Misellenes

[Tellos Athenaios]

Simply put: Hellen is the general term for Greek, Macedonians, Epeirotes and others are just as Greek as anyone among the "Southerners" (just read Herodotos, he claims that there are quite a few Phoenician/ Egyptian influences, especially in the south...). Next: because of it's general meaning, Hellen is used to either note "we Greeks vs. those barbarians" or "we vs. the other Greeks". The latter, of course is the case with the misellen trait and Greek character combination. The person doesn't like all those others calling themselves Greeks and considering him barbarian. "What?! They would call my kin barbarians, when in fact we did all their dirty work?! And to think they dare to stand against us! Buggers!"

[Lomma]

From what I remember, Alexander refused to call himself Greek because the Hellenes called his father, Phillip a barbarian.

[Watchman]

Wasn't his mother Olympias Illyrian or something along those lines ? You don't need to live on Baker Street to deduce what that made for his standing as far as the peninsular Greeks were concerned...
Although they probably weren't too loud about it for obvious reasons.

[keravnos]

Olympias was daughter of Neoptolemus, king of Epirus. Her father claimed descent from Neoptolemus, son of Achilles. When her father died ca. 360 BC, his brother and successor Arymbas (grandfather of Pyrrhus of Epirus) made a treaty with the new king of Macedonia, Philip II of Macedon. The alliance was cemented with a diplomatic marriage: Arymbas' niece Olympias became queen of Macedonia in 359 BC.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Olympias

She was born in Passarona, an outskirt of present day Ioannina. Pyrrhos, her brothers' grandson married an Illyrian princess, along with many other women. (Quite the polygamist, Pyrrhos was)

[meliritos]

From what I remember, Alexander refused to call himself Greek because the Hellenes called his father, Phillip a barbarian.

Hmmm...right....and exactly where did you read this? And the next thing you are going to tell us is that Homer was a Turk and his real name was Omar? Come on people...Macedonians where originated from the same tribe that the Spartans came. And talking about purity, is there a civ that is pure? You are what you believe in your heart and your mind, period. Even today, people who live, lets say to the US, will say that they are from LA, or Ohio. Does that mean that they are less American? So why does it make it so difficult to understand that people would call themselves macedonian, athenian, or spartan and still feel being a part of the hellenic world at the ancient times?

[MarcusAureliusAntoninus]

The point isn't that people are the same or different or that they are pure or unpure. The point is that other people saw them that way, whether it was the truth or not.

[Watchman]

So why does it make it so difficult to understand that people would call themselves macedonian, athenian, or spartan and still feel being a part of the hellenic world at the ancient times?

What I wonder is what makes it so difficult to understand that they also regarded themselves as quite specifically Macedonian, Athenian and Spartan respectively relative to each other, and whatever very vague idea of mutual "hellenic" identity there might have been was purely in relative terms regarding, say, Thracians, Romans or Persians.

And did not particularly mean they preferred each other over said odd foreigners, indeed quite the contrary. One need merely compare the number of bitter wars the "hellens" fought against each other to those they fought against assorted strange foreigners, and their ready willingness to accept the assistance of the latter to gain an edge over the former...

[Redmeth]

Look at the Scots and the Irish (don't know much about Welsh) but they surely don't consider themselves part of the great "English world". If you call a Scotsman an Englishman he'll always correct you and say he's Scotish...
Same with the Macedonians, Athenians, Spartans and probably all the other inhabitants of other major polis.

[Watchman]

Or the Medieval North Italian city-states. The poor Venetian-Genoese relationship was almost legendary, and the rest hardly less quarrelsome...

[Spoofa]

or if you call a Korean Chinese or Japanese he will correct you, I know because im Korean and I've been to Korea and most ppl I've talked to about it take it very seriously. People seem to have the misconception that all asians are the same...

[hellenes]

Look at the Scots and the Irish (don't know much about Welsh) but they surely don't consider themselves part of the great "English world". If you call a Scotsman an Englishman he'll always correct you and say he's Scotish...
Same with the Macedonians, Athenians, Spartans and probably all the other inhabitants of other major polis.

Youve got a significant mistake here...The Scots are celtic inhabitants of the British Isles that had a completely different culture language and civilisation than the invading Germanic Angli...
Makedonians, Spartans, Athenians had the same language, art, religion and general civilisation...just read Isocrates and youll understand what Im saying...

[Spoofa]

Youve got a significant mistake here...The Scots are celtic inhabitants of the British Isles that had a completely different culture language and civilisation than the invading Germanic Angli...
Makedonians, Spartans, Athenians had the same language, art, religion and general civilisation...just read Isocrates and youll understand what Im saying...

From my understanding the Makedonians only adopted the "Greek" Language after Philip changed it, somewhere around 350 b.c.ish.. (just a rough guess on the date)

I'm sure they thought about this,

If it walks like a greek, and talks like a greek....

that doesnt mean its a greek.