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Giannakis (G.K.) (ed.) Ancient Macedonia. Language, History, Culture . Pp. 295, ill. Thessaloniki : Centre for the Greek Language , 2012. Paper. ISBN: 978-960-7779-52-6 .
Reviews
LANGUAGE IN ANCIENT MACEDONIA
This collection of four essays seeks to contribute to the ongoing debate surrounding the language of ancient Macedonia. At the heart of this controversy is a fundamental question of identification: was Macedonian a dialect of Greek or was it, instead, a dialect belonging to another Indo-European language, perhaps Phrygian, Thracian or Illyrian? Published by the Centre for the Greek Language in Thessaloniki, this volume stakes a claim for the former hypothesis, situating Macedonian 'within the dialect geography of ancient Greece' (p. 79). All four essays are reproduced in Greek, English, French and German, which will make the volume widely accessible. The occasional awkward phrasings that seem to stem from the process of translation, at least in the English version, rarely detract from the content.
The essays are preceded by G.'s short introduction, which briefly alludes to the modern political implications of this debate before summarising each essay in some detail. G. presents the volume's main conclusion, that ancient Macedonian is a north-western dialect of Greek with ties to Doric, but stops short of offering a synthesis of the evidence or a theoretical foundation that might articulate how and why the various disciplinary approaches represented in the essays should be brought to bear on one another and on the central argument. Since the volume is without a concluding chapter, the absence of such a framework here is acutely felt.
In the first essay, 'The History of Macedonia in the pre-Hellenistic Period', M. Zahrnt presents an overview of Macedonian history, beginning with Herodotus' legend of the kingdom's foundation. Zahrnt effectively summarises major events and figures in...