Greatest empires of all time

[DinoDoc]

Originally posted by Heresson
Macedonian Empire wasn't created by Greeks, but by Macedonians.

You do realize that the Greeks will kill you for pointing this out. They like living under the delusion that Macedonia was Greek.

[Sonic]

Heresson, the book was Lithuanian it's author was Martynas Maþvydas and it was called "Katekizmas". Second book was also not in XIX age but in XV age. And both were Lithuanian and Lithuanian was language most people spoken, not Ruthenian (later in Poland-Lithuania some Lithuanian people started to talk in Polish, but this was much later).
Poland-Lithuania as a country was quite rich, but it did nothing to be in this list - it didn't had enough size, good military, it didn't did big input in world's history. I know LGD also didn't but it had very good military and huge size at it's best time. LGD was like scaled down version of Mongolia - low culture, but big strenght, and in both cases "bet times" weren't for long. Also, Lithuania like Mongolia was tolerant to other religions, in Vilnius we had catholic churhces, orthodox churches, lutheran churches, synagogue and mosque (this was destroyed in WW2) and people were tolerant to each other. That is also one of things Lithuania was quite modern for that time.

[Bereta_Eder]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
You do realize that the Greeks will kill you for pointing this out. They like living under the delusion that Macedonia was Greek.

Poor sod

Macedonians were and are Greeks. The slavs of FYROM are not Their language is not either.




Indisputable evidence that Macedonians are Greek.

"Aetolians, Acarnanians, Macedonians, men of the same language"
T. Livius XXXI, 29, 15 (Loeb, E.T. Sage) ,
"And she conceived and bore to Zeus, who delights in the thunderbolt, two sons, Magnes and Macedon,
rejoicing in horses, who dwell round about Pieria and Olympus."
(Hesiod, Catalogues of Women and Eoiae 3 [Loeb, H.G. Evelyn-White])


"For in the days of king Deucalion it (i.e. a Makednian tribe) inhabited the land of Phthiotis, then in the time of Dorus, son of Hellen, the country called Histiaean, under Ossa and Olympus; driven by the Cadmeians from this Histiaean country it settled about Pindus in the parts called Macedonian; thence again it migrated to Dryopia, and at last came from Dryopia into Peloponnesus, where it took the name of Dorian."
(Herod. I, 56, 3 [Loeb, A.D. Godley])

"Tell your king (Xerxes), who sent you, how his Greek viceroy (Alexander I) of Macedonia has received you hospitably."
(Herod. V, 20, 4 [Loeb])

"Now, that these descendants of Perdiccas are Greeks, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know."
(Herod. V, 22, 1 [Loeb])

"The country by the sea which is now called Macedonia... Alexander, the father of Perdiccas,
and his forefathers, who were originally Temenidae from Argos"
Thucydides 99,3 (Loeb, C F Smith)

"But Alexander (I), proving himself to be an Argive, was judged to be a Greek;
so he contended in the furlong race and ran a dead heat for first place."
(Herod. V, 22, 2)

"The Peloponnesians that were with the fleet were ... the Lacedaimonians, ... the Corinthians, ...
the Sicyonians, ... the Epidaurians, ... the Troezenians, ... the people of Hermione there; all these,
except the people of Hermione, were of Dorian and Macedonian stock and had last come from
Erineus and Pindus and the Dryopian region."
(Herod. VIII, 43 {Loeb])

"Three brothers of the lineage of Temenos came as banished men from Argos to Illyria,
Gauanes and Aeropos and Perdiccas."
(Herod. VIII, 137, 1 [Loeb])

"For I (Alexander I) myself am by ancient descent a Greek,
and I would not willingly see Hellas change her freedom for slavery."
(Herod. IX, 45, 2 [Loeb])

"The country by the sea which is now called Macedonia ... Alexander I, the father of Perdiccas (II), and his forefathers, who were originally Temenidae from Argos."
(Thuc. II, 99, 3 [Loeb, C. F. Smith])

"Argos is the land of your fathers."
(Isoc., To Philip, 32 (Loeb, G. Norlin])

"It is your privilege, as one who has been blessed with untrammeled freedom,
to consider all Hellas your fatherland, as did the founder of your race."
(Isoc., To Philip, 127 [Loeb])

" ... all men will be grateful to you: the Hellenes for your kindness to them and the rest of the nations,
if by your hands they are delivered from barbaric despotism and are brought under the protection of Hellas."
(Isoc., To Philip, 154 [Loeb])

"This is a sworn treaty made between us, Hannibal ... and Xenophanes the Athenian ...
in the presence of all the gods who possess Macedonia and the rest of Greece."
(Pol. Histories, VII, 9, 4 [Loeb, W.R. Paton])

"How highly should we honor the Macedonians, who for the greater part of their lives never cease from fighting with the barbarians for the sake of the security of Greece? For who is not aware that Greece would have constantly stood in the greater danger, had we not been fenced by the Macedonians and the honorable ambition of their kings?"
(Pol. Hist., IX, 35, 2 [Loeb])

"And Macedonia, of course, is a part of Greece."
(Strab. VII, Frg. 9 [Loeb, H.L. Jones])

"He sent to Athens three hundred Persian panoplies to be set up to Athena in the acropolis;
he ordered this inscription to be attached: Alexander, son of Philip, and the Greeks,
save the Lacedaimonians, set up these spoils from the barbarians dwelling in Asia."
(Arr. I, 16, 7 [Loeb, P. A. Brunt])

"Your ancestors invaded Macedonia and the rest of Greece and did us great harm, though we had done them no prior injury; ... (and) I have been appointed leader of the Greeks ..."
(Arr., Anab. Alex. II, 14, 4)

"They say that these were the tribes collected by Amphiktyon himself in the Greek Assembly: ... the Macedonians joined and the entire Phocian race ... In my day there were thirty members: six each from Nikopolis, Macedonia and Thessaly..."
(Paus. Phokis VIII, 2 & 4 [Loeb, W. Jones])

"Belistiche, a woman from the coast of Macedonia, won with the pair of foals ... at the hundred and twenty-ninth Olympics."
(Paus. Eleia VIII, 11 [Loeb])

"Yet through Alexander (the Great) Bactria and the Caucasus learned to revere the gods of the Greeks ... Alexander established more than seventy cities among savage tribes, and sowed all Asia with Greek magistracies ... Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Seleucia, nor Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor the Caucasus a Greek city, for by the founding of cities in these places savagery was extinguished and the worse element, gaining familiarity with the better, changed under its influence."
(Plut. Moralia. On the Fortune of Alexander, I, 328D, 329A Loeb, F.C. Babbitt)


The speech of Alexander I when he was admitted to the Olympic games "Men of Athens... Had I not greatly at heart the common welfare of Hellas I should not have come to tell you; but I am myself Hellene by descent, and I would not willingly see Hellas exchange freedom for slavery.... If you prosper in this war, forget not to do something for my freedom; consider the risk I have run, out of zeal for the Hellenic cause, to acquaint you with what Mardonius intends, and to save you from being surprised by the barbarians. I am Alexander of Macedon."
(Herodotus, The Histories, 9.45)



ohhhh, eat it baby

[Boris Godunov]

Re: Re: Greatest empires of all time

Originally posted by Serb


Ok. It's a hard task to make such desicion without pressure of patriotism, but I'll try.
Let's see.... It should be Russia!!!

Size- the largest.
Strenght- the strongest
Loyality- the happiest.
Lifetime- the oldest as an Emipre.
And we have the coolest national hymn ever.
Russia forever!!!

Have a nice day.

Size: Nope, British and Mongol were larger.
Strength: Nope, America was stronger
Loyalty: Yeah, all those guys in gulags in Siberia were real happy, hmmm? America wins here, too!
Lifetime: Dude, China's got you beat by a landslide!
National Hymn: Naw, Germany's and France's are better!

[Sonic]

Size: right, British and Mongol were stronger
Strenght: many empires were stronger, including Britain, Mongol (which won wars against Russians by the way), USA, etc.
Loyality: Russian loyality is low. Look at Arab or early XX age Japanese one to see what I mean.
Lifetime: yes, China, also Japanese and many more lived longer
Hymn: Lithuanian one is the best

[Giovanni Wine]

Originally posted by Heresson
Descendance of Romans have nothing to do with language
or rase.

So if it's not by language or race!
What is it... culture?
Well... Italian culture is by far closer to Roman culture than any other one.

And Yes.... Macedonia was a Greek Empire, do not think of Macedonia as the area of present day "Former Yugolslavian Repubblic of Macedonia" cause the Greek times Macedonia was way larger, and it had Greek cultures.

Saluti

[Dinner]

I'll give you a hint who I voted for...

[Bereta_Eder]

The French?

[Bereta_Eder]

in a forum populated by 80% americans and english it is a pleasant surprise to see the Roman Empire on the top spot

The votes for England are anticipated

[Tingkai]

The British empire was pretty short-lived, what about 150 years.

[Tingkai]

Originally posted by Gangerolf
The British Empire (not nowadays of course, but 100 years ago).



I think it's closer to 1/5. BTW, "can't be wrong"? I don't think China is the nicest place to live in... (not the worst either though)

Yeah, but for about 2,000 years it was the most civilized place on earth.

[Sandman]

If you believe this nonsense , then the British Empire is still going strong.

I particularly like this quote:

The United Kingdom itself has very little to do with the new British Empire. England, Scotland, Wales, and, especially, Northern Ireland, are today little more than slave plantations and social engineering laboratories, serving the needs of a collection of families, numbering no more than 3,000-5,000 people, who live and work in and around the City of London, a one-mile-square financial and corporate district, which represents the greatest concentration of financial power ever assembled in one location.

[Paris]

Originally posted by DinoDoc
You do realize that the Greeks will kill you for pointing this out. They like living under the delusion that Macedonia was Greek.

Dino,

in your case we have two options:
a) You have bad taste of humor....
b) "Foolish people says always the same foolish things", Leonardo DaVinci (When DaVinci being in front of Pope at Vatican).

[King of Rasslin]

Ok, no country has ever been as great as America. We basically have every good part of every culture of the world, and none of the bad. In France, you eat French food. In Romania, you eat Roman food. In America, you can eat American food, which is from every country because we are the land of opportunity and we don't let some king rule us.

Every other country gets a slice, but we own the whole F'n pie! Beat that!

[Heresson]

Heresson, the book was Lithuanian it's author was Martynas Ma?vydas and it was called "Katekizmas".

Oh, Marcin Ma?wid. But it was XVI century, 1547. It was translation of German and Polish, nothing original.

Second book was also not in XIX age but in XV age. And both were Lithuanian and Lithuanian was language most people spoken, not Ruthenian (later in Poland-Lithuania some Lithuanian people started to talk in Polish, but this was much later).

Again, the book You are speaking about is from XVI century. The grammar of Lithuanian language of next century
was made by a German and written in Latin. All literature was written in Polish. Ruthenian was the official
language of the state (with Polish getting stronger and stronger) until 1697, when Lithuania officially took
Polish and forbidden writting laws in Ruthenian. Later Polish was dominant up to the start of XX century.
All later examples of written Lithuanian come from northern Prussia and have to do with reformation
(as well as Martynas' book).

Poland-Lithuania as a country was quite rich, but it did nothing to be in this list - it didn't had enough size,

It had the same size or bigger than Lithuania in its peaks
anyway the southern half of Lithuanian duchy, the great steppes of Ukraine,
were only theoretically controlled by it.

good military,

Are You kidding? Lithuanian military wasn't all that good at the start.
Just light armours. Polish and later Polish-Lithuanian
military was much better, vide Chocims, Wiede?, K?uszyn etc...

it didn't did big input in world's history.

Ha ha ha. Do You REALLY think Lithuanian duchy before the union had
bigger impact on world history? If so, You must be nuts. I can't comment it
otherwise. You just subdued some Ruthenian states, And it's a discussional matter
if it helped Moscow or didn't. Anyway, Poland before, and Poland-Lithuania
later was much much much more important. I could give You some examples
how P-L influenced world's history, why the Ruthenian case is the only thing I can
think of, and your story of Lithuania stopping Mongols isn't worth much.
After all, we were fighting with Mongolians too and I don't claim that by that or building
hungreds of castles, Casimir the Great saved Europe, while my law to this
is equal. Try to think about what I say; Mongolians crushed Ruthenian duchies
and made them enough weak to be subdued by Lithuania without bigger fight.

I know LGD also didn't but it had very good military

not bad, but not better and often worse than its
non-ruthenian neighbours.

and huge size at it's best time.

Again, not bigger than Rzeczpospolita.

LGD was like scaled down version of Mongolia - low culture, but big strenght, and in both cases "bet times" weren't for long. Also, Lithuania like Mongolia was tolerant to other religions, in Vilnius we had catholic churhces, orthodox churches, lutheran churches, synagogue and mosque (this was destroyed in WW2) and people were tolerant to each other. That is also one of things Lithuania was quite modern for that time.

Uhm, churches of different denominations were built later... And Mongols really were strong and could smash
everyone (but mamluks), while again, Lithuania alone wasn't able to defend itself against TK and tiny Moscow.

---------------------
Paiktis, macedonians were closely related to Greeks and perhaps wanted to be Greeks
(they weren't considered Hellens from the start), but weren't.
They were under heavy influence of Greek culture, perhaps we can say that their culture
was Greek, and the empires created by them turned out to be Greek, but the nation
The stuf You gave is no proof or anything. you can call ancient Macedonian language Greek,
as well as You can call Slovak language Czech (or Polish), or Byelorussian Russian or Polish;
it's close, someone may be mistaken, but scientifically it's not the same.

oh, by the way; Polish hymn is so good that Yugoslavia copied the melody, and Ukraine
copied the words
Though I, as some others, would rather have as the hymn the other candidate, that lost,
but still is sung on patriotic occasions sometimes...:
"A German won't spit in our face
Or germanise our children
(...)"
It's nice.

-----------------------

Giovanni,
Roman culture is as far from Italian as from any other.
True descendants of Romans are - Romans, "Byzantines",
and they do not exist anymore so You are the closest
living relative I could call it (or perhaps Greece?), still Italian state has nothing to
do with the Roman one. Only Byzantines had the legitimation to speak
as the Romans, as they just were them. Rome-Byzantium left Italy as God who
left old chosen nation and created a new, Christian one.

Would like to write more, but it takes too much time anyway.