On the Greek side:
56-724: On the Trojan side: The Achaeans or Akhaians ( / ə ˈ k iː ən z / ; Ancient Greek : Ἀχαιοί , romanized : Akhaioí , "the Achaeans" or "of Achaea ") is one of the names in Homer which is used to refer to the Greeks collectively. The term "Achaean" is believed to be related to the Hittite term Ahhiyawa and the Egyptian term Ekwesh which appear in texts from
112-588: A Pre-Greek *Akaya- . In Homer , the term Achaeans is one of the primary terms used to refer to the Greeks as a whole. It is used 598 times in the Iliad , often accompanied by the epithet "long-haired". Other common names used in Homer are Danaans ( / ˈ d æ n eɪ . ən z / ; Δαναοί Danaoi ; used 138 times in the Iliad ) and Argives ( / ˈ ɑːr ɡ aɪ v z / ; Ἀργεῖοι Argeioi ; used 182 times in
168-543: A pitch accent . In Modern Greek, all vowels and consonants are short. Many vowels and diphthongs once pronounced distinctly are pronounced as /i/ ( iotacism ). Some of the stops and glides in diphthongs have become fricatives , and the pitch accent has changed to a stress accent . Many of the changes took place in the Koine Greek period. The writing system of Modern Greek, however, does not reflect all pronunciation changes. The examples below represent Attic Greek in
224-477: A lack of contemporaneous evidence. Several theories exist about what Hellenic dialect groups may have existed between the divergence of early Greek-like speech from the common Proto-Indo-European language and the Classical period. They have the same general outline but differ in some of the detail. The only attested dialect from this period is Mycenaean Greek , but its relationship to the historical dialects and
280-419: A lesser degree. Pamphylian Greek , spoken in a small area on the southwestern coast of Anatolia and little preserved in inscriptions, may be either a fifth major dialect group, or it is Mycenaean Greek overlaid by Doric, with a non-Greek native influence. Regarding the speech of the ancient Macedonians diverse theories have been put forward, but the epigraphic activity and the archaeological discoveries in
336-507: A list of the cities and regions of the Tanaju is also mentioned in this inscription; among the cities listed are Mycenae, Nauplion , Kythera , Messenia and the Thebaid (region of Thebes ). During the 5th year of Pharaoh Merneptah , a confederation of Libyan and northern peoples is supposed to have attacked the western delta. Included amongst the ethnic names of the repulsed invaders is
392-550: A prefix /e-/, called the augment . This was probably originally a separate word, meaning something like "then", added because tenses in PIE had primarily aspectual meaning. The augment is added to the indicative of the aorist, imperfect, and pluperfect, but not to any of the other forms of the aorist (no other forms of the imperfect and pluperfect exist). The two kinds of augment in Greek are syllabic and quantitative. The syllabic augment
448-608: A separate historical stage, though its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek , and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek . There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek; Attic Greek developed into Koine. Ancient Greek was a pluricentric language , divided into many dialects. The main dialect groups are Attic and Ionic , Aeolic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric , many of them with several subdivisions. Some dialects are found in standardized literary forms in literature , while others are attested only in inscriptions. There are also several historical forms. Homeric Greek
504-630: A standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance . This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language, which are the best-attested periods and considered most typical of Ancient Greek. From the Hellenistic period ( c. 300 BC ), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek , which is regarded as
560-510: A vowel or /n s r/ ; final stops were lost, as in γάλα "milk", compared with γάλακτος "of milk" (genitive). Ancient Greek of the classical period also differed in both the inventory and distribution of original PIE phonemes due to numerous sound changes, notably the following: The pronunciation of Ancient Greek was very different from that of Modern Greek . Ancient Greek had long and short vowels ; many diphthongs ; double and single consonants; voiced, voiceless, and aspirated stops ; and
616-520: Is a literary form of Archaic Greek (derived primarily from Ionic and Aeolic) used in the epic poems , the Iliad and the Odyssey , and in later poems by other authors. Homeric Greek had significant differences in grammar and pronunciation from Classical Attic and other Classical-era dialects. The origins, early form and development of the Hellenic language family are not well understood because of
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#1732766193329672-418: Is added to stems beginning with consonants, and simply prefixes e (stems beginning with r , however, add er ). The quantitative augment is added to stems beginning with vowels, and involves lengthening the vowel: Some verbs augment irregularly; the most common variation is e → ei . The irregularity can be explained diachronically by the loss of s between vowels, or that of the letter w , which affected
728-659: Is an early form of Greek ; the earlier debate was summed up in 1984 by Hans G. Güterbock of the Oriental Institute . More recent research based on new readings and interpretations of the Hittite texts, as well as of the material evidence for Mycenaean contacts with the Anatolian mainland, came to the conclusion that Ahhiyawa referred to the Mycenaean world, or at least to a part of it. Scholarship up to 2011
784-666: Is called 'East Greek'. Arcadocypriot apparently descended more closely from the Mycenaean Greek of the Bronze Age. Boeotian Greek had come under a strong Northwest Greek influence, and can in some respects be considered a transitional dialect, as exemplified in the poems of the Boeotian poet Pindar who wrote in Doric with a small Aeolic admixture. Thessalian likewise had come under Northwest Greek influence, though to
840-448: Is considered by some linguists to have been closely related to Greek . Among Indo-European branches with living descendants, Greek is often argued to have the closest genetic ties with Armenian (see also Graeco-Armenian ) and Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan ). Ancient Greek differs from Proto-Indo-European (PIE) and other Indo-European languages in certain ways. In phonotactics , ancient Greek words could end only in
896-467: Is the Tawagalawa Letter written by an unnamed Hittite king (most probably Hattusili III ) of the empire period (14th–13th century BC) to the king of Ahhiyawa , treating him as an equal and implying Miletus ( Millawanda ) was under his control. It also refers to an earlier " Wilusa episode" involving hostility on the part of Ahhiyawa . Ahhiya(wa) has been identified with the Achaeans of
952-680: Is the set of dialects of Ancient Greek spoken mainly in Boeotia ; in Thessaly ; in the Aegean island of Lesbos ; and in the Greek colonies of Aeolis in Anatolia and adjoining islands. The Aeolic dialect shows many archaisms in comparison to the other Ancient Greek dialects ( Arcadocypriot , Attic , Ionic , and Doric varieties), as well as many innovations. Aeolic Greek is widely known as
1008-708: The Greek region of Macedonia during the last decades has brought to light documents, among which the first texts written in Macedonian , such as the Pella curse tablet , as Hatzopoulos and other scholars note. Based on the conclusions drawn by several studies and findings such as Pella curse tablet , Emilio Crespo and other scholars suggest that ancient Macedonian was a Northwest Doric dialect , which shares isoglosses with its neighboring Thessalian dialects spoken in northeastern Thessaly . Some have also suggested an Aeolic Greek classification. The Lesbian dialect
1064-529: The Iliad ) while Panhellenes ( Πανέλληνες Panhellenes, "All of the Greeks") and Hellenes ( / ˈ h ɛ l iː n z / ; Ἕλληνες Hellenes ) both appear only once ; All of the aforementioned terms were used synonymously to denote a common Greek identity. In some English translations of the Iliad , the Achaeans are simply called the Greeks throughout. Later, by the Archaic and Classical periods,
1120-656: The Late Bronze Age and are believed to refer to the Mycenaean civilization or some part of it. In the historical period, the term fell into disuse as a general term for Greek people, and was generally reserved for inhabitants of the region of Achaea , a region in the north-central part of the Peloponnese . The city-states of this region later formed a confederation known as the Achaean League , which
1176-598: The Trojan War and the city of Wilusa with the legendary city of Troy (note the similarity with early Greek Ϝιλιον Wilion , later Ἴλιον Ilion , the name of the acropolis of Troy). Emil Forrer , a Swiss Hittitologist who worked on the Boghazköy tablets in Berlin, said the Achaeans of pre-Homeric Greece were directly associated with the term "Land of Ahhiyawa" mentioned in the Hittite texts. His conclusions at
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#17327661933291232-501: The present , future , and imperfect are imperfective in aspect; the aorist , present perfect , pluperfect and future perfect are perfective in aspect. Most tenses display all four moods and three voices, although there is no future subjunctive or imperative. Also, there is no imperfect subjunctive, optative or imperative. The infinitives and participles correspond to the finite combinations of tense, aspect, and voice. The indicative of past tenses adds (conceptually, at least)
1288-1031: The 5th century BC. Ancient pronunciation cannot be reconstructed with certainty, but Greek from the period is well documented, and there is little disagreement among linguists as to the general nature of the sounds that the letters represent. /oː/ raised to [uː] , probably by the 4th century BC. Greek, like all of the older Indo-European languages , is highly inflected. It is highly archaic in its preservation of Proto-Indo-European forms. In ancient Greek, nouns (including proper nouns) have five cases ( nominative , genitive , dative , accusative , and vocative ), three genders ( masculine , feminine , and neuter ), and three numbers (singular, dual , and plural ). Verbs have four moods ( indicative , imperative , subjunctive , and optative ) and three voices (active, middle, and passive ), as well as three persons (first, second, and third) and various other forms. Verbs are conjugated through seven combinations of tenses and aspect (generally simply called "tenses"):
1344-454: The Achaeans as compared to the dark locks of "Mediterranean" Poseidon , on the basis of hints in Homer, has been rejected by some. The contrasting belief that "Achaeans", as understood through Homer, is "a name without a country", an ethnos created in the Epic tradition , has modern supporters among those who conclude that "Achaeans" were redefined in the 5th century BC, as contemporary speakers of Aeolic Greek . Karl Beloch suggested there
1400-410: The Achaeans instead migrated from "southern Asia Minor to Greece, probably settling first in lower Thessaly " probably prior to 2000 BC. Some Hittite texts mention a nation to the west called Ahhiyawa ( Hittite : 𒄴𒄭𒅀𒉿 Aḫḫiyawa ). In the earliest reference to this land, a letter outlining the treaty violations of the Hittite vassal Madduwatta , it is called Ahhiya . Another important example
1456-596: The Achaeans were forced from their homelands by the Dorians , during the legendary Dorian invasion of the Peloponnese. They then moved into the region later called Achaea. A scholarly consensus has not yet been reached on the origin of the historic Achaeans relative to the Homeric Achaeans and is still hotly debated. Former emphasis on presumed race, such as John A. Scott's article about the blond locks of
1512-771: The Aeolic dialect of Pittacus of Mytilene as " barbarian ", because of its difference from the Attic literary style: "He didn't know to distinguish the words correctly, being from Lesbos, and having been raised with a barbarian dialect". Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Greek * kʷ changed to Aeolic p everywhere. By contrast, PIE * kʷ changed to Attic / Ionic , Arcadocypriot , and Doric t before e and i . Similarly PIE/PGk * gʷ always became b and PIE * gʷʰ > PGk * kʰʷ always became ph (whereas in other dialects they became alternating b / d and ph / th before back/front vowels). Labiovelars were treated
1568-495: The Archaic period of ancient Greek (see Homeric Greek for more details): Μῆνιν ἄειδε, θεά, Πηληϊάδεω Ἀχιλῆος οὐλομένην, ἣ μυρί' Ἀχαιοῖς ἄλγε' ἔθηκε, πολλὰς δ' ἰφθίμους ψυχὰς Ἄϊδι προΐαψεν ἡρώων, αὐτοὺς δὲ ἑλώρια τεῦχε κύνεσσιν οἰωνοῖσί τε πᾶσι· Διὸς δ' ἐτελείετο βουλή· ἐξ οὗ δὴ τὰ πρῶτα διαστήτην ἐρίσαντε Ἀτρεΐδης τε ἄναξ ἀνδρῶν καὶ δῖος Ἀχιλλεύς. The beginning of Apology by Plato exemplifies Attic Greek from
1624-685: The Cadmeans ( the Thebans ), Hellen of the Hellenes (not to be confused with Helen of Troy ), Aeolus of the Aeolians , Ion of the Ionians , and Dorus of the Dorians . Cadmus from Phoenicia , Danaus from Egypt , and Pelops from Anatolia each gained a foothold in mainland Greece and were assimilated and Hellenized. Hellen, Graikos, Magnes, and Macedon were sons of Deucalion and Pyrrha ,
1680-599: The Classical period of ancient Greek. (The second line is the IPA , the third is transliterated into the Latin alphabet using a modern version of the Erasmian scheme .) Ὅτι [hóti Hóti μὲν men mèn ὑμεῖς, hyːmêːs hūmeîs, Aeolic Greek In linguistics , Aeolic Greek ( / iː ˈ ɒ l ɪ k / ), also known as Aeolian ( / iː ˈ oʊ l i ə n / ), Lesbian or Lesbic dialect ,
1736-724: The Ekwesh or Eqwesh, whom some have seen as Achaeans, although Egyptian texts specifically mention these Ekwesh to be circumcised. Homer mentions an Achaean attack upon the delta, and Menelaus speaks of the same in Book IV of the Odyssey to Telemachus when he recounts his own return home from the Trojan War . Some ancient Greek authors also say that Helen had spent the time of the Trojan War in Egypt, and not at Troy , and that after Troy
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1792-460: The Greeks went there to recover her. In Greek mythology , the perceived cultural divisions among the Hellenes were represented as legendary lines of descent that identified kinship groups, with each line being derived from an eponymous ancestor. Each of the Greek ethne were said to be named in honor of their respective ancestors: Achaeus of the Achaeans, Danaus of the Danaans, Cadmus of
1848-505: The Lesbian dialect this ending also extends to the thematic conjugation, where Attic/Ionic has -ein . All three of these Aeolic endings occur in Homer. Proto-Greek -ans and -ons → -ais and -ois ( first- and second declension accusative plural) ~ Attic/Ionic - ās and -ōs ( -ους ). Dative plural -aisi and -oisi ~ Attic/Ionic -ais and -ois . The participle has -ois and -ais for Attic -ōs ( -ους ), -ās . Below
1904-665: The Mycenaean world is in the Annals of Thutmosis III ( c. 1479 –1425 BC), which refers to messengers from the king of the Tanaju, c. 1437 BC , offering greeting gifts to the Egyptian king, in order to initiate diplomatic relations, when the latter campaigned in Syria. Tanaju is also listed in an inscription at the Mortuary Temple of Amenhotep III . The latter ruled Egypt in c. 1382 –1344 BC. Moreover,
1960-605: The accusative plural of a and o stem nouns, or in many 3 Pl verb conjugations. In Boeotian, the vowel-system was, in many cases, changed in a way reminiscent of the modern Greek pronunciation. In Lesbian Aeolic, the accent of all words is recessive ( barytonesis ), as is typical only in the verbs of other dialects. Contracted or vowel-stem verbs that are thematic in Attic/Ionic are often athematic ( -mi ) in Aeolic. Aeolic athematic infinitive active ends in -men or (Lesbian) -menai . ~ Attic/Ionic has -enai . In
2016-550: The aorist. Following Homer 's practice, the augment is sometimes not made in poetry , especially epic poetry. The augment sometimes substitutes for reduplication; see below. Almost all forms of the perfect, pluperfect, and future perfect reduplicate the initial syllable of the verb stem. (A few irregular forms of perfect do not reduplicate, whereas a handful of irregular aorists reduplicate.) The three types of reduplication are: Irregular duplication can be understood diachronically. For example, lambanō (root lab ) has
2072-419: The augment when it was word-initial. In verbs with a preposition as a prefix, the augment is placed not at the start of the word, but between the preposition and the original verb. For example, προσ(-)βάλλω (I attack) goes to προσ έ βαλoν in the aorist. However compound verbs consisting of a prefix that is not a preposition retain the augment at the start of the word: αὐτο(-)μολῶ goes to ηὐ τομόλησα in
2128-547: The authors state that "there is now little doubt that Ahhiyawa was a reference by the Hittites to some or all of the Bronze Age Mycenaean world", and that Forrer was "largely correct after all". It has been proposed that Ekwesh of the Egyptian records may relate to Achaea (compared to Hittite Ahhiyawa ), whereas Denyen and Tanaju may relate to Classical Greek Danaoi . The earliest textual reference to
2184-438: The center of Greek scholarship, this division of people and language is quite similar to the results of modern archaeological-linguistic investigation. One standard formulation for the dialects is: West vs. non-West Greek is the strongest-marked and earliest division, with non-West in subsets of Ionic-Attic (or Attic-Ionic) and Aeolic vs. Arcadocypriot, or Aeolic and Arcado-Cypriot vs. Ionic-Attic. Often non-West
2240-615: The dialect of Sparta ), and Northern Peloponnesus Doric (including Corinthian ). All the groups were represented by colonies beyond Greece proper as well, and these colonies generally developed local characteristics, often under the influence of settlers or neighbors speaking different Greek dialects. After the conquests of Alexander the Great in the late 4th century BC, a new international dialect known as Koine or Common Greek developed, largely based on Attic Greek , but with influence from other dialects. This dialect slowly replaced most of
2296-619: The forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek ( c. 1400–1200 BC ), Dark Ages ( c. 1200–800 BC ), the Archaic or Epic period ( c. 800–500 BC ), and the Classical period ( c. 500–300 BC ). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers . It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been
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2352-561: The historical Dorians . The invasion is known to have displaced population to the later Attic-Ionic regions, who regarded themselves as descendants of the population displaced by or contending with the Dorians. The Greeks of this period believed there were three major divisions of all Greek people – Dorians, Aeolians, and Ionians (including Athenians), each with their own defining and distinctive dialects. Allowing for their oversight of Arcadian, an obscure mountain dialect, and Cypriot, far from
2408-476: The historical circumstances of the times imply that the overall groups already existed in some form. Scholars assume that major Ancient Greek period dialect groups developed not later than 1120 BC, at the time of the Dorian invasions —and that their first appearances as precise alphabetic writing began in the 8th century BC. The invasion would not be "Dorian" unless the invaders had some cultural relationship to
2464-453: The language of Sappho and of Alcaeus of Mytilene . Aeolic poetry, which is exemplified in the works of Sappho, mostly uses four classical meters known as the Aeolics : Glyconic (the most basic form of Aeolic line), hendecasyllabic verse, Sapphic stanza , and Alcaic stanza (the latter two are respectively named for Sappho and Alcaeus). In Plato 's Protagoras , Prodicus labelled
2520-508: The older dialects, although the Doric dialect has survived in the Tsakonian language , which is spoken in the region of modern Sparta. Doric has also passed down its aorist terminations into most verbs of Demotic Greek . By about the 6th century AD, the Koine had slowly metamorphosed into Medieval Greek . Phrygian is an extinct Indo-European language of West and Central Anatolia , which
2576-680: The only people who survived the Great Flood ; the ethne were said to have originally been named Graikoi after the elder son but later renamed Hellenes after Hellen who was proved to be the strongest. Sons of Hellen and the nymph Orseis were Dorus, Xuthos, and Aeolus . Sons of Xuthos and Kreousa, daughter of Erechthea, were Ion and Achaeus. According to Hyginus , 22 Achaeans killed 362 Trojans during their ten years at Troy . Male Female Deity Ancient Greek language Ancient Greek ( Ἑλληνῐκή , Hellēnikḗ ; [hellɛːnikɛ́ː] ) includes
2632-487: The perfect stem eilēpha (not * lelēpha ) because it was originally slambanō , with perfect seslēpha , becoming eilēpha through compensatory lengthening. Reduplication is also visible in the present tense stems of certain verbs. These stems add a syllable consisting of the root's initial consonant followed by i . A nasal stop appears after the reduplication in some verbs. The earliest extant examples of ancient Greek writing ( c. 1450 BC ) are in
2688-529: The same way in the P-Celtic languages and the Sabellic languages . A Proto-Greek consonant cluster with h (from Indo-European *s ) and a sonorant ( r, l, n, m, w, y ) changed to a double sonorant ( rr, ll, nn, mm, ww, yy ) in Lesbian and Thessalian (sub-dialects of Aeolic) by assimilation . In Attic/Ionic, Doric, and Boeotian Aeolic, the h assimilated to the vowel before the consonant cluster, causing
2744-517: The syllabic script Linear B . Beginning in the 8th century BC, however, the Greek alphabet became standard, albeit with some variation among dialects. Early texts are written in boustrophedon style, but left-to-right became standard during the classic period. Modern editions of ancient Greek texts are usually written with accents and breathing marks , interword spacing , modern punctuation , and sometimes mixed case , but these were all introduced later. The beginning of Homer 's Iliad exemplifies
2800-517: The term "Achaeans" referred to inhabitants of the much smaller region of Achaea . Herodotus identified the Achaeans of the northern Peloponnese as descendants of the earlier, Homeric Achaeans. According to Pausanias , writing in the 2nd century AD, the term "Achaean" was originally given to those Greeks inhabiting the Argolis and Laconia . Pausanias and Herodotus both recount the legend that
2856-411: The time were challenged by other Hittitologists (i.e. Johannes Friedrich in 1927 and Albrecht Götze in 1930), as well as by Ferdinand Sommer, who published his Die Ahhijava-Urkunden ( The Ahhiyawa Documents ) in 1932. The exact relationship of the term Ahhiyawa to the Achaeans beyond a similarity in pronunciation was hotly debated by scholars, even following the discovery that Mycenaean Linear B
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#17327661933292912-792: The vowel to lengthen by compensatory lengthening . Lesbian Aeolic lost initial h- ( psilosis "stripping") from Proto-Indo-European s- or y-. By contrast, Ionic sometimes retains it, and Attic always retains it. In Thessalian and Boeotian (sub-dialects of Aeolic) and Doric , the Proto-Indo-European and Proto-Greek semi-vowel w ( digamma ) was retained at the beginning of a word. In Aeolic and Doric, Proto-Greek long ā remains. By contrast, in Attic, long ā changes to long ē in most cases; in Ionic, it changes everywhere. Compensatory lengthening of a, e, o in Lesbian gives ai, ei, oi (in Attic, it would be ā, ei, ou ) for example in
2968-480: Was Aeolic. For example, fragments of the works of the poet Sappho from the island of Lesbos are in Aeolian. Most of the dialect sub-groups listed above had further subdivisions, generally equivalent to a city-state and its surrounding territory, or to an island. Doric notably had several intermediate divisions as well, into Island Doric (including Cretan Doric ), Southern Peloponnesus Doric (including Laconian ,
3024-467: Was influential during the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC. According to Margalit Finkelberg the name Ἀχαιοί ( earlier Ἀχαιϝοί) is possibly derived, via an intermediate form *Ἀχαϝyοί, from a hypothetical older Greek form reflected in the Hittite form Aḫḫiyawā ; the latter is attested in the Hittite archives, e.g. in the Tawagalawa letter . However, Robert S. P. Beekes doubted its validity and suggested
3080-493: Was no Dorian invasion, but rather that the Peloponnesian Dorians were the Achaeans. Eduard Meyer , disagreeing with Beloch, instead put forth the suggestion that the real-life Achaeans were mainland pre-Dorian Greeks. His conclusion is based on his research on the similarity between the languages of the Achaeans and pre-historic Arcadians. William Prentice disagreed with both, noting archeological evidence suggests
3136-510: Was reviewed by Gary M. Beckman et al. In this review, the increasing acceptance of the Ahhiyawa-Mycenaeans hypothesis was noted. As to the exact location of Ahhiyawa: It now seems most reasonable to identify Ahhiyawa primarily with the Greek mainland, although in some contexts the term "Ahhiyawa" may have had broader connotations, perhaps covering all regions that were settled by Mycenaeans or came under Mycenaean control. In fact,
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