Is this Ancient proverb try: Shortest Macedonian warrior was tallest that tallest Greek warrior?

Answer 1

thats corny

Answer 2

If you really want to know, I can direct you to Hesiod. He, about 3,000 years ago wrote some of the most important, original and initial works, where he mentions the birth of Macednos, MAgnetas and other Greeks! But, most likely you neither know nor you want to learn! Am I right?
Also, if it is an ancient proverb, what language was it preserved and by whom? I would like to know! Thank you!
Since modern people including people in the area and away, do not know the exact meaning of the Greek language, many messages are not reaching us correctly! Thus, you think it is an ancient proverb, while I think it is an outcome of the etymology of the names!

Answer 3

it might be true...who knows?!

Answer 4

I am really enjoying your questions!!!
Of course such a ancient proverb doesn't exist! If tou want to convinced me you have to write down were was it mention, by whom in what ancient text and so on! (you know you can't!)
Everybody knows that ancient Macedonia was a Greek kingdom and it is still part of Greece!( Your country is Slavic-Macedonia and it is a modern state!)
But let me help you! here are some real quotes from the ancients:
“Arrian, "Anabasis of Alexander"
"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 Hellenes, except the Lacedaemonians, set up these spoils from the barbarians dwelling in Asia",
(Arrian I, 16, 7)

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

"There are Greek troops, to be sure, in Persian service -- but how different is theirs cause from ours ! They will be fighting for pay--- and not much of it at that; we on the contrary shall fight for Greece, and our hearts will be in it. As for our foreign troops ---Thracians, Paeonians, Illyrians, Agrianes --- they are the best and stoutest soldiers of Europe, and they will find as their opponents the slackest and softest of the tribes of Asia."
(Arrian, 11.7)

"You ought to have remembered that you are not the attendant of and adviser of Cambyses or Xerxes, but of Philip's son, a man with the blood of Heracles and Aeacus in his veins, a man whose forefathers came from Argos to Macedonia, where they long ruled not by force, but by law."
(Arrian 4.11)

"Well, here we are in a foreign land; and if for that reason we must think foreign thoughts, yet I beg you, Alexander, to remember Greece; it was for her sake alone, that you might add Asia to her empire, that you undertook this campaign. Consider this too: when you are home again, do you really propose to force the Greeks, who love their liberty more than anyone else in the world, to prostrate themselves before you?"
(Arrian 4.11)

"In this latter place he (Alexander) found political troubles in progress, and settled them, remitting the tribute which the town paid to Darius on the ground that Mallus was a colony of Argos and he himself claimed to be descended from the Argive Heracleidae."
(Arrian 5)

"He set the Persian palace on fire, even though parmenio urged him to save it, arguing that it was not right to destroy his own property, and that the Asians would not thus devote themselves to him, if he seemed determined not to rule Asia, but only to pass through as a conqueror. But Alexander replied that he intended to punish the persians for their invasion of Greece, the destruction of Athens, the burning of the temples, and all manner of terrible things done to the Greeks: because of these things, he was exacting revenge. But Alexander does not seem to me to have acted prudently, nor can it be regarded as any kind of punishment upon Persians of long ago.
[Arrian, 3.18.11-12]

[edit]Arrian, "The Indica"
"...There a man appeared to them, wearing a Greek cloak, and dressed otherwise in the Greek fashion, and speaking Greek also. Those who first sighted him said that they burst into tears, so strange did it seem after all these miseries to see a Greek, and to hear Greek spoken. They asked whence he came, who he was; and he said that he had become separated from Alexander's camp, and that the camp, and Alexander himself, were not very far distant. Shouting aloud and clapping their hands they brought this man to Nearchus..."
(Arrian, XXXIII)

"...On this Alexander wept the more, since the safety of the force had seemed too good to be true; and then he enquired where the ships were anchored. Nearchus replied: 'They are all drawn up at the mouth of the river Anamis, and are undergoing a refit.' Alexander then called to witness Zeus of the Greeks and the Libyan, Ammon that in good truth he rejoiced more at this news than because he had conquered all Asia since the grief he had felt at the supposed loss of the fleet cancelled all his other good fortune..."
(Arrian,XXXV)

"...Alexander then sacrificed thank-offerings for the safety of his host, to Zeus the Saviour, Heracles, Apollo the Averter of Evil, Poseidon and all the gods of the sea; and he held a contest of art and of athletics, and also a procession..."
(Arrian,XXXVI)

"...The Greeks moved on thence, from the sacred island, and were already coasting along Persian territory..."
(Arrian,XXXVIII)

"...Thence they sailed eight hundred stades, anchoring at Troea; there were small and poverty-stricken villages on the coast. The inhabitants deserted their huts and the Greeks found there a small quantity of corn, and dates from the palms..."
(Arrian,XXIX)

Some more from Plutarch:
Plutarch - Moralia, "On the Fortune of Alexander"
"Alexander lived many hundred years ago. He was king of Macedon, one of the states of Greece. His life was spent in war. He first conquered the other Grecian states, and then Persia, and India, and other countries one by one, till the whole known world was conquered by him. It is said that he wept, because there were no more worlds for him to conquer. He died, at the age of thirty-three, from drinking too much wine. In consequence of his great success in war, he was called Alexander the Great."
(Plutarchos, Moralia, On the Fortune of Alexander, I, 328D, 329A [Loeb, F.C. Babbitt])

"But he said, `If I were not Alexandros, I should be Diogenes'; that is to say: `If it were not my purpose to combine barbarian things with things Hellenic, to traverse and civilize every every continent, to search out the uttermost parts of land and sea, to push the bounds of Macedonia to the farthest Ocean, and to diseminate and shower the blessings of the Hellenic justice and peace over every nation, I should not be content to sit quietly in the luxury of idle power, but I should emulate the frugality of Diogenes. But as things are, forgive me Diogenes, that I imitate Herakles, and emulate Perseus, and follow in the footsteps of Dionysos, the divine author and progenitor of my family, and desire that victorius Hellenes should dance again in India and revive the memory of the Bacchic revels among the savage mountain tribes beyond the Kaukasos...' "
(Plutarchos, On the Fortune of Alexander, 332 a-b)

"Yet through Alexander, 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 Hellenic magistracies ... Egypt would not have its Alexandria, nor Mesopotamia its Seleucia, nor Sogdiana its Prophthasia, nor India its Bucephalia, nor the Caucasus a Hellenic 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.'
(Plutarchos Moralia. On the Fortune of Alexander, I, 328D, 329A)

"When he (Alexander the Great) arrived at Ilion he sacrificed to Athena and offered libations to the Heroes."
(Plutarchos, Alexander 15)

"It is agreed on by all hands, that on the father's side, Alexander descended from Hercules by Caranus, and from Aeacus byNeoptolemus on the mother's side"
(Plutarch, The Life of Alexander)

And some from Herodotus
"Now that the men of this family are Hellenes, sprung from Perdiccas, as they themselves affirm, is a thing which I can declare on my own knowledge, and which I will hereafter make plainly evident. That they are so has been already adjudged by those who manage the Pan-Hellenic contest at Olympia"
(Herodotus, The Histories 8.43)

"Tell your king who sent you how his Hellenic viceroy of Macedonia has received you hospitably... "
(Herodotus V, 20, 4)

"Now that these descendants of Perdiccas are Hellenes, as they themselves say, I myself chance to know"
(Herodotus V, 22, 1)

"Xerxes, having so spoken, held his peace. (SS 1.) Whereupon Mardonius took the word, and said: ....I myself have had experience of these men when I marched against them by the orders of thy father; and though I went as far as Macedonia, and came but a little short of reaching Athens itself, yet not a soul ventured to come out against me to battle. ......But, notwithstanding that they have so foolish a manner of warfare, yet these Greeks, when I led my army against them to the very borders of Macedonia, did not so much as think of offering me battle."
(Herodotus Book VII)
"...but the Dorians on the contrary have been constantly on the move; their home in Deucalion's reign was Phthiotis and in the reign of Dorus son of Hellen the country known as Histiaeotis in the neighbourhood of Ossa and Olympus; driven from there by the Cadmeians they settled in Pindus and were known as Macedons; thence they migrated to Dryopis, and finally to the Peloponnese, where they got their present name of Dorians."
Herodotus, Book I, 56

"...Three brothers of the lineage of Temenos came as banished men from Argos to Illyria, Gavganis and Aeropos and Perdikkas, and worked for the king that was there.
When the king learned that when the queen baked the bread of Perdikkas, it doubled its size, than of the the other breads, he considered that as a miracle and ordered the 3 brothers to leave his kingdom. The brothers required their payment. Then the king told them to take the sun as a payment. Gavganis and Aeropos where taken by surprise and the youngest brother, Perdikkas, accepted the offer. He took out his sword, circled it 3 times and took the sun, which he placed in his underarm and left with his brothers..."

Herodotus VIII,137

"...and that you may tell your king, who sent you, that a Greek, the lord of Macedonia, entertained you royally both with bed and board."
Herodotus, Book V, 20

"The composition of the fleet was as follows: 16 ships from Lacedaemon, the same number from Corinth as at Artemisium, 15 from Sicyon, 10 from Epidaurus, 5 form Troezen, 3 from Hermione. The people of all these places except Hermione are of Dorian and Macedonian blood, and had last emigrated from Erineus, Pindus, and Dryopis."
Herodotus, Book VIII ,43

Do you want more?
Ok here are some from a Roman:
Polybius' Histories and Macedonia
"If the circumstances are the same now as at the time when you made alliance with the Aetolians, then your policy ought to remain on the same lines.' That was their first proposition. 'But if they have been entirely changed, then it is fair that you should now deliberate on the demands made to you as on a matter entirely new and unprejudiced.' I ask you therefore, Cleonicus and Chlaeneas, who were your allies on the former occasion when you invited this people to join you? Were they not all the Greeks? But with whom are you now united, or to what kind of federation are you now inviting this people? Is it not to one with the foreigner? A mighty similarity exists, no doubt, in your minds, and no diversity at all! Then you were contending for glory and supremacy with Achaeans and Macedonians, men of kindred blood with yourselves, and with Philip their leader; now a war of slavery is threatening Greece against men of another race, whom you think to bring against Philip, but have really unconsciously brought against yourselves and all Greece. For just as men in the stress of war, by introducing into their cities garrisons superior in strength to their own forces, while successfully repelling all danger from the enemy, put themselves at the mercy of their friends,--just so are the Aetolians acting in the present case. For in their desire to conquer Philip and humble Macedonia, they have unconsciously brought such a mighty cloud from the west, as for the present perhaps will overshadow Macedonia first, but which in the sequel will be the origin of heavy evils to all Greece.
"But if thanks are due to the Aetolians for this single service, how highly should we honour 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 greatest danger, had we not been fenced by the Macedonians and the honourable ambition of their kings?"
(Polybius, Book IX, 35, 2)

"...I assert is that not only the Thessalians, but the rest of the Greeks owed their safety to Philip."
(Polybius, Book IX, 33, 3)

"...because he (Philip) was the benefactor of Greece, that they all chose him commander-in-chief both on sea and land, an honour previously conferred on no one."
(Polybius, Book IX, 33, 7)

"...he (Alexander) inflicted punishment on the Persians for their outrages on all the Greeks, and how he delivered us all from the greatest evils by enslaving the barbarians and depriving them of the resources they used for the destruction of the Greeks, pitting now the Athenians and now the Thebans against the ancestors of these Spartans, how in a word he made Asia subject to Greece."
(Polybius, Book IX, 34, 3)

"The 38th book contains the completion of the disaster of the Hellenes. For though both the whole of Hellas and her several parts had often met with mischance, yet to none of her former defeats can we more fittingly apply, the name of disaster with all it signifies than to the events of my own time. In the time I am speaking of a comon misfortune befell the Peloponnesians, the Boiotians, the Phokians, the Euboians, the Lokrians, some of the cities on the Ionians Gulf, and finally the Macedonians"
(Polybius, Book IX, 38, 8)
Actually we have hundred of references about ancient Macedonia!!! You have nothing!!! Only propaganda and forgery!