Before Alexander: Constructing Early Macedonia [Paperback]

Eugene N. Borza (Author)

Product Details

• Paperback
• Publisher: Regina Books (July 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0941690970
• ISBN-13: 978-0941690973
• Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.8 x 0.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 3.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,962,215 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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14 of 21 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A seminal historical work, December 16, 2004

By 

Eugene Borza (Pennsylvania State University) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Before Alexander: Constructing Early Macedonia (Paperback)

This paper seeks to illuminate the problems associated with determining the ethnicity of the ancient Macedonians (were
they Greek?), and to discuss the "reverberations" (to use the organizers' term) of that issue in modem times. While the
1971 OED may regard the use of the word "ethnicity" as obsolete, no adequate substitute for the word exists. Indeed,
part of the discussion in my paper will, following the lead of Loring Danforth in his recent The Macedonian Conflict.-
Ethnic Nationalism in a Transnational World (Princeton 1995), attempt to illustrate some principles by which the "ethnicity"
of the ancient Macedonians--and, perhaps, other ancient peoples--can be discussed in a coherent manner.

Among the questions asked as appropriate to a methodological model of determining ethnicity are:

I. What were a people's origins and what language did they speak? From the surviving literary sources(Hesiod, Herodotus, and Thucydides) there is little information about Macedonian origins, and the archaeological data from the early period is sparse and inconclusive. On the matter of language, and despite attempts to make Macedonian a dialect of Greek, one must accept the conclusion of the linguist R. A. Crossland in the recent CAH, that an insufficient amount of Macedonian has survived to know what language it was. But it is clear from later sources that Macedonian and Greek were mutually unintelligible in the court of Alexander the Great. Moreover, the presence in Macedonia of inscriptions written in Greek is no more proof that the Macedonians were Greek than, e.g., the existence of Greek inscriptions on Thracian vessels and coins proves that the Thracians were Greeks.

II. Self-identity: what did the Macedonians say or think about themselves? Virtually nothing has survived from the Macedonians themselves (they are among the silent peoples of antiquity), and very little remains in the Classical and Hellenistic non-Macedonian sources about Macedonian attitudes.

III. What did others say about the Macedonians? Here there is a relative abundance of information from Arrian, Plutarch (Alexander, Eumenes), Diodorus 17-20, Justin, Curtius Rufus, and Nepos (Eumenes), based upon Greek and Greek-derived Latin sources. It is clear that over a five-century span of writing in two languages representing a variety of historiographical and philosophical positions the ancient writers regarded the Greeks and Macedonians as two separate and distinct peoples whose relationship was marked by considerable antipathy, if not outright hostility.

IV. What is the nature of cultural expressions as revealed by archaeology? As above we are blessed with an increasing amount of physical evidence revealing information about Macedonian tastes in art and decoration, religion, political and economic institutions, architecture and settlement patterns. Clearly the Macedonians were in many respects Hellenized, especially on the upper levels of their society, as demonstrated by the excavations of Greek archaeologists over the past two decades. Yet there is much that is different, e. g., their political institutions, burial practices, and religious monuments.

I will argue that, whoever the Macedonians were, they emerged as a people distinct from the Greeks who lived to the
south and east. In time their royal court--which probably did not have Greek origins (the tradition in Herodotus that the
Macedonian kings were descended from Argos is probably a piece of Macedonian royal propaganda)--became Hellenized in many respects, and I shall review the influence of mainstream Greek culture on architecture, art, and literary preferences.

Finally, a took at contemporary Balkan politics. The Greek government firmly maintains that the ancient Macedonians
were ethnic Greeks, and that any claim by the new Republic of Macedonia (The Former Yugoslav Republic of

Macedonia) to the name "Macedonia" and the symbols of ancient Macedonia is tantamount to an expropriation of Greek history. Moreover, it is claimed that there is no such thing as a distinct Slavic Macedonian identity and language separate
from Bulgaria and Serbia.

I shall review the evidence for the existence of a modern Macedonian ethnicity with reference to my recent work in a
Macedonian ethnic community in Steelton, Pennsylvania. Both the gravestones in a local cemetery and U.S. census reports from the early twentieth century provide evidence that emigres from Macedonia who lived and died in Steelton in the early
twentieth century considered themselves to be distinct from their Serbian and Bulgarian neighbors.

3 of 5 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Eugene Borza agrees that ancient Macedonians were Greeks., July 13, 2007

By 

I.S - See all my reviews

This review is from: Before Alexander: Constructing Early Macedonia (Paperback)

First of all the review "written by Mr Borza" below is fake . Mr Borza hasent got an acount in Amazon.
It is true that Eugene Borza was skeptic about the origin of the ancient macedonians. He never ofcourse linked the anceint macedonains with the modern Slav-macedonains!
"Modern Slavs, both Bulgarians and Macedonians, cannot establish a link with antiquity, as the Slavs entered the Balkans centuries after the demise of the ancient Macedonian kingdom. Only the most radical Slavic factions--mostly émi-grés in the United States, Canada, and Australia--even attempt to establish a connection to antiquity."
"Macedonia Redux", Eugene N. Borza, The Eye Expanded: Life and the Arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity, Frances B. Titchener and Richard F. Moorton, Jr., editors
But in his "Makedonika" Mr Borza clearly states:
Eugene N. Borza, `Makedonika'
Regina Books, Claremont CA
"Our understanding of the Macedonians' emergence into history is confounded by two events: the establishment of the Macedonians as an identifiable ethnic group, and the foundation of their ruling house. The "HIGHLANDERS" or "MAKEDONES" of the mountainous regions of western Macedonia ARE DERIVED FROM NORTHWEST GREEK STOCK; THEY WERE AKIN BOTH TO THOSE WHO AT AN EARLIER TIME MAY HAVE MIGRATED SOUTH TO BECOME THE HISTORICAL "DORIANS", and to other Pindus tribes who were the ancestors of the Epirotes or Molossians. That is, we may suggest that NORTHWEST GREECE PROVIDED A POOL OF INDO-EUROPEAN SPEAKERS OF PROTO-GREEK from which were drawn the tribes who later were known by different names as they established their regional identities in separate parts of the country."
"First, the matter of the Hellenic origins of the Macedonians: Nicholas Hammond's general conclusion (though not the details of his arguments)that the origin of the Macedonians lies in the pool of proto-Greek speakers who migrated out of the Pindus mountains during the Iron Age, is acceptable."
I belive that all the above are enough to stop the propagandists from Slavic/Macedonia

7 of 13 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Sad, but true!, August 29, 2005

By 

Macedonian "MK" (Greece) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Before Alexander: Constructing early Macedonia (Publications of the Association of Ancient Historians)

No matter how much understanding we have for the members of the Greek ethnicity, Mr. Borza's views of the Ancient Macedonia and Macedonians are true! Revolutions change the course of things, Mr. Borza's works are a revolution in the studies, especially about the history of Ancient Macedonia, which, before Mr. Borza's emergence, were tendenciously included in the Hellenism. And, for the invention of Hellenism and the "fact" that the Ancient Macedonians were Greeks, the inhabitants of present-day Greece, who think this way, should errect a monument (statue) to the German historian Dreusen. Without him, the truth about the Ancient Macedonians would have been very different than it is. Mr. Borza knows that the best. It remains for the others to accept that themselves.