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you said:"No, because The Russians didn't set up inscriptions in the way that the Greeks did."Explain then?Also, comments on why the Epirotes spoke Northwest Greek rather than Attic or Doric?(languages of the south Greek colonizers in Epirus)

Hi Smitty, I respect your opinion though obviously I disagree. Modern interpitations of course are subjective.I agree on this point. Stating I place emphisis on poety is incorrect.Hard evidence is where I place my emphisis.Archeological evidence is the most important.Yet it is important to mention writings and accounts before the period of ATG.Hesoids account was a poem in essence so was the Illiad.Naturally no one in their right mind believes Zues was striking bolts of lighting.However Hesoids account does give us place names and beleifs about early Greek origins.Makedon is mentioned as being part of the Greek family in 720 BC.Is not Herodotus a contemporary Greek of his time?He does use legends to describe origins of Greek peoples but with identifiable geographic place names.Since Greeks at that time read the works of Herodotus ,there is no reason to beleive that these beliefs were abnormal. If hard evidence (archeological findings) linguistic data support these accounts then there is some validity.I brought up Borza yesterday because he ruled out Herodotus accounts as not concvincing yet winds up accepting the same conclusion as Herodotus via Macedonian origins =early Greek speakers in the Pindus Mountains though not on the same logic (obviously has other evidence which he does not define). ATG era
Plutarch It is AGREED on by ALL HANDS, that on the father's side, Alexander descended from Hercules by Caranus, and from Aeacus by Neoptolemus on the mother's side Does this mean for sure ATG was an ancestor of Achilles? Of course not.It does however it does state that ATG beleived this to be very true and so did the Greek world at that time.Was not Achilles a figure of the early Greek world and from the original Hellas?ATG beleived he was his direct ancestor.Even if symbolic why would he be obsessed with Achilles?Macedonian institutions were indeed Homeric and used Homeric terminology ex hetairoi. In the long run hard evidence always is the key.Testimentary accounds that support hard evidence are valid.There is to many examples of hard evidence so I will save that for later. Best Regards , Dimitri

Hi Jorge,My point was that any written documents in a language don't necessarily mean that they are in the language of the country's inhabitants.Another example would be the use of Latin in Medieval England - and that wasn't the language spoken at court (although it was used as a lingua franca across Europe).As I said in the first place, this wasn't intended to mean that the Epirotes weren't Greek (because I don't know), but that the evidence of inscriptions does not constitute proof that they were.All the bestMarcus

Hi dimitri,What do you mean by "Alexandranize"?I don't disagree with what you say, but I will repeat (again) that I am making no claim one way or the other about the Epirotes' Greekness. What I said was that the existence of inscriptions in Greek is not proof in itself.All the bestMarcus