Macedonia
has played an important part in world history. Alexander the Great
and his Macedonian successors achieved a remarkable acculturation
of other peoples, imbuing them so deeply with Greek values that
the three century period of their ascendancy became known as the
"Hellenistic Period".
This
process turned the Greek language into a kind of "lingua
franca" of the then known world. This very language became
the vehicle for the propagation of the Christian faith. The Old
Testament was translated into Greek so that it could be understood
by all the peoples of this era who shared the language.  The
same is true for three of the Gospels and for the "Acts of
the Apostles" while the Gospel according to Matthew was translated
from Aramaic into Greek. Macedonia served as the springboard for
the christianisation of Europe by Apostle Paul whose life-work
became the conversion of the nations. He was himself deeply affected
by the civilizing achievements of Alexander the Great and his
successors. In his home, Greek was spoken while he himself had
absorbed the teaching of ancient Greek authors, philosophers and
scholars. His mandate to start from Macedonia is reputed to be
divinely inspired. ("And a vision appeared to Paul in the
night; There stood a man of Macedonia, and prayed him, saying,
Come over into Macedonia, and help us." - Acts 16:9). Holzner,
the biographer of saint Paul mentions in his book "Paul"
the following: "There once came from Macedonia a young hero
- Alexander - who brought with him to the East not only his 22
years of age but also the gifts of the West, the Greek language
and philosophy. Now, the West was eager to receive the gift of
the East, the teachings of Jesus from Nazareth". With the
exception of some enclaves of Latin-speaking and other peoples,
the fundamentally Greek population of Macedonia remained effectively
unchanged until the 7th century A.D., when various Slav races
(Drogovites, Strumonites, Sagoudates, and others) began to settle
in the area of Macedonia. With the permission of the Byzantine
authorities, these tribes formed small Slavic enclaves known to
the Byzantines as 'Sclavineae'.
Throughout
the 7th century the Slavs fought the Byzantines and made repeated
attacks on Thessaloniki, though without success. In 688 Justinian
II won a decisive victory over them, and forcibly removed many
of them to Bithynia in Asia Minor. For a long time the Slavs lived
peacefully in the European provinces of the Byzantine Empire and,
as can be seen from Byzantine writers, many of them were hellenised.
After the foundation, in 1870, of an independent Bulgarian church
known as the Exarchate, open rivalry broke out between Greece
and Bulgaria over which of the two was to dominate Macedonia.
In reality, this rivalry focused on the question of the national
consciousness among the Slav-speaking masses inhabiting the central
zone of Macedonia.  According
to consular reports of the time, this zone lay between theKastoria-Ptolemaida-Yannitsa-Zichni
Serron line in the south and the Ochrid-PrilepStrumnitsa-Meleniko-Nevrokop
line in the north.
After
the Greco-Turkish war of 1897, which proved a disaster for Greece,
the Bulgarians managed to win over a considerable proportion of
the Slav-speaking inhabitants of Macedonia. Thus it came about
that on the feastday (20 July) of the Prophet Elijah in 1903 there
was a Bulgarian rising, known as the Iliden rising, which the
Turkish army soon bloodly suppressed. This rising led also to
the destruction of numerous Greek communities and towns in Western
and Northern Macedonia, including that of Krusovo. The rising,
however, made plain the danger that Macedonia might be lost for
ever, which stimulated a general moblisation on the part of the
Greeks. So it came about, in 1904, that the armed'Macedonian Struggle'
began, lasting until 1908. During this period, units made up of
volunteers from the free Greek state, from Crete and from other
as yet unredeemed areas poured into Macedonia in solidarity with
the local Greek Macedonian fighters.Together, they managed to
check the spread of Bulgarian infiltration and to maintain the
predominantly Greek character of the central and southern parts
of Macedonia. It should not be overlooked that in many areas the
volunteer units were made up principally of Slav-and Vlach-speaking
guerrillas, fighting on the side of the Greek cause. Their devotion
to the Greek national cause led the Bulgarians to call them 'Graikomans',
that is, fanatical Greeks.The reward for the efforts and sacrifices
of the participans in the Macedonian Struggle came with the victorious
Balkan Wars of 1912-13, by which Macedonia shook off the Ottoman
yoke that had lain upon it for five centuries. The Treaty of Bucharest
(10 August 1913) finally fixed the frontiers of the Balkan states
in Macedonia. The part of Macedonia which came into Greek possession
included most of the vilayets of Thessaloniki and Monastir, with
the exception of some provinces which today lie within Yugoslavian
and Bulgarian Macedonia. The liberation of Macedonia and the widespread
movements of population which followed led to the three sections
of Macedonia, as incorporated into the three Balkan states, becoming
part of the life of the respective countries. This process was
neither uniform nor rapid.  In
Greek Macedonia, the revolutionary ethnological developments led
to the emergence of homogeneously Greek population, with only
sparse alien elements mainly in border districts.
The
Treaty of Lausanne (1923) put an end to the traditional Greek
policy of the "Great Idea". This allowed the Greek governments
of the inter-war years to turn their attention to the country's
domestic affairs and to the building of the modern Greek state.
The "new lands", including Macedonia, experienced difficulties
at first in absording the influx of refugees but were later to
play a leading part in the economic and social upsurge of modern
Greece and her people.As for the problem of the other ethnic and
linguistic groups left within Greek borders, the Greek government
attempted, after the signing of the peace treaties ending the
First World War, to keep in line with the atmosphere current in
Europe at the time, complying to the letter with all the provisions
of the League of Nations minority treaties. Overlooking the fact
that the Slav-speakers who had chosen to remain in Greece thought
of themselves largely as Greeks, the Greek government of the day
agreed, in 1924, to sign with Bulgaria an agreement known as the
Kalfov-Politis protocol, by which the Slav- speaking populations
left within Greek territory were acknowledged to be Bulgarian.
However, this raised such an outcry in the country -not to mention
the fact that Serbia reacted by repudiating the Greco-Serbian
treaty of alliance of 1913- that the Greek Parliament refused
to ratify the protocol and the League of Nations relieved Greece
of the obligations she had undertaken by it. After that Greece
regarded the remaining Slav-speakers -of whom there were in any
case not more than 100,000- as Slav-speaking Greeks, an attitude
which was greeted with relief by the vast majority of those concerned
since their national consciousness was Greek regardless of what
language they might speak.Today Macedonia (Makedonia) is Greece's
largest geographical region and it occupies the northern part
of the country. Central Macedonia, occupies the central section
of Macedonia including the prefectures of Thessaloniki, Chalkidiki,
Imathia, Pieria, Pella and Kilkis. In Central Macedonia there
are large fertile plains, such as the plain of Thessaloniki, mineral
rich areas, such as Chalkidiki, wooded mountains, lakes, wetlands,
enchanting waterfalls and forests of fir, pine, and beach trees.
Rushing rivers, caves, verdant plains, fertile valleys, distant
lake shores, beautiful coast, and large and small fishing villages.
The capital is Thessaloniki, named after the daughter of king
Philip of Macedonia.
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