[Liberal]

The distinction between the tribes and people that populated ancient Macedonia, on one hand, and the Greeks, on the other, can be seen in the Trojan war.

(see map: http://homepage.mac.com/cparada/GML/Map ... ojans.html)

Homer in his Book II, 848-850 tells us that the Paeonians (a tribe that populated many parts of Macedonia) were Trojan allies, and thus fought agains the Hellens:

Quote:

Aτρ Πυραχµης γε Παονας γκυλοτξους,τηλεν ξ Aµυδνος, π Aξιο ερ οντος,Aξιο, ο κλλιστον δωρ πικδναται ααν.

Quote:

II. 848 "But Pyraechmes led the Paeonians, with curved bows, from afar, out of Amydon from the wide- flowing Axius—Axius the water whereof floweth the fairest over the face of the earth."

The Paeonians:

Quote:

are regarded as descendants of the Phrygians of Asia Minor, large numbers of whom in early times crossed over to Europe. According to the national legend (Herodotus v. 16), they were Teucrian colonists from Troy, and Homer (Iliad, Ii. 848) speaks of Paeonians from the Axius fighting on the side of their Trojan kinsmen.

Before the reign of Darius Hystaspes, they had made their way as far east as Perinthus in Thrace on the Propontis. At one time all Mygdonia, together with Crestonic, was subject to them. When Xerxes crossed Chalcidic on his way to Therma (Thessalonica) he is said to have marched through Paeonian territory. They occupied the entire valley of the Axius (Vardar) as far inland as Stobi, the valleys to the east of it as far as the Strymon (Struma), and the country round Astibus and the river of the same name, with the water of which they anointed their kings.

Emathia, the district between the Haliacmon (Bistritza) and Axius, was once called Paeonia; and Pieria and Pelagonia were inhabited by Paeonians. In consequence of the growth of Macedonian power, and under pressure from their Thracian neighbors, their territory was considerably diminished, and in historical times was limited to the north of Macedonia from Illyria to the Strymon. The chief town and seat of the kings was Bylazora (Veles, Kuprolu on the Axius); in the Roman period, Stobi (Pusto Gradsko).

The Paeonians included several independent tribes, all later united under the rule of a single king. Little is known of their manners and customs. They adopted the cult of Dionysus, known amongst them as Dyalus or Dryalus, and Herodotus mentions that the Thracian and Paeonian women offered sacrifice to Queen Artemis (probably Bendis).

They worshipped the sun in the form of a small round disk fixed on the top of a pole. A passage in Athenaeus (ix. p. 398) seems to indicate the affinity of their language with Mysian. They drank barley beer and various decoctions made from plants and herbs.

The country was rich in gold and a bituminous kind of wood (or stone, which burst into a blaze when in contact with water) called t-nrivoc (or ts,rivos).

The women were famous for their industry. In this connection Herodotus (v. I 2) tells the story that Darius, having seen at Sardis a beautiful Paeonian woman carrying a pitcher on her head, leading a horse to drink, and spinning flax, all at the same time, inquired who she was. Having been informed that she was a Paeonian, he sent instructions to Megabyzus, commander in Thrace, to deport two tribes of the nation without delay to Asia.

At the time of the Persian invasion, the Paeonians on the lower Strymon had lost, while those in the north maintained, their independence. They frequently made inroads into Macedonian territory, until they were finally subdued by Philip, who permitted them to retain their government by kings. The daughter of Audoleon, one of these kings, was the wife of Pyrrhus, king of Epirus, and Alexander the Great wished to bestow the hand of his sister Cynane upon Langarus, who had shown himself loyal to Philip.

An inscription, discovered in 1877 at Olympia on the base of a statue, states that it was set up by the community of the Paeonians in honor of their king and founder Dropion. Another king, whose name appears as Lyppeius on a fragment of an inscription found at Athens relating to a treaty of alliance is no doubt identical with the Lycceius or Lycpeius of Paeonian coins (see B. V. Head, Historia numorum, 1887, p. 207).

In 280 the Gallic invaders under Brennus ravaged the land of the Paeonians, who, being further hard pressed by the Dardani, had no alternative but to join the Macedonians, whose downfall they shared. After the Roman conquest, Paeonia east and west of the Axius formed the second and third districts respectively of Macedonia (Livy xiv. 29). Under Diocletian Paeonia and Pelagonia formed a province called Macedonia secunda or salutaris, belonging to the prefecture of Illyricum.

This article incorporates text from the public domain 1911 Encyclopædia Britannica.

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

[Eismakedon]

If a collection of a few misused quotes and a copy and pasting of a whole article by an old edition of Encyclopaedia Britannica is to be called a history paper, then history is surely doomed.
The job of the pseudo-historian is not to clarify the issues and to teach us a new way of looking at events past, but to muddle the waters by confusing the issues, making the historical truth hostage to chance. It becomes burdensome to the untrained and not well informed to distinguish between truth and half truth, between event and fiction.
Macedonia and the Trojan war, we are told by the title and we prepare ourselves to learn something about Homer's Troy and its relation to the Macedonians, naively thinking that it is actually an article about the Trojan war. To our amazement, the only thing the writer wanted us to hear is that there was supposedly some "distinction between the tribes and people that populated ancient Macedonia, on one hand, and the Greeks, on the other" and this distinction, we are told "can be seen in the Trojan war".
Reader, you must now focus on that point in the middle of the circle that moves round and round, and as you become sleepy and dizzy, let the subliminal message sink in: "distinction"...yes..."distinction"..."between tribes and people that lived in ancient Macedonia"...yes "between people in ancient Macedonia"..."and Greeks on the other hand"...!
Did it sink in? Please repeat as many times as possible: This is how propaganda was taught in Tito's Yugoslavia...the subliminal message needs to sink in...the reader is not going to end up any wiser about Macedonia or the Trojan war after reading this pitiful pasting of quotes and paragraphs...but as long as the subliminal message sinks in, the paid propagandist's salary in Skopje was well worth it. It is paltry paid college students in FYROM, who are paid to work part time and produce this kind of "Makedonist" articles, they are not true professionals. But what they are lacking in quality and Historic scholarship they make up in quantity: they have been proven very capable of producing an extraordinary amount of propaganda internet posts and swamp every history related internet forum with them.
Coming back to the issue at hand: What do we learn from the article? We hear "that the Paeonians (a tribe that populated many parts of Macedonia) were Trojan allies, and thus fought agains(sic) the Hellens(sic)"
We are even offered a quote from Homer, to back this up. Here it is:
"Quote:
Aτρ Πυραχµης γε Παονας γκυλοτξους,τηλεν ξ Aµυδνος, π Aξιο ερ οντος,Aξιο, ο κλλιστον δωρ πικδναται ααν"
A reader trained in Greek will be scratching their head trying to decipher what by Zeus's name this quote says...it makes no sense in Greek, and how could it? Our friend from FYROM could have as well quoted mandarin Chinese, since (being clueless in Greek) he simply copied and pasted a quote that started long ago in the copying and pasting process as a Homeric verse but ended up as the last sentence in a game of "telephone".
Here is the Homeric verse and below in parenthesis is the copied and pasted "telephone game" version of it:
αὐτὰρ Πυραίχμης ἄγε Παίονας ἀγκυλοτόξους τηλόθεν ἐξ Ἀμυδῶνος ἀπ' Ἀξιοῦ εὐρὺ ῥέοντος,
"Aτρ Πυραχµης γε Παονας γκυλοτξους,τηλεν ξ Aµυδνος, π Aξιο ερ οντος,"
Ἀξιοῦ οὗ κάλλιστον ὕδωρ ἐπικίδναται αἶαν.
"Aξιο, ο κλλιστον δωρ πικδναται ααν"
It is obvious even to someone who cannot read the Greek text that almost half the letters are missing! The text has been massacred, and the sloppiness in the treatment of the ancient text is indicative of the author's lack of seriousness.
In their effort to present themselves as scholarly, the pseudo-Makedonist "historians" try to impress us with their knowledge of Homeric Greek but all they are proving is their utter ignorance, not to speak of their inability to even copy and paste properly! At any rate, this is what the text in translation is saying, which Homer muses in Rhapsody II, 848:
"But Pyraechmes led the Paeonians, with curved bows, from afar, out of Amydon from the wide- flowing Axius—Axius the water whereof flows the fairest over the face of the earth."
Let us make a point here, on the Paeonian names mentioned by Homer: Pyraechmes, Amydon and Axios.
Pyraechmes: pyr = fire and aechme = spear point.
Amydon from amydis: together, place of meeting at the same time, and finally, the river hydronym
Axios: axios = worthy, valuable in Greek. A name appropriate for a river that brings wealth and fertility to the central plain of Macedonia. The Slavs call it Vardar, but Greeks still name it the same way Homer did 2800 years ago.
The Paeonians were linguistically and ethnically related to the Greeks, and this is proven by linguistically analyzing all the Paeonian names, which sound almost completely Greek, with only superficial differences, of the kind that someone today would compare to differences between French and Italian or between German and Swedish, linguistically related languages. Looking at the list of the known names of the Paeonian kings we find names like:
* Agis (? – 359 BC) (Several Spartan kings went by this name too, which means the Leader)
* Lycceius( 356-340 BC) (Lyceios, Illustrious in Greek)
* Patraus (340-315 BC) (Patroos, in Greek, of the fatherland)
* Audoleon (315-285 BC) (Lionvoiced)
* Ariston (286-285 BC) (Identical name in Greek, the Best)
* Leon (278-250 BC) (Leon also in Greek, the Lion)
* Dropion (250 - 230 BC) (The one who cuts down)
* Eupolemenos (Eupolemaios in Greek)
* Bastareus (from basto, in Greek to hold to be in control)
These names, while not completely Greek, they do follow Greek phonetic and grammatical rules and their etymology is fully explainable through Greek. Eupolemenos, for example, is explainable from Eu=good and polemos=war, to mean good warrior, a name fit for king, but if it was properly Greek it would have been Eupolemaios, not Eupolemenos. This proves that the Paeonians were not Greek but were closely related to Greeks linguistically. They also shared most of the religious beliefs and Gods. So were the Phrygians who migrated around 1200 and replaced the Hittites as the nation that controlled central Asia Minor. We find Phrygian inscriptions like the one #5 at : http://titus.uni-frankfurt.de/texte/etc ... /phryg.htm:
Inscription: 5
Line: 1 apelan vac. mekastevano.[
ΑΠΕΛΑΝ vac. ΜΕΚΑΣΤΕFΑΝΟ.[
which if translated from the Greek would mean: To Apellan/Apollon, a great wreath or crown.
Phrygian:ΑΠΕΛΑΝ vac. ΜΕΚΑΣΤΕFΑΝΟ
Greek: ΑΠΕΛΛΑΝ ΜΕΓΑΣΤΕΦΑΝΟΝ
We need to remind ourselves that this is an 8th century BC inscription and written at a time when Greeks of Ionia and Phrygians of central Asia Minor had little if any cultural interaction, so it could not be a case of Phrygians writing in Greek at that Archaic time.
The ancients knew of the similarities between the Paeonians and the Phrygians. Some theorized that the Paeonians were Phrygians who imigrated to Macedonia from Asia, but this is simply false. The exactly opposite is true as Herodotus tells us:
73. [1] Φρύγες δὲ ἀγχοτάτω τῆς Παφλαγονικῆς σκευὴν εἶχον, ὀλίγον παραλλάσσοντες. οἱ δὲ Φρύγες, ὡς Μακεδόνες λέγουσι, ἐκαλέοντο Βρίγες χρόνον ὅσον Εὐρωπήιοι ἐόντες σύνοικοι ἦσαν Μακεδόσι, μεταβάντες δὲ ἐς τὴν Ἀσίην ἅμα τῇ χώρῃ καὶ τὸ οὔνομα μετέβαλον ἐς Φρύγας. Ἀρμένιοι δὲ κατά περ Φρύγες ἐσεσάχατο, ἐόντες Φρυγῶν ἄποικοι. τούτων συναμφοτέρων ἦρχε Ἀρτόχμης Δαρείου ἔχων θυγατέρα
Herodotus. Histories, Polymnia 7.73.1
"The Phrygian equipment was very similar to the Paphlagonian, with only a small difference. As the Macedonians say, these Phrygians were called Briges as long as they dwelt in Europe, where they were neighbors of the Macedonians; but when they changed their home to Asia, they changed their name also and were called Phrygians. The Armenians, who are settlers from Phrygia, were armed like the Phrygians. Both these together had as their commander Artochmes, who had married a daughter of Darius."
Herodotus. Histories, Polymnia 7.73.1
What Herodotus tells us here has been confirmed by modern linguistics, which has found Greek and Armenian to be related among the modern languages (The Linguistic Relationship Between Armenian and Greek [Publications of the Philological Society] by James Clackson), but also the linguistic connection between Phrygian and ancient Greek (The Ancient Languages of Asia Minor by Roger D. Woodard, 2008, and the studies by Claude Brixhe, "Phrygian," The Cambridge Encyclopedia of the World's Ancient Languages, ed. Roger D. Woodard [2004, Cambridge University Press, pp. 777-788], pg. 780).
A discussion on the linguistic connection between the languages connected to Greek can also be referenced at: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hellenic_languages.
As for the Macedonians and their contribution in the Trojan war, we need to remind ourselves that the Greek speaking Macedonians descended into Lower Macedonia around 700 BC, while the Trojan war happened at least five hundred years earlier, around 1200 BC. Speaking of the Macedonians and the Trojan war is the same as speaking of the contribution of the Spanish to the establishment of the Incan and Mayan empires or the contribution of the Arabs to the establishment of the kingdom of ancient Egypt:
Wrong time, wrong place, and nil connection.