91-495: Asclepius ( / æ s ˈ k l iː p i ə s / ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Ἀσκληπιός Asklēpiós [asklɛːpiós] ; Latin : Aesculapius ) is a hero and god of medicine in ancient Greek religion and mythology . He is the son of Apollo and Coronis , or Arsinoe , or of Apollo alone. Asclepius represents the healing aspect of the medical arts; his daughters, the "Asclepiades", are: Hygieia ("Health, Healthiness"), Iaso (from ἴασις "healing, recovering, recuperation",
182-860: A Bronze Age origin for these creatures of myth. A painted terracotta centaur was found in the "Hero's tomb" at Lefkandi , and by the Geometric period , centaurs figure among the first representational figures painted on Greek pottery. An often-published Geometric period bronze of a warrior face-to-face with a centaur is at the Metropolitan Museum of Art . In Greek art of the Archaic period , centaurs are depicted in three different forms. There are also paintings and motifs on amphorae and Dipylon cups which depict winged centaurs. Centaurs were also frequently depicted in Roman art. One example
273-577: 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 the following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered
364-477: A burial society and dining club that also participated in the Imperial cult . The botanical genus Asclepias (commonly known as milkweed) is named after him and includes the medicinal plant A. tuberosa or "Pleurisy root". Asclepius was depicted on the reverse of the Greek 10,000 drachmas banknote of 1995–2001. At the city of Miletus , archaeologists discovered a cave under the city's theatre which
455-577: 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,
546-650: A bow is referred to as a sagittarius . Jerome's version of the Life of St Anthony the Great , written by Athanasius of Alexandria about the hermit monk of Egypt, was widely disseminated in the Middle Ages; it relates Anthony's encounter with a centaur who challenged the saint, but was forced to admit that the old gods had been overthrown. The episode was often depicted in The Meeting of St Anthony Abbot and St Paul
637-508: 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
728-593: A fierce and valiant race always faithful to the High King Aslan the Lion. In J.K. Rowling 's Harry Potter series, centaurs live in the Forbidden Forest close to Hogwarts , preferring to avoid contact with humans. They live in societies called herds and are skilled at archery, healing, and astrology, but like in the original myths, they are known to have some wild and barbarous tendencies. With
819-456: A fire-breathing dragon on his shoulders, arriving to punish a sinner who has just cursed God. In his Purgatorio , an unseen spirit on the sixth terrace cites the centaurs ("the drunken double-breasted ones who fought Theseus") as examples of the sin of gluttony . C.S. Lewis ' The Chronicles of Narnia series depicts centaurs as the wisest and noblest of creatures. Narnian Centaurs are gifted at stargazing, prophecy, healing, and warfare;
910-417: A funeral pyre to be consumed, but Apollo rescued the child by cutting him from Coronis' womb. According to Delphian tradition, Asclepius was born in the temple of Apollo, with Lachesis acting as a midwife and Apollo relieving the pains of Coronis. Apollo named the child after Coronis' nickname, Aegle. Phoenician tradition maintains that Asclepius was born of Apollo without any woman involved. According to
1001-481: A healer that he surpassed both Chiron and his father, Apollo. Asclepius was therefore able to evade death and to bring others back to life from the brink of death and beyond. This caused an excessive abundance of human beings, and Zeus resorted to killing him to maintain balance in the numbers of the human population. At some point, Asclepius was among those who took part in the Calydonian Boar hunt. Also, he
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#17327826681771092-590: A lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It 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
1183-400: 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 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
1274-459: A mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and 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 ,
1365-489: A proud, elitist group of beings that consider themselves superior to all other creatures. The fourth book also has a variation on the species called an Alcetaur, which is part man, part moose. The myth of the centaur appears in John Updike 's novel The Centaur . The author depicts a rural Pennsylvanian town as seen through the optics of the myth of the centaur. An unknown and marginalized local school teacher, just like
1456-551: A relief by Michelangelo . The most common theory holds that the idea of centaurs came from the first reaction of a non-riding culture, as in the Minoan Aegean world , to nomads who were mounted on horses. The theory suggests that such riders would appear as half-man, half-animal. Bernal Díaz del Castillo reported that the Aztecs also had this misapprehension about Spanish cavalrymen. The Lapith tribe of Thessaly, who were
1547-498: A river of boiling blood in which the violent against their neighbours are immersed, shooting arrows into any who move to a shallower spot than their allotted station. The two poets are treated with courtesy, and Nessus guides them to a ford. In Canto XXIV, in the eighth circle, in Bolgia 7, a ditch where thieves are confined, they meet but do not converse with Cacus (who is a giant in the ancient sources), wreathed in serpents and with
1638-467: A rod wreathed with a snake, which became associated with healing. Another version states that when Asclepius (or in another myth Polyidus ) was commanded to restore the life of Glaucus, he was confined in a secret prison. While pondering on what he should do, a snake crept near his staff. Lost in his thoughts, Asclepius unknowingly killed it by hitting it again and again with his staff. Later, another snake came there with an herb in its mouth, and placed it on
1729-460: 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 the early 19th century that
1820-458: A story about his birth. Asclepius was the son of Apollo and, according to the earliest accounts, a mortal woman named Koronis (Coronis), who was a princess of Tricca in Thessaly. When she displayed infidelity by sleeping with a mortal named Ischys , Apollo found out with his prophetic powers and killed Ischys. Coronis was killed by Artemis for being unfaithful to Apollo and was laid out on
1911-680: A study human skeleton with the skeleton of a Shetland pony , is entitled "Do you believe in Centaurs?". According to the exhibitors, it was meant to mislead students in order to make them more critically aware. Depictions of centaurs in a mythical land located south beyond the world's known continents appear on a map by Urbano Monti from 1587, sometimes called Monti's Planisphere. Centaurs are common in European heraldry, although more frequent in continental than in British arms. A centaur holding
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#17327826681772002-489: A while and taught him many things about medicine. However, like his half-brother, Aristaeus , Asclepius had his formal education under the centaur Chiron who instructed him in the art of medicine. It is said that in return for some kindness rendered by Asclepius, a snake licked Asclepius's ears clean and taught him secret knowledge (to the Greeks snakes were sacred beings of wisdom, healing, and resurrection). Asclepius bore
2093-489: Is a creature from Greek mythology with the upper body of a human and the lower body and legs of a horse that was said to live in the mountains of Thessaly . In one version of the myth, the centaurs were named after Centaurus , and, through his brother Lapithes , were kin to the legendary tribe of the Lapiths . Centaurs are thought of in many Greek myths as being as wild as untamed horses, and were said to have inhabited
2184-683: 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 is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek
2275-727: Is shown as a horse with the torso of a man where the horse's head would be, and is similar to a Greek centaur. A centaur-like half-human, half-equine creature called Polkan appeared in Russian folk art and lubok prints of the 17th–19th centuries. Polkan is originally based on Pulicane , a half-dog from Andrea da Barberino 's poem I Reali di Francia , which was once popular in the Slavonic world in prosaic translations. The extensive Mycenaean pottery found at Ugarit included two fragmentary Mycenaean terracotta figures which have been tentatively identified as centaurs. This finding suggests
2366-1150: 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 Centaur A centaur ( / ˈ s ɛ n t ɔːr , ˈ s ɛ n t ɑːr / SEN -tor, SEN -tar ; Ancient Greek : κένταυρος , romanized : kéntauros ; Latin : centaurus ), occasionally hippocentaur , also called Ixionidae ( Ancient Greek : Ἰξιονίδαι , romanized : Ixionídai , lit. 'sons of Ixion '),
2457-763: 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,
2548-637: Is the pair of centaurs drawing the chariot of Constantine the Great and his family in the Great Cameo of Constantine ( circa AD 314–16), which embodies wholly pagan imagery, and contrasts sharply with the popular image of Constantine as the patron of early Christianity. Centaurs preserved a Dionysian connection in the 12th-century Romanesque carved capitals of Mozac Abbey in the Auvergne . Other similar capitals depict harvesters, boys riding goats (a further Dionysiac theme), and griffins guarding
2639-632: 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 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
2730-562: The British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of 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
2821-657: 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 the objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek
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2912-566: The Gigantes . Philip Jose Farmer 's World of Tiers series (1965) includes centaurs, called Half-Horses or Hoi Kentauroi. His creations address several of the metabolic problems of such creatures—how could the human mouth and nose intake sufficient air to sustain both itself and the horse body and, similarly, how could the human ingest sufficient food to sustain both parts. Brandon Mull 's Fablehaven series features centaurs that live in an area called Grunhold. The centaurs are portrayed as
3003-516: 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
3094-721: The Lamian Pheres , twelve rustic daimones (spirits) of the Lamos river . They were set by Zeus to guard the infant Dionysos , protecting him from the machinations of Hera , but the enraged goddess transformed them into ox-horned Centaurs unrelated to the Cyprian Centaurs. The Lamian Pheres later accompanied Dionysos in his campaign against the Indians. The centaur's half-human, half-horse composition has led many writers to treat them as liminal beings , caught between
3185-652: The United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout 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
3276-522: The caduceus , remains a symbol of medicine today. Those physicians and attendants who served this god were known as the Therapeutae of Asclepius . The etymology of the name is unknown. In his revised version of Frisk's Griechisches etymologisches Wörterbuch ( Greek Etymological Dictionary ), R. S. P. Beekes gives this summary of the different attempts: Beekes suggested a Pre-Greek proto-form *(a)-sklap- . His name may mean "to cut open" from
3367-554: The chalice that held the wine. Centaurs are also shown on a number of Pictish carved stones from north-east Scotland erected in the 8th–9th centuries AD (e.g., at Meigle , Perthshire). Though outside the limits of the Roman Empire , these depictions appear to be derived from Classical prototypes. The John C. Hodges library at The University of Tennessee hosts a permanent exhibit of a "Centaur from Volos " in its library. The exhibit, made by sculptor Bill Willers by combining
3458-468: 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 the ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in
3549-417: 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 the noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However,
3640-566: 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
3731-549: The 3rd millennium BC. In a popular legend associated with Pazhaya Sreekanteswaram Temple in Thiruvananthapuram , the curse of a saintly Brahmin transformed a handsome Yadava prince into a creature having a horse's body and the prince's head, arms, and torso in place of the head and neck of the horse. Kinnaras , another half-man, half-horse mythical creature from Indian mythology , appeared in various ancient texts, arts, and sculptures from all around India . It
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3822-563: The False Prophet to denounce the swindler for future generations. He described Alexander as having a character "made up of lying, trickery, perjury, and malice; [it was] facile, audacious, venturesome, diligent in the execution of its schemes, plausible, convincing, masking as good, and wearing an appearance absolutely opposite to its purpose." In Rome, the College of Aesculapius and Hygia was an association ( collegium ) that served as
3913-544: 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
4004-549: 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
4095-585: The Hermit by the painter Stefano di Giovanni , who was known as "Sassetta". Of the two episodic depictions of the hermit Anthony 's travel to greet the hermit Paul, one is his encounter with the demonic figure of a centaur along the pathway in a wood. Lucretius , in his first-century BC philosophical poem On the Nature of Things , denied the existence of centaurs, based on the differing rates of growth of human and equine anatomies. Specifically, he states that at
4186-421: The Roman version, Apollo, having learned about Coronis' betrayal with the mortal Ischys through his raven Lycius , killed her with his arrows. Before breathing her last, she revealed to Apollo that she was pregnant with his child. He repented his actions and unsuccessfully tried to save her. At last, he removed their son safely from her belly before she was consumed by the fire. In yet another version, Coronis who
4277-404: 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),
4368-425: The age of three years, horses are in the prime of their life while humans at the same age are still little more than babies, making hybrid animals impossible. Centaurs are among the creatures which 14th-century Italian poet Dante placed as guardians in his Inferno . In Canto XII, Dante and his guide Virgil meet a band led by Chiron and Pholus , guarding the bank of Phlegethon in the seventh circle of Hell,
4459-479: 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 the older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from
4550-796: 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 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 ,
4641-441: 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 is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before
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#17327826681774732-420: The dead on Artemis's request, and accepted gold for it. It is the only mention of Asclepius resurrecting the dead. In all other accounts he is said to use his skills simply as a physician. However, Hades accused Asclepius of stealing his subjects and complained to his brother Zeus about it. According to others, Zeus was afraid that Asclepius would teach the art of resurrection to other humans as well. Concerning
4823-528: 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 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
4914-632: The earth by Centaurs wielding rocks and the branches of trees. In her article "The Centaur: Its History and Meaning in Human Culture", Elizabeth Lawrence claims that the contests between the centaurs and the Lapiths typify the struggle between civilization and barbarism. The Centauromachy is most famously portrayed in the metopes of the Parthenon by Phidias and in the Battle of the Centaurs ,
5005-536: The exception of Chiron , the centaurs in Rick Riordan 's Percy Jackson & the Olympians are seen as wild party-goers who use a lot of American slang. Chiron retains his mythological role as a trainer of heroes and is skilled in archery. In Riordan's subsequent series, Heroes of Olympus , another group of centaurs are depicted with more animalistic features (such as horns) and appear as villains, serving
5096-412: 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 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
5187-439: The fate of Asclepius, Ovid writes that "the youth [Asclepius] blasted by ancestral bolts [of Zeus] soars from earth [rising as the constellation Ophiuchus] and flings his hands coiled with double snakes." Later accounts read "The Serpent-Holder. Many astronomers have imagined that he is Aesculapius [Asclepius], whom Jupiter [Zeus], for the sake of Apollo, put among the stars." Asclepius was killed by Zeus, and by Apollo 's request,
5278-667: The fourth century BC. Another famous asclepeion was built approximately a century later on the island of Kos , where Hippocrates , the legendary "father of medicine", may have begun his career. Other asclepieia were situated in Gortys (in Arcadia), and Pergamum in Asia . From the fifth century BC onwards, the cult of Asclepius grew very popular and pilgrims flocked to his healing temples ( Asclepieia ) to be cured of their ills. Ritual purification would be followed by offerings or sacrifices to
5369-411: The god (according to means), and the supplicant would then spend the night in the holiest part of the sanctuary– the abaton (or adyton). Any dreams or visions would be reported to a priest who would prescribe the appropriate therapy by a process of interpretation. Some healing temples also used sacred dogs to lick the wounds of sick petitioners. In honor of Asclepius, a particular type of non-venomous snake
5460-611: The goddess of recuperation from illness), Aceso (from ἄκεσις "healing", the goddess of the healing process), Aegle (the goddess of good health) and Panacea (the goddess of universal remedy). He has several sons as well. He was associated with the Roman/Etruscan god Vediovis and the Egyptian Imhotep . He shared with Apollo the epithet Paean ("the Healer"). The rod of Asclepius , a snake-entwined staff similar to
5551-403: The gods ...". Epidauria (τὰ Ἐπιδαύρια) was a festival at Athens in honour of Asclepius. Some later religious movements claimed links to Asclepius. In the 2nd century AD the controversial miracle-worker Alexander claimed that his god Glycon , a snake with a "head of linen" was an incarnation of Asclepius. The Greek language rhetorician and satirist Lucian produced the work Alexander
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#17327826681775642-508: The head of a dead snake, which soon came back to life. Seeing this, Asclepius used the same herb, which brought Glaucus back. A species of non-venomous pan-Mediterranean serpent, the Aesculapian snake ( Zamenis longissimus ) is named for the god. He was originally called Hepius but received his popular name of Asclepius after he cured Ascles, ruler of Epidaurus who suffered an incurable ailment in his eyes. Asclepius became so proficient as
5733-526: The horse as a totem . A similar theory was incorporated into Mary Renault 's The Bull from the Sea . Though female centaurs, called centaurides or centauresses, are not mentioned in early Greek literature and art, they do appear occasionally in later antiquity. A Macedonian mosaic of the 4th century BC is one of the earliest examples of the centauress in art. Ovid also mentions a centauress named Hylonome who committed suicide when her husband Cyllarus
5824-485: The kinsmen of the Centaurs in myth, were described as the inventors of horse-riding by Greek writers. The Thessalian tribes also claimed their horse breeds were descended from the centaurs. Robert Graves (relying on the work of Georges Dumézil , who argued for tracing the centaurs back to the Indian Gandharva ), speculated that the centaurs were a dimly remembered, pre-Hellenic fraternal earth cult who had
5915-449: The language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to 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
6006-467: 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
6097-452: 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 the 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is
6188-465: 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 the infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of
6279-455: The mythological Chiron did for Prometheus, gave up his life for the future of his son who had chosen to be an independent artist in New York. Other hybrid creatures appear in Greek mythology, always with some liminal connection that links Hellenic culture with archaic or non-Hellenic cultures: Also, Additionally, Bucentaur , the name of several historically important Venetian vessels,
6370-568: The nymph Stilbe . In the latter version of the story, Centaurus's twin brother was Lapithes , ancestor of the Lapiths . Another tribe of centaurs was said to have lived on Cyprus . According to Nonnus , the Cyprian Centaurs were fathered by Zeus , who, in frustration after Aphrodite had eluded him, spilled his seed on the ground of that land. Unlike those of mainland Greece, the Cyprian centaurs were ox-horned. There were also
6461-431: The owner of goats and the guard dogs found the child. As he came near, he saw lightning that flashed from the child, and thinking of it to be a sign of the divine, he left the child alone. Asclepius was later taken by Apollo. According to Strabo and other traditions, the birthplace of Asclepius is considered to be Tricca (modern Trikala city in Thessaly ). Apollo named the rescued baby "Asclepius" and reared him for
6552-590: The region of Magnesia and Mount Pelion in Thessaly, the Foloi oak forest in Elis , and the Malean peninsula in southern Laconia . Centaurs are subsequently featured in Roman mythology , and were familiar figures in the medieval bestiary. They remain a staple of modern fantastic literature. The Greek word kentauros is generally regarded as being of obscure origin. The etymology from ken + tauros , 'piercing bull',
6643-643: The regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek 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
6734-519: The rest of the Lapith women on the day of Hippodamia's marriage to Pirithous , who was the king of the Lapithae and a son of Ixion. Theseus , a hero and founder of cities, who happened to be present, threw the balance in favour of the Lapiths by assisting Pirithous in the battle. The Centaurs were driven off or destroyed. Another Lapith hero, Caeneus , who was invulnerable to weapons, was beaten into
6825-437: 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
6916-495: The two natures they embody in contrasting myths; they are both the embodiment of untamed nature, as in their battle with the Lapiths (their kin), and conversely, teachers like Chiron . The Centaurs are best known for their fight with the Lapiths who, according to one origin myth, would have been cousins to the centaurs. The battle, called the Centauromachy, was caused by the centaurs' attempt to carry off Hippodamia and
7007-480: Was a euhemerist suggestion in Palaephatus ' rationalizing text on Greek mythology, On Incredible Tales (Περὶ ἀπίστων), which included mounted archers from a village called Nephele eliminating a herd of bulls that were the scourge of Ixion's kingdom. Another possible related etymology can be "bull-slayer". The centaurs were usually said to have been born of Ixion and Nephele . As the story goes, Nephele
7098-462: Was a cloud made into the likeness of Hera in a plot to trick Ixion into revealing his lust for Hera to Zeus . Ixion seduced Nephele and from that relationship centaurs were created. Another version, however, makes them children of Centaurus , a man who mated with the Magnesian mares. Centaurus was either himself the son of Ixion and Nephele (inserting an additional generation) or of Apollo and
7189-574: 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
7280-415: Was already pregnant with Apollo's child, had to accompany her father to Peloponnesos . She had kept her pregnancy hidden from her father. In Epidaurus , she bore a son and exposed him on a mountain called Tittheion (from τίτθη "wet nurse", τιτθεύω "to suckle, breastfeed"). The child was given milk by one of the goats that pastured about the mountain, and was guarded by the watch-dog of the herd. Aresthanas,
7371-557: 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
7462-427: Was associated with Asclepius cult. At Hyperteleatum , Hypsi and Hyettus there were temples of Asclepius. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized : Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized : Hellēnikḗ ) is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It
7553-556: 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 is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and
7644-496: Was killed in the war with the Lapiths. The Kalibangan cylinder seal , dated to be around 2600–1900 BC, found at the site of Indus-Valley civilization shows a battle between men in the presence of centaur-like creatures. Other sources claim the creatures represented are actually half human and half tigers, later evolving into the Hindu Goddess of War . These seals are also evidence of Indus-Mesopotamia relations in
7735-544: Was often used in healing rituals, and these snakes—the Aesculapian Snakes —slithered around freely on the floor in dormitories where the sick and injured slept. These snakes were introduced at the founding of each new temple of Asclepius throughout the classical world. The original Hippocratic Oath began with the invocation "I swear by Apollo the Physician and by Asclepius and by Hygieia and Panacea and by all
7826-490: Was one of the Argonauts . Asclepius was married to Epione , with whom he had five daughters: Hygieia , Panacea , Aceso , Iaso , and Aegle , and three sons: Machaon , Podaleirios and Telesphoros . He also sired a son, Aratus , with Aristodeme . Asclepius once started bringing back to life the dead people like Tyndareus, Capaneus, Glaucus, Hymenaeus, Lycurgus and others. Others say he brought Hippolytus back from
7917-485: 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 the epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in
8008-561: Was subsequently immortalized as a star. The most ancient and the most prominent asclepeion (or healing temple) according to the geographer of the 1st century BC, Strabo, was situated in Trikala . The 1st century AD Pool of Bethesda , described in the Gospel of John , chapter 5, was found by archaeologists in 1964 to be part of an asclepeion. One of the most famous temples of Asclepius was at Epidaurus in north-eastern Peloponnese , dated to
8099-580: 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
8190-637: 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 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
8281-673: 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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