The kingdom of Macedonia that emerged in the 7th century BC extended over today's northern Greece and Macedonia. Its kings Philip II and his son Alexander the Great extended its power in the 4th century BC over not only Greece but also the Persian Empire, including Egypt and lands as far east as the fringes of India.

Macedonia was however defeated by Rome in 197 and 168 BC and annexed as a Roman province in 146 BC. When the Roman Empire split into west and east in 395 AD, Macedonia came under the rule of distant Byzantium that could not prevent the massive migrations of pagan Slavs in the 6th and 7th centuries.

The long waves of penetration of the Slavs towards the end of the 7th century AD resulted in an entirely different situation - Macedonia acquired new inhabitants and became a Slav territory. The Sclavinia was their first form of social organization and structure. Then they fell under the Byzantine and Bulgarian empires. Following the fall of the Bulgarian Empire and the decline of the Byzantine Empire, Samuil, a skilled military leader and statesman, established the first Macedonian state (976-1018). Samuil's Empire comprised the whole of Macedonia, Thessaly, Epirus, Albania and the former coastal Sclaviniae of Duklja, Travunja, Zahumlje and the Neretva region, and also Serbia (t.e. Rashka) and a considerable part of Bulgaria. In this large empire, the most numerous subjects were the Macedonian Slavs, the Slavs in Greece and Peloponnesus, and only then Bulgarians, followed by Serbs, Croats and finally Romaioi (Byzantines), Albanians and Vlachs.

Conquered by the Ottoman Turkish army in the first half of the 15th century, Macedonia remained a part of the Ottoman Empire for nearly half a millennium, during which it gained a substantial Turkish minority. After the revival of Greek, Serbian and Bulgarian statehood in the 19th century, Macedonia became a focus of the national ambitions of all three governments who divided Macedonia among themselves during the First and Second Balkan Wars (1912-13).