1) Greek Claim: "Alexander's Empire" by John Pentland Mahaffy (University of Dublin) P 8 "

1) Greek Claim: "Alexander's Empire" by John Pentland Mahaffy (University of Dublin) P 8 "... for with Alexander the stage of Greek influence spread across the world. " (John Pentland Mahaffy, Alexander's empire, G Putnam's sons, London, 1881)

REPLY:

This quote does not show anywhere that the Macedonians were Greek. We know that Alexander accepted and spread the standard koine Greek as a spoken language for his multi-ethnic empire, the only international language on which the whole Mediterranean world had already communicated even prior to the conquest of the Macedonians (just like English is international language today). Alexander was smart enough to keep this international Greek language for the Persians, Egyptians, Jews and all the nations of his empire to communicate. Forcing all those people to learn now a new foreign Macedonian language would have only provoked an additional hatred and multi-ethnic resistance for the Macedonian occupation of Asia, Egypt, and Greece, which the Macedonians obviously wanted to avoid. Unlike the Roman Empire, there was no single powerful centralized Macedonian Empire, but three main Macedonian kingdoms (Macedonia, Asia, Egypt) which were fragile and in conflict occasionally among each other, and the Macedonians needed such language standardization to help them maintain their power. That of course, does not mean that although the Macedonians, Persians, Egyptians, Jews, now communicated in Greek, that they all turned into Greeks, just like the African nations did not turn into French and English, just because of their usage of those two languages to communicate among themselves.

What is for certain however, is that Alexander spoke Macedonian with his own Macedonian troops and used Greek in addressing the Asians and Greeks. After all, the Macedonians were his kinsmen (precisely the way he calls them), not the Greeks. The ancient sources specifically refer to Macedonian as a language and not as a dialect of Greek, and Alexander himself specifically calls the Macedonian language - "our native language". During the trial of Philotas, Alexander himself clearly distinguishes his native Macedonian language from the Greek language which was used at the Macedonian court as well as a second language in diplomacy, a fact we find in the Philotas trial (Q. Curtius Rufus).

The conclusion is clear - that the Macedonian kings admired a foreign culture (Greek in this case) does not prove they were Greek. Similarly, the Russian czars admired the French culture and French was even spoken on the Russian court. The African nations also use international English language to communicate among themselves. That of course does not prove that the Russian czars were French, nor that the Africans were English. Therefore, the above quote from the Greek internet page can not be used as a ‘proof’ that the Macedonians were Greek. To see the complete evidence on the ethnicity of the ancient Macedonians please click here.