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com/
12th October 2009

Ancient Macedonian Language,is a Greek?

By Akritas

GENERAL
One from the primary source to define a language is the writing
system. The Blackwell Encyclopedia of Writing Systems defines a
writing system as "a set of visible or tactile signs used to
represent units of language in a systematic way". This simple
explanation encompasses a large spectrum of writing systems with
vastly different stylistic and structural characteristics spanning
across the many regions of the globe.

So the inscription or the script was, is and will be the major

definition source of a language.

There is no defined line between a language and a dialect, but it is

often said that a language is a dialect with an army and a navy, a
statement credited to Max Weinreich.

To the question, what kind of language did the ancient

Macedonians use, the answer can be given based on, what else, the
existing references in ancient documents and the excavated
inscriptions. What we have concluded is, that the ancient
Macedonians were Hellenophon and the original dialect of the
Hellenic language they used (Macedonian dialect) was very much
similar to the Doric dialect (that is in accordance to Herodotus'
references on the common origin of the Dorians and the
Macedonians). Later on (in Hellenistic era) that dialect was
gradually replaced by the Koini Attiki dialect, just like in all of the
other Greek states. Every native Macedonian name, is Hellenic and
is formed in the Hellenic way of producing words, as for example
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12th October 2009

the names:"Adista, Philista, Sostrata, Philotas, Perdikkas,

Mahatas," and hundreds more.

And, of course, the strongest evidences of the Greekness of the

Macedonian dialect are:

• The excavated inscriptions, where you can find only Greek

characters and words
• The coins of Macedonia, where again you can find only Greek
characters and words
• The quotations of the ancient writers on the Macedonians'
speech
• The characteristics of the Macedonian dialect
• Etymology of some names in Macedonia

Some years back, a German linguist by the name Otto Hoffman

wrote a book with the title "Makedonians, their language and their
Ethnicity". Hoffman analyzed the paradoxical or idiomatic words
(calling them languages),which past grammatical, lexicographers
and more in general everyone engaged around the Hellenic
language had noted them as "worthy to be analyzed" in Makedonia.

To begin with,all those people were believing that the Makedonian

language was an Hellenic dialect, and exactly this is the reason
mentioning certain of its peculiarities, had they believe that the
Makedonian language was alien to that Hellenic one, there was not
a reason mentioning those Makedonian paradoxical and/or
idiomatic "languages".

According to the same Hoffman his conclusions after "supervising"

other peoples work are the following:
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And now after supervising the ancient Makedonian linguistic

thesaurus we are posting the decisive question,if what is adding to
the Makedonian language its character,are the hellenic or the
barbarian elements of it,the responce can not be of any doubts.
From the 39 "languages" that according to Gustav Mayer their
form was "completely alien" has been proven after this research
of mine,that 10 of them are clearly Hellenic,with 4 more possibly
dialectical forms of common hellenic words,so from the entire
collection are remaining only 15 words appearing to be justifiable
or at least suspected of anti-hellenic origins. Adding to those 15,
few others which with regards their vocals could be Hellenic,
without till now being confirmed as such,then their number, in
comparison to the number of pure hellenic ones in the Macedonian
language, is so small that the GENERAL HELLENIC CHARACTER
OF THE MAKEDONIAN LINGUISTIC TREASURE CAN NOT BE
DOUBTED.

Another major evidence was the ancient Theaters. It is a well-

known fact that only the ancient Greeks had theaters in Classical
period. The four ancient theaters in Macedonia are in Dion,
Vergina, Philippi, and Thassos. The theater of Dion hosted the
first performance (before an audience of Greek-speaking
Macedonians, of course) of Euripides world-famous tragedy
Bacchae, which he wrote at Pella of Macedonia. Euripides died and
was buried in Macedonia.

The official code name that given recetly from the linqustics is
Ancient Macedonian language (provisional ISO-DIS 639-3.5 XMK).
Subgrouping Code : Ancient Greek language or IEGreekB Group
code: Greek Language or IEGreek.

ANCIENT INSCRIPTIONS
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Anyone can read the inscriptions that found in Macedonia as also

and the texts through the Epigraphical database

http://epigraphy.packhum.org/inscriptions/search_main.html

Of course all are in the ancient Greek language. Also I want to add
some critical points regarding the ancient Macedonian language.

Linguistically, there is no real distinction between a dialect and a

language without a specific factor. People usually consider the
political factor to determine whether a certain kind of speech is a
language or a dialect. Since the Pan-Hellenic area consisted of
many small city- states (Attica, Lacedaemon, Corinth, etc.), and
larger states (Molossia, Thesprotia, Macedonia, Acarnania,
Aetolia, etc.), it was common knowledge at the time that the
people of all those states were speaking different languages, when
in fact they were all variations of the same language, Hellenic or
Greek. The most advanced of all Hellenic dialects was the dialect
of Attica (Athens) or Attic. When people state “ancient Greek
language” they mean the Attic dialect and any comparison of the
Macedonian dialect to ancien Greek is actually a comparison to the
Attic dialect.

The difference between Macedonian and Attic was like the

difference between Low and High German. Nobody doubts that
both are Germanic languages, although they differ from one
another. Another good example of a multi-dialectal linguistic
regime is present-day Italy. The official language of Italy is the
Florentine, but common people still speak their own dialects. The
same goes and in the present Greece. The Cretans speak their own
dialect, even and for some Greeks is very difficult to understand
them
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As I mention in my first post German linguistic Hoffman considers

40 names of official Macedonians found on an inscription from 423
B.C adding:

""In final analysis it is possible that the name VYRGINON

KRASTWNOS is of Thracian origins, while independent remains
the name DIRVE.....ALL the other names are
BEAUTIFULL,CLEAR,HELLENIC CONSTRUCTIONS and only two
of them NEOPTOLEMOS and MELEAGROS could have been loans
from the HELLENIC MYTHOLOGY. ""

Hoffman considers the names of the populations of upper or

Western Makedonia including the Orestians (Kastoria), Eordians
(Ptolemais-Arnissa),Tymfaians (Pindos-Konitsa), Elimiotians
(Kozani), and Lyngestians (Florina-Monastiri).

He considers and analyzes the names of the King's body-guards,of

the generals,of the administrative employees,of the leaders of
the Makedonian cavalry,the leaders of the name and army,and
those of many other common people of the 5th and 4th and even
later centuries.

His conclusions?
""THE NAMES OF THE GENUINE MAKEDONIANS AND THOSE
BORN OF MAKEDONIAN PARENTS ,ESPECIALLY THE NAMES
OF THE ELITIC CLASS AND NOBLES,IN THEIR FORMATION
AND PHONOLOGY ARE PURELY HELLENIC."

And he continues,...
""The general Hellenic character of the Makedonians linguistic
treasure can not be disputed even in case some of them might be
loans from the Hellenic Mythology or from non-hellenic myths or
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for the better pre-hellenic myths (Teytamos-Marsyas-

Seilinos....*).

The reason?
Both Hellenic mythology and pre-Hellenic SUCH,contributed many
of their names not only in the Makedonian but as well in
thegeneral hellenic vocabulary of names. Names that in their
phonology and the laws governing their formations are clearly
different than those Thracians and Illyrians,and they can not even
be used as "in between" those and the Greek ones.

One from the strong archaeological evidence that show what

language spoken from the ancient Macedonians is the Pella
katadesmos (see picture ) .Is a katadesmos (a curse, or magic
spell) inscribed on a lead scroll, probably dating to between 380
and 350 BC. It was found in Pella (at the time capital of Macedon)
in 1986; it was published in the Hellenic Dialectology Journal in
1993.

The tab has been dated by the original publishers to the "Mid-4th
century BC or slightly earlier (letter forms, spelling)". This dating
has been contested by Prof. Edmonds of Bryn Mawr College, who
proposes a 3rd century BC date.
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The former opinion is concurred by the Oxford Classical

Dictionary, in which Professor Olivier Masson writes:

"Yet in contrast with earlier views which made of it {i.e.

Macedonian} an Aeolic dialect (O.Hoffmann compared Thessalian)
we must by now think of a link with North-West Greek (Locrian,
Aetolian, Phocidian, Epirote). This view is supported by the recent
discovery at Pella of a curse tablet (4th cent. BC) which may well
be the first 'Macedonian' text attested (provisional publication by
E.Voutyras; cf. the Bulletin Epigraphique in Rev. Et. Grec. 1994,
no.413); the text includes an adverb "opoka" which is not
Thessalian." (OCD, 1996, pp 905, 906).

Of the same opinion is James L. O'Neil's (of the University of

Sydney) presentation at the 2005 Conference of the Australasian
Society for Classical Studies, entitled "Doric Forms in Macedonian
Inscriptions" (abstract):

"A fourthâ century BC curse tablet from Pella shows word forms
which are clearly Doric, but a different form of Doric from any of
the west Greek dialects of areas adjoining Macedon. Three other,
very brief, fourth century inscriptions are also indubitably Doric.
These show that a Doric dialect was spoken in Macedon, as we
would expect from the West Greek forms of Greek names found
in Macedon. And yet later Macedonian inscriptions are in Koine
avoiding both Doric forms and the Macedonian voicing of
consonants. The native Macedonian dialect had become unsuitable
for written documents."

In English the text of Pella katasemos

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On Thetima and Dionysophon the ritual wedding and the marriage

I bind by a written spell, as well as (the marriage) of all other
women (to him), both widows and maidens, but above all of
Thetima; and I entrust (this spell) to Macron and to the daimones.
And were I ever to unfold and read these words again after
digging (the tablet) up, only then should Dionysophon marry, not
before; may he indeed not take another beside myself, but let me
alone grow old by the side of Dionysophon and no one else. I
implore you: have pity for [Phila (?)], dear daimones, [for I am
indeed bereft (?)] of all my dear ones and abandoned. But please
keep this (piece of writing) for my sake so that these events do
not happen and wretched Thetima perishes miserably [---] but let
me become happy and blessed

WORDS
The 154 words are the words that recorded from the ancient
writers and not those that found in the inscriptions (200 more).
The majority are part of the Greek syntaxis sentences

Relatively few words of the Macedonian dialect have been

preserved about 154 as i said and they are recorded by Athenaeus
and in the Lexicon of Hesychios, who drew them mainly from the
work of the Macedonian lexicographer Amerias. I want be should
noted that ancient lexicographers did not record all the words of
a language or dialect, but only those that presented a certain
peculiarity or difficulty in comprehension. For this reason foreign
words and idioms are recorded, and thus the proportion of foreign
words is not representative of the total vocabulary of the
Macedonian dialect. Many of the words which have been treasured
as Macedonian occur in all Greek dialects, but in the Macedonian
dialect they had a specific meaning and they were recorded by the
ancient lexicographers, for example the word υπασπιστής
(adjutant).
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These words that were handed down as Macedonian do not bear

any resemblance to the Thracian-Illyrian language. The
Macedonian linguistic material (proper names, place-names and
common nouns) testifies to the Greek character of the
Macedonian dialect in my opinion because of :
• The etymology of the words is Greek
• the features and vowel changes are common in Greek and
• so are the inflections and endings.

As for the few words which are recorded as Macedonian in the

Lexicon of Hesyxhios and which are not considered by some to be
Greek, it is most likely that they are loan-words, a phenomenon
that is observed in all languages, and one which does not put their
origin in doubt.

Also there are another 200 words that found in several

inscriptions (Posidipus,Pella katadaesmos,Dervinion ppayrus e.t..c)
except of course those that recorded from the ancient
writers(about 154) that has the same chareacteristiscs.

CONCLUSION

Summarize the arguments as about the Macedonian language we

have 5 facts that proov the Greek origin of the ancient
Macedonian language….

Fact 1-ISO Identification

Ancient Macedonian language (provisional ISO-DIS 639-3.5 XMK).
Subgrouping Code : Ancient Greek language or IEGreekB
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Group code: Greek Language or IEGreek.

Fact 2-Excavated inscriptions

Were 6000 and the most famous are the Pella katadesmos and
Dervenion Papyrus and of course all of them are in the Greek
languages

Fact 3-Words
The known Macedonian words have Greek roots(except some of
them)according the linguistics that anlyzed the ancient inscription
(e.g. Pella katadesmos )

Fact 4-Evidence of non Greek inscription

There is not found yet any single non-Greek text , not only in the
Macedonia but also and in the regions that Macedonian passed and
leave theirs roots.

Fact 5-The Opposite side

Non of them that claim the opposite they don't have any single
Linguistic proof in order to support theirs speculations of non
Greek speaking Macedonians

The Question now is...

…the ancient Macedonian language was Greek?

Its up to you to decide.

Thanks for your time

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Sources:
1- Hellenic Dialectology Journal in 1993
2- C. Brixhe, A. Panayotou, Le Macédonien in: Langues indo-
européennes,ed. Bader, Paris, 1994, 205–220.
3-http://bibleocean.com/OmniDefinition/Pella_katadesmos
4-Hatzidakis, The language of the ancient Macedonians
5-http://ancient-medieval-macedonian-
history.blogspot.com/search/label/Ancient%20Macedonian%20Language

Appendix A
Some quotes from several sources as about the Macedonian
Language.
Appendix B
Article from the Marcus Alexander Templar
Appendix C
Nicholas G. L. Hammond, ‘The Macedonian State: The Origins,
Institutions and History’, Oxford University Press, Reprint
Edition, July 1997; 4. The Language of the Macedonians, pgs 413,
pgs12-14
Appendix D
Indo-European Revival Association - http://dngl111.org/, A
grammar of modern Indo-European by Carlos Quile, pages 80-81
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APPENDIX A
Some quotes from several sources as about the Macedonian
Language......

Thomas Martin, ‘Ancient Greece – From Prehistoric to Hellenic

Times’ Yale University Press, 1996, pgs 188-189:
"Macedonians had their own language related to Greek, but
members of the elite that dominated Macedonian society routinely
learned to speak Greek because they thought of themselves and
indeed all Macedonians as Greek by blood. At the same time,
Macedonians looked down on the Greeks to the south as a soft lot
unequal to the adversities of life in Macedonia. The Greeks
reciprocated this scorn

Ulrich Wilcken, ‘Alexander the Great’ W.W. Norton &

Company, Reissue Edition March 1997:
"It seems more and more certain that the Macedonians were a
Greek tribe related to the Dorians. However, as they stayed high
up in the distant north, they could not participate in the progress
of civilization of the Greek people that migrated southward.

A strong Illyrian and Thracian influence can thus be recognized in

Macedonian speech and manners. These however are only trifles
compared with the Greek character of the Macedonian nationality;
for example the names of the true full blooded Macedonians,
especially of the princes and nobles, are purely Greek in their
formation and sounds.

And yet when we take into account the political conditions, religion
and morals of the Macedonians, our conviction is strengthened
that they were a Greek race akin to the Dorians."
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J.R. Hamilton, ‘Alexander the Great’ Hutchinson, London, 1973:

"That the Macedonians were of Greek stock seems certain. The
claim made by the Argead dynasty to be of Argive descent may be
no more than a generally accepted myth, but Macedonian proper
names, such as Ptolemaios or Philippos, are good Greek names, and
the names of the Macedonian months, although differed from
those of Athens or Sparta, were also Greek. The language spoken
by the Macedonians, which Greeks of the classical period found
intelligible, appears to have been a primitive north-west Greek
dialect, much influenced by the languages of the neighboring
barbarians."

Nicholas G. L. Hammond, ‘Philip of Macedon’ Duckworth Publishing,

February 1998:
"Philip was born a Greek of the most aristocratic, indeed of divine,
descent... Philip was both a Greek and a Macedonian, even as
Demosthenes was a Greek and an Athenian...The Macedonians over
whom Philip was to rule were an outlying family member of the
Greek-speaking peoples."

"As subjects of the king the Upper Macedonians were henceforth

on the same footing as the original Macedonians, in that they could
qualify for service in the King's Forces and thereby obtain the
elite citizenship. At one bound the territory, the population and
wealth of the kingdom were doubled. Moreover since the great
majority of the new subjects were speakers of the West Greek
dialect, the enlarged army was Greek-speaking throughout."

Cambridge Univ. Press, 1998,Ancient Histories

The evidence for the language of the Macedonians has been
reviewed and discussed by Kalleris and Hammond, Griffith, and
many others, all contending that it was a dialect of Greek. The
increasing volume of surviving public and private inscriptions
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makes it quite clear that there was no written language but Greek.
There may be room for argument over spoken forms, or at least
over local survivals of earlier occupancy, but it is hard to imagine
what kind of authority might sustain that. There is no evidence
for a different "Macedonian" language that cannot be as easily
explained in terms of dialect or accent.

Malcolm Errington, "A History of Macedonia", Univ. of California

Press, LA, 1990
"Ancient allegations that the Macedonians were non-Greeks all had
their origin in Athens at the time of the struggle with Philip II.
Then as now, political struggle created the prejudice. The orator
Aischines once even found it necessary, in order to counteract the
prejudice vigorously fomented by his opponents, to defend Philip
on this issue and describe him at a meeting of the Athenian
Popular Assembly as being 'Entirely Greek'. Demosthenes'
allegations were lent on appearance of credibility by the fact,
apparent to every observer, that the life-style of the
Macedonians, being determined by specific geographical and
historical conditions, was different from that of a Greek city-
state. This alien way of life was, however, common to western
Greeks of Epeiros, Akarnania and Aitolia, as well as to the
Macedonians, and their fundamental Greek nationality was never
doubted. Only as a consequence of the political disagreement with
Macedonia was the issue raised at all.
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APPENDIX B
Article from the Marcus Alexander Templar

Linguistically, there is no real distinction between a dialect and a

language without a specific factor. People usually consider the
political factor to determine whether a certain kind of speech is a
language or a dialect. Since the Pan-Hellenic area consisted of
many small city- states (Attica, Lacedaemon, Corinth, etc.), and
larger states (Molossia, Thesprotia, Macedonia, Acarnania,
Aetolia, etc.), it was common knowledge at the time that the
people of all those states were speaking different languages, when
in fact they were all variations of the same language, Hellenic or
Greek. The most advanced of all Hellenic dialects was the dialect
of Attica (Athens) or Attic. When people state “ancient Greek
language” they mean the Attic dialect and any comparison of the
Macedonian dialect to ancien Greek is actually a comparison to the
Attic dialect.

The difference between Macedonian and Attic was like the

difference between Low and High German. Nobody doubts that
both are Germanic languages, although they differ from one
another. Another good example of a multi-dialectal linguistic
regime is present-day Italy. The official language of Italy is the
Florentine, but common people still speak their own dialects.

Two people from different areas of Italy cannot communicate if

both speak their respective dialect, and yet they both speak
Italian. Why should the Hellenic language be treated differently?

At that time, Greeks spoke more than 200 Hellenic dialects or

languages, as the ancient Greeks used to call them. Some of the
well-known dialects were Ionic, Attic, Doric, Aeolic, Cypriot,
Arcadic, Aetolic, Acarnanic, Macedonian and Locric. Moreover, we
know that the Romans onsidered the Macedonians as Hellenic
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speaking peoples. Livy wrote, " The Aetolians, the Acarnanians, the
Macedonians, men of the same speech, are united or disunited by
trivial causes that arise from time to time …"
(Livy, History of Rome, b. XXXI par. XXIX).

The Aetolians and Acarnanians were definitely Hellenic tribes. On

another occasion Livy writes "…[General Paulus] took his official
seat surrounded by the whole crowd of Macedonians … his
announcement was translated into Greek and repeated by Gnaeus
Octavius the praetor…”. If the crowd of Macedonians were not
Greek speaking, why then did the Romans need to translate Paulus'
speech into Greek?
(Livy, History of Rome, b. XLV, para XXIX).

The Macedonian dialect was an Aeolic dialect of the Western

Greek language group (Hammond, The Macedonian State, p. 193).
All those dialects differ from each other, but never in a way that
one person could not understand the other.

The Military Yugoslavian Encyclopedia of the 1974 edition (Letter

M, page 219), a very anti-Hellenic biased publication, states, “… u
doba rimske invazije, njihov jezik bio grčki, ali se dva veka ranije
dosta razlikovao od njega, mada ne toliko da se ta dva naroda nisu
mogla sporazumevati.” (… at the time of the Roman invasion their
language was Hellenic, but two centuries before it was different
enough, but not as much as the two peoples could not understand
one another).

After the death of Alexander the Great, the situation changed in

the vast empire into a new reality. Ptolemy II, Philadelphos (308-
246 BC) the Pharaoh (king) of Egypt realized that the physical
unification of the Greeks and the almost limitless expansion of the
Empire required the standardization of the already widely used
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common language or Koinē. Greek was already the lingua franca of

the vast Hellenistic world in all four kingdoms of the Diadochi
(Alexander's Successors). It was already spoken, but neither an
official alphabet nor grammar had yet been devised.
Alexandria, Egypt was already the Cultural Center of the Empire
in about 280 BC. Ptolemy II assigned Aristeas, an Athenian
scholar, to create the grammar of the new language, one that not
only all Greeks, but all inhabitants of the Empire would be able to
speak. Thus, Aristeas used the Attic dialect as basis for the new
language. Aristeas and the scholars who were assisting him
trimmed the language a little, eliminated the Attic idiosyncrasies
and added words as well as grammatical and syntactical rules
mainly from the Doric, Ionic, and Aeolic dialects. The Spartan
Doric, however, was excluded from it (see Tsakonian further
down). So, they standardized THE Hellenic language, called Koine
or Common.

The language was far from perfect. Non-Greeks encountered

difficulties reading it since there was no way to separate words,
sentences and paragraphs. In addition, they were unable to
express their feelings and the right intonation. During that time,
Greek was a melodic language, even more melodic than Italian is
today.

The system of paragraphs, sentences, and some symbols like ~. ;`'!

, were the result of continuous improvement and enhancement of
the language with the contribution of many Greek scholars from
all over the World.

There were a few alphabets employed by various Hellenic cities or

states, and these alphabets included letters specific to the
sounds of their particular dialect. There were two main
categories, the Eastern and the Western alphabets. The first
official alphabet omitted all letters not in use any longer ( sampi,
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qoppa, digamma also known as stigma in Greek

numbering) and it presented a 24-letter alphabet for the new
Koinē language. However, the inclusion and use of small letters
took place over a period of many centuries after the
standardization of Koinē.

After the new language was completed with its symbols, the Jews
of Egypt felt that it was an opportunity for them to translate
their sacred books into Greek since it was the language that the
Jews of Diaspora spoke. So on the island of Pharos, by
Alexandria's seaport, 72 Jewish rabbis were secluded and
isolated as they translated their sacred books (Torah, Nevi’im,
Ketuvim, etc.) from Aramaic and Hebrew to the Koinē Greek, the
newly created language. This is known as the Septuagint
translation. The Koinē evolved and in about two to three centuries
it became the language that Biblical scholars call Biblical Greek. In
fact, only those who have studied the Attic dialect can understand
the difference between the Septuagint Greek and the Greek of
the New Testament.

Although the Koinē was officially in use, common folk in general

continued to speak their own dialect and here and there one can
sense the insertion of elements of the Attic dialect in various
documents such as the New Testament. The Gospel according to
St. John and the Revelation are written in perfect Attic. The
other three Synoptic Gospels were written in Koinē with the
insertion of some Semitic grammatical concepts (i.e. the Hebrew
genitive) and invented words (i.e. epiousios).

The outcome is that today in Greece there are many variations in

speech; of course not to the point of people not understanding
each other, but still there is divergence in the Greek spoken
tongue. Today the Hellenic language accepts only one dialect, the
Tsakonian, which is a direct development of the ancient Doric
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dialect of Sparta. The Demotic is a development of mostly the

Doric sound system, whereas the Katharevousa is a made-up
language based on the Classical Attic. Presently, the speech in
various areas of Greece somehow differs from each other and
sometimes an untrained ear might have difficulty understanding
the local speech. Pontic and Cypriot Greek are very good examples
to the unacquainted ear. Tsakonian dialect, the descendant of the
Spartan Doric, is almost impossible to understand if one is not
familiar with it.

Over the years, Macedonia had several names. At first the

Macedonians gave the land the name, Emathia, after their leader
Emathion. It derives from the word amathos, amathoeis meaning
sand or sandy. From now on, all of its names are Greek. Later it
was called Maketia or Makessa and finally Makedonia (Macedonia).
The latter names are derived from the Doric/Aeolic word “makos,”
(in Attic “mēkos) meaning length (see Homer, Odyssey, VII, 106),
thus Makednos means long or tall, but also a highlander or
mountaineer. (cf. Orestae, Hellenes).

In Opis, during the mutiny of the Macedonian Army, Alexander

the Great spoke to the whole Macedonian Army addressing them
in Greek (Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander, VII, 9,10). The
Macedonian soldiers listened to him and they were dumbfounded
by what they heard from their Commander-in-Chief. They were
upset. Immediately after Alexander left for the Palace, they
demanded that Alexander allow them to enter the palace so that
they could talk to him. When this was reported to Alexander, he
quickly came out and saw their restrained disposition; he heard
the majority of his soldiers crying and lamenting, and was moved
to tears. He came forward to speak, but they remained there
imploring him. One of them, named Callines, whose age and
command of the Companion cavalry made him preeminent spoke as
follows: “Sire, what grieves the Macedonians is that you have
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already made some Persians your ‘kinsmen’, and the Persians are
called ‘kinsmen’ of Alexander and are allowed to kiss you, while not
one of the Macedonians has been granted this honor” (Arrian,
Anabasis of Alexander, VII, 8-11).

The previous story clearly reveals that the Macedonians were

speaking Greek since they could understand their leader. There
were thousands of them, not just some selected few who
happened to speak Greek. It would be unrealistic for Alexander
the Great to speak to them in a language they supposedly did not
speak. It would be impossible to believe that the Macedonian
soldiers were emotionally moved to the point that all of them were
lamenting after listening to a language they did not understand.
There is no way for the Macedonians to have taken a crash course
in Greek in 20 minutes so that they would be able to understand
the speech simultaneously as Alexander was delivering it.

Furthermore, the Macedonians wore a distinctive hat, the “kausia”

(καυσία) (Polybius IV 4,5; Eustathius 1398; Arrian, Anabasis of
Alexander, VII 22; cf. Sturz, Macedonian Dialect, 41) from the
Greek word for heat that separated them from the rest of the
Greeks. That is why the Persians called them “yauna takabara,”
which meant “Greeks wearing the hat”. The Macedonian hat was
very distinctive from the hats of the other Greeks, but the
Persians did not distinguished the Macedonians, because the
Macedonian speech was also Greek (Hammond, The Macedonian
State p. 13 cf. J.M. Balcer, Historia, 37 [1988] 7).

Accusations of Macedonians being barbarians started in Athens

and they were the result of political fabrications based on the
Macedonian way of life and not on their ethnicity or language.
(Casson, Macedonia, Thrace and Illyria, p158, Errington, A History
of Macedonia, p 4).
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Demosthenes traveled to Macedonia twice for a total of nine

months. He knew very well what language the Macedonians were
speaking. We encountered similar behavior with Thrasyboulos.

He states that the Acarnanians were barbarians only when the

Athenians encountered a conflict of political interest from the
Acarnanians. The Macedonian way of life differed in many ways
from the southern Greek way of life, but that was very common
among the Western Greeks such as Chaones, Molossians,
Thesprotians, Acarnanians, Aetolians and Macedonians (Errington,
A History of Macedonia, p 4.) Macedonian state institutions were
similar to those of the Mycenean and Spartan (Wilcken, Alexander
the Great, p 23).

Regarding Demosthenes addressing Philip as “barbarian” even

Badian an opponent of the Greekness of Macedonians states “It
may have nothing to do with historical fact, any more than the
orators' tirades against their personal enemies usually have.” (E.
Badian, Studies in the History of Art Vol 10: Macedonia And
Greece in Late Classical and Early Hellenistic Times, Greeks and
Macedonians).
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APPENDIX C
Nicholas G. L. Hammond, ‘The Macedonian State: The Origins,
Institutions and History’, Oxford University Press, Reprint
Edition, July 1997; 4. The Language of the Macedonians, pgs 413,
pgs12-14

What language did these ‘Macedones’ speak?

The name itself is Greek in root and in ethnic termination. It

probably means ‘highlanders,’ and it is comparable to Greek tribal
names such as ‘Orestai’ and ‘Oreitai,’ meaning ‘mountain-men.’ A
reputedly earlier variant, ‘Maketai,’ has the same root, which
means ‘high,’ as in the Greek adjective ‘makednos’ or the noun
‘mekos.’ The genealogy of eponymous ancestors which Hesiod
recorded (p. 3 above) has a bearing on the question of Greek
speech. First, Hesiod made Macedon a brother of Magnes; as we
know from inscriptions that the Magnetes spoke the Aeolic dialect
of the Greek language, we have a predisposition to suppose that
the Macedones spoke the Aeolic dialect. Secondly, Hesiod made
Macedon and Magnes first cousins of Hellen’s three sons - Dorus,
Xouthus, and Aeolus - who were the founders of three dialects of
Greek speech, namely Doric, Ionic, and Aeolic. Hesiod would not
have recored thisrelationship, unless he had believed, probably in
the seventh century, that the Macedones were a Greek-speaking
people. The next evidence comes from Persia. At the turn of the
sixth century the Persians described the tribute-paying peoples
of their province in Europe, and one of them was the ‘yauna
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takabara,’ which meant the ‘Greeks wearing the hat.’ There were
Greeks in Greek city-states here and there in the province, but
they were of various origins and not distinguished by a common
hat, the ‘kausia.’ We conclude that the Persians believed the
Macedonians to be speakers of Greek. Finally, in the latter part of
the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, visited Macedonia
and modified Hesiod’s genealogy by bringing Macedon and his
descendants firmly into the Aeolic branch of the Greek-speaking
family.

Hesiod, Persia, Hellanicus had no motive for making a false

statement about the language of the Macedonians, who were then
an obscure and not a powerful people. Their independent
testimonies should be accepted as conclusive. That, however, is
not the opinion of most scholars. They disregard or fail to assess
the evidence which I have cited, and they turn instead to
‘Macedonian’ words and names, or/and to literary references.
Philologists have studied words which have been cited as
Macedonian’ in ancient lexica and glossaries, and they have come
to no certain conclusion; for some of the words are clearly Greek,
and some are clearly not Greek. That is not surprising; for as the
territory of the Macedonians expanded, they overlaid and lived
with peoples who spoke Illyrian, Paeonian, Thracian and Phrygian,
and they certainly borrowed words from them which excited the
authors of lexica and glossaries. The philological studies result in
a verdict, in my opinion, of ‘non liquet.’

The toponyms of the Macedonian homeland are the most

significant. Nearly all of them are Greek: Pieria, Lebaea,
Heracleum, Dium, Petra, Leibethra, Aegae, Aegydium, Acesae,
Acesamenae; the rivers Helicon, Aeson, Leucus, Baphyras, Sardon,
Elpe’u’s, Mitys; lake Ascuris and the region Lapathus. The mountain
names Olympus and Titarium may be pre-Greek; Edessa, the
earlier name for the place where Aegae was founded, and its river
Ascordus were Phrygian.
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The deities worshipped by the Macedones and the names which

they gave to the months were predominantly Greek, and there is
no doubt that these were not borrowings. To Greek literary
writers before the Hellenistic period the Macedonians were
‘barbarians.’ The term referred to their way of life and their
institutions, which were those of the ‘ethne’ and not of the city-
state, and it did not refer to their speech. We can see this in the
case of Epirus. There Thucydides called the tribes ‘barbarians.’
But inscriptions found in Epirus have shown conclusively that the
Epirote tribes in Thucydides’ lifetime were speaking Greek and
used names which were Greek.

In the following century ‘barbarian’ was only one of the abusive

terms applied by Demosthenes to Philip of Macedon and his people.
In passages which refer to the Macedonian soldiers of Alexander
the Great and the early successors there are mentions of a
Macedonian dialect, such as was likely to have been spoken in the
original Macedonian homeland. On one occassion Alexander ‘called
out to his guardsmen in Macedonian (’Makedonisti’), as this [viz.
the use of ‘Macedonian’] was a signal (’symbolon’) that there was a
serious riot.’ Normally Alexander and his soldiers spoke standard
Greek, the ‘koine,’ and that was what the Persians who were to
fight alongside the Macedonians were taught. So the order ‘in
Macedonian’ was unique, in that all other orders were in the ‘koine.’
It is satisfactorily explained as an order in broad dialect, just as
in the Highland Regiment a special order for a particular purpose
could be given in broad Scots by a Scottish officer who usually
spoke the King’s English.

The use of this dialect among themselves was a characteristic of

the Macedonian soldiers (rather that the officers) of the King’s
Army. This point is made clear in the report - not in itself
dependable - of the trial of a Macedonian officer before an
Assembly of Macedonians, in which the officer (Philotas) was
mocked for not speaking in dialect. In 321 when a non-Macedonian
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general, Eumenes, wanted to make contact with a hostile group of

Macedonian infantrymen, he sent a Macedonian to speak to them
in the Macedonian dialect, in order to win their confidence.

Subsequently, when they and the other Macedonian soldiers were

serving with Eumenes, they expresed their affection for him by
hailing him in the Macedonian dialect (’Makedonisti’).

He was to be one of themselves. As Curtius observed, ‘not a man

among the Macedonians could bear to part with a jot of his
ancestral customs.’ The use of this dialect was one way in which
the Macedonians expressed their apartness from the world of the
Greek city-states.

Taken from : http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/N.G.L._Hammond

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APPENDIX D
Indo-European Revival Association - http://dngl111.org/, A
grammar of modern Indo-European by Carlos Quile, pages 80-81
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