Speech of Alexander the Great to the Athenians

Speech of Alexander the Great to the Athenians ----> Herodotus Book IX ,45,

HAD I NOT GREATLY AT HEART THE COMMON WELFARE OF GREECE, I SHOULD NOT HAVE COME TO TELL YOU; BUT I AM MYSELF A GREEK BY DESCENT AND WOULD NOT WILLINGLY SEE GREECE EXCHANGE FREEDOM FOR SLAVERY.

Well if the great man says he's greek ,who am I to argue with him.

This isn't Alexander the Great. This was Alexander I, who was the ruler of Macedonia when the Persians invaded in 480BC. As for this speech, we are not certain that it is indeed authentic. Remember, Herodotus was writing during the height of Athenian hegemony and it had to keep good relations with Perdiccas II to secure supply of timber for the Athenian fleet. I am not saying that he couldn't have said this, but it is good to examine everything against the background of the era and its specific circumstances.

This is the same Alexander to some Persian envoys who requested some women for their nocturnal pleasures:

"Everything we had, and everything we could get, has been yours; and now to put the finishing touch to your entertainment, we make you a free and generous offer of our mothers and sisters, that you may know without doubt that we honour you as you deserve, and that you may tell your king, who sent you, that a Greek, the lord of Macedonia, entertained you royally both with bed and board." Alexander then put a Macedonian by the side of each Persians; and when the Persians, thinking they were women, tried to touch them, they were stabbed.

Book 5, 20

bravo alexi greekturkish/tiphat.gif

Well, that sounds dangerously close to post-victory propaganda. Remember, Persians regarded envoys as sacred. Athens and Sparta killed the envoys of Darius who visited them requesting earth and water and in return Xerxes marked them down for complete destruction with no chance to redeem themselves. In preparation of his invasion to Greece he sent envoys to every city in Greece, except Athens and Sparta. So I find it hard to believe that Alexander killed the Persian envoys and he wasn't punished not even a little for this. Instead he was "promoted" to Mardonius' contant with the Greeks.

Even before the invasion Alexander knew that he was right in the path of any Persian army. He knew he would be forced to assist the Persians but he always planned to keep enough distance from the whole affair. For example, when a 10000 task force blocked the Tempi pass, he hurried to tell them that it could be easily turned, not so much because he was concerned about their welfare, but because the Persian army would be held up in Macedonia for a long amount of time, with disastrous result for the food production of the area. He knew he had to keep good relations with the Greek cities, especially Athens, just in case the Persians failed. I am not saying that it is impossible this incident happened, just quite improbable.

pseudo intellectuals never cease to amaze me. greekturkish/shakehead.gif

I think it is important to distinguish between 3 different issues:
a) What Macedonians actually were, ethnically speaking
b) What they thought about their own ethnicity
c)What others thought about them.

These are three different questions that may yield completely different answers.

To a) I would say that they were Greek or at least very close to the Greeks
To b) I would say the same particularly under the "Argeads", the dynasty of Perdikas, Philip and Alex.

But c) is different because other Greeks -not only Demosthenes and the Athenians- did not consider them "properly" Greek before Alexander's conquests, primarily because of their perceived "backwardness". The did not have a polis system, they had a kind of "racial state" of the old type; they drunk A LOT and did not mix their wine with water like other Greeks; and their language was undoubtable Greek and related to Doric but it was much harder for an Athenian to understand them than it was to undestrand a Spartan.

No this speech has been regularly quoted by people in order to prove that Macedonians were Greeks. Although I believe they were I just wanted to point out that this particular excerpt from Herodotus only proves that Alexander I himslelf claimed to be or was Greek, because his dynasty was from Argos (Note "BUT I AM MYSELF A GREEK BY DESCENT "). A narrative which, if anything is an indication for the opposite conclusion that his subjects were not as Greek. My point is not that the ancient Macednians were not ethnically Greek, but that the above quote is one of the view pieces of evidence that actually support the opposite conclusion.

QUOTE (Jack @ December 04, 2007 08:48 pm)

pseudo intellectuals never cease to amaze me. greekturkish/shakehead.gif

This pseudo-intellectual understands that historiography does not exist in a void. Nor is it clear-cut or without motive.

Yes we should also tell all authorised historians that have studied history for 20 years to shut up shop and not research any pertinent points because not everything is black and white... it has a motive!

greekturkish/wank_opt_6.gif

"Authorised" historians are taught that historiography is objective on the very first day of their course. And yes, practically nothing is black and white. But I guess it suits moronic nationalists around the world to see it as such. You see, they, too, have a motive.

This is so amusing..Alex the great was the one who "hellenised" the whole "known world" by that time.
The macedons spoke greek,wrote greek and had the hellenic religion plus culture..still some people like to question their "heritage" cause they were more "primitive" than the rest of the hellenes..or they drunk their wine without water.

I also drink my ouzo without water,my retsina without coke or sprite and I eat my souvlaki without bread..my greek friends are shocked everytime I do all that still I have my greek passport.. greekturkish/Rolls.gif

QUOTE (Mavrogenides @ December 05, 2007 03:50 pm)

..still some people like to question their "heritage" cause they were more "primitive" than the rest of the hellenes..or they drunk their wine without water.

some examples of these "people":
Herodotus, Thucydides, Xenophon, Demosthenes...

Polites..most of these guys were from athens...maybe you know that athens had some "problems" with the macedons.
But anyway..since you pretend to be a greek..do you personnaly believe that the macedons were not hellenes?

A good source to consult is Macedonia: 4000 years of Greek history and civilization edited by Professor M. B. Sakellariou and published by EKDOTIKI ATHINON.

I had some of the pages photocopied about what the ancient sources say about the Greek identity of ancient Macedonians, but I cannot currently find it. Probably that book had the best exposition of the evidence as to the identity of the ancient Macedonians.

QUOTE

http://history-of-macedonia.com/wordpress/...nguage-part-ii/
The Macedonian Tongue (excerpts from pages 54-63)
————————————————-

The earliest Macedonian written documents contain only names. When more extensive Macedonian texts begin to appear, they are expressed in the Attic dialect. This fact furnishes one of the arguments used by those who deny that the Macedonians were Greeks and claim that the Macedonians were a people who spoke a different tongue and who became hellenized. Those who support the view that the Macedonian were Greeks counter that their kings introduced the attic dialect into the court and the administration because the local dialect was undeveloped. Attic thus became widespread among the Macedonians as a means of expressing themselves in writing. Both these explanations are hypotheses that require proof. And the proof of either depends on other factors that will be examined below.

Despite the lack of Macedonian texts written in the local language the nature of Macedonian may be discerned from certain -*test*-('")imonia; from about 100 surviving Macedonian words; and from several hundred Macedonian names.

1) TESTIMONIA. There are three ancient pieces of indirect evidence of a conclusive nature:
a) in a scene from the attic comedy MACEDONIANS, by the fifth century writer Stattis, an Athenian asks “h sfyraina d’ esti tis;” (’sledfish, what do you mean?’) and a Macedonian replies “kestran men ymmes vttikoi iklhskete” (’wha ye Attics ca’ a hammer-fush,
ma freen’) .
In order to appreciate the value of the Macedonian’s reply for the problem under discussion we must not forget that as is clear from many passages in Aristophanes, the attic comedians made their non-Greeks speak broken Greek with an admixture of barbarian words (some of them imaginary) while Lacedaemonians, Megarians Boiotians and other Greeks spoke their own dialects.
The Macedonian’s reply is in good Greek with dialect (ymes, sfyraina) and archaizing elements (kiklhskete)

b) Alexander the Great having selected thirty thousand Persian youths, gave an order that they were to “learn Greek letters and be trained in the use of Macedonian weapons“. From this it may be deduced that the Macedonian soldiers spoke Greek: It would be pointless to teach the young Persians who were to fight alongside the Macedonians a language that the Macedonians did not understand.

c) an ambassador from Macedonia speaking to the Aitolians in 200BC says of the Macedonians, the Aitolians and the Arkanians that they spoke the same language.

The expressions “aneboa makedonisti” “makedonisti th fvnh” klp have been taken by opponents of the thesis that the Macedonians were Greeks as indicating that their language differed from Greek; the supporters of this thesis declare that these formulation indicate a Greek dialect (cf “aiolizein th fvnh”, “attikizei”, “attikisti”, “boivtiazein”,”dvrizein” etc). The expressions are in fact susceptible of either interpretation and cannot therefore be used to form part of the argumentation with which either is supported. Their sense will become clear after Maceonian has been shown to be Greek, or not, from other data.

WORDS

2) WORDS. Today, over a hundred Macedonian words and a few hundred Macedonian names are known from a variety of sources. Although the names presuppose words, they will be examined separately for a number of methodological reasons.

A total of one hundred and twelve words, with ninety nine different stems, are at-*test*-('")ed directly. Of these, sixty-five words, or sixty-three stems have been preserved in lexica, with forty-seven words, with thirty-six stems, survive in various ancient texts, none of which is Macedonian. All the words in the second group are Greek. The opponents of the view that the Macedonians were Greeks refuse to take them into consideration, arguing that they were all words borrowed by the Macedonians from Greek at the time they began to use the
Attic dialect as the official language- which they ascribe to the reign of Philip II.

However:
a) The word “sfyraina” and the form “ymmes” ARE NOT attic in origin and are attributed to the Macedonians half a century before the accession of Philip.
b) the majority of these words are military and, as has already been observed it would be illogical to suppose that Philip would impose a foreign military terminology on the MAacedonians; moreover, twelve of these same words are not at-*test*-('")ed as common to all dialects and fourteen more, while being common words, have a different meaning in Macedonian. In dealing with the Macedonian material in lexica, the opponents of the view that the Macedonians were Greeks have made use to varying extents of the following method: they select from amongst these words the ones that cannot be shown to have a Greek derivation; they do not always inquire whether the form of some of these has changed as a result of copying errors; they suggest derivations for these words from Indo-European roots without always demonstrating adequately that their derivations are well grounded; using this kind of etymology as their point of departure they draw up rules for the conversion of Indo European vowels or consonants to “Macedonian”; finally since the same rules can be detected in words that are not at-*test*-('")ed as Macedonian in the sources, they declare that these words, notwithstanding, should be considered Macedonian.

The la-*test*-('") and most complete monograph on the nationality of the Macedonians devotes hundreds of pages to the study of Macedonian words and contain some perceptive critical observations and original views. it concludes that fifty-two of the sixty-five words in the lexica are Greek, while the remaining thirteen include not only genuinely non_Greek words but also ambiguous forms, copyists’ errors and words used by children.

Let us assume however that ALL the Macedonian words handed down by the lexica are demonstrably non-Greek (which is not claimed even by the most extreme opponents of the theory that the Macedonians were Greeks) Even in this eventuality, it would not necessarily follow that the Macedonians didn’t speak Greek, The reason is that these words are not a representative sample of the Macedonian tongue. this would require that they had been preserved at random and from a variety of sources. Quite the reverse is true: they have all been catalogued in lexica whose purpose is the interpretation of rare words only. It follows that the Alexandrian scholars who were the first to compose lexica of this sort (the forerunners of the surviving lexica in which the words in question are preserved) found only a few dozen Macedonian words that required interpretation.

QUOTE (Mavrogenides @ December 06, 2007 01:01 am)

QUOTE

Now this speech has been regularly quoted by people in order to prove that Macedonians were Greeks. Although I believe they were I just wanted to point out that this particular excerpt from Herodotus only proves that Alexander I himslelf claimed to be or was Greek, because his dynasty was from Argos (Note "BUT I AM MYSELF A GREEK BY DESCENT "). A narrative which, if anything is an indication for the opposite conclusion that his subjects were not as Greek. My point is not that the ancient Macednians were not ethnically Greek, but that the above quote is one of the view pieces of evidence that actually support the opposite conclusion.

Please read more carefully before you accuse of pretending. I was expecting more than this "you are either with us or against us" mentality from you.
I am not pretending to be anything. I just express my opinion. If you have a problem with understanding the English let me know and I will write in Greek.