Eugene N. Borza

Eugene N. Borza (3 March 1935 – 5 September 2021)[1] was a professor emeritus of ancient history at Pennsylvania State University, where he taught from 1964 until 1995.

Academic career

Born in Cleveland, Ohio, USA, Borza came from a family of immigrants from Romania. Borza wrote extensively on the ancient kingdom of Macedonia, his most notable publication In the Shadow of Olympus (1990, Princeton). He was a guest lecturer for the In the introductory chapter of Makedonika by Carol G. Thomas.[2] He has also been called the dean of US scholars on ancient Macedonia, and served as president of the Association of Ancient Historians for six years, from 1984 to 1989, and was a national lecturer for the Archaeological Institute of America (AIA) for 40 years. He was appointed as visiting professor at the University of Colorado, Boulder; The American School of Classical Studies at Athens; the University of Washington; Trinity University; and Carlton College. He especially enjoyed serving as historical advisor to the National Gallery of Art's groundbreaking exhibition, The Search for Alexander, in 1981.

Views

Eugene Borza at the Acropolis of Athens, Greece (2006)

Like Ernst Badian and Peter Green, (sometimes grouped together as Badian-Green-Borza)[3] Borza doubted that the ancient Macedonians were Greek.[3] Borza wrote that: "they may or may not have been Greek in whole or in part—while an interesting anthropological sidelight—is really not crucial to our understanding of their history" and that they "may have had Greek origins" (through proto-Greek populations),[4] but that "the Macedonians emerged as a people recognized as distinct from their Greek and Balkan neighbors".[5] Simon Hornblower summarizes: "Borza's answer to the sub-question 'were they Greeks?' is 'yes and no'; what he insists on is that the Macedonians saw themselves as distinct".[6] However, he also argued that "the 'highlanders' or 'Makedones' of the mountainous regions of western Macedonia are derived from northwest Greek stock.[4]

Borza also noted that the ancient Macedonians were not related to the modern ethnic Macedonians.[5] He wrote that the modern-day ethnic Macedonians "who have had no history, need one" and that they are "a newly emergent people in search of a past to help legitimize their precarious present".[7]

His views and skepticism on the ethnicity of the ancient Macedonians, rejected by the Greek government, led to the Greek refusal to allow him to film with British historian Michael Wood for the 1998 BBC television series In the Footsteps of Alexander the Great inside Greece.[8]

In 2008, he received a festschrift published in his honor.[9] His works have received both praise and criticism from a variety of scholars.[3][10][11][12][13]

Published works

  • 1962 – The Bacaudae: A Study of Rebellion in Late Roman Gaul (University of Chicago, Department of History)
  • 1974 – The Impact of Alexander the Great (Dryden Press, ISBN 0-03-090000-X)
  • 1972 – "Fire from heaven: Alexander at Persepolis" Classical Philology 67, 233–245.
  • 1982 – "The natural resources of early Macedonia" in W. L. Adams and E. N. Borza, eds. Philip II, Alexander the Great, and the Macedonian Heritage. Lanham, MD. 1–20.
  • 1983 – "The symposium at Alexander's court" Archaia Makedonia 3, 45–55
  • 1990 – In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon (Princeton University Press, ISBN 0-691-00880-9)
  • 1995 – Makedonika (Regina Books, ISBN 0-941690-65-2)
  • 1999 – "Macedonia Redux" in Frances B. Titchener and Richard F. Moorton, eds. The Eye Expanded: Life and Arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity De Gruyter, 249-65.

References

  1. ↑ "Eugene Borza Obituary (1935 - 2021)". Legacy.com. Retrieved 2022-08-07.
  2. ↑ "Eugene N. Borza". Retrieved August 11, 2017.
  3. 1 2 3 Hatzopoulos, Miltiades B. (2020). Ancient Macedonia. De Gruyter. pp. 70–72, 115. doi:10.1515/9783110718683. ISBN 978-3-11-071868-3. S2CID 240818590.
  4. 1 2 Borza, Eugene N. (1992). In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon. Princeton University Press. pp. 78, 92, 277. ISBN 978-0-691-00880-6.
  5. 1 2 Borza, Eugene (1999). "Macedonia Redux". In Frances B. Titchener and Richard F. Moorton (ed.). The Eye Expanded: Life and Arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity. De Gruyter. pp. 26, 249ff. doi:10.1525/9780520919709-020. ISBN 9780520919709.
  6. ↑ Hornblower, Simon (1994). "Review of In the Shadow of Olympus. The Emergence of Macedon". The English Historical Review. 109 (432): 675–676. doi:10.1093/ehr/CIX.432.675. ISSN 0013-8266. JSTOR 572923.
  7. ↑ "The Macedonians are a newly emergent people in search of a past to help legitimize their precarious present as they attempt to establish their singular identity in a Slavic world dominated historically by Serbs and Bulgarians...The twentieth-century development of a Macedonian ethnicity, and its recent evolution into independent statehood following the collapse of the Yugoslav state in 1991, has followed a rocky road. In order to survive the vicissitudes of Balkan history and politics, the Macedonians, who have had no history, need one." For more see: "Macedonia Redux", in "The Eye Expanded: life and the arts in Greco-Roman Antiquity", ed. Frances B Tichener & Richard F. Moorton, University of California Press, 1999, ISBN 0-520-21029-8, p. 259.
  8. ↑ Joseph Roisman (2002). Brill's Companion to Alexander the Great. BRILL. p. 359. ISBN 978-90-04-21755-3.
  9. ↑ Timothy Howe and Jeanne Reames as ed. Macedonian Legacies: Studies in Ancient Macedonian History and Culture in Honor of Eugene N. Borza, ISBN 1-5393-6565-4
  10. ↑ Hammond, N. G. L. (1991). "The Emergence of Macedon - Eugene N. Borza: In the Shadow of Olympus: the Emergence of Macedon. Pp. xviii + 333; 6 illustrations. Princeton University Press, 1990. $39.50". The Classical Review. 41 (2): 392–394. doi:10.1017/s0009840x00280633. ISSN 0009-840X. S2CID 160273469.
  11. ↑ Andronikos, Manolis. (1991) Ο Μανώλης Ανδρόνικος μιλάει για Bernal, Hammond, Borza και για την Αδέκαστη Ιστορία. To Vima (Archived)
  12. ↑ Fox, Robin Lane (2011). "Introduction: Dating the Royal Tombs at Vergina". In Fox, Robin Lane (ed.). Brill's Companion to Ancient Macedon: Studies in the Archaeology and History of Macedon, 650 BC - 300 AD. BRILL. pp. 1–34. ISBN 978-90-04-20650-2.
  13. ↑ Greenwalt, William S. (1992). "Review of In the Shadow of Olympus: The Emergence of Macedon". Classical Philology. 87 (2): 169–173. doi:10.1086/367303. ISSN 0009-837X. JSTOR 269531.
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