Greece did not "survive to the modern day." The nation-state of Greece is entirely a modern creation. Its borders were established by war and diplomacy in the 19th and early 20th centuries. At no previous point in history was there ever any single country of Greece.

What modern Greek nationalism taps into is the notion of a common Greek identity (separate from any unified Greek state), which we can detect as early as the Archaic period (ca. 750-500 BC). Homer already uses various collective nouns to refer to the Greeks: Achaians, Danaans, Argives, and on one or two occasions, the one they would eventually settle on: Hellenes. Around the time of the Persian Wars, Herodotos spoke of "the same blood and common shrines," as well as mutually intelligible dialects, customs, and stories. It is fair to say that the Ancient Greek world was more than just a collection of tiny disconnected states; even if it always remained politically fragmented and internally divided, it perceived itself as a genealogical and cultural unity. This sense of unity was greatly reinforced by the cultural and political capital that came with Greek identity in the Hellenistic period (323-31 BC). Greek was the language of education and power, so everybody wanted to be Greek, and the Greeks wanted to guard their identity against those who sought to benefit from it.

Macedonian domination of this Greek world was short-lived. It lasted for little more than a generation, from Philip's victory at Chaironeia in 338 BC to the liberation of Athens by Antigonos and Demetrios in 307 BC (though other dates could be chosen for the end point). Macedon remained a powerful player for another century and a half, but its wars against various coalitions of Greek states backed by other Hellenistic kingdoms were never a foregone conclusion. The Greeks continued to resist what they saw as oppressive foreign domination from each of these kingdoms, even if they were often forced or tempted to court them and seek their support.

The kingdom of Macedonia was dissolved by Rome in 167 BC, and even though it had a brief resurgence in the following decades, it would never reemerge as an independent kingdom. Its territory, like that of the city-states and federations of the Greek world, was reshaped into a number of puppet states and eventually absorbed into the Roman provincial system.

There is little reason for those who identify as Greek in more modern times to fight for a resurgence of Macedonian power. In any case, modern Greek nationalism emerged in large part as a resistance movement against Ottoman domination, and such movements tend to appeal more to a tradition of "soft" (cultural) power and inherent strength than to one of military supremacy. Instead of trying to revive a historical state that saw the Greek world at its most powerful, the modern nationalist movement sought ties with the cultural Greekness that had once dominated the life of Mediterranean courts and intellectual centres. This also allowed them to appeal for help to Western Europeans, who idolised Ancient Greek cultural achievements and believed that helping the modern Greeks might contribute to their resurgence. The great majority of the features of Ancient Greek culture obviously did not survive two thousand years of change, but some could be reconstituted, reintroduced or reimagined in order to provide the modern idea of Greekness with venerable ancient roots.

Even though the modern nation-state of Greece is fundamentally different from anything that ever existed before, it consciously and deliberately appeals to Antiquity as its ancestor, to the point where people may get the impression that Ancient Greece "survived to this day." Such is the power of national myths.