It\'s all Greek to me (Makedonians included) ...

[Epictetus]

I stumbled across the following passage and thought it was interesting. Evidently even some of the ancients had difficulties describing themselves as Greek, Macedonian or some sort of hybrid combination.

First, it seems likely that Appian would anyway not have looked directly to a Greek background as his source of identity, but rather to a Graeco-Macedonian one. The status of the Macedonians as Greeks had long been open to dispute. Alexander the Great was protected from scrutiny by his own merits. The Successors, the founders of the Hellenistic kingdoms and their heirs, were more exposed… It is clear from Appian’s Syrian Wars that Appian himself had discussed the question of the relationship between Macedonians and Greeks. ‘The affairs of the Macedonians and the Greeks were closely associated (epimikta) at various times and places, as I have demonstrated in my Hellenic History’ (Syrian Wars 2.5). In other words, being Macedonians was different (cf. ibid. 57. 297, Mithridatic War 41. 159), and very definitely a source of pride (cf. Preface 9.33, 10.37-42, 12.45; Civil Wars ii. 149. 619-152. 649 for the digressive comparison between Caesar and Alexander), but not too different. Appian as an Alexandrian could legitimately claim the authority of Macedonian arms, as well as the intellectual inheritance of Greece.

Swain, Hellenism and Empire