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Letter
to Governor Benson from J. Rouman
February 23, 2003
The Honorable Craig Benson
Office of the Governor
25 Capitol Street
Concord, NH 03301
Dear Governor Benson,
It has been brought to my attention that the Senate
of the State of New Hampshire will vote on Resolution LSR 1169,
stating among other facts that "The language and culture
of the ancient Macedonians…were Hellenic." As a classicist
and Greek epigraphist I laud this proclamation which scholars
of the Greek language everywhere have always known.
For five years, both at the University of Wisconsin
at Madison and at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton,
I was research assistant during Professor Charles F. Edson's protracted
and difficult project, the editing of all the inscriptions of
ancient Thessalonica from the third century B.C. to the seventh
or eighth century A.D. for the German Academy of Berlin. There
are 1,044 inscriptions in that corpus; most of these are Greek
while a few are Latin. This fascicle, Inscriptiones Thessalonicae
et Viciniae (ISBN 3 11 0018594), is one of the most difficult
and complex of the volumes of the Berlin corpus as it is also
on of the most voluminous, for which publication Dr. Edson was
awarded the prestigious Charles Goodwin Award of Merit of the
American Philological Association.
Clearly, the language of the ancient Macedonians was
Greek. The Greek inscriptions of the Balkans attest this fact.
I commend Resolution LSR 1169 and urge you to ignore any claims
to the contrary.
Respectfully,
John C. Rouman
Professor Emeritus
of Classics
cc to New Hampshire Senators
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