Miltiades Elia Bolaris
January 25, 2010
δῆλον δὲ πρῶτον μὲν ὁρισαμένοις τί τὸ ἀληθὲς καὶ ψεῦδος. τὸ μὲν γὰρ λέγειν τὸ ὂν μὴ εἶναι ἢ τὸ μὴ ὂν εἶναι ψεῦδος, τὸ δὲ τὸ ὂν εἶναι καὶ τὸ μὴ ὂν μὴ εἶναι ἀληθές, ὥστε καὶ ὁ λέγων εἶναι ἢ μὴ ἀληθεύσει ἢ ψεύσεται (Αριστοτέλης, Μεταφυσικά)
This will be plain if we first define truth and falsehood. To say that what is is not, or that what is not is, is false; but to say that what is is, and what is not is not, is true; and therefore also he who says that a thing is or is not will say either what is true or what is false. (Aristotle, Metaphysics)
Once someone rejects truth and accepts falsehood, the search for explanations to cover the tracks of his falsehood becomes essential. This inevitably leads to the creation of an alternate reality that attempts to explain the unexplainable. The pseudo-Makedonist regime in Skopje has elevated fraud to the level of science, and it has correspondingly reduced science to being the contemptible paramour of their repulsive politics of hatred, ultra-nationalist bigotry and ethnic intolerance.
The Skopjan blog http://my.opera.com/ancientmacedonia/blog is one of the numerous conduits of extremism and propaganda constantly polluting the internet with outrageous pseudo-history, invented pseudo-linguistics, ethnic hatred and shameless misinformation.
That aside, many of its articles make excellent recreational reading of great amusement value. Their pretentious and serious-sounding pseudo-scientific tone is coupled with some of the most hilarious mental inventions that a twisted mind in the service of a third world regime propaganda department can fabricate. The truly tragic part of this story is that students in FYROM, eager to find the truth on their identity, reading this in their own language, have very limited, if any, means of double checking this crime perpetrated against their fertile minds, and unsuspectingly accept this fraud as universally accepted truth. This is, unfortunately, the fate of people who live in regimes that treat their own citizens as docile subjects of the all powerful political state apparatus, with contempt normally reserved for pasture animals.
MACEDONIAN THEATER
There is a method to good propaganda. Any experienced propagandist always starts with something factually correct that is well established and known to be true, in order to gain his victim´s confidence and to relax his critical thinking into accepting falsehoods and lies further down:
"Theatre-Teatar-theatron –θέατρον
Wednesday, 23. December 2009, 10:46:42
The first recorded theatrical event was a performance of the sacred plays of the myth of Osiris and Isis in 2500 BC in Egypt.This story of the god Osiris was performed annually at festivals throughout the civilization, marking the beginning of a long relationship between theatre and religion.
Stanton, Sarah; Banham, Martin (1996). "Middle East and North Africa". Cambridge paperback guide to theatre. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 241. ISBN 0-521-44654-6."
The article pompously starts with a dictionary entry from a Cambridge University publication on theater. The serious aura of Cambridge university is cunningly used by the propagandist to start off sounding as intellectually serious. This, quote, incidentally, has no relation to what is in store for us later on, it is just a relaxing pill.
"..............
How the culture began in Macedonia?
From Neolithic to....Macedon and Pierus had daughters-MUSES....
Dionysus celebrated ....and was celebrated...Orpheus....Ksantika-Xanthicus"
The article starts, the author has committed his own words on ink and now we enter the realm of delirium. His sentences lack cohesion: an era (Neolithic) is chronologically contrasted to a land (Macedon) and Greek mythology is thrown in for good measure. Pierus/Πίερος (Mythological eponymous hero of Pieria/Πιερία=wealthy land) with his daughters the Muses/Μούσες (the words Music/Μουσική and Museum/Μουσείον come from their name) are mixed in with the Greek God of wine Dionysus/Διόνυσος. The Thracian God of music Orpheus/Ορφεύς is mentioned being celebrated along with the Macedonian lunar month (corresponding to March) Xanthicos/Ξανθικός (also known as Ξανδικός/Xandikos). Xanthicos is coupled with the word Ksantika which is supposed to explain it, somehow, completing this bizarrely incomprehensible sentence.
Time for truth again, and here once again the propagandist simply copies an entry ontheater" from "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology". Very impressive reference, indeed!
"Etymology:
1.theatre
U.S. theater in antiquity, open-air structure for plays and spectacles XIV; playhouse XVI. — OF. t(h)eatre (mod. théâtre) or L. theātrum — Gr. théātron ´place for viewing´, f. theâsthai behold.
So theatrical XVI; sb. pl. XVII. f. late L. theātricus — Gr. theātrikós.
2.theater
late 14c., "open air place in ancient times for viewing spectacles," from O.Fr. theatre (12c.), from L. theatrum, from Gk. theatron "theater," lit. "place for viewing," from theasthai "to behold" (cf. thea "a view," theates "spectator") + -tron, suffix denoting place.
3.Polykleitos (Circa 350 B.C.)
A renowned sculptor, Polykleitos the Younger was architect of the Tholos at Epidauros. Started around 365 B. C., the Tholos exhibited elaborate detailing...
Notes:"
As I understood it, the Oxford dictionary refers the English word for theater to the Latin word which is in turn refered to the original Greek word Theatron/Θέατρον.
Before we go any further, let us stop here for a moment: just below the dictionary entry, the Skopjan propagandist puts his own "notes", without a break, in a way that the unsuspecting reader would think they are simply a continuation of the Oxford dictionary. Then he starts his attack:
"notes:
Epidauros theatre----- Greeks (around 365 B. C) in Epidauros
ok...let see...in Greek language
behold=βλέπω, αντικρύζω, παρατηρώ=blepo, antikryzo, paratiro
where is theâsthai?"
I suppose we are now in trouble! True, the Oxford dictionary tells us that the word theater derives its etymology from Latin Theatrum which in turn takes it from the Greek Theatron/Θέατρον, a place of viewing, from theasthai/θέασθαι that means to behold. But "Wait!" cries the cunning propagandist: there is no word theastai/θέασθαι in the Greek language! Where did Oxford dictionary find it and came up with it? There is only: "βλέπω, αντικρύζω, παρατηρώ=blepo, antikryzo, paratiro! where is theâsthai?"
Amazing! The Oxford dictionary has been caught with its pants down, so to speak, urgent assistance is needed to be sent from Skopje to revise it! The cunning propagandist is obviously using some pocket size modern Greek dictionary and is at a loss for not finding an ancient Greek word in it, in its original format…horror of horrors…I looked up some Latin word in an Italian dictionary and I could not find it! Moreover, I looked up a Sanskrit word in a modern Hindi dictionary and it was not there! Now, finally, I can completely understand. For someone that speaks a language that was established and codified as the "Makedonski language"/"Mакедонски јазик" in 1944, using the Bulgarian dialect spoken in Pelagonia, with a lot of lexical borrowings from Serbian, the notion of a historical language with thousands of years of history and development behind it sounds incomprehensible. Unfortunately for him, Greek is one of these languages, but it is not the only one. There are several historical languages like it, Latin, Sanskrit, Chinese, Hebrew join Greek in this category. All of them survive as written and spoken languages in some form or another whether as intact languages (Hebrew, Chinese and Greek) or in dialectical form as new languages (Latin survives as Italian, French, Romanian, Portuguese, Catalan, etc, Sanskrit survives as modern Hindi, Urdu, and other Indian subcontinent languages, and both Greek and Chinese exist in multiple spoken but not written dialects).
I open the G. Babiniotes Lexico tes Neas Ellenikes Glossas/Λεξικό της Νέας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, Lexicon of the Modern Greek language, a dictionary which, with over 150,000 lemmata only partially covers the modern Greek language, and it contains no ancient Greek words, unless currently used. The Words found in the Greek language in all its eras, approximates one million lemmata. By comparison, the Oxford English Dictionary contains 170,000 words, with about 50,000 obsolete words in the English language. On page 742 we read (I consciously did not include words that are not related, like lemmata related to the word Theos/Θεός, God, which appear among them but are etymologically unrelated):
Θέα/thea
Θεαθήναι/theathenai
Θέαμα/theama
Θεαματικός/theamaticos
Θεαματικότητα/theamatikoteta
Θέαση/theasi
Θεατής/theates
Θεατός/theatos
Θεατράνθρωπος/theatranthropos
Θεατρίζομαι/theatrizomai
Θεατρικογράφος/theatricographos
Θεατρικὀς/theatricos
Θεατρικότητα /theatricoteta
Θεατρίνα/theatrina
Θεατρινισμός/theatrinismos
Θεατρίνος/theatrinos
We now move to page 743 and we continue:
Θεατρισμός/theatrismos
Θέατρο/theatro
Θεατρολογία/theatrologia
Θεατρομανής/theatromanes
Θεατρόφιλος/theatrophilos
Θεατροφιλικός/theatrophilicos
Θεατρώνης/theatronis
The word theasthai/θέασθαι is indeed missing, simply because in modern Greek it does not exist in that exact grammatical format, as an aparemphaton, "of the infinitive mood" as it appears in ancient Greek. While theasthai/θέασθαι is not to be found, the word from which theasthai is derived, the original word of both theasthai and theatron, is still widely used in modern Greek: the word Θέα/thea=view, especially from above, as from a mountaintop, or a high building. Many toponyms, villages and hotels in Greece are named Kalithea/Καλιθέα or Kallithea/Καλλιθέα (written with either one l/λ or two ll/λλ) meaning "Beautiful View", or as the Italians would say Bella Vista, or the French Bellevue.
The Skopjan propagandist remains unconvinced:
"Question:
Indeed the word behold explains the notion of word theâsthai?"
The answer will be obvious once I translate the first words found in the aforementioned dictionary:
Θέα/thea=view, especially from above, as from a mountaintop, or a high building
Θεαθήναι/theathenai=being seen
Θέαμα/theama=spectacle, cinema or television program
Θεαματικός/theamaticos=spectacular
Θεαματικότητα/theamatikoteta=spectacularity, popularity of a television program or a movie in cinema
Θέαση/theasi=viewing
Θεατής/theates=viewer
Θεατός/theatos=visible, opposite Αθέατος/atheatos: invisible
Now he challenges us again, by being absolutely certain in his pseudo-scientific credentials:
"Root of this word theâsthai does not exist in the so-called IE languages."
He is again caught lying through his teeth, and we are certain that he is lying, not simply making a mistake because if someone is not sure, they can at least search for it. When you search, you eventually find things. If, on the other hand, all you want to do is fabricate a BIG LIE, then the truth is against you, you need to cover your tracks, like a dog covers his excrement: this is why Skopjan propagandists are constantly becoming the laughing stock of Greeks who mistake them for idiots.
Far from being idiots, they do the best they can with an insurmountable task at hand: they try to prove that a mouse is an elephant and that a bull is a rabbit, or something to that effect. They know they are lying…and in my experience with several of them, once you catch them fabricating facts and prove them wrong, they either throw insults at you (the internet makes it easy for someone to be rude) and disappear, or they casually move on to the next BIG LIE, as if nothing happend.
Despite his pretentious certainty that "Root of this word theâsthai does not exist in the so-called IE languages." the truth is that indeed it does: theasthai comes from theasis, and theasis comes from thea. Θέα/thea=view is derived from *θήFη < θάFα < ΙΕ *dhau, meaning "to see", "to look", see also the word θαύμα/thauma= miracle and of course: thea-tron/θέα-τρον, theater, theates/θεατής=viewer and theaomai/θεάομαι=I am viewing.
G. Babiniotes also gives us an alternate derivation from: IE *dhmsva- < *dhem-bh- (see the word thambos/θάμβος=bright light).
Herebelow starts the real circus. Here we need to sit down. The thoughtful propagandist understands our situation and kindly obliges, as we shall see:
"Answer:?
Let see...
Macedonian
théātron=tron=трон=king chair"
Thank lord Zeus, now we can sit down. A throne has indeed been provided for us. Now we can bear whatever comes our way:
"Tholos=stol;stolovi;stolot etc..=стол=chair;stool;seat
Greeks
chair=καρέκλα=karekla
stool=σκαμνί, έδρανο, σκαμπό=skamni, edrano, skampo
seat=κάθισμα, έδρα, καθίζω=kathisma, edra, kathizo
theâsthai
1.sthai=stoi-стои=stand;stay up
2.sthai=stoi (na mesto)-стои (на место)=sit
3.sthai=astal-астал-stol=table (eat),chair
4.sthai=staja-odaja-стаја=chamber;room
etc....
theâsthai=
the=the end =d_end)macedonian)=
asthai=_sta(v)i;_stoi
theâsthai=de_stavi;de_stoi=let put(sit);let stay (sit)"
If I were a Roman I would have exclaimed in desperation: Reductio ad absurdum ad maiorem Scupi gloriam, but I am not, so I will simply say: Reduction to absurdity for the greater glory of Skopje!
What was that all about?
Tholos/θόλος is not a stool or a Slavonic table (from Proto-Slavic *stolъ=table), Tholos/θόλος is "covered roof, a cupola, a dome., a rounded vaulted chamber". Anybody that has been to Epidauros or has seen its Tholos in a reconstructed image will immediately recognize the round building with the conical roof. Tholos is also linguistically related to the word Thalamos/Θάλαμος which means a room in the inner part of the house, but also an underground chamber, a cove, a cavern. These are both words that appear in homer but are still used in modern Greek. An interesting derivative word in Modern Greek is Thalami/θαλάμι which means the cavernous home of an octopus, and also a trap use to catch an octopus, usually in the shape of a rounded pot which the octopus adopts as a home.
Alas, our mental torture has no quick end in sight:
"next....
"Greek Theater" in Epidaurus is unbelievable stupidity...from some modern scholars...Residents of the city states were swept by Macedonians-Philip II of Macedon
Epidarium was built by Macedonians, built at a very strategic place, where Philip 2 intended to shift the Macedonian army against the Persian fleet in the Aegean.
Therefore, around the theater were built library, stadium, camp, hospital, rotunda - old shrine dedicated to Asklepios....altar on the stage of the theater where was bust of Dionysus."
So now that we learn that it was Philippos/Φίλιππος the father of Alexander the Great who built Epidaurus, let us see what some impartial entity like UNESCO has on its website describing the monuments of Epidaurus and its famous theater, a Unesco dedicated monument. It is written for all of humanity to read, in English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish:
"In a small valley in the Peloponnesus, the shrine of Asklepios, the god of medicine, developed out of a much earlier cult of Apollo (Maleatas), during the 6th century BC at the latest, as the official cult of the city state of Epidaurus. Its principal monuments, particularly the temple of Asklepios, the Tholos and the Theatre - considered one of the purest masterpieces of Greek architecture – date from the 4th century. The vast site, with its temples and hospital buildings devoted to its healing gods, provides valuable insight into the healing cults of Greek and Roman times."
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/491
In other words, Epidaurus with its Ascleipeion and its Tholos was not built by Philip II, the Greek King of Macedonia in the 4th century BC, but at least two centuries earlier, on a shrine that was probably much earlier than that. Greek history is not our Skopjan propagandist´s forte, it seems. A couple centuries here or there, makes no difference. This is small change when compared to the adoption of Philippos II/Φίλιππος Β´ and Alexandros the Great/Αλέξανδρος ο Μέγας, the greatest of all Macedonian kings by the modern descendants of the Draguvites/Dragovici/Драговити, Sagudates/Sagudaci/Сагудати, Bersites/Brsjaci/Берзити and the other Slavic tribes that entered the Balkans a full thousand years AFTER these Greek kings of Macedonia had passed into Hades.
Now exposed, our history fabricator runs unbridled:
"There is no any facts about hellenisation (word from 19 cent....german nonsens) of Macedonian culture"
Yes, indeed, for our friends from Skopje 19th century those German intellectuals were nonsensical vagabonds of some sort...what do they have to show to the world? Who was
Goethe? Schelling? Hegel? Marx? Nietzsche? Bismarck? Who was the Hellenist historian Johann Gustav Droysen? Very nonsensical characters indeed, these Germans! Calling the era after Alexander Hellenistic as Droysen did, was indeed too much!...just because a Hellenic language, Attic Greek was spoken and promoted by Alexander the Great and his Macedonians and was thereafter spoken in the Macedonian Hellenistic kingdoms? Nonsensical Germans, indeed! How could it have escaped them the rumor that Alexandros was in fact a Bulgarian-speaking Skopjan komitadzi called Aleksandar Veliki? All they have to do is read the recently published "Makedonskata Enciklopedija" in Skopje and they will learn all they need to learn about that famous Aleksandar, the proto-Slav kingpin whose humongous statue has already arrived from Florence and is being prepared for installation in Skopje´s central square. " if it is known that in Athens in 5th century BC there was a wooden theater with wooden benches that once collapsed.
Athenians...they "known and applied" versus gorgeously marble theaters that were built from Macedonians, everywhere to where Macedonians arrived."
If anyone was wondering what is that makes great theater, the answer is obvious: marble! This is what makes great theater! What audacity could the Athenians have to boast of creating Drama and Comedy, with such trivial theatranthropoi as Aescylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, holding their theatrical events in such embarrassingly primitive wooden benches (one of which, in fact once collapsed, we are told!)! What shame! Soon enough someone will claim that Shakespeare´s Globe theater was some wooden structure! For heaven´s sake…who would call that a theater worthy of the name? Theater, let us remember, by Skopjan definition means:
"Macedonian
théātron=tron=трон=king chair"
That is correct…Theatron means chairs…in fact a royal chair, a throne! But if TRON is a throne, a king´s chair, then why did they call it THEA-Tron? Whatever happened to Thea-? And what does "Thea-" mean? In the beginning of this article we were given the words:
"Theatre-Teatar-theatron –θέατρον
Let me follow this, because I am already getting confused:
Theatre is the English word for theater. Sofar so good.
Teatar is the Serbian, Croatian and Slavomacedonian word for theater.
Theatron –θέατρον is the Greek word for theater.
Let us follow this again: teaTAR…theaTRON. Teatar/Tеатар. We know that Teatar is theater in Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian etc, but we are asked to believe it is also the ancient Macedonian word for it. Teatar ends in –TAR and theatron θέατρον, the Greek word ends in TRON. The word-magician is telling us that this is all derived from Tron the Makedonski Throne. Now if Tron is the Makedonski word for Throne and Theatron is derived from Throne, then how come the Makedonski word for Theater is not ending in TRON but only the Greek one does: teaTAR…theaTRON. Something is fishy here, obviously. To make things worse we find out that tron is throne in Polish, Hungarian, Scottish Gaelic, Danish, and several other European languages, most of which are languages that I would say have never had any contact with Skopje, but all of them share one common thread: they do not have the Θ sound, not for the Th spelling anyway. It is also obvious that all these languages borrowed tron, the throne from Latin. In the Latin Dictionary of Lewis & Short, Oxford University Press, 1993, Theatrum i, n., =θέατρον, a playhouse, theater, is referring us to the original Greek.
Someone would wish that the anonymous author would have enlighten our ignorance by explaining how is theatron/θέατρον derived from tron/трон but then becomes teatar/Театар/Театър once again. And why does Theatron/θέατρον, with the –on ending ends in –tron, but in Slavomacedonian ends in –tar? There are many words in Greek that end in –tron: Lytron/Λύτρον, Phobetron/Φόβητρον, Electron/Ηλεκτρον, etc. The ending –tron/-τρον is actually very typical for many Greek words but non-existing as a Slavonic ending, except for Greek loan words.
The linguistic derivation still begs for explanation:
Tron/трон
Theatron/θέατρον/Театрон (note the absence of a letter to express the Greek Th/Θ sound in all Slavonic languages, since this sound is not to be found in Slavic languages. It is always replaced, depending on the language by either T or F)
Teatar/Театар
Many linguists would commit suicide being at the loss in trying to solve this puzzle.
Theater or in Greek Theatron, starts from the Th/Θ sound, found in Greek as well as in English. It is very common sound in Greek so much so that a letter has been committed to express it. There is no Slavic word that contains the Greek Th/Θ sound. There is no such word, in ANY Slavic language: simply none! Theodore Dostoyevsky is pronounced Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in Russian and Theodore Zhivkov, the Bulgarian leader was Todor Zhivkov. Despite pretending to be descendents of the ancient Macedonians, our Slavonic friends north of Greece are unable to pronounce the Macedonian name of Alexander the Great´s sister, now also the name of Greece´s second largest city: Thessaloniki/Θεσσαλονίκη: her Macedonian name is a phonetic impossibility for the Slav-"Makedonskis" who shortened her name to the more manageable Solun/Солун. Irredentist cries of Solun is the capital of Makedonija, should be Thessaloniki/Θεσσαλονίκη so much, first find a Th/θ sound in your language, that corresponds to her true Macedonian name, and you can have her!
Thirdly, Tron, even spelled in Cyrillic characters as трон/tron is still a Greek word with another impossible (for a Slavic speaking Makedonski) to pronounce Th/θ sound: Thronos/θρόνος, from which the English word for Throne is derived. Its Indo-European root lemma is: dher-2 meaning to hold firmly, to support. This root gives us words like farm, firm, affirm, the Latin firmus, strong, suffixed with zero-grade form *dhr-ono-, throne from Greek thronos, seat, throne("support"). The same roots gives us the Sanskrit Dharma, statute and dharana, holding firm, and the Persian name Darius, meaning holding firm the good, from ancient Persian daraya, to hold firm, to uphold.
"First Macedonian theater in Athens dedicated to Dionysus, built in 330...was build from the occupation -Macedonian Army....This Theater brings all the features of the Macedonian buildings."
By now we have lost any hope that our pseudo-makedonski propagandist would tell us history the way it is, so we check the dates and sure enough we catch him fabricating long tales again:
"The third theatre at Athens was built around 330 B.C. under Lycurgus. The Lycurgan theatre is the first permanent (that is, stone) theatre at Athens, and Lycurgus´ building project produced much of the Athenian theatre that one sees today."
Lycourgos/Λυκούργος was the Athenian manager of the public revenue office, under whom the rebuilding of the theater of Dionysos was executed. The main political figure of that era, let us remember was Demosthenes/Δημοσθένης son of Demosthenes. The theater was built 330BC, and Demosthenes was in power from 342 BC to 324BC. There were no Macedonians during this time in Athens, they came later on, after the theater was rebuilt. Is this important? Not really, but it is always good to catch a pseudo-makenonist lying shamelessly and exposing his historical fabrications even in smaller details that truly make no difference to his case…if he had one.
"next..dramatists and great tragedians....Euripides
The theater of Dion hosted the first performance of Euripides world-famous tragedy Bacchae, which he wrote at Pella of Macedonia. Euripides died and was buried in Macedonia.
etc.....
Therefore it is macedonization of culture and not hellenisation."
We know that the Macedonian king Archelaos/Αρχέλαος (derived from: archo/άρχω,=to lead + Laos/ λαός= the people in arms) invited the Athenian dramatist Euripides/Ευριπίδης to Macedonia/Μακεδονία. The Macedonian kingdom was growing and Archelaos had just built his new capital, Pella. The spoken Macedonian dialect, a hitherto unwritten form of Greek, related to Aeolian dialect and intelligible to Northwest Greek dialect speakers (Aetolians, Epirotans, etc), was deemed insufficient for the running of the fast growing kingdom. Attic Greek, the dialect of philosophy (the Athenians Plato/Πλάτων and the Macedonian Aristotle/Αριστοτέλης) and Drama (the Athenians dramatists mentioned earlier), the Greek dialect most advanced and respected and most studied by all educated Greeks throughout the Hellenic world, was thus introduced as the official language of Macedonia. Archelaos himself invited several poets, philosophers, men of the letters and wise men (Socrates, Plato´s teacher reputedly refused the invitation) to his palace and it is correct that Euripides wrote and played Bacchae/Βάκχαι in Macedonia. He also wrote the drama Archaelaos/Αρχέλαος, named after the king, a play now lost. While Archaelaos/Αρχέλαος the drama has been lost, Bacchae/Βάκχαι survived antiquity and is available for all to read in its original beautiful Attic Greek. Knowing that the ancients never made any translations of literary texts (most had to wait until the Renaissance to be translated into Latin and much later into the main European languages), and understanding that drama is not as universal an art as say, painting or music…you either understand every nuance of the spoken text or miss the whole plot. We know that Euripides performed Archaelaos/Αρχέλαος and Bacchae/Βάκχαι in Macedonia and we know that both plays were performed in Attic Greek in the open theater of Dion/Δίον, the holy Macedonian city of Zeus/Ζεύς-Dios/Διός.
My question, therefore, to the paid propagandist from Skopje who wrote this pitiful pseudo-linguistic and history-falsifying paper is as follows:
Were the Macedonians just watching like some ignorant barbarians unable to comprehend the Greek poetry? Were the people of Dion, Aegai (in whose theater Philip himself was assassinated), Heracleia Lyncistis, Sirris, Amphipolis, Philippoi, Stoboi, Thassos, etc simply flush with money and they were building marble theaters on a whim, just to hear some actors mumble about in a foreign incomprehensible tongue? Or were they all speaking and comprehending Greek just fine, and going to a Greek theater/θέατρον and to a Greek Gymnasion/Γυμνάσιον a normal part of their every day existence as all other Greeks?
The answer to this question, which also gives an answer to what language was spoken during the time these theaters were built, It can be found written on the marble steps of Heracleia Lyncystis/Ηράκλεια Λυγκιστίς, a few minutes outside of Monastir/ Μοναστήρι/ Bitola/ Битола, and on the steps of the Greek theater of Stoboi/Στόβοι by Gradsko/Градско, south of Veles/Велес. These are thirty centimeter (30cm) tall inscribed letters and the language, as I recall them, was unmistakably not Bulgarian nor any proto-slavic dialect.
Since our friends from Skopje, Macedonians themselves as they claim, reputedly of the direct blood and linguistic line of the ancient Makednoi, can easily read the language of the ancient Macedonians, I will repeat what was written, to the best of my recollection, on these theater steps, without any need to translate them:
ΑΡΤΕΜΙΣΙΑΣ ΦΥΛΗ . ΑΣΚΛΗΠΙΑΣ ΦΥΛΗ . ΗΡΑΚΛΕΙΑΣ ΦΥΛΗ . ΔΙΟΝΥΣΙΑΣ ΦΥΛΗ
Finally, a note on Euripides the Athenian dramatist, the third of the triad of Attic drama giants.
"Euripides died and was buried in Macedonia.
etc.....
Therefore it is macedonization of culture and not hellenisation."
The genius of this argument is obvious. Any Arab can now claim that Alexander the Great died in Babylon which now lies in Iraq and was buried in Egypt. Alexander the Great, therefore, a cunning Arab nationalist could argue, was an Arab Haliph (not a proto-Slavic Czar, as Skopje pseudo-Makedonists claim him to be) and we should not be speaking of Hellenization of the East but Arabization of the East, a thousand years before the Arabs entered Egypt or Mesopotamia/Iraq.
The argument would be as laughable as the claim that Alexander was a Slav, a thousand years before the South Slavs invaded the Balkans. To their credit, the Arabs revere Alexander the Great for who he was, Iskander /الإسكندر الأكبر , the great king of the Greek-speaking/ باليونانية Macedonians. When a traveler is entering Alexandria of Egypt, a large bilingual sign reading ALEXANDRIA greets him: http://api.ning.com/files/VUrNRP7mCPTNOJ8238r6W5yAcogGhE81em8KK6tpFHyAM17NYwBccraFZrUAvtdJVaLDfPhSzOGyYaFsUa4kc77iGTLD8FJm/alexandria.jpg : Greek and Arabic. The Arabs, of course, are serious people with great history of their own and centuries-old culture to show to the world. They are not plagued by the identity confusion and nightmarish insecurities tormenting some (but not all, by any means) of the Slavomacedonians: they do not need to pretend to be something they are not. Once a similar realization hits home at Skopje, and they come to grips with their own TRUE Slavic identity, they will suddenly realize that they do not need thirty meter tall bronze statues of Alexander the Great, a Greek king of the past, unrelated to them, to bolster a fake "Macedonian" identity. Then the mending of the trauma in their national psyche, and their relations with their own neighbors, including their Greek friends and partners to the south, will be as easy as 1,2,3.
Finally, here are the references of the anonymous propagandist:
"references:
Greeks (around 365 B. C) in Epidauros
1.The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology | 1996 | T. F. HOAD | © The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology 1996, originally published by Oxford University Press 1996.
2.Douglas Harper
3.Polykleitos
4.greek-english lexicon
5.Macedonian language...if you do not believe go to Idividi[sic]
continue..."
NOTES AND REFERENCES:
By "Skopjan" we define not the inhabitants of the city of Skopje, nor the people of the former Yugoslav Republic of Makedonija, but the irredentist, ethnic-engineering and history-falsifying policies emanating from the ultranationalist regime of Skopje and the propagandists in their (usually paid) service.
WHAT´S THE POINT?
The first thing that someone with even elementary knowledge of Greek would ask, after reading this article would be: "Why on earth did you spend so much time writing it? What is the point of answering every lunacy coming out of Skopje?". This is a valid question, and many people asked me already the same question for similar articles. Truly, why should anyone spend ink and time defending the self-evident truth? Honestly, the more valid question, which they should be asking, should be not why I am writing these rebuttals, but WHY ARE THE SKOPJANS WRITING THEIR OUTLANDISH BOGUS THEORIES, to begin with! And why is Mr. George Soros spending his billions promoting the fake and fraudulent pseudo-makedonism:
http://www.soros.org.mk/archive/index.htm
There is a huge, well-oiled and paid organized propaganda industry supporting and bolstering pseudo-makedonism, the vast extent of which anyone can recognize in an quick instant by doing an internet search for anything "Macedonian", anywhere in the internet, where someone would be looking up something or anything about Macedonia, Macedonian History, Macedonian Culture, Macedonian language, Alexander the Great, Philip II, etc, etc. Everywhere you look up the internet is polluted by a virtual tsunami of outrageously scatological in quality products of hideous, truth-twisting propaganda which passes itself as casually "impartial" information. The (admittedly idiotic) "teatar from tron" article at hand about the supposed "Macedonian Theater" is but a drop in the ocean, just one of thousands out there. I myself admit feeling like an idiot many times, trying to defend the self evident against vicious by the BIG LIE perpetrators, spending untold hours doing the research to answer what is clear and obvious, but still, I believe that truth needs to document itself against falsehood. I find the strength to continue exposing deception and fake arguments in the same way that a lawyer needs to expose defamation to defend someone whose name has been tarnished has been hideous slanders and libel. Greeks or Greek-speaking persons can smell such pseudo-linguistic and pseudo-historian rotten fish from a mile, because they know Greek, and most of them know Greek history too. For them it is easy to spot the eye-popping, gutter-quality fraudulent fallacies that are being mass-produced daily and in untold qualities in Skopje. The obvious reason, for me is that the pseudo-Makedonists are not here to convince the Greeks. They know better than that and anyway, very few people, comparatively, speak Greek in this world anyway. The BIG LIE propaganda from Skopje is directed towards the wide world audience, the unsuspecting millions who have little or no knowledge of the bloody details of the Macedonian Issue, and most have little or no knowledge of ancient, medieval or modern European history and Balkan history in particular. To them I ask that if they want to be on the side of history and impartiality, then they should at least look up and read the letter that the 200 Classical Scholars from around the world sent to the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama:
http://macedonia-evidence.org/obama-letter.html
ARE THEY ALL LIKE THAT?
Trying to find out if the opinions held by the ultra-nationalist VMRO-DPNE crackpots and disseminated through the internet reflect a more general view in FYROM, I was pleasantly surprise to find out that there are serious people indeed, probably the silent majority, who do not espouse this kind of unfounded theories. A quick check on the Slavomaceedonian Wikipedia confirmed my best hopes that there is future for reason to prevail at the end: Театарот во Античка Грција (Од Википедија)
http://mk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%B5%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%82_%D0%B2%D0%BE_%D0%90%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D0%93%D1%80%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0
a. Latin Dictionary of Lewis & Short, Oxford University Press, 1993
b. Lexico tes Neas Ellenikes Glossas, G. Babiniotes /Λεξικό της Νέας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, Γ. Μπαμπινιώτης , Athens 2002
c. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, Calvert Watkins, Boston, 2000
d. A New Greek and English Lexicon, James Donnegan, Boston, 1835
e. Liddell & Scott, Oxford University Press, 1952
f. Epidaurus and Epidaurus Theater: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/491 Unesco website
g. Theatre of Dionysus at Athens: http://traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/Archaeopaedia/184 , Stanford University website.
h. http://www.soros.org.mk/archive/index.htm
i. The original "Macedonian theater" article can be found on this website:
http://my.opera.com/ancientmacedonia/blog/2009/12/23/macedonian-theatreteatar-theatron
j. Macedonian Evidence, Letter to Obama, http://macedonia-evidence.org/obama-letter.html
k. Театарот во Античка Грција (Од Википедија), http://mk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%B5%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%82_%D0%B2%D0%BE_%D0%90%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D0%93%D1%80%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0
This will be plain if we first define truth and falsehood. To say that what is is not, or that what is not is, is false; but to say that what is is, and what is not is not, is true; and therefore also he who says that a thing is or is not will say either what is true or what is false. (Aristotle, Metaphysics)
Once someone rejects truth and accepts falsehood, the search for explanations to cover the tracks of his falsehood becomes essential. This inevitably leads to the creation of an alternate reality that attempts to explain the unexplainable. The pseudo-Makedonist regime in Skopje has elevated fraud to the level of science, and it has correspondingly reduced science to being the contemptible paramour of their repulsive politics of hatred, ultra-nationalist bigotry and ethnic intolerance.
The Skopjan blog http://my.opera.com/ancientmacedonia/blog is one of the numerous conduits of extremism and propaganda constantly polluting the internet with outrageous pseudo-history, invented pseudo-linguistics, ethnic hatred and shameless misinformation.
That aside, many of its articles make excellent recreational reading of great amusement value. Their pretentious and serious-sounding pseudo-scientific tone is coupled with some of the most hilarious mental inventions that a twisted mind in the service of a third world regime propaganda department can fabricate. The truly tragic part of this story is that students in FYROM, eager to find the truth on their identity, reading this in their own language, have very limited, if any, means of double checking this crime perpetrated against their fertile minds, and unsuspectingly accept this fraud as universally accepted truth. This is, unfortunately, the fate of people who live in regimes that treat their own citizens as docile subjects of the all powerful political state apparatus, with contempt normally reserved for pasture animals.
MACEDONIAN THEATER
There is a method to good propaganda. Any experienced propagandist always starts with something factually correct that is well established and known to be true, in order to gain his victim´s confidence and to relax his critical thinking into accepting falsehoods and lies further down:
"Theatre-Teatar-theatron –θέατρον
Wednesday, 23. December 2009, 10:46:42
The first recorded theatrical event was a performance of the sacred plays of the myth of Osiris and Isis in 2500 BC in Egypt.This story of the god Osiris was performed annually at festivals throughout the civilization, marking the beginning of a long relationship between theatre and religion.
Stanton, Sarah; Banham, Martin (1996). "Middle East and North Africa". Cambridge paperback guide to theatre. Cambridge, England: Cambridge University Press. p. 241. ISBN 0-521-44654-6."
The article pompously starts with a dictionary entry from a Cambridge University publication on theater. The serious aura of Cambridge university is cunningly used by the propagandist to start off sounding as intellectually serious. This, quote, incidentally, has no relation to what is in store for us later on, it is just a relaxing pill.
"..............
How the culture began in Macedonia?
From Neolithic to....Macedon and Pierus had daughters-MUSES....
Dionysus celebrated ....and was celebrated...Orpheus....Ksantika-Xanthicus"
The article starts, the author has committed his own words on ink and now we enter the realm of delirium. His sentences lack cohesion: an era (Neolithic) is chronologically contrasted to a land (Macedon) and Greek mythology is thrown in for good measure. Pierus/Πίερος (Mythological eponymous hero of Pieria/Πιερία=wealthy land) with his daughters the Muses/Μούσες (the words Music/Μουσική and Museum/Μουσείον come from their name) are mixed in with the Greek God of wine Dionysus/Διόνυσος. The Thracian God of music Orpheus/Ορφεύς is mentioned being celebrated along with the Macedonian lunar month (corresponding to March) Xanthicos/Ξανθικός (also known as Ξανδικός/Xandikos). Xanthicos is coupled with the word Ksantika which is supposed to explain it, somehow, completing this bizarrely incomprehensible sentence.
Time for truth again, and here once again the propagandist simply copies an entry ontheater" from "The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology". Very impressive reference, indeed!
"Etymology:
1.theatre
U.S. theater in antiquity, open-air structure for plays and spectacles XIV; playhouse XVI. — OF. t(h)eatre (mod. théâtre) or L. theātrum — Gr. théātron ´place for viewing´, f. theâsthai behold.
So theatrical XVI; sb. pl. XVII. f. late L. theātricus — Gr. theātrikós.
2.theater
late 14c., "open air place in ancient times for viewing spectacles," from O.Fr. theatre (12c.), from L. theatrum, from Gk. theatron "theater," lit. "place for viewing," from theasthai "to behold" (cf. thea "a view," theates "spectator") + -tron, suffix denoting place.
3.Polykleitos (Circa 350 B.C.)
A renowned sculptor, Polykleitos the Younger was architect of the Tholos at Epidauros. Started around 365 B. C., the Tholos exhibited elaborate detailing...
Notes:"
As I understood it, the Oxford dictionary refers the English word for theater to the Latin word which is in turn refered to the original Greek word Theatron/Θέατρον.
Before we go any further, let us stop here for a moment: just below the dictionary entry, the Skopjan propagandist puts his own "notes", without a break, in a way that the unsuspecting reader would think they are simply a continuation of the Oxford dictionary. Then he starts his attack:
"notes:
Epidauros theatre----- Greeks (around 365 B. C) in Epidauros
ok...let see...in Greek language
behold=βλέπω, αντικρύζω, παρατηρώ=blepo, antikryzo, paratiro
where is theâsthai?"
I suppose we are now in trouble! True, the Oxford dictionary tells us that the word theater derives its etymology from Latin Theatrum which in turn takes it from the Greek Theatron/Θέατρον, a place of viewing, from theasthai/θέασθαι that means to behold. But "Wait!" cries the cunning propagandist: there is no word theastai/θέασθαι in the Greek language! Where did Oxford dictionary find it and came up with it? There is only: "βλέπω, αντικρύζω, παρατηρώ=blepo, antikryzo, paratiro! where is theâsthai?"
Amazing! The Oxford dictionary has been caught with its pants down, so to speak, urgent assistance is needed to be sent from Skopje to revise it! The cunning propagandist is obviously using some pocket size modern Greek dictionary and is at a loss for not finding an ancient Greek word in it, in its original format…horror of horrors…I looked up some Latin word in an Italian dictionary and I could not find it! Moreover, I looked up a Sanskrit word in a modern Hindi dictionary and it was not there! Now, finally, I can completely understand. For someone that speaks a language that was established and codified as the "Makedonski language"/"Mакедонски јазик" in 1944, using the Bulgarian dialect spoken in Pelagonia, with a lot of lexical borrowings from Serbian, the notion of a historical language with thousands of years of history and development behind it sounds incomprehensible. Unfortunately for him, Greek is one of these languages, but it is not the only one. There are several historical languages like it, Latin, Sanskrit, Chinese, Hebrew join Greek in this category. All of them survive as written and spoken languages in some form or another whether as intact languages (Hebrew, Chinese and Greek) or in dialectical form as new languages (Latin survives as Italian, French, Romanian, Portuguese, Catalan, etc, Sanskrit survives as modern Hindi, Urdu, and other Indian subcontinent languages, and both Greek and Chinese exist in multiple spoken but not written dialects).
I open the G. Babiniotes Lexico tes Neas Ellenikes Glossas/Λεξικό της Νέας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, Lexicon of the Modern Greek language, a dictionary which, with over 150,000 lemmata only partially covers the modern Greek language, and it contains no ancient Greek words, unless currently used. The Words found in the Greek language in all its eras, approximates one million lemmata. By comparison, the Oxford English Dictionary contains 170,000 words, with about 50,000 obsolete words in the English language. On page 742 we read (I consciously did not include words that are not related, like lemmata related to the word Theos/Θεός, God, which appear among them but are etymologically unrelated):
Θέα/thea
Θεαθήναι/theathenai
Θέαμα/theama
Θεαματικός/theamaticos
Θεαματικότητα/theamatikoteta
Θέαση/theasi
Θεατής/theates
Θεατός/theatos
Θεατράνθρωπος/theatranthropos
Θεατρίζομαι/theatrizomai
Θεατρικογράφος/theatricographos
Θεατρικὀς/theatricos
Θεατρικότητα /theatricoteta
Θεατρίνα/theatrina
Θεατρινισμός/theatrinismos
Θεατρίνος/theatrinos
We now move to page 743 and we continue:
Θεατρισμός/theatrismos
Θέατρο/theatro
Θεατρολογία/theatrologia
Θεατρομανής/theatromanes
Θεατρόφιλος/theatrophilos
Θεατροφιλικός/theatrophilicos
Θεατρώνης/theatronis
The word theasthai/θέασθαι is indeed missing, simply because in modern Greek it does not exist in that exact grammatical format, as an aparemphaton, "of the infinitive mood" as it appears in ancient Greek. While theasthai/θέασθαι is not to be found, the word from which theasthai is derived, the original word of both theasthai and theatron, is still widely used in modern Greek: the word Θέα/thea=view, especially from above, as from a mountaintop, or a high building. Many toponyms, villages and hotels in Greece are named Kalithea/Καλιθέα or Kallithea/Καλλιθέα (written with either one l/λ or two ll/λλ) meaning "Beautiful View", or as the Italians would say Bella Vista, or the French Bellevue.
The Skopjan propagandist remains unconvinced:
"Question:
Indeed the word behold explains the notion of word theâsthai?"
The answer will be obvious once I translate the first words found in the aforementioned dictionary:
Θέα/thea=view, especially from above, as from a mountaintop, or a high building
Θεαθήναι/theathenai=being seen
Θέαμα/theama=spectacle, cinema or television program
Θεαματικός/theamaticos=spectacular
Θεαματικότητα/theamatikoteta=spectacularity, popularity of a television program or a movie in cinema
Θέαση/theasi=viewing
Θεατής/theates=viewer
Θεατός/theatos=visible, opposite Αθέατος/atheatos: invisible
Now he challenges us again, by being absolutely certain in his pseudo-scientific credentials:
"Root of this word theâsthai does not exist in the so-called IE languages."
He is again caught lying through his teeth, and we are certain that he is lying, not simply making a mistake because if someone is not sure, they can at least search for it. When you search, you eventually find things. If, on the other hand, all you want to do is fabricate a BIG LIE, then the truth is against you, you need to cover your tracks, like a dog covers his excrement: this is why Skopjan propagandists are constantly becoming the laughing stock of Greeks who mistake them for idiots.
Far from being idiots, they do the best they can with an insurmountable task at hand: they try to prove that a mouse is an elephant and that a bull is a rabbit, or something to that effect. They know they are lying…and in my experience with several of them, once you catch them fabricating facts and prove them wrong, they either throw insults at you (the internet makes it easy for someone to be rude) and disappear, or they casually move on to the next BIG LIE, as if nothing happend.
Despite his pretentious certainty that "Root of this word theâsthai does not exist in the so-called IE languages." the truth is that indeed it does: theasthai comes from theasis, and theasis comes from thea. Θέα/thea=view is derived from *θήFη < θάFα < ΙΕ *dhau, meaning "to see", "to look", see also the word θαύμα/thauma= miracle and of course: thea-tron/θέα-τρον, theater, theates/θεατής=viewer and theaomai/θεάομαι=I am viewing.
G. Babiniotes also gives us an alternate derivation from: IE *dhmsva- < *dhem-bh- (see the word thambos/θάμβος=bright light).
Herebelow starts the real circus. Here we need to sit down. The thoughtful propagandist understands our situation and kindly obliges, as we shall see:
"Answer:?
Let see...
Macedonian
théātron=tron=трон=king chair"
Thank lord Zeus, now we can sit down. A throne has indeed been provided for us. Now we can bear whatever comes our way:
"Tholos=stol;stolovi;stolot etc..=стол=chair;stool;seat
Greeks
chair=καρέκλα=karekla
stool=σκαμνί, έδρανο, σκαμπό=skamni, edrano, skampo
seat=κάθισμα, έδρα, καθίζω=kathisma, edra, kathizo
theâsthai
1.sthai=stoi-стои=stand;stay up
2.sthai=stoi (na mesto)-стои (на место)=sit
3.sthai=astal-астал-stol=table (eat),chair
4.sthai=staja-odaja-стаја=chamber;room
etc....
theâsthai=
the=the end =d_end)macedonian)=
asthai=_sta(v)i;_stoi
theâsthai=de_stavi;de_stoi=let put(sit);let stay (sit)"
If I were a Roman I would have exclaimed in desperation: Reductio ad absurdum ad maiorem Scupi gloriam, but I am not, so I will simply say: Reduction to absurdity for the greater glory of Skopje!
What was that all about?
Tholos/θόλος is not a stool or a Slavonic table (from Proto-Slavic *stolъ=table), Tholos/θόλος is "covered roof, a cupola, a dome., a rounded vaulted chamber". Anybody that has been to Epidauros or has seen its Tholos in a reconstructed image will immediately recognize the round building with the conical roof. Tholos is also linguistically related to the word Thalamos/Θάλαμος which means a room in the inner part of the house, but also an underground chamber, a cove, a cavern. These are both words that appear in homer but are still used in modern Greek. An interesting derivative word in Modern Greek is Thalami/θαλάμι which means the cavernous home of an octopus, and also a trap use to catch an octopus, usually in the shape of a rounded pot which the octopus adopts as a home.
Alas, our mental torture has no quick end in sight:
"next....
"Greek Theater" in Epidaurus is unbelievable stupidity...from some modern scholars...Residents of the city states were swept by Macedonians-Philip II of Macedon
Epidarium was built by Macedonians, built at a very strategic place, where Philip 2 intended to shift the Macedonian army against the Persian fleet in the Aegean.
Therefore, around the theater were built library, stadium, camp, hospital, rotunda - old shrine dedicated to Asklepios....altar on the stage of the theater where was bust of Dionysus."
So now that we learn that it was Philippos/Φίλιππος the father of Alexander the Great who built Epidaurus, let us see what some impartial entity like UNESCO has on its website describing the monuments of Epidaurus and its famous theater, a Unesco dedicated monument. It is written for all of humanity to read, in English, French, Arabic, Chinese, Russian and Spanish:
"In a small valley in the Peloponnesus, the shrine of Asklepios, the god of medicine, developed out of a much earlier cult of Apollo (Maleatas), during the 6th century BC at the latest, as the official cult of the city state of Epidaurus. Its principal monuments, particularly the temple of Asklepios, the Tholos and the Theatre - considered one of the purest masterpieces of Greek architecture – date from the 4th century. The vast site, with its temples and hospital buildings devoted to its healing gods, provides valuable insight into the healing cults of Greek and Roman times."
http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/491
In other words, Epidaurus with its Ascleipeion and its Tholos was not built by Philip II, the Greek King of Macedonia in the 4th century BC, but at least two centuries earlier, on a shrine that was probably much earlier than that. Greek history is not our Skopjan propagandist´s forte, it seems. A couple centuries here or there, makes no difference. This is small change when compared to the adoption of Philippos II/Φίλιππος Β´ and Alexandros the Great/Αλέξανδρος ο Μέγας, the greatest of all Macedonian kings by the modern descendants of the Draguvites/Dragovici/Драговити, Sagudates/Sagudaci/Сагудати, Bersites/Brsjaci/Берзити and the other Slavic tribes that entered the Balkans a full thousand years AFTER these Greek kings of Macedonia had passed into Hades.
Now exposed, our history fabricator runs unbridled:
"There is no any facts about hellenisation (word from 19 cent....german nonsens) of Macedonian culture"
Yes, indeed, for our friends from Skopje 19th century those German intellectuals were nonsensical vagabonds of some sort...what do they have to show to the world? Who was
Goethe? Schelling? Hegel? Marx? Nietzsche? Bismarck? Who was the Hellenist historian Johann Gustav Droysen? Very nonsensical characters indeed, these Germans! Calling the era after Alexander Hellenistic as Droysen did, was indeed too much!...just because a Hellenic language, Attic Greek was spoken and promoted by Alexander the Great and his Macedonians and was thereafter spoken in the Macedonian Hellenistic kingdoms? Nonsensical Germans, indeed! How could it have escaped them the rumor that Alexandros was in fact a Bulgarian-speaking Skopjan komitadzi called Aleksandar Veliki? All they have to do is read the recently published "Makedonskata Enciklopedija" in Skopje and they will learn all they need to learn about that famous Aleksandar, the proto-Slav kingpin whose humongous statue has already arrived from Florence and is being prepared for installation in Skopje´s central square. " if it is known that in Athens in 5th century BC there was a wooden theater with wooden benches that once collapsed.
Athenians...they "known and applied" versus gorgeously marble theaters that were built from Macedonians, everywhere to where Macedonians arrived."
If anyone was wondering what is that makes great theater, the answer is obvious: marble! This is what makes great theater! What audacity could the Athenians have to boast of creating Drama and Comedy, with such trivial theatranthropoi as Aescylus, Sophocles, Euripides and Aristophanes, holding their theatrical events in such embarrassingly primitive wooden benches (one of which, in fact once collapsed, we are told!)! What shame! Soon enough someone will claim that Shakespeare´s Globe theater was some wooden structure! For heaven´s sake…who would call that a theater worthy of the name? Theater, let us remember, by Skopjan definition means:
"Macedonian
théātron=tron=трон=king chair"
That is correct…Theatron means chairs…in fact a royal chair, a throne! But if TRON is a throne, a king´s chair, then why did they call it THEA-Tron? Whatever happened to Thea-? And what does "Thea-" mean? In the beginning of this article we were given the words:
"Theatre-Teatar-theatron –θέατρον
Let me follow this, because I am already getting confused:
Theatre is the English word for theater. Sofar so good.
Teatar is the Serbian, Croatian and Slavomacedonian word for theater.
Theatron –θέατρον is the Greek word for theater.
Let us follow this again: teaTAR…theaTRON. Teatar/Tеатар. We know that Teatar is theater in Serbian, Croatian, Bulgarian etc, but we are asked to believe it is also the ancient Macedonian word for it. Teatar ends in –TAR and theatron θέατρον, the Greek word ends in TRON. The word-magician is telling us that this is all derived from Tron the Makedonski Throne. Now if Tron is the Makedonski word for Throne and Theatron is derived from Throne, then how come the Makedonski word for Theater is not ending in TRON but only the Greek one does: teaTAR…theaTRON. Something is fishy here, obviously. To make things worse we find out that tron is throne in Polish, Hungarian, Scottish Gaelic, Danish, and several other European languages, most of which are languages that I would say have never had any contact with Skopje, but all of them share one common thread: they do not have the Θ sound, not for the Th spelling anyway. It is also obvious that all these languages borrowed tron, the throne from Latin. In the Latin Dictionary of Lewis & Short, Oxford University Press, 1993, Theatrum i, n., =θέατρον, a playhouse, theater, is referring us to the original Greek.
Someone would wish that the anonymous author would have enlighten our ignorance by explaining how is theatron/θέατρον derived from tron/трон but then becomes teatar/Театар/Театър once again. And why does Theatron/θέατρον, with the –on ending ends in –tron, but in Slavomacedonian ends in –tar? There are many words in Greek that end in –tron: Lytron/Λύτρον, Phobetron/Φόβητρον, Electron/Ηλεκτρον, etc. The ending –tron/-τρον is actually very typical for many Greek words but non-existing as a Slavonic ending, except for Greek loan words.
The linguistic derivation still begs for explanation:
Tron/трон
Theatron/θέατρον/Театрон (note the absence of a letter to express the Greek Th/Θ sound in all Slavonic languages, since this sound is not to be found in Slavic languages. It is always replaced, depending on the language by either T or F)
Teatar/Театар
Many linguists would commit suicide being at the loss in trying to solve this puzzle.
Theater or in Greek Theatron, starts from the Th/Θ sound, found in Greek as well as in English. It is very common sound in Greek so much so that a letter has been committed to express it. There is no Slavic word that contains the Greek Th/Θ sound. There is no such word, in ANY Slavic language: simply none! Theodore Dostoyevsky is pronounced Fyodor Dostoyevsky, in Russian and Theodore Zhivkov, the Bulgarian leader was Todor Zhivkov. Despite pretending to be descendents of the ancient Macedonians, our Slavonic friends north of Greece are unable to pronounce the Macedonian name of Alexander the Great´s sister, now also the name of Greece´s second largest city: Thessaloniki/Θεσσαλονίκη: her Macedonian name is a phonetic impossibility for the Slav-"Makedonskis" who shortened her name to the more manageable Solun/Солун. Irredentist cries of Solun is the capital of Makedonija, should be Thessaloniki/Θεσσαλονίκη so much, first find a Th/θ sound in your language, that corresponds to her true Macedonian name, and you can have her!
Thirdly, Tron, even spelled in Cyrillic characters as трон/tron is still a Greek word with another impossible (for a Slavic speaking Makedonski) to pronounce Th/θ sound: Thronos/θρόνος, from which the English word for Throne is derived. Its Indo-European root lemma is: dher-2 meaning to hold firmly, to support. This root gives us words like farm, firm, affirm, the Latin firmus, strong, suffixed with zero-grade form *dhr-ono-, throne from Greek thronos, seat, throne("support"). The same roots gives us the Sanskrit Dharma, statute and dharana, holding firm, and the Persian name Darius, meaning holding firm the good, from ancient Persian daraya, to hold firm, to uphold.
"First Macedonian theater in Athens dedicated to Dionysus, built in 330...was build from the occupation -Macedonian Army....This Theater brings all the features of the Macedonian buildings."
By now we have lost any hope that our pseudo-makedonski propagandist would tell us history the way it is, so we check the dates and sure enough we catch him fabricating long tales again:
"The third theatre at Athens was built around 330 B.C. under Lycurgus. The Lycurgan theatre is the first permanent (that is, stone) theatre at Athens, and Lycurgus´ building project produced much of the Athenian theatre that one sees today."
Lycourgos/Λυκούργος was the Athenian manager of the public revenue office, under whom the rebuilding of the theater of Dionysos was executed. The main political figure of that era, let us remember was Demosthenes/Δημοσθένης son of Demosthenes. The theater was built 330BC, and Demosthenes was in power from 342 BC to 324BC. There were no Macedonians during this time in Athens, they came later on, after the theater was rebuilt. Is this important? Not really, but it is always good to catch a pseudo-makenonist lying shamelessly and exposing his historical fabrications even in smaller details that truly make no difference to his case…if he had one.
"next..dramatists and great tragedians....Euripides
The theater of Dion hosted the first performance of Euripides world-famous tragedy Bacchae, which he wrote at Pella of Macedonia. Euripides died and was buried in Macedonia.
etc.....
Therefore it is macedonization of culture and not hellenisation."
We know that the Macedonian king Archelaos/Αρχέλαος (derived from: archo/άρχω,=to lead + Laos/ λαός= the people in arms) invited the Athenian dramatist Euripides/Ευριπίδης to Macedonia/Μακεδονία. The Macedonian kingdom was growing and Archelaos had just built his new capital, Pella. The spoken Macedonian dialect, a hitherto unwritten form of Greek, related to Aeolian dialect and intelligible to Northwest Greek dialect speakers (Aetolians, Epirotans, etc), was deemed insufficient for the running of the fast growing kingdom. Attic Greek, the dialect of philosophy (the Athenians Plato/Πλάτων and the Macedonian Aristotle/Αριστοτέλης) and Drama (the Athenians dramatists mentioned earlier), the Greek dialect most advanced and respected and most studied by all educated Greeks throughout the Hellenic world, was thus introduced as the official language of Macedonia. Archelaos himself invited several poets, philosophers, men of the letters and wise men (Socrates, Plato´s teacher reputedly refused the invitation) to his palace and it is correct that Euripides wrote and played Bacchae/Βάκχαι in Macedonia. He also wrote the drama Archaelaos/Αρχέλαος, named after the king, a play now lost. While Archaelaos/Αρχέλαος the drama has been lost, Bacchae/Βάκχαι survived antiquity and is available for all to read in its original beautiful Attic Greek. Knowing that the ancients never made any translations of literary texts (most had to wait until the Renaissance to be translated into Latin and much later into the main European languages), and understanding that drama is not as universal an art as say, painting or music…you either understand every nuance of the spoken text or miss the whole plot. We know that Euripides performed Archaelaos/Αρχέλαος and Bacchae/Βάκχαι in Macedonia and we know that both plays were performed in Attic Greek in the open theater of Dion/Δίον, the holy Macedonian city of Zeus/Ζεύς-Dios/Διός.
My question, therefore, to the paid propagandist from Skopje who wrote this pitiful pseudo-linguistic and history-falsifying paper is as follows:
Were the Macedonians just watching like some ignorant barbarians unable to comprehend the Greek poetry? Were the people of Dion, Aegai (in whose theater Philip himself was assassinated), Heracleia Lyncistis, Sirris, Amphipolis, Philippoi, Stoboi, Thassos, etc simply flush with money and they were building marble theaters on a whim, just to hear some actors mumble about in a foreign incomprehensible tongue? Or were they all speaking and comprehending Greek just fine, and going to a Greek theater/θέατρον and to a Greek Gymnasion/Γυμνάσιον a normal part of their every day existence as all other Greeks?
The answer to this question, which also gives an answer to what language was spoken during the time these theaters were built, It can be found written on the marble steps of Heracleia Lyncystis/Ηράκλεια Λυγκιστίς, a few minutes outside of Monastir/ Μοναστήρι/ Bitola/ Битола, and on the steps of the Greek theater of Stoboi/Στόβοι by Gradsko/Градско, south of Veles/Велес. These are thirty centimeter (30cm) tall inscribed letters and the language, as I recall them, was unmistakably not Bulgarian nor any proto-slavic dialect.
Since our friends from Skopje, Macedonians themselves as they claim, reputedly of the direct blood and linguistic line of the ancient Makednoi, can easily read the language of the ancient Macedonians, I will repeat what was written, to the best of my recollection, on these theater steps, without any need to translate them:
ΑΡΤΕΜΙΣΙΑΣ ΦΥΛΗ . ΑΣΚΛΗΠΙΑΣ ΦΥΛΗ . ΗΡΑΚΛΕΙΑΣ ΦΥΛΗ . ΔΙΟΝΥΣΙΑΣ ΦΥΛΗ
Finally, a note on Euripides the Athenian dramatist, the third of the triad of Attic drama giants.
"Euripides died and was buried in Macedonia.
etc.....
Therefore it is macedonization of culture and not hellenisation."
The genius of this argument is obvious. Any Arab can now claim that Alexander the Great died in Babylon which now lies in Iraq and was buried in Egypt. Alexander the Great, therefore, a cunning Arab nationalist could argue, was an Arab Haliph (not a proto-Slavic Czar, as Skopje pseudo-Makedonists claim him to be) and we should not be speaking of Hellenization of the East but Arabization of the East, a thousand years before the Arabs entered Egypt or Mesopotamia/Iraq.
The argument would be as laughable as the claim that Alexander was a Slav, a thousand years before the South Slavs invaded the Balkans. To their credit, the Arabs revere Alexander the Great for who he was, Iskander /الإسكندر الأكبر , the great king of the Greek-speaking/ باليونانية Macedonians. When a traveler is entering Alexandria of Egypt, a large bilingual sign reading ALEXANDRIA greets him: http://api.ning.com/files/VUrNRP7mCPTNOJ8238r6W5yAcogGhE81em8KK6tpFHyAM17NYwBccraFZrUAvtdJVaLDfPhSzOGyYaFsUa4kc77iGTLD8FJm/alexandria.jpg : Greek and Arabic. The Arabs, of course, are serious people with great history of their own and centuries-old culture to show to the world. They are not plagued by the identity confusion and nightmarish insecurities tormenting some (but not all, by any means) of the Slavomacedonians: they do not need to pretend to be something they are not. Once a similar realization hits home at Skopje, and they come to grips with their own TRUE Slavic identity, they will suddenly realize that they do not need thirty meter tall bronze statues of Alexander the Great, a Greek king of the past, unrelated to them, to bolster a fake "Macedonian" identity. Then the mending of the trauma in their national psyche, and their relations with their own neighbors, including their Greek friends and partners to the south, will be as easy as 1,2,3.
Finally, here are the references of the anonymous propagandist:
"references:
Greeks (around 365 B. C) in Epidauros
1.The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology | 1996 | T. F. HOAD | © The Concise Oxford Dictionary of English Etymology 1996, originally published by Oxford University Press 1996.
2.Douglas Harper
3.Polykleitos
4.greek-english lexicon
5.Macedonian language...if you do not believe go to Idividi[sic]
continue..."
NOTES AND REFERENCES:
By "Skopjan" we define not the inhabitants of the city of Skopje, nor the people of the former Yugoslav Republic of Makedonija, but the irredentist, ethnic-engineering and history-falsifying policies emanating from the ultranationalist regime of Skopje and the propagandists in their (usually paid) service.
WHAT´S THE POINT?
The first thing that someone with even elementary knowledge of Greek would ask, after reading this article would be: "Why on earth did you spend so much time writing it? What is the point of answering every lunacy coming out of Skopje?". This is a valid question, and many people asked me already the same question for similar articles. Truly, why should anyone spend ink and time defending the self-evident truth? Honestly, the more valid question, which they should be asking, should be not why I am writing these rebuttals, but WHY ARE THE SKOPJANS WRITING THEIR OUTLANDISH BOGUS THEORIES, to begin with! And why is Mr. George Soros spending his billions promoting the fake and fraudulent pseudo-makedonism:
http://www.soros.org.mk/archive/index.htm
There is a huge, well-oiled and paid organized propaganda industry supporting and bolstering pseudo-makedonism, the vast extent of which anyone can recognize in an quick instant by doing an internet search for anything "Macedonian", anywhere in the internet, where someone would be looking up something or anything about Macedonia, Macedonian History, Macedonian Culture, Macedonian language, Alexander the Great, Philip II, etc, etc. Everywhere you look up the internet is polluted by a virtual tsunami of outrageously scatological in quality products of hideous, truth-twisting propaganda which passes itself as casually "impartial" information. The (admittedly idiotic) "teatar from tron" article at hand about the supposed "Macedonian Theater" is but a drop in the ocean, just one of thousands out there. I myself admit feeling like an idiot many times, trying to defend the self evident against vicious by the BIG LIE perpetrators, spending untold hours doing the research to answer what is clear and obvious, but still, I believe that truth needs to document itself against falsehood. I find the strength to continue exposing deception and fake arguments in the same way that a lawyer needs to expose defamation to defend someone whose name has been tarnished has been hideous slanders and libel. Greeks or Greek-speaking persons can smell such pseudo-linguistic and pseudo-historian rotten fish from a mile, because they know Greek, and most of them know Greek history too. For them it is easy to spot the eye-popping, gutter-quality fraudulent fallacies that are being mass-produced daily and in untold qualities in Skopje. The obvious reason, for me is that the pseudo-Makedonists are not here to convince the Greeks. They know better than that and anyway, very few people, comparatively, speak Greek in this world anyway. The BIG LIE propaganda from Skopje is directed towards the wide world audience, the unsuspecting millions who have little or no knowledge of the bloody details of the Macedonian Issue, and most have little or no knowledge of ancient, medieval or modern European history and Balkan history in particular. To them I ask that if they want to be on the side of history and impartiality, then they should at least look up and read the letter that the 200 Classical Scholars from around the world sent to the President of the United States of America, Barack Obama:
http://macedonia-evidence.org/obama-letter.html
ARE THEY ALL LIKE THAT?
Trying to find out if the opinions held by the ultra-nationalist VMRO-DPNE crackpots and disseminated through the internet reflect a more general view in FYROM, I was pleasantly surprise to find out that there are serious people indeed, probably the silent majority, who do not espouse this kind of unfounded theories. A quick check on the Slavomaceedonian Wikipedia confirmed my best hopes that there is future for reason to prevail at the end: Театарот во Античка Грција (Од Википедија)
http://mk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%B5%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%82_%D0%B2%D0%BE_%D0%90%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D0%93%D1%80%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0
a. Latin Dictionary of Lewis & Short, Oxford University Press, 1993
b. Lexico tes Neas Ellenikes Glossas, G. Babiniotes /Λεξικό της Νέας Ελληνικής Γλώσσας, Γ. Μπαμπινιώτης , Athens 2002
c. The American Heritage Dictionary of Indo-European Roots, Calvert Watkins, Boston, 2000
d. A New Greek and English Lexicon, James Donnegan, Boston, 1835
e. Liddell & Scott, Oxford University Press, 1952
f. Epidaurus and Epidaurus Theater: http://whc.unesco.org/en/list/491 Unesco website
g. Theatre of Dionysus at Athens: http://traumwerk.stanford.edu:3455/Archaeopaedia/184 , Stanford University website.
h. http://www.soros.org.mk/archive/index.htm
i. The original "Macedonian theater" article can be found on this website:
http://my.opera.com/ancientmacedonia/blog/2009/12/23/macedonian-theatreteatar-theatron
j. Macedonian Evidence, Letter to Obama, http://macedonia-evidence.org/obama-letter.html
k. Театарот во Античка Грција (Од Википедија), http://mk.wikipedia.org/wiki/%D0%A2%D0%B5%D0%B0%D1%82%D0%B0%D1%80%D0%BE%D1%82_%D0%B2%D0%BE_%D0%90%D0%BD%D1%82%D0%B8%D1%87%D0%BA%D0%B0_%D0%93%D1%80%D1%86%D0%B8%D1%98%D0%B0
