Philip fulfiled his mentor’s Epaminondas dream to unite Greece

Taken from the book of Lewis Vance Cummings “Alexander the Great” 

Page 20

Philip had been a boy of thirteen when he was taken as a hostage to Thebes. He had been well treated, and placed in charge of Epaminondas, perhaps the greatest Greek of that day. The Thcban was a man of culture, an orator of the first caliber, a politician of consummate shrewdness and ability, a strategist and general with the driving power of a Spartan. By sheer force of domineering will power he had won from the people of Thebes their blind obedience and made himself supreme in the city. He had tried, fruitlessly, largely by diplomatic chicane, even to the extent of intriguing with the Persian king and even sending Pelopidas to dance attendance upon the foreign monarch, to force Theban ascendancy in matters pertaining to the policies of all Greece. It was later said that Epaminondas’ intentions were the same as those of Jason, ultimately to use his ascendancy to force unity of Greece for the purpose of attacking the Persian Empire. But he had run into the stone wall of insular hatred that kept all Greeks in constant bitter turmoil. The Greek city-states, jealous of their individual prerogatives and governed by frequently changed personalities, would never agree to genuine co-operation, or, having agreed, would break any agreement to gain an advantage or upon the slightest fancied insult. They had become politically incapable of forming a lasting confederation for mutual defense or betterment, and were individually too weak to defend themselves in the face of any logical combination or alliance. Epaminondas had failed in his dream, but the scope of his vision, mental resources, military prowess, and diplomatic cleverness had fired young Philip’s imagination

Cults in Ancient Macedonia

MACEDONIA – CULTS

Nowadays historians generally agree that the Macedonians form part of the Greek ethnos; hence they also shared in the common religious and cultural features of the Hellenic world.

Consequently most of the gods worshipped in Greece can also be found in Macedonia. However regional characteristics have to be noted. Especially in the areas bordering on Thrace and among the Paeonians in the north – though these had early contacts with the Macedonians in the centre – local deviants in cult and religion have been attested.

The cult of Zeus was one of the most important cults in Macedonia. Its places of worship on Olympus, at the foot of the mountain at Dion, and at Aegae (Vergina) were extremely popular. As father of Makedon he was the Macedonians’ eponymous ancestor.

The cult of Artemis was widely practised. Although most of the evidence dates to Roman times one may assume the existence of older religious practices. In the areas in contact with Thrace it is determined by the Thracian cult of Artemis and the worship of Bendis, probably themselves types of a deity of fertility and vegetation. Herodotus (4.33) says that women in Thrace and Paeonia always brought wheat-straw in their offerings to Artemis Basileia. In central Macedonia Enodia is attested, on horseback and holding a torch. She has frequently been associated with Artemis.

By comparison the cult of Apollo is not as widespread. Here too local deviants can be found. In Thessalonica, where Pythian Games were held in honour of Apollo Pythius, the cult of Apollo is even connected with the Cabiri.

The cult of Dionysus, whom the Paeonians called Dyalus, was especially popular. However, the sites are unevenly distributed. On the basis of the borders of the later Macedonian provinces there are fewer monuments for Dionysus in the south-west, while one of the cult centres was in the area of the Pangaeus – a region admittedly also settled in by the Thracians.

Zeus, Apollo, Heracles, Dionysus, Athena, and other such gods appear on coins of the 5th and 4th cents. BC. This evidence, however, ought not to be overestimated since these gods were depicted in order to demonstrate the close links with the Greek world. Especially important was Heracles not only as the ancestor of the Macedonian royal family, but also fulfilling manifold other functions, e.g. as the patron of hunting.

Other cults of not inconsiderable importance were those of Helios, among the Paeonians worshipped as a disc, Selene, the Dioscuri, healing deities -represented by Asclepius and Hygeia- river-gods, nymphs, the Pierian Muses, and a strange snake.

Alongside the cult of Dionysus and the Samothracian mysteries, Orphism too was not unknown (Derveni papyrus c.330 BC.)

The so-called Thracian Rider is attested on votive tablets in north and east Macedonia. However, in contrast to Thrace the ‘Heros Equitans’ is frequently depicted on Macedonian tomb-stones. The numerous deifications of the dead as e.g. Aphrodite, Artemis, Athena, Dionysus, Eros, Hermes, and Heracles belong in this context. These monuments, as well as most river-statues and the votive reliefs depicting various deities, generally date to the second half of the 2nd and the first half of the 3rd cent. AD.

M.Oppermann,

Oxford Classical Dictionary, 3rd ed. (1996), p.905

http://www.ucc.ie/staff/jprodr/macedonia/macancrel.html

Eurypides and Macedonians

Euripides spent many years of his life and finally died in Macedonia. Many of his tragedies were written and played while he was in Macedonia. This would have been impossible, had the Macedonians been ‘barbarians’. This is because in one of these tragedies, ‘Iphigeneia in Aulis’, the Greek superiority over the barbarians is emphasized.

MIT classics is elightening on this subject, where Iphigenia is talking to her mother Clytaemnestra (in Euripides’ Iphigenia at Avlis):

IPHIGENIA: And it is but right, mother, that Hellenes should rule barbarians, but not barbarians Hellenes, those being slaves, while these are free.

http://classics.mit.edu/Euripides/iphi_aul.pl.txt 

For the sake of the argument, it woud have been a great insult for the proud Macedonians if Euripides, in front of the Macedonian King Archelaos and the theater full of Macedonians, would dare to say that Greeks should rule the barbarians, if Macedonians were barbarians themselves

The question is…Did Euripides had a death wish OR he was certain he was adressing Greeks????  

Some more questions would be why did Euripides assumed that these Macedonians knew everything about the Trojan War, Iphigenia, Orestis and the like, as references to these abound in the text?

Why did he assume that the deities, their characteristics and actions were understandable by the Macedonians?

The Answer is easy…Euripides knew Macedonians were Greeks!!!

Ancient writers about Macedonia – Dionysius Halicarnasus

The Battle of Asculum (279 BC), between the Greeks forces of Pyrrhus of Epirus and the Romans under publius Decius Mus, from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, Roman Antiquities, p387, Excerpts from Book XX

 

• “Having agreed through heralds upon the time when they would join in battle, they descended from their camps and took up their positions as follows: King Pyrrhus gave the Macedonian phalanx the first place on the right wing and placed next to it the Italiot mercenaries from Tarentum; then the troops from Ambracia and after them the phalanx of Tarentines equipped with white shields, forced by the allied force of Bruttians and Lucanians; in the middle of the battle-line he stationed the Thesprotians and Chaonians; next to them the mercenaries of the Aetolians, Acarnanians and Athamanians, and finally the Samnites, who constituted the left wing. Of the horse, he stationed the Samnite, Thessalian and Bruttian squadrons and the Tarentine mercenary force upon the right wing, and the Ambraciot, Lucanian and Tarentine squadrons and the Greek mercenaries, consisting of Acarnanians, Aetolians, Macedonians and Athamanians, on the left. The light-armed troops and the elephants he divided into two groups and placed them behind both wings, at a reasonable distance, in a position slightly elevated above the plain. He himself, surrounded by the royal agema, as it was called, of picked horsemen, about two thousand in number, was outs the battle-line, so as to aid promptly any of his troops in turn that might be hard pressed.*
  

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Ancient writers about Macedonia – Cosmas Indicopleustes

BOOK II

This Ptolemy is one of those Ptolemies who reigned after Alexander the Macedonian, concerning whom the prophet Daniel prophesied in different passages, and especially in the dream of Nabuchodonosor and in the vision of the four beasts that rose up from the sea which Daniel himself saw; namely in the image, a head of gold, but in the vision a lioness, by which he signified the kingdom of the Babylonians, that is Nabuchodonosor. Then, [145] in the image, the breast and the arms of silver, but in the vision, a bear—-namely, the empire of the Medes, which was inferior to that of the Babylonians, whereby he means Darius the Mede. Next again in the image—-the belly and the thighs of brass, but in the vision a leopard, the kingdom namely of the Persians, by which he signifies Cyrus, whose empire was no less splendid and renowned than that of the Babylonians. Then again in the image, the legs of iron, and in the vision, a beast terrible and dreadful, with claws of brass and teeth of iron, by which he indicates the Macedonian empire—-that is Alexander—-breaking kingdoms in pieces and subduing them. Then again in the image, the feet and toes partly of iron and partly of clay; and in the vision, ten horns corresponding in number with the toes, by which he means the empire of Alexander broken up after his death, which, in the vision also of the ram and the he-goat was, he says, broken up towards the four winds of heaven. For, when Alexander was approaching his end, he divided his empire among his four friends, of whom one reigned in Europe, that is, in GREECE, another in Asia, another in Syria and Babylonia, and |69 the fourth in Egypt, Libya and the southern parts.118 Unto these four were many sons born, who filled their thrones after them and brought manifold evils upon the world, as has been recorded in the book of the Maccabees. Now the little horn speaking great things, that was in the midst of the ten horns, signifies Antiochus Epiphanes, who warred against the Jews in the days of the Maccabees. He speaks therefore of all these things as partly of iron and partly of clay, to show them as conquering each other and being conquered in turn, and not mixed together, just as iron and clay do not commingle.

Book III

Even in Taprobanê, on an island in Further India, where the Indian sea is, there is a Church of Christians, with clergy and a body of believers, but I know not whether there be any Christians in the parts beyond it. In the country called Malê, where the pepper grows, there is also a church, and at another place called Calliana there is moreover a bishop, who is appointed from Persia. In the island, again, called the Island of Dioscoridês, which is situated in the same Indian sea, and where the inhabitants speak Greek, having been originally colonists sent thither by the Ptolemies who succeeded Alexander the Macedonian, there are clergy who receive their ordination in Persia, and are sent on to the island, and there is also a multitude of Christians. I sailed along the coast of this island, but did not land upon it. I met, however, with some of its Greek-speaking people who had come over into Ethiopia. And so likewise among the Bactrians and Huns and Persians, and the rest of the Indians, Persarmenians, and Medes and Elamites, and throughout the whole land of Persia there is no limit to the number of churches with bishops and very large communities of Christian people, as well as many martyrs, and monks also living as hermits. So too in Ethiopia and Axôm, and in all the country about it; among the people of Happy Arabia—-who are now called Homerites—-through all Arabia and Palestine, Phoenicia, and all Syria and Antioch as far as Mesopotamia; among the Nubians and the Garamantes, in Egypt, Libya, Pentapolis, Africa and Mauretania, as far as southern Gadeira,there are everywhere churches of the Christians, and bishops, martyrs, monks and recluses, where the Gospel of Christ is proclaimed. So likewise again in Cilicia, Asia, Cappadocia, Lazica and Pontus, and in the northern countries occupied by the Scythians, Hyrcanians, Heruli, Bulgarians, Greeks and Illyrians, Dalmatians, Goths, Spaniards, Romans, Franks, and other nations, as far as Gadeira on the ocean towards the northern parts, there are believers and preachers of the Gospel confessing the resurrection from the dead; and so we see the prophecies being fulfilled over the whole world.
Book XI

And yet He has not left them without a witness to Himself, that He was working for their good and taking thought for it beforehand, for He manifested to them some tokens of His goodness, some four hundred years or more before the coming of Christ, in the days of Alexander the Macedonian, long after the Trojan war, when the Greeks were still flourishing. Let me give an instance of this: When Alexander the Macedonian was passing by Jerusalem in prosecution of his war against Darius, the High Priest of the Jews, arrayed in the robes of his office, came forth to meet him, whereupon Alexander dismounted from his horse and in a very kindly manner embraced him. And when his attendants reproached him for so doing and said: Why hast thou done so? he excused himself and said: When I set out at first from Macedonia, a man dressed in this style was seen by me in a dream who said to me: Go forth and conquer. The result was that the King himself offered sacrifices to God and bestowed many gifts on the Temple, and accorded many privileges to the country of the Jews.In subsequent times Ptolemy surnamed Philadelphus, after having made careful inquiry from Tryphon the Phalerean about the Jewish books, and learned the truth concerning them, earnestly solicited them from the High Priest Eleazar, to whom as well as to the Temple he sent many presents. These books he received along with seventy elderly men, who translated them from the Hebrew into the Greek tongue, and he deposited them on the shelves of his own library. This also was a work of divine providence, that the translation had been prepared before the coming of Christ, lest, if it were done afterwards in the days of the Apostles, it would be exposed to general suspicion, as if they had interpreted what had been said of old by the prophets both concerning Christ and the calling of the Gentiles in a way to suit their own predilections

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Ancient writers about Macedonia – Quintus Curtius Rufus

• “They recalled that at the start of his reign Darius had issued orders for the shape of the scabbard of the Persian scimitar to be altered to the shape used by the Greeks, and that the Chaldeans had immediately interpreted this as meaning that rule over the Persians would pass to those people whose arms Darius had copied. “

(Quintus Curtius Rufus 3.3.6)

• “For his part Alexander responded much like this: ‘His majesty Alexander to Darius: Greetings. The Darius whose name you have assumed wrought much destruction upon the Greek inhabitants of the Hellespontine coast and upon the Greek colonies of Ionia, and the crossed the sea with a mighty army, bringing the war to Macedonia and Greece. On another occasion Xerxes, a member of the same family, came with his savage barbarian troops, and even when beaten in a naval engagement he still left Mardonius in Greece so that he could destroy our cities and burn our fields though absent himself.”

(Quintus Curtius Rufus 4.1.10)

• “Mutiny was but a step away when, unperturbed by all this, Alexander summoned a full meeting of his generals and officers in his tent and ordered the Egyptian seers to give their opinion. They were well aware that the annual cycle follows a pattern of changes, that the moon is eclipsed when it passes behind the earth or is blocked by the sun, but they did not give this explanation, which they themselves knew, to the common soldiers. Instead, they declared that the sun represented the Greeks and the moon the Persians, and that an eclipse of the moon predicted disaster and slaughter for those nations.”

(Quintus Curtius Rufus 4.10.1)

• “Alexander called a meeting of his generals the next day. He told them that no city was more hateful to the Greeks than Persepolis, the capital of the old kings of Persia, the city from which troops without number had poured forth, from which first Darius and then Xerxes had waged an unholy war on Europe. To appease the spirits of their forefathers they should wipe it out, he said.”

(Quintus Curtius Rufus 5.6.1)

• “One of the latter was Thais. She too had had too much to drink, when she claimed that, if Alexander gave the order to burn the PErsian palace, he would earn the deepest gratitude among all the Greeks. This was what the people whose cities the Persians ahd destroyed were expecting she said. As the drunken whore gave her opinion on a matter of extreme importance, one or two who were themselves the worse for drink agreed with her. the king, too, was enthusiastic rather than acquiescent. “Why do we not avenge Greece, then and put the city to the torch?” he asked.”

(Quintus Curtius Rufus 5. 7. 3)

• “From here he now moved into Media, where he was met by fresh reinforcement from Cilicia: 5,000 infantry and 1,000 cavalry, both under the command of the Athenian Plato. His foraces thus augmented. Alexander determined to pursue Darius”

(Quintus Curtius Rufus 5. 7.

• “As for Alexander, it is generally agreed that, when sleep had brought him back to his senses after his drunken bout, he regretted his actions and said that the Persians would have suffered a more grievous punishment at the hands of the Greeks had they been forced to see him on Xerxes’ throne and in his palace.”

(Quintus Curtius Rufus 5.7.11)

• “In pursuit of Bessus the Macedonians had arrived at a small town inhabited by the Branchidae who, on the orders of Xerxes, when he was returning from Greece, had emigrated from Miletus and settled in this spot. This was necessary because, to please Xerxes, they had violated the temple called the Didymeon. The culture of their forebears had not yet disappeared thought they were now bilingual and the foreign tongue was gradually eroding their own. So it was with great joy that they welcomed Alexander, to whom they surrendered themselves and their city. Alexander called a meeting of the Milesians in his force, for the Milesians bore a long-standing grudge against the Branchidae as a clan. Since they were the people betrayed by the Branchidae, Alexander let them decide freely on their case, asking if they preferred to remember their injury or their common origins. But when there was a difference of opinion over this, he declared that he would himself consider the best course of action.

When the Branchidae met him the next day, he told them to accompany him. On reaching the city, he himself entered through the gate with a unit of light-armed troops. The phalanx had been ordered to surround the city walls and, when the signal was given, to sack this city which provided refuge for traitors, killing the inhabitants to a man. The Branchidae, who were unarmed, were butchered throughout the city, and neither community of language nor the olive-branches and entreaties of the suppliants could curb the savagery. Finally the Macedonians dug down to the foundations of the city walls in order to demolish them and leave not a single trace of the city.”

• “The gist of the passage was that the Greeks had established a bad practice in inscribing their trophies with only their kings’ names, for the kings’ were thus appropriating to themselves glory that was won by the blood of others.”

(Quintus Curtius Rufus 8.1.29)

• “and he [alexander] demonstrated the strength of his contempt for the barbarians by celebrating games in honour of Aesclepius and Athena.”

(Curtius Rufus 3, 7, 3)

• “he consecrated three altars on the banks of the river Pinarus to Zeus, Hercules, and Athena,…”

(Curtius Rufus 3, 12, 27)

• “About this time there took place the traditional Isthmian games, which the whole of Greece gathers to celebrate. At this assembly the Greeks – political trimmers by temperament – determined that fifteen ambassadors be sent to the king to offer him a victory-gift of a golden crown in honour of his achievements on behalf of the security and freedom of greece.”

(Curtius Rufus 4, 5, 11)

• “they also occupied Tenedos and had decided to seize Chios at the invitation of its inhabitants.”

(Curtius Rufus 4, 5, 14)

• “Then Alexander’s horses dragged him around the city while the king gloated at having followed the example of his ancestor Achilles in punishing his enemy.”

Curtius Rufus 4,6.29)

• ” Moreover, as a reward for their exceptional loyalty to him, Alexander reimbursed the people of Mitylene for their war expenses and also added a large area to their territories.”

(Curtius Rufus 4.8.13)

• ” Furthemore, appropriate honours were accorded the kings of Cyprus who had defected to him from Darius and sent him a fleet during his assault on Tyre.”

(Curtius Rufus 4.8.14)

• “Amphoterus, the admiral of the fleet, was then sent to liberate Crete, most of which was occupied by both Persian and Spartan armies”

(Curtius Rufus 4.8. 15)

• “He did not want her tainting the character and civilized temperament of the Greeks with this example of barbarian lawlessness“

• “Alexander advanced from there to the river Tanais, where Bessus was brought to him, not only in irons but entirely stripped of his clothes. Spitamenes held him with a chain around his neck, a sight that afforded as much pleasure to the barbarians as to the Macedonians.”

(Curtius Rufus 7.5.36)

• ” Meanwhile a group of Macedonians had gone off to forage out of formation and were suprised by some Barbarians who came rushing down on them from the neighbouring mountains.”

(Curtius Rufus 7.6.1)

• “Menedemus himself, riding an extremely powerful horse, had repeatedly charged at full gallop into the barbarians’ wedge-shaped contingents, scattering them with great carnage.”

(Curtius Rufus 7.6.35)

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Ancient writers about Macedonia – Velleius Paterculus

“”In this period, sixty-five years before the founding of Rome, Carthage was established by the Tyrian Elissa, by some authors called Dido. About this time also Caranus, a man of royal race, eleventh in descent from Hercules, set out from Argos and seized the kingship of Macedonia. From him Alexander the Great was descended in the seventeenth generation, and could boast that, on his mother’s side, he was descended from Achilles, and, on his father’s side, from Hercules. “”

Velleius Paterculus, Book I

Ancient writers about Macedonia – Titus Livius

“Aetolians, Acarnanians, Macedonians, men of the same language“

(T. Livius XXXI,29, 15)

“General Paulus of Rome surrounded by the ten Commissioners took his official seat surrounded by the whole crowds of Macedonians…Paulus announced in Latin the decisions of the Senate, as well as his own, made by the advice of his council. This announcement was translated into Greek and repeated by Gnaeus Octavius the Praetor-for he too was present.”

(T. Livius,XLV)

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Ancient writers about Macedonia – Pausanias

Pausanias, “Description of Greece”

• “They say that these were the clans collected by Amphictyon himself in the Greek assembly… The Macedonians managed to join and the entire Phocian race… In my day there were thirty members: six each from Nikopolis, Macedonia, and Thessaly – and from the Boeotoi that were the first that departed from Thessalia and that’s when they were called Aioloi – two from each of the Phokeis and Delphi, one from the ancient Dorida, the Lokroi send one from the Ozoloi and one from the ones living beyond Evoia, one from the Evoeis. From the Peloponnesians, one from Argos, one from Sikion, one from Korinthos and Megara, one from Athens…”

(Pausanias, Description of Greece, Phocis Book VIII, 4)

• “…later they added sinorida (race between two-horse-chariots) and horse-riding. In sinorida Velistichi from Makedonia, a woman of the sea, and Tlipolemos Likion were proclaimed victors, he at the 131st Olympiad and Velistichi, in sinorida, at the third Olympiad before that (128th)…”

(Pausanias, Description of Greece, Iliaka, VIII, 11)

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Ancient writers about Macedonia – Aeschines

• “at the congress of the Lakedaimonian allies and the rest of the Hellenes, in which Amyntas, the father of Philip, being entitled to a seat, was represented by a delegate whose vote was absolutely under his control, he joined the rest of the Hellenes in voting…”

(Aeschines, On the Embassy 32)

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