...Isokrates places Macedonia outside the boundaries of Greece

"...Isokrates places Macedonia outside the boundaries of Greece and describes the Macedonians as ‘an unrelated race’..."

"…The general sense of a passage in Thucydides gives the impression that the historian considered the Macedonians barbarians." The Macedonians are also distinguished from the Greeks and classified with the barbarians in the Pen Politeias, an anonymous work written about the end of the fifth or the beginning of the fourth century B.C. Various ancient geographers and historians of the classical and post-classical periods, such as Ephoros, Pseudo-Skylax, Dionysios son of Kalliphon and Dionysios Periegetes, put the northern borders of Greece at the line from the Ambrakian Gulf to the Peneios. Isokrates places Macedonia outside the boundaries of Greece and describes the Macedonians as ‘an unrelated race’. Medeios of Larisa, who accompanied Alexander on his campaign in Asia, calls the Thessalians ‘the most northerly of the Greeks’.

In contrast with the genealogy of the mythical founder of the Macedonians to be found in Hellanikos there are three other genealogies of Makedon in which he is not included in the stemma of Hellen. About 700 B.C., Hesiod refers to Makedon as the son of Zeus and Thyia. Pseudo-Skymnos calls him "born from the earth". Pseudo-Apollodoros and Aelian reflect a tradition according to which Makedon was the son of Lykaon. …"

General Editor
M.B. SAKELLARIOU
Member of the Academy of Athens
EKDOTIKE ATHENON S.A.
1988