- IT IS DIFFICULT TO BELIEVE THAT, AT THAT TIME, A GREEK ROYAL HOUSEHOLD WAS IN A POSITION TO conquer and rule over an alien people which spoke a different language, while surrounded by a local military aristocracy-also speaking a different language-which never desired to remove the foreign ruler, It is not only nalve to accept such an idea, it would also compel us to accept a fact for which one could not easily supply an analogy from some other country.
- EVEN IF WE DO ACCEPT THIS RATHER IMPROBABLE FACT, WHAT SHOULD HAVE HAPPENED AS A NATURAL CONSEQUENCE WOULD HAVE BEEN THE LINGUISTIC ASSIMILATION OF THE GREEK ROYAL HOUSEHOLD BY ITS SUBJECTS, AND NEVER THE REVERSE. What always happens in the history of the nations is the linguistic absorption of the foreign rulers by the local people.Even when the rulers comprise an entire nation , it is sufficient for them to be less in number.
- EVEN IF THE MACEDONIAN KINGS DID IMPOSE GREEK ON THEIR SUBJECTS AS A FOREIGN LANGUAGE, IT WOULD HAVE BEEN IMPOSSIBLE FOR THE PEOPLE TO LEARN IT SO QUICKLY, AND NOT TO PRESERVE ,THEIR OWN LANGUAGE SIDE BY SIDE WITH IT, which, as we know today, always happens in such cases, and impossible also for such a thing to escape the attention of Titus Livy, the Roman historian, who mentions that in the 3rd century B.C. the Macedonians spoke the same language as the (Greek) Aetolians and Acarnanians
These observations very much discredit any suspicion that the Greek kings of Macedonia could have made Greek speakers of a foreign people at such an early period, when there existed neither schools, nor printing, nor church.
What would be able to dispose conclusively of this idea would be nothing other than a text written in the ancient Macedonian dialect-i.e. the dialect which the Macedonians spoke before they supposedly became Greek speakers, but unfortunately this does not exist.
All the ancient inscriptions from the depths of the Macedonian earth which have come to light under the archaeologists trowel belong to the era when the Macedonian kings had already made Attic the official dialect of their nation. To date, it has not been possible to find anywhere an inscription, even of one single phrase, written before the 5th century B.C.; that is to say, before the time when the Macedonians supposedly became speakers of Greek.
How are we to explain this?
IT IS ENTIRELY IMPROBABLE THAT THE MACEDONIANS DID NOT WRITE IN THE 6TH CENTURY B.C., SINCE THE GREEK SCRIPT WAS BY THEN ALREADY KNOWN TO PEOPLES FURTHER TO THE NORTH OF THEM. it her, therefore, the old Macedonian inscriptions were all carved onto some perishable material and have disappeared without trace in the passage of time; or we must keep hoping that somewhere, they too await the archaeological pickaxe or the farmer's plough to drag them into the light of day.
MACEDONIANS had only GREEK names and spread GREEK civilization ONLY.
Is that Hellenization ?
if yes I challenge to ANYONE to show me any NOT GREEK that spread from the MACEDONIANS ?
No comments:
Post a Comment