No, you are pretty much right. Our national identity is our ancient (not just the cultural - more recent poets for example are not that prominent in our daily pride-talk, and more recent events like the civil war are comfortably omitted when we talk about "Greece") history. So there is a lot in stake for us with those matters.
However I would disagree with the "Macedonian barbarian" note you made: Alexander was educated by Aristoteles and he was elected as the main greek general in the war against the barbarians (Persians) by the rest of the greeks.