I’m taking a political theory class for uni. The professor was talking about Polybius and in the background info mentioned that the Greeks had a large empire under Alexander the Great.
I have always understood that Macedon was a separate empire from the Greek city states. Even in a class on Ancient Greece that I took, it was talked about as if it was different.
Is this a case of me misunderstanding what I was taught previously or is it a case of world history is complicated?
Macedon was a separate nation, but studies have shown they spoke a dialect of Ancient Greek. Ethnically, they were probably Greek, closer to the Dorian Greeks that came from the North into Greece sometime between 1200-950 BC. They were perhaps more 'barbaric' than their 'civilized' cousins in Athens but they were Greek. It is similar to modern day Cyprus; they are ethnically Greek, speak their own unique dialect of Greek, which even some Greeks have trouble understanding - similar to Pontiac Greek, another unique Greek dialect but almost unintelligible among Modern Greeks - but they consider themselves Cypriots before Greeks.
Alexander the Great conquered the Greek City-States, and all of them - besides Sparta - joined his league, so in one sense the Empire he briefly created was Greek. It was more an Hellenistic Empire than Greek though. It was about the intense spread of Greek Language and Culture, Literature, Art, Architecture . Alexander's Empire crumbled upon his death, but with his successors fighting for control of his Empire, Hellenistic States sprung up like Ptolemaic Egypt, Seleucid Empire but the Hellenistic Period lasted for nearly three hundred years until the last Ptolemy.
I suppose it is easier to simply label it a Greek Empire than Macedonian, because even if they did come from Macedonia, ethnically they were Greeks to at least some degree, and it was Greek ideas they spread with their conquest. Hope that helps a little.
It's...eh, it's Complicated. I commend to your attention the work of u/Iphikrates, specifically these two posts addressing this matter exactly.