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The Ancient Macedonians were the inhabitants of Macedon and adjacent regions in ancient times. Historians generally agree that the ancient Macedonians — whether they spoke a Greek dialect or a distinct language — were absorbed into the Koine Greek-speaking population in Hellenistic times. Whether the ancient Macedonians were an ethnically Greek people themselves continues to be debated by historians, linguists, and lay people.

Origins

According to a common reading of the passage, Herodotus considers the Macedonians a Hellenic tribe left behind during the Dorian invasion:

for during the reign of Deucalion, Phthiotis was the country in which the Hellenes dwelt, but under Dorus, the son of Hellen, they moved to the tract at the base of Ossa and Olympus, which is called Histiaeotis; forced to retire from that region by the Cadmeians, they settled, under the name of Macedonians, in the chain of Pindus. Hence they once more removed and came to Dryopis; and from Dryopis having entered the Peloponnese in this way, they became known as Dorians. (Histories, 1.53.1)

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Culture

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Language and writing

See main article: Ancient Macedonian language. The language spoken by the area's inhabitants prior to the 5th century BC, and continued into the early centuries of the Common Era by the rural population , is attested in some hundred words from various glosses (mainly those of Hesychius of Alexandria, 5th century AD), as well as placenames (toponyms) and personal names (anthroponyms). The majority of these words can be confidently identified as Greek . There are words, however, that are not easily identifiable as Greek, a number of which for example show voiced stops where Greek has voiceless aspirates.

There was either linguistic contact with speakers of Doric Greek (whom Herodotus considered akin to Macedonians) or the Macedonian language was Doric dialect. A number of Doric inscriptions from classical Macedon are known, such as the Pella katadesmos, but no inscriptions in a non-Greek language have been found. It has been suggested by classical historians such as Eugene Borza and others that Doric Greek was used as the literary language in classical Macedon, but the actual Macedonian language may have been a non-Greek tongue. From the 5th century BC Macedonia was closely associated with Southern Greek cultural and political development, resulting in the adoption of the Attic dialect (see Koine Greek).

There is no clear consensus among linguists and historians that the Doric inscriptions represent the Macedonian language. The classification of the ancient Macedonian language is thus disputed, and it appears that Macedonian has not participated in at least one sound change common to every other known Greek dialect (the unvoicing of voiced aspirates, leading to *Pherenikē as opposed to Macedonian Berenikē). Eugene Borza (1999) concludes that the Macedonians were "a unique people in antiquity who gradually became Hellenized, and who are unrelated to any modern people".

On the other hand, Olivier Masson in the Oxford Classical Dictionary (1996) saw the phonological peculiarities mentioned above as "local pronunciations" due to Macedon's "marginal position" and concluded that Macedonian is "a dialect related to North-West Greek".

Hellenic controversy

The controversy whether or not ancient Macedonia should be considered a Hellenic state is addressed variously: based on ancient sources, and on linguistic evidence. Neither approach is conclusive, Herodotus seems to assert that the Macedonian aristocracy was of Achaean origin while Macedonian people were of Dorian stock. Linguistics seems to point inconclusively to either Macedonian as an archaic form of Greek, Macedonian as part of a Graeco-Macedonian subfamily of Indo-European, or Macedonian as an independent member of the Paleo-Balkan Sprachbund.

The Macedonians were sometimes spoken of as a tribe of Thrace, the land north-east of Greece (Sir William M. Ramsay). Rather than a Greek origin, some argue that the ancient Macedonians had an Illyrian or Thracian origin. It is also possible that the ancient Macedonians were originally a distinct people, later absorbing Greek, Illyrian, and Thracian elements (cf. Borza, et al.).

This controversy concerns the early kingdom before the time of Philip II exclusively. It is undisputed that Macedon was heavily Atticized from the time of Alexander the Great (see Hellenism).

A series of passages in book five of Herodotus' Histories (5:22) indicate to many classical scholars that the Macedonians were customarily excluded from panhellenic events such as the Olympic Games, entry to which apparently was confined to Greeks. The Macedonian aristocracy, however, clearly saw itself as Greek and Macedonian kings were permitted to participate on that basis. This was evidently somewhat controversial: when Alexander I attempted to compete at Olympia, Herodotus relates:

Now that the men of this family are Greeks, sprung from Perdiccas, as they themselves affirm, is a thing which I can declare of my own knowledge, and which I will hereafter make plainly evident. That they are so has been already adjudged by those who manage the Pan-Hellenic contest at Olympia. For when Alexander wished to contend in the games, and had come to Olympia with no other view, the Greeks who were about to run against him would have excluded him from the contest- saying that Greeks only were allowed to contend, and not barbarians. But Alexander proved himself to be an Argive, and was distinctly adjudged a Greek; after which he entered the lists for the foot-race, and was drawn to run in the first pair. Thus was this matter settled. (Histories, 5:22)

In book eight, Herodotus counts the allied Macedonians as part of the Greek fleet. Some view this as proof that the Macedonians were considered Hellenes before Philip's conquests and Macedon's rise to power.

Titus Livius (lived 59 BC-14 AD) in his Ab urbe condita (31.29) is quoting a Macedonian ambassador from the late 3rd century BC, implying that Macedonians had been a Greek-speaking tribe:

The Aetolians, the Acarnanians, the Macedonians, men of the same language, are united or disunited by trivial causes that arise from time to time; with aliens, with barbarians, all Greeks wage and will wage eternal war; for they are enemies by the will of nature, which is eternal, and not from reasons that change from day to day.---

The late Nicholas G. L. Hammond, a classicist, also suggested that Macedonian was a Greek dialect:

"What language did these `Macedones' speak? The name itself is Greek in root and in ethnic termination. It probably means `highlanders', and it is comparable to Greek tribal names such as `Orestai' and `Oreitai', mean­ing 'mountain-men'. A reputedly earlier variant, `Maketai', has the same root, which means `high', as in the Greek adjective makednos or the noun mekos... At the turn of the sixth century the Persians described the tribute-paying peoples of their province in Europe, and one of them was the `yauna takabara', which meant `Greeks wearing the hat'. There were Greeks in Greek city-states here and there in the province, but they were of various origins and not distinguished by a common hat. However, the Macedonians wore a dis­tinctive hat, the kausia. We conclude that the Persians believed the Macedonians to be speakers of Greek. Finally, in the latter part of the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, visited Macedonia and modi­fied Hesiod's genealogy by making Macedon not a cousin, but a son of Aeolus, thus bringing Macedon and his descendants firmly into the Aeolic branch of the Greek-speaking family. Hesiod, Persia, and Hellanicus had no motive for making a false statement about the language of the Macedonians, who were then an obscure and not a powerful people. Their independent testimonies should be accepted as conclusive."

See also

• Macedon
• List of ancient Macedonians
• Lynkestis
• Molossians
• Dorian
• Ancient Greece

• Ancient Macedon
• Ancient Greece