109-562: The Cypria ( / ˈ s ɪ p r i . ə / ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Κύπρια Kúpria ; Latin : Cypria ) is a lost epic poem of ancient Greek literature , which has been attributed to Stasinus and was quite well known in classical antiquity and fixed in a received text, but which subsequently was lost to view. It was part of the Epic Cycle , which told the entire history of the Trojan War in epic hexameter verse. The story of
218-477: A hecatomb , a sacrifice of 100 oxen, if he won Helen, but forgot about it and earned her wrath. Menelaus inherited Tyndareus' throne of Sparta with Helen as his queen when her brothers, Castor and Pollux , became gods, and when Agamemnon married Helen's sister Clytemnestra and took back the throne of Mycenae. Paris, under the guise of a supposed diplomatic mission, went to Sparta to get Helen and bring her back to Troy. Before Helen could look up to see him enter
327-577: A basis for coinages: anthropology , photography , telephony , isomer , biomechanics , cinematography , etc. Together with Latin words , they form the foundation of international scientific and technical vocabulary ; for example, all words ending in -logy ('discourse'). There are many English words of Greek origin . Greek is an independent branch of the Indo-European language family. The ancient language most closely related to it may be ancient Macedonian , which, by most accounts,
436-406: A better hunter than she. The only way to appease Artemis, he said, was to sacrifice Iphigenia , who was either the daughter of Agamemnon and Clytemnestra, or of Helen and Theseus entrusted to Clytemnestra when Helen married Menelaus. Agamemnon refused, and the other commanders threatened to make Palamedes commander of the expedition. According to some versions, Agamemnon relented and performed
545-461: A co-commander, which he was granted. The last commander to arrive was Achilles , who was then 15 years old. Following a sacrifice to Apollo , a snake slithered from the altar to a sparrow's nest in a plane tree nearby. It ate the mother and her nine chicks, then was turned to stone. Calchas interpreted this as a sign that Troy would fall in the tenth year of the war. When the Achaeans left for
654-461: A digression tells Menelaus how Epopeus was destroyed after seducing the daughter of Lycus , the story of Oedipus , the madness of Heracles , and the story of Theseus and Ariadne . In gathering the leaders, they detect Odysseus ' feigned madness. The assembled leaders offer ill-omened sacrifice at Aulis , where the prophet Calchas warns the Greeks that the war will last ten years. They reach
763-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in
872-560: A faster, more convenient cursive writing style with the use of ink and quill . The Greek alphabet consists of 24 letters, each with an uppercase ( majuscule ) and lowercase ( minuscule ) form. The letter sigma has an additional lowercase form (ς) used in the final position of a word: In addition to the letters, the Greek alphabet features a number of diacritical signs : three different accent marks ( acute , grave , and circumflex ), originally denoting different shapes of pitch accent on
981-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near
1090-545: A foul smell; on Odysseus's advice, the Atreidae ordered Philoctetes to stay on Lemnos . Medon took control of Philoctetes's men. While landing on Tenedos, Achilles killed king Tenes , son of Apollo, despite a warning by his mother that if he did so he would be killed himself by Apollo. From Tenedos, Agamemnon sent an embassy to the Priam king of Troy composed of Menelaus and Odysseus, asking for Helen's return. The embassy
1199-770: A prize, and Agamemnon Chryseis . Then follow the death of Palamedes, the plan of Zeus to relieve the Trojans by detaching Achilles from the Hellenic confederacy, and a catalogue of the Trojan allies. The Cypria was considered to be a lesser work than Homer 's two masterpieces: Aristotle criticised it for its lack of narrative cohesion and focus. It was rather a catalogue of events than a unified story. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ )
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#17327652220381308-541: A woman so that he would not have to go to war, but, according to one story, they blew a horn, and Achilles revealed himself by seizing a spear to fight intruders, rather than fleeing. According to another story, they disguised themselves as merchants bearing trinkets and weaponry, and Achilles was marked out from the other women for admiring weaponry instead of clothes and jewellery. Pausanias said that, according to Homer, Achilles did not hide in Skyros, but rather conquered
1417-578: Is abridged from that in the Cypria , which was known to contain in its final book a list of the Trojan allies. In current critical editions only about fifty lines survive of the Cypria' s original text, quoted by others. For the content we are almost entirely dependent on a prose summary of the Cyclic epics contained in the Chrestomathy attributed to an unknown "Proclus" (possibly to be identified with
1526-804: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout
1635-773: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system
1744-479: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During
1853-553: Is attributed to the 6th century BC Sicilian poet Stesichorus , while for Homer the Helen in Troy was one and the same. The ship then landed in Sidon . Paris, fearful of getting caught, spent some time there and then sailed to Troy. Paris' abduction of Helen had several precedents. Io was taken from Mycenae, Europa was taken from Phoenicia , Jason took Medea from Colchis , and
1962-877: Is given by the Bibliotheca that differs somewhat but agrees in numbers. Some scholars have claimed that Homer's catalogue is an original Bronze Age document, possibly the Achaean commander's order of operations. Others believe it was a fabrication of Homer. The second book of the Iliad also lists the Trojan allies , consisting of the Trojans themselves, led by Hector, and various allies listed as Dardanians led by Aeneas, Zeleians , Adrasteians , Percotians , Pelasgians , Thracians , Ciconian spearmen, Paionian archers, Halizones , Mysians, Phrygians , Maeonians , Miletians , Lycians led by Sarpedon and Carians . Nothing
2071-647: Is known from a summary included in Proclus ' Chrestomathy . The authorship of the Cyclic Epics is uncertain. It is generally thought that the poems were written down in the 7th and 6th century BC , after the composition of the Homeric poems, though it is widely believed that they were based on earlier traditions. Both the Homeric epics and the Epic Cycle take origin from oral tradition . Even after
2180-526: Is left behind in Lemnos . Here, too, Achilles quarrels with Agamemnon. A first landing at the Troad is repulsed by the Trojans, and Protesilaus is killed by Hector . Achilles then kills Cycnus , the son of Poseidon , and drives the Trojans back. The Greeks take up their dead and send envoys to the Trojans demanding the surrender of Helen and the treasure. The Trojans refusing, they first attempt an assault upon
2289-561: Is now accepted by most scholars. The historicity of the Trojan War remains an open question. Many scholars believe that there is a historical core to the tale, though this may simply mean that the Homeric stories are a fusion of various tales of sieges and expeditions by Mycenaean Greeks during the Bronze Age . Those who believe that the stories of the Trojan War are derived from a specific historical conflict usually date it to
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#17327652220382398-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to
2507-477: Is said of the Trojan language ; the Carians are specifically said to be barbarian-speaking , and the allied contingents are said to have spoken many languages, requiring orders to be translated by their individual commanders. The Trojans and Achaeans in the Iliad share the same religion, same culture and the enemy heroes speak to each other in the same language, though this could be dramatic effect. Philoctetes
2616-814: Is sometimes called aljamiado , as when Romance languages are written in the Arabic alphabet. Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in Greek: Transcription of the example text into Latin alphabet : Article 1 of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in English: Proto-Greek Mycenaean Ancient Koine Medieval Modern Trojan War On
2725-526: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around
2834-763: Is still used internationally for the writing of Ancient Greek . In Greek, the question mark is written as the English semicolon, while the functions of the colon and semicolon are performed by a raised point (•), known as the ano teleia ( άνω τελεία ). In Greek the comma also functions as a silent letter in a handful of Greek words, principally distinguishing ό,τι ( ó,ti , 'whatever') from ότι ( óti , 'that'). Ancient Greek texts often used scriptio continua ('continuous writing'), which means that ancient authors and scribes would write word after word with no spaces or punctuation between words to differentiate or mark boundaries. Boustrophedon , or bi-directional text,
2943-650: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with
3052-466: Is usually credited as Zeus' daughter, and sometimes Nemesis is credited as her mother. Helen had scores of suitors , and her father was unwilling to choose one for fear the others would retaliate violently. Finally, one of the suitors, Odysseus of Ithaca, proposed a plan to solve the dilemma. In exchange for Tyndareus' support of his own suit towards Penelope , he suggested that Tyndareus require all of Helen's suitors to promise that they would defend
3161-471: The 12th or 11th century BC , often preferring the dates given by Eratosthenes , 1194–1184 BC, which roughly correspond to archaeological evidence of a catastrophic burning of Troy VII , and the Late Bronze Age collapse . The events of the Trojan War are found in many works of Greek literature and depicted in numerous works of Greek art . There is no single, authoritative text which tells
3270-454: The Caucasus , that, like his father Cronus, he would be overthrown by one of his sons. Another prophecy stated that a son of the sea-nymph Thetis, with whom Zeus fell in love after gazing upon her in the oceans off the Greek coast, would become greater than his father. For one or both of these reasons, either upon Zeus' orders or because she wished to please Hera, who had raised her, Thetis
3379-486: The Cypria comes chronologically at the beginning of the Epic Cycle, and is followed by that of the Iliad ; the composition of the two was apparently in the reverse order. The poem comprised eleven books of verse in epic dactylic hexameters . The Cypria , in the written form in which it was known in classical Greece , was probably composed in the late seventh century BCE, but there is much uncertainty. The Cyclic Poets, as
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3488-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It
3597-502: The Homeric epics also apply to the Cypria . Many or all of the stories in the Cypria were known to the composer(s) of the Iliad and Odyssey . The Cypria , in presupposing an acquaintance with the events of the Homeric poem, in the received view thus formed a kind of introduction to the Iliad though there is an overlap in events from the death of Palamedes , including the catalogue of Trojan allies. J. Marks observes that "Indeed,
3706-561: The Iliad (Books II – XXIII) describes a period of four days and two nights in the tenth year of the decade-long siege of Troy; the Odyssey describes the journey home of Odysseus , one of the war's heroes. Other parts of the war are described in a cycle of epic poems , which have survived through fragments. Episodes from the war provided material for Greek tragedy and other works of Greek literature, and for Roman poets including Virgil and Ovid . The ancient Greeks believed that Troy
3815-516: The Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ), but little definitive evidence has been found. In addition, Albanian has also been considered somewhat related to Greek and Armenian, and it has been proposed that they all form a higher-order subgroup along with other extinct languages of the ancient Balkans; this higher-order subgroup is usually termed Palaeo-Balkan , and Greek has a central position in it. Linear B , attested as early as
3924-596: The Peloponnese , the Dodecanese islands, Crete, and Ithaca, comprising 1186 pentekonters , ships with 50 rowers. Thucydides says that according to tradition there were about 1200 ships, and that the Boeotian ships had 120 men, while Philoctetes ' ships only had the fifty rowers, these probably being maximum and minimum. These numbers would mean a total force of 70,000 to 130,000 men. Another catalogue of ships
4033-544: The Styx , the river that runs to the underworld , making him invulnerable wherever he was touched by the water. Because she had held him by the heel, it was not entirely immersed during the bathing and thus the heel remained mortal and vulnerable to injury (hence the expression " Achilles' heel " for an isolated weakness). He grew up to be the greatest of all mortal warriors. After Calchas' prophecy, Thetis hid Achilles in Skyros at
4142-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in
4251-419: The 2nd-century AD grammarian Eutychius Proclus , or else with an otherwise unknown 5th-century grammarian). Many other passing references give further minor indications of the poem's storyline. What follows embeds reports of known content of the Cypria in a retelling of the known events leading up to the anger of Achilles. The poem narrates the origins of the Trojan War and its first events. It begins with
4360-470: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into
4469-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit
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4578-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than
4687-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in
4796-547: The Greek side: On the Trojan side: The Trojan War was a legendary conflict in Greek mythology that took place around the 12th or 13th century BC. The war was waged by the Achaeans ( Greeks ) against the city of Troy after Paris of Troy took Helen from her husband Menelaus , king of Sparta . The war is one of the most important events in Greek mythology, and it has been narrated through many works of Greek literature , most notably Homer 's Iliad . The core of
4905-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow
5014-685: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community
5123-469: The Trojan War circulated. In later ages playwrights , historians , and other intellectuals would create works inspired by the Trojan War. The three great tragedians of Athens , Aeschylus , Sophocles and Euripides , wrote a number of dramas that portray episodes from the Trojan War. Among Roman writers the most important is the 1st century BC poet Virgil; in Book 2 of his Aeneid , Aeneas narrates
5232-474: The Trojan princess Hesione had been taken by Heracles, who gave her to Telamon of Salamis . According to Herodotus , Paris was emboldened by these examples to steal himself a wife from Greece, and expected no retribution, since there had been none in the other cases. According to Homer, Menelaus and his ally, Odysseus, travelled to Troy, where they unsuccessfully sought to recover Helen by diplomatic means. Menelaus then asked Agamemnon to help him enforce
5341-548: The Trojans Hector and Paris, the city fell to the ruse of the Trojan Horse . The Achaeans slaughtered the Trojans, except for some of the women and children whom they kept or sold as slaves and desecrated the temples, thus earning the gods' wrath. Few of the Achaeans returned safely to their homes and many founded colonies in distant shores. The Romans later traced their origin to Aeneas, Aphrodite's son and one of
5450-489: The Trojans, who was said to have led the surviving Trojans to Italy . The following summary of the Trojan War follows the order of events as given in Proclus' summary, along with the Iliad , Odyssey , and Aeneid , supplemented with details drawn from other authors. According to Greek mythology, Zeus had become king of the gods by overthrowing his father Cronus ; Cronus in turn had overthrown his father Uranus . Zeus
5559-404: The acute during the late 20th century, and it has only been retained in typography . After the writing reform of 1982, most diacritics are no longer used. Since then, Greek has been written mostly in the simplified monotonic orthography (or monotonic system), which employs only the acute accent and the diaeresis. The traditional system, now called the polytonic orthography (or polytonic system),
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#17327652220385668-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of
5777-527: The apple. They submitted the judgment to a shepherd they encountered tending his flock. Each of the goddesses promised the young man a boon in return for his favour: power, wisdom, or love. The youth—in fact Paris, a Trojan prince who had been raised in the countryside—chose love, and awarded the apple to Aphrodite. As his reward, Aphrodite caused Helen, the Queen of Sparta, and most beautiful of all women, to fall in love with Paris. The judgement of Paris earned him
5886-506: The city of Teuthras in Mysia and sack it in error for Ilium: Telephus comes to the city's rescue and is wounded by Achilles . The fleet scattered by storm, Achilles puts in at Skyros and marries Deidameia , the daughter of Lycomedes , then heals Telephus, so that he might be their guide to Ilium. When the Achaeans have been mustered a second time at Aulis, Agamemnon is persuaded by Calchas to sacrifice his daughter Iphigenia to appease
5995-438: The city, and then lay waste the country round about. Achilles desires to see Helen, and Aphrodite and Thetis contrive a meeting between them. The Achaeans next desire to return home, but are restrained by Achilles, who afterwards drives off the cattle of Aeneas, sacks neighbouring cities, and kills Troilus . Patroclus carries away Lycaon to Lemnos and sells him as a slave, and out of the spoils Achilles receives Briseis as
6104-408: The composition of the Iliad , Odyssey , and the Cyclic Epics, the myths of the Trojan War were passed on orally in many genres of poetry and through non-poetic storytelling. Events and details of the story that are only found in later authors may have been passed on through oral tradition and could be as old as the Homeric poems. Visual art, such as vase painting , was another medium in which myths of
6213-513: The court of King Lycomedes , where he was disguised as a girl. At a crucial point in the war, she assists her son by providing weapons divinely forged by Hephaestus (see below ). The most beautiful woman in the world was Helen, one of the daughters of Tyndareus , King of Sparta. Her mother was Leda , who had been either raped or seduced by Zeus in the form of a swan. Accounts differ over which of Leda's four children, two pairs of twins, were fathered by Zeus and which by Tyndareus. However, Helen
6322-666: The decision of Zeus to relieve the Earth of the burden of population through war, a decision with familiar Mesopotamian parallels. The war of the Seven against Thebes ensues. The Cypria described the wedding of Peleus and Thetis ; in the Judgement of Paris among the goddesses Athena , Hera , and Aphrodite : Paris awards the prize for beauty to Aphrodite, and as a prize is awarded Helen , wife of Menelaus . Then Paris builds his ships at Aphrodite's suggestion, and Helenus foretells
6431-403: The downfall of Troy. After bathing in the spring of Ida, the goddesses appeared to him naked, either for the sake of winning or at Paris' request. Paris was unable to decide among them, so the goddesses resorted to bribes. Athena offered Paris wisdom, skill in battle, and the abilities of the greatest warriors; Hera offered him political power and control of all of Asia ; and Aphrodite offered him
6540-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of
6649-469: The entire events of the war. Instead, the story is assembled from a variety of sources, some of which report contradictory versions of the events. The most important literary sources are the two epic poems traditionally credited to Homer, the Iliad and the Odyssey , composed sometime between the 9th and 6th centuries BC. Each poem narrates only a part of the war. The Iliad covers a short period in
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#17327652220386758-618: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute
6867-424: The fairest"). The apple was claimed by Hera, Athena, and Aphrodite. They quarrelled bitterly over it, and none of the other gods would venture an opinion favouring one, for fear of earning the enmity of the other two. Eventually, Zeus ordered Hermes to lead the three goddesses to Paris, a prince of Troy, who, unaware of his ancestry, was being raised as a shepherd on Mount Ida , because of a prophecy that he would be
6976-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in
7085-488: The future to him, and Aphrodite orders Aeneas to sail with him, while Cassandra prophesies the outcome. In Lacedaemon the Trojans are entertained by the sons of Tyndareus , Castor and Pollux , and by Menelaus, who then sets sail for Crete, ordering Helen to furnish the guests with all they require. Aphrodite brings Helen and Paris together, and he takes her and her dowry back to his home of Troy with an episode at Sidon , which Paris and his men successfully storm. In
7194-458: The goddess Artemis and obtain safe passage for the ships, after he offends her by killing a stag. Iphigeneia is fetched as though for marriage with Achilles. Artemis, however, snatches her away, substituting a deer on the altar, and transports her to the land of the Tauri , making her immortal. Next they sail as far as Tenedos , where while they are feasting, Philoctetes is bitten by a snake and
7303-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn
7412-591: The interior of Asia Minor. Reinforcements continued to come until the very end. The Achaeans controlled only the entrance to the Dardanelles, and Troy and her allies controlled the shortest point at Abydos and Sestos and communicated with allies in Europe. Achilles and Ajax were the most active of the Achaeans, leading separate armies to raid lands of Trojan allies. According to Homer, Achilles conquered 11 cities and 12 islands. According to Apollodorus, he raided
7521-558: The ire of both Hera and Athena, and when Helen left her husband, Menelaus, the Spartan king, for Paris of Troy, Menelaus called upon all the kings and princes of Greece to wage war upon Troy. Menelaus' brother Agamemnon , king of Mycenae , led an expedition of Achaean troops to Troy and besieged the city for ten years because of Paris' insult. After the deaths of many heroes, including the Achaeans Achilles and Ajax , and
7630-516: The island, as part of the Trojan War. The Achaean forces first gathered at Aulis . All the suitors sent their forces except King Cinyras of Cyprus. Though he sent breastplates to Agamemnon and promised to send 50 ships, he sent only one real ship, led by the son of Mygdalion, and 49 ships made of clay. Idomeneus was willing to lead the Cretan contingent in Mycenae's war against Troy, but only as
7739-486: The junction would be seamless if the Kypria simply ended with the death of Palamedes." The title Cypria , associating the epic with Cyprus , demanded some explanation: the epic was said in one ancient tradition to have been given by Homer as a dowry to his son-in-law, a Stasinus of Cyprus mentioned in no other context; there was apparently an allusion to this in a lost Nemean ode by Pindar . Some later writers repeated
7848-584: The last year of the siege of Troy, while the Odyssey concerns Odysseus's return to his home island of Ithaca following the sack of Troy and contains several flashbacks to particular episodes in the war. Other parts of the Trojan War were told in the poems of the Epic Cycle , also known as the Cyclic Epics: the Cypria , Aethiopis , Little Iliad , Iliou Persis , Nostoi , and Telegony . Though these poems survive only in fragments, their content
7957-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write
8066-430: The love of the most beautiful woman in the world, Helen of Sparta. Paris awarded the apple to Aphrodite, and, after several adventures, returned to Troy, where he was recognised by his royal family. Peleus and Thetis bore a son, whom they named Achilles. It was foretold that he would either die of old age after an uneventful life, or die young in a battlefield and gain immortality through poetry. Furthermore, when Achilles
8175-399: The main narrative, and therefore as likely to be "early and integral". Eight years after the storm had scattered them, the fleet of more than a thousand ships was gathered again. When they had all reached Aulis, the winds ceased. The prophet Calchas stated that the goddess Artemis was punishing Agamemnon for killing either a sacred deer or a deer in a sacred grove, and boasting that he was
8284-412: The marriage of Helen, regardless of whom he chose. The suitors duly swore the required oath on the severed pieces of a horse, although not without a certain amount of grumbling. Tyndareus chose Menelaus. Menelaus was a political choice on her father's part. He had wealth and power. He had humbly not petitioned for her himself, but instead sent his brother Agamemnon on his behalf. He had promised Aphrodite
8393-411: The meantime Castor and Pollux, while stealing the cattle of Idas and Lynceus , are caught and killed: Zeus gives them immortality that they share every other day. Iris informs Menelaus, who returns to plan an expedition against Ilium with his brother Agamemnon . They set out to assemble the former suitors of Helen, who had sworn an oath to defend the rights of whichever one won her hand. Nestor in
8502-640: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek
8611-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and
8720-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks
8829-479: The oath of Helen's suitors, which was to defend her marriage, regardless of which suitor was chosen. Agamemnon agreed, and sent emissaries to all the Achaean kings and princes to call them to observe their oath and retrieve Helen. Since Menelaus's wedding, Odysseus had married Penelope and fathered a son, Telemachus . In order to avoid the war, he feigned madness and sowed his fields with salt. Palamedes outwitted him by placing Telemachus, then an infant, in front of
8938-536: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It
9047-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as
9156-515: The palace, she was shot with an arrow from Eros , otherwise known as Cupid , and fell in love with Paris when she saw him, as promised by Aphrodite. Menelaus had left for Crete to bury his uncle, Crateus. According to one account, Hera, still jealous over the judgement of Paris, sent a storm. The storm caused the lovers to land in Egypt, where the gods replaced Helen with a likeness of her made of clouds, Nephele . The myth of Helen being switched
9265-526: The plough's path. Odysseus turned aside, unwilling to kill his son, so revealing his sanity and forcing him to join the war. According to Homer, however, Odysseus supported the military adventure from the beginning, and travelled the region with Pylos ' king, Nestor , to recruit forces. At Skyros, Achilles had an affair with the king's daughter Deidamia , resulting in a child, Neoptolemus . Odysseus, Telamonian Ajax, and Achilles' tutor Phoenix went to retrieve Achilles. Achilles' mother disguised him as
9374-407: The sack of Troy. Traditionally, the Trojan War arose from a sequence of events beginning with a quarrel between the goddesses Hera , Athena , and Aphrodite . Eris , the goddess of discord, was not invited to the wedding of Peleus and Thetis , and so arrived bearing a gift: a golden apple , inscribed "for the fairest". Each of the goddesses claimed to be the "fairest", and the rightful owner of
9483-482: The sacrifice, but others claim that he sacrificed a deer in her place, or that at the last moment, Artemis took pity on the girl, and took her to be a maiden in one of her temples, substituting a lamb. Hesiod says that Iphigenia became the goddess Hecate . The Achaean forces are described in detail in the Catalogue of Ships , in the second book of the Iliad . They consisted of 28 contingents from mainland Greece,
9592-473: The sale of Lycaon to Lemnos or the kitting out of Achilles with Briseis and Agamemnon with Chryseis ". A comparison can be made with the Aethiopis , also lost, but which even in its quoted fragments is more independent of the Iliad as text. The stories contained in the Cypria , on the other hand, were fixed much earlier than that, and the same problems of dating oral traditions associated with
9701-480: The story. It did at least serve to explain why the Cypria was attributed by some to Homer and by others to Stasinus. Others, however, ascribed the poem to Hegesias (or Hegesinus) of Salamis in Cyprus or to Cyprias of Halicarnassus (see Cyclic Poets ). It is possible that the " Trojan Battle Order " (the list of Trojans and their allies, of Iliad 2.816–876, which forms an appendix to the Catalogue of Ships )
9810-437: The stressed vowel; the so-called breathing marks ( rough and smooth breathing ), originally used to signal presence or absence of word-initial /h/; and the diaeresis , used to mark the full syllabic value of a vowel that would otherwise be read as part of a diphthong. These marks were introduced during the course of the Hellenistic period. Actual usage of the grave in handwriting saw a rapid decline in favor of uniform usage of
9919-441: The translator of Homerica Hugh G. Evelyn-White noted, "were careful not to trespass upon ground already occupied by Homer ," one of the reasons for dating the final, literary form of Cypria as post-Homeric, in effect a " prequel ". "The author of the Kypria already regarded the Iliad as a text. Any reading of the Kypria will show it preparing for events for (specifically) the Iliad in order to refer back to them, for instance
10028-476: The war is the least developed among surviving sources, which prefer to talk about events in the last year of the war. After the initial landing the army was gathered in its entirety again only in the tenth year. Thucydides deduces that this was due to lack of money. They raided the Trojan allies and spent time farming the Thracian peninsula. Troy was never completely besieged, thus it maintained communications with
10137-426: The war, they did not know the way, and accidentally landed in Mysia , ruled by King Telephus , son of Heracles, who had led a contingent of Arcadians to settle there. In the battle, Achilles wounded Telephus, who had killed Thersander . Because the wound would not heal, Telephus asked an oracle, "What will happen to the wound?" The oracle responded, "he that wounded shall heal". The Achaean fleet then set sail and
10246-451: The wound must be able to heal it. Pieces of the spear were scraped off onto the wound, and Telephus was healed. Telephus then showed the Achaeans the route to Troy. Some scholars have regarded the expedition against Telephus and its resolution as a derivative reworking of elements from the main story of the Trojan War, but it has also been seen as fitting the story-pattern of the "preliminary adventure" that anticipates events and themes from
10355-464: Was Heracles' friend, and because he lit Heracles's funeral pyre when no one else would, he received Heracles' bow and arrows. He sailed with seven ships full of men to the Trojan War, where he was planning on fighting for the Achaeans. They stopped either at Chryse Island for supplies, or in Tenedos , along with the rest of the fleet. Then Philoctetes was bitten by a snake. The wound festered and had
10464-574: Was a distinct dialect of Greek itself. Aside from the Macedonian question, current consensus regards Phrygian as the closest relative of Greek, since they share a number of phonological, morphological and lexical isoglosses , with some being exclusive between them. Scholars have proposed a Graeco-Phrygian subgroup out of which Greek and Phrygian originated. Among living languages, some Indo-Europeanists suggest that Greek may be most closely related to Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian ) or
10573-568: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of
10682-557: Was also used in Ancient Greek. Greek has occasionally been written in the Latin script , especially in areas under Venetian rule or by Greek Catholics . The term Frankolevantinika / Φραγκολεβαντίνικα applies when the Latin script is used to write Greek in the cultural ambit of Catholicism (because Frankos / Φράγκος is an older Greek term for West-European dating to when most of (Roman Catholic Christian) West Europe
10791-423: Was betrothed to an elderly human king, Peleus, son of Aeacus . All of the gods were invited to Peleus and Thetis' wedding and brought many gifts, except Eris (the goddess of discord), who was stopped at the door by Hermes , on Zeus' order. Insulted, she threw from the door a gift of her own: a golden apple ( Ancient Greek : το μήλον της έριδος ) on which was inscribed the word καλλίστῃ Kallistē ("To
10900-399: Was first to leap off his ship, he was not the first to land on Trojan soil. Hector killed Protesilaus in single combat, though the Trojans conceded the beach. In the second wave of attacks, Achilles killed Cycnus , son of Poseidon . The Trojans then fled to the safety of the walls of their city. The walls served as sturdy fortifications for defence against the Greeks. The build of the walls
11009-570: Was located near the Dardanelles and that the Trojan War was a historical event of the 13th or 12th century BC . By the mid-19th century AD, both the war and the city were widely seen as non-historical, but in 1868, the German archaeologist Heinrich Schliemann met Frank Calvert , who convinced Schliemann that Troy was at what is now Hisarlık in modern-day Turkey . On the basis of excavations conducted by Schliemann and others, this claim
11118-653: Was meditating marvelous deeds, even to mingle storm and tempest over the boundless earth, and already he was hastening to make an utter end of the race of mortal men, declaring that he would destroy the lives of the demi-gods, that the children of the gods should not mate with wretched mortals, seeing their fate with their own eyes; but that the blessed gods henceforth even as aforetime should have their living and their habitations apart from men. But on those who were born of immortals and of mankind verily Zeus laid toil and sorrow upon sorrow. Zeus came to learn from either Themis or Prometheus , after Heracles had released him from
11227-584: Was nine years old, Calchas had prophesied that Troy could not again fall without his help. A number of sources credit Thetis with attempting to make Achilles immortal when he was an infant. Some of these state that she held him over fire every night to burn away his mortal parts and rubbed him with ambrosia during the day, but Peleus discovered her actions and stopped her. According to some versions of this story, Thetis had already killed several sons in this manner, and Peleus' action therefore saved his son's life. Other sources state that Thetis bathed Achilles in
11336-469: Was not faithful to his wife and sister Hera , and had many relationships from which many children were born. Since Zeus believed that there were too many people populating the earth, he envisioned Momus or Themis , who was to use the Trojan War as a means to depopulate the Earth, especially of his demigod descendants. These can be supported by Hesiod's account: Now all the gods were divided through strife; for at that very time Zeus who thunders on high
11445-576: Was refused. Philoctetes stayed on Lemnos for ten years, which was a deserted island according to Sophocles' tragedy Philoctetes , but according to earlier tradition was populated by Minyans . Calchas had prophesied that the first Achaean to walk on land after stepping off a ship would be the first to die. Thus even the leading Greeks hesitated to land. Finally, Protesilaus , leader of the Phylaceans , landed first. Odysseus had tricked him, in throwing his own shield down to land on, so that while he
11554-464: Was scattered by a storm. Achilles landed in Skyros and married Deidamia. A new gathering was set again in Aulis. Telephus went to Aulis , and either pretended to be a beggar, asking Agamemnon to help heal his wound, or kidnapped Orestes and held him for ransom, demanding the wound be healed. Achilles refused, claiming to have no medical knowledge. Odysseus reasoned that the spear that had inflicted
11663-569: Was so impressive that legend held that they had been built by Poseidon and Apollo during a year of forced service to Trojan King Laomedon . Protesilaus had killed many Trojans but was killed by Hector in most versions of the story, though others list Aeneas, Achates , or Ephorbus as his slayer. The Achaeans buried him as a god on the Thracian peninsula, across the Troäd. After Protesilaus' death, his brother, Podarces , took command of his troops. The Achaeans besieged Troy for nine years. This part of
11772-580: Was under the control of the Frankish Empire ). Frankochiotika / Φραγκοχιώτικα (meaning 'Catholic Chiot') alludes to the significant presence of Catholic missionaries based on the island of Chios . Additionally, the term Greeklish is often used when the Greek language is written in a Latin script in online communications. The Latin script is nowadays used by the Greek-speaking communities of Southern Italy . The Yevanic dialect
11881-673: Was written by Romaniote and Constantinopolitan Karaite Jews using the Hebrew Alphabet . In a tradition, that in modern time, has come to be known as Greek Aljamiado , some Greek Muslims from Crete wrote their Cretan Greek in the Arabic alphabet . The same happened among Epirote Muslims in Ioannina . This also happened among Arabic-speaking Byzantine rite Christians in the Levant ( Lebanon , Palestine, and Syria ). This usage
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