15) GREEK CLAIM: The speech of Alexander I when he was admitted to the Olympic games "Men of Athens... Had I not greatly at heart the common welfare of Hellas I should not have come to tell you; but I am myself Hellene by descent, and I would not willingly see Hellas exchange freedom for slavery.... If you prosper in this war, forget not to do something for my freedom; consider the risk I have run, out of zeal for the Hellenic cause, to acquaint you with what Mardonius intends, and to save you from being surprised by the barbarians. I am Alexander of Macedon." (Herodotus, The Histories, 9.45)

Let us present the circumstances under which this apparent quote was made, and then, we will sift through the argument about the alleged "Greekness" of this Macedonian king. We will prove with facts below, that Alexander I was not a Greek, and as a foreigner was not allowed to participated in the Olympic Games, which were reserved for the Greeks alone.

1. The year is obviously 480-479 B.C., when the Persian armies were poised to attack Greece. 2. The Greek armies had taken defensive positions at Tempe Pass. 3. The Kingdom of Macedon with Amyntas I, had established a very convenient relationship with Darius I, the King of Persia. Amyntas I, had long before this recognized the suzerainty of Darius I. His daughter Gygea, the sister of Alexander I, had married an Iranian nobleman, and his son Alexander I loyally served his suzerain, continuing to profit by Persian favours and protection. 4. The Kingdom of Macedon enjoyed prosperity and enlarged its own territory. 5. Being a shrewd politician, Alexander plays both cards in this conflict; took care to build bridges towards the Greeks - giving them good advice that would not harm his overlords. And when it became clear that Greek victory could no longer be delayed, he came out in full support of the victors, rendering them services for which he receives the "honor" of "Philhellen" (This appellation appears to swing the pendulum against the Greeks for its apparent and obvious contradiction). 6. With the Persian overlord gone for good, cooperation with his southern neighbors became an essential aim of policy. 7. He, Alexander I, invents this mythical descent from Argos in order to be accepted at the Olympic Games in Athens. 8. Let it be known that there is no evidence whatsoever of any Macedonian claim to a Greek connection before the Persian war.

Now, let's examine the gravity of the statement, and see if it can withstand the scrutiny of a historical analysis. Let us go point by point, and weigh each statement separately against the political thinking of that time, and place its contents in a comparatively measurable scale.

a) If Alexander I was Greek, why wasn't he defending the Greek homeland with the rest of the Greeks who at this time were greatly outnumbered? b) What business does he have to serve as Darius' suzerain when the land of the Greeks was under such a treat? And if one finds solace in the fact that many Greek cities in Asia were under such an arrangement with Darius, I must caution you that we are talking about mainland Greece. Here, the Asian barbarian was seldom invited or welcomed, for obvious reasons, of course. c) If Alexander I of Macedon was in fact Greek, we ought to ask ourselves the following question: Would it be prudent, militarily sound and calculated, for the Persian commander Mardonius to chose him, Alexander I, a "Greek" to negotiate for him with the Greeks? One must also bear in mind that Mardonius was not a man of deliberate miscalculations. He was in a position to know who was and who was not Macedonian. Does it make any sense to entrust your negotiations into the hands of a Greek when negotiating with Greeks? I surely do not think so, and most likely, neither did Mardonius. d) If Alexander of Macedon was indeed "Greek", why was he dubbed "proxenos", a public friend of the Greeks? Isn't it kind of odd to call a "Greek" a friend of Greeks? This appellation speaks much louder than what the Greeks like to reveal. e) If he was Greek, why does he feel compelled to prove his Greekness? Why is this compulsion reserved for the Macedonians only? When was the last time that any of the Athenian commanders have proclaimed their Greekness? When did Memnon, Harpalus, Charidemes, Agis, or anyone else for that matter, asserted their Greekness? It is evident that this apparent statement of Alexander I, given to a biographer (Herodotus) carried different ticket, the door to the Olympic games where he was promptly rejected and turned away exactly for that reason and that reason alone: He was not a Greek, and those games were reserved for Greeks (Hellene) only. f) Herodotus speaks of the Thessallians as being the first Greeks to fall under Persian rule in 480 B.C.. Evidence shows that the Persian armies entered Macedonian soil in 492 B.C.. This puts the Persian armies in Macedonia for 12 long years before they entered Greece. Therefore, shall we assume then, that the Greeks did not regard Macedonia as their own land? Should we, further, suppose that the Persian armies flew over Macedonia to reach Thessaly? Or, should we conclude that Herodotus was wrong in his calculations? Neither of the above choices is plausible; Greeks knew quite well where Greece's boundaries were, and where the land of the Kingdom of Macedon begins. There is nothing ambiguous about their stand. Olympus was the dividing line, and there was nothing to suggest the opposite. One is hard pressed to arrive at any other conclusion when one bears in mind that Herodotus would not make such a glaring omission. The truth is that Herodotus knew where Greece's line end, and where Macedonian land began. Here is what the "Macedonian Specialist" - Professor Borza, had written regarding this matter:

"It is clear that the analysis of our earliest-and sole-source cannot produce a consistent and satisfactory sequence of events. My own view is that there is some underlying veracity to the Mt. Vermion reference (as evidenced by the Phrygian connections), that among the Makedones a family of Vermion background emerged as pre-eminent, but that the Argive context is mythic, perhaps a bit of fifth-century B.C. propaganda (as I argue in the next chapter). To deny such fables and attribute them to contemporary Macedonian propaganda may appear minimalistic. But given the historical milieu in which such stories were spawned and then adorned, the denial of myth seems prudent."

"The Temenidae [the Greek origin] in Macedon are an invention of the Macedonians themselves, intended in part to give credence to Alexander I's claims of Hellenic ancestry, attached to and modifying some half-buried progenitor stories that had for a long time existed among the Macedonians concerning their own origins. The revised version was transmitted without criticism or comment by Herodotus. Thucydides (2-99.3; 5.80.2) acquired the Argive lineage tale from Herodotus, or from Macedonian-influenced sources, and transmitted it. His is not an independent version. [There is no hard evidence (pace Hammond, HM i: 4) that Thucydides ever visited Macedonia, but it makes no difference; Thucydides is reflecting the official version of things.] What emerged in the fifth century is a Macedonian-inspired tale of Argive origins for the Argead house, an account that can probably be traced to its source, Alexander I (for which see Chapter 5 below). The Temenidae must disappear from history, making superfluous all discussion of them as historical figures." (Borza - In the Shadow of Olympus)

"Why is it that no Spartan or Athenian or Argive felt constrained to prove to the others that he and his family were Helenes? But Macedonian kings seem hard put to argue in behalf of their Hellenic ancestry in the fifth century B.C., and that circumstance is telling. Even if one were to accept that all the Herodotian stories about Alexander were true, why did the Greeks, who normally were knowledgeable about matters of ethnic kinship, not already know that the Macedonian monarchy was Greek? But--following Herodotus--the stade- race competitors at Olympia thought the Macedonian was a foreigner (Hdt. 5.22: barbaros) Second, for his effort on behalf of the Greek cause against the Persians Alexander is known as "Philhellene". Now this is kind of odd to call a Greek a "friend of the Greeks". "This title", writes Borza, "is normally reserved for non-Greeks".