Makedon in Epigraphy - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

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By noemon
#1398855
Image

Epigraphy-Packhum.org

Free Translation in English.

This is an epigraphy found in Ephesos, and explains the holiness of the month Artemisiona:

the surname of the {Artemis} is called upon during the month, by us {Ephesians) Artemisiona, by the Macedonians and the rest Greek nations, -and all their cities- is called Artemision, during this month festivities and celebrations are being held, in our city though, the food offerings are different as it is the city of the Goddess herself, the Ephesian.


---------

Search term"Μακεδ-Maked"

"Maked" frequency in Greek inscriptions in the database of epigraphy.packhum.org

74 0.0057% Attica (IG I-III)
20 0.0080% Peloponnesos (IG IV-[VI])
120 0.0188% Central Greece (IG VII-IX)
143 0.0804% Northern Greece (IG X)
17 0.0084% Thrace and the Lower Danube (IG X)
2 0.0024% North Coast of the Black Sea
140 0.0123% Aegean Islands, incl. Crete (IG XI-[XIII])
209 0.0171% Asia Minor
7 0.0238% Cyprus ([IG XV])
9 0.0148% Greater Syria and the East
41 0.0184% Egypt, Nubia and Cyrenaïca
13 0.0094% Sicily, Italy, and the West (IG XIV)
1 0.0040% Upper Danube
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By Thunderhawk
#1398904
eh?

I take it, it is a well known greek tale found in Macedonia?
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By Arthur2sheds_Jackson
#1399017
Ephesus is in Turkey not too far from the Virgin Mary's house.

(At least I visited both on the same day)

I got the impression the city was roman by the way it has been rebuilt tho obviously the hellenistic features pre date this.
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By Cid
#1399046
Dear noemon,

by posting this topic in the history subforum I thank you for making it clear to all members that Greek Makedon belongs to history and that the modern Republic of Macedonia has nothing to do with the Greeks.

cheers
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By noemon
#1399106
An Ephesian wrote in a epigraphy:

By the Macedonians and the rest Greek nations


Makedosin(Macedonians) kai(and) tois(the) loipois(rest) ethnesin(nations) tois(the) Ellhnikois(Greek)


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Cid, the only argument that allows the Skopjian argument to remain afloat are the Greek references of Macedonia separately from Greece which allows simplistic minds to perform the equation:

"Macedonia, Greece? Separately? The Greeks should not be talking about Macedonians."


It shows the breadth and depth of Historical knowledge "those" people have.

Besides, this also shows the intelligibility of the Greek language today, with the one of the inscription as it is easy for an elementary school Greek to read and understand the content of the inscription.

Another artifact for Thunderhawk, whom i didnt get, but nevertheless here is an inscription from Macedonia:

Δάμων Νικάνορος Μακεδὼν ἀπὸ

Θεσσαλονίκης v Κόϊντον Καικέλιον

Κοΐντου Μέτελλον, στρατηγὸν ὕπατον

Ῥωμαίων, vvvv Διὶ Ὀλυμπίωι
5

ἀρετῆς ἕνεκεν καὶ εὐνοίας ἧς ἔχων διατε-

λεῖ εἴς τε αὑτὸν καὶ τὴν πατρίδα καὶ τοὺς λοιποὺς

Μακεδόνας v κ̣αὶ τοὺς ἄλλους Ἕλληνας.


EDIT:Fixed the link
Source

Translation:

Virtue(Areti) he has {Damon Nikanoros Makedon}, and eunoia(is being favored) himself and his homeland by the Macedonians and the rest of Greeks.


This is an inscription found in Macedonia and the search term here is "Greek" ("ELLHN"-Ελλην)

EDIT:And this link:
Search term "ELLHN" in Northern Greece

Erasing something from the past is erasing its respective page from the future.

-Konstantinos Palamas, Demotic Poetry
Last edited by noemon on 13 Dec 2007 20:25, edited 2 times in total.
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By akritas
#1399652
Slavmacedonians - a newly emergent people - cannot establish a link with antiquity, as the Slavs entered the Balkans centuries after the demise of the ancient Macedonian kingdom.

One from the strong archaeological evidence that show what language spoken from the ancient Macedonians is the Pella katadesmos.
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 and it was published in the Hellenic Dialectology Journal in 1993.

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).

Also the 154 words are the words that recorded from the ancient writers (mainly Hesychios) and not those that found in the inscriptions (200 more). The majority are part of the Greek syntaxis sentences and not bear any resemblance to the Thracian-Illyrian language.
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By Thunderhawk
#1399978
What written records of Thracian are there to compare against?
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By noemon
#1400294
Ask the Bulgarians...;)

At any rate, what do you mean compare against, compare which with which?

The Macedonian? With the Thracian?

The Macedonian is a certified Greek tongue, while there is still debate on which Greek dialect was predominant on it.

Was it the Doric element? Was it the North-Western Greek or was it the Ionic, predominant on the Macedonian speech.

To understand better ill give you an example the Doric words are identical to the Ionic, with the major exception being the A sound in Doric (approximately) turns into an I(sound) in Ionic, "i" as in electro.

eg.
The famous Spartan motto: I TAN i EPI TAS = "With the shield or on it", becomes in Ionic(Athenian, Ephesian and so on) I TIN I EPI TIS, the Macedonians interchanged from one to the other style, and hence the debate, on which style was predominant, just like the Modern Greeks who use both styles, the Standard Greek uses the Ionic style with "i", that is the standard learning form, while the surviving Doric dialect in Sparta uses still the Doric "a", slung speakers sometimes prefer the "a" in some areas.

As you realize the debate that exists in regards to the Macedonian language, is not whether it was Greek, but whether which one of the Greek dialects was predominant on it.

The Macedonians who sprung from the Doric genealogical family, like the Spartans had more "A" sounds in their dictionary, later with the Ionic colonies in proximity their speech turned into a more Ionic version..the "a" becoming "i", while at the same time they had grammar rules and syntax of the North-Western Greek, so scholars are discussing, still on which Greek dialect was predominant in Macedonian speech prior to the Common standardization, when all these minor differences eclipsed and all Greeks started using a standard version for all, the Standard Greek was promulgated by Alexander himself, and this is the same lingua that the Modern Greek nation uses, and the same as the language, Byzantion had in all forms of language usage (official, social, educational, rural, etcetera)

-------------------------

From Greek accounts, see Hesychios Lexicon, we know that approximately 17-20 words of Thracian origin were used by the Macedonians.

The Thracian is not a Greek tongue, the Thracians used Greek Letters but their language was not intelligible to a Greek.

Meaning, Macedonians like the rest of Greeks did not understand the Thracians, except from these 17-20 words which they had adopted, like the Southern Greeks(Spartans, Achaians) had adopted words from the Levant due to the Phoenicians colonies in the Pelloponesse(Elafonisos and Kythera), the Ionic Greeks in Asia Minor from Persian and the Graeci In Magna Graecia, from the Latin, the exchange ofc especially when dealing with Linguocentrists as the Greeks, works both ways. The Hellenic element in the worlds dictionaries today is the most obvious testament on this.
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By Anothroskon
#1409148
the modern Republic of Macedonia has nothing to do with the Greeks.


If only the Slavomacedonians could understand this as well. BTW that was almost coherent. Are you sure you are all right?

Akritas, you might find this interesting.

The following is an excerpt from Ulf Brunnbauer of the Free University of Berlin on the issue of slavomacedonian historiography.

"Pro-Serbians" vs. "Pro-Bulgarians": Revisionism in Post-Socialist Macedonian Historiography
http://tinyurl.com/354wc5

After 1990, historians in the Republic of Macedonia soon settled in accepting communist-time scholarship as the base on which to build further research. The reluctance for a thorough re-evaluation of communist historiography was mainly caused by the fact that the very nation of Macedonia was a result of communist Yugoslav policies, and this historiography had played a major role in the nation-building process. Historians therefore feared that substantial critique of communist historiography and of the Yugoslav period would jeopardize Macedonian national identity. There was also no official effort for a re-evaluation of the communist past. Cracks in this consensus occurred after 1998, when the anti-communist opposition came to power. Revisionist tendencies appeared which portrayed Yugoslavia as a peoples' prison and tried to rehabilitate personalities from Macedonian history, previously kept out of the national pantheon. The main dividing line was the one between historians who kept to the radical dissociation of Macedonian from Bulgarian history, and those who accepted the cultural proximity between these two peoples. Both tendencies, however, shared their basically nationalistic conceptualization of the past.

This is a picture of the macedonian katadesmos Akritas mentioned dated to the 4th century BCE and attributed to a person of low status as evinced by their vocabulary and their implied belief in the efficacy of curses.

Image
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By noemon
#1469173
In addition:

"Before the city{Salonica} fell in 1430, it had already enjoyed seventeen hundrend years of life as a Hellenistic, Roman and Byzantine Metropolis. Sometimes it had flourished, at others it was sacked and looted. Foreigners had seized it and moved on. Throughout it remained a city whose inhabitants spoke Greek. BUt of this Greek past, only traces survived the Ottoman Conquest. A few Christian survivors returned and saw their great churches turned into mosques.....In a very different era, far in the future, archeologists would asign new values to the statues, columns and sarcophagi they found, and new rulers - after the Ottomans had been defeated in their turn - would use them to reshape and redefine the city once more. One thing, however, always survived as a reminder of its Greek origins, however badly it was battered and butchered by time and strangers, and that was its name.

...Salonicco, Selanik, Solun? Salonicha or Salonique? There are at least thirteen medieval variants alone; the city is an indexer's nightmare and a linguist's delight.

...It is only foreigners that make things difficult for themsleves , for the Greek etymology is perfectly straightforward. The daughter of a local ruler, Phillip of Macedon, was called Thessaloniki, and the city is named after her: both daughter and city commemorated the triumph(niki) of her father over the people of Thessaly as he extended Macedonian power throughout Greece. Later of course his son, Alexander, conguered much more distant lands which took him to the limits of the known world. There were prehistoric settlements in the area but the city itself is a creation of the fourth century BCE Macedonian state.

Today the association between the city and the dynasty is as close as it has ever been."


Mark Mazower, Salonica, City of Ghosts, Chapter 1 "Beginnings", Pages 15-16. ISBN 978-0-00-712022-2

------------------------------

Also, lets get a glimpse of Athenian tendencies during the rise of Macedon.

Isocrates an Athenian Orator, wrote the Panegyricus where he:

In the "Panegyricus," the most famous of all the writings of Isocrates, we first meet with a clear exposition of his dominant political idea--the formation of a union of the Greeks to carry on war against Persia. It takes its name from the "Panegyreis," or great public festivals, such as the Panathenaea at Athens, or the pan-Hellenic festival at Olympia.1

Gorgias, Lysias, and others had already composed speeches which were delivered at Olympia (Olympiac speeches), and it is probable that Isocrates here has in mind the festival at Olympia. It is not likely that the speech was ever actually delivered, although we are told, on the authority of Philostratus, that it was. The retiring disposition of Isocrates, his lack of self-confidence, and his poorness of voice, seem to go against this. It is considered possible that he may have deputed some one else to deliver it for him; and that it afterwards was put into circulation by copies being sent round to the various Greek states.2 According to the statement of Quintilian, Isocrates was ten years engaged in its composition. Its date is approximately fixed as the latter part of the summer of B.C. 380.

At the time when the speech was written Sparta was the ruling power in Greece, Artaxerxes II. was master of the Asiatic Greeks, and the Aegean was overrun by pirates, so that there was every need of someone to rouse the Athenians to re-assert their supremacy.

After apologizing for coming forward to speak, Isocrates proceeds to recount the services rendered by Athens to Hellas generally, and to particular states in early times, dwelling upon the rivalry of Athens and Sparta during the Persian wars. The first division of the speech concludes with a defence of the Athenians against the charge of having behaved with cruelty towards the confederate states, and a contrast between the past and present condition of the city, now that it is under the arbitrary rule of Sparta.

In the second part of the speech he recommends that Athens and Sparta should sink their differences, and agree upon united action, especially when such a favourable opportunity presents itself. The Persians, he says, are weak, and have their hands full: the misery of the Hellenes has reached its height, and, under the circumstances, even existing treaties should not prevent us from declaring war; and a united campaign against our hereditary foes will tend to enhance the reputation of the state.

Argument
The speech was written at the time when the Lacedaemonians were rulers of the Hellenes and we were in a state of humiliation. It summons the Hellenes to a campaign against the barbarians, and disputes with the Lacedaemonians the right to the headship of Hellas. Having adopted this as my theme, I prove that the city has been the cause of all the blessings enjoyed by the Hellenes. Having clearly marked off the subject of such benefits, and wishing to prove still more clearly that the headship belongs to Athens, I next attempt to show, in regard to these points, that it is the due of the city to receive honour much more by reason of the dangers it has faced in war than on account of all the other benefits it has conferred upon Hellas.

This argument was written by Isocrates himself, see Or. xv. §§ 57, 58.


He also wrote another speech addressed to Phillip of Macedon, the Phillipus, which complements the Panegyricus:

THE Philippus is the complement of the Panegyricus. As the latter had contained an appeal for united action on the part of the Greeks against Persia, so this calls upon Philip of Macedon to put himself at the head of that movement, and take the command of the combined forces. The speech was commenced in April, B.C. 346, soon after the conclusion of the so-called Peace of Philocrates, and finished before the Phocian campaigns of Philip in July of the same year. Isocrates had previously been engaged upon a letter addressed to Philip (B.C. 347) on the subject of Amphipolis, with the object of bringing about the end of a war ruinous to both the contending parties, in which it was pointed out that the possession of Amphipolis was not of sufficient importance either to Athens or Philip to make it worth fighting about; the conclusion of peace rendered this letter unnecessary. We have the express testimony of Isocrates himself that "the Philippus" was actually sent to the king.

In the first part of the speech Isocrates tells Philip that it is not only his duty to bring about the reconciliation of the Hellenic states, but that it is in his power to do so; this, he says, will bring him great renown, and at the same time put a stop to the calumnies of his enemies.

In the second part he commences by pointing out the ease with which barbarian forces can be overcome, as shown in the case of Cyrus and Clearchus, and the present weakness of the Great King, and appeals to Philip to act up to the glorious deeds of his ancestors, and gain renown for himself and Hellas.



The Argument of the discourse to Philip
By an unknown writer
It should be known that this discourse was written to Philip by Isocrates after the peace which was brought about by the followers of Aeschines and Demosthenes; in consequence of which he took the opportunity to write to him, Philip, as having become a friend of Athens. Under the guise of an eulogy upon him, he exhorts him to reconcile the great Hellenic states which were quarrelling with each other, and to take the field against the Persians. "For it becomes you," he says, "to do this, being an Heraclid and possessed of such power." Now Philip, after receiving and reading the discourse, was not persuaded by its contents, but delayed for a while; but afterwards his son Alexander read the discourse, and fired with enthusiasm, made war against the later Darius, who was also called Ochus. For his proper name was Ochus, but in flattery thc Persians gave him the name of Darius, after his early ancestors.

The character of the discourse is practical, in the form of advice. It was written by Isocrates when an old man, a short while before his own and Philip's death, as Hermippus tells us.

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By Red Star
#1469178
What written records of Thracian are there to compare against?


As far as we know, the Thracians had no writing. The only "Thracian" writing found has been an alphabet created by Romans in the christianisation of the last remaining Thracians post 350AD.
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By noemon
#1469188
Red Star, not really, the Thracians had writing(using Greek Letters), but their language cannot be deciphered by any language today confirming at least the Greek accounts that the Thracians do not speak Greek.

Here is an inscription:

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/e ... o_ring.jpg

"The meaning of the inscription is not known, and it bears no resemblance to any known language. Thracologists such as Georgiev and Dechev have proposed various translations for the inscription but these are just guesses."

On the contrary, the Ancient Macedonian language can be read naturally by Greeks today as the Insciption posted by Anothroskon verifies.
Last edited by noemon on 05 Mar 2008 14:50, edited 5 times in total.
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By Red Star
#1469194
Yeah, I meant like their own writing rather than the aristocracy using Greek letters.
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By noemon
#1469200
As you realize Thurnderhawk and Red Star, a couple of theories that suggest that the Macedonian was more Thracian than Greek, is not just a load of bollocks, but it is entirely founded in the science of "assumption".

We have 4 Thracian inscriptions undeciphered, we have 5000 Macedonian inscriptions all of them being Greek, yet we have theorists that suggest that Macedonian is more akin to Thracian than it is to Greek without ofc ever defining what is this Thracian language.

Unfortunately, these assumtions, are famous and even used by supposedly credible historians such as Davies, in his "History of Europe", allegedly the epitome of objectivity, who is either trying to legitimize the claims of the FYROM for the sake of political harmony by Thracianizing the Macedonians and taking them away their Greek nature, in which case he is doing political propaganda, or is simply an ignoramus, which i doubt.
Last edited by noemon on 05 Mar 2008 14:33, edited 1 time in total.
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By Red Star
#1469202
I've kind of heard about all that. To be fair I don't believe it. I have absolutely nothing against their existence as a sovereign nation - can they jus clear up their history?
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By noemon
#1469205
The problem at the moment is not the people from Macedonia(FYROM), Red Star, they have been brainwashed, ethnographic literature has documented their development, and that's that for them. The problem has moved to the popular domain, when supposedly credible Historians such as Davies(History of Europe) promulgate such theories in the popular Western domain, which lacks the critical ability to put things into Classical/Archaic context, and misunderstanding are intentionally promoted.

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