Alexander the Graet

""En Filipo II y el Arte de la Guerra tendremos la oportunidad de conocer en profundidad a uno de los más grandes reyes de la antigua Macedonia. Gracias a su habilidad como estratega, diplomático, político y soldado, heredó un reino pobre, débil y acosado por innumerables enemigos y lo transformó en el más poderoso de toda Grecia.

A lo largo de sus páginas podremos conocer la historia del reino Macedonio, desde sus orígenes míticos hasta la formación de un imperio, de la mano del que, a la postre, se convertiría en el padre del mítico Alejandro Magno y en el forjador de un nuevo ejército que cambiaria el devenir de la guerra en la Antigüedad. Filipo II fue el creador de la falange macedonia, formación que se demostraría como inigualable en el campo de batalla y que reportaría incontables victorias sobre poderosos enemigos, como los ilirios, los tesalios, los tracios, los beocios o los atenienses. Pero no sólo eso, logró integrar en el campo de batalla a la infantería y a la caballería para emplearlos en nuevas formaciones tácticas: armó a sus soldados con las míticas sarissas y apreció como pocos las posibilidades militares que la maquinaria de guerra podía proporcionarle, siendo el mecenas de numerosos avances en este campo. Soñó con conquistar el Imperio persa, cuando ya había logrado lo que nadie antes fue capaz: el control de Grecia.

Sólo la muerte le arrebató esa hazaña, pero sentó las bases de lo que más tarde conseguiría su propio hijo. Su figura levantó tanto odios como pasiones; se le conocía como mujeriego y bebedor, pero también por su habilidad para la oratoria, por sus astucia, determinación y valor. Siempre luchó en primera línea junto a sus soldados y nunca permitió que éstos le llamaran rey, sino solo "General".

Macedonians have emerged from the substratum of prehistoric tribes belonging to the huge family of Pelasgians, Aeols/Boreans  and Hyperboreans (Anti, Brygii, Danuni, Kiti, Hittiti, Lapiti, Macedoni, Minyi, Misiani, Mosiniki, Pelasgi, Pelagoni, Paioni, Tiroi, Tyrseni, etc.) that lived and contributed the creation of archetypical cultures of the second millennium BCE in the central regions of Macedonian Peninsula and Asia Minor.  During their migrations these ancestral Aryan-Macedonic tribes brought with them their culture and contributed to the creation of the civilization centers in antiquity,  especially in the region of lower Danube and further toward Ukraine/Russia (as 'Aryans') and in Central Europe (as 'Veneti' and/or 'Gaul'). 
As a result of the progressive expansion of the early Macedonians during the archaic period all the other regional tribes fused together into a larger union of Macedonians. At the beginning the Orestians (modern Mkd. Gorani; Eng. 'highlanders', mountainers)  from Argo (today Kostur region, Aegean Macedonia) in western Lower Macedonia, together with other neighboring Macedonic tribes living in Eordaia, Elimeia (Kožani and Grevena), northern Timfaia (Hasia), Lynkestia, Desaretia (Lerin-Prespa-Ohrid region), Elimiotia, Pelagonia and Paionia (in Upper Macedonia) began to form the Macedonian state, the first entity of that kind and extent on the European soil.

"This paper proposes a new identification of a mosaic workshop of Late Antiquity in the Near East. Two mosaic pavements, that is, the mosaic of the Bath of Achilles discovered forty years ago in room 40 of the Villa of Theseus in Nea Paphos, Cyprus, and the renowned representation of the Life of Alexander from the
Villa of Patrikios in Baalbeck, published by M. Chéhab in 1958, display many similarities which leave no doubt that both of them were made by the same mosaic workshop. In the first half of the 5th century, like during the whole Roman period, Cypriot mosaics were closely linked with those of the Syro-Palestinian coastal area. The author suggests also a new date of execution of the mosaic from Baalbeck in the first half of the 5th century."

""Recent scholarship in Classics and related fields has shown great interest in letters and epistolary literature of all forms (e.g. Morello and Morrison 2007; Trapp 2003; Rosenmeyer 2001).  The use of embedded letters to advance the narrative in genres such as historiography and the novel, and the potential for real or pseudonymous letters to function as biography (real or fictionalized), autobiography, or historical fiction, mean that letters in antiquity play a crucial role in the development of narrative literature of many kinds.  The apparent popularity of letters as reading matter rather than merely tools for communication, especially in the Imperial period, makes it essential that we pay attention to this genre, as we assess the reading practices and literary preferences of antiquity. The literary qualities of Greek letters are often overlooked, despite the fact that they display the same kind of awareness of generic conventions and self-consciousness of their literary nature as other narrative genres. 
Letters are always about narrative, among other things, whether directly – narrating events to absent correspondents - or indirectly – presenting fragments of an underlying narrative that the reader attempts to reconstruct.  This collection of essays explores the inherent narrative quality of letters and its use by Greek authors in a variety of genres and time periods, as well as the limited and sometimes even willfully obscure nature of epistolary narratives that omit vital information in the name of verisimilitude.  A series of case studies, with topics ranging from Classical poetry and historiography through to Philostratus and Christian martyrs, asks why particular authors choose the letter form; how an embedded letter relates to its narrative environment, and, conversely, the effect of the epistolary form on the narrative it contains; and how each author manipulates the epistolary tradition.  It explores various types of epistolary forms:  individual letters (embedded or free-standing); collections of continuous epistolary narrative; and letters presenting fragmented or discontinuous narrative.  It pays close attention to the self-consciously literary or fictional qualities in Greek letters, including intertextuality with other literary texts and particularly allusions to earlier letters as literature.  A chronological organization of the volume encourages the reader to consider epistolary narrative as a kind of literature that develops over time, growing in popularity and in the variety of forms it takes.  ""