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90-492: Attica ( Greek : Αττική , Ancient Greek Attikḗ or Attikī́ , Ancient Greek: [atːikɛ̌ː] or Modern: [atiˈci] ), or the Attic Peninsula , is a historical region that encompasses the entire Athens metropolitan area , which consists of the city of Athens , the capital of Greece and the core city of the metropolitan area, as well as its surrounding suburban cities and towns. It

180-577: 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

270-577: 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,

360-508: 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

450-590: 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

540-400: 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

630-459: 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 ,

720-515: A number of votive statues dedicated to Poseidon which probably stood in front of the god's sanctuary. The archaic temple was probably destroyed in 480 BC by Persian troops during Xerxes I's invasion of Greece . After they defeated Xerxes in the naval Battle of Salamis , the Athenians placed an entire captured enemy trireme (warship with three banks of oars) at Sounion as a trophy dedicated to Poseidon. The temple of Poseidon at Sounion

810-460: 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

900-468: A world" (ibid.). Cape Sounion remains a popular day-excursion for tourists from Athens, with the sunset over the Aegean Sea , as viewed from the ruins, a sought-after sight since the first development of modern tourism in the early 19th century. The Lavreotiki municipality was established in 1890 under the name of Sounio , and renamed to Lavreotiki in 1891. Cape Sounion itself is located between

990-520: Is a peninsula projecting into the Aegean Sea , bordering on Boeotia to the north and Megaris to the west. The southern tip of the peninsula, known as Laurion , was an important mining region . The history of Attica is closely linked with that of Athens. In ancient times, Attica corresponded with the Athens city-state. It was the most prominent region in Ancient Greece, specifically during

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1080-597: Is a triangular peninsula jutting into the Aegean Sea . It is naturally divided to the north from Boeotia by the 10 mi (16 km) long Cithaeron and Parnes mountain ranges. To the west of Eleusis , the Greek mainland narrows into Megaris , connecting to the Peloponnese at the Isthmus of Corinth . The southwestern coast of Attica, also known as the Athens Riviera , forms the eastern coastline of

1170-601: Is mentioned in the Odyssey . A smaller Doric temple next to the temple of Athena is thought to have been dedicated either to the hero Phrontis or to Artemis . A deep pit southeast of the temenos was used to deposit the remains of the Archaic-period offerings destroyed during the Persian invasion. The temple of Athena was demolished in the 1st century AD, and parts of its columns were taken to Athens to be used in

1260-591: Is more extensive than the historical region, and includes Megaris as part of the regional unit of West Attica , the Saronic Islands and Cythera , as well as the municipality of Troizinia on the Peloponnesian mainland. According to the Roman geographer Pausanias , the place was originally named Actaea, but was later renamed in the honour of Atthis , daughter of king Cranaus of Athens . Attica

1350-759: Is pockmarked by a plethora of semi-continuous hills, the most notable ones being the Tourkovounia , Lykavittos , the Acropolis of Athens itself and Philopappou . Mesogeia lies to the east of Mount Hymettus and is bound to the north by the foothills of Mount Penteli, to the east by the Euboean Gulf and Mount Myrrhinous, and to the south by the mountains of Lavrio (modern Lavreotiki ), Paneio (Πάνειον Όρος), and Laureotic Olympus (Λαυρεωτικός Όλυμπος). The Lavrio region terminates in Cape Sounion , forming

1440-1044: 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 Cape Sounion Cape Sounion ( Modern Greek : Aκρωτήριο Σούνιο Akrotírio Soúnio [akroˈtirʝo ˈsuɲo] ; Ancient Greek : Ἄκρον Σούνιον Άkron Soúnion , latinized Sunium ; Venetian : Capo Colonne "Cape of Columns")

1530-763: 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,

1620-537: Is the promontory at the southernmost tip of the Attica peninsula , 8 kilometres (5.0 mi) south of the town of Lavrio (ancient Thoricus ), and 69.5 km (43.1 miles) southeast of Athens in the Athens Riviera . It is part of Lavreotiki municipality, East Attica , Greece . Cape Sounion is noted for its Temple of Poseidon , one of the major monuments of the Golden Age of Athens . Its remains are perched on

1710-632: 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

1800-562: 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

1890-535: The Doric Order . They were made of locally quarried white marble. They were 6.10 m (20 ft) high, with a diameter of 1 m (3.1 ft) at the base and 79 cm (31 inches) at the top. At the center of the temple, there would have been a hall of worship ( naos ), a windowless rectangular room, similar to the partly intact hall at the Temple of Hephaestus. It would have contained, at one end facing

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1980-657: 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

2070-433: The Golden Age of Athens in the classical period . Ancient Attica (the classical Athens city-state ) was divided into demoi , or municipalities, from the reform of Cleisthenes in 508/7 BC, grouped into three zones: urban ( astu ) in the region of Athens main town, and Piraeus (the port), coastal ( paralia ) along the coastline, and inland ( mesogeia ) in the interior. The modern administrative region of Attica

2160-505: The Goths under the command of Alaric . Attica's population diminished in comparison to the neighboring area of Boeotia . The sites of historical interest date to the 11th and 12th centuries, when Attica was under the rule of the Franks . The great monastery of Dafni, that was built under Justinian I 's rule, is an isolated case that does not signify a widespread development of Attica during

2250-692: The Greek War of Independence in the 1820s, the peasants of Attica were the first to revolt (April 1821), occupying Athens and seizing the Acropolis that was handed over to the Greek revolutionaries in June, 1822. Attica belonged to the newly-founded Greek state from its founding. From 1834, Athens was made the new Greek capital (moved from Nafplio in Argolis ), which caused the gradual repopulation of Attica by other people around Greece. The most dramatic surge came with Greek refugees from Anatolia following

2340-676: The Greek genocide and later the population exchanges between Greece and Turkey under the Treaty of Lausanne . Today, much of Attica is occupied by urban Athens, encompassing the entirety of the Athenian plain. The modern Greek region of Attica includes classical Attica as well as the Saronic Islands , a small part of the Peloponnese around Troezen , and the Ionian Island of Kythira . Mela, A.; Tousi, E.; Melas, E.; Varelidis, G. Spatial Distribution and Quality of Urban Public Spaces in

2430-516: 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

2520-454: The Isthmus , and, toward the continent, they extended as far as the heights of Cithaeron and Parnes . The boundary line came down toward the sea, bounded by the district of Oropus on the right and by the river Asopus on the left. During antiquity, the Athenians boasted about being ' autochthonic ', which is to say that they were the original inhabitants of the area and had not moved to Attica from another place. The traditions current in

2610-675: The Saronic Gulf . Mountains separate the peninsula into the plains of Pedias, Mesogeia , and the Thriasian Plain . The mountains of Attica are the Hymettus , the eastern portion of the Geraneia , Parnitha (the highest mountain of Attica), Aigaleo and Penteli . Four mountains — Aigaleo, Parnitha, Penteli and Hymettus (clockwise from the southwest) — delineate the hilly plain on which the Athens urban area now spreads. The plain

2700-780: 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

2790-468: 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

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2880-417: 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,

2970-566: 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

3060-414: The 6th century BCE ( https://www.ancient-greece.org/architecture/temple-athena-sounio.html ). Its architecture was unusual, as it had colonnades on the southern and eastern sides, but not on the western or northern sides, a peculiarity mentioned by Vitruvius . It was built adjacent to a peribolos identified as the burial mound and shrine to Phrontis , the helmsman of Menelaus whose burial at Sounion

3150-585: The Athmoneia games were also celebrated. After the period of antiquity, Attica came under Roman , Byzantine , Venetian , and Ottoman rule. In the Roman period, the Scandinavian Heruli tribe raided Athens and Attica in 267 AD, destroying most of the city and laying waste to the countryside. During the Byzantine period Athens was an important middle size city. In 396 Attica was invaded by

3240-609: The Attica Region (Greece) during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Survey-Based Analysis. Urban Sci. 2024, 8, 2. https://doi.org/10.3390/urbansci8010002 *Not included the most parts of Athens urban area 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

3330-659: The Byzantine period. On the other hand, the buildings built during the 11th and 12th centuries show a greater development that continued during the rule of the Franks, who did not impose strict rule. From the 14th century onwards, the Arvanites came to Attica from what is today southern Albania . They were mostly invited as mercenaries by the local Greek lords. During the Ottoman rule, Athens enjoyed some rights. However, that

3420-544: 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

3510-549: 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

3600-593: The Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek

3690-704: The Ionian tribe and spoke the Ionian dialect of Ancient Greek. Many Ionians later left Attica to colonize the Aegean coast of Asia Minor and to create the twelve cities of Ionia . During the Mycenaean period , the inhabitants of Attica lived in autonomous agricultural societies . The main places where prehistoric remains were found are Marathon , Rafina , Nea Makri , Brauron , Thorikos , Agios Kosmas, Elefsina , Menidi , Markopoulo , Spata , Aphidnae and Athens main city. All of these settlements flourished during

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3780-478: The Mycenaean period. According to tradition, Attica comprised twelve small communities during the reign of Cecrops , the legendary Ionian king of Athens. Strabo assigns these the names of Cecropia , Tetrapolis , Epacria , Decelea , Eleusis , Aphidna , Thoricus , Brauron , Cytherus , Sphettus , Cephisia , and possibly Phaleron. These were said to have been later incorporated in an Athenian state during

3870-551: The Peloponnesian war, Attica was invaded and raided several times by the Lacedaemonians , while in the war's third phase the fortress of Decelea was captured and fortified by Lacedaemon. During the classical period, Athens was fortified to the north by the fortress of Eleutherae , which is preserved well. Other fortresses are those of Oenoe , Decelea , Phyle and Aphidnae . To protect the mines at Laurium , on

3960-580: The Sounion temple stand today, but when intact it would have closely resembled the contemporary and well-preserved Temple of Hephaestus beneath the Acropolis, which may have been designed by the same architect. As with all Greek temples, the Poseidon building was rectangular, with a colonnade on all four sides. The total number of original columns was 34, of which 15 still stand today. The columns are of

4050-714: The South-East temple of the Agora . In 413 BC, during the Peloponnesian War against the Spartans , the Athenians fortified the site with a wall and towers to prevent it from falling into Spartan hands. This would have threatened Athens' seaborne grain supply route from Euboea . Athens' supply situation had become critical since the city's land supply lines had been cut by the Spartan fortification of Dekeleia , to

4140-601: The Synngrou Estate on the foothills of the former (intersecting the border between the suburban towns of Kifisia , Melissia and Marousi is home to the sole remaining natural forest in the Athenian plain. The Kifisos is the longest river in Attica, which starts from the foothills of mount Parnitha near Varibobi, crosses the Athenian plain and empties into the delta of Faliro east of the port of Piraeus. According to Plato , Attica's ancient boundaries were fixed by

4230-404: 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),

4320-447: The area between Eleusis and Cape Sounion and the area around the city (ἐσωτερικό-μεσογαία), inhabited by people living on the north of Mount Parnitha , Penteliko and the area east of the mountain of Hymettus on the plain of Mesogeia . Principally, each civic unit would include equal parts of townspeople, seamen, and farmers. A "trittýs" ("third") of each sector constituted a tribe. Consequently, Attica comprised ten tribes. During

4410-423: 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

4500-452: The base of one of the columns of the Temple of Poseidon, possibly dates from his first visit to Greece, on his Grand Tour of Europe before he acquired fame. Byron spent several months in 1810–11 in Athens, including two documented visits to Sounion. There is, however, no direct evidence that the inscription was made by Byron himself. Byron mentions Sounion in his poem Isles of Greece : Place me on Sunium's marbled steep, Where nothing, save

4590-553: The cape in a sacred boat. Sounion was a deme of the Leontis tribe (phyle) even before its fortification in the Peloponnesian War . It sent four men to the ancient Boule of 500 at the time of Cleisthenes , and later (3rd century BC) six men to the Boule of 600. In the 2nd century BC, Sounion is still on record as a deme, but now considered part of the recently-introduced Attalid phyle (created in honour of Attalus I ). The deme

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4680-713: The classical period recounted that, during the Greek Dark Ages , Attica had become the refuge of the Ionians , who belonged to a tribe from the northern Peloponnese. Supposedly, the Ionians had been forced out of their homeland by the Achaeans , who in turn had been forced out of their homeland by the Dorian invasion . Supposedly, the Ionians integrated with the ancient Atticans, who, afterward, considered themselves part of

4770-431: The coast, Athens was protected by the walls at Rhamnus , Thoricus , Sounion , Anavyssos , Piraeus , and Elefsina . Although these forts and walls had been constructed, Attica did not establish a fortification system until later, in the 4th century BC. Attica's warfare is displayed by piles of rubble from fortresses from the Chremonidean war. Even though archaeological ruins of religious importance are found in nearly

4860-495: 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 ,

4950-441: 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

5040-528: 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

5130-415: The entrance, the cult image , a colossal, ceiling-height (6 metres (20 ft)) bronze statue of Poseidon. The temple of Athena Souniados (Ναός της Αθηνάς Σουνιάδος 37°39′11″N 24°01′37″E  /  37.653°N 024.027°E  / 37.653; 024.027 ), was located on a low hill some 300 m northeast of the temple of Poseidon. It was built in 470 BC, replacing an older building of

5220-412: 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

5310-406: The headland, surrounded on three sides by the Aegean sea . Cape Sounio has a hot semi-arid climate ( Köppen climate classification : BSh ). Cape Sounio experiences hot, dry summers and mild, wetter winters. The earliest literary reference to Sounion is in Homer's Odyssey (III. 278–285). The story recounts that as the various Greek commanders sailed back from Troy , the helmsman of

5400-403: The land suggests the invisible nearness of the divine and dedicates to it every growth and every human work" (ibid.). He goes on to reflect "the people of this country knew how to inhabit and demarcate the world against the barbarous in honour of the seat of the gods. ...they knew how to praise what is great and by acknowledging it, to bring themselves in front of the sublime, founding, in this way,

5490-449: 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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5580-414: 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

5670-405: The local communities lose their independence and succumb to the central government in Athens . As a result of these reforms, Attica was divided into approximately a hundred municipalities, the demes ( dēmoi , δῆμοι), and also into three large sectors: the city (ἄστυ), which comprised the areas of central Athens, Ymittos , Aegaleo and the foot of Mount Parnes , the coast (παράλια), that included

5760-400: 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

5850-465: 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

5940-404: The north of Attica. The Sounion fortress was soon later seized from the Athenians by a force of rebel slaves from the nearby silver mines of Laurium . The Temple of Poseidon was situated in the southeastern corner of the fortress, with the garrison quarters arranged along a main stream on the western slope of the hill. The fortress included a small naval base, with a shipshed for two warships in

6030-405: The northwestern corner ( 37°39′09″N 24°01′22″E  /  37.6524°N 24.0228°E  / 37.6524; 24.0228 ). The fortress was maintained well into the Hellenistic period. Repairs and additions to the fortress were made during the Chremonidean War (266–261 BC). The name Capo Colonne (graecicized Καβοκολώνες Kavokolones ) is reported from the 17th century, for

6120-497: The reason that unusually, several columns of the temple of Poseidon had remained standing since antiquity. Early modern descriptions in travelogues include those by G. Wheler (1676), J.-D. Le Roy (1754), R. Chandler (1765) and E. Dodwell (1805). Scottish poet William Falconer (1732–1769) was shipwrecked off Cape Colonna, as Sounion was then known, in 1750, an event depicted in the central scene of his The Shipwreck (1762). The inscribed name of George Lord Byron , carved into

6210-417: 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

6300-428: The reign of Theseus , the mythical king of Athens. Modern historians consider it more likely that the communities were progressively incorporated into an Athenian state during the 8th and the 7th centuries BC. Until the 6th century BC, aristocratic families lived independent lives in the suburbs of Athens, such as Hippios Kolonos . Only after Peisistratos 's tyranny and the reforms implemented by Cleisthenes did

6390-449: The ship of King Menelaus of Sparta died at his post while rounding "Holy Sounion, Cape of Athens." Menelaus landed at Sounion to give his companion full funeral honours (i.e., cremation on a funeral pyre on the beach). Archaeological finds on the site date from as early as 700 BC. Herodotus (VI.87) mentions that in sixth century BC, the Athenians celebrated a quinquennial festival at Sounion, which involved Athens' leaders sailing to

6480-461: The southeastern tip of the Attic peninsula. Athens' water reservoir, Lake Marathon , is artificial and was created by damming in 1920. Pine and fir forests cover the area around Parnitha. Hymettus, Penteli, Myrrhinous and Lavrio are forested with pine trees, whereas the rest are covered by shrubbery. Parts of the sprawling forests of mount Penteli and Parnitha have been lost to forest fires, while

6570-437: 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

6660-416: The villages of Kato Sounio and Legrena. The Sounio national park (Εθνικός Δρυμός τού Σουνίου) was established in 1974 with a core area of 750 hectares. Forming the southeastern endpoint of the Athens Riviera , Sounion is now an upscale summer home location for Athenians. Construction of villas across the bay northwest of Cape Sounion flourished in the 1960s to 1970s. The Grecotel Cape Sounio luxury resort

6750-405: The walls may still be traced, except where the precipitous nature of the rocks afforded a natural defence. The walls which are fortified with square towers, are of the most regular Hellenic masonry, and enclose a space of a little more than half a mile in circumference. The southern part of Attica, extending northwards from the promontory of Sounion as far as Thoricus on the east, and Anaphlystus on

6840-574: The waves and I, May hear our mutual murmurs sweep... Martin Heidegger visited Sounion during his journey to Greece in 1962, as described in his book Sojourns . He refers to the "gleaming-white ruins of the temple". In the strong sea breeze "these few standing columns were the strings of an invisible lyre, the song of which the far-seeing Delian god let resonate over the Cycladic world of islands". He marvels at "the way that this single gesture of

6930-469: The west, is called by Herodotus the Suniac angle (τὸν γουνὸν τὸν Σουνιακόν). Though Sounion was especially sacred to Athena , we learn from Aristophanes that Poseidon was also worshipped there. The original, Archaic-period temple of Poseidon on the site was built of tufa . The Sounion Kouros , discovered in 1906 in a pit east of the temple alongside fragments of other statues, was probably one of

7020-537: The whole area of Attica, the most important are those found in Eleusis . The worship of the goddesses Demeter and Cora , beginning in the Mycenaean period, continued until the late years of antiquity. Many other types of worship can be traced to the prehistory . For example, the worship of Pan and the Nymphs was common in many areas of Attica such as Marathon , Parnes and Ymittos . The god of wine, Dionysus ,

7110-574: 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

7200-557: 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

7290-556: 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

7380-525: Was constructed in 444–440 BC. This was during the ascendancy of the Athenian statesman Pericles , who also rebuilt the Parthenon in Athens. It was built on the ruins of a temple dating from the Archaic period. It is perched above the sea at a height of almost 60 metres (200 ft). The design of the temple is a typical hexastyle , i.e., it had a front portico with six columns. Only some columns of

7470-416: Was fortified in the nineteenth year of the Peloponnesian War (413 BCE) for the purpose of protecting the passage of the cornships to Athens, and was regarded from that time as one of the principal fortresses of Attica. Its proximity to the silver mines of Laurium probably contributed to its prosperity, which passed into a proverb; but even in the time of Cicero it had sunk into decay. The circuit of

7560-478: Was located between Amphitrope to the west and Thorikos to the north. Its territory included parts of the Mines of Laurion . According to Traill (1986), the center of the settlement was situated somewhat to the north of the cape, between the modern settlements of Ano Sounio and Kato Sounio (close to 37°40′26″N 24°01′48″E  /  37.674°N 24.030°E  / 37.674; 24.030 ). Sounion

7650-492: Was not the case for the villages of Attica. Great areas were possessed by the Turks , who terrorized the population with the help of sipahis . The monasteries of Attica played a crucial role in preserving the Greek element of the villages. In spite of its conquerors, Attica managed to maintain its traditions. This fact is proved by the preservation of ancient toponyms such as Oropos , Dionysus , Eleusis , and Marathon . During

7740-485: 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

7830-580: 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

7920-637: 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

8010-574: Was worshipped mainly in the area of Icaria , now the suburb of Dionysus . Iphigeneia and Artemis were worshipped in Brauron , Artemis in Rafina , Athena on Sounion , Aphrodite on Iera Odos, and Apollo in Daphne . The festival of Chalceia was celebrated every autumn in Attica. The festival honored the gods Hephaestus and Athena Ergane . In the deme of Athmonon , in modern-day Marousi ,

8100-673: 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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