N. G. L. Hammond quote: “All in all, the language of the Macedones was a distinct and particular form of Greek, resistant to outside influnces a…”

“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 […] 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 recorded this relationship, 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 takabara', which meant `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. However, the Macedonians wore a distinctive 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 making Macedon not a cousin, but a son of Aeolus, thus bringing Macedon and his descendants firmly into the Aeolic branch of the Greek-speaking family. Hesiod, Persia, and 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.”

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

"The Macedonian State" p.12-13)

“The Fourth Gospel is admitted by all Greek scholars to be, in parts, extraordinarily obscure.”

Edwin Abbott Abbott (1838–1926) British theologian and author

Johannine Grammar (1906), p. 5
Context: The Fourth Gospel is admitted by all Greek scholars to be, in parts, extraordinarily obscure. No honest writer of history is obscure, as a rule, except through carelessness or ignorance — ignorance, it may be, of the art of writing, or of the subject he is writing about, or of the persons he is addressing, or of the words he is using, but, in any case, ignorance of something. But an honest writer of poetry or prophecy may be consciously obscure because a message, so to speak, has come into his mind in a certain form, and he feels this likely to prove the best form — ultimately, when his readers have thought about it.

“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)

“Since so little is known about the early Macedonians, it is hardly strange that in both ancient and modern times there has been much disagreement on their ethnic identity. The Greeks in general and Demosthenes in particular looked upon them as barbarians, that is, not Greek. Modern scholarship, after many generations of argument, now almost unanimously recognises them as Greeks, a branch of the Dorians and ‘NorthWest Greeks’ who, after long residence in the north Pindus region, migrated eastwards. The Macedonian language has not survived in any written text, but the names of individuals, places, gods, months, and the like suggest strongly that the language was a Greek dialect. Macedonian institutions, both secular and religious, had marked Hellenic characteristics and legends identify or link the people with the Dorians. During their sojourn in the Pindus complex and the long struggle to found a kingdom, however, the Macedonians fought and mingled constantly with Illyrians, Thracians, Paeonians, and probably various Greek tribes. Their language naturally acquired many Illyrian and Thracian loanwords, and some of their customs were surely influenced by their neighbours[…] To the civilised Greek of the fifth and fourth centuries, the Macedonian way of life must have seemed crude and primitive. This backwardness in culture was mainly the result of geographical factors. The Greeks, who had proceeded south in the second millennium, were affected by the many civilising influences of the Mediterranean world, and ultimately they developed that very civilising institution, the polis. The Macedonians, on the other hand, remained in the north and living for centuries in mountainous areas, fighting with Illyrians, Thracians, and amongst themselves as tribe fought tribe, developed a society that may be termed Homeric. The amenities of city-state life were unknown until they began to take root in Lower Macedonia from the end of the fifth century onwards.”

John V.A. Fine (1903–1987) American historian

"The Ancient Greeks: A Critical History", Harvard University Press, 1983, pgs 605-608

“Part of my Greek heritage: The call of resistance to the Nazis, when all mainland Europe had succumbed, it was only Greece my Antigone, who resisted and was starved for it.”

Angelique Rockas South African actress and founder of Internationalist Theatre, London

Interview on Helenism .net (September 2011)

“Both Herodotus and Thycidides describe the Macedonians as foreigners, a distinct people lying outside the frontiers of the Greek-city states.”

Eugene N. Borza (1935) American historian

Source: In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon (1990), p. 92

“Among the conservative Greek opinion there would be no regrets that Alexander the Greek leader was invading the barbarians.”

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

Source: Alexander the Great, 1973, p.101

“All which relates to the overspreading of the Greek Empire with Monks and Nuns, who placed holiness in abstinence from marriage; and to the invocation of saints and veneration of their relics, and such like superstitions, which these men introduced in the fourth and fifth centuries.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Vol. I, Ch. 12: Of the Prophecy of the Scripture of Truth
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)
Context: Hitherto the Roman Empire continued entire; and under this dominion, the little horn of the He-Goat continued mighty, but not by his own power. But now, by the building of Constantinople, and endowing it with a Senate and other like privileges with Rome; and by the division of the Roman Empire into the two Empires of the Greeks and Latins, headed by those two cities; a new scene of things commences, in which which a King, the Empire of the Greeks, doth according to his will, and, by setting his own laws above the laws of God, exalts and magnifies himself above every God, and speaks marvelous things against the God of Gods, and shall prosper till the indignation be accomplished.—Neither shall he regard the God of his fathers, nor the lawful desire of women in matrimony, nor any God, but shall magnify himself above all. And in his seat he shall honor Mahuzzims, that is, strong guardians, the souls of the dead; even with a God whom his fathers knew not shall he honor them, in their Temples, with gold and silver, and with precious stones and valuable things. All which relates to the overspreading of the Greek Empire with Monks and Nuns, who placed holiness in abstinence from marriage; and to the invocation of saints and veneration of their relics, and such like superstitions, which these men introduced in the fourth and fifth centuries. And at the time of the end the King of the South, or the Empire of the Saracens, shall push at him; and the King of the North, or Empire of the Turks, shall come against him like a whirlwind, with chariots and with horsemen, and with many ships; and be shall enter into the countries of the Greeks, and shall overflow and pass over. He shall enter also into the glorious land, and many countries shall be overthrown; but these shall escape out of his hand, even Edom and Moab, and the chief of the children Ammon: that is, those to whom his Caravans pay tribute. He shall stretch forth his hand also upon the countries, and the land of Egypt shall not escape; but he shall have power over the treasures of gold and silver, and over all the precious things of Egypt; and the Lybians and Ethiopians shall be at his steps. All these nations compose the Empire of the Turks, and therefore this Empire is here to be understood by the King of the North. They compose also the body of the He-Goat; and therefore the Goat still reigns in his last horn, but not by his own power.

“The fourth Beast was the empire which succeeded that of the Greeks, and this was the Roman.”

Isaac Newton (1643–1727) British physicist and mathematician and founder of modern classical physics

Vol. I, Ch. 4: Of the vision of the four Beasts
Observations upon the Prophecies of Daniel, and the Apocalypse of St. John (1733)
Context: The fourth Beast was the empire which succeeded that of the Greeks, and this was the Roman. This beast was exceeding dreadful and terrible, and had great iron teeth, and devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with its feet; and such was the Roman empire. It was larger, stronger, and more formidable and lasting than any of the former.... it became greater and more terrible than any of the three former Beasts. This Empire continued in its greatness till the reign of Theodosius the great; and then brake into ten kingdoms, represented by the ten horns of this Beast; and continued in a broken form, till the Ancient of days sat in a throne like fiery flame, and the judgment was set, and the books were opened, and the Beast was slain and his body destroyed, and given to the burning flames; and one like the son of man came with the clouds of heaven, and came to the Ancient of days, and received dominion over all nations, and judgment was given to the saints of the most high, and the time came that they possessed the kingdom.

“"The language spoken by these early Macedonians has become a controversial issue in modern times. It seems not to have been so in antiquity. As we have seen, Hesiod made Magnes and Macedon first cousins of the Hellenes, and he therefore regarded them as speakers of a dialect (or dialects) of the Greek language. That he was correct in the case of the Magnetes has been proved by the discovery of early inscriptions in an Aeolic dialect in their area of eastern Thessaly. Then, late in the fifth century a Greek historian, Hellanicus, who visited the court of Macedonia, made the father of Macedon not Zeus but Aeolus, a thing which he could not have done unless he knew that the Macedonians were speaking an Aeolic dialect of Greek. A remarkable confirmation of their Greek speech comes from the Persians, who occupied Macedonia as part of their conquests in Europe c.510-480. […] Disagreements over this issue have developed for various reasons. In the second half of the fifth century Thucydides regarded the semi-nomadic, armed northerners of Epirus and western Macedonia as "barbarians", and he called them such in his history of events in 429 and 423. The word was understood by some scholars to mean "non-Greek-speakers" rather than "savages." They were shown to be mistaken in 1956, when inscriptions of 370-68, containing lists of Greek personal names and recording in the Greek language some acts of the Molossians, were found at Dodona in Epirus. This discovery proved beyond dispute that one of Thucydides "barbarian" tribes" of Epirus, the Molossians, was speaking Greek at the time of which he was writing. Demosthenes too called the Macedonians "barbarians" in the 340s. That this was merely a term of abuse has been proved recently by the discovery at Aegae (Vergina) of seventy-four Greek names and one Thracian name on funerary headstones inscribed in Greek letters.”

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

"The Miracle That Was Macedonia", Palgrave Macmillan (September 1991)

“All in all, the language of the Macedones was a distinct and particular form of Greek, resistant to outside influnces and conservative in pronunciation. It remained so until the fourth century when it was almost totally submerged by the flood tide of standardized Greek.”

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