ANCIENT QUOTES

Quotations from Classical Sources Relating to Macedonia
Indisputable evidence that Macedonians are Greek.

"And she conceived and bore to Zeus, who delights in the thunderbolt, two sons, Magnes and Macedon,
rejoicing in horses, who dwell round about Pieria and Olympus."
(Hesiod, Catalogues of Women and Eoiae 3 [Loeb, H.G. Evelyn-White])

"For in the days of king Deucalion it (i.e. a Makednian tribe) inhabited the land of Phthiotis, then in the time
of Dorus, son of Hellen, the country called Histiaean, under Ossa and Olympus; driven by the Cadmeians
from this Histiaean country it settled about Pindus in the parts called Macedonian; thence again it migrated
to Dryopia, and at last came from Dryopia into Peloponnesus, where it took the name of Dorian."
(Herod. I, 56, 3 [Loeb, A.D. Godley])

"Tell your king (Xerxes), who sent you, how his Greek viceroy (Alexander I) of Macedonia has received
you hospitably."
(Herod. V, 20, 4 [Loeb])

"Now, that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know."
(Herod. V, 22, 1 [Loeb])

"The country by the sea which is now called Macedonia... Alexander, the father of Perdiccas,
and his forefathers, who were originally Temenidae from Argos"
Thucydides 99,3 (Loeb, C F Smith)

"But Alexander (I), proving himself to be an Argive, was judged to be a Greek;
so he contended in the furlong race and ran a dead heat for first place."
(Herod. V, 22, 2)

"The Peloponnesians that were with the fleet were ... the Lacedaimonians, ... the Corinthians, ...
the Sicyonians, ... the Epidaurians, ... the Troezenians, ... the people of Hermione there; all these,
except the people of Hermione, were of Dorian and Macedonian stock and had last come from
Erineus and Pindus and the Dryopian region."
(Herod. VIII, 43 {Loeb])

"Three brothers of the lineage of Temenos came as banished men from Argos to Illyria,
Gauanes and Aeropos and Perdiccas."
(Herod. VIII, 137, 1 [Loeb])

"For I (Alexander I) myself am by ancient descent a Greek,
and I would not willingly see Hellas change her freedom for slavery."
(Herod. IX, 45, 2 [Loeb])

"The country by the sea which is now called Macedonia ... Alexander I, the father of Perdiccas (II),
and his forefathers, who were originally Temenidae from Argos."
(Thuc. II, 99, 3 [Loeb, C. F. Smith])

"Argos is the land of your fathers."
(Isoc., To Philip, 32 (Loeb, G. Norlin])

"It is your privilege, as one who has been blessed with untrammeled freedom,
to consider all Hellas your fatherland, as did the founder of your race."
(Isoc., To Philip, 127 [Loeb])

" ... all men will be grateful to you: the Hellenes for your kindness to them and the rest of the nations,
if by your hands they are delivered from barbaric despotism and are brought under the protection
of Hellas."
(Isoc., To Philip, 154 [Loeb])

"This is a sworn treaty made between us, Hannibal ... and Xenophanes the Athenian ...
in the presence of all the gods who possess Macedonia and the rest of Greece."
(Pol. Histories, VII, 9, 4 [Loeb, W.R. Paton])

"How highly should we honor the Macedonians, who for the greater part of their lives never cease from
fighting with the barbarians for the sake of the security of Greece? For who is not aware that Greece
would have constantly stood in the greater danger, had we not been fenced by the Macedonians and
the honorable ambition of their kings?"
(Pol. Hist., IX, 35, 2 [Loeb])

"And Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece."
(Strab. VII, Frg. 9 [Loeb, H.L. Jones])

"He sent to Athens three hundred Persian panoplies to be set up to Athena in the acropolis;
he ordered this inscription to be attached: Alexander, son of Philip, and the Greeks,
save the Lacedaimonians, set up these spoils from the barbarians dwelling in Asia."
(Arr. I, 16, 7 [Loeb, P. A. Brunt])

"Your ancestors invaded Macedonia and the rest of Greece and did us great harm, though we had done
them no prior injury; ... (and) I have been appointed leader of the Greeks ..."
(Arr., Anab. Alex. II, 14, 4)

"They say that these were the tribes collected by Amphiktyon himself in the Greek Assembly: ...
the Macedonians joined and the entire Phocian race ... In my day there were thirty members: six each
from Nikopolis, Macedonia and Thessaly..."
(Paus. Phokis VIII, 2 & 4 [Loeb, W. Jones])

"Belistiche, a woman from the coast of Macedonia, won with the pair of foals ... at the hundred
and twenty-ninth Olympics."
(Paus. Eleia VIII, 11 [Loeb])

"Yet through Alexander (the Great) Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the gods of the Greeks ...
Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all Asia with
Greek magistracies ... Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Seleucia,
nor Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor the Caucasus a Greek city,
for by the founding of cities in these places savagery was extinguished and the worse element,
gaining familiarity with the better, changed under its influence."
(Plut. Moralia. On the Fortune of Alexander, I, 328D, 329A Loeb, F.C. Babbitt)

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)