12) GREEK CLAIM: "When Alexander arrived in Asia he visited the ancient Greek town of Troy (Troia), where he sacrificed to the Greek Gods to help him in his quest".

REPLY:

This quote does not prove at all that Alexander or the Macedonians were Greek. We also know for a fact that Alexander also sacrificed to Persian, Egyptian, and Indian gods, next to the Greek gods. Does that fact also make him Persian, or Egyptian? Of course not, what was most important to him was his Macedonian nationality and the Macedonian gods. The quote below is taken from Urlich Wilken’s Alexander the Great: Alexander sacrificed to "Macedonian gods according to ancestral rituals, and ordered a torch-race and gymnastic contest to follow." p. 187, line 15, we read the following passage referring to his advances to the Hyphasis:

"Alexander built twelve great tower-like altars on the nearer side of the river. We have been informed by those who refer everything to Babylonia, that this was for the twelve signs of the zodiac. In reality it was the twelve gods of Macedonia to whom these altars were raised."

Key words are: Twelve Macedonian gods, not Greek. Based on the religion, we can not conclude that the Macedonians were Greek, since they had their own Macedonian gods. The fact that the Macedonians had their own gods, does prove that they had different religion from the Greeks who worshiped different gods. To this we can add the writings of the ancient author Plutarch:

'Soon after his death the people of Athens paid him fitting honours by erecting his statue in bronze, and by decreeing that the eldest member of his family should be maintained in the prytaneum at the public expense. On the base of his statue was carved his famous inscription: 'If only your strength had been equal, Demosthenes, to your wisdom Never would Greece have been ruled by a Macedonian Ares' [p.216]

Macedonians had their own Gods and religion, separate from the Greeks. Macedonian Ares is a Macedonian god, which the ancient Greeks here compare to their own Ares. The fact that they call it "Macedonian Ares" clearly states that it is not the Greek God Ares, but a Macedonian god equivalent to the Greek Ares, whose name they had substituted with Ares. This phenomena when the ancient Greeks substitute the names of the foreign gods with names of their own gods, is called interpretatio graeca. In the ancient Greek texts we also find the Greeks referring to one Egyptian God as Egyptian Athena. Of course, the real name of this Egyptian god can not be Athena (just like the name of the Macedonian god above was not Ares), since the Egyptians didn't worship Greek gods The ancient Greek writers here use interpretatio graeca in order to better relate to their audience the magnitude of the Macedonian and Egyptian gods, both foreign to them. The above statement furthermore, clearly shows us that Greece was subdued by the Macedonians.