86-515: The Asia Minor Greeks ( Greek : Μικρασιάτες , romanized : Mikrasiates ), also known as Asiatic Greeks or Anatolian Greeks , make up the ethnic Greek populations who lived in Asia Minor from the 13th century BC as a result of Greek colonization , up until the forceful population exchange between Greece and Turkey in 1923, though some communities in Asia Minor survive to
172-577: 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
258-434: A res publica as long as it continued to use Latin as its official language. Rome acquired imperial character de facto from the 130s BC with the acquisition of Cisalpine Gaul , Illyria , Greece and Hispania , and definitely with the addition of Iudaea , Asia Minor and Gaul during the 1st century BC. At the time of the empire's maximal extension during the reign of Trajan (AD 117), Rome controlled
344-577: 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,
430-508: 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
516-590: 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
602-400: 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
688-459: 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 ,
774-761: A result of the crisis of the third century . During Late antiquity Christianity became increasingly popular, finally ousting the Roman imperial cult with the Theodosian decrees of 393. Successive invasions of Germanic tribes finalized the weakening of the Western Roman Empire during the 5th century, while the Eastern Roman Empire persisted throughout the Middle Ages , in a state called Romania by its citizens, and designated
860-643: A series of conflicts of the 4th and 3rd centuries, the Samnite Wars , Latin War , and Pyrrhic War . Roman victory in the Punic Wars and Macedonian Wars established Rome as a super-regional power by the 2nd century BC, followed by the acquisition of Greece and Asia Minor . This tremendous increase of power was accompanied by economic instability and social unrest, resulting in the Catiline conspiracy ,
946-460: 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
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#17327658781871032-683: 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
1118-474: Is often considered to begin with the earliest recorded Epic Greek poetry of Homer (8th–7th-century BC) and ends with the end of the Western Roman Empire in 476 AD. Such a wide span of history and territory covers many disparate cultures and periods. Classical antiquity may also refer to an idealized vision among later people of what was, in Edgar Allan Poe 's words, "the glory that was Greece, and
1204-851: 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 Classical antiquity Classical antiquity , also known as
1290-763: 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,
1376-632: 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
1462-562: 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
1548-561: The Byzantine Empire by later historians. Hellenistic philosophy was succeeded by continued development of Platonism and Epicureanism , with Neoplatonism in due course influencing the theology of the Christian Church Fathers . Many writers have attempted to name a specific date for the symbolic "end" of antiquity, with the most prominent dates being the deposing of the last Western Roman Emperor in 476,
1634-615: The Byzantine Papacy . The Eastern Roman empire's capital city Constantinople remained the only unconquered large urban site of the original Roman empire, as well as being the largest city in Europe. Yet many classical books, sculptures, and technologies survived there along with classical Roman cuisine and scholarly traditions, well into the Middle Ages, when much of it was "rediscovered" by visiting Western crusaders. Indeed,
1720-524: The Catholic Church in particular maintained Latin language, culture, and literacy for centuries; to this day the popes are termed Pontifex Maximus which during the classical period was a title belonging to the emperor, and the ideal of Christendom continued the legacy of a united European civilization even after its political unity had ended. The political idea of an Emperor in the West to match
1806-606: 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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#17327658781871892-516: 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
1978-526: The Muslim conquests of the 7th century finalized the irreversible loss of all the largest Eastern Roman imperial cities besides the capital itself. The emperor Heraclius in Constantinople , who reigned during this period, conducted his court in Greek, not Latin, though Greek had always been an administrative language of the eastern Roman regions. Eastern-Western associations weakened with the ending of
2064-607: The Sabines to a festival and stole their unmarried maidens, resulting the integration of Latins and Sabines. Archaeological evidence indeed shows first traces of settlement at the Roman Forum in the mid-8th century BC, though settlements on the Palatine Hill may date back to the 10th century BC. According to legend, the seventh and final king of Rome was Tarquinius Superbus . As the son of Tarquinius Priscus and
2150-780: The Social War and the First Triumvirate , and finally the transformation to the Roman Empire during the latter half of the 1st century BC. The precise end of the Republic is disputed by modern historians; Roman citizens of the time did not recognize that the Republic had ceased to exist. The early Julio-Claudian Emperors maintained that the res publica still existed, albeit protected by their extraordinary powers, and would eventually return to its earlier Republican form. The Roman state continued to term itself
2236-652: 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
2322-653: The classical era , classical period , classical age , or simply antiquity , is the period of cultural European history between the 8th century BC and the 5th century AD comprising the interwoven civilizations of ancient Greece and ancient Rome known together as the Greco-Roman world , centered on the Mediterranean Basin . It is the period during which ancient Greece and ancient Rome flourished and had major influence throughout much of Europe , North Africa , and West Asia . Conventionally, it
2408-588: The classical orders of architecture. The philosophy of St. Thomas Aquinas was derived largely from that of Aristotle , despite the intervening change in religion from Hellenic Polytheism to Christianity . Greek and Roman authorities such as Hippocrates and Galen formed the basis of the practice of medicine even longer than Greek thought prevailed in philosophy. In the French theater , playwrights such as Molière and Racine wrote plays on mythological or classical historical subjects and subjected them to
2494-468: 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
2580-564: The red-figure style , developed by the Andokides Painter in about 530 BC. Greek colonisation refers to the expansion of Archaic Greeks , particularly during the 8th–6th centuries BC , across the Mediterranean Sea and the Black Sea . The Etruscans had established political control in the region by the late 7th-century BC, forming the aristocratic and monarchial elite. The Etruscans apparently lost power in
2666-417: 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,
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2752-484: The 18th and 19th centuries. The earliest period of classical antiquity occurs during a time of gradual resurgence of historical sources after the Late Bronze Age collapse . The 8th and 7th centuries BC are still largely protohistorical , with the earliest Greek alphabetic inscriptions appearing during the first half of the 8th century. The legendary poet Homer is usually assumed to have lived during
2838-566: The 19th century. John Milton and even Arthur Rimbaud received their first poetic educations in Latin. Genres like epic poetry, pastoral verse, and the frequent use of characters and themes from Greek mythology affected Western literature greatly. In architecture, there have been several Greek Revivals , which seem more inspired in retrospect by Roman architecture than Greek. Washington, DC has many large marble buildings with façades made to look like Greek temples , with columns constructed in
2924-566: 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
3010-932: The 8th or 7th century BC, and his lifetime is often considered as the beginning of classical antiquity. During the same period is the traditional date for the establishment of the Ancient Olympic Games , in 776 BC. The Phoenicians originally expanded from ports in Canaan , by the 8th century dominating trade in the Mediterranean . Carthage was founded in 814 BC, and the Carthaginians by 700 BC had established strongholds in Sicily , Italy and Sardinia , which created conflicts of interest with Etruria . A stele found in Kition , Cyprus commemorates
3096-653: The Dark Ages). In pottery, the Archaic period sees the development of the Orientalizing style , which signals a shift from the geometric style of the later Dark Ages and the accumulation of influences derived from Egypt, Phoenicia and Syria . Pottery styles associated with the later part of the Archaic age are the black-figure pottery , which originated in Corinth during the 7th-century BC and its successor,
3182-610: The Eastern Roman capital ( first in 674–78 and then in 717–18 ) severed the economic, cultural, and political links that had traditionally united the classical cultures around the Mediterranean, ending antiquity (see Pirenne Thesis ). The original Roman Senate continued to express decrees into the late 6th century, and the last Eastern Roman emperor to use Latin as the language of his court in Constantinople
3268-583: The Emperor in the East continued after the Western Roman Empire's collapse; it was revived by the coronation of Charlemagne in 800; the self-described Holy Roman Empire ruled central Europe until 1806. The Renaissance idea that the classical Roman virtues had been lost as a result of medievalism was especially powerful in European politics of the 18th and 19th centuries. Reverence for Roman republicanism
3354-578: The Great in 323 BC. In 510, Spartan troops helped the Athenians overthrow the tyrant Hippias , son of Peisistratos . Cleomenes I , king of Sparta, established a pro-Spartan oligarchy conducted by Isagoras . The Greco-Persian Wars (499–449 BC), concluded by the Peace of Callias ended with not only the liberation of Greece, Macedon , Thrace , and Ionia from Persian rule , but also with
3440-544: 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
3526-549: 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
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3612-523: The Greeks. Fathers had great power over their children, and husbands over their wives. In fact, the word family, familia in Latin, actually referred to those who were subject to the authority of a male head of household. This included non-related members such as slaves and servants. By marriage, both men and women shared property. Divorce was allowed first during the first century BC and could be done by either man or woman. The Roman Empire began to weaken as
3698-521: The Senate and had Superbus and the monarchy expelled from Rome in 510 BC. After Superbus' expulsion, the Senate in 509 BC voted to never again allow the rule of a king and reformed Rome into a republican government . The classical period of Ancient Greece corresponds to most of the 5th and 4th centuries BC, in particular, from the end of the Athenian tyranny in 510 BC to the death of Alexander
3784-404: 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),
3870-569: The area by the late 6th-century BC, and at this time, the Italic tribes reinvented their government by creating republics , with greater restraints on the ability of individual rulers to exercise power. According to legend, Rome was founded on 21 April 753 BC by twin descendants of the Trojan prince Aeneas , Romulus and Remus . As the city was bereft of women, legend says that the Latins invited
3956-479: 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
4042-516: The closing of the last Platonic Academy in Athens by the Eastern Roman emperor Justinian I in 529, and the conquest of much of the Mediterranean by the new Muslim faith from 634 to 718. These Muslim conquests, of Syria (637), Egypt (639), Cyprus (654), North Africa (665), Hispania (718), Southern Gaul (720), Crete (820), and Sicily (827), Malta (870), as well as the sieges of
4128-796: 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 ,
4214-455: The creation of a new Greek state in 1832. After the capture of Constantinople in 1453, the Russian Czars (a title derived from Caesar) claimed the Byzantine legacy as the champion of Orthodoxy ; Moscow was described as the " Third Rome ", and the Czars ruled as divinely appointed Emperors into the 20th century. Despite the fact that the Western Roman secular authority disappeared entirely in Europe, it still left traces. The Papacy and
4300-494: The cultures of Persia , the Kingdom of Israel and Kingdom of Judah , Central Asia and Egypt . Significant advances were made in the sciences ( geography , astronomy , mathematics , etc.), notably with the followers of Aristotle ( Aristotelianism ). The Hellenistic period ended with the increase of the Roman Republic to a super-regional power during the 2nd century BC and the Roman conquest of Greece in 146 BC. The Republican period of Ancient Rome began with
4386-441: 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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#17327658781874472-421: The disappearance of imperial authority in the west. This tendency reached its maximum when Charlemagne was crowned "Roman Emperor" in the year 800, an act which resulted in the formation of the Holy Roman Empire . The notion that an emperor is a monarch who outranks a king dates from this period. In this political ideal, there would always be a Roman Empire, a state the jurisdiction of which extended through
4558-412: The dominance of Athens in the Delian League , which resulted in conflict with Sparta and the Peloponnesian League , resulting in the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), ending with a Spartan victory. Greece began the 4th century with Spartan hegemony , but by 395 BC the Spartan rulers dismissed Lysander from office, and Sparta lost its naval supremacy. Athens , Argos , Thebes and Corinth ,
4644-528: 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
4730-411: The entire Mediterranean as well as Gaul, parts of Germania and Britannia , the Balkans , Dacia , Asia Minor, the Caucasus , and Mesopotamia . Culturally, the Roman Empire was significantly Hellenized , but also incorporated syncretic "eastern" traditions, such as Mithraism , Gnosticism , and most notably Christianity . Classical Rome had vast differences within their family life compared to
4816-465: The entire civilized western world. That model continued to exist in Constantinople for the entirety of the Middle Ages, where the Byzantine Emperor was considered the sovereign of the entire Christian world. The Patriarch of Constantinople was the Empire's highest-ranked cleric, but even he was subordinate to the emperor, who was "God's Vicegerent on Earth". The Greek-speaking Byzantines and their descendants continued to call themselves " Romioi " until
4902-412: 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
4988-425: The fringes of India . The classical Greek period conventionally ends at the death of Alexander in 323 BC and the fragmentation of his empire, which was at this time divided among the Diadochi . Greece began the Hellenistic period with the increasing power of Macedon and the conquests of Alexander the Great . Greek became the lingua franca far beyond Greece itself, and Hellenistic culture interacted with
5074-451: The grandeur that was Rome". The culture of the ancient Greeks , together with some influences from the ancient Near East , was the basis of art, philosophy, society, and education in the Mediterranean and Near East until the Roman imperial period . The Romans preserved, imitated, and spread this culture throughout Europe, until they were able to compete with it. This Greco-Roman cultural foundation has been immensely influential on
5160-439: The inhabitants of Constantinople continued to refer to themselves as Romans, as did their eventual conquerors in 1453, the Ottomans (see Romaioi and Rûm .) The classical scholarship and culture that was still preserved in Constantinople were brought by refugees fleeing its conquest in 1453 and helped to begin the Renaissance (see Greek scholars in the Renaissance ). Ultimately, it was a slow, complex, and graduated change of
5246-449: 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
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#17327658781875332-412: The language, politics, law, educational systems, philosophy , science, warfare, literature, historiography, ethics, rhetoric, art and architecture of both the Western , and through it, the modern world. Surviving fragments of classical culture helped produce a revival beginning during the 14th century which later came to be known as the Renaissance , and various neo-classical revivals occurred during
5418-414: 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
5504-417: The latter two of which were formerly Spartan allies, challenged Spartan dominance in the Corinthian War , which ended inconclusively in 387 BC. Later, in 371 BC, the Theban generals Epaminondas and Pelopidas won a victory at the Battle of Leuctra . The result of this battle was the end of Spartan supremacy and the establishment of Theban hegemony . Thebes sought to maintain its dominance until it
5590-400: 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
5676-465: 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
5762-424: The overthrow of the Monarchy c. 509 BC and lasted more than 450 years until its subversion through a series of civil wars , into the Principate form of government and the Imperial period. During the half millennium of the Republic, Rome increased from a regional power of the Latium to the dominant force in Italy and beyond. The unification of Italy by the Romans was a gradual process, brought about by
5848-630: The present day. Cappadocian Greeks also known as Greek Cappadocians ( Greek : Έλληνες-Καππαδόκες, Ελληνοκαππαδόκες, Καππαδόκες ; Turkish : Kapadokyalı Rumlar ) or simply Cappadocians are an ethnic Greek community native to the geographical region of Cappadocia in central-eastern Anatolia . The Pontic Greeks ( Greek : Πόντιοι , romanized: Póndii or Ελληνοπόντιοι , romanized: Ellinopóndii ; Turkish : Pontus Rumları or Karadeniz Rumları , Georgian : პონტოელი ბერძნები , romanized: P’ont’oeli Berdznebi ) are an ethnically Greek group who traditionally lived in
5934-429: The region of Pontus , on the shores of the Black Sea and in the Pontic Mountains of northeastern Anatolia . 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
6020-417: 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
6106-433: The socio-economic structure in European history that resulted in the changeover between classical antiquity and medieval society and no specific date can truly exemplify that. In politics, the late Roman conception of the Empire as a universal state, commanded by one supreme divinely appointed ruler, united with Christianity as a universal religion likewise headed by a supreme patriarch , proved very influential, even after
6192-640: The son-in-law of Servius Tullius , Superbus was of Etruscan birth. It was during his reign that the Etruscans reached their apex of power. Superbus removed and destroyed all the Sabine shrines and altars from the Tarpeian Rock , enraging the people of Rome. The people came to object to his rule when he failed to recognize the rape of Lucretia , a patrician Roman, by his own son. Lucretia's kinsman, Lucius Junius Brutus (ancestor to Marcus Brutus ), summoned
6278-778: The state, as can be seen in the architecture of the Panthéon , the Arc de Triomphe , and the paintings of Jacques-Louis David . During the revolution, France transitioned from kingdom to republic to dictatorship to Empire (complete with Imperial Eagles) that the Romans had experienced centuries earlier. Classical antiquity is a general term for a long period of cultural history . Such a wide sampling of history and territory covers many rather disparate cultures and periods. "Classical antiquity" often refers to an idealized vision of later people, of what was, in Edgar Allan Poe 's words, "the glory that
6364-437: 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
6450-577: The victory of King Sargon II in 709 BC over the seven kings of the island, marking an important part of the transfer of Cyprus from Tyrian rule to the Neo-Assyrian Empire . The Archaic period followed the Greek Dark Ages , and saw significant advancements in political theory , and the beginnings of democracy , philosophy , theatre , poetry , as well as the revitalization of the written language (which had been lost during
6536-483: Was Greece , the grandeur that was Rome !" During the 18th and 19th centuries AD, reverence for classical antiquity was much greater in Europe and the United States than it is now. Respect for the ancient people of Greece and Rome affected politics , philosophy , sculpture , literature , theatre , education , architecture , and sexuality . Epic poetry in Latin continued to be written and circulated well into
6622-574: 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
6708-505: 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
6794-428: 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
6880-718: Was emperor Maurice , who reigned until 602. The overthrow of Maurice by his mutinying Danube army commanded by Phocas resulted in the Slavic invasion of the Balkans and the weakening of Balkan and Greek urban culture (resulting in the flight of Balkan Latin speakers to the mountains, see Origin of the Romanians ), and also provoked the Byzantine–Sasanian War of 602–628 in which all the great eastern cities except Constantinople were lost. The resulting turmoil did not end until
6966-669: Was finally ended by the increasing power of Macedon in 346 BC. During the reign of Philip II , (359–336 BC), Macedon expanded into the territory of the Paeonians , the Thracians and the Illyrians . Philip's son, Alexander the Great , (356–323 BC) managed to briefly extend Macedonian power not only over the central Greek city-states but also to the Persian Empire , including Egypt and lands as far east as
7052-485: 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
7138-749: Was strong among the Founding Fathers of the United States and the Latin American revolutionaries; the Americans described their new government as a republic (from res publica ) and gave it a Senate and a President (another Latin term), rather than use available English terms like commonwealth or parliament . Similarly in Revolutionary and Napoleonic France, republicanism and Roman martial virtues were promoted by
7224-580: 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
7310-637: 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
7396-673: 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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