 Complete the following phrase:  After the 3rd century BC, and especially in Roman times, the Macedonians were consistently regarded as Greeks. For example, Polybiuss Acarian character Lyciscus tells the Spartans that they are of the same tribe as the Achaeans and the Macedonians, who should be honoured because throughout nearly their whole lives are ceaselessly engaged in a struggle with the barbarians for the safety of the Greeks. Polybius also used the phrase Macedonia and the rest of Greece, and says that Philip V of Macedon associates himself with the rest of the Greeks. In his text History of Rome, Livy states that the Macedonians, Aetolians and Acarians were all men of the same language. Similar opinions are shared by Arrian, Strabo and Plutarch, who wrote of Aristotle advising Alexander to have regard for the Greeks as for friends and kindred. M. B. Hatzopoulos points out that passages in Arrians text also reveal that the terms Greeks and Macedonians were at times synonymous. For instance, when Alexander the Great held a feast accompanied by Macedonians and Persians, with religious rituals performed by Persian magi and Greek seers, the latter of whom were Macedonians. Any preconceived ethnic differences between Greeks and Macedonians faded soon after the Roman conquest of Macedonia by 148 BC and then the rest of Greece with the defeat of the Achaean League by the Roman Republic at the 