Comparison between Rome and Greece (no flame please)

[xee]

I was reading some posts in another forum which stated why Rome was superior to Greece and why Greece hadn't to be thanked for civilization more than Rome.
since I'm interested in learning more about the topic I'd like you to show some sources that confirm or denies these thoughts, but, PLEASE, _no_ flames or unsourced posts which proclame the superiority of one above the other without serious argumentations, no stupid slogans like "Roma delenda est" or "Greece delenda est".
only serious post, with historical sources and reasoning behind every assertion.
so claims should be the result of a useful discussion, not a contraposition of rival hooligans.

here is a quote:


The Romans didn't hate Greeks, they appreciated their virtues and avoided their bad things. But thanks to God, Rome didn't emulate too much Greece.
Somebody mighy say that, if Greece had won, now we might be a people of homosexuals and women with burqas.
Well, maybe.
But surely we would have a lot of literature.
But also we wouldn't have Law. And paved roads. And acqueducts. And solid bridges bulit by masonry.
And our forefathers would have been Barbarians, we would be all Goths, maybe we might also speak Gothic, since the mighty and wonderful military skill of Greece, so wonderfull that they turned against themselves (and destroyed themselves), always suffered against many and many peoples like Scordisci or Galatians (who Rome defeated easily). I'm worried in thinking of Attila...

I'm saying that, in front of the objective military greatness of Rome, the Greece had become, militarly, nigh a bad smelling mound of corpses and ruins. As Plautus said, Greece was spineless, crumbling, decaying.
And didn't that happen even to Rome? I mean, to become weak and then be vanquished by savage Barbarians who didn't know much of art of war, except the art of pillaging, sacking, destroying.
And Greece showed her real strength, which wasn't the army, nor the phalanx or Alexander the Great (who was Macedon and not Greek, also), but instead their artistic side: arts, literature, philosophy, architeture, sculpture...

I'd really like to know especially if the part which says that without Rome but with victorious Greece we wouldn't have laws, acqueducts, roads. some academic users I think that could answer if Greece had her skills in these things, or if was only thanks to Rome that they were developed so further.
and also if Greeks might have brought those things in all the european countries with their diplomacy, conquests and trades, or if only Rome was able to spread those things so fast and larger.

[Captain Trek]

Why do I get the feeling whoever wrote that is a right-wing Christian fundamentalist, most likely American?

[Cultured Drizzt fan]

Wow... that was pretty out there. I especially like the portion where he mentioned the "barbarians" had no military skill except pillaging, those "barbarians" had some of the best fighting men in Europe, they were motivated and well trained, I mean even Caesar complimented the Gauls and Germans on that. The Homosexual comment was stupid, at that time in Antiquity, almost every culture had relations like that, but that does not mean everyone was a homosexual, because at the time they did not organize people as Gay and Straight. There is only one thing in that text I even agree with slightly, and that is at the time Greece had become a cesspit, it had left behind its golden years and was left with nothing, but that happens to everyone. Every empire falls, in fact even as an American I have the feeling America is starting to get into a decline... nothing lasts forever. The Greeks had their high points and the Romans had theirs. they are both deserving of honour.

[xee]

Why do I get the feeling whoever wrote that is a right-wing Christian fundamentalist, most likely American?

you should explain that, because you're only implicitly say that she's only a close-minded ignorant who doesn't deserve attention, but I want to understand why.
I myself say this: why a person who says thing like that should be labelled as a "fundamentalist american blah and blah", that is a negative consideration? I (or we) want to know and expand my personal culture by learning why that user is wrong, or why instead is saying right things.
I don't want slogans. I want to understand. I want to understand why those thoughts are right or wrong, no superficial generalizations like "oh that's a fan of imperialistic evil romans/oh that's a fan of soft-squeezing greek rats", which explains NOTHING to me and to everybody. history should be a fact of learning and understanding, a fact of personal culture, not of stereotypes and void contrapositions.

however nope, this person, who claims to have studied greek history and literature for some examinations, seems no to be a right-wing american, because she said "USA are a punch of megalomaniac ignorants and roman 'imperialism' as you call it was completely different" and seem to be even of non-christian left-wing, but this is off topic.


The Homosexual comment was stupid, at that time in Antiquity, almost every culture had relations like that, but that does not mean everyone was a homosexual, because at the time they did not organize people as Gay and Straight.

she was answering to those who believe that Greece is only homosexuality and other things, saying that Greece had many other things like arts or literature.

[Cultured Drizzt fan]

can we see a link to the thread? I would like to see how this was brought about

[SwissBarbar]

Wow... that was pretty out there. I especially like the portion where he mentioned the "barbarians" had no military skill except pillaging, those "barbarians" had some of the best fighting men in Europe, they were motivated and well trained, I mean even Caesar complimented the Gauls and Germans on that. The Homosexual comment was stupid, at that time in Antiquity, almost every culture had relations like that, but that does not mean everyone was a homosexual, because at the time they did not organize people as Gay and Straight. There is only one thing in that text I even agree with slightly, and that is at the time Greece had become a cesspit, it had left behind its golden years and was left with nothing, but that happens to everyone. Every empire falls, in fact even as an American I have the feeling America is starting to get into a decline... nothing lasts forever. The Greeks had their high points and the Romans had theirs. they are both deserving of honour.

Completely agree in every single word. Not to be forgotten, that the romans suceeded that much for their ability to use other peoples' great developments. Phalanx formation from the greeks, Manipular formation and the Pilum from the Samnites, Gladius from the Iberians and also the Montefortino helmet is a Celtic model....

[Gaivs]

Just. Wow. That was ... um. Enlightening.

[zooeyglass]

without trying to sound too idiotic, it strikes me as futile to hypothesise over whether things would be different nowadays if a certain event, or series of events, had occurred differently, or even not occurred, in the past. there is absolutely no point considering whether or not we might have "law" or "aqueducts" or anything else if the Roman empire had no existed, because if we are to try to model a world today with a radically different past, one that did not seem Roman pre-eminence in the mediterranean for at least 200 years, well....we may as well start asking equivalent impossible to answer questions.

what could be gained from history is not a model of the present based on a theoretical past, but a greater comprehension of our current situation through an analysis of the decisions made in the past. So perhaps the question you need to ask is not "what would it be like if Greece had beat Rome" (let's not even begin to consider the question of Greece vs Rome as though it were a single fight, or, for that matter, consider the question of "Greece" as a modern name for a country that at that time in history probably didn't view itself as a unity in the way in which we might do now) but: "why did certain elements of Greek culture pervade Roman society" or even "why did the Romans choose to adopt certain elements of culture, society, k.t.l."

and that is enough from me for now....

[machinor]

@xee: To give you some explanation on why this comment (and the whole argument, for that matter) you quoted is bogus:
It is silly to talk about "THE Romans", "THE Greek" or "THE Americans". That implies that a people or more accurate a culture consists not of individuals but of some kind of drones who all share the same virtues and vices. One might call this cultural racism since characteristics are attributed not an individual but to his cultural or ethnic background which basically is the definition of racism.
The statement that the Romans were better than the Greeks because they defeated them in battle (again, talking about THE Greek as if they were one political entity is silly as there were lots of different states sharing or being heavily influenced by Greek culture) is quite stupid because the efficiency of a culture's military is not a valid indicator of a culture's assets; one might argue if it's even to be considered a part of culture.
Furthermore it is even more silly to apply today's values of any kind to ancient cultures or even different cultures of our time. One can surely say "I find this or that aspect of that culture to be a negative one" as that is something that someone who is part of that culture, might also say him-/herself. However, it is stupid to say that one culture is better or lesser than another because of certain aspects. Every culture has its history and is grown into what it is because of certain reasons. One might find some aspects of a certain culture bad which is absolutely okay as I already said, but it is stupid and ignorant to judge a whole culture. Also, a culture is something dynamic. There is not THE Roman culture or The Greek culture, there are only Roman and Greek culture and their developement and mutation over the centuries.

This whole talk of "this culture is better than that one because this one conquered that one" is totally backward. It belongs to the 19th century with its conception of social darwinism (the best race/culture/society will dominate the others) which is profoundly racist.


I hope that explained the turning-away that the posting quoted by you has generated among the people here. :smash:

[zooeyglass]

I hope that explained the turning-away that the posting quoted by you has generated among the people here. :smash:

hear-hear, i think it explained it well. better than my struggle to sum up some kind of response. thank you!

[Potocello]

Why do I get the feeling whoever wrote that is a right-wing Christian fundamentalist, most likely American?

Actually, nevermind

[Nachtmeister]

I have to agree with machinor on most points although I could never have phrased it so well - except the one about the military being arguably not a part of culture for the simple reason that regular conscription (ephebeia, roman military service in the republican era, but most importantly Sparte) usually seems to have had deep roots in the society in which it was practised - sometimes to such an extent that the term "conscription" becomes something like an understatement. I believe that in a time of nearly constant war, it is impossible to not have a "militaristic culture" although there is probably a more eloquent term for this.
And the military efficiency *is* - albeit *only* in conjunction with *other indicators* and only when examined in depth - an indicator of certain assets of a culture just as most parts of a culture are indicators of some quality or another if examined in a sufficiently broad context but also enough attention to detail as far as I have seen. Of course I can err here but if this is so please do point out where my fault lies.
If I were to say that the military is no valid evidence of a culture then where do I draw the line indicating where the valid parts begin? Libraries? Hospitals? Schools? Casinos? Restaurants? AFAIK there are perfectly valid cultures even today in which some of the above mentioned are totally absent...

Back on original topic I'd like to point out that a considerable amount of modern mathematics - just as the roman siege engineering btw - is based on ancient "Greek" research (Thales, Euklid, Pythagoras etc.) and as mathematics form the basis of all technological development beyond a certain stage (try launching a sattelite or constructing a => stone bridge <= without them) it is (very theoretically) arguable that maybe we would not have stone bridges without "the Greeks" rather than having no stone bridges if "they" had subjugated the mediterranean instead of Rome.
Same applies to the other components of that low-tech and procreational habits argument; I for one would prefer to have more fornication take place in a socially tolerated sphere though... Err, in fact the eastern part of the Roman empire might to my layman's perspective be described as really the final (Greek) solution to the diadochoi wars rather than the sum of an Italian city's vassal states... More obviously so after the empire was split into two separately ruled states - but this whole thing is again going down the false line of drawing firm borders. A culture, a state, a family, even the macro-organic individual ("high" fauna *and the "high" is really still a hint of un-just superiority induced by a creationistic perspective upon the universe*) - they are all the sum of their elements, not the absolute, unfailing, ever-true construction blueprint of their elements. FSM for the win!! :dizzy2::smash:

[LordCurlyton]

Meh the numerals we use are Arabic, the number 0 did not exist at that time IIRC, algebra was Arabic, etc. The thing is that most achievements that we associate with this or that culture could have and almost certainly would have been invented by someone in another culture at some point and time. Think of the arch, which we generally associate with a Greco-Roman culture. All the arch is is the engineering solution to the problem "how do we make bigger bridges and bigger buildings". Add in "we want to provide as much space in the buildings as possible" and its inevitable that SOMEBODY would have struck on the idea, since the arch is an amazingly efficient load distributor which happens to lend itself to aesthetic pleasantry to boot. If the Greeks and Romans hadn't been the first (I'm presuming) to adopt it then someone else would have, seeing as there were many societies at a similar level of advancement in that time frame. Make the Greeks/Romans weaker, and its likely that Persian engineers become the first users (we will ignore China and India for this debate, mainly since I know next to nothing about this period for either).
The thing is that people mistakenly use technological achievements to define a culture, when at best they can be used to define a culture's archaeological markers (i.e. find this piece of stonework = they were here). An arch is no more a piece of "Classical Roman" culture than "High Medieval French". HOW its used is a part of the culture, though. Thus when we think of "Greek" arches we can think of the temple and odeion and such, with Romans, aqueducts. High Medieval arches = gothic style churches. Just like the aqueducts were not just Roman but came to symbolize a part of Roman culture, especially considering aqueducts were used by cultures around the world.
Me, I like to look at the Hellenistic time as Rome = Hellenized Italics (especially by Principate), Hellas = Hellenes, Asia Minor = Hellenized Persians/other easterners. Yes, there was a lot of overlap and Rome ended up as THE Hellenized power in Europe, but when has overlap never occurred?

[BurningEGO]

Every empire falls, in fact even as an American I have the feeling America is starting to get into a decline...

Since WHEN is, or was, America an Empire?

Ahaha...

Sorry man, couldnt resist the temptation.

And just for the record it was normal by that time, to BOTH male romans and male greeks to have "close-relations" (if you know what i mean) with other men. Even if they were married and had sons and daughters. I remember hearing of many famous emperors (i believe one of them was Hadrian) that whenever in campaign usually brought with him a very young and beautiful boy.

So if because of greece we would have been homosexuals, so we would have been because of Rome. Cant really say that greece or rome was superior to one another with that to be honest.

In fact, in terms of decency, Rome was worse (with today's way of thinking). Ranging from prostitutes that just wanted a "cup of wine" worth in cash for their services, certain Empresses that had close relations with more then 20 men in the same day, or from Emperors that were pedophiles... Of course, apart from the part of that preverted Empress, these were normal things back in these days. And i believe these practices were adopted from the Etruscans.

As for the rest, i pretter much agree with Nachtmeister. Most things Rome built, like aqueducts, was "stolen" from other civilizations. Even the famous paved roads were. Rome, in fact, was so sucessful as it was because they knew how to adopt pretty much everything from other civilizations to their benefit. Ranging from military tactics, military equipment, arquictecture, amongst other things.

[Lucio Domicio Aureliano]

You could research for yourself.

Even though the Greeks and Celts have been using moderately sophisticate plumbing systems before, the Romans perfected it. I've once that the water consumption in Roman Cologne back then was equal to that in our times!

Most Democratic Governments today, including the US, are based on Roman models of governance.

Most legal systems around the world are based on the Jus Romanum, the Roman law originating in the Twelve Tables.

Most languages spoken on Western Europe descend from Romance, which descends from Latin, and which has a vast influence on English.

Romans invented our calendary, which with some changes is still in use today (you owe "July" and "August" to two well known figures).

Romans used the writing I'm using now, practically in the same way

Romans had probably the best road building technology of the Ancient Age and made numerous contributions to the field

Romans also invented concrete, which is used until our days for... your house and pretty much everything you see on the street

blah blah blah see for youself: http://www.mariamilani.com/ancient_rome/ancient_roman_inventions.htm.

It's actually very obvious, glaring and even overwhelming. Many things were also originally Roman, and do not fall into the general misconception you expressed here. Romans not only perfected many and many previous inventions but also had a fair share of their own, and what you could expect from a large Empire.

Moreover I think their biggest contribution was political thorough and thoroughly. Without Rome, the Papacy would probably never exist, and Christianity would never prosper inside the relative safety of Imperial borders, furthermore they played a part in the migrations of the late Empire that more or less composed the entire ethnic makeup of modern Europe; Romans also introduced new species of plants and animals into Europe during and before the Empire and were the first ones to make a systematic industrialized approach towards agriculture and mining that set them apart in efficiency, and which are more or less adopted in our industrial economies.

Etc.... etc... etc...

Edit: See also this (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Roman_technology).



Anyway, on the matter of non-original inventions: the Roman contribution is in no way diminished by the fact they weren't the original inventors. For example: one cannot deny that the US, Japan and countries around the world gave a very large contribution to the automobile industry in no way makes it smaller just for the fact that they did not invent the original Daimler Benz engine in the XIX century (in Germany). A great part of the Roman greatness comes from spreading Classical Greek culture and original ideas they adopted to very large proportions, such as the spatha designs (which influenced pretty much a lot of medieval swords, and was based on a previous Celtic one), chain mail (idem), aqueducts, their writing (which was based on the Etruscan one, that was based on Greek, which in turn came from the Phoenician alphabet) and etc...

So, regardless of fanboyism, Roman contributions were also great in their own way ;).

Basileos ton Ellenon please don´t get mad because i used your posts. I just did because, i believe, it says a lot about the general misconception that the Romans only adapted things. As for Greece and Rome, it´s fair to say that they complemented each other. The Roman empire would never be so great and rich if not by the greeks. Anyway we must point that Graeco-Roman world was also heavily influenced by other cultures, most notably the persians.

[Dayve]

Why do I get the feeling whoever wrote that is a right-wing Christian fundamentalist, most likely American?

I got a very "hardcore Christian George Bush supporting conservative" vibe from it as well.

[Mongoose24]

hi guys i would like add some comments..


quote:

The Romans didn't hate Greeks, they appreciated their virtues and avoided their bad things. But thanks to God, Rome didn't emulate too much Greece.
Somebody mighy say that, if Greece had won, now we might be a people of homosexuals and women with burqas.
Well, maybe.
But surely we would have a lot of literature.
But also we wouldn't have Law. And paved roads. And acqueducts. And solid bridges bulit by masonry.
And our forefathers would have been Barbarians, we would be all Goths, maybe we might also speak Gothic, since the mighty and wonderful military skill of Greece, so wonderfull that they turned against themselves (and destroyed themselves), always suffered against many and many peoples like Scordisci or Galatians (who Rome defeated easily). I'm worried in thinking of Attila...


I'd really like to know especially if the part which says that without Rome but with victorious Greece we wouldn't have laws, acqueducts, roads. some academic users I think that could answer if Greece had her skills in these things, or if was only thanks to Rome that they were developed so further.
and also if Greeks might have brought those things in all the european countries with their diplomacy, conquests and trades, or if only Rome was able to spread those things so fast and larger.[/QUOTE]

Why do I get the feeling whoever wrote that is a right-wing Christian fundamentalist, most likely American?


i Slightly agree,during the time of roman empire or even from the very beggining most european countries had develop their own culture, way of life, and military strength and obstinately tried for their independance, some people had been called barbarians and savages, people like germans and gauls. The romans during that time conquered many european nations, always with a pretext were saying that they are living in the dark and under their savage ways of life, rome was the light.......yeah right. The Roman or the Greeks should teach and propose new deals through trade and politics, not to smash them.

Many historians says the european tribes during the that time were barbarians, yes but not all of them.

they were different with some common parts, the british tribes and many balkan tribes at the age of Crist or at the age of Alexander the great were cannibals and some of them they didint even exist.The Romans were showing their might and greatness by throughing them to the lions (Colloseum), just to satisfy the roman public, those who dare to believe in Crist
or those who denied to follow the roman crap. The Greeks have built the Parthenon which is the worlds symbol of democracy Art and culture, first invented the great Phallanx project, and others like aqueduct , Plumbing,e.tc

The worst thing about the American Society and system is, whether or not the Greeks had beat the romans,will be corrupted and homosexual because is based on the romans anciest politic and justice system


quote:
Alexander the Great (who was Macedon and not Greek)


:inquisitive: CAUTION: DO NOT SEE THE MOVIE ITS AMERICAN

[A Very Super Market]

I don't understand your post. At all. You can quote by writing [quote]whatever text[quote] but put a / between the [ and q for the 2nd one.

[A Terribly Harmful Name]

The guy who wrote the quoted text is clueless of intent and thought. Would we really be wearing burqas because of Greeks?

Most likely, both civilizations had their very own contributions to us. Classical Culture was the predecessor of many Modern concepts, ranging from Law et all to sophisticate plumbing and roads used to our days.

However I wouldn't go as far as creating any imaginary barriers between both Greeks and Romans. As much as I know they are part of the same classical medium centered around the polis identity, and completely unfamiliar to any of our romantic nationalist and ethnical concepts. Even Rome, up to the Late Principate, was still the Greatest Poleis of the West and the diminute political center of an almost subordinate and culturally insignificant countryside. People who were born a few miles away in Veii or Capua were not "Romans" except if they shared an ancestor from the Seven Hills or were recognized as such by the main political institutions of the Roman poleis. Until the 2nd Century Citizenship was still severely restricted and the Ius Gentium dominant, to the effect that in Roman eyes about 90% of the Empire was still a foreign subject of Rome, much like it was and would be if Sparta or Athens dominated the world like they did.

Greek, and Italian nationalities for the matter, are the product of modern constructs.

[Cyrus]

I agree with macinor and think this thread is kinda dumb. One comment did however strike me quote:"Greece had become a cesspit, it had left behind its golden years and was left with nothing, but that happens to everyone. Every empire falls, in fact even as an American I have the feeling America is starting to get into a decline... nothing lasts forever" wich was said by Cultured Drizzt fan. That got me thinking. Is there a reason why every single Empire this world has known eventually is doomed? One reason (but it is not my thinking) is that an empire is always hated by one or more people and consequently goes into long lasting wars that slowly eat it up from the inside. I would like to know your opinion on this. and sorry if it's off topic.

[Tollheit]

In an ideal Platonic polis, everybody knows what he is working/fighting for.
The larger the empire, the farther removed it is from said ideal polis.

IMHO, it is not the enemy people's hostility, but the lack of genuine motivation for the common cause among any empire's own population, which will be eventually it's greatest problem.

[BurningEGO]

Not always. Most empires during the colonization era were killed due to the interference of foreign greedy/jealous bastards for example.

[O'ETAIPOS]

The Romans didn't hate Greeks, they appreciated their virtues and avoided their bad things. But thanks to God, Rome didn't emulate too much Greece.
Somebody mighy say that, if Greece had won, now we might be a people of homosexuals(1) and women with burqas.(2)
Well, maybe.
But surely we would have a lot of literature.
But also we wouldn't have Law(3). And paved roads(4). And acqueducts(5). And solid bridges bulit by masonry(6).
And our forefathers would have been Barbarians(7), we would be all Goths, maybe we might also speak Gothic, since the mighty and wonderful military skill of Greece(8), so wonderfull that they turned against themselves (and destroyed themselves(9)), always suffered against many and many peoples like Scordisci or Galatians (who Rome defeated easily(10)). I'm worried in thinking of Attila...

I'm saying that, in front of the objective military greatness of Rome (11), the Greece had become, militarly, nigh a bad smelling mound of corpses and ruins (12). As Plautus said, Greece was spineless, crumbling, decaying.
And didn't that happen even to Rome? I mean, to become weak and then be vanquished by savage Barbarians who didn't know much of art of war (12), except the art of pillaging, sacking, destroying (13).
And Greece showed her real strength, which wasn't the army (14), nor the phalanx or Alexander the Great (who was Macedon and not Greek, also), but instead their artistic side: arts, literature, philosophy, architeture, sculpture...

This is so ...:wall:, I'll try to respond to some of those points.

(1) Roman sexual habits were in no real way different... It was Christianity that changed moral opinions not "roman virtue".

(2) This was not obvious in Greece. It varied from state to state for example in Sparta women had much better position. And women from noble and royal families were in completely different situation.

(3) Current sea law is based on Rhodian set of laws... Rhodians were Greeks... Also in other fields Greeks, and especially hellenistic monarchies had formal laws.

(4) Roman highways were masterpieces, but Greeks built paved roads. Problem is that no greek or hellenistic state had so much money or available manpower (troops) to achieve such scale as imperial Rome.

(5) Romans were not only aqueduct builders. Assyrians built them. On Samos aqueduct, including kilometre tunnel, was built in VIc BC. Besides this Greeks had other ways to deliver water. For example in Pergamon it was delivered by system of high pressure pipelines from nearby hills. Pipes run from hilltops to bottom of valley and then up, to the top of Pergamon acropolis. With many tanks used to filter water and stabilise pressure.

(6) Hellenistic constructions were marvellous. Such statement may come only from person who doesn't know architecture. Only roman innovation was concrete, but it was accidental discovery, that happened because they used easily available volcanic ash instead of sand in mortar.

This for now. I'll respond to military points later.

[soup_alex]

Nice work, O'ETAIPOS! :beam:

Cyrus, I would go with what BurningEGO appears to be saying; that every empire will eventually crumble as those at its heart become more and more corrupt (actually, Tollheit is sort-of saying this, too). Not that I'm a chauvinist (am I?), but I'm not sure if this applies so much to the British Empire (yes, the Company was corrupt, which is why India came under rule of the crown); AFAIK India's independence came about due to activism and war, rather than corrupt politicos (though I'll admit said such scumbags can't have been far away given the absolute pig's ear was made of the whole affair).

As for the main topic: I'm not touching that with a flaming kontos.

[machinor]

In an ideal Platonic polis, everybody knows what he is working/fighting for.
The larger the empire, the farther removed it is from said ideal polis.
Please let's not take the Platonic ideal polis as an ideal in any way. Plato (as much as I cherish him and his philosophy) inarguebly provided the prototype for totalitarianism and not just as a byproduct but as the main characteristic of his state philosophy. I'll rather stick with my Aristotle concerning "ideal" states (which btw do not exist even as a concept in political Aristotelism... which makes Aristotle much more likeable in my opinion).

[Lucio Domicio Aureliano]

Only roman innovation was concrete.[/QUOTE]

Only roman innovation was concrete? this´s completely wrong. The true is as there were things that the greeks excell there were other things that the romans excell. Just take a look in the quotes from Basileos ton Ellenon that i posted. It says a lot about this misconception.

[Mulceber]

Please let's not take the Platonic ideal polis as an ideal in any way. Plato (as much as I cherish him and his philosophy) inarguebly provided the prototype for totalitarianism and not just as a byproduct but as the main characteristic of his state philosophy. I'll rather stick with my Aristotle concerning "ideal" states (which btw do not exist even as a concept in political Aristotelism... which makes Aristotle much more likeable in my opinion).

I agree completely - Plato's ideal state depended too much on people being morally perfect. Aristotle had a much better view of things.


(1) Roman sexual habits were in no real way different... It was Christianity that changed moral opinions not "roman virtue".

I wouldn't go that far. They were similar, especially in the late Republic/Imperial period, but if you look at the early/middle Republic (the time EB focuses on), there are some distinct differences; the Greeks viewed sexual morality from two qualifications: active vs. passive (more powerful male was supposed to be active, less powerful female or boy should be passive) and moderate vs. excessive. The Romans shared this construction as well, but especially in the early/middle Republic, they also viewed things in terms of native vs. foreign - any sexual practice that was "Roman" was acceptable (this would include mostly just relations with women with the man being in the active position) and anything else was foreign and therefore decadent. -M

[machinor]

I agree completely - Plato's ideal state depended too much on people being morally perfect. Aristotle had a much better view of things.
Well, most utopias depend on people being morally perfect. However, my problem with Platonic state philosophy is, that the state is the end in itself and the individual is merely subject to the state. That is what I consider to be the essence of totalitarism.
For Aristotle on the other hand the individual is the most important thing and the state is only there to establish and secure the 'eudaimonia' (beatitude or blessedness) of the individual. However, what exactly the eudaimonia consists in is (deliberately) not definitely set. So Aristotle is basically pluralistic in defining what an ideal state is. That's what I very much like about Aristotle.

Wandering kind of off-topic here, though. :sweatdrop:

[Mulceber]

That's very true - the other problem is that Plato's ideal state works against human nature - it calls for the dissolution of the family unit so that everyone will be more loyal to the state, rather than to each other. Let's face it, the family unit is natural. I don't mean the conservative "man-woman-two-kids" family unit, but people naturally tend to find someone who they love and devote themselves to that person. And, very often, they reproduce, and so it's only natural that they will form into families. Plato tends to see this as disadvantageous to the state and calls for everyone to be married to everyone, whereas Aristotle recognizes that this is natural and crafts his ideal state so that the family unit works to the state's advantage. -M

[Tollheit]

that the state is the end in itself and the individual is merely subject to the state.
Was that not the ethos of early Rome? Killing your own son for the greater good of the res publica, for example?


Make no mistake, I am no friend of totalitarism. I am merely of the opinion that a totalitarian ethos is the stuff budding empires are made of, and that the very success that results from it puts an end to it, eventually.

[Husker98]

I was reading some posts in another forum which stated why Rome was superior to Greece and why Greece hadn't to be thanked for civilization more than Rome.
since I'm interested in learning more about the topic I'd like you to show some sources that confirm or denies these thoughts, but, PLEASE, _no_ flames or unsourced posts which proclame the superiority of one above the other without serious argumentations, no stupid slogans like "Roma delenda est" or "Greece delenda est".
only serious post, with historical sources and reasoning behind every assertion.
so claims should be the result of a useful discussion, not a contraposition of rival hooligans.

here is a quote:



I'd really like to know especially if the part which says that without Rome but with victorious Greece we wouldn't have laws, acqueducts, roads. some academic users I think that could answer if Greece had her skills in these things, or if was only thanks to Rome that they were developed so further.
and also if Greeks might have brought those things in all the european countries with their diplomacy, conquests and trades, or if only Rome was able to spread those things so fast and larger.

lol no Greece no rome plain and simple. much of roman culture and architecture was derived from greece. i mean hell rome fought like the hopilites of greece for a long time before coming up with their modified legion. the only thing rome can really take credit for is improving and further civilizing Gaul, Iberia, and Britannia. Thus strengthening western civilization. Rome had similar gods as the greeks, government, social structure, and military (atleast the earlier years) where all for the longest time carbon copies of the greeks.This is all attributed to Rome's early encounters with Greek colonies in Italy. So tell that dude he's got his facts screwy.

I like Rome i really do we all have alot to thank them for but Western Civilization itself is based of the architectural, military, and economic fundamentals that the greeks laid down over two millenia ago.

[Owen Glyndwr]

i mean hell rome fought like the hopilites of greece for a long time before coming up with their modified legion. the only thing rome can really take credit for is improving and further civilizing Gaul, Iberia, and Britannia.

Well, if you really want to get technical with the Roman military. The pilum was an invention entirely their own.

On a more serious and less stickler-like note, I agree with the camp saying that just because the Romans devloped/perfected the art of various things such as the aqueduct and plumbing, that does not mean that without the romans we would have never had them. I mean, look at the Aztecs. They had massive aqueducts leading to and away from Tenochtitlan, and yet, they had no contact whatsoever to the Romans. It has always amazed me that despite the miles of land, sea, mountains, desert, etc, all of mankind still maintains the spear, the bow/arrow, the axe, and the sword, or something similar to it. I think if anything it is proof that some inventions (though maybe not necessarily all) derive, not from the designs of one man's genius, but from that fact that necessity will draw man to invention. And in most circumstances he will utilize the simplest method available to alleviate that necessity, and in those circumstances, it may seem no wonder that they occur in a similar manner despite isolation or lack of communication among multiple parties.

[Nachtmeister]

Well, if you really want to get technical with the Roman military. The pilum was an invention entirely their own.

... but it was not entirely their own invention: Compare the Peltastai with the Hastati (as portrayed by EB) and I believe there is some kind of evolutionary connection between the pilum and the javelin - one might even say that javelins *were* pila... :clown:

*EDIT*: Wrong way round, swap positions. I mean, PILA were JAVELINS.

My more serious, less sticky note is that you are right with your serious note, Owen Glyndwr.
Necessity is the *only* thing that makes a human being *truly* re-locate it's rear end or move anything else at all. And for any example delivered to counter this, there is usually a heavier counter-example and always a waterproof counter-explanation.
In consequence, technological advance will always take the simplest path possible; however, the simplest path is relative and depends upon the routes available to the mind of the inventor (a bronze spear is, to someone who has both learned the craft of blacksmiths and of stone sculptor, much easier and less time-consuming to produce that an obsidian spear head; however, it requires metallurgy to be available to the one bent on impaling something). Still, if you really *do* want to reach someone's vitals during serious hostilities without exposing your own to them, a long, pointy stick is the first thing that comes to mind because there are a lot of those oxidating around in our natural surroundings... And with some time to dwell upon how uncomfortable it is to have to move up to whatever you wish to gut everytime you get the corresponding impulse, you get creative about tension and conservation of energy and impulse and ballistics. Only, exactly in the opposite order; I am convinced that the javelin must have come before the bow --- and so it goes on, ad infinitum.
Still, something I *do* credit neither of our two contestants but rather the Mesopotamians in general with (more than other *cultures*, although it certainly does not apply to every individual Mesopotamian) is an intentional increase in inventive thought, lowering the threshold at which invention is perceived as necessary - basically the invention or at least "pursuit with exceptionally high popularity and adjunct fame-to-be-gained" of professional scholars! Well, at least the earliest historical records relevant for Europe (China and the Americas are something else entirely - wasn't there some extremely highly advanced northern American civilization that got wiped out by a plague long before the Vinland-expidition?) point to this sort of organized, dedicated full-time inventing originating somewhere around Babylon...?
Anyway, if I am not very very mistaken, it is they who passed SCIENCE on to the Egyptians who passed it on to the Minoans who passed it on to the Mycenaean Greeks who passed it on to the Dorian Greeks who passed it on to the Romans... Right? :book::dizzy2:

[LordCurlyton]

Well unless the EB descriptions are incorrect, I believe the pilum is a continuation of the Iberian solifera, seeing as both seemed to have similar properties...I could be wrong, of course.

[Maion Maroneios]

The Romans didn't hate Greeks, they appreciated their virtues and avoided their bad things. But thanks to God, Rome didn't emulate too much Greece.
They copied the Greek ways, for those that don't understand that. There is no Roman Empire in theory without it's Greek characteristics.


Somebody mighy say that, if Greece had won, now we might be a people of homosexuals and women with burqas.
Well, maybe.
But surely we would have a lot of literature.
That somebody would have been hell lotta stupid. A true moron, for only those without any (decent, at least) knowledge of homosexuality would say something like that. The Greeks were lovers of beauty, women would never wear burqas. That's an Islamic thing, not Greek.


But also we wouldn't have Law. And paved roads. And acqueducts. And solid bridges bulit by masonry.
And our forefathers would have been Barbarians, we would be all Goths, maybe we might also speak Gothic, since the mighty and wonderful military skill of Greece, so wonderfull that they turned against themselves (and destroyed themselves), always suffered against many and many peoples like Scordisci or Galatians (who Rome defeated easily). I'm worried in thinking of Attila...
No law, no paved roads? I wonder, where did the Romans get their language, their literature, their techonolgy, their science from? Oh wait, yes, the Greeks. True, they did take things a step further, that I aknowledge.


I'm saying that, in front of the objective military greatness of Rome, the Greece had become, militarly, nigh a bad smelling mound of corpses and ruins. As Plautus said, Greece was spineless, crumbling, decaying.
It's Greece actually, not the Greece. Furthermore, you have to define Greece. In it's broader meaning (modern one, that is), it means all Greek people. At that time, the Greeks were divided into many little and bigger states, tribes, nations, kingdoms etc.


And didn't that happen even to Rome? I mean, to become weak and then be vanquished by savage Barbarians who didn't know much of art of war, except the art of pillaging, sacking, destroying.
True.


And Greece showed her real strength, which wasn't the army, nor the phalanx or Alexander the Great (who was Macedon and not Greek, also), but instead their artistic side: arts, literature, philosophy, architeture, sculpture...
That contains some parts of truth. Though let us all remember the Alexander did, in fact, conquer much more than the Roman Empire in terms of land in an amount of time. True enough though, he couldn't keep his Empire united as easily as the Romans. As for the Macedonians not being Greek, let me tell you that this moron that wrote it has absolutely no idea of national identity, the true meaning of the word Hellen and any history in general.

I wish you could just post these answers to that moron that wrote what he wrote at that forum...

Maion

[Starforge]

Better Question:

How much were Roman and Greek cultures and worlds influenced by those that came before them? Civilization existed before both in the forms of the Minoans, Egyptians, Persia, etc (and those didn't spring out of existance from nothing either - it's just that the records and evidence become murky at best.)

It's interesting how we like to draw conclusions about who founded, invented, or created something based upon the scantest of evidence. Finding the first writings of, say, a mathmatecal concept doesn't prove that person invented the concept - merely that we found the first *hard* evidence of it. Pythagoras's contribution to math could be overturned tomorrow with new evidence.

To the OP: Argueing about the individual cultural components seems pointless and subjective. One could say the Romans ultimately "won" and the Greeks "lost" but that's highly simplistic. Cultural components from both exist in forms today - but argueing the details will only be arguments over the opinions we, in modern day, have towards the various cultural components which is pretty much meaningless from a historical perspective. Just my 2cp.

[Captain Trek]

To the OP: Argueing about the individual cultural components seems pointless and subjective. One could say the Romans ultimately "won" and the Greeks "lost" but that's highly simplistic. Cultural components from both exist in forms today

Not to mention that the Byzantines were more Greek than Roman...

[Lucio Domicio Aureliano]

They copied the Greek ways, for those that don't understand that. There is no Roman Empire in theory without it's Greek characteristics.Maion

I´m not going to argue with you about that although the romans had their culture as well ( strengh and honor :laugh4:).



That somebody would have been hell lotta stupid. A true moron, for only those without any (decent, at least) knowledge of homosexuality would say something like that. The Greeks were lovers of beauty, women would never wear burqas. That's an Islamic thing, not Greek.

Again, i agree with you. As for the homosexuality, it´s practice was more present in the greek society but it was fairly usual with the romans as well. Nevertheless the romans were a little bit different in it´s aproach.



No law, no paved roads? I wonder, where did the Romans get their language, their literature, their techonolgy, their science from? Oh wait, yes, the Greeks. True, they did take things a step further, that I aknowledge..

If we want to go this way we will realize that much of what is greek was, in fact, a legacy from past civilizations (Egypt, Persia, Babylon...). Anyway, it´s clear that the romans learn a lot with other civilizations (Etruscans, Greeks, Chartage...) but they also had their fair share of inventions. Law, roads, aqueducts, bridges, sanitation...ad infinitum, all this things were not romans innovations( neither they were greek) but the romans brought major advances in this areas and this´s worthy to be praised for.
I´m a lawer and we as of today still study roman law, in fact there´s a say that goes, after the romans not much about law has been done as well as after the greeks not much about philosophy either.
One more thing, there´s no shame in upgrading previous inventions ( the car, for example, was invented by the Germans. Does this mean that we should disconsider all the contributions done by the EUA, Japan? Of course not.





It's Greece actually, not the Greece. Furthermore, you have to define Greece. In it's broader meaning (modern one, that is), it means all Greek people. At that time, the Greeks were divided into many little and bigger states, tribes, nations, kingdoms etc.

Cannot argue with that.



That contains some parts of truth. Though let us all remember the Alexander did, in fact, conquer much more than the Roman Empire in terms of land in an amount of time. True enough though, he couldn't keep his Empire united as easily as the Romans. As for the Macedonians not being Greek, let me tell you that this moron that wrote it has absolutely no idea of national identity, the true meaning of the word Hellen and any history in general.

You should not be this harsh about the Macedonias not being greeks since is known that in the ancient world many greeks from greece didn´t considered the macedonians as greeks. When in modern greece the macedonias are considered greeks this has not always been true.

[Nachtmeister]

I´m a lawer and we as of today still study roman law, in fact there´s a say that goes, after the romans not much about law has been done as well as after the greeks not much about philosophy either.

I am very sorry for being a pedantic err, ...rectal retard, but I can't restrain myself from writing this:

Now, saying that "after the Greeks not much about philosophy either [...has been done]" is ... not right. :laugh4:
But as you say, since law has not been fundamentally re-thought after the romans, there has been no (can't say "need" here) desire to incorporate philosophy into it... But remember Immanuel Kant and the "Categoric Imperative". This alone should suffice to demonstrate that philosophy has indeed come a very long way since the ancient Greeks. And before someone throws in the argument that Megas Alexandros with his drive for greatness and perfection was *the* living example of a follower of Nietzsche (who is, chronologically, a successor of Kant) which would seem to indicate no progress at all - Nietzsche himself was a product of his time; in his period, all of Germany was on a huge retro-romantic trip towards ancient Greece. It is no surprise that a philosopher from this period would drop recent achievements of other philosophers and embrace a severely biased concept - which is in fact rather close to the problem most of us have with the OP ("the ... were/are/shall forever be SUPERIOR" etc.).
This is not to say that I do not somehow like Nietzsche's ideas :clown:
But I'm told that from a scientific philosophical perspective they are quite obsolete.
I mean, everyone agreed even almost a century ago that Nazis are bad --- but to ancient Greek philosophy, genocide, slavery, imperialism, subjugation in general, *and* even individual selection of "you live, you die" based on physical properties were nothing unusual or immoral or wrong. It was, with some other practices basically amounting to selective breeding, called eugenics (so the modern name Eugene in fact has a *very* sinister touch to it). The easiest example would be Sparta, but there were many others! The only point at which it became bad was the point at which it inhibited the judgement and thus the survivability of the dominators or no longer immediately served their cause ("hybris" or "hubris").

[Lucio Domicio Aureliano]

I am very sorry for being a pedantic err, ...rectal retard, but I can't restrain myself from writing this:

Now, saying that "after the Greeks not much about philosophy either [...has been done]" is ... not right. :laugh4:
But as you say, since law has not been fundamentally re-thought after the romans, there has been no (can't say "need" here) desire to incorporate philosophy into it... But remember Immanuel Kant and the "Categoric Imperative". This alone should suffice to demonstrate that philosophy has indeed come a very long way since the ancient Greeks. And before someone throws in the argument that Megas Alexandros with his drive for greatness and perfection was *the* living example of a follower of Nietzsche (who is, chronologically, a successor of Kant) which would seem to indicate no progress at all - Nietzsche himself was a product of his time; in his period, all of Germany was on a huge retro-romantic trip towards ancient Greece. It is no surprise that a philosopher from this period would drop recent achievements of other philosophers and embrace a severely biased concept - which is in fact rather close to the problem most of us have with the OP ("the ... were/are/shall forever be SUPERIOR" etc.).
This is not to say that I do not somehow like Nietzsche's ideas :clown:
But I'm told that from a scientific philosophical perspective they are quite obsolete.
I mean, everyone agreed even almost a century ago that Nazis are bad --- but to ancient Greek philosophy, genocide, slavery, imperialism, subjugation in general, *and* even individual selection of "you live, you die" based on physical properties were nothing unusual or immoral or wrong. It was, with some other practices basically amounting to selective breeding, called eugenics (so the modern name Eugene in fact has a *very* sinister touch to it). The easiest example would be Sparta, but there were many others! The only point at which it became bad was the point at which it inhibited the judgement and thus the survivability of the dominators or no longer immediately served their cause ("hybris" or "hubris").

Nachtmeister i agree with you but since the say goes that way, i thought better to write it all. Anyway what i understand of this say is that since the Chirstian philosophy is a twist of Aristotles and like or not we´re stiil influenced by the church. That said, it means that much of the greek way of think has effects on us today.

You´re excuse.:smash:

[Nachtmeister]

You´re excuse.:smash:

*big smiles* Thank you LDA! I was nearly worried for a moment there... :laugh4:

What you say about what I'll just call "common perception" as the basis of "common sense" (which can, thank goodness, at times be not quite so brutally common), is very true - even modern atheists are often totally full of religious zeal with or without being aware of it. Politicians rely on this to further their agendae and in some countries, lawyers use this to sway a jury toward or against a culprit...

[Phalanx300]

You should not be this harsh about the Macedonias not being greeks since is known that in the ancient world many greeks from greece didn´t considered the macedonians as greeks. When in modern greece the macedonias are considered greeks this has not always been true.

Maion is right in this, the Macedonians were, and still are Greek.

And considering is something else then actually being, if I consider you not a human and many other would too then that still doesn't change the fact that you are a human :sweatdrop:.

[Lucio Domicio Aureliano]

*big smiles* Thank you LDA! I was nearly worried for a moment there... :laugh4:

What you say about what I'll just call "common perception" as the basis of "common sense" (which can, thank goodness, at times be not quite so brutally common), is very true - even modern atheists are often totally full of religious zeal with or without being aware of it. Politicians rely on this to further their agendae and in some countries, lawyers use this to sway a jury toward or against a culprit...

As it sounds, we think the same.

[Lucio Domicio Aureliano]

Maion is right in this, the Macedonians were, and still are Greek.

And considering is something else then actually being, if I consider you not a human and many other would too then that still doesn't change the fact that you are a human :sweatdrop:.

Considering is the same as being if it´s one wish to support the claims of bloodties grounded on national idendity. Nevertheless one can always support that the Ancient Macedonians were undoubtedly a Greek tribe; either a north-western tribe related to the Dorians and Epirots, or an Aeolic one related to the Aeolians of Thessaly (before the north-western tribe of the Thessalians settled there), as scholars tend to accept today.

[Phalanx300]

Considering is the same as being if it´s one wish to support the claims of bloodties grounded on national idendity. Nevertheless one can always support that the Ancient Macedonians were undoubtedly a Greek tribe; either a north-western tribe related to the Dorians and Epirots, or an Aeolic one related to the Aeolians of Thessaly (before the north-western tribe of the Thessalians settled there), as scholars tend to accept today.

Well seeing as they had Greek language, culture and admitted themselves that they were Greek that says enough for me. There is enough proof you can find which prooves that the Macedonians were Greek, they are Macedonian in the same way that the Spartans were Spartan.

[Rilder]

But thanks to God, Rome didn't emulate too much Greece.

I stopped reading here, IIRC wasn't Rome just starting to decline when they went Christian?

[Lucio Domicio Aureliano]

QUOTE=Phalanx300;2148508]Well seeing as they had Greek language, culture and admitted themselves that they were Greek that says enough for me. There is enough proof you can find which prooves that the Macedonians were Greek, they are Macedonian in the same way that the Spartans were Spartan.[/QUOTE]

Hi Phalank300, if you have time read this from Council for Research into South-Eastern Europe of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Skopje.

In Greece today people start from an a priori assumption of the "Greek identity of Macedonia as an obvious historical fact". Identifying the Greeks from the ethnic and linguistic point of view with the ancient Macedonians, the current Greek regime accuses "Skopje" of encroaching upon the name Macedonia and on a part of a cultural heritage which belongs only to the Greeks.

In fact this is nothing more than their conviction which for years now has been handed out to young people in Greek schools from their earliest years and, most recently, has been propagated throughout the entire world. The thesis of the "Greek identity of Macedonia" is not scientifically supportable. We shall concentrate here on the earliest period.

In Greek scholarship, in numerous articles and books, the historical facts which go against the thesis of a "Greek Macedonia" are passed over. It is universally known that the classical Greek authors did not recognize the Macedonians as their fellow-countrymen, calling them barbarians, and they considered Macedonian domination in Greece as an alien rule, imported from outside by the members of other tribes, the, as Plutarch says, allophyloi.

This historical right and this "Greek identity of Macedonia" have for a long time been "proved" with the hypothesis that the ancient Macedonians were a Doric tribe and their language a Doric dialect. Since this could not be supported by definite facts from historical sources, and even less by archaeological or linguistic proofs, not long ago official Greek scholarship discarded this hypothesis. After the deciphering of Linear B in 1952, and more particularly after 1970. when the luxurious edition of The History of the Greek Ethnos' was published, Greek linguists and historians went far into the past to seek for foundations for their thesis of a "Greek Macedonia".

Although none of the Mycenaean scholars in the world takes seriously their hypothetical interpretations of Mycenaean texts, they nevertheless wish to discover in them "proofs" that the ancient Macedonians were Indo-Europeans, Proto-Hellenes, and that their language was the oldest, purest and most conservative Greek dialect which at the same time cast a new light on the oldest history of the Greek ethnos. This thesis reached its culmination at the beginning of the 1980's when an unusual jubilee under the title of "4,000 Years of Greek Macedonia" was celebrated with great pomp. The theory thus constructed has pretensions to scholarship but in fact starts out from pre-suppositions which are not supported by a single historical fact.

The history of the ancient Macedonians over a lengthy period of 1,600 years (2,200-600 B.C.) has been reconstructed on the basis of a prejudgement that they could have been nothing other than Greeks. It should be noted that no text whatsoever has been preserved in the ancient Macedonian language. Only about a hundred glosses are known, from which it is not possible to reconstruct the language. For more than 150 years these words have been a subject of comparative linguistic studies, but quite a large number of these remain with only a hypothetical explanation or even with no explanation at all.

While earlier on Doric forms were being sought in the Macedonian glosses, Greek linguists are now investing great efforts in revealing archaic Aeolian. Arcado-Cypriot and Mycenaean parallels. In fact the sparse linguistic material is extremely complex and heterogeneous. It is clear that among the glosses there are borrowings from Greek which in antique times was a language of great prestige; the Greek words, however, have been adapted according to a different, non-Greek phonetic system, [e.g.: Macedonian ade "sky", Greek aither "air"; Mac. danos, Gk. thanatos "death"; Mac. keb(a)]le Gk. kephale "head", etc.] But at the same time there are among the glosses such words as are not found in Greek but have parallels in other Indo-European languages, [e.g.: aliza "a white layer under the bark of a tree", Slavonic e/oa xa; Mac. goda "innards", Gk. entera, Old Indian Sanskrit gudam "intestine"; Mac. pella "stone", Germ. Fels < + pel-sa, etc.]
As proof of the cognation of the ancient Macedonians with the Greeks a photograph has been presented of the inscription from Vergina with Greek names. It should be mentioned that the majority of the names of Macedonians from the ancient period are those of members of the ruling dynasty or the aristocracy who consciously identified with the sphere of Hellenic culture so that it is in no way strange that the names of the majority of them are Greek. But alongside them are to be found Macedonian names which cannot be explained by means of Greek etymology.
With regard to their religion which, it is maintained, was the same as that of the Greeks, it should be borne in mind that the names of the divinities were translated into Greek in accordance with their functions, just as the names of the Greek divinities were altered by Roman authors writing in Latin: Jupiter in place of Zeus, Minerva for Athena, Venus for Aphrodite, etc. From an analysis of the ancient Macedonian glosses it can be concluded that ancient Macedonian was an Indo-European language distinct from Greek.
The well-known French Indo-European scholar A. Meje says that Greek is no closer to ancient Macedonian than is any other Indo-European language. In his classification of the Indo-European languages, J. Pokorny with complete justification puts Macedonian together with Phrygian in his Indo-European etymological dictionary. In support of the thesis that the ancient Macedonians were Greeks it is stressed that Philip II and Alexander the Great not only behaved as Greeks but were incarnations of the idea of a united Greek state.
The state which was ruled by Philip II and Alexander the Great, who subdued the Greek city-states and extended their frontiers to Central Asia, is nowhere called a Greek state. Educated by the great Greek philosopher Aristotle, Alexander highly valued classical Greek education and spread it to Central Asia. He abandoned, moreover, the dogma of the "difference" between Greeks and barbarians. He introduced into his policy a new spirit of the equality of all peoples, a spirit alien even to his teacher, who had prepared him for leadership of the Greeks and mastery of the barbarians.
In accordance with his cosmopolitan ideology, Alexander showed an extraordinary broadmindedness both towards the Greeks and towards the other Balkan and Asiatic peoples. With this approach he laid the foundations of Hellenism too, which was a mixture of Greek philosophic and educational ideas with the cultural and religious understandings of the peoples of the east. Alexander spread Hellenism in the Greek language, which he considered to be the language of culture, but his mother tongue was not understood by the Greeks: a fact of which there are explicit proofs.")
Greek scholarship passes over with an underestimation the historic fact of the migration of peoples which fundamentally redrew the ethnic map of Europe, and especially of the Balkans, during the early Byzantine period. Macedonia has been represented as a buffer protecting Hellenism from the waves of the barbarians throughout the centuries.
The Slavonic element in Greece is either denied or minimalized and it is well known that the Byzantine historian Constantine Porphyrogenitus openly says that the whole of Hellas had been Slavicized - It is likewise a known fact that the Slavonic tribes of the Ezerites and the Milingi were independent in the Peloponnese in the 7th and 8th centuries and did not pay tribute to Byzantium. If such facts are borne in mind, it is not difficult to understand whether Macedonia at that period was really a "bastion of Hellenism".
There have been protests in Greece that we have not used toponyms from the Aegean part of Macedonia in the forms which were given to them by decree after 1913 and more especially in 1926 because this has called Greek sovereignty into question. Demelios Georgakas" notes that even today in the Peloponnese no matter in which direction one moves one cannot go three miles without encountering a Slavonic place-name. Similar statements have been made by Ph. Malingudis.
If there are so many Slavonic place-names in the Peloponnese, how many more are there in the Aegean part of Macedonia where the Slavonic tribes dwelt? And today Slavs have been living there for a period of 1,400 years. What is more natural than that the Balkanized Slavs who have lived so long and continuously in Macedonia should be called Macedonians and their language Macedonian.
During the period of Thucydides (11, 99) the population of Northern (Upper) Macedonia was distinguished from the Macedonian conquerors; but even those from Upper Macedonia were likewise called Macedonians. It is very unscholarly to speak of a homogenization of just one nation in these regions of the Balkans.

[Macilrille]

This is hardly unbiased itself though. A bit like asking Pia Kjærsgaard and Kamal Qureshi to define each their own version of "Danish".

(Pia Kjærsgaard is the leader of the nationalist Dansk Folkeparti while Kamal Qureshi is originally a Pakistani, but now Danish parlamentarist for the Socialist Socialistisk Folkeparti).

[Lucio Domicio Aureliano]

This is hardly unbiased itself though. A bit like asking Pia Kjærsgaard and Kamal Qureshi to define each their own version of "Danish".

(Pia Kjærsgaard is the leader of the nationalist Dansk Folkeparti while Kamal Qureshi is originally a Pakistani, but now Danish parlamentarist for the Socialist Socialistisk Folkeparti).

This´s very True. As with most situations the "truth" will be appear when both arguments are analyzed. But as you can see "national idendity" is not as clear as it´s made beleive

[machinor]

I am very sorry for being a pedantic err, ...rectal retard, but I can't restrain myself from writing this:

Now, saying that "after the Greeks not much about philosophy either [...has been done]" is ... not right. :laugh4:
But as you say, since law has not been fundamentally re-thought after the romans, there has been no (can't say "need" here) desire to incorporate philosophy into it... But remember Immanuel Kant and the "Categoric Imperative". This alone should suffice to demonstrate that philosophy has indeed come a very long way since the ancient Greeks. And before someone throws in the argument that Megas Alexandros with his drive for greatness and perfection was *the* living example of a follower of Nietzsche (who is, chronologically, a successor of Kant) which would seem to indicate no progress at all - Nietzsche himself was a product of his time; in his period, all of Germany was on a huge retro-romantic trip towards ancient Greece. It is no surprise that a philosopher from this period would drop recent achievements of other philosophers and embrace a severely biased concept - which is in fact rather close to the problem most of us have with the OP ("the ... were/are/shall forever be SUPERIOR" etc.).
This is not to say that I do not somehow like Nietzsche's ideas :clown:
But I'm told that from a scientific philosophical perspective they are quite obsolete.
I mean, everyone agreed even almost a century ago that Nazis are bad --- but to ancient Greek philosophy, genocide, slavery, imperialism, subjugation in general, *and* even individual selection of "you live, you die" based on physical properties were nothing unusual or immoral or wrong. It was, with some other practices basically amounting to selective breeding, called eugenics (so the modern name Eugene in fact has a *very* sinister touch to it). The easiest example would be Sparta, but there were many others! The only point at which it became bad was the point at which it inhibited the judgement and thus the survivability of the dominators or no longer immediately served their cause ("hybris" or "hubris").
Well, first of all, since in philosophy there are basically no definite answers one can argue, that acient Greek philosophers still have relevance today and it indeed is productive to read them from today's perspective. However, to say that since the ancient Greeks there has been no other advance in philosophy is quite silly. Philosophy since then has progressed so much that it fills hundreds and hundreds of libraries.
Nachtmeister, I fear you have a bit of a superficial understanding of Nietzsche (no offense :sweatdrop:). This whole will to power, drive to greatness, Übermensch etc. is a rather dubious and marginal part of Nietzsche's philosophy. His relevance for Western philosophy lies in his critique of metaphysics and morality as well as his contributions to aesthetics. Apart from that, I think it was Kurt Tucholsky (definitely THE most brilliant German satirist of the past 100 years) who wrote: "Thou shalt not quote Nietzsche. He has said everything. And the opposite of everything." :beam:
Regarding ancient Greek morality... it is of course true what you say. But then again those practices were not without controversy even in the Hellenic world. Just remember the contempt the Spartans had for the Athenians because of their life-style and society; and vic versa. Furthermore these practices were considered justifiable only against barbarians, whom the Hellenes did not consider fully-fledged human beings because of their lack of (Hellenic) culture. This however brings us back to Nietzsche's criticism of metaphysics and morality. Philosophy never ends! :2thumbsup:
Btw, "Eugene" (eu-genos) simply means "[of] good/beautiful [effectively meaning noble] descent". Not that sinister. ~;)

@Lucio Domicio Aureliano: Christianity is not really influenced that much by Aristotle; it's more Platonic due to having been heavily influenced by Neoplatonism in Late Antiquity. In the High Middle Ages Aristotle was "discovered" for Christian Philosophy by the Scholastics (trhe most famous being Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinus). However, this Christianised Aristotelic philosophy was demolished in the Renaissance when writings from Antiquity were rediscovered for the European philosophy bringing lots of new old and old new ideas into the philosophical discourse. Since then, Aristotle is not really important to Christian theology that much anymore because philosophy emancipated itself from theology.

[Lucio Domicio Aureliano]

Well, first of all, since in philosophy there are basically no definite answers one can argue, that acient Greek philosophers still have relevance today and it indeed is productive to read them from today's perspective. However, to say that since the ancient Greeks there has been no other advance in philosophy is quite silly.

I agree. As i´ve said i don´t believe philosophy didnt evolve.


@Lucio Domicio Aureliano: Christianity is not really influenced that much by Aristotle; it's more Platonic due to having been heavily influenced by Neoplatonism in Late Antiquity. In the High Middle Ages Aristotle was "discovered" for Christian Philosophy by the Scholastics (trhe most famous being Albertus Magnus and Thomas Aquinus). However, this Christianised Aristotelic philosophy was demolished in the Renaissance when writings from Antiquity were rediscovered for the European philosophy bringing lots of new old and old new ideas into the philosophical discourse. Since then, Aristotle is not really important to Christian theology that much anymore because philosophy emancipated itself from theology.

I beg do differ. Undoubtly in Late Antiquity, Christianity was heavily influenced by Neoplatonism as well as in high Middle ages Aristotle influenced Christianity. But i don´t think the Renaissance demolished the Christianised Aristotelic philosophy (for instance in 1879 Pope Leo XIII stated that Aquinas' theology was a definitive exposition of Catholic doctrine. Thus, he directed the clergy to take the teachings of Aquinas as the basis of their theological positions; in 1880 Aquinas was declared patron of all Catholic educational establishments).


philosophy emancipated itself from theology.

Agreed.

I´m not christian btw.

[machinor]

I beg do differ. Undoubtly in Late Antiquity, Christianity was heavily influenced by Neoplatonism as well as in high Middle ages Aristotle influenced Christianity. But i don´t think the Renaissance demolished the Christianised Aristotelic philosophy (for instance in 1879 Pope Leo XIII stated that Aquinas' theology was a definitive exposition of Catholic doctrine. Thus, he directed the clergy to take the teachings of Aquinas as the basis of their theological positions; in 1880 Aquinas was declared patron of all Catholic educational establishments).
You definitely got a point there. Aquinas' Aristotelianism still is very important for Christian theology. However, Aristotle's grip on the European cosmos was demolished in Renaissance, as with philosophy's emancipation from theology. Aristotle was kind of like the "link" between theology and philosphy. As philosophy freed itself from Aristotle, it emancipated itself from theology and thus the Aristotelian philosophy was for a long time considered to be a tool of backward, reactionary theologians to keep new philosophical ideas down. So the Aristotelian system got demolished systematically in the 17th century by such prominent men as Thomas Hobbes and Renè Descartes. What I wanted to say with all this elevated talk is that it was one of the main goals of European philosphy from the 16th to the 18th century to free itself from Aristotle and his theological interpretations which was achieved for the most part. So I would not necessarily say that Aristotle is still very influental in today's European philosophy. However, you are right insofar as Aristotle is still considered a major part of the philosophical tradition. And you are of course also right about acient Greek philosophy continuing influence. A good example would be the influence of ancient Scepticism (a.k.a. Pyrrhonism) on phenomenology (especially Husserl).

Cheers. ~:)

[Phalanx300]

QUOTE=Phalanx300;2148508]Well seeing as they had Greek language, culture and admitted themselves that they were Greek that says enough for me. There is enough proof you can find which prooves that the Macedonians were Greek, they are Macedonian in the same way that the Spartans were Spartan.

Hi Phalank300, if you have time read this from Council for Research into South-Eastern Europe of the Macedonian Academy of Sciences and Arts, Skopje.

In Greece today people start from an a priori assumption of the "Greek identity of Macedonia as an obvious historical fact". Identifying the Greeks from the ethnic and linguistic point of view with the ancient Macedonians, the current Greek regime accuses "Skopje" of encroaching upon the name Macedonia and on a part of a cultural heritage which belongs only to the Greeks.

In fact this is nothing more than their conviction which for years now has been handed out to young people in Greek schools from their earliest years and, most recently, has been propagated throughout the entire world. The thesis of the "Greek identity of Macedonia" is not scientifically supportable. We shall concentrate here on the earliest period.

In Greek scholarship, in numerous articles and books, the historical facts which go against the thesis of a "Greek Macedonia" are passed over. It is universally known that the classical Greek authors did not recognize the Macedonians as their fellow-countrymen, calling them barbarians, and they considered Macedonian domination in Greece as an alien rule, imported from outside by the members of other tribes, the, as Plutarch says, allophyloi.

This historical right and this "Greek identity of Macedonia" have for a long time been "proved" with the hypothesis that the ancient Macedonians were a Doric tribe and their language a Doric dialect. Since this could not be supported by definite facts from historical sources, and even less by archaeological or linguistic proofs, not long ago official Greek scholarship discarded this hypothesis. After the deciphering of Linear B in 1952, and more particularly after 1970. when the luxurious edition of The History of the Greek Ethnos' was published, Greek linguists and historians went far into the past to seek for foundations for their thesis of a "Greek Macedonia".

Although none of the Mycenaean scholars in the world takes seriously their hypothetical interpretations of Mycenaean texts, they nevertheless wish to discover in them "proofs" that the ancient Macedonians were Indo-Europeans, Proto-Hellenes, and that their language was the oldest, purest and most conservative Greek dialect which at the same time cast a new light on the oldest history of the Greek ethnos. This thesis reached its culmination at the beginning of the 1980's when an unusual jubilee under the title of "4,000 Years of Greek Macedonia" was celebrated with great pomp. The theory thus constructed has pretensions to scholarship but in fact starts out from pre-suppositions which are not supported by a single historical fact.

The history of the ancient Macedonians over a lengthy period of 1,600 years (2,200-600 B.C.) has been reconstructed on the basis of a prejudgement that they could have been nothing other than Greeks. It should be noted that no text whatsoever has been preserved in the ancient Macedonian language. Only about a hundred glosses are known, from which it is not possible to reconstruct the language. For more than 150 years these words have been a subject of comparative linguistic studies, but quite a large number of these remain with only a hypothetical explanation or even with no explanation at all.

While earlier on Doric forms were being sought in the Macedonian glosses, Greek linguists are now investing great efforts in revealing archaic Aeolian. Arcado-Cypriot and Mycenaean parallels. In fact the sparse linguistic material is extremely complex and heterogeneous. It is clear that among the glosses there are borrowings from Greek which in antique times was a language of great prestige; the Greek words, however, have been adapted according to a different, non-Greek phonetic system, [e.g.: Macedonian ade "sky", Greek aither "air"; Mac. danos, Gk. thanatos "death"; Mac. keb(a)]le Gk. kephale "head", etc.] But at the same time there are among the glosses such words as are not found in Greek but have parallels in other Indo-European languages, [e.g.: aliza "a white layer under the bark of a tree", Slavonic e/oa xa; Mac. goda "innards", Gk. entera, Old Indian Sanskrit gudam "intestine"; Mac. pella "stone", Germ. Fels < + pel-sa, etc.]
As proof of the cognation of the ancient Macedonians with the Greeks a photograph has been presented of the inscription from Vergina with Greek names. It should be mentioned that the majority of the names of Macedonians from the ancient period are those of members of the ruling dynasty or the aristocracy who consciously identified with the sphere of Hellenic culture so that it is in no way strange that the names of the majority of them are Greek. But alongside them are to be found Macedonian names which cannot be explained by means of Greek etymology.
With regard to their religion which, it is maintained, was the same as that of the Greeks, it should be borne in mind that the names of the divinities were translated into Greek in accordance with their functions, just as the names of the Greek divinities were altered by Roman authors writing in Latin: Jupiter in place of Zeus, Minerva for Athena, Venus for Aphrodite, etc. From an analysis of the ancient Macedonian glosses it can be concluded that ancient Macedonian was an Indo-European language distinct from Greek.
The well-known French Indo-European scholar A. Meje says that Greek is no closer to ancient Macedonian than is any other Indo-European language. In his classification of the Indo-European languages, J. Pokorny with complete justification puts Macedonian together with Phrygian in his Indo-European etymological dictionary. In support of the thesis that the ancient Macedonians were Greeks it is stressed that Philip II and Alexander the Great not only behaved as Greeks but were incarnations of the idea of a united Greek state.
The state which was ruled by Philip II and Alexander the Great, who subdued the Greek city-states and extended their frontiers to Central Asia, is nowhere called a Greek state. Educated by the great Greek philosopher Aristotle, Alexander highly valued classical Greek education and spread it to Central Asia. He abandoned, moreover, the dogma of the "difference" between Greeks and barbarians. He introduced into his policy a new spirit of the equality of all peoples, a spirit alien even to his teacher, who had prepared him for leadership of the Greeks and mastery of the barbarians.
In accordance with his cosmopolitan ideology, Alexander showed an extraordinary broadmindedness both towards the Greeks and towards the other Balkan and Asiatic peoples. With this approach he laid the foundations of Hellenism too, which was a mixture of Greek philosophic and educational ideas with the cultural and religious understandings of the peoples of the east. Alexander spread Hellenism in the Greek language, which he considered to be the language of culture, but his mother tongue was not understood by the Greeks: a fact of which there are explicit proofs.")
Greek scholarship passes over with an underestimation the historic fact of the migration of peoples which fundamentally redrew the ethnic map of Europe, and especially of the Balkans, during the early Byzantine period. Macedonia has been represented as a buffer protecting Hellenism from the waves of the barbarians throughout the centuries.
The Slavonic element in Greece is either denied or minimalized and it is well known that the Byzantine historian Constantine Porphyrogenitus openly says that the whole of Hellas had been Slavicized - It is likewise a known fact that the Slavonic tribes of the Ezerites and the Milingi were independent in the Peloponnese in the 7th and 8th centuries and did not pay tribute to Byzantium. If such facts are borne in mind, it is not difficult to understand whether Macedonia at that period was really a "bastion of Hellenism".
There have been protests in Greece that we have not used toponyms from the Aegean part of Macedonia in the forms which were given to them by decree after 1913 and more especially in 1926 because this has called Greek sovereignty into question. Demelios Georgakas" notes that even today in the Peloponnese no matter in which direction one moves one cannot go three miles without encountering a Slavonic place-name. Similar statements have been made by Ph. Malingudis.
If there are so many Slavonic place-names in the Peloponnese, how many more are there in the Aegean part of Macedonia where the Slavonic tribes dwelt? And today Slavs have been living there for a period of 1,400 years. What is more natural than that the Balkanized Slavs who have lived so long and continuously in Macedonia should be called Macedonians and their language Macedonian.
During the period of Thucydides (11, 99) the population of Northern (Upper) Macedonia was distinguished from the Macedonian conquerors; but even those from Upper Macedonia were likewise called Macedonians. It is very unscholarly to speak of a homogenization of just one nation in these regions of the Balkans.[/QUOTE]

Then again, this comes from Skopje, many FYROMS themselves think that they are the ancestors of the ancient Macedonians.

Anyways, I saw this on a page on Youtube from a proud Greek:

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 mothers side, he was descended from Achilles, and, on his fathers side, from Hercules."
Velleius Paterculus, Book I

ALEXANDROS m Ancient Greek (ALEXANDER Latinized)
From the Greek name Alexandros, which meant defending men from Greek alexein to defend, protect, help and aner man (genitive andros). Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, is the most famous bearer of this name. In the 4th century BC he built a huge empire out of Greece, Egypt, Persia, and parts of India. The name was borne by five kings of Macedonia.

PHILIPPOS m Ancient Greek (PHILIP Latinized)
From the Greek name Philippos which means friend of horses, composed of the elements philos friend and hippos horse. The name was borne by five kings of Macedonia, including Philip II the father of Alexander the Great.


The Macedonian royal house was called "Argeads" or "Temenidae". According to the tradition, the founder of the royal house Perdiccas - even if the name of the founder differs in reference with the ancient source used - along with his brothers, the "Temenidae" came to the place called Macedonia from the Greek city of Argos (southern Greece). These Temenidae were descendants of Heracles, through Temenus, thus they were called also 'Heracleids'.
Since the time of Alexander I, Macedonian kings participated in Olympic games, which as we all know only Greeks could take part. The Argive origin of the Macedonian royal house was well-attested and widely believed both from Macedonians, as well as the rest of Greeks.
"The country by the sea which is now called Macedonia... Alexander, the father of Perdiccas, and his forefathers, who were originally Temenidae from Argos" Thucydides 99,3 (Loeb, C F Smith)

"It is your privilege, as one who has been blessed with untrammeled freedom, to consider all Hellas your fatherland, as did the founder of your race". Isocrates, To Philip, 127 (Loeb, G. Norlin)

"Argos is the land of your fathers". Isocrates, To Philip, XII, 32 (Loeb, G. Norlin)

Alexander's letter to Persian king Darius in response to a truce plea:

[...Your ancestors came to Macedonia and the rest of Hellas and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury. I have been appointed leader of the Greeks, and wanting to punish the Persians I have come to Asia, which I took from you..."
[Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander II, 14, 4 (Loeb, P. A. Brunt)]




"Had I not greatly at heart the common welfare of Greece, I should not have come to tell you; but I (Alexander I) am myself a Greek by descent, and I would not willingly see Greece exchange freedom for slavery" [Herodotus Book IX ,45,(Kalliopi)]


"Alexanders ancestry went back to Heracles on his fathers side, while through his mother he was related to the Aeacids."
[Diodorus Siculus 17.1.5]

"As for Alexanders family, it is firmly established that he was descended from Heracles through Caranus on his fathers side and from Aeacus through Neoptolemus on his mothers. The story goes that Philip was initiated into the mysteries at Samothrace along with Olympian. She was an orphan and he was still a very young man; he fell in love with her, and on the spur of the moment became betrothed to her after gaining the blessing of her brother Anybbas."
[Plutarch, Alexander 2.1-2]

"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)

"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 forces thus augmented. Alexander determined to pursue Darius"
(Quintus Curtius Rufus 5. 7. )

"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)

"Now that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know" [Herodotus V, 22, 1 (Loeb, A.D. Godley)]

"But Alexander proving himself to be an Argive, he was judged to be a Greek; so he contended in the furlong race and ran a dead heat for the first place". [Herodotus V, 22, 2 (Loeb, A. D. Godley)]

"How highly should we honour the Macedonians, who for the greater part of their lives never cease from fighting with the barbarians for the sake of the security of Greece? For who is not aware that Greece would have constantly stood in the greater danger, had we not been fenced by the Macedonians and the honorable ambition of their kings?" [The Histories of Polybius, IX, 35, 2 (Loeb, W.R. Paton)]

"No king of the Hellenes had ever conquered Egypt with the exception only of Alexander, and that he did without war"
[Callisthenes of Olynthus 2.4.7-8; Oration of Demosthenes]

[Lucio Domicio Aureliano]

You definitely got a point there. Aquinas' Aristotelianism still is very important for Christian theology. However, Aristotle's grip on the European cosmos was demolished in Renaissance, as with philosophy's emancipation from theology. Aristotle was kind of like the "link" between theology and philosphy. As philosophy freed itself from Aristotle, it emancipated itself from theology and thus the Aristotelian philosophy was for a long time considered to be a tool of backward, reactionary theologians to keep new philosophical ideas down. So the Aristotelian system got demolished systematically in the 17th century by such prominent men as Thomas Hobbes and Renè Descartes. What I wanted to say with all this elevated talk is that it was one of the main goals of European philosphy from the 16th to the 18th century to free itself from Aristotle and his theological interpretations which was achieved for the most part. So I would not necessarily say that Aristotle is still very influental in today's European philosophy. However, you are right insofar as Aristotle is still considered a major part of the philosophical tradition. And you are of course also right about acient Greek philosophy continuing influence. A good example would be the influence of ancient Scepticism (a.k.a. Pyrrhonism) on phenomenology (especially Husserl).

Cheers. ~:)

At this terms i understand and i agree with what you´re saying. You´re most right abut the philosophy emancipation.

[Lucio Domicio Aureliano]

Then again, this comes from Skopje, many FYROMS themselves think that they are the ancestors of the ancient Macedonians.

Anyways, I saw this on a page on Youtube from a proud Greek:

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 mothers side, he was descended from Achilles, and, on his fathers side, from Hercules."
Velleius Paterculus, Book I

ALEXANDROS m Ancient Greek (ALEXANDER Latinized)
From the Greek name Alexandros, which meant defending men from Greek alexein to defend, protect, help and aner man (genitive andros). Alexander the Great, King of Macedonia, is the most famous bearer of this name. In the 4th century BC he built a huge empire out of Greece, Egypt, Persia, and parts of India. The name was borne by five kings of Macedonia.

PHILIPPOS m Ancient Greek (PHILIP Latinized)
From the Greek name Philippos which means friend of horses, composed of the elements philos friend and hippos horse. The name was borne by five kings of Macedonia, including Philip II the father of Alexander the Great.


The Macedonian royal house was called "Argeads" or "Temenidae". According to the tradition, the founder of the royal house Perdiccas - even if the name of the founder differs in reference with the ancient source used - along with his brothers, the "Temenidae" came to the place called Macedonia from the Greek city of Argos (southern Greece). These Temenidae were descendants of Heracles, through Temenus, thus they were called also 'Heracleids'.
Since the time of Alexander I, Macedonian kings participated in Olympic games, which as we all know only Greeks could take part. The Argive origin of the Macedonian royal house was well-attested and widely believed both from Macedonians, as well as the rest of Greeks.
"The country by the sea which is now called Macedonia... Alexander, the father of Perdiccas, and his forefathers, who were originally Temenidae from Argos" Thucydides 99,3 (Loeb, C F Smith)

"It is your privilege, as one who has been blessed with untrammeled freedom, to consider all Hellas your fatherland, as did the founder of your race". Isocrates, To Philip, 127 (Loeb, G. Norlin)

"Argos is the land of your fathers". Isocrates, To Philip, XII, 32 (Loeb, G. Norlin)

Alexander's letter to Persian king Darius in response to a truce plea:

[...Your ancestors came to Macedonia and the rest of Hellas and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury. I have been appointed leader of the Greeks, and wanting to punish the Persians I have come to Asia, which I took from you..."
[Arrian, Anabasis of Alexander II, 14, 4 (Loeb, P. A. Brunt)]




"Had I not greatly at heart the common welfare of Greece, I should not have come to tell you; but I (Alexander I) am myself a Greek by descent, and I would not willingly see Greece exchange freedom for slavery" [Herodotus Book IX ,45,(Kalliopi)]


"Alexanders ancestry went back to Heracles on his fathers side, while through his mother he was related to the Aeacids."
[Diodorus Siculus 17.1.5]

"As for Alexanders family, it is firmly established that he was descended from Heracles through Caranus on his fathers side and from Aeacus through Neoptolemus on his mothers. The story goes that Philip was initiated into the mysteries at Samothrace along with Olympian. She was an orphan and he was still a very young man; he fell in love with her, and on the spur of the moment became betrothed to her after gaining the blessing of her brother Anybbas."
[Plutarch, Alexander 2.1-2]

"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)

"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 forces thus augmented. Alexander determined to pursue Darius"
(Quintus Curtius Rufus 5. 7. )

"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)

"Now that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know" [Herodotus V, 22, 1 (Loeb, A.D. Godley)]

"But Alexander proving himself to be an Argive, he was judged to be a Greek; so he contended in the furlong race and ran a dead heat for the first place". [Herodotus V, 22, 2 (Loeb, A. D. Godley)]

"How highly should we honour the Macedonians, who for the greater part of their lives never cease from fighting with the barbarians for the sake of the security of Greece? For who is not aware that Greece would have constantly stood in the greater danger, had we not been fenced by the Macedonians and the honorable ambition of their kings?" [The Histories of Polybius, IX, 35, 2 (Loeb, W.R. Paton)]

"No king of the Hellenes had ever conquered Egypt with the exception only of Alexander, and that he did without war"
[Callisthenes of Olynthus 2.4.7-8; Oration of Demosthenes][/QUOTE]

Your evidences are compelling as well phalanks300. But as you can from what i´ve posted i don´t deny that the macedonians are not greek. My point is that the so called national idendity is not as clear as it looks. And i think we can agree that like most things the truth is something in the middle.

[Cyclops]

Comparing "Greeks" with "Romans" is like comparing football with the Boston Celtics.

One is a broad ethnic linguistic and cultural movement which encompasses many political entities (eg the ancient Poleis of Athens, or the Kingdom of Macedon) and tinged many others (eg Pontos or Rome itself).

The other is a specific politcal entity, or series of entities.

No Rome without Greece. Roman politics, culture, thought, taste, arts, every aspect of their society were enlightened by their greek neighbours, even after politically annihilating the Greek world.

In another way, no greece without Rome: Rome provided a stable political structure to support and disseminate Greek culture.

I am a little frustrated by the "Macedonia is not Greek" notion. In one way I can argue Sparta is not Greek, its dead and gone. Its territory is occupied by Hellas. There are Spartan descendants living all over the world, and many others influenced by Spartan thoughts and deeds. Will anyone take me seriously?

AFAIK, Macedonia sprang from the old greek district around Aegae. AFAIK they were well within the parameters of the Greek world as measured by language, blood ties, religion, military culture etc. They were a lot more Greek than say the Cypriots of their time, and at least as greek as the Cretans. They spread their realm north into Thracian areas, and clearly absorbed a lot of Thracian culture and loan words, along with other groups in the Balkans. They have no known political heirs, as their kingdom was utterly destroyed by the Romans. The provinces of old Macedonia were carved up and its borders redrawn many times.

I think modern Hellas likes to glorify Alexander as a Greek to build national pride but I don't think he'd recognise or like modern Hellas. That said he'd have no idea who the guys in FYROM were.

I think the fight is for politcal chips in the game of "who gets to keep Thessalonika", a cruel and boody farce played by Turks Bulgarians Greeks and others down the centuries. Venice played a round once (in the 1420's I think it was) but didn't do too well.

[chairman]

I resent the comment that "philosophy was emancipated from the church".

This yet another example of what is called the "Conflict theory" of the relationship between religion and science. Christianity (and other religions as well) have all had there impact on philosophy, whether it be religious or secular in nature. Keep in mind that Ancient Greek philosophy was always strongly tied to religion and the thirst for greater knowledge of theology and the supernatural.

Conflict theory is also an old and thoroughly obsolete relic of the 19th century. It is the product of two authors who had a deep hatred for the Catholic church, which was reflected in their writings. 'Nuff said.

On the topic of whether the Makedonians were Greeks, I have to say that while they belong more to the modern Hellenic Republic than to FYROM, in ancient times they were no more "Greek" than Dorians were Ionians were Aeolians etc... Culturally, linguastically they were "Greeks", but only under a certain defination of what "Greek" means. Please don't forget to modern concepts of race, ethnicity and nationality seperate from your understanding of the ancient world.

Like I said, FYROM is NOT Macedonia in the ancient sense of the word. I would prefer for sake of clarity that they called themselves something else, but that is the same as wishing that words only had one meaning or that Americans not ourselves Americans because the Native Americans/American Indians were here first. That is just silly. So, because FYROM contains a small part of ancient Makedonia, let themselves be called "Macedonians" (note the spelling change), but they should never believe that they have claim to Phillip or Alexander or Antigonas. For one thing, Alexander didn't grow up in Vardar Macedonia, he lived in what is today the "Periphery of Makedonia" in the Hellenic Republic.

Whew! Rant over.

Chairman

[machinor]

I resent the comment that "philosophy was emancipated from the church".

This yet another example of what is called the "Conflict theory" of the relationship between religion and science. Christianity (and other religions as well) have all had there impact on philosophy, whether it be religious or secular in nature. Keep in mind that Ancient Greek philosophy was always strongly tied to religion and the thirst for greater knowledge of theology and the supernatural.

Conflict theory is also an old and thoroughly obsolete relic of the 19th century. It is the product of two authors who had a deep hatred for the Catholic church, which was reflected in their writings. 'Nuff said.
Well first of all, you should read the postings by Lucio Domicio Aureliano and me again. We wrote of philosophy's emancipation from theology in the Renaissance. In the Middle Ages philosophy was considered to be the "handmaiden of theology" since most literate people back then came from a clerical background and thus their interest in philosophy was from a theological perspective. For philosophy in order not to be considered highly dubious and potentially heretic it was necessary to go hand in hand with theology. During the 15th, 16th and 17th century European philosophy slowly seperated itself from theology and established itself as a discipline of its own.

Furthermore, your statement that "Ancient Greek philosophy was always strongly tied to religion and the thirst for greater knowledge of theology and the supernatural" is wrong. First of all "ancient Greek philosophy" is a designation concerning rather a historical context than one of content. Ancient Greek philosophy is a very diverse field with lots of different philosophical teachings and schools. While it is true, that some philosophical schools in Late Antiquity had a trend torwards religion, eschatology and theology (the most prominent being Neoplatonism), for the most part of its history Greek philosophical traditions were not very interested in theological questions or the supernatural. On the contrary: the first tradition in the history of European philosophy was that of the Ionian natural philosophers who were opposed to explaining the kosmos through supernatural forces and causes. The same goes for Plato and Aristotle (the so called "Theology of Aristotle" circulating during the Middle Ages was in fact a text by the neoplatonist Plotin). Also the Stoics and Epicureans, the most popular philosophic traditions throughout Antiquity, were basically materialistic, denying that gods or godlike beings had any power over human affairs, basically assuming a more or less agnostic point of view. Not to speak of the Pyrrhonian scepticists...

[Nachtmeister]

Well, first of all, since in philosophy there are basically no definite answers one can argue, that acient Greek philosophers still have relevance today and it indeed is productive to read them from today's perspective.

Sorry about the jumbled up state of my last post; it was somewhat late and I am badly out of shape (if I ever was in good shape, that is) with essays. I did not mean to discard ancient Greek philosophy alltogether although in retrospective my wording does suggest it... At the very least, it is necessary to read them in order to grasp the intention and any little nuances of modern philosophical works if these are from philosophers who have read ancient Greek philosophy. Some of the original work may even still ring true and uncontested...



Nachtmeister, I fear you have a bit of a superficial understanding of Nietzsche (no offense :sweatdrop:). This whole will to power, drive to greatness, Übermensch etc. is a rather dubious and marginal part of Nietzsche's philosophy. His relevance for Western philosophy lies in his critique of metaphysics and morality as well as his contributions to aesthetics. Apart from that, I think it was Kurt Tucholsky (definitely THE most brilliant German satirist of the past 100 years) who wrote: "Thou shalt not quote Nietzsche. He has said everything. And the opposite of everything." :beam:

No offense taken; I am studying to become an engineer and no scholar of philosophy, just rather interested in it. Thus, I am glad about any correction of my at best under-qualified personal opinions; this prevents intellectual harm from being caused because others take what I write to be fully correct and it broadens my horizon, so indeed I thank you for posting this!
Unfortunately my philosophy course back at school was a rather hostile environment for males due to the political agenda of the teacher (must have been "female power, reduce portion of males to 10% of population for reproductive purpose only, until other means of reproduction are developed" or something although she could not be made to explicitly say this in classes)... And I allowed my motivation to plummet below the ground because of this. Now most of the time there is no one around to provide any philosophical input at all.



Regarding ancient Greek morality... it is of course true what you say. But then again those practices were not without controversy even in the Hellenic world. Just remember the contempt the Spartans had for the Athenians because of their life-style and society; and vic versa. Furthermore these practices were considered justifiable only against barbarians, whom the Hellenes did not consider fully-fledged human beings because of their lack of (Hellenic) culture. This however brings us back to Nietzsche's criticism of metaphysics and morality. Philosophy never ends! :2thumbsup:

Yes, although I would argue for argument's sake that the helots surely must have had some degree of
Greek culture...? You lost me about the connection back to Nietzsche because I have not read that critique yet. Can you provide a link or recommendation for a layman-accessibly commented source?



Btw, "Eugene" (eu-genos) simply means "[of] good/beautiful [effectively meaning noble] descent". Not that sinister. ~;)

No, not in the literal meaning - but with the context of what "good/beautiful/noble descent" meant for the others who were insufficiently eu-genos I still find it somewhat sinister...
But my idea of this context is also based on a Wikipedia article on eugenics so it may lack accuracy.

**********

This discussion is moving on faster than I can type. :laugh4:

[oudysseos]

Some interesting things here, as well as some not so well supported: but if this continues to develop into a Macedonia/FYROM/Greece nationalism thread then I foresee locking ricky-tick. This is not the forum for politics.

[Maion Maroneios]

Some interesting things here, as well as some not so well supported: but if this continues to develop into a Macedonia/FYROM/Greece nationalism thread then I foresee locking ricky-tick. This is not the forum for politics.
Agreed, this should stop at once. But before it does, let me tell you this, to all people out there who are against the Greekness of Macedonia or any other people:
ΕΛΛΗΝ ΕΣΤΙ Ο ΦΕΡΩΝ ΤΗΝ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΝ ΠΑΙΔΕΙΑΝ ΚΑΙ Ο ΟΜΙΛΩΝ ΤΗΝ ΕΛΛΗΝΙΚΗΝ ΓΛΩΣΣΑΝ
This, in English, means the following: Hellen is he, who bears the Hellenic education and speaks the Hellenic language. Over and out.

Maion

[machinor]

No offense taken; I am studying to become an engineer and no scholar of philosophy, just rather interested in it. Thus, I am glad about any correction of my at best under-qualified personal opinions; this prevents intellectual harm from being caused because others take what I write to be fully correct and it broadens my horizon, so indeed I thank you for posting this!
Unfortunately my philosophy course back at school was a rather hostile environment for males due to the political agenda of the teacher (must have been "female power, reduce portion of males to 10% of population for reproductive purpose only, until other means of reproduction are developed" or something although she could not be made to explicitly say this in classes)... And I allowed my motivation to plummet below the ground because of this. Now most of the time there is no one around to provide any philosophical input at all.
I had a very incompetent philosophy teachers in high school as well who nearly destroyed any interest for philosophy. Fortunately here at the university (Vienna has the second largest philosophy institute in Europe! :2thumbsup:) we have quite a few very competent and great professors.


Yes, although I would argue for argument's sake that the helots surely must have had some degree of
Greek culture...? You lost me about the connection back to Nietzsche because I have not read that critique yet. Can you provide a link or recommendation for a layman-accessibly commented source?
Great thinking. I completely forgot about the helots. I once read that the Spartan state was heavily critizised throughout the Hellenic world for basically enslaving Greeks, since that was considered appaling and a crime. Nietzsche in his critique of morality basically says that morality is based on values which are defined quite random. They cannot be proven to be right or wrong and thus have no "logical value" (so to speak). In this context he talks about the murder of God: the statement "God is dead. And we have killed him." has nothing to do with atheism but with critique of Christian based morality. Since the premise of Christian ethics is christianity and God is dead, meaning that people do not believe in an allmighty, allknowing God anymore, Christian morality is hollow and thus has failed.
I cannot give you any literature on that since I myself am not very well versed in Nietzsche. Sorry.


No, not in the literal meaning - but with the context of what "good/beautiful/noble descent" meant for the others who were insufficiently eu-genos I still find it somewhat sinister...
But my idea of this context is also based on a Wikipedia article on eugenics so it may lack accuracy.
You got a point... would be like calling one's children "good bloodline"... a bit problematic. :beam:


This discussion is moving on faster than I can type. :laugh4:
It does and it does so in quite interesting directions. ~:)

[waydog98]

greeks kick ass is all i got to say.. they are masters of philosophy nd create some of the most important inventions by mankind or at least laid out the groundwork.. yes romans had there empire but if greece was united under one banner nd had alexander leading them then i think greeks would have prevailed nd no phalanx is not inferior to roman infantry. Any ways i wont say that cause it didnt happen but the greeks had their glory age like almost all civilizations nd even as a conquered people contributed alot to history

[oudysseos]

Ughh.

Look, there were between 750 and 1000 greek City-states and colonies, ranging from Spain to Turkey, Egypt, and the Ukraine over a period of 1000 years or more. They were never at any time all united politically, militarily, economically, socially, philosophically, artistically, or even by language: the prevalence of Attic Koine came quite late in the game and other dialects persisted.

"Greece" in the sense of a socio-political unit centred on Attica and the Peloponnese has existed since around 1827, so a comparison with the early Roman Republic is a bit pointless. 'Pointless' is a great word to describe this whole exercise: you can't compare "Rome" and "Greece": undefined as they are the words have absolutely no meaning.

The posts about Nietzsche are interesting, though clearly from an entirely different topic.

[desert]

Who was the guy that said "Peace is only a name. All of the poleis are always in a state of war with each other"?

[Cyclops]

Just as there was more than one "Greece" there was more than one Rome, so perhaps my initial response should be toned down.

One point about Greek philosophy is that they developed complex systematic approaches to ideas. Platonic and Aristotlean philosophy give a (somewhat) coherent basis for understanding new phenomena as well as the known world, rather different to text- or mystery-based religious explanations.

This systemic approach to ideas (for example checking ideas against an internally consistent criterion rather than a recieved text) is a really basic foundation stone of western civilization.

Greeks were great synthesisers too, and many Greeks readily aknowledged their cultural and intellectrual heritage from Egypt and Mesopotamia (which were the big ideas centres when Greece was little). The distasteful chauvanism of some Greeks (especially in the Hellenistic age when their pride took several knocks, and in the nationalist age) taints a truly broad minded ethos to which the whole world is heir.

The Romans synthesised or evolved a robust set of political and legal principles so strong that even proud Greeks (not to mention Islamic Turks) happily called themselves Roman. Cruel as they were, they made a state that lasted from c.700 BC to 1453 AD, and a name that will last forever.

The idea of a publically published set of laws emerges in the city states of Mesopotamia, like so many brilliant ideas, but developing forms of representative government did not survive the bronze age. The Greeks and Phoenicians made a success of the city-state system with varying degrees of representative government, but the Greeks failed to expand representative government beyond one city. Athens "Empire" was freedom at home and slavery abroad, and Sparta was a truly evil political system based on inheritable slavery and permanent warfare.

Carthage seems to have managed a sizable (although perhaps loosely held) state before the rise of Rome, and it would be interesting to explore how much Rome learned from them about establishing a stable empire. After all, the first 3 Roman provinces outside Italy (Sicily, Sardinia and Corsica) were all ex-Cathaginian provinces.

Even before they spread overseas, Rome's system took enemies, crushed and conquered them and made them good Romans. Their system was not perfect and they had their share of revolts but their legal and civic political system prevented and survived many shocks that tumbled lesser states. Once the monarchy was established the system was so robust it survived insane rulers like Caligula and Nero, and decades of civil war. Obviously a perfect system would've prevented the civil wars, but nobodies perfect...

Greece provided a quantum leap in the realm of ideas that enlightened the whole world, and Rome provided a rock solid basis for those ideas to flourish in.

I'd guess only India surpasses Greece in the amazing sophistication and depth of its philosophical tradition (perhaps it is less rigourous as a rule, but its far more imaginative than even Greece), and only China surpasses Rome for establishing a practical and durable system of civilised government (I'm unsure how sound and durable traditional Chinese legal systems were, they aren't crash hot atm from what I hear).

[glouch]

to burningEGO:

i thought you agreed to the read more history when you installed EB. america especially during the 19th century harbored imperialist ideals and put them into practice. opening up japan through gunboat diplomacy (w/c eventually led to the westernization and industrialization of that country) and the spanish-american war, in which it kicked out the spanish from cuba and wrested the philippines from the old colonial power's control are examples of what the u.s.a. did to expand its influence and territory, thereby establishing itself as a major imperialist power.

in the present day, america arguably has the same "imperialist" ideals because it still does wields tremendous influence throughout the world, and, depending on the current leader, has also strongly expressed its place as the 'leader of the free world', which of course can be understood in the different ways it has influenced and even directly interfered in the affairs of other countries, particularly the much poorer countries through financial 'aid' in exchange for certain 'favors', in order to advance it's own interest. a good example of this is the economic agreement between the philippines (a former colony of the u.s.) and america, which the 3rd world country agreed to just after the second world war, which let americans ship their goods to filipino shores while at the same time letting them buy filipino raw materials and taking them out without any sort of tariff (for both cases) in exchange for american aid in reconstruction after ww2. this meant that americans could ship raw materials out of that country, manufacture it into the final product, and ship it back again as well as to other markets. this resulted in the acquisition of untold riches by the already richer country, while the poorer country continuously languishes for the better part of a century. this situation is closely related to what the british, spanish, french, and other imperialist powers did to their colonies, the only difference being that these countries exercised direct control over the exploited countries.

----------

as for this thread, i would say that the idea that one culture can be compared to the another and be assessed as either 'better' or 'worse' than the aforementioned referenced culture is not only flawed, but absurd. it would be like comparing modern culture with, say, that of central asian nomads. the nomads' practice of offering their women to a visitor may seem odd, even disgusting to people living within modern globalist society, but the nomads themselves may in turn find the absence of their own practice in modern culture as odd. in this case, the difference between morality, social norms, as well as the context within which their respective cultures developed is most likely the key. as such it is irresponsible to judge any one of these cultures based on one or the other's ideals and social norms.

with regards to the musings of the author of the quoted text about what would have happened if the greeks rather than romans had become the preeminent culture in europe, they're really a little idiotic, not to mention racist and narrow-minded. a certain point in time has infinitely many branching points, events which could have happened, but never did because another did in fact happen. picking out a particular string of events and assuming that it must have been the progression after a certain event after proposing that that certain event happened in place of an actual one through logic may conceivably be done in small time frames lasting perhaps in minutes or days or months, but then applying that to history itself is pointless because events in turn spawn infinitely many more potential events, and each of these infinitely many possibilities in turn spawn their own infinities or at least a fixed amount of many, many possibilities.

in other words... it's pointless. :p