We have seen that Greece was never a unified nation. There was even dispute, throughout the history of the Greeks as a people, as to just who were included under the caption “Greek.” In particular the question rose in reference to the Macedonians when they came to power under the leadership of King Philip, father of Alexander the Great. The Macedonians spoke a dialect of the Greek language, and Philip ardently contended that he and his people were entitled to be considered as true Greeks. The claim was hotly contested so long as the people of Greece, in the narrower sense, had the power to hold out against the man whom they regarded as a usurper; but in the end the claim of Philip received official recognition, and his subjugation of Greece was not regarded as the conquest of a foreigner, but merely as establishing the hegemony of one Greek state over the others, Macedonia now taking that leadership which had been held in turn by Athens, Sparta, and Thebes.
In the broadest view this way of regarding the Macedonians as really Greeks was, perhaps, not illogical. The question of the exact origin of the Hellenes is still much in doubt, but the more the matter is investigated, the more certain it becomes that this wonderful people was a mixed race. Throughout history everywhere, the ethnologist points out that it is the mixed race which develops the greatest potentialities; and the case of Greece is no exception to the rule. One speaks of the Greeks as Aryans, and, therefore, naturally associates them with the Persians and Indians on the one hand and the Germanic races on the other. Yet, in point of fact, it is probably only in relation to their speech that any such close affinity exists. If the theory of the “Mediterranean race” with its central African origin be true, then the Greeks considered ethnologically were much more closely associated with the so-called Hamitic Egyptians and the so-called Semitic Hebrews, Babylonians, Assyrians and Phœnicians, than they were with the other so-called Aryan races.
All discussion of this exact point is still somewhat problematical, but it is quite clear to the most casual physical inspection that the Greek is of a physical type much more closely akin to the dark-skinned and dark-eyed Mediterranean races than to the fair-skinned, blue-eyed, Indo-Germanic tribes. Yet the language of the Greeks is unequivocally of the Indo-Germanic family. Quite possibly, the explanation of this anomaly may be found in the theory of a prehistoric invasion of Greece by a Germanic race from the north, which mingled with the Mediterranean race already in possession of the soil, and gave to it the elements of the Indo-Germanic language, yet failed to stamp the traits of its physical personality upon the original occupants of the little peninsula. Whoever will, for a moment, consider the known history of the English people as an ethnic race contrasted with the history of the language which they speak, will at once see how very misleading may be any inferences as to racial status based solely upon the English language, were not such checked by other historical sources of information. This is but one case of many that might be given illustrating how philologists have slowly awakened to the fact that inferences based solely upon philological evidence must not be made too confidently in their application to questions of ethnology pure and simple. And so with the case of the Greeks, the fact of their Aryan speech must not blind us to the probability that, as a race, the Hellenes were not closely akin in recent times to the other races speaking Indo-Germanic languages. That the Greeks came to their favoured land from some unknown region and that they found a population there before them which gradually disappeared, presumably by intermingling with the invaders, we have already viewed as a current tradition.
But this is only one item of the evidence which makes it clear that when one uses the word “Greek” he is speaking of a mixed race with no certain proof of common lineage and often with no stronger bond than that supplied by a common language. In one sense, then, whoever spoke the Greek language as his mother tongue was a Greek, whether the place of his nativity were the little peninsula of Greece proper, or an Ægean island, or the coast of Asia Minor, or the island of Sicily, or southern Italy, or Macedonia.
Yet, from another point of view, it is quite clear that the Macedonians were in some respects different in temperament from the typical Greeks and, in particular, from the typical Athenians. One can hardly imagine a Philip or an Alexander as being of Athenian birth. We have learned to revere the Athenian for his culture, his love of the beautiful, his artistic instincts, and exceptionally for his abstract philosophy. But with all this one cannot escape the feeling that, in some sense, the Athenian even of the most brilliant period was a child. He was vain, arrogant, emotional, vacillating; in short, the reverse of all that usually goes to make a great leader or a great political people. The Spartan, to be sure, was more akin to the Macedonian, but rarely indeed did any Spartan show that breadth of political view which characterised Philip and Alexander, and at least the germs of which were latent in a considerable company of their associates and generals. And, indeed, in viewing the Macedonian race as a whole one is forced to the conclusion that here was a sturdier race, of firmer fibre, if also, and perhaps inevitably, of a lower æsthetic plane and a less elaborated culture.
In accordance then as one views the case from one point of view or another, it might be made to appear that Philip was right in claiming that his kingdom was a part of Greece; or that the Athenians were right in combating that claim. But, whatever the theoretical right of the matter, here, as always in the history of nations, Might made the practical or political Right, and the Might lay with Philip. He was a great soldier, and he came at a time when the power of Greece proper had been almost utterly shattered by internal dissensions. Still, it was his desire to effect a peaceful conquest; he sought to rule Greece, but to rule it by diplomacy rather than by the sword, and he well-nigh succeeded. But for the stubborn resistance of Athens, urged on by Demosthenes, he would probably have gained all that he sought without striking a single warlike blow against the people whom he was pleased to regard as his fellow-Greeks; but the hostility of Athens at last made an appeal to arms inevitable, and on the field of Chæronea Philip proved the sword to be mightier than voice or pen, and effected the utter subjugation of all Greece.
This accomplished, Philip was ready for that invasion of Persia which he had long planned. But, just as his preparations were completed, he was struck down by the hand of an assassin. His ambition was thus cut short, his life-work left unfinished. What he would have accomplished had he lived remains, of course, problematical. He was only in middle life when he fell, and he had already demonstrated that his powers were of the first order, and it is not improbable, had he been permitted to undertake the Asiatic invasion, which he planned, that he would have carried it out successfully. But all comment on such a question as this is, of course, idle. As the case stands, Philip’s glory has been almost eclipsed by that of his more brilliant son, and the history of the rise of Macedon seems important to after ages, not so much because it is the history of the overthrow of the Grecian independence, as because it is the history of the preparation for Alexander. The narrative of this preparation we must now view in some detail before passing on to the events of that extraordinary period which has been stamped in history for all time as the Age of Alexander the Great.[a]
EARLY HISTORY OF MACEDONIA
Æschylus attributes to King Pelasgus of Argos the statement that the dwellings of his people, named Pelasgians after him, extended to the clear waters of the Strymon, enclosing in their sweep the highlands of Dodona, the district about Pindus, and the wide region of Pæonia. According to the old soldier of Marathon, the inhabitants of the lands watered by the Haliacmon and the Axius were of the same race as those ancient populations which occupied the regions extending from Olympus to the Tænarum, and to the west of Pindus. This high mountain that separates Thessaly from Epirus and the highlands of Dodona forms in its northwestern slope, as far as the Schar-Dagh of ancient Scardus, the wall that divides Macedonia and Illyria, then turns eastward to the source of the Strymon and continues at the left of the river southeastward under the name of Orbelus, till it reaches the coast, thus forming a natural boundary between Macedonia and Pæonia, and keeping off the Thracian populations in the east and north. Within this enclosed territory, crossed by the Haliacmon, the Axius with its tributaries, and the Strymon, are a second and third mountain chain which, concentric like that of Pindus-Scardus-Orbelus, enclose the inner coast lands, Pella and Thessalonica. Hemmed in this double circle of valleys, through which break three streams, those of Haliacmon and Axius making their way side by side to the sea, the inhabitants of this district are set apart by nature as forming a sort of hermit race with the lowlands of the coast as their common territorial centre.
According to Herodotus the people, called Dorians at a later period, were crowded out of Thessaly and established themselves near Pindus in the Haliacmon valley, being known there under the name of Macedonians. According to other accounts Argæus, from whom the Macedonians are supposed to descend, came from Argos in Orestis and settled in the region about the source of the Haliacmon, which explains the origin of the name, Argead, given to the house of the king. There are other traditions, widely received at that time, which assert that three brothers, Heraclidæ of the princely Argive race that sprang from Temenus, travelled north to Illyria, then penetrated into Macedonia and settled at Edessa, close to the mighty falls which mark the entrance of the waters into the fruitful coast lands. In Edessa, also called Ægæ, Perdiccas, youngest of the three brothers, founded the kingdom that was to include in its steady growth and unite in the name of Macedonia the neighbouring districts of Emathia, Mygdonia, Bottia, Pieria, and Amphaxitis.