LIVY, Rome and the Mediterranean
BOOK XXXI

"...and yet it had a claim to fame almost greater, because of the ancient renown of the Macedonian nation, and the vast extent of their empire, which gave them possession, by conquest, of large tracts of Europe, and the greater part of Asia..."

Just wanted to add - the quote demonstrates quite clearly that the ancient Macedonians were a separate nation (regardless of what language they spoke) from all of their immediate neighbors, be it nations or smaller, dependent tribes. They were not part of a 'bigger' or 'larger' nation.

Comments from Menelaos or Nikola are welcome, and I would like to know what they think.

Also, I am not trying to prove that modern Macedonians are descendants of ancient Macedonians. This quote only illustrates that ancient Macedonians were a conscious, independent nation, as Livy tells us.

Regards!

Here's a piece from the same book (XXXI, Chapter 29)
The Aetolians, the Acarnanians, the Macedonians, men of the same speech, are united or disunited by trivial causes that arise from time to time; with aliens, with barbarians, all Greeks wage and will wage eternal war; for they are enemies by the will of nature, which is eternal, and not from reasons that change from day to day.
http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/hopper/text?doc=Perseus%3Atext%3A1999.02.0164%3Abook%3D31%3Achapter%3D29

MCA, I know.

Can you explain how this quote proves that Macedonians were not a Nation, per Livy's quote - regardless of what language Macedonians spoke?

Interestingly, my book, Penguin Classics edition translated by Henry Bettenson, does not have (omits) the following part completely: "men of the same speech". It's just not in there.

Liv. XXXI.30 - Athenian response: Athenians "complain that he who calls the Romans aliens and barbarians...":

"After the Macedonians, with the permission [89] and indeed at the bidding of the Romans themselves, -151 the Athenians were brought in, who were able, having suffered dreadfully, to assail with greater reason the savageness and cruelty of the king. [2] They lamented the devastation and miserable ruin of their land: they did not complain because they suffered the treatment of an enemy from an enemy, for there are certain laws of war which are legitimately to be experienced as well as practised: [3] it is sad, rather than unjust to the sufferer, that crops be burned, homes be destroyed, men and animals driven off as booty; [4] but they did, however, complain that he who calls the Romans aliens and barbarians had so polluted human and divine law alike that on his first raid he had waged impious war on the gods of the world below, on his second, with the gods above. [5] All the tombs and monuments in their land had been destroyed, the shades of all the dead left naked, no man's bones left with their covering of earth. [6] They had had shrines, which their ancestors dwelling in the country demes had once consecrated in their little villages and towns and which, even when united in one city,152 they had not left deserted. About all these temples Philip had built his destroying fires; half-burned, mutilated images of gods lay amid the fallen portals of their shrines. [7] The sort of land he had made of Attica, once so rich in art and treasure, such, if he were permitted, he would make of Aetolia and all Greece. [8] Their city too would have suffered the same despoliation if the Romans had not come to its aid. [9] For in the same criminal fashion the gods that keep the city and Athena, guardian of its citadel, had been attacked, so too the temple of Demeter at Eleusis, so Zeus and Athena at Piraeus; [10] but, repulsed not only [91] from their temples but also from the walls by force of153 arms, he had spent his wrath on those shrines which were protected by a sense of reverence alone. [11] They therefore begged and besought the Aetolians to pity the Athenians and under the leadership, first of the immortal gods, second of the Romans, who were next to the gods in power, to undertake the war."

XXXII.23
"...and there was no doubt in their minds that they would easily dislodge the Macedonians and the Greeks."

XXXIII.12
"The Macedonian kings now seemed to threaten the liberty of Greece..."

Emathius,
This subject can be viewed depending on how ppl want to see it.
If you can somehow find the original translation of those quotes above, I can easily translate what it means. Im always weary of quotes from antiquity that has been written in Greek shown in English...

Here it is in Latin (original) and Modern Greek
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cMwXdtbB37g