Alexander statue

[Macedon]

I think you definetely have a point there, because the entire region under Greek cultural influences, or that what we these days mark as such, should be studied as a whole. This means including Thracia, Macedonia and the coastal regions of present day Turkey, i.e. byzantion, Arkanania etc and all the islands.

The debate whether someone was Greek or barbaroi was not at all clear to the Greek city states themselves. If you would have told a Spartan he was a Greek and therefore an Athenian you probably would have gotten a head-butt or worse.

What we call hellenistic culture is a conglomeration of all sorts of cultures and languages and dialects extending over a much larger area of the region than what is now called the country of Greece itself. Therefore the national pride Greece has of "their" Alexander the Great is ridiculous. If that were so, also Egypt, Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan among many others could be proud of their "Greek" heritage and origins....

M.VIB.M.

This is not what I am saying. Greekness was not something fluid at any given time. It is of course a fact that a certain people may have been barbarians in the 9th century and Greeks in the 5th, but this has to do with the hellenization process many peoples went through. The Greeks may be the only people who openly speak about such processes without implying that they have been around forever. You are very wrong if you think that Greeks were not Greeks, but "a conglomeration of languages and culture". Their culture was Greek and their languages dialects of the Greek. Running the danger to not seeing through another irony, I will again explain my point.

Greeks were characterized (as ALL peoples) by a variety of dialects and peculiarities in all aspects of culture, but they all perfectly understood their common bonds and heritage. Regional identities were very strong, the Hellenic identity was also strong (again as is the case in a great many cultures and states even today). No one would say to a Spartan that he was a Greek THEREFORE an Athenian. This is just wrong and absurd to the ears of any Greek. They would say that he was a Spartan and therefore a Greek though. the mistake many people make here is that they only compare Macedonians to Athenians and then stress the differences. They never make the effort to make such comparisons between the Athenians/Macedonians and other Greek states to see what is going on. This is a grave mistake, the Athenians are what most people not well schooled in the Greek culture are more comfortable with, they are not "Greece".

You may not believe in cultural continuity, you may resent national emblems, love for one's history and culture, you may see yourself as a "citizen of the world". It is your right, exactly as it is the right of the great many people who care about such staff to cherish their history and such "nationalistic" staff. Alexander the Great has been a Greek cultural element since day 1 and it is ridiculous to claim that any land he stepped on has the right to claim his heritage and history. We have no problem with Egypt or Syria raising statues, because they do it out of admiration, of pure love and respect and they do not make any effort to change history, to create absurd theories to persuade their peoples first and those who prefer learning about Alexander from the Internet rather than studying his exploits second that "Homer was a proto-slav writing in the proto-slavic language the Iliad and the Odyssey, a language later usurped by Greeks to create their own idiom..." or that "the true written and spoken form of the Macedonian language is evident on the middle part of the Rosetta Stone, a script wrongly recognized as Coptic Egyptian, when in fact it is pure Slav..." or "When the Romans came, the Macedonians migrated north to Russia, where they formed the glorious Slavic nation. In the 6th century, they came back to their homeland..." and so many other crap theories they propagandize to their population. Respecting Alexander and his history is one thing, usurping Alexander by changing his history is another.

Again, it is your right to be above all that, but, what you have not commented on, is that apart from the "history", there are also political allusions, which cannot be viewed as anything else BUT provocative.

Again, if you would like to discuss and not just make fun, we could do it, but laughing at our national pride is becoming tiresome and provocative too.