Summary of Richard A. Billows's Before & After Alexander

Please note: This is a companion version & not the original book. Sample Book Insights: #1 The North-West Bend of the Aegean Sea forms a great Gulf-the Thermaic Gulf-enclosed by land on three sides. To the west, the gently rolling plains of Pieria and Emathia are surrounded by the rich Amphaxitis plain. #2 The question of the ethnicity and language of the ancient Macedonians has been caught up in the identity politics of the modern peoples and states of the southern Balkan peninsula.
As the Ottoman Empire decayed, four local peoples sought to establish nation-states encompassing as much territory as possible. #3 The question of who the Macedonians were has always been a mystery. They may have been a group of people who lived in the southern Balkans, but they may have also been a group of people who lived in Asia Minor. #4 The earliest surviving Greek inscriptions, dating from the middle and second half of the eighth century, do not mention Macedonians.
The first literary reference to Macedonia comes in one of the texts belonging to the Hesiodic corpus, the so-called Catalogue of Women, which was probably compiled around 700.