contested Ethnicities: Perception of the self and the other: the case of Macedon, page 51
[10]- Irad Malkin (editor), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity, Cambridge, Mass. and London 2001, Contested Ethnicities: Perceptions of Macedonia within Evolving Definitions of Greek Ethnicity, page 166
[11]- Irad Malkin (editor), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity, Cambridge, Mass. and London 2001, Contested Ethnicities: Perceptions of Macedonia within Evolving Definitions of Greek Ethnicity, page 172
[12]- Miltiadis Hatzopoulos in “Macedonian institutions under the kings,1996” and Giannis Xydopoulos “ Social and cultural relations of Macedonians and the other Greeks, 2006”
[13]- Miltiadis Hatzopoulos, Macedonian Identities, Patakis publishing, 2008, Contested Ethnicities: Perception of the self and the other: the case of Macedon, page 55

http://ancient-medieval-macedonian-history.blogspot.com/2009/01/hellenicity-of-barbarian-macedonians.html

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  Quote Guests Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Jan-2009 at 15:44
I don't doubt that there were some links, but this article is rather poorly done as it tries "too hard" to prove its point. Sentences such are they were barbarians to all, but really they are a Dorian like Greek race tribe that stayed are a bit too circumstantial and not sound enough for a serious argument.


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  Quote Flipper Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Jan-2009 at 17:39
What Jonathan Hall said is basically undeniable. After the 6th century, the inhabitants clearly belong to the Greek sphere. Besides, Olympic participants and barbarians is an impossible equation. The scholar debate actually focuses on earlier times where the problem arises. It is a question of definition however. Who do we consider as early Macedonians before the 6th century? The upper mountainous Kindoms or shall the fuzzy northern and eastern parts be included as well?

By my opinion the areas from Pindus, Boion until the coasts of Pieria and Emathia are not problematic at all anymore. It is the area of Aigae and the area above Thermae that may cause confusion.


Edited by Flipper - 11-Jan-2009 at 17:43


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  Quote akritas Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Jan-2009 at 18:46

It should be emphasized at this point that ancient histo­rians and geographers did not follow the scientific methods of modern linguists, who make detailed descriptions of the speech of the groups that they are studying. The information contained in the ancient writers is based very occasionally on personal experience, and mainly on impressions gathered from their various informants, who were normally not trained philologists, of course, and had no particular inter­est in language. Consequently the description of ethnic groups as barbarians or as Greek by ancient writers can never be regarded as sufficient proof of their ethnic identi­ty. 

As I wrote the most convincing proof, however, that the Macedonians belonged firm­ly within the religious body of Greece, is provided by the catalogues of thearodokoi listing the Greek cities and tribes to which the major pan-Hellenic sanctuaries sent theoroi to announce an impending sacred truce and the performance of sacrifices and contests. The tribes and cities of Epirus and Macedonia(mentioned as barbarians from some writers)  are recorded in the most completely preserved lists (those of Epidauros, Argos, and Delphi) from as early as the 1st half of the 4th century B.C. The weight of this evidence is decisive because, as is well known, only Greeks were al­lowed to, participate in the pan-Hellenic games and festivals.
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  Quote Chilbudios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Jan-2009 at 23:08
This is a topic which was discussed and over-discussed. However, I note one thing. An unfair use of scholars. For instance, Johnatan Hall which is quoted several times has different opinions about the things which he's not quoted for. E.g. about "Hellenism" before 5th century from  History of the Archaic Greek World 1200-479 BCE (2007), p. 259-260:
"In fact there are two reasons why is it unlikely that the linguistic criterion was ever paramount in issues of Hellenic self-identification in the Archaic period. Firstly, there never exited a "Greek language" in the sense of a single linguistic idiom spoken by all those who professed Hellenic descent. [...] If the Aetolians spoke what they wrote, they conversed in a West Greek dialect, but it was one that Thucydides (3.94.5) found incomprehensible; the same is probably true of the Macedonian dialect. [...]
Secondly, is highly likely that a mixed-marriage environment would have had linguistic consequences. The most obvious is bilingualism [...] Furthermore, the facility with which the Greek alphabet was transmitted to the Phrygians, Etruscans, Lydians, Carians, Lycians, Sicels and Elymians suggests a multi-lingual environment that was hardly conductive to the construction of clearly demarcated, linguistically based identities.
Nor do the Greeks seem to have conceived of a characteristically Hellenic shared culture prior to the fifth century - the period in which the verb hellenizein ("to act - and eventually speak - like a Greek") makes its first appearance (e.g. Thucydides 2.68.5)"
or in Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity‎ (2000), p. 177:
"Language and dialect [...] cannot be regarded as criteria of ethnicity."
or at p. 178:
"Throughtout the world and throughout the history the multilingualism is rather the norm than the exception"
 
Maybe a fair representation of Johnathan Hall's view is that there were no Greeks (as Hellenes) before 5th century BC, however there were distinct tribes like those of Macedonians. In other words, Macedonians became Greeks in that period. Somehow, this blog entry manages to draw a slightly different conclusion.
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  Quote Flipper Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 11-Jan-2009 at 23:20
I don't know about the 5th century, but i would rather agree with R.J Hopper who said that the history of the Greeks as an ethnic entity, starts with the first Olympics. Before that i can agree there's a chaos of tribes.


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  Quote akritas Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2009 at 01:10

Where is my unfair Chilbudios ?

I have use the most known article that written from Hall and has as subject the Macedonian ethnogenesis.

As regards your abstracts in the second one(Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity) we have the negation of this as I have showed , and in the first one I don’t see something that negated these that Hall written in Contested Ethnicities: Perceptions of Macedonia within Evolving Definitions of Greek Ethnicity

Hall agree with R.J Hopper that Pan-Hellenic games such as Olympic- that based in the transformed genealogies- were the core of the Greek ethnogenesis. As regards the language, Hall in the same book (Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity) said that linguistic groups can be equated with ethnic group. Actually consider the “language” as an ethnic indicium rather than an ethnic criterion (pages 180-181). And I was clear on this in my first post

Finally I would like to see your opinion as about the epigraphical evidence  not only for the Macedonians but also for the tribes that consider from the ancient writers as barbarians such as Aitolians, Locrians, Acarnanians, Thesprotians, Molossians, Chaones, Atintanias, Parauaians and Orestians.



Edited by akritas - 12-Jan-2009 at 01:11
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  Quote Chilbudios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2009 at 02:36

Because Johnathan Hall does not believe "the kings, the elite, and the generality of the Macedonians were Greeks by criteria of religion and language." as you concluded after reviewing some of his works but "If the Aetolians spoke what they wrote, they conversed in a West Greek dialect, but it was one that Thucydides (3.94.5) found incomprehensible; the same is probably true of the Macedonian dialect" and moreover "Language and dialect [...] cannot be regarded as criteria of ethnicity".

Let's see more of what Johnathan Hall thinks of the ancient Macedonians in Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity‎, p. 63-64:
"While other sources associated Mount Pindos with Hestiaiotis, Herodotos mentions it in connection with Makedonia, perhaps indicating the northern rather than southern Pindos range. Elsewhere Herodotos notes that the Spartans, the Korinthians, the Sikyonians, the Epidaurians and the Troizenians are of the 'Dorian and Makedonian ethnos'. Although the mention of Makedonia in the Herodotean account of the Dorians' wanderings has often been invoked as support for the idea of an historical invasion from the northern Balkans, it has every appearance of being a more recent invention. In the Catalogue of women, the eponymous founder of Makedonia, Makedon, was the son of Zeus and Deukalion's daughter Thuia. This line of descent excludes him from the Hellenic genealogy - and hence, by implication, the Makedonians from the ranks of Hellenism. While Makedon derives descent from the Thessalian 'first man', Deukalion, this is traced through uterine succession (the female line) and bypasses Hellen himself. Nor does the fact that Zeus is his father necessarily testify to his credentials as a bona fide Hellene: after all, Sarpedon is the son of Zeus, but he is a Lykian not a Hellene. By the second half of the fifth century, the Makedonians did manage to enrol their eponymous ancestor within the Hellenic genealogy, but Makedon's descent was derived not from Doros but from Aiolos - an association that may have been suggested by the fact that both Makedon and Aiolos were given the epithet 'he who fights from a chariot' in the Catalogue of women.
The Dorian pedigree of the Makedonians is not attested before the middle of the fifth century and it is tempting to attribute this development to the reign of Alexander I during the first half of the century. Alexander involved himself with the panhellenic world of the Greek poleis to a greater degree than any of his predecessors. His qualification to do so was based on his claimed descent not only from a Heraklid ancestor, but from the Temenids of Argos. These credentials were evidently sufficient to persuade the officials whose task it was to prevent barbaroi from competing in the Olympic games, though Herodotos suggests that the integrity of Alexander's genealogy was not sufficient to convince all the Greeks, and this doubt was to be ruthlessly exploited in the fourth century in order to dissuade the Greeks from allying themselves to Philip II. With the promotion of Alexander's Argive Heraklid descent came perhaps the idea that the Makedonians were Dorians after all."
(the last sentence has an interesting footnote: "Though Badian (1994, 119 n. 13) argues that while the Macedonian kings may have been Greek, the populations over which they ruled were not.").
 
As such, according to Hall, the Macedonian "Hellenic ancestry" (i.e. Doric) was a fabrication of the 5th century. Sentences like "And yet when we take into account the political conditions, religion and morals of the Macedonians, our conviction is strengthened that they were a Greek race and akin to the Dorians" or "Above all, the fundamental features of Macedonian poli­tical institutions are not only Greek but primitive Greek, a Homeric Greek" are what Hall debunks throughout his work. The "crude" answer based on scholars like Hall is "not before the 5th century BC". Therefore your essay misrepresents its sources.
 
Hall agrees that Olympic games played a great part in the Greek ethnogenesis but also doubts their historicity. He notes the 'circuit of stephanitic games' is first attested in the 6th century BC (Hellenicity, p. 154), he notes the ethnic distribution of the Olympic victors for the first 300 years of games (219 victors, 29 Aiolians, 109 Dorians, 34 Ionians, 28 Akhaians, 19 others, p. 163) and then he proceeds to discuss about the excluded Greek tribes from the Hellenism. For instance, Aitolians (p. 170-71), lacking Olympic victors, no patrilinear lineage to Hellen, then moving to classical sources: Euripides describes an Aitolian as meixobarbaros, Thucydides describes the Aitolian Eurytanes as 'incomprehensible in speech and eaters of raw meat', Polybios even goes as far to claim that Aitolians are not Hellenes.
In the same book, Appendix B deals with the historicity of the early Olympic games and victors (p. 241-46), pointing out several important doubts (lack of archaeological evidence, contradicting literary evidence, a late - 6h century BC instead of 8th - tradition, etc.) 
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  Quote akritas Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2009 at 07:51

Chilbudios the «Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity» written in 1997, when the other two books are more recently. The finely balanced verdict of him [Irad Malkin (editor), Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity, Cambridge, Mass. and London 2001, Contested Ethnicities: Perceptions of Macedonia within Evolving Definitions of Greek Ethnicity, page 172] is all the more praiseworthy in that it does not hesitate explicitly or implicitly to contradict authoritative views current in the American academic establishment or even to modify opinions pre­viously expressed by the author himself.

Hall is one from the few scholars that finally understand that the “ancient Greek nationality” is matter of the shifting definitions  of “Hellenicity”  and fully shares Malkin’s view on the overriding importance of religion and in particular of common shrines , sacrifices e.t.c..

 

«Thus, the inhabitants of north-western Greece “are ‘barbarian’ not in the sense that their cultures, customs, or behavior are in direct, diametrical opposition to Greek norms but rather in the sense that their seemingly more primitive way of life makes them Hellènes manqués» (Contested Ethnicities: Perceptions of Macedonia within Evolving Definitions of Greek Ethnicity, page 172)

 
When Thoukidides called the Macedonias, Molossians and Chaonians as "barbarians" the cause was not the linguistic factor but theirs "primitive way of life" as view it from the South Greeks.



Edited by akritas - 12-Jan-2009 at 07:51
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  Quote Chilbudios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2009 at 08:44
Akritas, I've quoted from these books published in these years:
Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity (2000)
Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (2002)
A History of the Archaic Greek World, 1200-479 BCE (2007)
 
He may have corrected some of his former views, but in what was published in 2007 he wrote that Macedonian dialect  was probably incomprehensible to Thucydides (he actually claims there was no "Greek" language to be understood by all) and that the Hellenic culture does not seem to be shared by Greeks before 5th century BC. Your quote from "Ancient Perceptions of Greek Ethnicity" does not address the language, nor the Greekness/Hellenicity of the Macedonians in the Homeric age.
 
 


Edited by Chilbudios - 12-Jan-2009 at 08:46
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  Quote akritas Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2009 at 09:34
The 2000 edition of "Ethnic Identity in Greek Antiquity" is just a reprint of 1997. Hall focus in cultural critirion and not in the linguistic one from his  first book.  As about the language because was probably incomprehensible to Thucydides that is not made a not Greek dialect. Hall writes for the Macedonian language in Hellenicity (page 155)...
 
For what it is worth, the evidence - sparse as it is - suggests that a form of Northwest Greek was spoken in Makedonia, but structural linguistic affiliation does not guarantee intelligibility and it is entirely possible that the Makedonian dialect was as difficult for other dialect speakers to comprehend as the speech of the Aitolian Eurytanes was unintelligible to Thoukydides.

 

These statements by the ancient authors are rather sur­prising. In fact, although it is beyond dispute that the Kari­ans were speakers of a barbarian language until they were gradually Hellenized during the Hellenistic period, it is equally beyond doubt that the Eleans and the Aitolians had always been Greek-speaking; this is clear from by inscrip­tions discovered in these two areas, the earliest of which go back almost to the 7th century B.C.

Hall and many others American writers avoid to mention the  epigraphic data of capital linguistic interest that flourish in Greek soil and would have provided additional arguments and prevented some minor inaccuracies such as Thucydides literacy accounts.

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  Quote Chilbudios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2009 at 11:08
 
Let me redo the emphases in your quote:
For what it is worth, the evidence - sparse as it is - suggests that a form of Northwest Greek was spoken in Makedonia, but structural linguistic affiliation does not guarantee intelligibility and it is entirely possible that the Makedonian dialect was as difficult for other dialect speakers to comprehend as the speech of the Aitolian Eurytanes was unintelligible to Thoukydides.
 
He also continues at the same page: Certainly, later writers appear to regard the Makedonian dialect as a distinct linguistic idiom (Ploutarkh even ranks Kleopatra's Makedonian dialect alongside the speech of the Egyptians, Ethiopians, Troglodytes, Hebrews, Arabs, Syrians, Medes and Parthians)
In the following pages Hall proceeds to show that not this unintelligible language made Macedonians Hellenes, and gives other ways to construct Hellenic identity: through mythic genalogies, participating at Olympics, becoming part of a certain elite etc.
 
The epigraphic evidence gives little to nothing about the Archaic times. For instance, the epigraphic evidence for Macedonian included in Christidis' A History of Ancient Greek is from 4th-3rd century BC. However Hall also considers epigraphic evidence (see page 155 from Hellenicity, footnote 127 about the 4th century curse tablet from Pella and a late 5th century epitaph). As such, I stand by my initial criticism - Hall's position is misrepresented.


Edited by Chilbudios - 12-Jan-2009 at 11:20
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  Quote Flipper Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2009 at 18:32
I feel sometimes we get into details that do not help the reader at all. Not that it is wrong in a critical debate, but it helps only those who are really deep into a subject.

I would rather put Greek ethnicity and this matter into a more simple form, using questions and answers, like the old days.

When did Greek ethnicity arrise in a panhelladic scale?


In the first Olympics (opinions may vary, but not dramatically)

Did the Greek speaking people of the Trojan era have a "Greek consciousness"?


Not at a large scale. The Trojan war might have later been a symbol of Greek unity for many (including the Macedonians) but the tribes participating might not have had a Hellenic consciouness like most of them had in the classical era.

The proto-Greek speakers and their ancestors had no idea of what ethnicity is. Even though language in the second millenium BC seems homogenous, this doesn't mean they could identify fully with each other, moreover most tribes probably met rarely or were unaware of each other. The Ionian, Dorian, Macedonian, Aeolian, Aetolian, Epirotan, Cretan, Arcadian, Cypriot etc people were once something far from a Greek ethnos. During the LNIII and early bronze age, they were even unrelated to each other (eg. Cypriots and Arcadians).

The common factor, except from the usual cultural, religious and lingual development, was that all of them went through the same process in different periods of time.


What about Greek geneology?


All tribal leaders that were offsprings of Hellen were not the only Greeks. Greeks could be offspings of Graecus, Zeus, Pelasgus etc. Graecus was brother of Macedon in some stories, but he can also be in Hellens geneology in other stories. Athenians, were not in Hellens geneology but were still Greeks in and in a conservative level. The people descending from Graecus, were according to the tradition the first to rename themselves to Hellenes, even though they belonged to the Grecian geneology. At this point, Pandora is the mother of the Greeks, rather than the hero Hellen.


Spoken language and written forms?

Since Chilbudios gave an example of the Aetolians, it gave me a great chance to analyse the transition of regional greek writting to koine.

The Aetolians correctly wrote in what we today consider as Doric. What we consider Doric in writting form, does not necessaraly render the spoken dialect like for example Corinthian. Look what i discovered some months ago:

Theocritus, Idylls, 15, 92

Κορίνθιαι εἰμὲς ἄνωθεν,
ὡς καὶ ὁ Βελλεροφῶν· Πελοποννασιστὶ λαλεῦμες·
δωρίσδεν δ᾽ ἐξεστι, δοκῶ, τοῖς Δωριέεσσι.

Which i translate as
"We are Corinthian women by extraction. What we talk is Peloponnesian. I suppose Dorians may speak Doric, mayn't they?"

So, Corinthian into our eyes is Dorian, but the Corinthians consider their dialect as Peloponnesian, not Dorian.

Further, the term Orthographia (spelling) appears as a problem in the second century BC. That's because, Koine is a standard and people do not write as they speak.

Look at the text above. A Koine writter or an Attic speaker would not write Πελοποννασιστὶ nor Δωριέεσσι. The Corinthian Dorieessi, which is correct in a matter of dialect, would be Doristi in standard Greek. Later, Corinthians write Doristi, but probably read or spoke it Dorieessi. Writting Doriessi in Koine or Dorissi etc would be a spelling mistake.

That is pretty much what happens with the Macedonians. They apparently wrote mostly in Koine text, but they did not read it loud like an Attic speaker, but as in Macedonian speech. Taking into consireration some short Macedonian texts (that do not help much into the language part), before Koine, they use archaic letters such as coppa, hapax etc which means that their litteracy (at whatever extend) started as early as the rest of Greece.

The modern example of this would be Helladic Greek and Cypriot Greek. Completely different dialect, different phonology, different voice stops but same writting. Cypriot can be intelligeble for Greeks of Greece, unless Cypriots choose to speak it in a "lighter form".

So far, other forms of native Macedonian writting except from short fragments, the Pella curse tablet, the arethousa tablet and the mixed language of the Derveni papyri has not been attested. Contrary, all the people that got through Hellenization with the help of Greeks, have produced billingual documents.

Who do we consider as Macedonians?

Depending on the time speaking, Macedonians can eather be the starting tribe or generally the citizens of the Macedonian Kindom. In the same way, Athenians during the classical age have been found to be even Epirotes that were given Athenian citizenship.

When speaking about the Macedonian homeland, we speak about upper Macedonia, which is strictly the south mountainous part of the whole region. When speaking of the Kindom of the 5th and 4th century, the area incorporates the original Phrygian homeland and some parts of the Thracian borders. Within such a Kindom, we undoubtly discover a Thracian minority (always based on personal names and reports) and there are probably Phrygian leftovers along with some Carians who inhabited the Athos penisula (coinage, wares and carian epigraphical evidence supports this).  So, you have the native Macedonians as a core and alien Macedonian citizens (Metikoi as they're reffered to), who are after generations Macedonians as well.

Amongst these citizens, there are other Greeks as well. The Bottians, one of the largest known minorities are early minoan invaders that could have predated the Macedonians. The Chalkideans, who became dominant in Chalkidiki and took over the Bottian supremacy in the late archaic years. The Corinthians, with their coastal colonies which were later annexed and who were few, but enough to rule the Lynchestian Kindom though the Bacchiadae. Last but not least, the Argeadae, who seems to be the core of the Macedonian aristocracy and religion (reffering to Olympias letter to Alexander about the Bacchic and Argeadic rites).

So, the Macedonians of the bronze age are not exactly the same like those of the classical age.


When did the bronze age Macedonians appear?


If we bypass Herodotus story of the migrating Thessalians of Phthia, in the 15th-14th century BC, Mycenaean settlements are spreaded thoughout upper Macedonia (geographically southern mountainous Macedonia).

However, going back to the cultures of the late 3rd and early 2nd millenium BC, that gave birth to the first Greek and Phrygian speakers (probably others as well) we might logically assume that not all of them spreaded southwards. The first Greek speaking people moved from the north to the south, spreading their language that was later divided to the four main dialectical groups as we treat them. Some of those primitive speakers, might have stuck in the north, which might explain the primitive lifestyle of the archaic and classical age Macedonians and why for example they used words like the Linear B attested "Kynagidas" instead of the Attic/Doric/Aeolic form of Kynigos/Kynagos. Add the idea that those early inhabitants might have been swinging between proto-Greek and palaeo-Phrygian, resulting a colourfull Macedonian speech.


Conclusion

Macedonians, went through what everybody else did, eather in a different timeframe, eather in a silent and unnoticed manner, eather in an unusual for the rest of the greeks way. When speaking of Panhellenion and the rest of the unions/events etc, we cannot put that stammering group outside a Greek sphere.




I hope my input was helpful, balanced and straight forward.








Edited by Flipper - 12-Jan-2009 at 19:01


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  Quote akritas Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2009 at 22:59

Chilbudios dont misrepresented my writings. I didnt mention "archaic period".  I wrote ....

 

Jonathan Hall proceeds to a penetrating analysis of the shifting definitions of Hellenicity in Herodotus, Thucydides and Isocrates, our main sources for the evolution of the concept in the Classical period.

 

Do you want to repeat it?

 

As about the epigraphical discoveries -mentioned in the notes at the first post - have greatly reduced the importance of glosses and have rendered redundant much of the relevant discussion.

 
In parti­cular, dreptos is a ghost (Anna Panayotou, “linguistic observations in Macedonian epigraphs”, Ancient Macedonia IV, Thessalonike 1986, 417).
Strabo 7.7.8  does not say that Macedonians, Epirotes and Illyrians shared some dialectal commonalities.

 

In fact he says two different things:

1) that some extend the term Macedonia to the whole country (west of Upper Macedonia) as far as Corcyra, because the inhabitants of this area (to wit the Epirotes opposite Corcyra and not the Illyrians, who lived farther north, beyond the Ceraunian mountains), use similar hairstyles, dress and dialect (R. Baladié, Strabon, Géographie. Livre VII, Paris 1989, 228, n. 4 ad locum)

2) some of the Epirotes inhabiting this area are bilingual (presumably they spoke Greek as well as Illyrian).

 

Judging from dedicatory inscriptions, the most popular gods of the Macedonians were Zeus, Herakles, Asklepios, Dionysos and a feminine deity variously appearing as Demeter, the Mother of the Gods, Artemis, Pasikrata, Ennodia etc. Catherine Trümpy’s excellent monograph, Untersuchungen zu den altgriechischen Monatsnamen und Monatsfolgen (Heidelberg 1997) 262-65, has made obsolete previous discussions of the Macedonian calendar.  For the months Peritios, Dystros and Hyperberetaios in particular (Hatzopoulos, “Macédonien” 237-39, “Epigraphie” 1202-1204.

Klodones and Mimallones have nothing to do with Thrace(M. Hatzopoulos, Cultes et rites de passage en Macédoine Μeletimata 19, Athens 1994 73-85. )
 
A piece of epigrpahical evidence( Hatzopoulos, Institutions, Volume  I , 472-86) which until very recently had gone unnoticed is the actual presence of Macedonians and Epirotes in the Pan-Hellenic sanctuaries, which is first attested in the Archaic period, but increases dramatically in the second half of the fourth century. Alexander I was neither the first nor the only Macedonian active at a Pan-Hellenic sanctuary in the fifth century. He had been preceded at Delphi by Macedonians from Pieria, and both his fifth century successors Perdikkas II and Archelaos participated in Pan-Hellenic festivals at Olympia, Delphi or Argos.

 

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  Quote Flipper Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2009 at 23:20
While mentioning, Pasikrata, it is a name and a combined-word strickly used by Macedonians and Magnetes (Thessalians). However, it appears twice in Epeiros.

The name itself means "She who holds everything", "she who has everything" (πάσα κρατεί).

Such observations are rarely seen in analyses of lingual issues, as well as words strickly shared between Aetolia, Phokis, Locris and Macedonia. Not much food on the language, but  such words reveal the geographical distribution of certain phenomenas.


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  Quote Flipper Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 12-Jan-2009 at 23:26
Originally posted by Akritas


2) some of the Epirotes inhabiting this area are bilingual (presumably they spoke Greek as well as Illyrian).


The context of billingualism is not mentioned. He says "diglottoi" which could apply to 2 languages (Greek-Illyrian, Greek-Phrygian, Greek-?) or 2 dialects (Macedonian-Aeolian, Macedonian-W. Doric).




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  Quote Chilbudios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 13-Jan-2009 at 00:10
Akritas, I argued against other parts of your initial post, while apparently relying mainly on Hall's ideas diverge considerably in the conclusions being drawn (e.g. "Macedonians were Greeks by criteria of [...] language" vs "Language and dialect [...] cannot be regarded as criteria of ethnicity").
 
Flipper, we know that some Illyrians or Pontic Scythians were Hellenized, we have no text in their language (but isolated glosses and names), we know little to nothing about their gods, all the epigraphic texts in regions with Greek-Illyrian or Greek-Scythian population were only in Greek, however we do not draw the conclusion that Illyrians were Greeks, that Scythians were Greeks, or even that the sole languages spoken in those regions were  dialects of Greek (we have no evidence but a mere assumption that the language/dialect of say, Pella tablet, is the same with that language/dialect about which the ancient authors said its speakers pronounce b, d, g instead of ph, th, kh; as such Brixhe and Panayotou consider the latter to be a substratum relic from another language/tribe which only ocassionally manifested into Macedonian). Moreover the dialects of Greek could be even practically mutually unintelligible to each other (Hall even compares them with the modern Italian dialects), as some of the ancient authors testify.
I agree with you that the Macedonians from Homeric age (whoever they were) were not the Macedonians of the Classical age, but the thorny problem is that we have too little evidence to know who the former were, we can't rely solely on the Classical age myths (e.g. Macedonians as Dorians), in other words we can't assume the Doric features we identify in 5-4th century Macedonian inscriptions are remnants of 2nd millenium BC Dorian invasion, unless we can prove the latter independently of Classical sources. And Dorian invasion as a historical event is challenged by several scholars: Borza or Hall are recent and well-known.
 
In short: I have no problem to accept that Alexander the Great's Macedonians were Hellenes or perhaps Hellenizing (if the process was not complete), but I see no good reason to consider Macedonia of Hellenic identiy or even solely Greek speaking from times immemorial.


Edited by Chilbudios - 13-Jan-2009 at 00:14
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  Quote Flipper Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Jan-2009 at 11:07
Chilbudios, I know that you apply healthy skepticism and the following is not pointed at you.

I believe that some scholars like Borza you mentioned do not keep a balance in their skepticism. I mean, sometimes, especially Borza does it for the sake of it. His dorian invasion things is a joke. The same goes for Philips tomb. I wish Taphoi, with whom i had a discussion about it, was a more regular poster here, in order to explain that issue in detail.

Now, what i mean with balanced skepticism is that some scholars, take the "what if" so far that they make it sound as probable as what they're skeptic about. That goes beyond skepticism. They don't even present it as a propability in many cases or they avoid to analyze both schools of though equaly.

For example the Hellenized Scythians and Illyrians. It is not a fair comparison to Macedon. The inscriptions found are all in the Greek colonies. The local Scythians and Illyrians of those small (compared to Macedon) areas were ofcourse billingual. We don't even know though if the inscriptions (honouring some Scythians or favouring a roman leader for his win over scythians) were written by Scythians themselves. Maybe the unmixed scythian population was illiterate. Any inscriptions in those areas are a product of Greek presence and their number is small compared to the massive macedonian corpus.

Moreover Scythians and Illyrians were not producing Greek culture in any form. They did not have the Macedonian equivalents of philosophers (I'm excluding Aristotle who I don't count as Macedonian), artizans etc. They were not accepted like Macedonians within the Greek world (Panhellenion, Olympics). Generally they're not even close to any comparison to Macedon and that's where it doesn't get fair.

Ofcourse, as we discussed both here and from our private discussions, Macedon incorporated people of certain origin as well, such as Thracians.  Basically, in many cases you know from an inscription when a person is Thracian. The question is if those Thracians were seen as Macedonians by the locals (and i'm not refering to the case of Kalindia) or if they were seen like "metikoi" (alien immigrants). In the case below, Kointos of Kointos and Artemidora "the barbarian" is obviously a Thracian living in Serrae the 2nd to 3nd century AD. Obviously the word "barbarian" was in use by Macedonians as well and in this case it is dirrected to a person of Thracian descend.

http://epigraphy.packhum.org/inscriptions/oi?ikey=150696&bookid=126&region=4&subregion=11

Ofcourse, that does not mean that Macedonians could not be something else seing Thracians as barbarians. The example above is not a proof of Hellenic Macedonians but rather an example that the term "barbaros" was in use in Macedonia as well.


Now, comparing again the Scythian-Illyrian examples with Macedon. When i go to remote areas like ancient Apidaea and find tons of inscriptions. This does not indicate simply Hellenization from an external source but rather a massive Greek presence spreaded all over the 4 sub Kindoms. No matter the school of though everyone sticks to, the Greek presence was spread in all the Kindoms since very early times. No matter the original Macedonian origin of the bronze age, there must have been an inside greek body that caused the cultural flourising of the archaic-classical age. The proto/mello-Greek invaders can't have all left the north to settle in the south. Some must have stuck in the north. I don't think we can speak of Hellenization from an external source in upper Macedonia, because it's way back in time. That's where Borza basically fails i believe. He never answers when and how a hellenization occured, while an explanation of "inside Hellenization" is most probable if one wants to favour that view.

As for your last quote, i understand your view and as i mentioned many times there must have been Thracian speaking populations and people swinging between Greek and Phrygian in Macedonia. Maybe those are the "diglottoi" Thucydides refers to. The question is if those "diglottoi" whether they are bilingual or bidialectal people were considered as Macedonians by the natives or not. We can't know the Macedonian view of who is macedonian in that time. I don't think for example that the Macedones, viewed the people of Chalkidike as Macedonians. However, the rest of the Greeks maybe generalized them as such and maybe the Chalkidians were feeling more Macedonians rather than Euboans, Corinthians, Thracians, Cretans etc. The same could apply for the Epirotes of the Pindus borders.

Btw, we do know some things about the gods and their names of the people mentioned above.





Edited by Flipper - 17-Jan-2009 at 11:13


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  Quote Chilbudios Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 17-Jan-2009 at 17:53


Let's not underestimate the Greek colonies. I am not so sure about the Illyrian territory, but at least the Pontic Greek colonies produced a large number of inscriptions. In Olbia alone centuries of Greek presence are attested by hundreds of inscriptions ( http://epigraphy.packhum.org/inscriptions/gis?region=6 - browse the collections I.Olbia or IGDOlbia ) and that's true for several other cities along the Black Sea coast having a barbarian hinterland and arguably significant barbarian presence in cities (Ovid's poems are particularly illustrative in this regard, and the hundreds of Greek inscriptions found in Tomis and its surroundings are largely mute about the Getic and/or Scythian languages spoken in this city: http://epigraphy.packhum.org/inscriptions/gis?region=5 - IScM II volume holds alone more than 400 inscriptions). Not only epigraphy is hiding the languages the various natives spoke, but also, in general, the archaeology fails to make the difference. For instance, in Classical Olbia and the Scythian World (Proceedings of the British Academy, 2007), Kryzhitskiy concludes there's no way we can safely estimate the barbarian presence in this city, and he discusses pottery (p. 19), weapons in male burials (p. 20), female burials (p. 20), prosopography (p. 21). And since I mentioned prosopography, this shows the Greek culture irradiated outside these cities, for instance we even have barbarians kings wearing arguably Greek names (e.g. Dromichaites, his kingdom probably was located in north-eastern Bulgaria; for the Greekness of his name see Eusthatius' comments on the Homeric poems, attesting the word 'dromichaites', using it in syntagms like 'dromichaites hippos' and paralleling it with adjectives like 'kyanochaites' or 'glaukochaites'). However, the significant influence of Greek culture is to be found also in locations remote from the coastal Greek colonies (e.g. the Celtic and Dacian oppida on Middle Danube contain also imported Greek pottery, inscribed Greek letters on walls - probably suggesting some Greek-speaking builders, coin imitations after Greek tetradrachms). And all these in contrast with a virtual absence of the native languages of these people in written forms (save for some isolated inscriptions, some of them controversial, however large areas did not produce a single inscription in a native language).
As for participating in Olympics or other such arguments, we do not know if a Greek-named, Greek-speaking inhabitant of a remote Greek city was Greek for 2 or 20 generations. 

On the other hand, the Macedonian inscriptions are mostly from the Classical period and later. Macedonia was largely outside the Mycenean civilization and few isolated discoveries cannot be convincing. In Christidis' A History of the Ancient Greek (2007) there's a map showing the Mycenean world and its trade and material cultural connections (p. 214-215) and Macedonia lies largely outside it (the northern extent of "Mycenean sphere of influence" is bordered on this map by Haliakmon river). The assumption that Macedonia had a large or even majoritarian Greek speaking population at this time doesn't seem supported by evidence (or if there is any, I don't know of it). Of course, being outside Mycenean world it doesn't mean it there were no Greek speakers at all.

As for the Dorian invasion, I don't know of any evidence except for a late literary tradition. I won't repeat Borza's arguments, because I'm sure you're familiar with them, I'll turn on Johnathan Hall's. For instance, in Hellenicity: Between Ethnicity and Culture (2002), in the section "Dorian invasion: Fact or Fiction?" (p. 73-82), after enumerating some claims and arguments brought by scholars from 19-20th centuries for this invasion, Hall proceeds to cast some doubts:
- the so-called "Doric" institutional (e.g. Pindar's tethmoi, Thucydides' nomima Dorika) and religious (e.g. the cult of Apollo Karneois) features are not present in all Dorian cities (p. 77)
- John Chadwick's identification of one of the dialects of Linear B as proto-Doric places Dorians in central Greece, Peloponnese and Crete before their alleged invasion (p. 78)
- Antonio Lopez Eire and Maria Pilar Fernandez Alvarez showed independently that all the common innovatory features of the West Greek dialect group are to be found in at least one non-West Greek dialect, which suggests there's no single linguistic ancestor for these (as hypothesised by the proponents of the Dorian invasion theory)
- Several archaeologists (Desborough, Snodgrass et al) showed that the emergence of various allegedly Dorian archaeological markers (like violin-bow filbulae, cist graves, etc) and the destructions of the Mycenean palaces are not contemporary. Snodgrass described it as a "invasion without invaders" and James Hooker concluded "We may therefore boldly postulate that there never was a 'Dorian invasion' in the sense that speakers of Doric forcibly entered some of those areas of Greece previously occuped by Mycenaeans" (p. 78-79)
- in the end of this section Hall proceeds to show the non-unitary aspects of the Dorian invasion legends. While refraining to deny population movements towards the south, he points out that the evidence is elusive, that the composite nature of the tradition contradicts the notion of a one-time massive influx of Dorians, that even if such traditions come from an earlier period they do not allow us to invest them with historical authenticity and that whatever the Dorian migration literary accounts meant, it was not to replicate faithfully a past historical event (p. 79-82)

Moreover, even some Greek scholars doubt or at least manifest reservations towards this hypothesised invasion. From Christidis' A History of the Ancient Greek:
- S. Andreou about the fall of Mycenean world: "A variety of hypotheses have been formulated at different times as causes for the collapse: climatic changes, incursions from a variety of directions, internal disturbances or economical and social reasons steered by the collapse of Mediterranean exchange networks. No hypothesis has yet met with general acceptance" (p. 219)
- L. Vokotopoulos about the link of the 12th century catastrophes with movements of peoples "The chances of confirming such phenomena are limited or uncertain, since the geographical limits of the cultural entities that may be identified in the archaeological record do not necessarily correspond to the distribution of the later dialects." (p. 263) and "A major problem is the location of Dorians, i.e. the group that tradition claims it was responsible for the destruction, although it must be said that their supposedly simple material culture would not be easy to identify in the archaeological evidence. Features of Balkan or Italic origin, such as the so-called "barbarian" pottery, do not appear in numbers great enough to attest the presence of relevant compact groups. Besides, they appear well before the catastrophes." (p. 263-64).
- M. Karali about the ancient Greek dialects: "... it would be dangerous to attempt to impose our linguistic map of the first millenium on to the facts of the second millenium. The desire to draw the linguistic portrait of the second millenium has led to the formulation of numerous theories, several of which are associated with historical assumptions concerning the movements of the various Greek tribes and groups. For the time being, however, the available linguistic evidence is not sufficient to reconstruct the linguistic map of the early periods, far less to draw conclusions about the population movements at that time." (p. 394)
 
For fairness, I should also note that in the same book J. Mendez Dosuna argues against Chadwick's theory and claims that "A Dorian invasion from the north-western Greece remains the only convincing explantion for the historical data" (p. 445). However my point was only to show that Dorian invasion has a more considerable opposition than Borza's and many scholars (also Greek ones) are skeptical in taking a decissive stance. As such, I believe the claim that the inhabitants of ancient Macedonia were Greeks in the 2nd millenium BC (or earlier) remains far from being proven.


Edited by Chilbudios - 17-Jan-2009 at 18:32
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  Quote Flipper Quote  Post ReplyReply Direct Link To This Post Posted: 28-Jan-2009 at 18:20
Originally posted by Chilbudios

Let's not underestimate the Greek colonies.


Nobody underestimates them. In the case of Scythia & Black Sea coast, the comparison is still unfair:

a) The inscriptions are still in the Greek centres radius
b) The amount is not limited at all, but still not comparable (many of those inscriptions are in Latin)
c) the geographic distribution of material culture is not as vast and do not cover equal periods as Emathia, Pieria and the Pindus chain.
d) Kyanochaites, Dromichaites etc sound more as "nicknames" rather than real names of larger geographic distribution. In Greece proper the name is mentioned once here in a list containing many a number of non Greeks.
e) There're no accounts of connecting Scythians/Dacians/Thracians with Greeks. However, there are acounts of half-Greek - half-Scythian people who speak 2 languages (Herodotus, Melpomene) and have Greek customes: "For the fact is that the Geloni were anciently Greeks, who, being driven out of the factories along the coast, fled to the Budini and took up their abode with them. They still speak a language half Greek, half Scythian". The modern equivalent of those people would be the Marianoupolitan Greek speakers of Ukraine.

and more points can be mentioned...


As for participating in Olympics or other such arguments, we do not know if a Greek-named, Greek-speaking inhabitant of a remote Greek city was Greek for 2 or 20 generations.


2 or 20, i'm half Greek and still qualify as a Greek today. Demosthenes was half Scythian but was the leader of the Athenians. The question is if a person labeled "Scythian" ever participated or even worse, being elected in national councils.


On the other hand, the Macedonian inscriptions are mostly from the Classical period and later. Macedonia was largely outside the Mycenean civilization and few isolated discoveries cannot be convincing.


a) Mostly yes...But Macedonians write their personal names already in the late 7th and early 6th century BC. Moreover, allow me to use Borzas logic and say that there must have been ealier inscriptions we're not aware of. The usage of ϝ and ϟ shows, that Macedonians adopted the Greek alphabet in a very early stage and while other Greek might still been illiterate or using an older writting system.

b) For the areas I've been speaking about (Pieria, Emathia, Pindus) there are many Mycenaean settlements, including the city of Aiani, cementaries and other smaller centers. There are currently loads of new bibliography about Mycenaean precense in Macedonia and Northern Thessaly.



I have mentioned it before, numerous of times, but there a Historian from FYROM called Dragi Mitrevski, believes Mycenaeans reached even the Vardar Valley. I don't really believe that, but that's how far some have taken it.

Also, in Aiani a Linear B inscription was found (http://hellas.teipir.gr/prefectures/english/Kozanis/Aiani.htm).



In Macedonian, you have also attested many times the word "Kynagidas" which means hunter and is an epithet of Herakles. That word has no equivalent in other dialects since it is only attested as Kynigos in Attic and Kynagos in Doric. The only match is the Linear B attested ku-na-ke-ta.

Now, the Greek speaking people of the bronse age certainly inhabited eastern Pindus and Pieria. So, your question should be if those people were the original Makedones or not. I guess, there's no answer to that, for the reasons we mentioned earlier in this thread.




As for the Dorian invasion, that belongs rather to a thread named "Was there a Dorian invasion?" instead of this one. I was not questioning the issue and how many support that, but rather Borzas arguments. He could choose better than the ones he picked.

Even Karamitrou - Mentesidi is skeptical about the "Dorian Invasion"

"Hence, the Aiani’s finds provide one more argument against the old (in any case untenable) theory of a massive Dorian invasion at the end of the second millennium"

However, the question is if Borza uses that to apply skepticism or not? In that case, a dorian invasion is inrelated with what people in the north were doing. Karamitrou - Mentesidi, might not favor such an invasion but she groups the people of Pieria and Pindus with some proto-Doric or akin to Doric people.

In any case such a theory of an absence has many question marks left unanswered. Historians treat it differently. Some speak of invasion, others of colonization, others of a longer process unrelated to the fall of the Mycenaean era. So it is a matter of definition.




Edited by Flipper - 28-Jan-2009 at 18:29


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