“He was still in a world of Greek gods and sacrifices, of Greek plays and Greek language, though the natives might speak Greek with a northern accent which hardened 'ch' into 'g','th' into 'd' and pronounced King Philip as Bilip.”

—  Robin Lane Fox

Source: Alexander the Great, 1973, p.30

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "He was still in a world of Greek gods and sacrifices, of Greek plays and Greek language, though the natives might speak…" by Robin Lane Fox?
Robin Lane Fox photo
Robin Lane Fox 20
Historian, educator, writer, gardener 1946

Related quotes

“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.”

N. G. L. Hammond (1907–2001) British classical scholar

"Philip of Macedon" Duckworth Publishing, February 1998

“Just as the Judeo-Christian world had learned the Greek language and internalized Greek categories, the Greco-Roman world gradually abandoned its dying gods and became monotheistic.”

Thomas Cahill (1940) American scholar and writer

Source: Sailing the Wine-Dark Sea: Why the Greeks Matter (2003), Ch.VII The Way They Went: Greco-Roman Meets Judeo-Christian

Robin Lane Fox photo

“The occasion was not lost on Alexander: at Susa, he sacrificed to Greek gods and held Greek gymnastic games…”

Robin Lane Fox (1946) Historian, educator, writer, gardener

Source: Alexander the Great, 1973, p.253

Robin Lane Fox photo

“Philip's mother had been a Lyncestian noblewoman" - "rebellious kings of Lyncestis who traced their origins to the notorious Bacchiad kings of Greek Corinth.”

Robin Lane Fox (1946) Historian, educator, writer, gardener

Source: Alexander the Great, 1973, p.32

“The Balkan situation was far from secure, with the Odrysians and Scythians only recently defeated and with the Triballi still defiant. Yet Philip was confident of success in the interest of the Greek-speaking world and of Macedonia in particular.”

N. G. L. Hammond (1907–2001) British classical scholar

"The Genius of Alexander the Great", p.21, Gerald Duckworth & Co Ltd (November 26, 2004)

Robin Lane Fox photo

“But Alexander was stressing his link with Achilles… Achilles was also a stirring Greek hero, useful for a Macedonian king whose Greek ancestry did not stop Greeks from calling him a barbarian.”

Robin Lane Fox (1946) Historian, educator, writer, gardener

Source: Alexander the Great, 1973, p.60

“At the end of the bronze age a residue of Greek tribes stayed behind in Southern Macedonia[…] one of these, the "Makedones" occupied Aegae and expanded into the coastal plain of lower Macedonia which became the Kingdom of Macedon; their descendants were the Macedonians proper of the classical period and they worshipped Greek gods. The other Greek tribes became intermingled in upper Macedonia with Illyrians, Paeonians and Thracians[…] in the early 5th century the royal house of Macedon, the Temenidae was recognised as Greek by the Presidents of the Olympic Games. Their verdict was and is decisive. It is certain that the Kings considered themselves to be of Greek descent from Heracles son of Zeus. "Macedonian" was a strong dialect of very early Greek which was not intelligible to contemporary Greeks.”

N. G. L. Hammond (1907–2001) British classical scholar

"A History of Greece to 323 BC", Cambridge University, 1986 (p 516)

“A society in whose culture the Ancient Greeks played such an important part was bound to have a view about the Modern Greeks.”

William St Clair (1937) author

Source: That Greece Might Still be Free (1972), p. 15-16.
Context: A society in whose culture the Ancient Greeks played such an important part was bound to have a view about the Modern Greeks. The inhabitants of that famous land, whose language was still recognizably the same as that of Demosthenes, could not be regarded as just another remote tribe of natives or savages. Western Europe could not escape being concerned with the nature of the relationship between the Ancient and the Modem Greeks. The question has teased, perplexed, and confused generations of Greeks and Europeans and it still stirs passions to an extent difficult for the rational to condone.

Henry David Thoreau photo

“He would have left a Greek accent slanting the wrong way, and righted up a falling man.”

Henry David Thoreau book A Plea for Captain John Brown

A Plea for Captain John Brown (1859)

Horace photo

“The Muse gave the Greeks their native character, and allowed them to speak in noble tones, they who desired nothing but praise.”
Grais ingenium, Grais dedit ore rotundo Musa loqui, præter laudem nullius avaris. . .

Horace Ars Poetica

Grais ingenium, Grais dedit ore rotundo
Musa loqui, præter laudem nullius avaris. . .

Line 323
Ars Poetica, or The Epistle to the Pisones (c. 18 BC)

Related topics