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

[Paralus]

I think also perhaps just the general established way of life up until Philip started to change the Makedonian state might account for this. It seems intially the Makedones were largely transhumant pastoralists, later working the land and managing the forests - lifestyles more in common with their immediate northern rather than more distant southern neighbours. ...

With which I'm in agreement. You see it is this view of the "Macedonians" - addressed by the speech Arrian puts into Alexander's mouth - that coloured the view of "urbanised" (Athenian) and city state Greeks. There is absolutely no doubt - Macedon's protests aside - that the vast bulk of "Macedonians" down to Philip II were a peasantry beholden to their masters. These masters - the "barons" or whatever - were those that Archelaus may have lost his life to trying to "Hellenise". These hetairoi - "all the Macedonian cavalry" - were the "Makedones" of Fifth century; the others - armed as best as possible for the purpose - were a barbaric rabble to a city state Greek. Especially an Athenian.

Philip's genius, evident in his beating Bardyliss, was to find its bloom in the expansion of the Macedonian hetarioi. He well knew that an army needed some ideal, some purpose. Not only did he expand the "companionate" (in cavalry terms) he expanded it to the infantry and created a propertied infantry with a stake in the national interest. They never forgot him.