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GREEK PERCEPTIONS OF ETHNICITY AND THE ETHNICITY OF THEMACEDONIANS
*
 Christiane Sourvinou-Inwood, in
Identità e Prassi Storica nel Mediterraneo Greco
 (Milan 2002) 173-203The realization that Macedonian is a Greek dialect
1
has created seriousproblems for those scholars who are convinced that the Macedonians werenot, and were not perceived to be, Greeks. Their conviction, I will argue, is based on conclusions concerning Greek perceptions of Macedonian ethnicitywhich resulted from the implicit and explicit deployment of flawedpresuppositions about Greek perceptions of ethnicity in general.
2
Ethnicidentity is not a timeless essence, but a fluid construction, involving sets of culturally determined perceptions, so the meaningful question about theethnicity of the Macedonians is; ‘How was this ethnicity perceived by theMacedonians themselves and by the non Macedonian Greeks?’ It may bethought that many past enquiries investigated precisely this question, andconcluded that the Macedonians wanted to be thought of as Greek, but theother Greeks believed that they were barbarians. However, I will try to show,such investigations often implicitly relied on modern ‘logic’ (which, forexample, overprivileged notions such as ‘political manipulations andpropaganda’) and on modern presuppositions about ethnic identity, and alsoabout the meanings of myths pertaining to ancestry and about religion, andthey also deployed by default modern assumptions in the reading of ancientstatements. For unless the assumptions that had shaped the ancientformulations (and their readings by their contemporaries) are reconstructed,these formulations are inevitably made sense of through ‘commonsense’ andthus, inevitably, culturally determined, presuppositions – which leads toculturally determined conclusions. The danger of culturally determineddistortions lurks even at the most basic level of reading. Since the word
barbaros
did not only mean ‘non Greek’, but also ‘rude, uncivilized, brutal’
3
 , inGreek eyes the word’s meanings were different depending on whether theyperceived the person or people so characterized to be Greek or not; if not, the
*
I am very grateful to Professor Robert Parker for discussing some of theseproblems with me. Professor Ernst Badian will probably disagree with myconclusions, so I hope that he will not mind if I mention that what led me topursue some of these issues further was a most inspiring and stimulatingdiscussion with him at Harvard.
1
See O. Masson, s.v.
 Macedonian language
, in
OCD
3
(1996), 905-906; C. Brixhe,
Un “nouveau” champs de la dialectologie greque: le Macédonien,
in A.C. Cassio (acura di)
 , Kata Dialekton. Atti del III Colloguio Internazionale de Dialettologia greca
 (Napoli-Fiaiano d’Ischia 1996), Napoli 1999, 41-71; see also M.B.Hatzopoulos,
Cultes et rites de passage in Macédoine,
Athènes-Paris 1994, 121.
2
Sometimes with the help of extraneous preconceptions pertaining to themodern world – preconceptions of which oneself is, of course, free, but ‘theother’ (especially the modern Greek ‘other’) is guilty (see some strikingexamples of this attitude in E. N. Borza,
In the shadow of Olympus: theemergence of Macedon
 , Princeton-Oxford, 1990, 90-91; E. N. Borza,
BeforeAlexander: constructing early Macedonia
 , Claremont, Calif. 1999, 34-37, 39.
3
ARISTOPH.
Nub.
492; DEM 21.150; 26.17.
 
word certainly denoted their non Greekness (with or without theconnotations of cultural inferiority, depending on the context); if those socharacterized were perceived to be Greek, then the word characterized themas culturally inferior, like barbarians, it was, in other words, a cultural insult –which may or may not have had the potentiality of being understood ascasting aspersions on the Greekness of the people thus insulted. There is,then, a danger of circularity in ‘commonsense’ readings of Greek statementspertaining to ethnicity, the danger of reading into the evidence expectationsderived from modern assumptions – or of simply adopting the
lectio facilior
.In order to avoid these dangers it is necessary to begin with the most crucialassumptions that shaped the relevant Greek filters, Greek perceptions of Greek ethnic identity, and then reconstruct the ways in which theseperceptions related to perceived Macedonian realities. I have discussedelsewhere
4
archaic and classical Greek perceptions of Greek ethnic identity,and argued that it is an extremely complex and fluid construction, and thatthe people who shared in the Greek ethnic identity were the people whoperceived themselves to be Greeks, and whose self-perception was validated by those who had the dominant role in ‘controlling’ the boundaries of Greekness, such as, in the fifth century, the Hellanodikai who controlledparticipation in the Olympic Games. That is, Greeks were those whoperceived themselves, and were perceived, to be members of a group whichdefined itself as Greek through a cluster of cultural traits which pertained,above all, to perceived ancestry, language and religious practices. Materialculture is not a strongly defining trait; it was also adopted by non Greeks invarious circumstances, and there were strong regional diversities in thematerial cultures of the Greek world, which involved – among other things –varying degrees of input from different non Greek cultures, and includedcolonial hybridities in cities that were unequivocally perceived to be Greek.
5
 
4
 
Hylas, the Nymphs, Dionysos and others. Myth, ritual, ethnicity
(forthcoming),chapter I.2 (in which I also set out a critique of J.M. Hall,
Ethnic Identity inGreek Antiquity
 , Cambridge 1997); see also my forthcoming paper entitled
Herodotus (and others) on Pelasgians: some perceptions of ethnicity
 , to bepublished in a volume edited by Prof. R. Parker and Dr. P. Derow anddedicated to the memory of W.G. Forrest.
5
In colonial situations the dominant culture of the colonists and the nativecultures of the people of the area being colonized mix in complex waysresulting in new cultural artifacts, - not simple combinations of two cultures, but complex interactions generating complex phenomena that may besubsumed in the post colonial concept of hydridity. (On hybridity see H.K.Bhabha,
The Location of Culture
 , London 1994, 102-122, cf. esp. 111-116; 127; cf.also 85-92; P. Van Dommelen,
Colonial constructs: Colonialism and archaeologyin the Mediterranean
 , in C. Gosden (ed.),
Culture Contact and Colonialism
 , in“World Archaeology”, 28, 1997, 305-323, esp. 309-310, 314-320.
 
Borza’s flawed perceptions of the relationship between material culture andGreek ethnicity (for example, the simple fact that there is no essence ‘Greek material culture’ to which we can compare ‘Macedonian material culture’) can be illustrated by the fact that he appears to believe that the notion thatMacedonian craftsmen developed a “regional style, heavily indebted toGreece, but with abundant Balkan and Asian influences in shape anddecoration” is an argument against the Greekness of the Macedonians (Borza
Before Alexander
 ,
cit
., 33).
 
Nevertheless, material culture does have a place – albeit a peripheral one – inthe cluster of traits defining Greekness, above all in so far as it reflected, andwas perceived to be reflecting, a ‘common way of life’, which contributed tothe construction of Greek identity.
6
 Ancestry was the most effective argument for convincing those who had thedominant role in controlling the boundaries of Greekness, but implicit in sucharguments concerning ancestry was the fact that the ‘petitioners’ shared in thelanguage, religion and other cultural traits that were considered Greek. Forthe role of ancestry, and the discourse of Greek ethnicity in general, was, Ihave argued elsewhere, much more complex, and less monolithic, than isoften assumed.
7
Though the Greeks appeared to privilege ancestry, this wasperceived by them as one element in a complex system of interacting traitsthat made up perceived Greekness, in which one or another element could beprivileged or underprivileged, depending on the circumstances. For example,despite the importance of ancestry, people could have barbarian ancestorsand still perceived to be Greek, as is illustrated by myths about barbariankings such as Pelops, and barbarian peoples who had lived in Greece, such asthe Pelasgians and the Leleges, who became absorbed in the Greek mainstream.
8
Because blood ancestry was not the only criterion for Greek ethnicity, barbarians could become Greeks.What, then, of the Macedonians? With regard to the first crucial criterion of Greek ethnic identity, language, it is now unambiguously clear thatMacedonian is a Greek dialect related to Northwest Greek.
9
As for the secondcriterion, religion, space prevents me from discussing Macedonian religion inother than the most superficial terms. The minimum that can be assertedwith certainty is that as soon as the religion of the Macedonians becomesvisible to us, it is part of Greek religion, involving Greek cults, deities andrites.
10
Like the religious systems of all Greek poleis and ethne, it is a localreligious system, the system of a particular
ethnos
 , with its own characteristicsand emphases – for Greek religion consists of interacting local systems, eachwith their particular characteristics, and also of a Panhellenic dimensionwhich interacted significantly with the local religious systems.
11
 
6
See the notion of 
≥
yea ımÒtropa
in Hdt. 8,144,23. This similar way of life wasreflected, in complex ways, in the material culture.
7
See
supra
n. 4.
8
I have discussed the complex issue of the ethnicity of the Pelasgianselsewhere (Sourvinou-Inwood,
Herodotos, cit
.). On the Leleges see
infra
.
9
See
supra
n. 1.
10
That Macedonian religion was Greek is also stated by M. Oppermann, s.v.
 Macedonia, cults
 , in
OCD
3
(1996), 905: “they also shared in the commonreligious and cultural features of the Greek world.” but “regionalcharacteristics have to be noted.”
11
I have discussed these issues in”
Persephone and Aphrodite at Locri: a model forpersonality definitions in Greek religion,
in “JHS), 98, 1978, 101-121 (=C.Sourvinou-Inwood, ‘
Reading’ Greek culture: texts and images, rituals and myths
 ,Oxford 1991, 147-188): see also C. Sourvinou-Inwood,
What is polis religion?
 ,in O. Murray-S. Price (eds.),
The Greek City from Homer to Alexander
 , Oxford
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