Academic Censures Academic Freedom - Contemptible Intimidation Tactics
Australian Macedonian Advisory Council
February 10, 2011
The subject of historical truth is something that all human beings should cherish even when the truth hurts. Those unqualified in historical matters (academics included), driven by their fear of being wrong, rather than argue those questions that are relevant to the academic discussion, bring into the debate unrelated topics to support their political views, even if these have no relevance to the question. In this case, the issue at hand is whether the statue of Alexander the Great should be erected in Skopje, the capital of the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, or FYROM. More than 370 scholars of Graeco-Roman antiquity, from 23 countries (Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada, Cyprus, Denmark, Egypt, Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Hungary, Ireland, Italy, Luxembourg, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Spain, Switzerland, Sweden, U.K., USA) signed a letter sent to U.S. President Obama protesting this as an affront to historical truth.
Among these distinguished professors is Professor John Melville-Jones, Professor Emeritus of the University of Western Australia.
Not wishing to state their aversion for historical truth because it proves them wrong, certain academics from irrelevant disciplines (Slavonic Linguistics, Cultural Anthropology, etc.) and their friends from the FYROM diaspora have attempted to obscure the members of the social media and readers of the Press (clearly avoiding any confrontation with main stream academic journals) by sidetracking the question at hand and moving the discussion to a realm irrelevant to the question, where they can express their views that are based on half-truths, expanding on unrelated concepts and imprudent parallelisms; all this is taking place in the name of politics -- not history.
Scholars who are versed in the subject matter respond with valid academic arguments, even if these appear to the unversed as hair-splitting. It is, however, unacceptable, albeit trendy, for the politically polarized, whether to the left or to the right, to use their degree in order to advance personal political interests at the expense of historical truth.
Professors with a background in impertinent disciplines are thereby attempting to equate the genesis of the Modern Greek state (1829) with the palingenesis of the Greek nation (1821) and turn around to then also compare the above to the genesis of the "Macedonian" nation, which, in their historically unfounded opinion, is as old as the Greek nation. In their lexicon, obviously, there exists no difference between palingenesis and ethnogenesis, nor between that of nation and a country. One could arguably apply such opinions to Israel which gained independence in 1948 and India which became an independent republic in 1947.
One such comment directed to the naïve is that "nations are, by definition, products of the modern era." The argument is tantalizing, but wrong. The definition of a nation is anything but new. Modern classic definitions of a nation offered by Joseph Stalin, Ernest Renan, and Max Weber do not significantly differ from those handed down to us by the ancient Greeks. Even under those definitions, the FYROM Slavs cannot be considered a nation before 1945; this is exactly why at present Bulgaria does not recognize them as anything but Bulgarians speaking a Bulgarian dialect!
In Homer´s Iliad, II 87 and VII 115 one finds a elementary definition of an ethnos (ἒθνος) or nation. Herodotus offers not only a more precise definition of the same in I.56.2, (compare to I.57.3), in 8.144.2 he actually defines the Greek nation as "the kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life" while in I.101 he defines genos (γένος) or tribe as the subdivision of a nation (compare to Arrian II.10 where genos is erroneously translated as race – see Lexicon Liddell, Scott, Jones s.v. γένος). In Works and Days 526 - 530, Hesiod, a poet who lived in circa seventh century BC, states "for the sun … shines more sluggishly upon the whole race of all Hellenes (Greeks)," which shows that the genesis of the Greeks did not take place in our day for the first time; only the uninformed choose to believe so. Aristotle explains also the change of name from Graeki to Hellenes on the Pindus Mountain range (Meteorologika, I, 13).
Although the Greek palingenesis took place in 1821, reference to the words Ἑλλην, ἑλληνικός, or the first word of composite nouns and adjectives ἑλληνο- and Ἑλλάς were already used by Homer and continues so to this very day. Among many famous users of these words are Hesiod, Aristotle, Arrian, Strabo, Komninos, Kekavmenos, Kotounios, Photius, Ioanna Komnina, Plethon, Cabasilas, some of them during the Ottoman period. One should start with the Lexicon Liddell, Scott, Jones, then Soudas, Hesychius, Stephanos Byzantius, just for starters.
In writing about the definition of the word ethnos or nation, the Metropolitan of Naupaktos Ierotheos states:
The word Romeosynē must be placed within the context of the Orthodox Church, since we know that during the Roman Empire, the theology of the Church played an important role in this. This means that Romeosynē is not an ideology or a peculiar nationalism, because it was affected by the Church, it is supranational.
Romeosynē did not apply to Greeks only, but to all Eastern Orthodox within the Byzantine (Roman) Empire and later the Ottoman State. The Ottoman State adopted the same policy and applied the meaning to all her Orthodox subjects regardless of ethnic affiliation. In April 1828 Kapodistria (later the first governor of an independent Greece) suggested a solution for the Eastern Question by offering a Romeosynē solution to the Russian Czar Nikolas I. His plan was actually a variation of the federation proposed about a century earlier by Rhigas Pherraios. It included the Romeosynē provinces of the Balkans with a free city of Constantinople (Istanbul).
Historians argue that the Greek nation was born at Thermopylae, a battle that ended in the defeat of the Greek forces (300 Lacaedemonians, 700 Thespians, 400 Thebans and a few hundred others) because of treason; it boosted the idea for the need of a unified people, a solid defense. The spirit of a united Greece facilitated the work of Philip II of Macedon who implemented it. We have similar events in our recent past with the Serbs in the Battle of Kosovo and the Americans in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Gallipoli is another good example.
A very important distinction is necessary between the old nations and the new nations. The old nations such as Greece acquired national identity or national consciousness before the formulation of the doctrine of nationalism was introduced by the French Revolution which "produced the modern doctrine of nationalism, and spread it directly throughout Western Europe...". Greece´s continuity with the past was broken by conquests, so that her national identity and national consciousness were formed gradually and indistinctly. "It was a spontaneous process, not forced by anyone, though there were great events which in certain cases clearly accelerated it."
New nations such as the FYROM "are those in which two processes developed simultaneously: the formation of national consciousness and the creation of nationalist movements. Both processes were the work of small political elites."
In their cases the process is easier to grasp, for it took place over a much shorter period and is well documented. The leaders of national movements since the French Revolution have been by definition articulate persons, and their propaganda among their own populations designed to implant in them a national consciousness and a desire for political action, though largely conducted by word of mouth, was also put in writing at the time.
If the sole purpose of the modern state that wants to be called "Macedonia" were a matter of innocent survival, it would not pose a problem. But this is not the case. FYROM´s population has no proven historical ties to ancient Macedonia (Kiro Gligorov, Mакедонија е сé Што Имаме, Skopje, 2000, 354), and most of it, in fact, lies outside the borders of ancient Macedonia.
Political activists, regardless of credentials, see nothing wrong with the irredentist maps of their "Macedonian" friends, who allow these to permanently hang on the walls of their classrooms. They find it acceptable for their friends to carry these same maps through the streets of Australian cities depicting a "unified" Macedonia (one that includes the Greek province of Macedonia) turned into a Slavic state under their Slavic culture and language. Such maps and slogans boldly claim that "Solun [Thessaloniki] will be the Capital of Macedonia again. But Thessaloniki is the Capital of the region of Macedonia which belongs to Greece. The question is: Why are they saying "again?" When exactly Thessaloniki was historically the capital of a Slavic dominated Macedonia as they would like it to be? Some scientific historical evidence to that effect would help clarify the erroneous and obviously nonexistent source. Clearly it is all part of a euphoric recall that these "professors" and their friends would enjoy. How does one expect the Greeks to feel when they see statues of Greek statesmen erected in the FYROM, structures and streets renamed after Greek heroes, historical Greek persons converted into Slavs with maps depicting a united Macedonia by graphically misappropriating a province that belongs to Greece – all under Skopje´s rule?
Freedom of speech and non-attribution are unknown rights in the universities of the FYROM, including the Faculty of History because Macedonism is protected under the FYROM criminal Law articles #178 and 179 while academic research is limited only to government projects under government guidance according to Article 6 of the Law on the Scientific Research Activity.
Freethinking is not only against the law in the FYROM, but an unknown and unthinkable matter. The present government has closed TV stations and newspapers and sent their owners and editors to prison; in addition, anyone stating that the ancient Macedonians were Greeks ends up in mental institutions or prison. Even the Church has not escaped this. Friar Jovan, a Bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church is in and out of prison held under bogus manufactured charges and false witnesses. These are the examples of freedom of speech in everyday FYROM. Anyone following the FYROM Press is very familiar with these cases. It is in the same spirit of those who attacked Prof. John Melville-Jones´ right to academic freedom of speech and which the FYROM diaspora also demonstrated when they filed a complaint against the Premier of South Australia, the Hon. Mike Rann (later ruled by the courts as an unfounded accusation).
What is disturbing is not that they were just concerned with Mr. Rann´s statement ("It´s important because one nation steals the history, culture of another…that´s why it´s is so important"), but their claim that his statement was a violation of their human rights. The reason behind their complaint according to Gjorgji Vlahov of the "Australian-Macedonian Human Rights Committee" was clearly expressed in the statement: "We hope that other Australian politicians will learn from this situation" This is a clear example of intimidation tactics that should raise the eyebrows of anyone concerned with freedom of speech, academic freedom, and historical truth, especially in Australia where the incident took place.
Bulgarians were inspired by the dream of Georgi Stoykov Popovich, better known as Georgi Sava Rakovski of Kotel, Bulgaria, who dedicated his life to the liberation of geographic Macedonia and Thrace. He was instrumental in the Bulgarian awakening of the mid-1800s that led to the Bulgarian Ilinden Uprising of 1903. The fact that the heroes of that Uprising as Goce Delchev and Dame Gruev were Bulgarians and not ethnic "Macedonians" is well documented .
The interesting part of the story is that the victims whom the government of the FYROM identifies as "Macedonian" were actually Greeks as the letter sent only a few days later by the Consul General of Greece in Monastiri (Bitola) to the Greek MFA proves!
The Manifesto of Krushevo in August 1903, the same one that the FYROM invokes in its Constitution´s Preamble, describes as Macedonian every inhabitant of Macedonia "regardless of faith, nationality, sex or conviction." As for the geographic section of Serbian Macedonia (since 1945 part of the FYROM) in 1917 was identified as "the middle Vardar valley below Veles and the hilly country which lies between that and the lake Ohrida." The spirit of the revolt that ended with the creation of the ephemeral Republic of Krushevo in 1903 was the primary purpose of the VMRO, which wanted to establish an independent geographic Macedonia under the influence of Bulgaria in a form of the cantonized Switzerland.
The Krushevo Manifesto or Proclamation as found in Nikola Kirov Majski´s memoirs, written in Bulgarian in 1920 and directed towards the Muslim population of Macedonia, called for all Macedonians "regardless of faith, nationality, sex or conviction," to take arms and liberate Macedonia from the Ottoman yoke securing "Macedonia for the Macedonians" as described above. Misirkov also wrote in the same wavelength. One must read a copy of Misirkov´s original Bulgarian text, not modern misinterpretations, in order to appreciate its meaning.
The first plenary Session of ASNOM (The Anti-Fascist Assembly of the National Liberation of "Macedonia") convened on August 2, 1944 in the Serbian Orthodox Monastery of St. Prohor Pčinjski, Serbia. It was the beginning of their ethnogenesis that was forcibly implemented by the Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ). Part of the said ethnogenesis was the codification of a common language. Since all Slavic inhabitants spoke a variety of Western Bulgarian from a dialect very close to Bulgarian (Strumica) to another which was almost Serbian (Skopje), the main task was given to linguists from Prilep and Bitola who codified the new language based on their own "in between" dialect. It was a job undertaken by Blaže Koneski, Krum Toshev, Bozho Vidoeski, Rada Ugrinova (from Skopje) and later the American Horace G. Lunt.
The newly codified FYROM Slavic language received Serbian tone; this happened 2,500 years after the establishment of the Attic Koine in Greece as the standard Greek out of 204 Greek dialects including the Macedonian. In 1957 Fanula Papazoglu, one of the leading historians of the Socialist Republic of "Macedonia" wrote her original dissertation Makedonski gradovi u rimsko doba in Serbian as the title indicates (with her Conclusion in French), because she did not speak the language that supposedly existed before 1945. In the Western Bulgarian dialect as spoken at present in the FYROM it would have read as Makedonski gradovi vo rimsko vreme.
The history of Greece is an open book and was written not by Modern Greeks as many from the FYROM and their friends would like to imagine, but is the result of a centuries long process and has been subjected to every possible scrutiny. During the Byzantine era, a number of chronicle writers recorded events that later became a part not only of Greek history, but also of all Balkan peoples including the Southern Slavs, although their descendants and their friends living in a dark fishbowl have chosen to ignore this.
One expects from academics that they evaluate source credibility before they express their opinions, especially when these are outside their discipline. It is their own credibility that lies at stake. Prof. Melville-Jones´ legitimate academic argument stating that Alexander the Great was Greek, has been attacked by irrelevant untrained academics and their friends in a manner that only the word malarkey can describe.
By Marcus A. Templar
Among these distinguished professors is Professor John Melville-Jones, Professor Emeritus of the University of Western Australia.
Not wishing to state their aversion for historical truth because it proves them wrong, certain academics from irrelevant disciplines (Slavonic Linguistics, Cultural Anthropology, etc.) and their friends from the FYROM diaspora have attempted to obscure the members of the social media and readers of the Press (clearly avoiding any confrontation with main stream academic journals) by sidetracking the question at hand and moving the discussion to a realm irrelevant to the question, where they can express their views that are based on half-truths, expanding on unrelated concepts and imprudent parallelisms; all this is taking place in the name of politics -- not history.
Scholars who are versed in the subject matter respond with valid academic arguments, even if these appear to the unversed as hair-splitting. It is, however, unacceptable, albeit trendy, for the politically polarized, whether to the left or to the right, to use their degree in order to advance personal political interests at the expense of historical truth.
Professors with a background in impertinent disciplines are thereby attempting to equate the genesis of the Modern Greek state (1829) with the palingenesis of the Greek nation (1821) and turn around to then also compare the above to the genesis of the "Macedonian" nation, which, in their historically unfounded opinion, is as old as the Greek nation. In their lexicon, obviously, there exists no difference between palingenesis and ethnogenesis, nor between that of nation and a country. One could arguably apply such opinions to Israel which gained independence in 1948 and India which became an independent republic in 1947.
One such comment directed to the naïve is that "nations are, by definition, products of the modern era." The argument is tantalizing, but wrong. The definition of a nation is anything but new. Modern classic definitions of a nation offered by Joseph Stalin, Ernest Renan, and Max Weber do not significantly differ from those handed down to us by the ancient Greeks. Even under those definitions, the FYROM Slavs cannot be considered a nation before 1945; this is exactly why at present Bulgaria does not recognize them as anything but Bulgarians speaking a Bulgarian dialect!
In Homer´s Iliad, II 87 and VII 115 one finds a elementary definition of an ethnos (ἒθνος) or nation. Herodotus offers not only a more precise definition of the same in I.56.2, (compare to I.57.3), in 8.144.2 he actually defines the Greek nation as "the kinship of all Greeks in blood and speech, and the shrines of gods and the sacrifices that we have in common, and the likeness of our way of life" while in I.101 he defines genos (γένος) or tribe as the subdivision of a nation (compare to Arrian II.10 where genos is erroneously translated as race – see Lexicon Liddell, Scott, Jones s.v. γένος). In Works and Days 526 - 530, Hesiod, a poet who lived in circa seventh century BC, states "for the sun … shines more sluggishly upon the whole race of all Hellenes (Greeks)," which shows that the genesis of the Greeks did not take place in our day for the first time; only the uninformed choose to believe so. Aristotle explains also the change of name from Graeki to Hellenes on the Pindus Mountain range (Meteorologika, I, 13).
Although the Greek palingenesis took place in 1821, reference to the words Ἑλλην, ἑλληνικός, or the first word of composite nouns and adjectives ἑλληνο- and Ἑλλάς were already used by Homer and continues so to this very day. Among many famous users of these words are Hesiod, Aristotle, Arrian, Strabo, Komninos, Kekavmenos, Kotounios, Photius, Ioanna Komnina, Plethon, Cabasilas, some of them during the Ottoman period. One should start with the Lexicon Liddell, Scott, Jones, then Soudas, Hesychius, Stephanos Byzantius, just for starters.
In writing about the definition of the word ethnos or nation, the Metropolitan of Naupaktos Ierotheos states:
The word Romeosynē must be placed within the context of the Orthodox Church, since we know that during the Roman Empire, the theology of the Church played an important role in this. This means that Romeosynē is not an ideology or a peculiar nationalism, because it was affected by the Church, it is supranational.
Romeosynē did not apply to Greeks only, but to all Eastern Orthodox within the Byzantine (Roman) Empire and later the Ottoman State. The Ottoman State adopted the same policy and applied the meaning to all her Orthodox subjects regardless of ethnic affiliation. In April 1828 Kapodistria (later the first governor of an independent Greece) suggested a solution for the Eastern Question by offering a Romeosynē solution to the Russian Czar Nikolas I. His plan was actually a variation of the federation proposed about a century earlier by Rhigas Pherraios. It included the Romeosynē provinces of the Balkans with a free city of Constantinople (Istanbul).
Historians argue that the Greek nation was born at Thermopylae, a battle that ended in the defeat of the Greek forces (300 Lacaedemonians, 700 Thespians, 400 Thebans and a few hundred others) because of treason; it boosted the idea for the need of a unified people, a solid defense. The spirit of a united Greece facilitated the work of Philip II of Macedon who implemented it. We have similar events in our recent past with the Serbs in the Battle of Kosovo and the Americans in the Battle of Bunker Hill. Gallipoli is another good example.
A very important distinction is necessary between the old nations and the new nations. The old nations such as Greece acquired national identity or national consciousness before the formulation of the doctrine of nationalism was introduced by the French Revolution which "produced the modern doctrine of nationalism, and spread it directly throughout Western Europe...". Greece´s continuity with the past was broken by conquests, so that her national identity and national consciousness were formed gradually and indistinctly. "It was a spontaneous process, not forced by anyone, though there were great events which in certain cases clearly accelerated it."
New nations such as the FYROM "are those in which two processes developed simultaneously: the formation of national consciousness and the creation of nationalist movements. Both processes were the work of small political elites."
In their cases the process is easier to grasp, for it took place over a much shorter period and is well documented. The leaders of national movements since the French Revolution have been by definition articulate persons, and their propaganda among their own populations designed to implant in them a national consciousness and a desire for political action, though largely conducted by word of mouth, was also put in writing at the time.
If the sole purpose of the modern state that wants to be called "Macedonia" were a matter of innocent survival, it would not pose a problem. But this is not the case. FYROM´s population has no proven historical ties to ancient Macedonia (Kiro Gligorov, Mакедонија е сé Што Имаме, Skopje, 2000, 354), and most of it, in fact, lies outside the borders of ancient Macedonia.
Political activists, regardless of credentials, see nothing wrong with the irredentist maps of their "Macedonian" friends, who allow these to permanently hang on the walls of their classrooms. They find it acceptable for their friends to carry these same maps through the streets of Australian cities depicting a "unified" Macedonia (one that includes the Greek province of Macedonia) turned into a Slavic state under their Slavic culture and language. Such maps and slogans boldly claim that "Solun [Thessaloniki] will be the Capital of Macedonia again. But Thessaloniki is the Capital of the region of Macedonia which belongs to Greece. The question is: Why are they saying "again?" When exactly Thessaloniki was historically the capital of a Slavic dominated Macedonia as they would like it to be? Some scientific historical evidence to that effect would help clarify the erroneous and obviously nonexistent source. Clearly it is all part of a euphoric recall that these "professors" and their friends would enjoy. How does one expect the Greeks to feel when they see statues of Greek statesmen erected in the FYROM, structures and streets renamed after Greek heroes, historical Greek persons converted into Slavs with maps depicting a united Macedonia by graphically misappropriating a province that belongs to Greece – all under Skopje´s rule?
Freedom of speech and non-attribution are unknown rights in the universities of the FYROM, including the Faculty of History because Macedonism is protected under the FYROM criminal Law articles #178 and 179 while academic research is limited only to government projects under government guidance according to Article 6 of the Law on the Scientific Research Activity.
Freethinking is not only against the law in the FYROM, but an unknown and unthinkable matter. The present government has closed TV stations and newspapers and sent their owners and editors to prison; in addition, anyone stating that the ancient Macedonians were Greeks ends up in mental institutions or prison. Even the Church has not escaped this. Friar Jovan, a Bishop of the Serbian Orthodox Church is in and out of prison held under bogus manufactured charges and false witnesses. These are the examples of freedom of speech in everyday FYROM. Anyone following the FYROM Press is very familiar with these cases. It is in the same spirit of those who attacked Prof. John Melville-Jones´ right to academic freedom of speech and which the FYROM diaspora also demonstrated when they filed a complaint against the Premier of South Australia, the Hon. Mike Rann (later ruled by the courts as an unfounded accusation).
What is disturbing is not that they were just concerned with Mr. Rann´s statement ("It´s important because one nation steals the history, culture of another…that´s why it´s is so important"), but their claim that his statement was a violation of their human rights. The reason behind their complaint according to Gjorgji Vlahov of the "Australian-Macedonian Human Rights Committee" was clearly expressed in the statement: "We hope that other Australian politicians will learn from this situation" This is a clear example of intimidation tactics that should raise the eyebrows of anyone concerned with freedom of speech, academic freedom, and historical truth, especially in Australia where the incident took place.
Bulgarians were inspired by the dream of Georgi Stoykov Popovich, better known as Georgi Sava Rakovski of Kotel, Bulgaria, who dedicated his life to the liberation of geographic Macedonia and Thrace. He was instrumental in the Bulgarian awakening of the mid-1800s that led to the Bulgarian Ilinden Uprising of 1903. The fact that the heroes of that Uprising as Goce Delchev and Dame Gruev were Bulgarians and not ethnic "Macedonians" is well documented .
The interesting part of the story is that the victims whom the government of the FYROM identifies as "Macedonian" were actually Greeks as the letter sent only a few days later by the Consul General of Greece in Monastiri (Bitola) to the Greek MFA proves!
The Manifesto of Krushevo in August 1903, the same one that the FYROM invokes in its Constitution´s Preamble, describes as Macedonian every inhabitant of Macedonia "regardless of faith, nationality, sex or conviction." As for the geographic section of Serbian Macedonia (since 1945 part of the FYROM) in 1917 was identified as "the middle Vardar valley below Veles and the hilly country which lies between that and the lake Ohrida." The spirit of the revolt that ended with the creation of the ephemeral Republic of Krushevo in 1903 was the primary purpose of the VMRO, which wanted to establish an independent geographic Macedonia under the influence of Bulgaria in a form of the cantonized Switzerland.
The Krushevo Manifesto or Proclamation as found in Nikola Kirov Majski´s memoirs, written in Bulgarian in 1920 and directed towards the Muslim population of Macedonia, called for all Macedonians "regardless of faith, nationality, sex or conviction," to take arms and liberate Macedonia from the Ottoman yoke securing "Macedonia for the Macedonians" as described above. Misirkov also wrote in the same wavelength. One must read a copy of Misirkov´s original Bulgarian text, not modern misinterpretations, in order to appreciate its meaning.
The first plenary Session of ASNOM (The Anti-Fascist Assembly of the National Liberation of "Macedonia") convened on August 2, 1944 in the Serbian Orthodox Monastery of St. Prohor Pčinjski, Serbia. It was the beginning of their ethnogenesis that was forcibly implemented by the Anti-Fascist Council of the People's Liberation of Yugoslavia (AVNOJ). Part of the said ethnogenesis was the codification of a common language. Since all Slavic inhabitants spoke a variety of Western Bulgarian from a dialect very close to Bulgarian (Strumica) to another which was almost Serbian (Skopje), the main task was given to linguists from Prilep and Bitola who codified the new language based on their own "in between" dialect. It was a job undertaken by Blaže Koneski, Krum Toshev, Bozho Vidoeski, Rada Ugrinova (from Skopje) and later the American Horace G. Lunt.
The newly codified FYROM Slavic language received Serbian tone; this happened 2,500 years after the establishment of the Attic Koine in Greece as the standard Greek out of 204 Greek dialects including the Macedonian. In 1957 Fanula Papazoglu, one of the leading historians of the Socialist Republic of "Macedonia" wrote her original dissertation Makedonski gradovi u rimsko doba in Serbian as the title indicates (with her Conclusion in French), because she did not speak the language that supposedly existed before 1945. In the Western Bulgarian dialect as spoken at present in the FYROM it would have read as Makedonski gradovi vo rimsko vreme.
The history of Greece is an open book and was written not by Modern Greeks as many from the FYROM and their friends would like to imagine, but is the result of a centuries long process and has been subjected to every possible scrutiny. During the Byzantine era, a number of chronicle writers recorded events that later became a part not only of Greek history, but also of all Balkan peoples including the Southern Slavs, although their descendants and their friends living in a dark fishbowl have chosen to ignore this.
One expects from academics that they evaluate source credibility before they express their opinions, especially when these are outside their discipline. It is their own credibility that lies at stake. Prof. Melville-Jones´ legitimate academic argument stating that Alexander the Great was Greek, has been attacked by irrelevant untrained academics and their friends in a manner that only the word malarkey can describe.
By Marcus A. Templar