M A C E D O N I A N W O R L D C O N G R E S S Presents a court case presentation on the Macedonian history:
Greece alleges that:
1) The Macedonians should not be recognized as Macedonians because the
Macedonians have been of Greek nationality since 2000 B.C.
2) Those Macedonians whose language belongs to the Slavic family of
languages, must not call themselves Macedonians because 4000
years ago the Macedonians spoke Greek and still speak nothing
but Greek.
3) Macedonia has no right to call itself by this name because Macedonia
has always been and is today a region of Greece.
The Macedonian people affirm that:
1) The ancient Macedonians were a distinct European people,
conscious and proud of their nationality, their customs, their
language, and their name. The same applies to their descendants
today.
2) The ancient Macedonians regarded the Greeks as neighbours not as
kinsmen. The Greeks treated the Macedonians as foreigners
("barbarians") whose native language was Macedonian not Greek.
3) Macedonian was never a region of Greece. On the contrary, Greece
was often subject to Macedonia. In 1913, Greece and her Balkan
allies partitioned Macedonia, and if today a portion of
Macedonian belongs to Greece, it is by virtue of an illegal
partition of the whole and occupation of a part of Macedonia.
MACEDONIANS AND GREEKS THROUGH THE AGES
Throughout antiquity, the Chasia and Kamvounia mountains, Mount
Olympus, and the vale of Tempe separated Macedonia from Greece.
On the north, Macedonia extended as far as the Vardar watershed and
along the Struma and Mesta valleys, past the city of Blagoevgrad to
the sources of the Bistrica River in the Rila Mountain in today's
Bulgaria. Macedonia covered a land area of c. 26,000 square miles.
In the course of the second pre-Christian millennium, the ancient
Greeks descended in several migratory waves as goatherds and
shepherds from the interior of the Balkans into Greece. Some passed
through the Morava-Vardar Valley and across the plain of Thessaly on
their way south, while others went south through Epirus. More recent
scholars point to Asia minor as the original Greek homeland.
There is no evidence that prehistoric Macedonia was ever occupied
by Greeks.
The Bronze Age Mycenaean Greek civilization, names so after the
city of Mycenae on the Peloponnesus, thrived from c. 1400 to 1100
B.C. in mainly Greece and on the Aegean islands. Archaeological
finds from Macedonia are meagre and sporadic; scholars believe that
ancient Macedonia lay beyond the cultural and ethnic borders of
Mycenaean Greece.
The ancient Macedonians claimed kinship with the Illyrians,
Thracians, and the Phrygians, not with the Greeks. In fact, the
Brygians of Macedonia were believed to be the European branch of the
people who in Asia Minor were known as the Phrygians.
Ancient Macedonia was home to many tribes and nations. Homer did
not know the Macedonians by this name. Of the many Macedonia
peoples, Homer only mentions the Paeones who lives in the heart of
Macedonia. In the Trojan War, the Paeones joined the besieged
Trojans, an indication that they were not Greeks. Greek and other
historians frequently mention the Brygians. Their name derives from
the Macedonian word 'breg', "hill/mountain". The Brygians were the
"hillsmen" of Macedonia. Another remarkable people were the
Mygdones, who lived in Aegean Macedonia, in Asia Minor, and in Upper
Mesopotamia.
Greek migrants came to Macedonia, Thrace, and Illyria after they
had exhausted the possibilities of settlement in Asia Minor, Italy,
France, Spain and Scythia, known today as Ukraine and Russia. Some
famous ancient Greeks went to Macedonia and Thrace in search of
livelihood or adventure. These included Pythagoras, Euripides,
Herodotus, and Aristotle's ancestors. However, the Greeks did not
consider Macedonia especially attractive for permanent settlement.
Neither did the Macedonians welcome them as openheartedly as did the
Italians and Scythians. Perhaps Aristotle who left Macedonia while
still a young man would have never gone back had the Macedonia King
Philip II (360-366 B.C.) not hired him to be his son's tutor. In any
case, by the middle of the fourth pre-Christian century, Greek
settlers were expelled from Macedonia, their cities, including
Aristotle's native Stagira, razed to the ground by Philip, and
Aristotle died in exile in Greece.
The ancient Macedonians regarded the Greeks as potentially
dangerous neighbours, never as kinsmen. The Greeks unanimously
stereotyped the Macedonians as "barbarians" and treated them in the
same bigoted manner in which they treated all non-Greeks. Herodotus,
the Father of History, relates how the Macedonian king Alexander I
(498-454 B.C.), a Philhellene, that is, "a friend of the Greeks",
and logically a non-Greek, wanted to take part in the Olympic games.
The Greek athletes protested, saying they would not run with a
barbarian. The historian Thucydides, himself half barbarian,
considered the Macedonians as barbarians. Demosthenes, the great
Athenians statesman and orator, spoke of the Macedonia king
Philip II as:
"... not only no Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not
even a barbarian from any place that can be named with
honours, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was
never yet possible to buy a decent slave." [Third Phillipic, 31]
The Macedonian "barbarian" defeated Greece at the battle of
Chaeronea in August 338 B.C. and appointed himself "Commander of the
Greeks." The date is commonly takes as the end of Greek history and
the beginning of the Macedonian era.
[Greece did not regain its independence until 1827 A.D.]
Greeks prospered under the Macedonians, but they prospered in
Egypt and West Asia, not in Greece and not in Macedonia. Though the
Macedonians expelled the Greeks from Macedonia and Thrace, they
permitted them to settle throughout their vast empire in Asia and
Africa. Antiochia and Alexandria, to name just the two most
important cities established by Macedonians, grew into great
cosmopolitan metropolises where Europeans, Africans, and Asians
traded goods, ideas, and insults conversing mainly in Greek, the
'lingua franca' (common language) of the Macedonian empire.
Other significant historical signposts include:
* Greece was conquered by Macedonia at the battle of Chaeronea
in 338 B.C.
* Both Macedonia and Greece were annexed by the Romans to their
empire after the battle of Pydna in 168 B.C.
* Under the Romans, the Greeks continued to prosper in the Levant,
Asia Minor, and Egypt, less so in Greece and not at all in
Macedonia. While the Romans did not establish any province by the
name of Greece or Hellas, there were two Macedonia's in their
Empire: 'Macedonia Prima', known today as the Aegean Macedonia, and
'Macedonia Salutaris', known today as the Vardar and Pirin
Macedonias. The two Macedonian provinces formed the Diocese of
Macedonia, to which the Romans attached all of modern Greece and
Albania. Latin was the official language in Roman Macedonia, from
168 B.C. until the demise of Roman rule at the end of the sixth
Christian century.
* After the establishment of Christianity, the Macedonians and
Greeks shed their ethnicity in favour of the new identity as
Christian and Roman citizens. Those who spoke Latin called
themselves 'Romani'. Those who spoke Greek, whether they were
Macedonians, Greeks, Armenians, or Arabs, referred to themselves
as 'Rhomaioi', a Greek word for Romans. Those who used Slavic
language were known as 'Slovene'.
* In the sixth century, the Paeones, now called Slavs, came back
and captured all of Macedonia from the East Romans, with the
exception of a few coastal cities. Macedonia maintained its
independence and resisted attacks by the Armenian and Syrian
dynasties who held power in New Rome (Byzantium) and by the
shamanist and nomadic Bulgars who roamed the steppes of the
Dobrudja with their herds. Since the sixth century, the native
Macedonian language had been the dominant speech of the land. It
was first systematized in the middle of the ninth Christian
century by SS. Cyril and Methodius, the apostles of the Slavs who
were born in Thessalonica, Solun. The Macedonian language has
functioned as the principal literary, liturgical, and colloquial
language of Macedonia ever since.
* In 867, the first European dynasty assumed power in medieval East
Rome. The dynasty is called Macedonian because the parents of its
founder, Basil I, originated from the Byzantine province of
Macedonia. The Macedonian rulers in Byzantium spoke Macedonian
and Greek and thought of themselves as Macedonians and Rhomaioi.
In the tenth century, another dynasty came to power in Macedonia
proper and reached its apogee under Tsar Samuilo at the turn of
the millennium.
* In 1014, the Macedonian Roman (Byzantine) Emperor Basil II
defeated Tsar Samuilo and soon annexed Macedonia to his East
Roman state. Under the Macedonian rules and their successors in
Byzantium, the Macedonians retained their language, customs, and
their church organization.
* The East Roman Empire was destroyed by the Crusaders in 1204.
During the next two and a half centuries, the Macedonians fought
foreign invaders, adventurers, and bandits who tried to dominate
their land. The Ottoman Turks established their rule in Macedonia
in the fifteenth century. The Turks used the name 'Rumelia' for
their possessions in the Balkan Peninsula in the belief that they
had once belonged to the Roman (Byzantine) Empire.
* In 1827, the Christian European powers intervened on behalf of
Greek rebels and forced the Turks to grant them independence. In
1832, the same powers established the first modern Greek state,
chose Prince Otto of Bavaria to be "King of the Hellenes", and
sent him to Athens.
* Macedonian entered this century as a province of the Ottoman
Empire, divided among the Solun, Bitola, and Kosovo vilayets.
The region was occupied primarily by Macedonians. The census in
the three vilayets taken by the Ottoman state in 1905 found
3,181,690 inhabitants. Other than to Macedonians, this region was
home to many Albanians, Turks, Romi, Vlachs, Jews, and Greeks.
* After the Ottoman state was weakened by internal troubles,
Montenegro, Serbia, Bulgaria, and Greece attacked their former
masters. In this war, called the First Balkan War, the Turks lost
Macedonia. The victorious Balkan kingdoms convened in Bucharest
in August 1913 to divide the spoils. By the Treaty of Bucharest,
Macedonian was partitioned. Greece was awarded Aegean Macedonia
and renamed it "Northern Greece"; Bulgaria annexed Pirin
Macedonia and abolished the Macedonian name, and Serbia took
Vardar Macedonia and renamed it "Southern Serbia."
* The Macedonian state was created out of the ashes of the
Second World War as Josip Broz Tito, the anti-fascist leader of
Yugoslavia, recognized the Macedonians as a distinct people
with their own nationality, language, and culture when he created
modern Yugoslavia. Macedonia became a sovereign state by a
popular referendum held in September 1991 when the majority of
voters chose independence.
MACEDONIAN AND OTHER LANGUAGES
During the reign of Alexander the Great, the Macedonians spoke
their own native language.
The question of the use of the Macedonian language was raised by
Alexander himself during the trial of Philotas, one of his generals
accused of treason. Alexander said to Philotas:
"The Macedonians are about to pass judgement upon you; I
wish to know whether you their native tongue in addressing
them." Thereupon Philotas replied: "Besides the Macedonians
there are many present who, I think, will more easily
understand what I shall say if I use the same language which
you have employed, for no other reason, I suppose, than in
order that you speech might be understood by the greater
number." Then said the king: "Do you not see how Philotas
loathes even the language of his fatherland? For he alone
disdains to learn it. But let him by all means speak in
whatever way he desires, provided that you remember he holds
our customs in as much abhorrence as our language."
[Quintus Curtius Rufus, History of Alexander the Great of
Macedon, VI. ix. 34-36]
The trial of Philotas took place in Asia before a multi-ethnic
public, which had accepted Greek as their common language. Alexander
spoke Macedonian with his conationals, but used Greek in addressing
West Asians.
Like Illyrian and Thracian, ancient Macedonian was not recorded in
writing. However, on the basis of about a hundred glosses,
Macedonian words noted and explained by Greek writers, some
place-names from Macedonia, and a few names of individuals, most
scholars believe that ancient Macedonian was a separate
Indo-European language. Evidence from phonology indicates that the
Macedonian language was distinct from Greek and closer to the
Thracian and Illyrian languages.
Linguistic continuity between the ancient and modern Macedonians
is shown by the survival of Philip's original native name. Philip
was known abroad as 'Philippos'. The native Macedonian and Thracian
form of his name was recorded in the name of the Thracian town which
he has conquered and named 'Pulpudeva', "the city of Philip". In the
language of its Slavic citizens it is known today as 'Plovdiv'.
The cosmopolitan form of the city's name is 'Philipopolis', a
learned rendering of the native name. Another example of this
continuity involves the ancient capital of Macedonia, Edessa. The
Macedonians knew this city as 'Voden' long before linguists
discovered that the Slavic name was a translation of the original
name and that both meant "watertown." The Greeks, on the other
hand, unless they study linguistics, do not know the meaning of the
name.
Since 1913, official Greece has been trying to banish native
Macedonian names of villages, towns, cities, and rivers in Aegean
Macedonia. For example, the Macedonians are being instructed to
forget Voden and use the name Edessa and to drop the name Solun in
favour of Thessaloniki. The people whose ancestors have over the
millennia plowed the earth and grazed their sheep and goats in the
Bistrica and Vardar valleys are forced to learn from dead writers a
dead language the "proper" names for their rivers.
The little stream which issues from Mount Olympus and flows into
the Aegean Sea by the town of Katerini is labelled 'Mavroneri',
"black water", on maps made by Greek cartographers. However, the
same river appears as "Crna Reka', a native Macedonian name meaning
"black river" on maps made before 1913. Perhaps the village of
Nezero on the southern slopes of Mount Olympus, has not yet been
given a Greek name because it has escaped the attention of Greek
linguist purists. The name in fact derives from the Slavic word for
"lake". Of course, when Zeus and his divine company lived on Mount
Olympus, the lake had another name. But, ever since mortal
Macedonians have lived there, the lake has been called 'Ezero',
meaning "lake".
SUMMARY
It is common knowledge that the northern boundary of ancient
Greece ran from the modern city of Preveza (a Macedonian name,
meaning "ferrytown") or from Korfu to the Vale of Tempe south of
Mount Olympus. In antiquity, Macedonian was a northern neighbour of
Greece, never a province of Greece.
Alexander spoke Macedonian and was proud of his ethnicity.
However, the Macedonian language of his day was not used as a
literary idiom. The first native written language of Macedonia is
the idiom called Macedonian or Old Church Slavic.
Though Alexander spoke Greek, loved Homer, and respected his
tutor Aristotle, there is much evidence that he hated and despised
the Greeks of his day. He thoroughly destroyed Thebes. His Asian
empire is correctly called Macedonian, not Greek, for he won it with
an army of 35,000 Macedonians and only 7,600 Greeks. The Greeks
distinguished themselves on the side of the Persians. For instance,
at the battle of Issus, Alexander's European army was opposed by a
large Asian host which included about 30,000 Greek mercenaries who
fought for the Persians. During his campaign in Asia, Alexander
dismissed the messenger who had brought him news of a war among the
Greeks, saying: "Why should I trouble myself with battles of mice"?
Alexander could not think of himself as a Greek, for his mother
was from Epirus, a land more Illyrian than Hellenic, and his earthly
father was a Macedonian whom the Greeks of his day called "a
barbarian". More importantly, Alexander told the Egyptians that his
heavenly parent was their god Ammon. After he conquered Mesopotamia,
Persia, and the Indus Valley, he believed he was a god commanding
his Greek subjects to accept his divinity.
It is possible that the native Macedonian name "Mygdones" was the
basis of the name "Makedones," which then became the collective name
for all the different peoples of Macedonia. It is by the latter form
that the various peoples of Macedonia became universally known. Even
if the ancient Greeks did take part in the shaping and popularizing
of this name, this does not give today's Greece the copyright to the
name "Macedonia".
THEREFORE:
The Claims put forward by Greece that the ancient Macedonians
were Greeks, that their native language was Greek, and that
Macedonia was a region of Greece are all false. The historical truth
is that Greece was inhabited by Greeks, Macedonia by Macedonians.
The presence of Greek settlements along the coast of Macedonia which
Philip II destroyed anyway did not change Macedonia's ethnic
character. Likewise, a very much stronger and longer Greek presence
in Egypt did not transform that African land into a region of
Greece. The ancients knew where Greece ended and where Macedonia
began. They believed that Mount Olympus was in Macedonia, Mount
Parnassus in Greece. Thus the geographer Strabo calls Olympus "the
highest mountain in Macedonia". It still is.
Author: Professor Jacques Bacid, Ph.D. Columbia University, 1983, has taught Balkan and East European history at the University of Oregon.
MAKEDONIJA NA MAKEDONCITE!
