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113-558: The first inhabitants on the shore of the current narrow bay were the Greeks as part of the Greek colonization of the Black Sea. The city of Kalos Limen ( Καλός Λιμήν – Lovely Harbor) was founded on this site by Chersonesus in the second half of the 4th century BC. It was one of the important centers of agriculture and trade, among both Greek and Scythian centers. By the middle of

226-486: A cool semi-arid climate ( Köppen BSk ) with very warm summers and cold, though not severe, winters. Precipitation is low, and heaviest in the autumn months when cyclonic lows may produce significant falls. Greeks The Greeks or Hellenes ( / ˈ h ɛ l iː n z / ; Greek : Έλληνες , Éllines [ˈelines] ) are an ethnic group and nation native to Greece , Cyprus , southern Albania , Anatolia , parts of Italy and Egypt , and to

339-475: A Greek state. Herodotus gave a famous account of what defined Greek (Hellenic) ethnic identity in his day, enumerating By Western standards, the term Greeks has traditionally referred to any native speakers of the Greek language , whether Mycenaean , Byzantine or modern Greek . Byzantine Greeks self-identified as Romaioi ("Romans"), Graikoi ("Greeks") and Christianoi ("Christians") since they were

452-531: A bio-genetic affinity and continuity shared between both groups. There is also a direct genetic link between ancient Greeks and modern Greeks. Today, Greeks are the majority ethnic group in the Hellenic Republic , where they constitute 93% of the country's population, and the Republic of Cyprus where they make up 78% of the island's population (excluding Turkish settlers in the occupied part of

565-677: A break during the Greek Dark Ages from which written records are absent (11th- 8th cent. BC, though the Cypriot syllabary was in use during this period). Scholars compare its continuity of tradition to Chinese alone. Since its inception, Hellenism was primarily a matter of common culture and the national continuity of the Greek world is a lot more certain than its demographic. Yet, Hellenism also embodied an ancestral dimension through aspects of Athenian literature that developed and influenced ideas of descent based on autochthony. During

678-530: A common Greek identity. In the historical period, Herodotus identified the Achaeans of the northern Peloponnese as descendants of the earlier, Homeric Achaeans. Homer refers to the "Hellenes" ( / ˈ h ɛ l iː n z / ) as a relatively small tribe settled in Thessalic Phthia , with its warriors under the command of Achilleus . The Parian Chronicle says that Phthia was the homeland of

791-816: A derogatory exonym for the Byzantines who barely used it, mostly in contexts relating to the West, such as texts relating to the Council of Florence , to present the Western viewpoint. Additionally, among the Germanic and the Slavic peoples, the Rhōmaîoi were just called Greeks. There are three schools of thought regarding this Byzantine Roman identity in contemporary Byzantine scholarship : The first considers "Romanity"

904-494: A direct consequence of this situation, Greek-speakers came to play a hugely important role in the Ottoman trading and diplomatic establishment, as well as in the church. Added to this, in the first half of the Ottoman period men of Greek origin made up a significant proportion of the Ottoman army, navy, and state bureaucracy, having been levied as adolescents (along with especially Albanians and Serbs ) into Ottoman service through

1017-615: A law that allowed members of the diaspora to vote in Greek elections; this law was repealed in early 2014. In ancient times, the trading and colonizing activities of the Greek tribes and city states spread the Greek culture, religion and language around the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins, especially in Southern Italy (the so-called " Magna Graecia "), Spain, the south of France and the Black sea coasts . Under Alexander

1130-621: A lesser extent, other countries surrounding the Eastern Mediterranean and Black Sea . They also form a significant diaspora ( omogenia ), with many Greek communities established around the world. Greek colonies and communities have been historically established on the shores of the Mediterranean Sea and Black Sea , but the Greek people themselves have always been centered on the Aegean and Ionian seas, where

1243-625: A matter of course on being recruited through the devshirme —were to be found in Crete ( Cretan Turks ), Greek Macedonia (for example among the Vallahades of western Macedonia ), and among Pontic Greeks in the Pontic Alps and Armenian Highlands . Several Ottoman sultans and princes were also of part Greek origin, with mothers who were either Greek concubines or princesses from Byzantine noble families, one famous example being sultan Selim

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1356-450: A nation in the meaning of an ethnos , defined by possessing Greek culture and having a Greek mother tongue , not by citizenship, race, and religion or by being subjects of any particular state. In ancient and medieval times and to some extent today the Greek term was genos , which also indicates a common ancestry. Greeks and Greek-speakers have used different names to refer to themselves collectively. The term Achaeans (Ἀχαιοί)

1469-658: A number of Rumaiic language schools. The best Rumaiic poet Georgi Kostoprav created a Rumaiic poetic language for his work. Promoting the Rumaiic, as against the Demotic Greek of Greece, was in effect a way of promoting the separate identity of Soviet Greeks versus Greeks in Greece and elsewhere outside the USSR. In the same spirit, A. A. Beletsky created a Cyrillic alphabet for Pontic in 1969. However, official promotion of

1582-630: A part of their historic homelands, Peloponnese , from the Ottoman Empire . The large Greek diaspora and merchant class were instrumental in transmitting the ideas of western romantic nationalism and philhellenism , which together with the conception of Hellenism, formulated during the last centuries of the Byzantine Empire , formed the basis of the Diafotismos and the current conception of Hellenism. The Greeks today are

1695-411: A sense of religious and cultural difference and exclusion (the word barbarian was used by 12th-century historian Anna Komnene to describe non-Greek speakers), a sense of Greek identity and common sense of ethnicity despite the undeniable socio-political changes of the past two millennia. In recent anthropological studies, both ancient and modern Greek osteological samples were analyzed demonstrating

1808-581: A third of the Greek population of the island in 1974, there was also an increase in the number of Greek Cypriots leaving, especially for the Middle East, which contributed to a decrease in population that tapered off in the 1990s. Today more than two-thirds of the Greek population in Cyprus is urban. Around 1990, most Western estimates of the number of ethnic Greeks in Albania were around 200,000 but in

1921-598: A time spanning from the early 5th century BC to the death of Alexander the Great , in 323 BC (some authors prefer to split this period into "Classical", from the end of the Greco-Persian Wars to the end of the Peloponnesian War, and "Fourth Century", up to the death of Alexander). It is so named because it set the standards by which Greek civilization would be judged in later eras. The Classical period

2034-593: Is a Greek dialect that derives from the ancient Ionic Greek dialect and resembles ancient Greek more than the modern "demotic" Greek language. Until recently, the ban on teaching Greek in Soviet schools meant that Pontian was spoken only in a domestic context. Consequently, many Greeks, especially those of the younger generation, speak Russian as their first language. Linguistically, Greeks are far from being unified. In Ukraine alone, there are at least five documented Greek linguistic groups, which are broadly categorized as

2147-504: Is also described as the "Golden Age" of Greek civilization, and its art, philosophy, architecture and literature would be instrumental in the formation and development of Western culture. While the Greeks of the classical era understood themselves to belong to a common Hellenic genos , their first loyalty was to their city and they saw nothing incongruous about warring, often brutally, with other Greek city-states . The Peloponnesian War ,

2260-464: Is likely that one of the factors which contributed to the Mycenaean palatial collapse was linked to raids by groups known in historiography as the " Sea Peoples " who sailed into the eastern Mediterranean around 1180 BC. The Dorian invasion was followed by a poorly attested period of migrations, appropriately called the Greek Dark Ages , but by 800 BC the landscape of Archaic and Classical Greece

2373-577: Is normally modern, Demotic Greek rather than Pontian. Cosmonaut Fyodor Yurchikhin has Greek Ancestry. Close to 35% of the Russian Greeks live in the Caucasian province of Stavropol Krai , mainly Caucasus Greeks and Pontic Greeks . The city of Yessentuki is regarded as the Greek cultural capital of Russia. Many of the famous Greek Russians, like Euclid Kyurdzidis hail from this city where Greeks constitute 5.7% (Up from 5.4% in 1989) of

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2486-679: Is one of the collective names for the Greeks in Homer 's Iliad and Odyssey (the Homeric "long-haired Achaeans" would have been a part of the Mycenaean civilization that dominated Greece from c. 1600 BC until 1100 BC). The other common names are Danaans (Δαναοί) and Argives (Ἀργεῖοι) while Panhellenes (Πανέλληνες) and Hellenes (Ἕλληνες) both appear only once in the Iliad ; all of these terms were used, synonymously, to denote

2599-533: Is possibly derived from the Proto-Indo-European root *ǵerh₂- , "to grow old", more specifically from Graea (ancient city), said by Aristotle to be the oldest in Greece, and the source of colonists for the Naples area. The most obvious link between modern and ancient Greeks is their language, which has a documented tradition from at least the 14th century BC to the present day, albeit with

2712-579: Is the oldest recorded living language and its vocabulary has been the basis of many languages, including English as well as international scientific nomenclature . Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world since the fourth century BC and the New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. The Greeks speak the Greek language , which forms its own unique branch within

2825-733: The Graikoi (Γραικοί) were named Hellenes. Aristotle notes in his Meteorologica that the Hellenes were related to the Graikoi. The English names Greece and Greek are derived, via the Latin Graecia and Graecus , from the name of the Graeci ( Γραικοί , Graikoí ; singular Γραικός , Graikós ), who were among the first ancient Greek tribes to settle southern Italy (the so-called " Magna Graecia "). The term

2938-582: The 2nd millennium BC has to be reconstructed on the basis of the ancient Greek dialects , as they presented themselves centuries later and are therefore subject to some uncertainties. There were at least two migrations, the first being the Ionians and Achaeans , which resulted in Mycenaean Greece by the 16th century BC, and the second, the Dorian invasion , around the 11th century BC, displacing

3051-768: The Arcadocypriot dialects , which descended from the Mycenaean period. Both migrations occur at incisive periods, the Mycenaean at the transition to the Late Bronze Age and the Doric at the Bronze Age collapse . In c. 1600 BC, the Mycenaean Greeks borrowed from the Minoan civilization its syllabic writing system ( Linear A ) and developed their own syllabic script known as Linear B , providing

3164-729: The Bolshevik government - who constituted a large part of the whole - were exposed to a hostile attitude. This was exacerbated due to the participation of a regiment from Greece, numbering 24,000 troops, in Crimea among the forces intervening on the White Russian side in the Civil War of 1919 About 50,000 Greeks emigrated between 1919 and 1924. After 1924 Soviet authorities pressed Greece to repatriate 70,000 Greeks from Russia, although few actually had ancestors who were citizens of

3277-584: The Byzantine Empire , a name not used during its own time ) became increasingly influenced by Greek culture after the 7th century when Emperor Heraclius ( r.   610–641 AD) decided to make Greek the empire's official language. Although the Catholic Church recognized the Eastern Empire's claim to the Roman legacy for several centuries, after Pope Leo III crowned Charlemagne , king of

3390-899: The Byzantine Empire , the Ottoman Balkans , and Pontic Greeks from the Empire of Trebizond and Eastern Anatolia who settled mainly in southern Russia and the South Caucasus in several waves between the mid-15th century and the second Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29. As during the Genocide of the Pontic Greeks , the survivors fled to the Upper Pontus (in the USSR ). In former Soviet republics, about 70% are Greek speakers who are mainly descendants of Pontic Greeks from

3503-641: The Crimean Tatar " Aqmeçit ", which literally means a white mosque . A mosque with a tall white minaret used to exist here. After the Crimean Tatars were forcibly deported in 1944, the settlement was given its present name, which alludes to the settlement's coastal location on the Black Sea . Chornomorske is a peninsula offshore drilling center and base port, and where the company Chornomornaftogaz derives its name. Chornomorske has

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3616-795: The Franks , as the " Roman Emperor " on 25 December 800, an act which eventually led to the formation of the Holy Roman Empire , the Latin West started to favour the Franks and began to refer to the Eastern Roman Empire largely as the Empire of the Greeks ( Imperium Graecorum ). While this Latin term for the ancient Hellenes could be used neutrally, its use by Westerners from the 9th century onwards in order to challenge Byzantine claims to ancient Roman heritage rendered it

3729-468: The Greek language has been spoken since the Bronze Age . Until the early 20th century, Greeks were distributed between the Greek peninsula , the western coast of Asia Minor , the Black Sea coast, Cappadocia in central Anatolia, Egypt , the Balkans , Cyprus, and Constantinople . Many of these regions coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and

3842-755: The Hyperborea ("beyond the North wind ") and its mythical inhabitants, the Hyperboreans, were said to have blissfully lived under eternal sunshine. Medea was a princess of Colchis , modern western Georgia , and was entangled in the myth of Jason and the Golden Fleece . The Amazons , a race of fierce female warriors, were placed by Herodotus in Sarmatia (modern Southern Russia and Southern Ukraine ). In historical times , Greeks have lived in

3955-584: The Indo-European family of languages, the Hellenic . They are part of a group of classical ethnicities, described by Anthony D. Smith as an "archetypal diaspora people". The Proto-Greeks probably arrived at the area now called Greece, in the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula , at the end of the 3rd millennium BC between 2200 and 1900 BC. The sequence of migrations into the Greek mainland during

4068-581: The Indo-Greek and Greco-Bactrian kingdoms, Greco-Buddhism was spreading and Greek missionaries would play an important role in propagating it to China . Further east, the Greeks of Alexandria Eschate became known to the Chinese people as the Dayuan . Between 168 BC and 30 BC, the entire Greek world was conquered by Rome, and almost all of the world's Greek speakers lived as citizens or subjects of

4181-490: The Italian Renaissance . The interest in the Classical Greek heritage was complemented by a renewed emphasis on Greek Orthodox identity, which was reinforced in the late Medieval and Ottoman Greeks' links with their fellow Orthodox Christians in the Russian Empire . These were further strengthened following the fall of the Empire of Trebizond in 1461, after which and until the second Russo-Turkish War of 1828–29 hundreds of thousands of Pontic Greeks fled or migrated from

4294-457: The Pontic Alps and Armenian Highlands to southern Russia and the Russian South Caucasus (see also Greeks in Russia , Greeks in Armenia , Greeks in Georgia , and Caucasian Greeks ). These Byzantine Greeks were largely responsible for the preservation of the literature of the classical era. Byzantine grammarians were those principally responsible for carrying, in person and in writing, ancient Greek grammatical and literary studies to

4407-404: The Pontic Alps region of northeast Anatolia , 29% are Turkish-speaking Greeks ( Urums ) from Tsalka in Georgia , and 1% are Greek speakers from Mariupol in Ukraine . Ukraine's 2001 census counted 91,500 Greeks in Ukraine. In Greek mythology , various contacts with the part of the world that was later named Russia or the Soviet Union are recorded. The area was vaguely described as

4520-429: The Roman Empire , they became secondary to religious considerations, and the renewed empire used Christianity as a tool to support its cohesion and promote a robust Roman national identity. From the early centuries of the Common Era , the Greeks self-identified as Romans ( Greek : Ῥωμαῖοι Rhōmaîoi ). By that time, the name Hellenes denoted pagans but was revived as an ethnonym in the 11th century. During most of

4633-578: The Russian Empire prior to the Russian Revolution , between 150,000 and 200,000 of them within the borders of the present-day Russian Federation . There have been several notable Greeks from Russia like Ioannis Kapodistrias , diplomat of the Russian Empire who became the first head of state of Greece, and the painter Arkhip Kuindzhi . In the early years after the October Revolution of 1917, there were contradictory trends in Soviet governmental policies towards ethnic Greeks. Greeks engaged in trade or other occupations that marked them as class enemies of

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4746-410: The Russian Orthodox Church was, in fact, with few exceptions, held by a Byzantine Greek all the way to the 15th century. One notable such prelate was Isidore of Kiev . With the Fall of Constantinople in the 15th century, there was an exodus of Greeks to Italy and the West but especially to fellow-Christian Orthodox Russia. Between the fall of the Empire of Trebizond to the Ottomans in 1461 and

4859-414: The Second World War (1939–1945), the Greek Civil War (1946–1949), and the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus in 1974. While official figures remain scarce, polls and anecdotal evidence point to renewed Greek emigration as a result of the Greek financial crisis . According to data published by the Federal Statistical Office of Germany in 2011, 23,800 Greeks emigrated to Germany, a significant increase over

4972-427: The Third Rome , positing Moscow as the legitimate successor to Rome and Byzantium. Greeks continued to migrate in the following centuries. Many sought protection in a country with a culture and religion related to theirs. Greek clerics, soldiers and diplomats found employment in Russia and Ukraine while Greek merchants came to make use of privileges that were extended to them in Ottoman-Russian trade. Under Catherine

5085-416: The Treaty of Lausanne was signed between Greece and Turkey in 1923, the two countries agreed to use religion as the determinant for ethnic identity for the purposes of population exchange, although most of the Greeks displaced (over a million of the total 1.5 million) had already been driven out by the time the agreement was signed. The Greek genocide , in particular the harsh removal of Pontian Greeks from

5198-401: The devshirme . Many Ottomans of Greek (or Albanian or Serb) origin were therefore to be found within the Ottoman forces which governed the provinces, from Ottoman Egypt, to Ottomans occupied Yemen and Algeria , frequently as provincial governors. For those that remained under the Ottoman Empire 's millet system , religion was the defining characteristic of national groups ( milletler ), so

5311-429: The exonym "Greeks" ( Rumlar from the name Rhomaioi) was applied by the Ottomans to all members of the Orthodox Church , regardless of their language or ethnic origin. The Greek speakers were the only ethnic group to actually call themselves Romioi , (as opposed to being so named by others) and, at least those educated, considered their ethnicity ( genos ) to be Hellenic. There were, however, many Greeks who escaped

5424-432: The lingua franca rather than Latin . The modern-day Griko community of southern Italy, numbering about 60,000, may represent a living remnant of the ancient Greek populations of Italy. During and after the Greek War of Independence , Greeks of the diaspora were important in establishing the fledgling state, raising funds and awareness abroad. Greek merchant families already had contacts in other countries and during

5537-455: The " Mariupol dialect ", a term derived from the city of Mariupol , a traditional center of this community. Other Greeks in the Crimea speak Tatar , and in regions such as Tsalka in Georgia there are numerous Turkophone Greeks . Greeks were permitted to teach their own language again during Perestroika , and a number of schools are now teaching Greek. Because of their strongly philhellenic sentiments and ambitions to live in Greece, this

5650-430: The 1990s, a majority of them migrated to Greece. The Greek minority of Turkey , which numbered upwards of 200,000 people after the 1923 exchange, has now dwindled to a few thousand, after the 1955 Constantinople Pogrom and other state sponsored violence and discrimination. This effectively ended, though not entirely, the three-thousand-year-old presence of Hellenism in Asia Minor. There are smaller Greek minorities in

5763-430: The 2nd century BC in the Greco-Scythian war, the town had been captured to the Scythians. Although liberated by Pontic intervention by the end of the 2nd century, it again fell under Scythian control by the mid-1st century BC to the early 2nd century AD. Scythian control ended permanently thereafter, possibly owing to Roman intervention. In Russian, the settlement was originally known as Ak-Mechet ( Ак-Мечеть ), from

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5876-408: The 4th century, with some areas such as the southeastern Peloponnese remaining pagan until well into the mid-Byzantine 10th century AD. The region of Tsakonia remained pagan until the ninth century and as such its inhabitants were referred to as Hellenes , in the sense of being pagan, by their Christianized Greek brethren in mainstream Byzantine society. While ethnic distinctions still existed in

5989-482: The Byzantine military, becoming its finest soldiers . In 965 AD there were 16,000 Crimean Greeks in the joint Byzantine and Kievan Rus army which invaded Bulgaria . Subsequently, Byzantine power in the Black Sea region waned, but ties between the two people were strengthened tremendously in cultural and political terms with the baptism of Prince Vladimir of Kievan Rus in 988 and the subsequent Christianization of his realm. The post as Metropolitan bishop of

6102-463: The Caucasus and southern Russia and Ukraine and in the Greek diaspora communities in a number of other countries. Today, most Greeks are officially registered as members of the Greek Orthodox Church . Greeks have greatly influenced and contributed to culture, visual arts, exploration, theatre, literature, philosophy, ethics, politics, architecture, music, mathematics, medicine, science, technology, commerce, cuisine and sports. The Greek language

6215-520: The Eastern Mediterranean areas of ancient Greek colonization . The cultural centers of the Greeks have included Athens , Thessalonica , Alexandria , Smyrna , and Constantinople at various periods. In recent times, most ethnic Greeks live within the borders of the modern Greek state or in Cyprus. The Greek genocide and population exchange between Greece and Turkey nearly ended the three millennia-old Greek presence in Asia Minor. Other longstanding Greek populations can be found from southern Italy to

6328-437: The European cultural revolution, later called the Renaissance. In Greek-inhabited territory itself, Greeks came to play a leading role in the Ottoman Empire , due in part to the fact that the central hub of the empire, politically, culturally, and socially, was based on Western Thrace and Macedonia , both in Northern Greece , and of course was centred on the mainly Greek-populated, former Byzantine capital, Constantinople . As

6441-451: The Great , Russian armies reached the shores of the Black Sea, followed by the foundation of Odessa ( Odesa ) – greatly facilitating the settlement of Greeks, many thousands of whom were settled in the empire’s south under this empress. During the 1828-29 war against the Ottoman Empire and Russian occupation of Erzurum and Gümüşhane many thousands of Pontic Greeks of the highland regions of Eastern Anatolia welcomed or collaborated with

6554-429: The Great Deluge of Deucalion , a land occupied by the Selloi and the "Greeks" who later came to be known as "Hellenes". In the Homeric tradition, the Selloi were the priests of Dodonian Zeus. In the Hesiodic Catalogue of Women , Graecus is presented as the son of Zeus and Pandora II , sister of Hellen the patriarch of the Hellenes. According to the Parian Chronicle , when Deucalion became king of Phthia,

6667-414: The Great's empire and successor states, Greek and Hellenizing ruling classes were established in the Middle East , India and in Egypt . The Hellenistic period is characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization that established Greek cities and kingdoms in Asia and Africa . Under the Roman Empire, easier movement of people spread Greeks across the Empire and in the eastern territories, Greek became

6780-423: The Greek enlightenment, the Greek expression of the Age of Enlightenment , contributed not only in the promotion of education, culture and printing among the Greeks, but also in the case of independence from the Ottomans , and the restoration of the term "Hellene". Adamantios Korais , probably the most important intellectual of the movement, advocated the use of the term "Hellene" (Έλληνας) or "Graikos" (Γραικός) in

6893-448: The Greek state. On the other hand, as with other ethnic nationalities, the early Bolsheviks under Vladimir Lenin and his immediate successors were willing to encourage ethnic culture manifestations of those ready to work within the new revolutionary regime. In this framework, a Rumaiic ( Pontic Greek ) revival occurred in the 1920s. The Soviet administration established a Greek-Rumaiic theater , several magazines and newspapers and

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7006-437: The Greeks were exiled to Kazakhstan , along with the Crimean Tatars . (Some of these Greeks, known as Urums , spoke a variant of the Crimean Tatar language as the mother tongue they adopted during centuries of life in proximity to the Tartars). In a further wave, about 100,000 Pontic Greeks , including 37,000 in the Caucasus area alone, were deported to Central Asia in 1949 during Stalin's post-war deportations . At about

7119-400: The Grim ( r.   1517–1520), whose mother Gülbahar Hatun was a Pontic Greek . The roots of Greek success in the Ottoman Empire can be traced to the Greek tradition of education and commerce exemplified in the Phanariotes . It was the wealth of the extensive merchant class that provided the material basis for the intellectual revival that was the prominent feature of Greek life in

7232-403: The Hellenes and that this name was given to those previously called Greeks ( Γραικοί ). In Greek mythology , Hellen , the patriarch of the Hellenes who ruled around Phthia, was the son of Pyrrha and Deucalion , the only survivors after the Great Deluge . The Greek philosopher Aristotle names ancient Hellas as an area in Epirus between Dodona and the Achelous river, the location of

7345-478: The Homeric tradition of ancient Greece. A distinct Greek identity re-emerged in the 11th century in educated circles and became more forceful after the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade in 1204. In the Empire of Nicaea , a small circle of the elite used the term "Hellene" as a term of self-identification. For example, in a letter to Pope Gregory IX , the Nicaean emperor John III Doukas Vatatzes (r. 1221–1254) claimed to have received

7458-414: The Indo-Greek kingdoms lasted for a few more decades. This age saw the Greeks move towards larger cities and a reduction in the importance of the city-state. These larger cities were parts of the still larger Kingdoms of the Diadochi . Greeks, however, remained aware of their past, chiefly through the study of the works of Homer and the classical authors. An important factor in maintaining Greek identity

7571-472: The Middle Ages, the Byzantine Greeks self-identified as Rhōmaîoi ( Ῥωμαῖοι , "Romans", meaning citizens of the Roman Empire ), a term which in the Greek language had become synonymous with Christian Greeks. The Latinizing term Graikoí (Γραικοί, "Greeks") was also used, though its use was less common, and nonexistent in official Byzantine political correspondence, prior to the Fourth Crusade of 1204. The Eastern Roman Empire (today conventionally named

7684-402: The Mycenaean heritage that survived, the names of the gods and goddesses of Mycenaean Greece (e.g. Zeus , Poseidon and Hades ) became major figures of the Olympian Pantheon of later antiquity. The ethnogenesis of the Greek nation is linked to the development of Pan-Hellenism in the 8th century BC. According to some scholars, the foundational event was the Olympic Games in 776 BC, when

7797-416: The Old Greek Diaspora . In the Eastern part of the Crimea the Bosporan kingdom was founded with Panticapaeum (modern Kerch ) as its capital. The Greeks had to fight off Scythian and Sarmatian (Alan) raiders who prevented them from progressing inland but retained the shores which became the wheat basket of the ancient Greek world. Following the conquests of Alexander the Great and the Roman conquest

7910-423: The Roman Empire. Despite their military superiority, the Romans admired and became heavily influenced by the achievements of Greek culture, hence Horace 's famous statement: Graecia capta ferum victorem cepit ("Greece, although captured, took its wild conqueror captive"). In the centuries following the Roman conquest of the Greek world, the Greek and Roman cultures merged into a single Greco-Roman culture. In

8023-467: The Rumaiic did not go unchallenged. In the Πανσυνδεσμιακή Σύσκεψη (All-Union Conference) of 1926, organized by the Greek-Russian intelligentsia , it was decided that demotic should be the official language of the community. Different sources referring to this period differ in putting the emphasis on the positive or the negative aspects of the 1920s Soviet policy. The Greek Autonomous District in Southern Russia existed in years 1930-1939. Its capital

8136-569: The Soviet Union sought to emigrate to Greece in the final years before the dissolution of the Soviet Union . In 1990, 22,500 Pontian Greeks left the Soviet Union , a dramatic increase from previous years. Figures for 1991 indicate that about 1,800 left every month, primarily from Central Asia and Georgia. Today most Greeks in the former USSR speak Russian , with a significant number speaking their traditional Pontic Greek . Pontian

8249-460: The Soviet Union. Greek Orthodox churches, Greek-language schools and other cultural institutions were closed. During the " Grecheskaya Operatsiya " (Греческая Операция), i.e., Greek Operation , launched on Stalin's orders in December 1937, there were mass arrests of Greeks, especially but not only wealthy and self-employed, affecting some 50,000 Greeks out of an overall community of 450,000. In

8362-643: The West during the 15th century, giving the Italian Renaissance a major boost. The Aristotelian philosophical tradition was nearly unbroken in the Greek world for almost two thousand years, until the Fall of Constantinople in 1453. To the Slavic world, the Byzantine Greeks contributed by the dissemination of literacy and Christianity. The most notable example of the later was the work of

8475-761: The apostles of the Slavs. Many Greeks remained in Crimea after the Bosporan kingdom fell to the Huns and the Goths , and Chersonesos became part of the Byzantine Empire . Orthodox monasteries continued to function, with strong links with the monasteries of Mount Athos in northern Greece. Relations with the people from the Kievan Rus principalities were stormy at first, leading to several short lived conflicts , but gradually raiding turned to trading and many also joined

8588-603: The city of Athens. Greeks from Cyprus have a similar history of emigration, usually to the English-speaking world because of the island's colonization by the British Empire . Waves of emigration followed the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, while the population decreased between mid-1974 and 1977 as a result of emigration, war losses, and a temporary decline in fertility. After the ethnic cleansing of

8701-406: The country). Greek populations have not traditionally exhibited high rates of growth; a large percentage of Greek population growth since Greece's foundation in 1832 was attributed to annexation of new territories, as well as the influx of 1.5 million Greek refugees after the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey. About 80% of the population of Greece is urban, with 28% concentrated in

8814-689: The creation of colonies and trade routes along the way. While the Alexandrian empire did not survive its creator's death intact, the cultural implications of the spread of Hellenism across much of the Middle East and Asia were to prove long lived as Greek became the lingua franca , a position it retained even in Roman times . Many Greeks settled in Hellenistic cities like Alexandria , Antioch and Seleucia . The Hellenistic civilization

8927-400: The descendants of Greeks and Romans. Before the establishment of the modern Greek nation-state, the link between ancient and modern Greeks was emphasized by the scholars of Greek Enlightenment especially by Rigas Feraios. In his "Political Constitution", he addresses to the nation as "the people descendant of the Greeks". The modern Greek state was created in 1829, when the Greeks liberated

9040-766: The disturbances many set up home around the Mediterranean (notably Marseilles in France , Livorno in Italy , Alexandria in Egypt ), Russia ( Odesa and Saint Petersburg ), and Britain (London and Liverpool) from where they traded, typically in textiles and grain. Businesses frequently comprised the extended family, and with them they brought schools teaching Greek and the Greek Orthodox Church . As markets changed and they became more established, some families grew their operations to become shippers , financed through

9153-438: The early 1990s. A new attempt to preserve a sense of ethnic Rumaiic identity started in the mid-1980s. The Ukrainian scholar Andriy Biletsky created a new Slavonic alphabet but, though a number of writers and poets make use of this alphabet , the population of the region rarely uses it. Greek diaspora Constantinople and Asia Minor : Africa : Other regions : Other groups : Other languages Many Greeks in

9266-516: The ethnic Greek population decreased in many provinces due to emigration, in the Stavropol province it actually rose from 26,828 in 1989 to 34,078 in 2002. A significant ethnic Greek population also exists in nearby Krasnodar Krai . Yanis Kanidis , a man who rescued children in the Beslan hostage crisis , was of Greek descent. In recent years, many Russian émigrés of Greek descent who had left in

9379-589: The first and oldest written evidence of Greek . The Mycenaeans quickly penetrated the Aegean Sea and, by the 15th century BC, had reached Rhodes , Crete , Cyprus and the shores of Asia Minor . Around 1200 BC, the Dorians , another Greek-speaking people, followed from Epirus . Older historical research often proposed Dorian invasion caused the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization , but this narrative has been abandoned in all contemporary research. It

9492-427: The gift of royalty from Constantine the Great, and put emphasis on his "Hellenic" descent, exalting the wisdom of the Greek people. After the Byzantines recaptured Constantinople, however, in 1261, Rhomaioi became again dominant as a term for self-description and there are few traces of Hellene (Έλληνας), such as in the writings of George Gemistos Plethon , who abandoned Christianity and in whose writings culminated

9605-573: The half century and more leading to the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821. Not coincidentally, on the eve of 1821, the three most important centres of Greek learning were situated in Chios , Smyrna and Aivali , all three major centres of Greek commerce. Greek success was also favoured by Greek domination in the leadership of the Eastern Orthodox church. The movement of

9718-484: The idea of a common Hellenism among the Greek tribes was first translated into a shared cultural experience and Hellenism was primarily a matter of common culture. The works of Homer (i.e. Iliad and Odyssey ) and Hesiod (i.e. Theogony ) were written in the 8th century BC, becoming the basis of the national religion, ethos, history and mythology. The Oracle of Apollo at Delphi was established in this period. The classical period of Greek civilization covers

9831-529: The immediate aftermath of the World War II German invasion of the Soviet Union, ethnic Greeks were included in the 1941–1942 "preventive" deportations of Soviet citizens of "enemy nationality", together with ethnic Germans, Finns, Romanians, Italians, and others - even though Greece fought on the Allied side. The Greeks then suffered under Nazi occupation and when Crimea was liberated in 1944, most of

9944-584: The invading Russian imperial army. They followed the Russians back into southern Russia and Georgia following the withdrawal from northeastern Anatolia and were resettled by the Russian authorities in southern Georgia and southern Russia and Ukraine. These Greeks are often referred to as Greek Pontians of Russia, while those of Georgia and the South Caucasus province of Kars Oblast are usually referred to as Caucasus Greeks . There were over 500,000 Greeks in

10057-408: The large scale civil war between the two most powerful Greek city-states Athens and Sparta and their allies , left both greatly weakened. Most of the feuding Greek city-states were, in some scholars' opinions, united by force under the banner of Philip 's and Alexander the Great 's Pan-Hellenic ideals, though others might generally opt, rather, for an explanation of " Macedonian conquest for

10170-466: The later years of the Eastern Roman Empire, areas such as Ionia and Constantinople experienced a Hellenic revival in language, philosophy, and literature and on classical models of thought and scholarship. This revival provided a powerful impetus to the sense of cultural affinity with ancient Greece and its classical heritage. Throughout their history, the Greeks have retained their language and alphabet , certain values and cultural traditions, customs,

10283-720: The local Greek community, notably with the aid of the Ralli or Vagliano Brothers . With economic success, the Diaspora expanded further across the Levant , North Africa, India and the USA. In the 20th century, many Greeks left their traditional homelands for economic reasons resulting in large migrations from Greece and Cyprus to the United States , Great Britain , Australia , Canada , Germany , and South Africa , especially after

10396-435: The mode of self-identification of the subjects of a multi-ethnic empire at least up to the 12th century, where the average subject identified as Roman; a perennialist approach, which views Romanity as the medieval expression of a continuously existing Greek nation; while a third view considers the eastern Roman identity as a pre-modern national identity. The Byzantine Greeks' essential values were drawn from both Christianity and

10509-471: The number is closer to just below five million. Integration, intermarriage, and loss of the Greek language influence the self-identification of the Greek diaspora ( omogenia ). Important centres include New York City , Chicago , Boston , Los Angeles , Sydney , Melbourne , London , Toronto , Montreal , Vancouver , Auckland , and Sao Paulo . In 2010, the Hellenic Parliament introduced

10622-464: The place of Romiós , that was seen negatively by him. The relationship between ethnic Greek identity and Greek Orthodox religion continued after the creation of the modern Greek nation-state in 1830. According to the second article of the first Greek constitution of 1822, a Greek was defined as any native Christian resident of the Kingdom of Greece , a clause removed by 1840. A century later, when

10735-554: The political heirs of imperial Rome , the descendants of their classical Greek forebears and followers of the Apostles ; during the mid-to-late Byzantine period (11th–13th century), a growing number of Byzantine Greek intellectuals deemed themselves Hellenes although for most Greek-speakers, "Hellene" still meant pagan. On the eve of the Fall of Constantinople the Last Emperor urged his soldiers to remember that they were

10848-675: The present Black Sea region of Russia and the Commonwealth of Independent States since long before the foundation of Kievan Rus' (Kyivan Rus'), the first Russian state. The Greek name of Crimea was Tauris, and in mythology it was the home of the tribes who took Iphigenia prisoner in Euripides' play Iphigenia in Tauris . Trade relations with the Scythians led to the foundation of the first outposts between 750 and 500 BC during

10961-550: The previous year. By comparison, about 9,000 Greeks emigrated to Germany in 2009 and 12,000 in 2010. Greeks in Russia Greeks have been present in what is now southern Russia from the 6th century BC; those settlers assimilated into the indigenous populations. The vast majority of contemporary Russia's Greek minority populations are descendants of Medieval Greek refugees, traders, and immigrants (including farmers, miners, soldiers, and churchmen/bureaucrats) from

11074-612: The provinces maintained active trading relations with the interior for centuries. Black Sea trade became more important for Constantinople as Egypt and Syria were lost to Islam in the 7th century. Greek missionaries were sent among the steppe people, like the Alans and Khazars . Most notable were the Byzantine Greek monks Saints Cyril and Methodius from Thessalonica in Greek Macedonia , who later became known as

11187-535: The religious sphere, this was a period of profound change. The spiritual revolution that took place, saw a waning of the old Greek religion, whose decline beginning in the 3rd century BC continued with the introduction of new religious movements from the East. The cults of deities like Isis and Mithra were introduced into the Greek world. Greek-speaking communities of the Hellenized East were instrumental in

11300-670: The rest of the Balkan countries, the Levant and the Black Sea states, remnants of the Old Greek Diaspora (pre-19th century). The total number of Greeks living outside Greece and Cyprus today is a contentious issue. Where census figures are available, they show around three million Greeks outside Greece and Cyprus. Estimates provided by the SAE – World Council of Hellenes Abroad put the figure at around seven million worldwide. According to George Prevelakis of Sorbonne University ,

11413-543: The sake of conquest" or at least conquest for the sake of riches, glory and power and view the "ideal" as useful propaganda directed towards the city-states. In any case, Alexander's toppling of the Achaemenid Empire , after his victories at the battles of the Granicus , Issus and Gaugamela , and his advance as far as modern-day Pakistan and Tajikistan , provided an important outlet for Greek culture, via

11526-426: The same time, the last major immigration occurred in the opposite direction, of Greeks going to Russia and the Soviet Union. After the end of the Greek civil war the defeated Communist supporters became political refugees. Over 10,000 of them ended up in the Soviet Union. After the de-Stalinization , Greeks were gradually allowed to return to their homes in the Black Sea region. Many have emigrated to Greece since

11639-538: The second Russo-Turkish War of 1828-29 there were several waves of refugee Pontic Greeks from the eastern Black Sea coastal districts, the Pontic Alps , and Eastern Anatolia to southern Russia and Georgia (see also Greeks in Georgia and Caucasus Greeks ). Together with the marriage of Greek Princess Sophia and Tsar Ivan III of Russia , this provided a historical precedent for the Muscovite political theory of

11752-599: The second-class status of Christians inherent in the Ottoman millet system, according to which Muslims were explicitly awarded senior status and preferential treatment. These Greeks either emigrated, particularly to their fellow Orthodox Christian protector, the Russian Empire , or simply converted to Islam, often only very superficially and whilst remaining crypto-Christian . The most notable examples of large-scale conversion to Turkish Islam among those today defined as Greek Muslims —excluding those who had to convert as

11865-697: The secular tendency in the interest in the classical past. However, it was the combination of Orthodox Christianity with a specifically Greek identity that shaped the Greeks' notion of themselves in the empire's twilight years. In the twilight years of the Byzantine Empire, prominent Byzantine personalities proposed referring to the Byzantine Emperor as the "Emperor of the Hellenes". These largely rhetorical expressions of Hellenic identity were confined within intellectual circles, but were continued by Byzantine intellectuals who participated in

11978-484: The southern shore area of the Black Sea, contemporaneous with and following the failed Greek Asia Minor Campaign , was part of this process of Turkification of the Ottoman Empire and the placement of its economy and trade, then largely in Greek hands under ethnic Turkish control. The terms used to define Greekness have varied throughout history but were never limited or completely identified with membership to

12091-408: The spread of early Christianity in the 2nd and 3rd centuries, and Christianity's early leaders and writers (notably Saint Paul ) were generally Greek-speaking, though none were from Greece proper. However, Greece itself had a tendency to cling to paganism and was not one of the influential centers of early Christianity: in fact, some ancient Greek religious practices remained in vogue until the end of

12204-540: The total population. Greeks constitute 3% (2.9% in 1989) of the population in Zheleznovodsk City and 4.7% in Inozemtsevo (5.1% in 1989). But the majority of the Greeks live in the rural regions of Stavropol and major concentrations can be found in the rural districts of Andropovsky (3.3% in 2002, 2.1% in 1989), Mineralovodsky (3.8% in 2002, 3.4% in 1989) and Predgorny (16.0% in 2002, 12.2% in 1989). While

12317-516: The two Byzantine Greek brothers, the monks Saints Cyril and Methodius from the port city of Thessalonica , capital of the theme of Thessalonica , who are credited today with formalizing the first Slavic alphabet . Following the Fall of Constantinople on 29 May 1453, many Greeks sought better employment and education opportunities by leaving for the West , particularly Italy , Central Europe , Germany and Russia . Greeks are greatly credited for

12430-515: Was Krymskaya . The policy underwent a sharp reversal in 1937. At the time of the Moscow Trials and the purges targeting various groups and individuals who aroused Joseph Stalin 's often unbased suspicions, policies towards ethnic Greeks became unequivocally harsh and hostile. Kostoprav and many other Rumaiics and Urums were killed, and a large percentage of the population was detained and transported to Gulags or deported to remote parts of

12543-519: Was contact with barbarian (non-Greek) peoples, which was deepened in the new cosmopolitan environment of the multi-ethnic Hellenistic kingdoms. This led to a strong desire among Greeks to organize the transmission of the Hellenic paideia to the next generation. Greek science, technology and mathematics are generally considered to have reached their peak during the Hellenistic period. In

12656-416: Was discernible. The Greeks of classical antiquity idealized their Mycenaean ancestors and the Mycenaean period as a glorious era of heroes, closeness of the gods and material wealth. The Homeric Epics (i.e. Iliad and Odyssey ) were especially and generally accepted as part of the Greek past and it was not until the time of Euhemerism that scholars began to question Homer's historicity. As part of

12769-412: Was the next period of Greek civilization, the beginnings of which are usually placed at Alexander's death. This Hellenistic age , so called because it saw the partial Hellenization of many non-Greek cultures, extending all the way into India and Bactria , both of which maintained Greek cultures and governments for centuries. The end is often placed around conquest of Egypt by Rome in 30 BC, although

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