The end of Greek dominance in the known world, or as it is otherwise known the Macedonian Era began at The Battle Of Chaeronea August 338BC.

In the year 357BC the threat to Greece did not come from Persia but from the young and intelligent King Phillip 2 of Macedonia.

At first Phillip began interfering in the affairs of Greece as the ally of one or another state.

To begin with Phillip acted peaceably. In August 338BC the Macedonian army met the combined forces of Athens and Thebes at the Battle Of Chaeronea. The main Macedonian weapon was a long pike, the sarissa, terrifying to men armed only with short lances and swords. It was used by foot soldiers in the Macedonian phalanx an indestructible body of men, sarissas and shields. As long as the walls of the phalanx were not broken it was indestructible.

There was fierce fighting from the start with neither side gaining the upper hand. The Greek General said "you have to keep attacking until you push the enemy back to Macedonia" and Phillip remarked "the Greeks just don’t know how to win". Phillip ordered his left wing to drop back steadily, the Greeks sensing victory urged on but what they didn’t know is that they were walking into a well-rehearsed trap. The Macedonian cavalry (horsemen) led by Prince Alexander then came and attacked. The entire Greek wall was broken and they were cut down each one by one. It was a great victory to the Macedonians, as they had wiped out the army of the proudest civilisation of their time in a few hours in August 338BC at Chaeronea.

The people of Athens were terrified of the news of Chaeronea and Phillip was granted Athenian citizenship. Alexander was sent to Athens bearing the bones and ashes of the Athenians who had fallen at Chaeronea and in return was given Athenian citizenship. Phillip pushed on to Sparta and his task was complete, the days of the little states was over, what a pity the Greeks couldn’t unite themselves but had to have a conqueror do it for them. At the drunken wedding feast of Attalus King Phillip was murdered by one of his own guards who was suspected to be in the pay of the Persians.

 INVASION AND DEFEAT OF PERSIA

The Greeks, who had breathed a sigh of relief over Phillip’s murder, began to realise that Phillip’s son was as much to be feared as Phillip had been.

Alexander was twenty-one when he crossed the Hellespont as Commander-in-Chief of the Macedonian Army and the league of Corinth. He took an army of 35,000 Macedonians and 7,600 Greeks.

King Darius did not take Alexander seriously at first. The Persians meet the Macedonians at the river Granicus and there objective was to kill Alexander as they thought he was the key and without him these Macedonian invaders would go home, although Alexander was very nearly killed only to be saved by a friend. The Persians were in a great position and attacked the Macedonians. Alexander drove the Persian left-wing up a hill and with that out of the way, then the Macedonian line started moving. Once within bow shot Alexander led the cavalry to charge all out, knowing he must get through. The Persian archers and troops turned and ran, Darius himself ordered his chariot to be turned and fled himself, deserting his army which went on fighting. When the Persians heard of the news that King Darius had fled himself they retreated and nothing much could be done to the Persian army before night fell.

The Macedonians saw what true luxury was for the first time as the Kings chariot was captured which one could imagine was a fairytale dome of gold and embroidery and precious stones.

The Persians had taken battle position near Gaugamela with Darius himself in the centre. Alexander kept back his Macedonian fighters in most of the battle until he saw a gap in the Persian line and then when he saw one he led his Macedonians into the gap and the line broke, and as before Darius turned and fled.

All was not well on Alexander’s left as the Persians had broke through the phalanx so Alexander and his Macedonian Companions went to help. The news had got through that Darius had again deserted them. They turned and fled still angry and undefeated. He went to the palace of Persepolis and the treasure he knew was there. At Persepolis there was more gold bars and coins than in the whole of the western cities. Alexander heard of Darius' whereabouts and went. Then they saw the men they were after and two of them stabbed Darius and left him there lying in the dessert. The first Macedonian who got there gave Darius a cup of water-he was dead before Alexander saw him.

The Macedonian Empire went as far as India, as was the largest empire the world had ever seen.

Alexander The Great of Macedonia (the first king to be known by the words the great after his name) is considered to be one of the best military leaders of all time and a military genius to say the least.

 

 

THE DEATH OF ALEXANDER

Alexander's army had enough and wanted to return to their homelands, they convinced Alexander to return home although Alexander became very ill on the way back to Macedonia. Alexander died on the 13^th June 323BC of malaria in Babylon.

The Macedonian Empire ended on the 22^nd June 168BC as they were conquered by the Romans, although a Roman General who fought them, never forgot and often confessed to his friends in Rome that he had never seen anything more alarming and terrifying than the Macedonian Phalanx.

 *Macedonians should not be recognised as Macedonians as they have been of Greek nationality since 2000BC.

 *Macedonians whose language belongs to the Slavic family, must not call themselves Macedonians as 4000 years ago they spoke Greek and today still speak nothing but Greek.

 *Macedonia has no right to call itself by this name as Macedonia has always been a region and is today a region of Greece.

 *Bulgaria's view is that Macedonians are ethnically Bulgarian.

 *& that Macedonians are simply Western Bulgarians.

 *The Serbs believe that Macedonians are misguided country cousins who belong in a Greater Serbia. (Yugoslavia)

 *Macedonia was never a region of Greece. On the contrary, Greece was often subject to Macedonia. In 1913, Greece, Serbia and Bulgaria divided Macedonia into three parts. (BALKAN WARS)

 *Ancient Macedonians were a distinct European people and proud of their nationality, their customs, their language and their name. The same applies to their descendants today.

 *Ancient Macedonians regarded Greeks as neighbours not as kinsmen. The Greeks treated the Macedonians as foreigners ("barbarians") whose native language was Macedonian not Greek.

 *Macedonians claimed kinship with the Illyrians, Thracians and Phrygians, not with Greeks.

 *Greeks said Macedonians were "barbarians" (a word which means non-Greek)

 *Demosthenes, the great Athenian statesman and orator, spoke of the Macedonian King Phillip2 of Macedon as:

"...Not only not Greek, nor related to the Greeks, but not even a barbarian from anyplace that can be named with honours, but a pestilent knave from Macedonia, whence it was never yet possible to buy a decent slave."[Third Phillipic, 31]

 *The Macedonian "barbarian’ defeated Greece at the Battle Of Chaeronea in August 338BC. The date is known as the end of Greek history or as The Macedonian Era.

 *Alexander The Great spoke Macedonian and was proud of his ethnicity. However the Macedonian language then was not used as a literacy idiom.

The first native written language in Macedonia is the idiom called Macedonian or Old Church Slavonic (Cyrillic Alphabet) and is the basis of all Cyrillic alphabets today.

 *Alexander won his empire with 35,000 Macedonians and only 7,600 Greeks and called it the Macedonian Empire not the Greek Empire.

 *Today’s republic was created by Josip Broz Tito the anti-fascist leader of Yugoslavia during the 2^nd World War who recognised Macedonians as a distinct nationality with their own language and customs.

 *The claims by Bulgaria that Macedonians are of Bulgarian ethnicity are entirely false due to the facts that the Tatars a people from the east who invaded the balkans during Byzantine times mixed with the Gypsies and Turks in the Balkans and created a new race of people which go by the name of Bulgarians.

The Tatars dropped their native name and language in favor for the Macedonian language with its Cyrillic alphabet and customs and created the Bulgarian nation which is east of Macedonia and today has in its boundaries the Pirin region of Macedonia.

 *By the Treaty of Bucharest, in August 1913 Macedonia was divided among Greece, Serbia (Yugoslavia) & Bulgaria.

Greece gained Aegean Macedonia and renamed it Northern Greece or Greek Macedonia.

Bulgaria gained Pirin Macedonia and abolished the Macedonian name.

Serbia gained Vardar Macedonia and renamed it Southern Serbia and it was included in the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats & Slovenes. Later renamed Yugoslavia.

Macedonian freedom fighters in 1944 created its Macedonian Republic (named Macedonia from then on, not Southern Serbia) but it was not entirely independent.

 *Macedonia became a sovereign state in 1991 by referendum. Majority of voters chose independence.

*Therefore,

The claims put forward by Greece that the Ancient Macedonians and present are Greeks, that their native language was Greek, and that Macedonia was a region of Greece are all false. Historical truth is that Greece inhabited by Greeks and Macedonia by Macedonians. The presence of Greek settlements along the coasts which King Phillip 2 destroyed anyway did not change Macedonia’s ethnic character and like wise, a much longer and stronger Greek presence in Egypt did not change that African land into a region of Greece.

The following is an extract from National Geographic, Vol 189, No.3 March 1996

Macedonians identify closely with their church, so early in my four week stay I drive into the hills north of Skopje with my guide, Elena Damjanovska to visit the Gorni Sveti Ilija.

The isolated monastery was built in the 12^th century, when Macedonia was part of the Byzantine Empire, and it survived Tito’s communists as well as the Ottoman Turks, whose 500 year rule of the Balkan peninsula ended only in 1913 which is when Macedonia was divided.

Its caretaker Tome Bonevski gives us the key to the church. Later we sample some wine and Tome wants to talk about his family.

"Nine of them are in Sweden as guest workers" he says, "but when the war broke out, my grandson came back down from Sweden to do his duty in the Yugoslav army. He ended up in Croatia, in Vukovar, where the worst fighting was. He shook for a month after we got him out of there".

The old man drabs his eyes."Macedonians have always been the victims in war" he says "My grandfather died fighting the Turks, and my father was left an orphan when only three. I joined the Partisans during World War 2 and got some of our nation back". "We fought for Macedonia for thousands of years" Bonevski says voice cracking, "and it should be known this piece of land is Macedonia and will always be Macedonia."

"When the Macedonian people had no state" says Petar, Bishop of Bitola, "The church protected them from being assimilated into another culture. That’s why Macedonians love their church, even though they are not really very religious." "Go to Ohrid" the bishop advises, "for the pilgrimage to the monastery where St Naum is buried, 50 000 people will be there"

Ohrid lies on the shore of Lake Ohrid, one of the two large lakes, the other Lake Prespa in south western Macedonia. Dark mountains cup Lake Ohrid and curve into the haze of the Albanian shore, nine miles away. The lake is fed by cold springs filtered through limestone, water that flows from the higher Lake Prespa, and is one of the oldest and deepest in the world, full of living fossils-trout and other species found no where else. The UN placed both lake and town under environmental protection.

We head out for St Naum the next morning led by Dragan Petrovski. Dragan scoops a cupful of Lake Water and drinks freely. "When I was a child we’d take a pan of eel-stew get on a boat in the evening, and spend all night at St Naum. Just give me a tent and I’d live right here. I’d be perfectly happy and I could plant some vegetables. My cousin in California calls me a Balkan peasant for staying here, but I love it."

St Naum monastery lies on the southern tip of the lake, surrounded by a green meadow eternally soaked in spring water. Families once brought their mentally disturbed to be purged in this place of purity.

Before 1912 Macedonia encompassed much of today's northern Greece including Thessaloniki although it was called Salonica then. In the savage Balkan Wars of 1912-13, the Turks were finally expelled from the peninsula, and Macedonia was partioned into three sectors. Vardar Macedonia, including Skopje which is today's Macedonian Republic became part of the Kingdom of the Serbs, Croats and Slovenes, formed in 1918 and later renamed Yugoslavia in 1929. Pirin Macedonia went to Bulgaria. Aegean Macedonia went to Greece and is now in northern Greece. The Greeks set out expunge Macedonian loyalties in its new territory in 1913, they shipped in ethnic Greeks from Asia Minor, which diluted the Macedonian population and forced out thousands of Macedonians.

Hristo Melovski, a professor at the University of Skopje, was born in Aegean Macedonia or as the Greeks call it, Greek Macedonia. "They Told us our name was now Mellios," he says, "and it was forbidden to speak our language-for every Macedonian word, you would be fined 30-40 Drachmas."

Greece bristled anew when an independent Macedonia emerged on its northern border. They were out raged by the 16 Point yellow sun in a blood red field, which they considered Greek as it was found on the grave of Phillip2 of Macedonia. But how can it be Greek when the Greeks considered Phillip and all other Macedonians as "barbarians" a word which means non-Greek.

Macedonia was forced to change its flag or would not be recognised by the Greeks and its powerful Washington lobby. Where is the justice in that?

Macedonia’s internal wound remains the Albanian question. Macedonians are 67% of the population and Albanians 23%. The official language is Macedonian or as otherwise known Old Church Slavonic with its Cyrillic alphabet.

Nade Proeva a professor says, "we all pay taxes to support these Albanians and their twelve children each." "They say will beat you in the beds."

"We don’t have a mother state, like the Albanians, we only have our land, and they want to divide it again. Enough is enough there is nothing left to divide!"

Albanians and Macedonians don’t socialise much. A young Albanian man said "The Macedonians have a force and army organised against us."

"Not against outside enemies?" I ask. "No against us."

"You can ask 200 Albanians." "If one disagrees, I will buy you dinner."

"What about the war?" I ask, "Will it happen?" "You can smell the powder even here." They reply.

Serbia is still Macedonia’s most likely ally. Macedonians and Serbians fought alongside each other as Partisans in World War 2. Josip Broz Tito encouraged development of the Macedonian language and culture. Josip Broz Tito's portrait appears behind every desk in Macedonia.

Macedonia avoided conflict in 1991 by convincing the Yugoslav army stationed there to take its weapons and go home and that they would not claim a share of the weapons. This left Macedonia in peace but defenceless until the UN and America stepped in.

The Americans patrol villages to be seen, not to fight if 25 000 Serbs, Bulgarians, Greeks or Albanians appeared on their border. "We protect ourselves, but otherwise weapons down."

They go on patrol on a sunny afternoon when a Macedonian man in Slaniste approaches us to greet us. " I have no place else to go" he says laughing, "I am married to a Serb." He and Sgt. Albert Ochoa, a Mexican American from Los Angeles, engage in a sort of semiverbal conversation. They are soon laughing and shaking hands vigorously and calling each other a "drugar" a Macedonian word which means a special friend for whom you would die for.

 

Visits since December 1998

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