ABSTRACT
At Vergina in 1977 the Greek archaeologist Manolis Andronikos, excavating the royal Macedonian graves of the fourth century BC at Vergina, found a bronze tripod dating from the mid-fifth century. This was an heirloom from the time of King Alexander I 'Philhellene' as he was later called; it was a prize won at the Argive Games to Hera (SEG xxix 652, cp. xi 330 = xxx 52). It recalls the earlier athletic successes of Alexander at Olympia, as described by Herodotus (v.22). Alexander had to argue with the authorities before they would let him compete, but he convinced them that he was descended from the royal house of Argos. He came first equal in the foot-race This incident raises for the first time a question which is still being debated two and a half thousand years later: were the Macedonians Greeks?' the orators and propagandists of the fifth and fourth centuries do not help for they contradict each other. For the fifty-century sophist Thrasymachus Archelaos was a barbarian, and Demosthenes could call the Macedonians 'barbarians as at xiv. 3, where Philip is the 'common enemy of the Greeks'. It has also been acutely pointed out that the title 'phi1hellene', which was perhaps first given to Alexander I by writers of the fourth century, actually implies a denial that he was Greek. But the Macedonian kings could be regarded as more Greek than their Macedonian subjects. Isokrates (v.139) clearly implies that Philip, as a descendant of Herakles, is Greek. The argument is the same as that used 150 years before by Alexander I - and just as impossible for us to test. What is clear that Macedonians wanted to be thought Greek. When Philip in 346 settled the Third Sacred War, he was (personally; not the Macedonians as a race) admitted to the Delphic Amphictyony, the body which managed the prestige sanctuary at Delphi; and so he gained admission to the Greek fraternity. Alexander the Great also found Greek culture valuable if only as a way of patronizing his Macedonian peers: he remarked to a Greek fellow-feaster (Plutarch Alex. li) that the Greeks seemed to walk among Macedonians as demigods among wild beasts.
