Sunday, July 31, 2011

Αποφράδα μέρα γιά τον άνθρωπο που δια πυρός και σιδήρου ένωσε την Ελλάδα

Σαν σήμερα 30 Ιουλίου, 336 π.Χ: Δολοφονήθηκε ο Φίλιππος Αμύντου, βασιλεύς Μακεδόνων.

On July 30, 336 BC, Phillipos son of Amyntas, 
Basileus of the Macedonians fell to an assasin's dagger.



Monday, July 25, 2011

From Miloshovski to Miloshevska - Cooler heads prevailing in Skopje?

http://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2011/jul/21/macedonia-tiff-all-greek-to-nato-eu/?page=1
Габриела Арсова Милошевска in her "Ukrainian" hairdo

"Macedonia" tiff all Greek to NATO, EU

We are used to reading all the insane stories out of Skopje, lately, with the supersized statue of Alexander the Great on Buccephalas and people crying in ecstasy in downtown Skopje about Aleksandar Makedonski "returning to his home", and all kinds of other such unreal reports and then we read about Gabriela Arsova-Miloshevska, (Габриела Арсова Милошевска) and we think that maybe, just maybe there  might be a future for the Slavomacedonians, after all. It took them 20 years and 130 plus countries to recognize FYROM by its chosen name, to finally realize that all they need is one country to recognize them Greece,and their problems will be resolved. They are finally coming to the realization that no solution will even come about as long as they spit on the one that holds the keys to their future and prosperity. We can only hope that these ideas help start a discussion for a healthy future for this country. The ultra-nationalist Gruevskian VMRO-DPMNEites who base their party ideology on anti-Hellenic hate mongerring and pseudo-Makedonist irredentism just recently won the elections, but with no solution in sight and with economic problems problems accumulating the population might start thinking things over and events might take a different turn.  All we hope for now is that the discussion on the decisions to be taken in FYROM will jump start at some point, sooner than later.

 


The Washington Times
Thursday, July 21, 201
"Macedonia" is 20 years old, if you’re talking about the former Yugoslav republic. Or it’s thousands of years old, if you’re talking ancient history.
The country clearly has an identity crisis.
Now the leader of a new political party in "Macedonia" believes she has a way to solve the problem and end a diplomatic dispute with neighboring Greece - which objects to its name, its symbols and its claims to the past.
Gabriela Arsova-Miloshevska, founder and chairwoman of the new Republican Alliance, wants to change the country’s name, flag, seal, national anthem and, she hopes, its future.
“I believe that people are ready for something different,” she said in a recent interview.
Ms. Arsova-Miloshevska, a former member of the ruling conservative party’s executive committee, said she supports the current government’s quest for membership in the European Union and NATO but added that Macedonia first must solve domestic disputes and settle its disagreements with Greece.
“To achieve integration in Europe, we must first achieve integration at home,” she said,.
Macedonia, with a ethnically diverse population of 2 million, is one of seven states to emerge from the rubble of Yugoslavia in 1991. However, it ran into an immediate conflict with Greece, which has a northern province also named Macedonia.
Both countries have ancient claims to Philip II of Macedon and his son Alexander the Great, arguably the most famous military leader of the ancient world.
Greece objected to "Macedonia"’s membership in the United Nations until it agreed to enter under the temporary, if cumbersome, name of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM). Greece also demands that "Macedonia" change its name to something acceptable to Athens before "Macedonia" is admitted to the European Union.
Greece, a NATO member, also has sway over "Macedonia"’s desire to join the Western military alliance.
“People want to get into the EU, but they don’t want to resolve the problem of the name,” Ms. Arsova-Miloshevska said.
“So we have to explain to them why this is important because without resolving this problem, there is not going to be economic growth.”
She also said "Macedonia" needs a new flag. The current one was redesigned in 1995 because of a dispute with Greece about a historical symbol related to Philip and Alexander, but the ethnic Albanian minority, which makes up about a quarter of the population, has largely rejected the new flag.
“We would like to ask everybody [for their ideas on a new flag] and see the different options,” she said.
The national anthem also needs to go.
“The national anthem we have now is from when the "Macedonians" were fighting against the Turks,” she said, referring to the conflict with the Ottoman Turkish Empire before World War I.
“It’s fixed in one period in time.”

Sunday, July 24, 2011

Of color blind knaves and blind fools: a few points on the Macedonian issue

"If you can bear to hear the truth you've spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools..."


This article has also been published at the American Chronicle:
http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/244578
 
Miltiades Elia Bolaris
July24, 2011

My hometown Serres is built at the foothills of Menoikio mountain, in central-eastern Macedonia. A Paeonian foundation, as Herodotus tells us, which the Macedonians made their own. When we were children, my father would take me and my brother, we would go mountain hiking from dawn to eve, and he would talk to us. He was an inspiring gentleman, to us children, well-traveled and well-read; full of wisdom. Both I and my brother owe a lot to him. Something that stuck in my mind from those childhood conversations with my father was the following saying by Confucius:

"If in your path you come across someone with whom you can carry an intelligent conversation, stay and discuss in earnest with him.
If in your path you come across someone with whom you cannot carry an intelligent conversation, do not waste your time in idle talk. Keep walking!"

I thought of my father a few days ago, on July 20th, prophet Elias's day in the Orthodox calendar, his name day. Here I stand now, wondering: why don't I simply follow my father's advise and Confucius' wisdom?

Does someone have to answer any and every scatological byproduct of lower intelligence floating out there? Here is an example:

"Macedonians, Philhellenes and Greeks", by Christos Stephou, a Canadian autodidact who habitually misspells his own (appropriately Boulgarized to Risto Stefov) Greek name.

A "Rebuttal", supposedly, of an article written three years ago:

"The arrest, disappearance and possible murder of a critic of PM Nicola Gruevski in FYROM", published on July 28. 2009 in the American Chronicle". I am saying "supposedly" because the article is rambling about anything but what it is supposed to be rebutting.

There is a wonderful American expression: "You cannot win an argument against an idiot as he is not bound by the rules of logic". Basic self respect demands that I should avoid it:
εἰ δυνατόν ἐστιν, παρελθάτω ἀπ' ἐμοῦ τὸ ποτήριον τοῦτο
if it be possible, let this cup pass away from me


At the same token, try as I may, and we all have our weaknesses, I simply cannot  
bear to hear the truth I've spoken twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools.

So, then, here we are, forced by necessity to make a few points of clarification. Our task is not to convince any propagandists of pseudo-Makedonism out there. They know they are dealing in a fake product, whether historical, political or linguistic. They are in the business of fraud and falsification. What makes it easy for us is that they are not even good at it. What we need to do is to clear out the cloudy haziness with which they always cover up their fuzzy tracks. We need to make the intellectual field crystal clear using crisp, logical argumentswhich are solidly based on research and factual documentation. We simply need to do our homework. We need to expose each and every pseudo-Makedonist hoax, for what it is: a fraud against history and science and a crime against the true identity of the Slavomacedonian nation and the future of the youth of FYROM.

POINT A: "When the Western-philhellenes came to Greece to begin their
project, they found this mass of befuddled individuals completely

immersed in their struggle for survival and oblivious to the

significance of their immediate surroundings."


When someone tries to belittle one of the greatest revolutions of the 19th century, the Greek revolution of 1821-1829, a revolution which paved through its heroic example the way to freedom for all other Christians of Ottoman occupied Europe, a revolution that inspired the greatest minds of its time, from Byron and Goethe to Delacroix, by calling it a mere "project" of "Western-Philhellenes", that someone is not only failing in his purpose. He is also betraying his abysmal hatred, personal baseness, mean spirit and, most of all, unfulfilled envy for what he never had. Nobody can accuse the Slavomacedonians for waiting to be be liberated by the Serbian army in 1912 or for gaining a statehood after the Yugoslav army decided to retreat in 1992. Things happen. But to start from this lack of an ethnogenetic Big Bang to go and start mumbling nonsense of Western Philhellenes' "project" is ludicrous.
A house pussycat has no moral right to accuse a lion of being docile, if you asked me. If you have not produced a Kolokotronis, a Karaiskakis a Makrygiannis or a Kanaris, and the only heroes you have to show are some Bugari Komitadjis, in the service of Bulgarian Exarchy, then the least you can do is hush the whole issue and lie low. Do not provoke comparisons that will slap you right back on your face.
"...mass of befuddled individuals...oblivious to the significance of their immediate surroundings" doing what they had to do. Greeks gained their freedom after a 9-year revolutionary struggle, 160 years before the peaceful retreat of the Yugoslav army gave independence (like a ripe fruit that fell on Skopje's  lap) to FYROM.

Calling the Greek revolutionaries, those barefooted men and women that broke the back of the Ottoman empire after a tooth and nail nine year old bloody struggle for freedom, a revolution during which no stone was left upon a stone, fighting against the most tyrannical empire of their time, and won, to call these men and women

"this mass of befuddled individuals completely immersed in their
struggle for survival"

is not at all demeaning the memory of those heroes. Pass du tous! It is simply indicative of how a slimy creature experiences its own insignificance looking up -in owe- to soaring eagles from down below, plodding along in its miserable muddy hole.

Since the population of FYROM has never achieved national liberation on its own, and there are historic reasons for this, the lack of homogeneity in the population being the most important, the closest thing they can look back towards is the two month long Ilinden uprising and the famous Krushevo government did not lasdt for more than ten days. This was an uprising that was thought of, organized and carried by Bulgarian Komitadjis. The liberation of the land during the Balkan wars of 1912 and 1913 was carried by the Serbian army. During WWII the local population embrashed the Nazi led Royal Bulgarian troups as liberators and the communist party leadership was the first to leave the Yugoslav Communist Party to join the Communist Party of Bulgaria. When the Serb army left southern Yugoslavia in the early 1990's, as the Yugoslav state was collapsing and Serbian army was needed to fight Croatian independentists, FYROM was finally established. FYROM, therefore, like Albania, which was liberated from the Ottomans by the Greek and Serbian army, or Bulgaria, which was liberated by the Russian army, for that matter, have no great national liberating revolution to look back to. This is not a crime nor a handicap. Crime against history and basic intelligence are the moronic attempts of the Skopian history falsifiers who try to try to appear greater by belittling the achievements of others. The fact that the Greek revolution roused the sympathy of freedom loving intellectuals from around the world who came to help the Greeks does not take anything out that great revolution. As for the Treaty of Bucharest which the Skopjan mouthpieces love to quote all the time, it did not give Macedonia to Greece. The Greek army in a succession of ferocious battles first in Sarantaporo and then in Yanista, defeated the Ottoman army forcing Hasan Tahsin Pasha to surrender central and western Macedonia to the Greeks.Te Greek army entered Thessaloniki on October 26, 1912.  The Treaty of London treaty recognizing Greek sovereignty over  these lands was signed on May 30, 1913. All the Treaty of Bucharest did was to divide between Romania, Greece and Serbia the lands lost by Bulgaria during the second Balkan War. And this was in August 1913, almost a year after Greeks had already won Thessaloniki. So, why are they not crying about the Treaty of London then, which determined the fate of their land, and only make noises about the Treaty of Buccarest that only determined the fate of a small part in the SE part of FYROM? The fact that the Skopje ultra-nationalist are whining and crying about the Treaty of Bucharest, is only reminiscing of the bitter tears their Bugari grandparents shed for having seen majka Balgarija lose to the hated Srbi and Grci. If it was not for the Treaty of Bucharest, FYROM would be part of Bulgaria...and as fate had it, with the intervention of Tito, they became Makedonci, not Makedonci Bugari. Is this the real reason why some of them are crying?
The ottoman army's Hasan Tahsin pasha capitulating to Constantinos. King George I entering Thessaloniki on Oct. 26, 1912, ten months before the signing of the Treaty of Buccharest.
 

POINT B:  "In haste to build and instill into this bewildered hodgepodge of
leftover Balkanites - Slavs, Albanians, Gypsies and Vlachs - a new
Greek identity, these idealistic westerners forgot to install a safety
valve for the inflated Greek ego."

Greeks: "...bewildered hodgepodge of
leftover Balkanites..." but damn proud of their heritage!
Let me rephrase this, and put it in a context that an impartial reader can easily
comprehend:

"In haste to build and instill into this bewildered hodgepodge of
leftover Europenites and Africanites – Slavs, Mexicans, Nigers,
Gypsies and Jews - a new Yankee identity, these idealistic westerners
forgot to install a safety valve for the inflated American ego."


How does that sound? Can the author of such a hideously racist excrement of a twisted humanoid brain have the moral footings to accuse anyone else of "promoting KKK ideology"?

Americans, Canadians, Australians: "...bewildered hodgepodge of leftover Europenites, Asiatics, Africanites..." if we are to follow Stefov's  twisted Nazi logic
The only bewilderment here is for how and why the American Chronicle can tolerate such a miserable misanthrope among its accepted "authors". Let the thousand flowers bloom is the idea...and who cares for the occasional thorn here and there.
PS: We don't live in Skopje here. While it is easy to accuse someone publicly of "promoting KKK ideology", when slapped with a libel suit for defamation, the irresponsible party will need to bring along to the court of law some solid proof of that "promotion", or they will have to eat their words like Charlie Chaplin ate his shoes, and we  will make sure we are there to watch it.


POINT C: " If the ancient boundaries of Greece do not coincide with the modern-day Greece's location and size, then the answer should be found in the "unredeemed" Greek territories."

Unlike Bulgaria, Turkey or Yugoslavia, and unlike Britain, Germany, Russia, China, Japan or the USA, not to speak of Canada and Australia, Greece has not taken part in any offensive war ever since 1922. It has in fact lost lands won post WWI and the Treaty of Sevres.The Dodecanese islands, are greek inhabited islands which Italy had won from the Ottomans and were given to Greece as compensation from Italy for all the destruction that Greece suffered during the triple occupation of Italy, Germany and Bulgaria during WWII. Greece has not made any implicit or explicit demands on the lands of any of its neighbors ever since 1922, and if anything, both Yugoslavia and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Makedonija have made numerous land grab claims against Greece. Yugoslavia in the 1940's and '50's, backed up by Yugoslav partisans and armed intervention and mingling in the Greek civil war, and FYROM through its constitution, its irredentist maps, school books, state sponsored publications and  constant propaganda pounding of the Slavomacedonian population about Obedineta Makredonija‏ "United Macedonia", the enslaved motherland of the "ethnic Macedonians" currently "occupied" but the un-Macedonian "Grci".


POINT D: Again on "promoting KKK ideology":
"Your virulent attack on Macedonia, its leadership and people ("The arrest, disappearance and possible murder of a critic of PM Nicola Gruevski in FYROM",
published on July 28. 2009 in the American Chronicle), is nothing less
than an expression of your deep-seated bigotry and hate for the ethnic
Macedonians."


The aforementioned article exposed the Gruevski administration of Stalinist style imprisonment of a vocal opponent of its pseudo-Makedonist campaign, and all of a sudden I stand accused of "promoting KKK ideology"? Very interesting train of thought indeed. I forgot that in Gruevski's VMRO regime there is only:

One people, One nation, One leader: Gruevski! An attack on one, is taken as an attack on all.

What is the German slogan, again?

"Ein Volk, ein Reich, ein Führer!"

An attack on the Führer, is an attack on the Nation! It is obvious that the ones who attack the Führer must be shut into concentration camps and be gased!...Oh, wait, maybe not practical an idea, when your country is a candidate member begging entry into the EU. Change of plans: just lock' em up in the Bardovci psychiatric clinic and drug 'em up with expired psycho drugs. That will do the trick! Send some money to Toronto too, to oil the diaspora propaganda section. We need to have more ideology goons writing this kind of crap. It's crap, alright, but its VMRO-DPMNE supporting, "good" crap:

"Laden with racism and hate, your portrayal of Macedonia and its leadership bristles with heavy inaccuracies."

God forbid if FYROM's "leadership" is portrayed like the cosa nostra Balkanika that it is! One opposition TV channel closed and two opposition newspapers shut down by Gruevski's mafiosi, I mean, police, have not been enough to hush up the growing internal uproar! Who needs external lights on VMRO-DPMNE's heavy handed political control of FYROM's polity!

On another point, speaking of KKK ideology, maybe the Slavomacedonian ultra-nationalist propagandists should look a bit closer to home. In what other country in the world would such a no hands down deleteriously racist and Nazi propaganda would be not only permitted but paid for and promoted by state TV? What would the (non-"Makedonoide-White race" nor even "Negroide race" but a mere "Mulato") current president of the USA think if he was to  watch this hemetic product of Skopje state TV?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dBRoocbMSEE

The translation is included, below the video, but here is a good excerpt, where none other than God himself is speaking on Skopje's national TV, promoting pseudo-Makedonism:

"Divine blessing for you, my Macedonians. I have waited for thousands of years to be called by you. From always with you, from eternity I am coming, I am already among you because here neither time nor space exists. Here, at my place, the time is still. But at your place, the time is now, for me to explain. Your mother Earth I have inhabited with three races: the White-Macedonoids, the Yellow-Mongoloids and the Black-Negroids. The rest-all are mulattoes. From you, Macedonians, the descendants of Macedon, I have impregnated the White race and everything began from you, to the Sea of Japan. All White people are your brothers because they carry Macedonian gene. And all the migrations started from your place towards the north. Kokino, Porodin, Radobor, Angelci, Barutnica, Govrlevo, wherever you dig you shall find the truth who you are, why you are and from where are you. Evil diabolic souls obscured the truth for thousands of years and lied to the world."

Let me repeat the charge: Your virulent attack on Macedonia, its leadership and people... is nothing less than an expression of your deep-seated bigotry and hate for the ethnic Macedonians. 
First of all, there are no ethnic Macedonians. Being a Macedonian myself I am not going to stay idle by while Stefov & Co. refuse me my Makedonism, claiming Macedonia as his exclusive tribal turf, disenfranchising me of my identity and cultural roots. There are not now and there never were an ethnic Macedonian, and the ancient Macedonians sure as hell did not speak Slavic but Greek. Secondly, for someone to accuse me of "...deep-seated bigotry and hate for the.." Slavo-Macedonians, they should produce such manifestation. Our attacks have been merciless but fully justified and they were NEVER AGAINST THE PEOPLE but against the pseudo-Makedonist leadership and propagandists. We respect and love the Slavomacedonians with whom we have never had anything to divide. We throw to the dogs of derision the ultra-nationalist Skopjan pseudo-Makedonists who have brought only hatred, division, political and economic poverty and isolation. As for the "our virulent attack on...(Skopje's pseudo-Makedonist leadership" and to the paid parade of ludicrous apologists, we happily plead guilty as charged: It is our firm belief and conviction that if you love the people you must attack the VMRO-DPMNE party, its central Asian style Makedonbashi Führer and all that the third world misery that they represent!
An attack on the Führer and his Central Asian type heavy handed leadership style and abysmal civil rights record is branded an attack on the Slavomacedonian people!
A question is now being raised. Is our attack on Gruevski's Stalinist methods of locking up its political opponents in psychiatric clinics (our article: "The arrest, disappearance and possible murder of a critic of PM Nicola Gruevski in FYROM"), in the interests of the Slavomacedonian people, or not? If the struggle to free the political future of FYROM and its multi-ethnic society from the cancer that Bukefalist pseudo-Makredonism represents is in the best long term interests of the Slavomacedonian people, which we fervently believe that it is, then by default, the cheerleaders and paid apologists of this fraudulent cult, a cult that has poisoned the political life and ethnic-minority relations as well as the international relations with ALL of Slavomacedonia's neighbors for years to come, these then are the most deleterious enemies of their people, these fanatical, color-blind knaves who treat the Slavomacedonian people as simple blind fools, are the worst enemies of their kin and, and the grave-diggers of the future for the youth of their country.

 POINT E: "The linguistic criteria are not only insufficient to denote ethnic
nuances in the Balkans; they can also be misleading."

"In other words, language does not denote or equate with ethnicity...
To sum it up: "it is identity that counts, not language not blood, not anything else."
As you can see Mr. Boralis, your feet are not resting on a firm ground. In other words, you are walking on thin ice. That usually happens to people who, as you so loudly put it in your article, use lies and distortions. So, it is not the language people speak or write that identifies the person's ethnicity? What about the inscriptions written in Greek that "prove" Alexander's Greek-ness? Which is it?"

It might come as a surprise to some, but the world is not as black and white as their color blind narrow vision and handicapped intellectual capacity might allow. The world is colorful and not everything fits the narrow cookie cutter standards of the less bright.

I know that it sounds like divine wonder to some, but the fact that South Africans and Australians speak the same language does not signify the same ethnicity. Likewise, speaking the same language, Spanish, does not make an Argentinian proud of his Mexicanidad. Are we clear on this?
We move to the next point. A Russian Jew and an Israeli Jew feel as belonging to the same ethnicity despite their ability to converse in the same language, one speaking Russian, or even Yiddish, and the other in Hebrew. A Jew in America may only feel culturally and or religiously Jewish, while the Russian Jew is Jewish in an ethnic sense, and he is legally considered to be a member of an "ethnic minority" by Russian law. He may or may not be religious. An Israeli Jew is ethnically Israeli and he feels Jewish whether he is religious or secular. The same can be said of an Armenian of Greece, of France, of Turkey and of Armenia, Iran, the USA or Russia. He may or may not be religious, he may or may not be speaking Armenian, but if he has an Armenian identity, then he is an Armenian. The ethnic and religious can over the years recede into cultural only and vice versa. A Muslim Slav from Bosnia had never acquired an ethnic identity and many had lost their religious identity that had receded into a cultural identity: Their grandparents were Muslim, so, if asked they would identify themselves as Muslims, and could easily intermarry with Catholic Croats or Orthodox Serbs. After the civil war, most Bosnian Muslims elevated their cultural and religious identity into an ethnic identity and now they even have their own language: Bosnian! You can also call it Serbocroatobosnian, but you may be run over by a nationalist truck or two...or three! Before the Balkan wars and WWI, someone could be a Turkophone Greek in central Anatolia, in Turkey that had lost his Greek language over the years but not his Greek Orthodox religious and cultural and ethnic identity. You could also be a Greek Muslim who spoke perfect Greek, in Macedonia or Thessaly or Crete, but lost your religious and ethnic identity, since being Muslim made someone identify themselves as Turkish. During the exchange of populations between Greece and Turkey, there were Greeks who came to Greece who spoke not a word of Greek and Greek Muslims who left because they identify themselves as Turkish. In Macedonia, and Albania there were bilingual people who could and did switch from one identity to another. I had dinner with a n army friend and his wife in Edessa a few years ago, and my friend's wife told me that her cousin's were coming from Bulgaria to work on the fruit orchards on picking season. Your cousins from Bulgaria? I asked? Were they children of civil war partisans from the 1940's? No...they had left earlier, in the Greek-Bulgarian voluntary population exchange of the 1920's. Momentary puzzlement on my part. That was normal back then, she explained. My grandfather was Greek, but his brother decided that he was a Bulgarian, so he left. Being brothers, they kept in contact. Now the grandchildren have different ethnic identities, this side Greek, that side Bulgarian, and they communicate in English! This was the time when the Exarchists were still calling themselves Bugari, the call for united Makedonija was only being promoted by Bulgarian fascists and the Bulgarian Communist Party and Kriste Misirkov was still debating in front of the mirror as to what to call himself, a simple Bulgarian, or a truest kind of Bulgarian, i.e. a Makedonetch.


POINT F. Did I ever say or write that Philip and Alexander were Greek just because all the ancient inscriptions found in Macedonia written by and intended to be read by the ancient Macedonians were Greek? I am sure I did not. Let me see what I wrote:

"Finally, we have the strongest indication on the ethnicity of the Ancient Macedonians, is their Greek language." Yes, indeed this is correct. The "strongest indication" on what? "...on the ethnicity of the Ancient Macedonians". No Alexander, no Philip involved in this. And I did not say proof either, I said "indication": one indication. You add several  indications and then you have the proof!
For example, you put also the fact that Macedonia and all the countries that Alexander conquered are  full of Greek theaters and this is another indication that the people who went into these Greek theaters were able to understand Aeschylus and Euripides because that is what they would hear in those theaters, not Chinese opera.
The restored Hellenistic theater of Babylon, in Iraq, dating from the time of Alexander
Add to this that the inscriptions to the men of Macedonia for conscription into the army was all written in Coene Greek and then you can see that by the fourth century BC the local Macedonian dialect had recessed to the point that everyone could understand standard Coene Greek. Should we also add that in the Christian bible when we hear of St. Paul visiting Philippoi and Thessaloniki, Apollonia and Berroia he meets Jews and Greeks and never mentions any "ethnic" Makedonci? I suppose this is another indication of the ethnic character of the ancient Macedonians. Should we also add the fact that wherever the Macedonians went, starting from Paeonia and Thrace to Asia Minor, Syria, Egypt, Mesopotamia, Bactria and India, we see the Greek language to be propagating and we see these Macedonians call themselves Macedonians only as a geographic determinant but Greeks in ethnicity? Is the
spread of the Greek language another indication of the language that the ancient Macedonians spoke? Is the fact that Jewish and Sanskrit and Iranian texts mention Greeks when they speak of Alexander's Macedonians? I suppose this is another indication. How about the fact that when Alexander asked that his Persian recruits be taught to fight in the way of the Macedonians and asked to have them learn Greek so that they can join his army...is that possibly an indication too of what language the Macedonian army was using for its commands? After all, the first thing you learn once you decide to join the Foreign Legion, is the French language, n'est-ce pas? Now, when someone lives in France, he speaks French, if he travels the world and he only reads French poetry and asks his friends to send him more French books, his father has been known to be a Frenchman, his mama is a French lady and his great great grandpa was proclaiming to the world that he was French...there is no way that I am going to call this man a Ukrainian. I am sorry, I cannot. I'd say that the better guess is that he is a Frenchman.
Now, we know Alexander had his Homer's Iliad and Odyssey with him all the time, he even had a Persian golden box to keep them in, he orderedGreek poetry and philosophy to be sent to him from Macedonia whilesightseeing and touring in Afghanistan. His father was called the only statement among all the Greeks who has worked for the good of Greece, against the barbarians ("When, therefore, you see the renown which even in a single city is bestowed on men who possess these gifts, what manner of eulogies must you expect to hear spoken of you, when among all the Hellenes you shall stand forth as a statesman who has worked for the good of Hellas, and as a general who has overthrown the barbarians?"Isoc. 5 140), He was also called a no good for nothing barbarian, but also "more Greek than all Greeks", by the same self proclaimed "queer, ill-conditioned fellow", Demosthenes:

308] And as for Philip, why, by Heracles, he was more Greek than all
Greeks, the finest orator and inspeech friendliest than everyone
towards Athens you could find in the whole world. And yet there were
some queer, ill-conditioned fellows in this city who did not blush to
abuse him, and even to call him a barbarian!"

Alexander's mother was Myrtele, a Greek princess from the royal house of Molossoi in Epeirus, who had to change her Greek name Myrtale to the even more Greek Olympias when she married into the Macedonian Royal household. His great great grandfather was Alexandros I, the benefactor of all Greeks, who, through Herodotus relayed to us that:

"Had I not greatly at heart the common welfare of Greece, I should not have come to tell you; but I am myself a Greek by descent, and I would not willingly see Greece exchange freedom for slavery...consider the risk I have run, out of zeal for the Greek cause, to acquaint you with what Mardonius intends, and to save you from being surprised by the barbarians. I am Alexander of Macedon."

"He goes to great pains to convince the reader that Alexander the Great was Greek because the writings on the found artifacts were in the ancient Greek language." I suppose we covered this.

Now:

"The fact that neither Philip nor Alexander the Great ever claimed to
be Greek or to have Greek consciousness is simply immaterial to him."

Let's read:

"While Alexander was in the region, a prophecy is said to have
occurred. A fountain near Xanthos suddenly welled up of its own accord
and threw out a bronze tablet inscribed with archaic letters
announcing the overthrow of the Persian Empire by the Greeks."

I read this in a Turkish web site:
http://www.exploreturkey.com/exptur.phtml?id=199 
Nobody could accuse the Turks of firebrand Philhellenism. So, then, if Alexander was, let's say a Proto-Slav Makedonskiot...why on earth would he be

"[3] Encouraged by this prophecy, Alexander hastened to clear up the seacoast as far as
Cilicia and Phoenicia." ?

Let us read again this prophesy which made Alexander be so encouraged:

"Now, there is in Lycia, near the city of Xanthus, a spring, which at
this time, as we are told, was of its own motion upheaved from its
depths, and overflowed, and cast forth a bronze tablet bearing the
prints of ancient letters, in which it was made known that the empire
of the Persians would one day be destroyed by the Greeks
and come to
an end. " 
Plutarch Alexander 17.2

Let me just say this: If I were Aleksandar Makedonskiot the ProtoSlav Czar of the Slavomakedonci and heard that "the Persians would one day be destroyed by the Greeks ", I not  depressed!...not encouraged...I would have called it quits and turned the army back! Why waste my time!...if it was to be the Greeks who would destroy the empire of the Persians? Now, one more tiny point.
Why did Alexander say "Alexandros Philippou and the Hellenes..."? Does this mean that pseudo-Makedonism's "Aleksandar Makedonskiot" forgot to take his "ethnic Makedonci" to the Granicus river battle? He obviously did not mean to say that his Makedonci were Greeks... did he? He did not mean to say that he had won that great battle against the Persian satraps with ALL the Greeks, INCLUDING his Macedonians...or did he?
 Let's see again:

‘Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Φιλίππου καὶ οἱ Ἕλληνες πλὴν Λακεδαιμονίων 
ἀπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων τῶν τὴν Ἀσίαν κατοικούντων’ 
‘Alexander the son of Philip and all the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians 
from the Barbarians who dwell in Asia.’
Yeah...that's a tough one all right...We can't say that Risto did not try...He gave it all he had: "The fact that neither Philip nor Alexander the Great ever claimed to be Greek or to have Greek consciousness...". Talk is cheap. 
"Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Φιλίππου καὶ οἱ Ἕλληνες πλὴν Λακεδαιμονίων
Alexander the son of Philip and all the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians", but including the Macedonians is PRICELESS!
We don't feel any sympathy for the poor trickster.. He and his kind are used to academic derision. They write whatever their glava comes down with, they throw some chopped up ancient quote to try to make the ancient Macedonians seem like they were not Greek, and then they wait. If nobody answers their nonsense, they are happy. If someone does, they hush up. They move to the nest issue. Being slapped around by truth and historical documentation is part and parcel of a normal day's job for a Skopjan propagandist and they are well adapted to the fact. It's like being a fake money printer. they print a lot of money, mostly in large denominations...the bigger the lie the more believable. if they are not caught, they keep on printing more. If they are caught, they stop but they continue as soon as they can, because this is the only thing they know how to do. You can't teach an old dog new tricks. Whatever the Titoists learned in the Stalinist school or falsification, the Skopjans applied and still apply feverishly till today.

Do they need to see a video where Philip and Alexander proclaim themselves to be Greek, to be convinced? There is none. All you need to do is read the sources. If you cannot read the sources, then go here:
http://macedonia-evidence.org/ , and read the opinion of Academics world wide.
But even if ancient videos had been found, Tendov and Boshevski would still invent more Rosetta stones with Demotic Egyptian read as proto-Slavic "Makedonski" in them, Stefov and Odisej Belchevski would invent pre-historic Slavomacedonski Homeric bards that taught that wretched Homer the ABC's of poetry and Aleksandar Donski would invent pseudo-Slavic words for every Greek, Thracian, Illyrian or Latin name ever found in Macedonia.

To end this, I would try to play the devil's advocate. Would the finding of a Slavonic inscription in Macedonia in any script, be it Egyptian, Chinese, Aramaic, Phoenician, Greek or Latin, produced in the years before the descent of the Slavs, of any time before Byzantium, that is, Roman, Hellenistic or Classic or Archaic eras of Macedonia, would this SINGLE inscription containing a proto-Slavic message be heralded as proof that the ancient Macedonians were not Greeks but Slavs? We are being reasonable here. We filled a page of "strong indications" why we believe the Macedonians were Greek. All we ask is for ONE tiny little inscription. What do we have instead? The fraudulent invention of an inscription by two pseudo-scientists on the Rosseta stone, a document that has been translated and scrutinized for almost two hundred years now, making internationally acclaimed bufoons out of the two Electrical engineering professors. And who can forget the notorious pseudo-linguist cum pseudo-historian, Aleksandar Donski, the one who found George W. Bush, and half of the US presidents to date plus Queen Elizabeth of England to be "Makedonci" descendants of Alexander the Great, the one who invents fraudulent pseudo-Slavonic etymologies fooling his nations' youth into a dead alley pseudo-archaist identity. What about the restauranteur-turned paleographer, Wasil Iliov, the charlatan who can read Slavonic Makedonski in every rock inscription south of the Danube...

And are we to accept that the deceptive delusions fabricated by the above named state paid charlatans have the same validity as thousands of Greek inscriptions exception of the several hundred Latin one after the Roman occupation), over 95% of them with Greek names (a few with Thracian or Paeonian ones), are we to say...that they mean nothing?

If a hypothetical catastrophe hits a country, say Holland tomorrow and all that is left for the archaeologist of the future, by which to make a determination of what was the ethnic identity (since identity is a personal issue, and not written in front of the house or place of work of each individual), what should we guess that they will say? he will fins some inscriptions or books in Englishem, German, French, even some Arabic or even Chinese, and some Russian, but the 95 % will be in Dutch. Will such future archaeologist be credible to come to the conclusion that the inhabitants of Holland in the 21st century were Hindus or Iranians?


POINT G: "Instead of disseminating worn-out propaganda lines and attempting to buy and collect new "converts" to your failed political goals you should advise, since you claim to be in that business, your leaders..."

Let me understand this now. I am "buying" converts? And...what exactly is "that business" which I "claim to be in"? I don't know what kind of deals Stefov Inc. is involved in, but some of us happen to work for a living. What we write is out of conviction, not profit. Unlike others, across the table, whatever we write is free in the public domain. And no, we have no money floating around to "buy" converts. After all, we do not run any kind of Buccephalist cult in need of converts. Do not judge others by your contact, in other words. We are all about truth and historical accuracy. Nothing else! And we are not known for showing mercy to pseudo-intellectual frauds.

Charlatans beware! Identity fraud will be relentlessly exposed to derision!

The circus with the clowns and the tigers jumping through the fire circles can be spectacular for some time but you cannot build a stable national identity based on Pharaohnic size statues and pseudo-science. I am sorry to bring an owl to Athena, as the ancient saying goes, but the middle section on the Rosetta stone, despite Tendov and Boshevski's ludicrous claims is not Slavic, but Demotic Egyptian. I am terribly sorry to be the bearer of bad news, but the ancient Macedonians spoke a Greek dialect, not any kind of proto-Slavo-Makedonski. Read Nicholas G.L. Hammond, read Eugene Borza, read Ian Worthington, read R.Malcolm Errington, tehre might be dissagreements as to when the Macedonians started speaking Standard Coene Greek, but everyone agrees that their original dialect was a mix of Aeolian and Northwest Greek. I am sorry to remind the Slavomacedonian youth of this, while it is a prerogative of anyone to chose when their previous ethnic identity does not meet their current existence, it is not a crime to say, that their grandparents spoke Bulgarian and thought of themselves as Bugari, or that their Grandparents were Greek and Latin speaking Vlachs even if themselves do not speak those languages any longer, and feel more of Slavic identity nowdays. That is fine. Untold millions of Canadians, Americans, South Africans or Australians have been through that same transformation, and many are now immensely proud of their ethnic mix. And yes, Greeks and Turks, both former imperial nations have had a lot of other nations adopt their identity. A quick comparison between a Greek and a Turk of the Aegean coast will make it apparent that their DNA is not that different, while a comparison of the facial characteristics of Turks from the Aegean coast with Turks from Central Asia will immediately prove that Anatolian Turks are basically Islamized Greeks, Armenians and to a smaller degree Slavs. I doubt that the average Turk cares for this. They feel a strong connection to the very Mongolian-looking Uygur in Xinjiang, the original Turks, who revolted recently against the Han Chinese. It is ok to say that there were Paeonians and Greek speaking Macedonians as well as Ilyrians and Thracians living in those lands in antiquity.Iit is ok to say that FYROM was a Greek speaking and Latin speaking territory before the Slabs showed up in Byzantine times. If it is ok for the Canadians, the Australians the Americans to say that their grandparents met indigenous populations when they arrived 200 to 500 years ago, it is perfectly ok I believe for the young Slavomacedonians to learn that more than a twelve hundred years ago, when the Brijaci and Draguvites and the other Slavonic tribes showed up, there were indeed Greek and Latin speaking Byzantines in this land and they did not simply disappear in thin air, many are still there, making up the ethnic mix of the country. No it is not all right to avoid the basic historic truth and create imbecile myths and make the children that they are basically Makedonci, who lost half of Macedonia to the hated Greeks. It is not ok to parade the Slavomacedonian youth in pseudo-Macedonian-phalangites apparel, making a carnival circus out of them.

The ones who criticize and expose the fraudulent pseudo-Makedonist myths of the VMRO-DPMNE regime and its well-paid apologists worldwide, do not show hatred towards the people of FYROM. The truth makes you stronger, the lies make you weak and vulnerable. A strong identity that can last into the future can only be built on truth, otherwise, and someone does not need a Cassandra, to be told of this, FYROM;'s population will start splitting in their component parts. Yugoslavia did not look anywhere as vulnerable, when I was growing up, yet it took its place in history books as a failed experiment.

Instead of crying and screaming and trying to make their critics as ethnic haters and KKKmen, the apologists of pseudo-Makedonism should consider starting an ethnic Glashnost, an opening up of a national debate as to where they stand and where they want to be 10, 20, 50, 200 years from now.

If anyone is perpetrating a crime against the Slavomacedonian youth, it is those who make a living selling books that promote pseudo-Makedonism and feed it with ethnogonetic myths which cannot stand to any serious academic scrutiny. I am sorry to personalize this but it is obvious that the likes of Donski and Gandeto, Stefov and Kuzman cannot be part of such a renaissance. People who have been tainted with lies and deception, cannot possibly be part of the solution. Ljupco Georgievski is the only exception to the rule, having been a Makedonist in his youth but moving towards a rapprochement with his family's Bulgarian identity. While there are many in FYROM who would be ready to shed Makedonism for Bulgarism, that might in fact create more problems and ethnic splits than solve the overall identity problem in FYROM. Things are not easy, but covering the issues under the rug is not the way to proceed either. First of all, not all Slavomacedonian speaking citizens are of Bulgarian ancestry and who can convince a Vlach or a Torbeshi that they are now Bulgarians?

It is obvious that FYROM cannot stay in limbo in eternity. Something has to give in. To begin with, the Makedonist ultra-nationalists might as well come to terms with reality and forget about grand schemes of Obedineta Makedonija, of taking over northern Greece's historic Macedonia and Bulgaria's Pirin region. Secondly, who says that an ethnically limiting name has to be applied to a state that is a multi-ethnic conglomerate of multiple nationalities in the model of ex-Yugoslavia? Additionally they have to realize that no matter how many countries recognize an inexact name for FYROM, it is obvious by now, after some 20 odd years of tug of war that they cannot get what they want. No government in Greece, no matter how strong or weak will commit suicide in the hands of the two million Macedonian Greeks if it dares compromise on the wrong side of the name issue and gives in to FYROM. The solution, therefore, needs to be one which cannot be negotiated by the builders of bronze equestrian Buccephalist sculptures and godfathers of Philippian stadia and Alexandrian highways.


FINAL THOUGHT:
Until now, they had thought that time is on their side. More and more countries were recognizing FYROM under its pseudonym ROM, and they had thought that the issue will fade into a solution in their favor. Two NATO summits later, the EU doors shut closed and an increasingly restive Albanian minority unwilling to put up with all this nonsense, plus the fact that Greece is bound to have weak governments for some time to come, therefore unable to compromise and be sen as traitor to long term Hellenic national interests and now the bleak realization is finally sinking in:

Time is not on Gruevski's pseudo-Makedonist side after all.

FURTHER REFERENCES:
Bibliography and articles found in: http://macedonianissues.blogspot.com/

Clarifying Plutarch's "Parallel Lives" on Alexander and the Macedonians - Part 4


Miltiades Elia Bolaris
July 24, 2011
This article is being simultaneously published in the American Chronicle - Το παρόν άρθρο εμφανίζεται ταυτόχρονα καί στο Αμερικανικό διαδυκτιακό περιοδικό Αμερικανικά Χρονικά / Αμέρικαν Κρόνικλ: 
( http://www.americanchronicle.com/articles/view/244414 )

If there was ever an instance in world history where life imitated art in a theatrical setting appropriately set for the act, it would have to be Aescylus' Agamemnon true-to-the-script re-enactment in that fateful summer day of 336BC. The stage for the drama had been carefully and lavishly prepared and choreographed. Philip son of Amyntas, king of the Macedonians, Tagos of the Thessalians, Hegemon of the Greek cities of the Common Peace, was ready to enter the stage of the theater of Aegai, the revered ceremonial old capital of Macedonia.

The October festivities were underway, and Philip had invited dignitaries from all around the Greek world to be entertained and impressed at his achievements. Part of the festivities was also an important family celebration: Philip was wedding one of his daughters, Cleopatra, Alexander the Great's sister, to Alexandros, king of the Molossians, of Epeirus.

Χορός
Ἰλίῳ δὲ κῆδος ὀρθ-
ώνυμον τελεσσίφρων
μῆνις ἤλασεν...
Chorus
To Ilium, its purpose fulfilling,
Wrath brought a marriage 

rightly named a mourning...
Aescylus, Agamemnon, 700

The first day passed with sacrifices and the wedding ceremonies being followed by banquets well into the night.

Κασάνδρα
ἰὼ γάμοι γάμοι Πάριδος ὀλέθριοι φίλων....
Cassandra
Ah, the marriage, the marriage of Paris, that destroyed his friends!
Aescylus, Agamemnon, 1156

The procession started with the entry into the theater of the statues of the twelve Olympian gods, followed by a statue of Philip, a deified king, the descendant of Hercules, being a son of the Argaead dynastic family himself.

Κασάνδρα
μισόθεον μὲν οὖν, πολλὰ συνίστορα
αὐτόφονα κακὰ καρατόμα,
ἀνδροσφαγεῖον καὶ πεδορραντήριον.
Cassandra
No, no, rather to a god-hating house,
a house that knows many a horrible butchery of kin,
a slaughter-house of men and a floor swimming with blood.
Aescylus, Agamemnon, 1090

The king's Hetaeroi, his Companions, entered the theater stage first, led by the crown prince, Alexander, son of Philip. They took their seats at the front row. Seven of the king's hypaspists, his bodyguards, followed next. Philip then made his solemn entry into the theater's orchestra, alone, dressed in a white chiton. He stopped at the center of the stage. Suddenly, Pausanias, one of his own bodyguards broke ranks from the others and ran towards Philip, dagger outstretched, and mortally stabbed him.

Ἀγαμέμνων
ὤμοι, πέπληγμαι καιρίαν πληγὴν ἔσω.
AGAMEMNON.
Ah me! I am struck -- a right-aimed stroke within me!
Aescylus, Agamemnon,

The spectators were dumbfounded. This could NOT be happening!

Χορός
σῖγα: τίς πληγὴν ἀυτεῖ καιρίως οὐτασμένος;
CHOROS.
Silence! Who is it shouts "stroke" -- "right-aimedly" a wounded one?
Aescylus, Agamemnon

Ἀγαμέμνων
ὤμοι μάλ᾽ αὖθις, δευτέραν πεπληγμένος.
AGAMEMNON.
Ah me! indeed again, -- a second, struck by!
Aescylus, Agamemnon, 1345

Philip had been mortally wounded. He died instantly, right in the middle of the orchestra.

Χορός
τοὔργον εἰργάσθαι δοκεῖ μοι βασιλέως οἰμώγμασιν.
ἀλλὰ κοινωσώμεθ᾽ ἤν πως ἀσφαλῆ βουλεύματα.
CHOROS.
This work seems to me completed by this "Ah me" of the king's;
But we somehow may together share in solid counsellings.
Aescylus, Agamemnon

There was commotion, some guardsmen ran towards the collapsing king while others run to catch Pausanias, the assassin.

—ἐγὼ μὲν ὑμῖν τὴν ἐμὴν γνώμην λέγω,
πρὸς δῶμα δεῦρ᾽ ἀστοῖσι κηρύσσειν βοήν.—
I, in the first place, my opinion tell you:
To cite the townsmen, by help-cry, to house here.
Aescylus, Agamemnon

Pausanias ran towards the place where the horses had been left (more than one horse, it was obviously a conspiracy), but triped on a vine and fell. Perdiccas, Attalos and Leonnatos caught up with him. He was killed on the spot.

—ἐμοὶ δ᾽ ὅπως τάχιστά γ᾽ ἐμπεσεῖν δοκεῖ
καὶ πρᾶγμ᾽ ἐλέγχειν σὺν νεορρύτῳ ξίφει.—
To me, it seems we ought to fall upon them
At quickest -- prove the fact by sword fresh-flowing!
Aescylus, Agamemnon, 1350

The army gathered on the spot, Homer's λαός/laos, the citizens in arms, congregated to decide and vote. Antipatros called the assembly and he presided. Alexandros Lyncestis, son of Aeropos, was the first to shout out whom he proposed to be the new king. It could as well have been Amyntas, son of king Perdiccas, Philip's nephew, the more legitimate claimant to the throne, since he had already been a child king before Philip deposed him. He was a few years senior to Alexander, and though he was wise enough to never challenge Philip, with Philip now gone he saw his chance. Many Macedonians saw their chance to align their fate with Amyntas too. The assembly could be persuaded to vote either way.

—κἀγὼ τοιούτου γνώματος κοινωνὸς ὢν
ψηφίζομαί τι δρᾶν: τὸ μὴ μέλλειν δ᾽ ἀκμή.—
And I, of such opinion the partaker,
Vote -- to do something: not to wait -- the main point!
Aescylus, Agamemnon

The fate of the kingdom and, looking at events in retrospect, the fate of the future history of the world hung on the decision of the Macedonian laos, the men under arms, assembled at Aegai. They had to decide right there and then whom they would vote to be their king. Alexandros Lyncestis was the first to cry a name:

Αλέξανδρος Φιλίππου - Alexandros Philippou – Alexander, son of Philip!

The Army's thunderous approval came in the form of thousands of long pike sarissas clanging against the shields. Alexandros Lyncestis was the first to put on his breastplate as he escorted Philip's twenty year old son to the palace. Macedonia had a new king: Alexander III, son of Philip - Alexandros Philippou.

—χρονίζομεν γάρ. οἱ δὲ τῆς μελλοῦς κλέος
πέδοι πατοῦντες οὐ καθεύδουσιν χερί.—
For we waste time; while they, - this waiting's glory
Treading to ground, - allow the hand no slumber.
Aescylus, Agamemnon

Alexandros Lyncestis' two brothers were soon executed as accomplices of Pausanias, while Alexandros Lyncestis himself not only saved his life but enjoyed for years to come the new king's favor. Attalos, Philip's friend and one of the commanders of the expedition army in Asia, at the time, came in contact with Demosthenes in Athens. Demosthenes swiftly received 300 talents of gold from Darius of Persia, to use not only for his person but also to bribe other politicians and rouse dissension against the new Macedonian king. Attalos, who had crossed Alexander only recently, was eliminated. Olympias found her opportunity to kill Attalos's niece Cleopatra and her little baby girl, Alexander's half sister, infuriating Alexander: females were never to be touched, in Macedonian royal family fratricidal murdering sprees, while males were always seen as potential threat to the king. Not only the pretender but his brothers, cousins and male children had to be eliminated.

"However, he did seek out the participants in the plot and punished them, and was angry with Olympias for her savage treatment of Cleopatra"
Plutarch, Alexander 10.4

While Attalos was being eliminated, Parmenion, on the other hand, and his sons were given virtual control of the army. His sons became commanders in both the phalanx and the cavalry. Amyntas, the pretender lost not only his life but all his male relatives, cousins of Alexander, were put under the knife. Antipater, on the other hand, the presiding head of the people's assembly that sided with Alexander was given virtually unlimited control over Macedonia in the kings absence. His son Cassandros became king of Macedonia, after Alexander's death, marrying Alexander's half sister, Thessaloniki in the process.

The circle of ruthless punishment of disloyalty on the one hand and accommodation and incorporation into the inner circle of beneficial acceptance on the other, was opening up.

The Triballoi, the Getaoi, the Illyrians and other Balkan tribesmen who resisted Alexander's striking invasion of the Balkan tribal lands were smashed and their cities burned. Langaros, the Paionian king of the Agrianes, on the other hand, who subdued the Autariatae, on Alexander's behalf, was offered the hand of Alexander's sister, making him part of the family.

Further south, we already saw Alexander, practicing moderation and avoiding unnecessary strife whenever possible by offering reasonable terms and amnesty to the revolting Thebans. He had only asked them to give up two of their anti-Macedonian leaders, and return to the Common Peace alliance. It was only after their refusal, and their insulting slurs to his person that Alexander unleashed his attack on them and made an example of political terror out of the destruction of Thebes.
Like another Philip or another Cyrus the Great, Alexander always sought accommodation and only when met with force and insult he would make an example out of his opponents destruction.
Continuing the same "carrot and stick" policy, by destroying Thebes he sent a message to all other Greeks who had signed into the Common Peace: If you go against me, you face destruction while if you join me, you get my gratitude and benevolence.
He gladly allowed his Central Greek allies to partake in the spoils of victory against Thebes whose revolt he:

"quite properly, treated"..."as an infringement of the Common Peace and handed over the decision about the fate of Thebes to the representatives of the allies" (J.R. Hamilton, "Alexander the Great", University of Pittsburgh, 1973, pg 49).

They decided for wholesale destruction. By condoning their decision allowing the destruction of Thebes he also strengthened the Phocian and Boeotian enemies of Thebes who had assisted him. Thebes we need not forget was itself a Boeotian city, and the other Boeotians were the Thebans' closest kin:

"This was done, in the main, because Alexander expected that the Greeks would be terrified by so great a disaster and cower down in quiet, but apart from this, he also plumed himself on gratifying the complaints of his allies; for the Phocians and Plataeans had denounced the Thebans."
Plutarch, Alexander 11.5

While he let all other Thebans to be sold into slavery, did not touch

"all who were guest-friends of the Macedonians"
Plutarch Alexander 11.6,

Right after he destroyed Thebes, he surprised the Athenians, rewarding them for staying on the sidelines, though their sympathies were obviously not with him:

"Furthermore, he was reconciled with the Athenians, although they showed exceeding sorrow at the misfortunes of Thebes;"
Plutarch Alexander 13.1

The carrot and the stick policy was a constant in Alexander's treatment of his perceived enemies, for he always strove to turn enemies into allies. Speaking of Athens, Plutarch explains us Alexander's motives. Here it Plutarch:

2] ἀλλ᾽ εἴτε μεστὸς ὢν ἤδη τὸν θυμὸν, ὥσπερ οἱλέοντες, εἴτε ἐπιεικὲς ἔργον ὠμοτάτῳ καὶ
σκυθρωποτάτῳ παραβαλεῖν βουλόμενος, οὐμόνον ἀφῆκεν αἰτίας πάσης, ἀλλὰ καὶ
προσέχειν ἐκέλευσε τοῖς πράγμασι τὸν νοῦντὴν πόλιν, ὡς, εἴ τι συμβαίη περὶ αὐτὸν,
ἄρξουσαν τῆς Ἑλλάδος.

2] But notwithstanding this, whether his rage was now sated, as a lion's might be, or whether he wished to offset a deed of the most sullen savagery with one that was merciful, he not only remitted all his charges against the city, but even bade it give good heed to its affairs, since, if anything should happen to him, it would have the rule over Greece.
Plutarch, Alexander 13.2

A good teacher of Macedonian history, when faced with students that are unable or unwilling to grasp the basics of that era, and keep on emphasizing Alexander's imaginary hatred against the other Greeks and the Athenians in particular, should require of such students to repeat a hundred times on the blackboard the following sentence, in the Attic Greek of Alexander the Great's original proclamation:

ἀλλὰ καὶ
προσέχειν ἐκέλευσε τοῖς πράγμασι τὸν νοῦν
τὴν πόλιν, ὡς, εἴ τι συμβαίη περὶ αὐτὸν,
ἄρξουσαν τῆς Ἑλλάδος.

Little Josif was never blessed with having such a teacher. It is no wonder that little Josif grew up to become a champion of Yugoslav pseudo-Makedonism and a leading history falsifier in his own right. Having, moreover, the misfortune of having being educated in Skopje, and not in Thessaloniki, for example, he was cut off from any contact with the language the ancient Macedonians spoke. Feeling his plight, here below we offer the English translation of Alexander 's (Hegemon of the Greeks and king of the Macedonians) thoughts on Athens, as relayed by Plutarch in the preceding quote:

"but even bade it (i.e. Athens) give good heed to its affairs, since, if anything should happen to him, it would have the rule over Greece."

All the examples above betray an unfaltering consistency in Alexander's reactions in relation to others. Depending on the situation, it was always black or white with him: he either distributed carrots or he resorted to using the stick. As for the Thebans, he did not keep a grudge for long either. It was always politics and policy that mattered to him:

"And there was not a Theban of those that survived who afterwards came to him with any request and did not get what he wanted from him."
Plutarch, Alexander 13.3

Alexander's next step was political. Philip his, father had been the first man in history to unify the Greeks. Despite "the intricate problems of the Greek city-states in the Classical period, with their almost constant strife and internecine conflicts...", professor Eugene Borza tells us that:

"The Greeks had managed to keep the Persian menace away from the Greek mainland but just barely, and had not yet begun to fulfill what Droysen later conceived as their historical mission. Eventually, however, Philip of Macedon appeared."
Eugene N. Borza's introduction: "An introduction to Alexander Studies" in "Alexander the Great" by Ulrich Wilcken, English translation, 1967

Philip II was the man who highhandedly brought all the Greek city states of southern Greece, i.e. geographic Hellas (but not those of Sicily, Magna Graecia, Ionia, the Pontus, etc) under one political and military umbrella.

Philip, N.G.L. Hammond explains us,
"decided to create the "Greek Community" (to koinon ton Hellenon), in which the states would swear to keep the peace among themselves, maintain existing constitutions, permit changes only by constitutional methods, and combine in action against any violator of the "Common Peace", whether internal or external."
"The Genius of Alexander the Great", N.G.L. Hammond, The University of South Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1997, pg. 20

If someone had to think in modern international terms, we can think of Philip's role after the battle of Chaeronea, as similar to that of the United States in setting the political and military affairs of Europe after defeating Germany and her allies at the end of WWII, in setting up NATO and helping usher in the EU. The similarities, to me, are quite astonishing, much more than the usually quoted but not so close similarities drawn between Athens vs Sparta during the Peloponnesian war and the US vs the USSR in the cold war. Yet I never heard or read anyone pointing them out. This is why I find the study of ancient Greek history so amazing. It never ceases on surprising us with the political analogies and the lessons it can teach a student of the modern world. But let us return to Nicholas Hammond describing Philip's work:

"The Council was a sovereign body: its decisions were sent to the states for implementation, not for discussion."
"The Genius of Alexander the Great", N.G.L. Hammond, The University of South Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1997, pg. 20

No wonder the Greek city state narrow minded nationalists were screaming "foul" against Macedonian infringements on the "liberties of the Greeks". All they were actually proclaiming was the right to kill, rape and enslave each other, basically, something that Macedon stopped or tried to stop once and for all. This fratricidal nationalism of the city states is what led to Greek defeat in the hands of Rome who played Greek state against Greek state like puppets in a puppet theater, then enslaved them all, having first eliminated Macedonia.

"The military forces and the naval forces at the disposal of the common Council were defined: the former amounted to 15,000 cavalry and 200,000 infantry, and the number of warships , which si not stated in our sources, was later to be 160triremes, manned by crews totalling some 30,000 men. Thus the Greek Community far outdid the Macedonian State in the size of the forces it could deploy."
"The Genius of Alexander the Great", N.G.L. Hammond, The University of South Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1997, pg. 20

Then, further down:

"The brilliance of Philip's political initiative, power of persuasion and effective leadership is obvious. He brought into being the combination of a newly created Greek State, self-standing and self-governing, and a Macedonian State which was unrivaled in military power. If that combination should succeed in liberating the Greek cities in Asia and in acquiring extensive territory, it would provide a cure for many of the troubles of the Greek world."

This is exactly what Isocrates the great Athenian in birth but Philhellenic and Panhellenic in outlook political writer had proposed to Philip:

μέλλω γάρ σοι συμβουλεύειν προστῆναι τῆς τε
τῶν Ἑλλήνων ὁμονοίας καὶ τῆς ἐπὶ τοὺς
βαρβάρους στρατείας:

16] For I am going to advise you to champion the cause of concord among the Hellenes and of a campaign against the barbarian;
Isocrates, To Philip, 5.16

And why was Isocrates the Athenian writing to Philip of Macedonia? Long before writing to Philip, long before Philip was even born, Isocrates, now an old man in his '90's, had started composing his Panygeric speech, which he published in 380BC. Philip was still a two year old baby, and Isocrates was writing trying to persuade the Athenians and the Spartans to stop fighting each other and to join forces under Athenian leadership to attack the Persian empire. Disappointed by them he turned to anyone who would listen, including the Thessalian tyrant Jason of Pherrai and finally Philip, the nemesis of his own city state, Athens:

129] Well, if I were trying to present this matter to any others before having broached it to my own country, which has thrice  freed Hellas—twice from the barbarians and once from the Lacedaemonian (note: the Gandetoists and the Stefovists will rise up now and argue that the lacedaemonians, i.e. the Spartans were not Greek) yoke—I should confess my error. In truth, however, it will be found that I turned to Athens first of all and endeavored to win her over to this cause with all the earnestness of which my nature is capable, but when I perceived that she cared less for what I said than for the ravings of the platform orators, I gave her up, although I did not abandon my efforts.

Athens, in other words, was too tied up in her own struggle for supremacy over other Greeks though she lacked the means by then to achieve it. She was following the whims of her demagogues, immersed in petty squabbling, unable to see beyond Athenian city state nationalism, unwilling to grasp and accept Isocrates' Panhellenic ideas of war against the barbarian periphery. Isocrates never gave up though:

130] Wherefore I might justly be praised on every hand, because throughout my whole life I have constantly employed such powers as I possess in warring on the barbarians, in condemning those who opposed my plan, and in striving to arouse to action whoever I think will best be able to benefit the Hellenes in any way or to rob the barbarians of their present prosperity.

So, he turned to Philip, who, unlike and beyond any other Greek leader of his time, being a king of Macedonia, in a Homeric, almost absolute sense, Philip had few political restrictions, and additionally, he had seemingly unlimited wealth and power:

15] σοὶ δὲ μόνῳ πολλὴν ἐξουσίαν ὑπὸ τῆςτύχης δεδομένην...
καὶ πλοῦτον καὶ δύναμιν κεκτημένον ὅσην οὐδεὶς τῶν Ἑλλήνων, 
ἃ μόνατῶν ὄντων καὶ πείθειν καὶ βιάζεσθαι πέφυκεν:
ὧν οἶμαι καὶ τὰ ῥηθησόμενα προσδεήσεσθαι.

15] while you and you alone had been granted by fortune free scope...
you, beyond any of the Hellenes, were possessed of both wealth and power, 
which are the only things in the world that are adapted at once to persuade 
and to compel; and these aids, I think, even the cause which I shall propose 
to you will need to have on its side.
Isocrates, To Philip, 5.15

From Isocrates we now take an abysmal meteoric plunge to the level of a Gandeto:

"From the writings of the ancient chronographers and biographers one can not possibly squeeze Greekness for the ancient Macedonians without corrupting the text. The amount of evidence is simply insurmountable and the weight of the proof too overwhelming. This should be a clear signal to anyone who attempts to manipulate the extant texts."

Here is the text, from someone who, unlike Demosthenes, had the WHOLE of Greece in mind, the Philhellene, Panhellenist Isocrates:

70] αἰσθάνῃ δὲ τὴν Ἑλλάδα πᾶσαν ὀρθὴν οὖσ
ανἐφ᾽ οἷς σὺ τυγχάνεις εἰσηγούμενος,

70] you will see all Hellas on tiptoe with interest in whatever you happen to propose;

He is Isocrates attaching Demosthenes, in support of Philip:

73] I observe that you are being painted in false colors by men who are jealous of you... and are...stirring up trouble in their own cities—men who look upon a state of peace which is for the good of all as a state of war upon their selfish interests...they keep talking about your power, representing that it is being built up, not in behalf of Hellas, but against her...

By speaking this rubbish...(they) are so far divorced from intelligence that they do not realize that...if, on the other hand, one should bring this charge against one of the descendants of Heracles, who made himself the benefactor of all Hellas, he would bring upon him the greatest opprobrium.
Isoc. 5 73-76

Isocrates urged Philip to be a presiding, military leader of a king, like the Spartans:

80] ... you fix your choice upon the kind of policy by which you can make yourself trusted by the Hellenes and feared by the barbarians - ...ἐξ ὧν τοῖς μὲν Ἕλλησιν ἔσει πιστός, τοῖς δὲ
βαρβάροις φοβερός.

Here is Gandeto, unabated:

"If ancient Greeks themselves did not see the ancient Macedonians as brethren; if ancient Macedonians have amply and irrevocably demonstrated their uniqueness and distinctiveness from the ancient Greeks, if..."

If "the Macedonian king Alexander the Great himself" came down from his 60 ft tall bronze statue in the middle of Skopje and told the Slavomacedonian history falsifiers that he was no barbarian, but a Greek king, like his father Philip and his mother Olympias, he would still not be able to convince those Titoist-trained hard headed yugoslavs. As it happens though, bronze statues do not talk, though they can make a powerful impression to the untrained, the brainwashed and uneducated.

Isocrates was hoping that Philip would be able to peacefully persuade the Greek city states to follow the Macedonian king and make the Panhellenic expedition to Asia:

83] ...regarding the course which you should take toward the Hellenes, perhaps no more need be said. But as to the expedition against Asia, we shall urge upon the cities which I have called upon you to reconcile that it is their duty to go to war with the barbarians, only when we see that they have ceased from discord.

He hoped that the Greek against Greek quarreling would be cured, and saw the power of Macedonia as the catalyst to achieve just that:

88] ... it is easy to draw the lesson that those who would take sane counsel must not begin a war against the King until someone has composed the quarrels of the Hellenes and has cured them of the madness which now afflicts them. And this is just what I have advised you to do.

In fact, he assured Philip, even if the states were too weak to help, he could still find tens of thousands of homeless and stateless Greeks eager to fight along the Macedonians as mercenaries:

96] Besides, you will find as many soldiers at your service as you wish, for such
 is now the state of affairs in Hellas that it is easier to get together a greater and stronger army from among those who wander in exile than from those who live under their own polities.

115] ...And mark that I am summoning you to an undertaking in which you will make expeditions, not with the barbarians against men who have given you no 
just cause, but with the Hellenes against those upon whom it is fitting that the descendants of Heracles should wage war.

I cannot help myself but think of Gandeto's words. The man can be so right, on occasion:

"Just a phrase or a jest, is enough to expose one´s real character. It has been amply demonstrated before that one cannot count to reach higher grounds on borrowed time. One cannot suppress and distort the truth for long by simply resorting to manipulation of the ancient text."

Here is the ancient text again:

" ἀλλὰ μετὰ τῶνἙλλήνων ἐπὶ τούτους πρὸς οὓς προσήκει 
τοὺς ἀφ᾽Ἡρακλέους γεγονότας πολεμεῖν.

but with the Hellenes against those upon whom it is fitting 
that the descendants of Heracles (i.e. The Macedonians) should wage war."

Isocrates was telling Philip to forget his barbarian Thracians or Agrianians and to take Greeks allies only to go liberate the Asian Greeks then move to conquer Asian lands up to Halys river (in the middle of what is now Turkey, in order to settle the surplus Greek population there and solve the social and political problems of Greece. He knew that this could not be achieved by any of the narrow minded city state politicians of his time, but only a Panhellenist, a Philhellene politician someone that saw the greater good of all of Greece, someone who loved the Whole of Hellas more than his particular Athens, Sparta , Thebes of Macedonia:

122] It is therefore the duty of a man who is high-minded, who is a lover of Hellas, who has a broader vision than the rest of the world, to employ these bands in a war against the barbarians, to strip from that empire all the territory which I defined a moment ago, to deliver these homeless wanderers from the ills by which they are afflicted and which they inflict upon others, to collect them into cities, and with these cities to fix the boundary of Hellas, making of them buffer states to shield us all.

123] ...it will be well deserved if only you will make this the goal of your own efforts and urge on the Hellenes in the same course.

Gandeto is so right, as I said, sometimes: we should not be corrupting the ancient texts. They are so beautiful and powerful, and they give us a true sense of how people thought in their own times! I suppose he could try to practice what he is preaching, instead of making a buffoonery out of his kind of pseudo-history, creating a written record of books and articles in the service of the basest kind of Skopjan history falsification and Slavomacedonian ultra-nationalism...a record that will haunt his name in posterity. This, in itself is reason enough to wright using a pseudonym...it all makes sense now, Mr. Grez...ovski!

Back to Isocrates again, who was upset that in Greece of his time plenty of

124] ...men have arisen who thought themselves worthy to rule over Hellas, while among the Hellenes no one has aspired so high as to attempt to make us masters of Asia?

127] Therefore, since the others are so lacking in spirit, I think it is opportune for you to head the war against the King;...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, and to be as ready to brave perils for her sake...

And by ALL OF HELLAS, Isocrates is clear: Macedonia AND the rest of Greece – all of Greece - ἅπασαν τὴν Ἑλλάδα! And Isocrates did not care who was the one to lead the Panhellenic campaign, as long as he was capable and up to the task:

128] ...because I have chosen to challenge you to the task of leading the expedition against the barbarians and of taking Hellas under your care, while I have passed over my own city.

139] Now I am not unaware that many of the Hellenes look upon the King's power as invincible. Yet one may well marvel at them if they really believe that the power which was subdued to the will of a mere barbarian—an ill-bred barbarian at that—and collected in the cause of slavery, could not be scattered by a man of the blood of Hellas, of ripe experience in warfare, in the cause of freedom—and that too although they know that while it is in all cases difficult to construct a thing, to destroy it is, comparatively, an easy task.

The translation here, as I checked it, is actually lacking, in precision. It is poetic, yes, but not an exact translation. Isocrates is not saying "by a man of the blood of Hellas" when he is addressing Philip son of Amyntas, king of Macedonia, the exact words in Isocrates' text are:  ἀνδρὸς Ἕλληνος / andros Hellenos = of a Greek man : of a Hellene man!

Lest we forget what the falsifiers of Greek history are saying about the Macedonians, here it is Gandeto again, speaking of Philip's son, Alexandros Philippou, Alexander son of Philip, the same Philip whom Isocrates addresses 
"a Greek man", a "Hellene":

"How it is possible", Gandeto claims " for today´s Greeks to unashamedly claim something that never belonged to them? How is it conceivable for them to embark on such a treacherous and preposterous undertaking to use manipulations in order to secure and appropriate a historical figure of no less stature and magnitude than one of the most studied and the most buttressed subjects of all times, like Alexander the Great?"

"unashamedly"... "conceivable"... "treacherous"... "preposterous undertaking"... "manipulations"..."buttressed subjects of all times"...

Is anyone day-dreaming here? Greeks are not claiming Julius Caesar, Cyrus the Great or Tutanhamon, after all, we are talking about Alexander the Great here...and who is pointing the finger on "the Greeks"? Someone whose last name rhymes with that of the Polish film director K. Kieslowski, or the Russian composer P.I.Tchaikovsky, great Slavs, no doubt, in their own right, and giants of modern art, but who would never claim a Hellenic-Macedonian decent. Names ending in "-ovski" did not appear in Macedonia for at least a thousand years after Philip and Alexander had met their destiny, and those names were brought into the lower Balkans, along with Slavic language and culture, by Slavs. Let us keep our feet on the ground, therefore, when we put ink on paper, and claim to be writing history, or, rather, polemics on history, to be more specific.

It is unfortunate, but this is indeed the reason why Greeks have been lately falling on the floor holding their bellies and laughing uncontrolably, finding this whole archaeo-Makedonist circus taking place in Skopje (with supersized bronze statues of Boukephalus and all) immensely amusing. On a more serious note, the challenge facing the claimants of everything "Macedonian", as far as Greeks are concerned, is obvious:

If you have a Slavic identity, you cannot claim to be "Macedonian" in an ETHNIC sense. You can be a Macedonian in a limited, geographic sense, as everyone else who lives in historic Macedonia. Even the claim pf being Macedonian in a strictly geographic sense is debatable, since everyone accepts that the bulk -to the tune of 80%- of Ancient Macedonia (and more than 50% of Ottoman Macedoni) a lies within Northern Greece. Obviously we can talk and argue about it, since Macedonia has been a very fluid geographic entity. But claiming the EXCLUSIVITY of the names "Macedonia" and "Macedonian" in an ethnic sense, is not and cannot be debatable, no matter how many of the 135-odd countries in the world are ready to endorse it.

Greeks, for example could readily concede that the Malvidas islands belong to Argentina or that Faulklands belong to England, it is too far from them...who cares!

In the same way, who in the Republic of Cape Verde, in the Federated States of Micronesia or in the Republic of Nauru cares how Slavic speaking citizens of ex-Yugoslavia's southernmost republic call their country. The southern Balkans is an exotic locale for them. They don't know the specifics and they simply don't care. For the Greeks, it is a whole different story, it is THEIR story, their history, their culture and identity.

Despite the cries of the other side about human rights and the right to call oneself what someone pleases, there are clear limits to that "right", and Macedonian Greeks are the violated party in this dispute. They are being agresively asked told to relinquish their Macedonian culture and history to a relative late comer who is aggressively pursuing ownership rights over EVERYTHING "Macedonian":

"How it is possible for today´s Greeks to unashamedly claim something that never belonged to them?", Gandeto asks.

If that is the case, then the stakes are serious and not simply who can sell "Macedonian" wine in the EU, or who advertises "Macedonia" to the international tourist market. For the ultra-nationalists of Skopje, the acquisition of the name brands "Macedonia" and "Macedonian" is only the beginning. Claims on the land, claims on ethnic minorities, claims on culture and history and art and products of industry, anything, in other words covered under the brand name "Macedonia" come with it. The nameless, get a name to use and to live by.

Greeks are not ready to concede to such a gross violation and they have a different viewpoint:

To say that I am a Bavarian, it automatically means that I am a German. If I say that I am a Welsh, I pretty much also proclaim my British identity.

If someone is claiming to be a Macedonian, they essentially claim to be of Hellenic nature, which means that culturally at least, they are known to be part of the Greek commonwealth. The least someone in that capacity should do is to put a stop to the virulent anti-Greek hysteria emanating from Skopje and its diaspora. Someone has to decide, am I a Slav or a Macedonian? If you are Slav, be proud of it, but you have to stop calling your language Macedonian, since it bears no connection to the ancient Greek dialect the Macedonians spoke. Calling yourself a Slavomacedponian, then, that is fine, it may be a compromise that makes a break from (and entails a qualitative difference from) the so called "ethnic Macedonian" which the Greeks do not and will never accept. This includes the language too, not simply the nation, and eventually, the name of the country, if indeed it takes on an ethnic and not a general, nationality-blind name. Linguistically speaking, the Slavomacedonians are NOT a Makedonizein nation, in the ancient writers sense but a Voulgarizein nation, although not necessarily in ethnic identity but for sure in language. Is Voylgarizein or Boulgarizein not good enough, or scientifically not correct, then call it Slavomakedonizein if you prefer but for sure it is not Makedonizein, except for those who speak the Greek language the ancient Macedonians spoke, of course, on both sides of the border.

With that necessary parenthesis, let us return to Plutarch. Isocrates had given Philip a grand plan, a roadwork map to proceed in uniting all the Greek forces, attack the Persian king, liberate the Greek cities of Ionia and Aeolia, and proceed in taking half of Asia Minor up to the river Halys under Greek control and colonize it with the surplus population roaming Greece at the time, hiring themselves to the highest bidder as mercenaries.

Philip died and Alexander took over. He pacified his north and he went south, not once twice. Plutarch only mentions the second time:

1]εἰς δὲ τὸν Ἰσθμὸν τῶν Ἑλλήνων συλλεγέντων καὶψηφισαμένων ἐπὶ Πέρσας μετ᾽ Ἀλεξάνδρου στρατεύεινἡγεμὼν ἀνηγορεύθη.

1] and now a general assembly of the Greeks was held at the Isthmus, where a vote was passed to make an expedition against Persia with Alexander, and he was proclaimed their leader. 
Plutarch, Alexander 14

Alexander puts together a great army and great navy, crosses the Hellespont, the Dardanelles, and moves to meet the Persian satraps who come to challenge him at the Granicus river. Plutarch, in "Alexander" tells us that:

6] While Alexander's cavalry were making such a dangerous and furious fight, the Macedonian phalanx crossed the river and the infantry forces on both sides engaged. The enemy, however, did not resist vigorously, nor for a long time, but fled in a rout, all except the Greek mercenaries. These made a stand at a certain eminence, and asked that Alexander should promise them quarter.

7] But he, influenced by anger more than by reason, charged foremost upon them and lost his horse, which was smitten through the ribs with a sword (it was not Bucephalas, but another); and most of the Macedonians who were slain or wounded fought or fell there, since they came to close quarters with men who knew how to fight and were desperate.

Of the Barbarians, we are told, twenty thousand footmen fell, and twenty-five hundred horsemen. But on Alexander's side, Aristobulus says there were thirty-four dead in all, of whom nine were footmen.

8] Of these, then, Alexander ordered statues to be set up in bronze, and Lysippus wrought them. Moreover, desiring to make the Greeks partners in his victory, he sent to the Athenians in particular three hundred of the captured shields, and upon the rest of the spoils in general he ordered a most ambitious inscription to be wrought: ´Alexander the son of Philip and all the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians from the Barbarians who dwell in Asia.´ But the drinking vessels and the purple robes and whatever things of this nature he took from the Persians, all these, except a few, he sent to his mother.

This is what Plutarch tells us. Now let us go to how Gandeto interprets the text:

"Plutarch, Alexander, 16. The battle at Granicus:

The letter that Alexander sent to the Athenians:

"Alexander the son of Philip and all the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians…."

The overwhelming majority of the bloggers on the net refer to this passage, the letter that Alexander sent to the Athenians, as a litmus test, as proof that Alexander saw himself as Greek. None of them dares to expose the rest of the episode. None of them mentions that the captured Greek mercenaries that fought against him were sent in chains to Macedonia, nor do they reveal Alexander´s real motive as Plutarch has done here:

"He wanted the Greeks to feel involved in the victory.""

In other words, if we are to understand correctly, what Josif Grez...ovski is saying, is that Alexander "wanted the Greeks to feel involved in the victory" so this is why he flattered the Greeks, by implying that he is Greek too. Good try! With arguments like that someone could convince their parrot and that's about it. The fact that Gandeto is able to sell books to the converted folk using such arguments and the fact that there are enough human parrots who buy his books and his arguments is a clear gauge and a pitiful indication of pseudo-Makedonism's intellectual bankruptcy.

I would like to make a few points found in Plutarch's text. The first is about the morale of the Greek mercenaries on Darius' pay:

6] ...The enemy..did not resist vigorously, nor for a long time, but fled in a rout, all except the Greek mercenaries. These made a stand at a certain eminence, and asked that Alexander should promise them quarter.

In other words, the Persians fought, but according to Plutarch not for a long time and not vigorously, which is probably not true, since we know that Alexander himself almost lost his life being furiously attacked by the Persian commanders and was saved from certain death by Cleitos the Black. The fact is that after a time the Persians left, leaving the Greek mercenaries alone. How and why the Persians left, it is easy: they were all cavalry, on horseback who "fled in a rout, all except the Greek mercenaries". The Greek mercenaries were infantry, stuck in the plain with no way out. They gathered on low hill, in a defensive posture. "These made a stand at a certain eminence, and asked that Alexander should promise them quarter." These people were not Leonidas' 300 Spartans ready to fight to the last for their country. They were mercenaries and they had hired themselves to the highest bidder. They had no wish to fight Alexander. All they wanted now was to get out!

"Not so easy!"...is in essence what Alexander must have replied to them. Plutarch tells us that Alexander:

7] ...influenced by anger more than by reason, charged foremost upon them...and most of the Macedonians who were slain or wounded fought or fell there, since they came to close quarters with men who knew how to fight and were desperate.

In other words, the Greek mercenaries wanted out but then they realized that Alexander would give them no quarters, they started fighting, but not for Darius or for money, they were fighting for their lives!

To say that Alexander charged at them "influenced by anger more than by reason" is not so credible. Alexander was a political animal who was calculating his every move.

Gandeto of course finds this event as "proof", somehow that Alexander and the Macedonians were not Greek. "None of them dares to expose the rest of the episode."

If Gandeto imagines in his delusion that Greeks are supposed to be scared of mentioning (or "admitting") this episode (???), where Alexander is actually punishing the traitors of Greece, the mercenaries who fought for Persian golden Darics against the interests of Hellas, let us hear it from a German then:

With subtle diplomacy, which was suggested to him by his recent troubles in Greece, Alexander in his capacity of Generalissimo of the Panhellenic war of revenge published to the world that this victory of the Granicus as a victory of the Corinthian League...In the same way it was with the intention of honouring the league and putting himself merely at the position of their elected Generalissimo that he sent the captured Greek mercenaries in chains to forced labour in Macedonia, giving as his reason, "because, contrary to the resolution of the League of Hellenes, they had fought for the barbarians against Hellas".
Ulrich Wilcken, Alexander the Great, W.W.Norton , 1967

Gandeto was so correct pointing out that "One cannot suppress and distort the truth for long by simply resorting to manipulation of the ancient text." Lincoln said the same thing150 years ago: You can fool all the people some of the time or some of the people all the time, but not all the people all the time!

So, then, why should "None of them", meaning us, Macedonian Greeks who fight Bulgarophone pseudo-Macedonism "dares to expose the rest of the episode. None of them mentions that the captured Greek mercenaries that fought against him were sent in chains to Macedonia"...?
Why should Greeks be afraid to admit that Alexander (repeating Ulrich Wilcken again):
"sent the captured Greek mercenaries in chains to forced labour in Macedonia, giving as his reason, "because, contrary to the resolution of the League of Hellenes, they had fought for the barbarians against Hellas".

I am sure we read that correctly: Not Alexander, not Macedonia, and for sure not Bulgaria, Albania, or any kind of FYROM – Dardania - Slavomacedonia, but: Hellas.

Here is the originbal text:

ὅτι παρὰ τὰ κοινῇ δόξαντα τοῖς

Ἕλλησιν Ἕλληνες ὄντες ἐναντία τῇ Ἑλλάδι ὑπὲρ τῶν

βαρβάρων ἐμάχοντο.

Arrian Anabasis 1.16.6

In a more word to word -unpoetic- translation:

"that contrary to the common agreements

among the Hellenes, being Hellenes themselves, against Hellas and on the side of the

barbarians they were fighting"

It does not take a genius to understand this. Anyone that has kindergarten level education and beyond, has enough brain power to comprehend this:

Who was fighting against Hellas and on the side of the barbarians, for the sake of money, who was the traitor to Greece? The Greek mercenaries.

Who was fighting for Hellas and against the barbarians and refused to compromise with the traitors to Greece? Alexander, his Macedonians and his Common Peace Greek allies.

Now let us hear the deafening echo emanating from Gandeto's hollow arguments:

"If ancient Greeks themselves did not see the ancient Macedonians as brethren; if ancient Macedonians have amply and irrevocably demonstrated their uniqueness and distinctiveness from the ancient Greeks, if the words of the Macedonian king Alexander the Great himself, are being recorded and preserved as evidence by no other than a famous Greek biographer Plutarch, then:

How it is possible for today´s Greeks to unashamedly claim something that never belonged to them? How is it conceivable for them to embark on such a treacherous and preposterous undertaking to use manipulations in order to secure and appropriate a historical figure of no less stature and magnitude than one of the most studied and the most buttressed subjects of all times, like Alexander the Great?

It seems to me that either they have grossly overestimated their literary prowess or they have greatly and contemptuously underestimated the wisdom of the rest of the world. I shall leave the verdict in your hands."

We "grossly overestimated our literary prowess"? I would not say that. A major difference between Gandeto and those who build 60ft tall bronze statues to Alexander in Skopje on the one hand, and the Macedonian Greeks who have built a life size statue to Alexander in Thessaloniki, is that the Macedonian Greeks can understand what Alexander said:

ὅτι παρὰ τὰ κοινῇ δόξαντα τοῖς
Ἕλλησιν Ἕλληνες ὄντες ἐναντία τῇ Ἑλλάδι ὑπὲρ τῶν
βαρβάρων ἐμάχοντο.
Arrian Anabasis 1.16.6

If they cannot understand the language the ancient Macedonian understood, I will write it in a language they can comprehend, using the Google translator services, under the grossly misnamed "Macedonian" language:

"Затоа што, спротивно на резолуцијата на Лигата на Елините, тие се бореле за варвари против Елада".

Now let us use the same service to translate it in Serbian:
"Јер, супротно резолуцији Савеза Грчке, они су се борили заварварима против Хелас".

and finally in Bulgarian:
"Защото, противно на резолюция на Лигата на елините, те сасе борили за варварите срещу Елада".

You do not need to know how to read Cyrillic script to understand that

"спротивно на резолуцијата",
"супротно резолуцији" and
"противно на резолюция"

signify closely related languages, all unrelated to the Greek of the ancient Macedonians.

The amusing part of the story is that one of the three languages above is supposed to be "Macedonian", indeed directly derived from the language of the ancient Macedonians! Why should Google care? The Greeks know better, and they happen to disagree. And it has nothing to do with whether "they have grossly overestimated their literary prowess or they have greatly and contemptuously underestimated the wisdom of the rest of the world." We simply insist on calling thinsg by their true name. You call your chicken swordfish, if you like, and even convince your family that it is fish that they are eating, but I do not see a restaurant offering chicken in its swordfish dishes lasting for too long.

If Ulrich Wilcken above was not enough, let us also hear from an equally great, British this time, historian of Alexander and Macedonia, W. W. Tarn :

"The rest of the army had crossed, and Alexander surrounded the Greeks and killed all but 2,000, whom he sent in chains to forced labour in Macedonia as traitors to the League;...and he emphasized the fact that he was general of the League by sending 300 Persian panoplies to Athens, with a dedication from " Alexander and the Greeks, except the Spartans".
"Alexander the Great", W. W. Tarn, Cambridge University Press, 1948Beacon Press, 1956-1971, page17

So, "he sent in chains to forced labour in Macedonia as traitors to the League"!

I wonder, having read this, how sure can Gandeto be that none of us dares to expose the rest of the episode? How sure can he be that none of us dares mention that the captured traitors to the League that fought against him were sent in chains to Macedonia, while at the same time lavish gifts were sent to the Parthenon in Athens proclaiming that the Granicus river battle was a great victory of all the Greeks under Alexander against the barbarians who live in Asia? We went at great lengths earlier to explain what Alexander was doing in his dealings with everyone, from his dealing with his own family and the ruling circles of Macedonia to how he dealt with both Greeks and barbarians, his usage of the time honored carrot and the stick method. He killed Alexandros Lyncestis's brothers while elevating him politically, he killed Attalus while elevating Parmenion, he destroyed the Ilyrians while offering his sister to the Paionian Langaros, he had no qualms destroying Thebes while coming to terms with Athens. Here we see Alexander being once again Alexander: He attacks Dareius' Greek mercenaries, not out of anger, but because he wants to make an example out of them. The Common peace specifically forbade any Greek person or city siding with the enemy, and Thebes had already paid her steep price with her destruction. Now it was the time of these wretched mercenaries, who could not believe their ears and eyes seeing and hearing Alexander refusing to accept their surrender, being attacked and make an example of what happens to those who oppose him, to the ones who stand to profit, paid by the Persians, to go against his will. It was not by senseless anger, as the moralist Plutarch tells us, but by sheer cold calculation that Alexander decides to refuse terms to the ones he considered traitors to the Panhellenic war on Persia. But there is a twist on this story:

"The 2,000 Greek mercenaries were sent to Macedonia to labour in chains for life (corpses so chained have been found recently in Chalcidice), because "being Greeks they had fought against Greeks in violation of the decisions of the Greeks". The Greek mercenaries who had fallen in battle and the Persian officers were given an honourable burial."
The Genius of Alexander the Great, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.G.L.Hammond, Page 69

We see Alexander once again, being Alexander. On one point we see him sending the 2000 mercenaries, who "being Greeks they had fought against Greeks in violation of the decisions of the Greeks", and at the same time he is not only showing his respect to the fallen officers of Persia but, true to Greek religious tradition and commands, he spends the time to bury ALL "the Greek mercenaries who had fallen in battle". This means that Alexander had his army dig enough graves to bury eight to ten thousand corpses, corpses of his enemies! At the same time he let the Persian rank and file rot on the ground! He felt he had to do this, for he was certainly afraid of the outcry that would had been raised in Greece had he left Greeks fallen in battle go unburied. In Greek religion this was consider sacrilegious and if anything, is one more proof of the Macedonian's true identity. We only have Gandeto to thank for pointing our attention to this incident, once again.

It is noteworthy, that after making an example of these wretched prisoners, Alexander never again repeated this. From then on, and as he was becoming more and more confident of his position, he would not only offer terms to any Greek mercenaries, but he also offered them a position in his army with the same pay and benefits as they enjoyed under the Great King.
By the time he reached and took over Miletus, which fell to Alexander,

"A number of its defenders, including 300 mercenaries, escaped to a nearby islet. They were prepared to fight to the death, but Alexander, as Arrian puts it, "was moved to pity by their courage and loyalty", and came to terms with them. The fact was that Alexander saw that his policy of treating them as traitors was mistaken and, ready as always to learn from his mistakes, decided to enroll in his army 300 valuable recruits whom by now he could well afford to pay."
J.R.Hamilston, "Alexander the Great", University of Pittsburgh Press, 1974

I would argue that the points were two, not compassion and not a correction of a previous mistake either. In Granicus he could neither afford to pay the Greek mercenaries, and he was also too early in his campaign to avoid making a lesson out of them. This is in line with what we know of Alexander.

Later on, in fact he even released some of the prisoners of Granicus:

"Achilles and Diophantus were sent by the Athenians to Alexander to negotiate the release of their countrymen, who had been captured at the Granicus River and sentenced to hard labor in Macedonia. They met Alexander near Tyre as he returned from Egypt in 331 and achieved their purpose (A 3.6.2; cf. C 4.8.12-13) "
"Who's who in the age of Alexander the Great", Waldemar Heckel - 2006

Their lesson had been learned, in other words, so by then he released them. There was no reason for him to keep the Athenians aggravated. It also shows that he did not ever intended to use them as hostages, for if he did, he would not have released them even at that point. He still very much needed the Athenian navy on his side, after all.

Now, as far as the dedication on the Parthenon of Athens goes, while Gandeto sticks to his laughable claim that Alexander "...wanted the Greeks to feel involved in the victory", making himself and the Macedonians appearing Greek, supposedly just to flatter the other Greeks, Nicholas Hammond highlights the contribution of the Greek cavalry and the Greek fleet to Alexander's campaign.

"Similar dedications may have been made in other states; for Alexander "wished to make the Greeks partners in the victory", rightly since the Greek cavalry had won on the left wing and the Greek fleet had mounted the invasion of Asia."
The Genius of Alexander the Great, The University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, N.G.L.Hammond, Page 69

We know about the allied Greek cavalry, to which Alexander owed one third of his victory at Granicus, the Macedonian cavalry having won the right flank, the Macedonian phalanx the center, and the Thessalian and other Greek allied cavalry having carried victory at the left flank.

"Thus the king by common consent won the palm for bravery and was regarded as the chief author of the victory, and next to him the Thessalian cavalry won a great reputation for valour because of the skilful handling of their squadrons and their unmatched fighting quality"

Diodorus 17.21.4

What about the rest of the Greeks in Alexander's army, why should Alexander want to show gratitude and make "the Greeks to feel involved in the victory"?

A quick look at Alexander's army at the onset of his Asian campaign, will help us gauge the contribution of his Greek allies.

As to the number of his forces, those who put it at the smallest figure mention thirty thousand foot and four thousand horse; those who put it at the highest, forty-three thousand foot and five thousand horse. To provision these forces, Aristobulus says he had not more than seventy talents; Duris speaks of maintenance for only thirty days; and Onesicritus says he owed two hundred talents besides.

Plutarch Alexander 15.1

Plutarch immediately explains to us that Alexander was in dire economic straits. He had no more than 70 talents when, to put it in context, Macedonia's annual income (derived from the Pangaeon mines was no more than 1,000 talents and Dareius after Issus offered Alexander 10,000 talents as ransom for his family. In other words, Macedonia was broke.

According to N.G.L.Hammond, Alexander planned to leave behind in
Macedonia only 12,000 infantry phalangites, 1000 Companion cavalry and
500 light-armed cavalry, along with a small number of light-armed
infantry, reinforced by the militias in the cities.
He took with him 12,000 phalangites and 1,800 Companion cavalry.

The Greek Community allies brought to Alexander 7,000 Hoplites heavy infantry and 2,300 cavalry (I am using NGLHammond's numbers, The Genius of Alexander the Great, page 60). Alexander was also able to hire 5,000 Greek mercenaries.

Therefore, out of a total of 5,100 cavalry and 32,000 infantry Macedonian troops were less than half (12,000 and 1800).

Agrianes and other Paeonians, Ilyrians, Tribalian and Odryssian Thracians and other assorted Balkan tribesmen were about 7,500. This number includes both infantry and cavalry.

Diodorus gives us a similar numbers:

"making up a total of thirty-two thousand foot soldiers. Of cavalry…making a total
of forty five hundred cavalry. These were the men who crossed with Alexander to
Asia."
Diodorus Sicelus 17.3

(Diodorus's numbers when each contingent is added adds to 5,100, which means that the 4,500 number of the total is probably a corruption during copying at some later time)

What about the navy? This is a hot charcoal topic to be avoided at all costs by the Skopje falsifiers of history who scream in all tones that Alexander had taken very few infantrymen from the League of Corinth city state Greeks with him. Let us now look into the contribution of the other Greeks into Macedonia's Panhellenic campaign against Persia.

Alexander only managed to put to sea 22 Macedonian triremes and 38 smaller warships, triaconters and penteconters, with a total of 6,000 crews, mostly Chalcidice Greeks. These numbers almost certainly represented the full strength of Macedonia's fleet at the time.

The Greek Common Peace League provided 160 triremes, mostly Athenian along with their crews of about 32,000 men.If we compare this to Macedonia's 12,000 Phalangites plus 1800 Companion cavalry men plus 6000 seamen, all of who were in fact Macedonian citizens from the previously independet but by now incorporated into the Macedonian kingdom Greek city states of Chalcedice, then we can start comprehending why this was indeed called a Panhellenic effort.

N.G.L.Hammond tells us that
"in addition to the warships which carried equipment and supplies, the later sufficient for one month only. The entire force may be estimated at 90,000 men. At least half of these men came from the Greek Community and from centers of mercenary recruitment in Greece, and only a quarter at most came from within the Macedonian kingdom. They were all under the command of Alexander as king and Hegemon..."

When the history falsifiers make noises about how many city state Greeks fought with Dareius versus how many fought with Alexander, what they conveniently hush up is the fact that most of Alexander's Greeks were Macedonia's allies while all of Dareius' were merely paid mercenaries. What determined who was able to hire more of each depended on who had the bigger coffers...Dareius did! Nobody even mentions the League of Corinth Greek states contribution, especially that of Athens, to Alexander's navy. The Panhellenic expedition would have been a grand nill had Alexander been unable to cross his army through the Hellespont. Had the Persian fleet of 400 triremes been there, to stop him, Alexander's 22 Macedonian triremes would have been utterly useless, and one month later, with depleted supplies he would have to return to Pella penniless. It was the Athenian navy, mainly, and the other Greek ships that made the crossing of the Hellespont safe for Alexander and his passage into Asia flawless.

Another little point that many people like to forget is the money issue. Who paid for all this? Alexander, as we saw had only 70 talents in his coffers and had to borrow money to start all this.

"The financial responsibility was divided between Macedonia and the Greek Community. The king provided wages and maintenance for the Macedonian and Balkan soldiers and for the crews of the Macedonian fleet....The member states of the Greek Community which sent a flotilla of ships maned them with crews at their own expense. (Tod no. 192), and those which provided soldiers must have been seen to it that they were properly equipped for instance with cavalry mounts and remounts." (N.G.L.Hammond, The Genius of Alexander the Great, page 62)

In other words, this was not simply a Panhellenic campaign in words alone...it is not like the other Greeks told the 20 year old son of the rtecently assasinated king of Macedonia, go do whatever you like in Asia and leave us alone...they actually invested in his adventure, and they invested heavily! Had the Athenians held back from offering their triremes to him and paid the salaries of their sailors for duration of all this truly amphibious operation Alexander would never had achieved his foorhold in Asia. Additionally the amphibious opperations in Alicarnassos, Ephessos etc, and of course as mentioned earlier the crossing of the Hellespont would have never been possible. Alexander had many reasons to be grateful to the other Greeks of the Common Peace.

Additionally, when Alexander says:

Alexander the son of Philip and all the Greeks except the Lacedaemonians from the Barbarians who dwell in Asia.´

Ἀλέξανδρος ὁ Φιλίππου καὶ οἱ Ἕλληνες πλὴν Λακεδαιμονίων ἀπὸ τῶν βαρβάρων τῶν τὴν Ἀσίαν κατοικούντων´,

he is not simply glorifying his Common Peace Greek allies who, by contributing infantrymen, cavalrymen, ships and money made this expedition possible for him; he is not simply saying that to him there are no Macedonians or Athenians, there are no Thessalians or Peloponnesians, but only Hellenes; he is not simply making himself, Alexander, the Hegemon of all the Hellenes, the living embodiment of the Panhellenic campaign of ALL (pan-) the Greeks (including the Macedonians) against the barbarians who dwell in Asia. By specifically excluding the Lacedaemonians and Sparta, Alexander also makes another interesting point, which Cambridge professor Paul Cartledge was keen to point out:

"The point of the accompanying inscription was to remind the Greek world that it was the Spartans who had sold out the Greeks of Asia to Persia in 386, and that they were now not only in more or less in active opposition to Macedon, outside the framework of the League of Corinth, but actually in treasonous contact with Persia."
Paul Cartledge, Alexander the Great, Vintage, page 140)

By the same token, it was clear to all that it was neither Athens, or Thebes nor Sparta or any of the other city states that brought about Gorgias' and Isocrates' vision to fruition. The dynamic force uniting the fratricidal warring parts of Greece into a Hellenic League for the purpose of a Panhellenic expedition of revenge against the barbarians of Asia, was himself:

ΑΛΕΞΑΝΔΡΟΣ ΦΙΛΙΠΠΟΥ - ALEXANDROS PHILIPPOY - Alexander son of Philip!

To be continued]




BIBLIOGRAPHY:


"The Genius of Alexander the Great", N.G.L. Hammond, The University of South Carolina Press, Chapel Hill, 1997


"Who's who in the age of Alexander the Great", Waldemar Heckel, Blackwel, 2006


"An introduction to Alexander Studies", Eugene N. Borza, in "Alexander the Great" by Ulrich Wilcken, English translation, NY, 1967


J.R.Hamilston, "Alexander the Great", University of Pittsburgh Press, 1974


Paul Cartledge, Alexander the Great, Vintage, NY, 2005


Aeschylus - Agamemnon
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=700&fromdoc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0003


Arrian – Anabasis
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3atext%3a2008.01.0530


Isocrates – To Philip
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0143%3Aspeech%3D5%3Asection%3D1


Plutarch – Alexander
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.01.0243%3Achapter%3D1%3Asection%3D1
RELATED ARTICLES by MEB:
http://www.scribd.com/doc/44674218/The-Alleged-Differences-Between-Macedonians-and-Other-Ancient-Greeks
http://macedonianissues.blogspot.com/2010_02_01_archive.html