Modern historians about Macedonia – Eugene Borza

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During medieval and modem times, Macedonia was known as a Balkan region inhabited by ethnic Greeks, Albanians, Vlachs, Serbs, Bulgarians, Jews, and Turks.

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The emergence of a Macedonian nationality is an offshoot of the joint Macedonian and Bulgarian struggle against Hellenization. With the establishment of an independent Bulgarian state and church in the 1870s, however, the conflict took a new turn. Until this time the distinction between “Macedonian” and “Bulgarian” hardly existed beyond the dialect differences between standard “eastern” Bulgarian and that spoken in the region of Macedonia.

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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.

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…the Macedonians are a newly emergent people in search of a past to help legitimize their precarious present as they attempt to establish their singular identity in a Slavic world dominated historically by Serbs and Bulgarians.

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The twentieth-century development of a Macedonian ethnicity, and its recent evolution into independent statehood following the collapse of the Yugoslav state in 1991, has followed a rocky road. In order to survive the vicissitudes of Balkan history and politics, the Macedonians, who have had no history, need one. They reside in a territory once part of a famous ancient kingdom, which has borne the Macedonian name as a region ever since and was called ”Macedonia” for nearly half a century as part of Yugoslavia. And they speak a language now recognized by most linguists outside Bulgaria, Serbia, and Greece as a south Slavic language separate from Slovenian, Serbo-Croatian, and Bulgarian. Their own so-called Macedonian ethnicity had evolved for more than a century, and thus it seemed natural and appropriate for them to call the new nation “Macedonia” and to attempt to provide some cultural references to bolster ethnic survival.

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It is difficult to know whether an independent Macedonian state would have come into existence had Tito not recognized and supported the development of Macedonian ethnicity as part of his ethnically organized Yugoslavia. He did this as a counter to Bulgaria, which for centuries had a historical claim on the area as far west as Lake Ohrid and the present border of Albania.

“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

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Only recently have we begun to clarify these muddy waters by revealing the Demosthenean corpus for what it is: oratory designed to sway public opinion and thereby to formulate public policy. That elusive creature, Truth, is everywhere subordinate to Rhetoric; Demosthenes’ pronouncements are no more the true history of the period than are the public statements of politicians in any age.

[E.Borza, “On the shadows of Olympus…” pages 5-6]

This larger Macedon included lands from the crest of the Pindus range to the plain of Philippi and the Nestos River. Its northern border lay along a line formed by Pelagonia, the middle Axios valley and the western Rhodopi massif. Its southern border was the Haliac- mon basin, the Olympus range and the Aegean, with the Chalcidic peninsula as peripheral… We thus have a conception of Macedonia both more and less extensive than Hammonds’s -less in that IT REDUCES EMPHASIS ON THE north western LANDS that lie today WITHIN THE YUGOSLAV STATE, but more in that it takes into greater account the territory east of the Axios. It is a definition BASED on the political DEVELOPMENT of the MACEDONIAN STATE OVER A LONG PERIOD OF TIME,…”

<E.N.Borza, “On the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp.29-31 >

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The macedonians themselves may have originated from the same population pool that produced other Greek peoples.

<E.N.Borza, “On the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), page 84

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but that the argive context is mythic, perhaps a bit of fifth-century BC propaganda.

<E.N.Borza, “On the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) page 80

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There is NO reason to deny the Macedonians’ own tradition about their early kings and the migrations of the Makedones.

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The basic story as provided by Herodotus and Thucydides minus the interpolation of the Temenid connection, UNDOUBTEDLY reflects the Macedonians’ own traditions about their early history

<E.N.Borza, “On the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) Page 84

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The memory of these early times may be preserved in a fragment of Hesiod; ” From the warloving king Hellen sprang Dorus and Xouthous [father of Ion] and Aeolus who took delight in horses”. Speakers of these various Greek dialects settled different parts of Greece at different times during the Middle Bronze Age, with one group, the “northwest” Greeks, developing their own dialect and peopling central Epirus. This was the origin of Molossian or Epirotic tribes.

“In the shadow of Olympus..” By Eugene Borza, page. 62

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the western greek people (with affinities to the Epirotic tribes) in Orestis, Lyncus , and parts of Pelagonia;”

“In the shadow of Olympus..” By Eugene Borza, page 74

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The wester mountains were peopled by the Molossians (the western Greeks of Epirus)

“In the shadow of Olympus..” By Eugene Borza, page 98

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Whether it was a rude patois that was the dialect of farmers and hillsmen or a style of speaking (like “Laconic”) is impossible to know from this scant, late evidence. In any case we cannot tell if it was Greek.

<E.N.Borza, “On the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) page 92

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It is only to say that there is an insufficient sample of words to show exactly what the macedonian language was. It must also be emphasized that this is not to say that it was not Greek; It is only to suggest that, from the linguists’ point of view, it is as yet impossible to know

<E.N.Borza, “On the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990)page 93

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although the thracians continued to produce coins well into the 470s and 460s and although they ADOPTED some of Alexander’s innovations (such as inscriptions in Greek), the obverse designs of their issues never achieved the quality of workmanship of their macedonian counterparts. They remain “Thracian” in style, whereas the Macedonian coinage is SIMILAR in its execution to the coins of the Greek world.

<E.N.Borza, “On the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990), pp.129 >\

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The argead Macedonians were now in contact with some of the macedonians of the western mountains, who were FORCED to accept a vassalage with which they never were comfortable. It is clear that these tribes retained their own royal houses and considerable local autonomy…..But for at least the next century and a half, the links between lower and upper Macedonians were tenuous at best.

<E.N.Borza, “On the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) page 124

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Despite the fact that Thucydides (2.99.3.6) could now call the whole area “Macedonia” the Argeads were NOT able to integrate their highland kinsmen into the kingdom until the reign of Philip II, and even then with only mixed success.

<E.N.Borza, “On the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) page 124

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Whatever the case, there is insufficient information to know whether the army of Alexander I, who was the first king tentively to ATTEMPT an unification fo the Macedonians

<E.N.Borza, “On the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) page 126

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it becomes clear that the Argeadae were notoriously quarrelsome, and that any unity that the Macedonian kingdom might posses would have to depend upon the strenght that could be excercised from the throne.

<E.N.Borza, “On the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) page 135

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Philip managed to incorporate the cantons of western macedonia into the greater Macedonians kingdom on a permanent basis. These mountainous regions had been virtually independent – and OFTEN HOSTILE – until Philip’s reign, and it was among his first necessities to stabilize the frontier.

<E.N.Borza, “On the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) page 135

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As for the rivalries among Macedonian families, these are unclear until the time of Philip II, and even here most of the evidence points to a hostility between the houses of western Macedonia and the Argeadae.

<E.N.Borza, “On the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) page 237

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Their daughter, who would be the half-sister of Alexander the Great and, later the wife of Cassander, was appropriately named Thessalonike, to commemorate Philip’s victory in Thessaly. In 315 Cassander founded at or near the site of ancient Therme the great city that still bears her name.

<E.N.Borza, “On the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) page 220

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It is difficult to imagine that Philip’s policy toward Greece was an end in itself. Once his Balkan borders had been secured his general course seems to have been directed toward the establishment of stability in Greece, NOT CONQUEST.

<E.N.Borza, “On the Shadows of Olympus” (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1990) page 230

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