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127-517: The population of the former municipality at the 2011 census was 1,333; according to the civil offices, which count all citizens including those who live abroad, was 6,780 (2011 estimate). The ancient name of the Greek toponym ( Greek : Φοινίκη ) was not preserved through literary revival. As such, the modern settlement retained in the Ottoman register of 1431 its name Finiki . In antiquity, Phoenice

254-482: A constitution and representative assembly . Despite the absolutism of Otto's reign, it proved instrumental in developing institutions which are still the bedrock of Greek administration and education. Reforms were taken in education, maritime and postal communications, effective civil administration and the legal code . Historical revisionism took the form of de- Byzantinification and de- Ottomanisation , in favour of promoting Ancient Greek heritage. The capital

381-501: A 2018 Forest Landscape Integrity Index mean score of 6.6/10, ranking it 70th globally out of 172 countries. In 2024, Greece became the first country in the European Union to ban bottom trawling in marine protected areas what should protect its marine biodiversity . Rare marine species such as the pinniped seals and the loggerhead sea turtle live in the seas surrounding mainland Greece, while its dense forests are home to

508-577: 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,

635-552: A coup in 1967 by the Greek junta , led by Georgios Papadopoulos . Civil rights were suspended, political repression intensified, and human rights abuses, including torture, were rampant. Economic growth remained rapid before plateauing in 1972. The brutal suppression of the Athens Polytechnic uprising in 1973 set in motion the fall of the regime, resulting in a counter-coup that established brigadier Dimitrios Ioannidis as

762-529: A failed attempt to annex Crete from the Ottomans. He was replaced by Prince Wilhelm of Denmark, who took the name George I and brought with him the Ionian Islands as a coronation gift from Britain. A new Constitution in 1864 changed Greece's form of government from constitutional monarchy to the more democratic crowned republic . In 1875 parliamentary majority as a requirement for government

889-558: A fairly stable set of consonantal contrasts . The main phonological changes occurred during the Hellenistic and Roman period (see Koine Greek phonology for details): In all its stages, the morphology of Greek shows an extensive set of productive derivational affixes , a limited but productive system of compounding and a rich inflectional system. Although its morphological categories have been fairly stable over time, morphological changes are present throughout, particularly in

1016-508: 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

1143-540: A foreign language. It is also often stated that the historical changes have been relatively slight compared with some other languages. According to one estimation, " Homeric Greek is probably closer to Demotic than 12-century Middle English is to modern spoken English ". Greek is spoken today by at least 13 million people, principally in Greece and Cyprus along with a sizable Greek-speaking minority in Albania near

1270-627: A major cultural and economic centre, was home to the Minoan civilization known for its colourful art , religious figurines , and monumental palaces . The Minoans wrote their undeciphered language using scripts known as Linear A and Cretan hieroglyphs . On the mainland, the Mycenaean civilization developed around 1750 BC and lasted until c.  1100 BC. The Mycenaeans possessed advanced military and built large fortifications . They worshiped many gods and used Linear B to write

1397-516: A protracted war of independence , which started in 1821, Greece emerged as a modern nation state in 1830. Over the first hundred years, the Kingdom of Greece sought territorial expansion , which was mainly realized in the early 20th century during the Balkan Wars and up until the catastrophic defeat of its Asia Minor Campaign in 1922. The short-lived republic that was established in 1924

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1524-483: A quarter of the population recorded bore purely Albanian anthroponyms. These figures do not take into account kinship ties shared between individuals bearing typical Albanian anthroponymy and those bearing more ambiguous names, and also do not include those bearing names that can be etymologically explained through Albanian (e.g., Buzmiri , Bala , Bardhi , Burriqi , Buzuku , Çobani , Dera , Iriqi , Kuka , Marsi , Mara , Macja , Poçi , Plaku , Uk , Ylli ). As such

1651-659: A ruling minority. As a result, during the centuries that followed a vernacular form of Greek , known as koine , and Greek culture was spread , while the Greeks adopted Eastern deities and cults . Greek science, technology, and mathematics reached their peak during the Hellenistic period. Aspiring to maintain their autonomy and independence from the Antigonid kings of the Macedonians , many poleis of Greece united in koina or sympoliteiai i.e. federations, while after

1778-773: A significant barrier to east–west travel. Its extensions cross through the Peloponnese, ending in the island of Crete. The Vikos Gorge , part of the Vikos-Aoos National Park in the Pindus range, is listed by the Guinness book of World Records as the deepest gorge in the world. Another notable formation are the Meteora rock pillars, atop which have been built medieval Greek Orthodox monasteries. Northeastern Greece features another high-altitude mountain range,

1905-471: Is Ἑλλάς ( Hellas , classical: [hel.lás] , modern: [eˈlas] ). This is the source of the English alternative name Hellas , which is mostly found in archaic or poetic contexts today. The Greek adjectival form ελληνικός ( ellinikos , [eliniˈkos] ) is sometimes also translated as Hellenic and is often rendered in this way in the formal names of Greek institutions, as in

2032-496: Is 1,160 km (721 mi). The country lies approximately between latitudes 34° and 42° N , and longitudes 19° and 30° E , with the extreme points being: the village Ormenio in the North and the islands Gavdos (South), Strongyli near Kastellorizo /Megisti (East), and Othonoi (West). The island Gavdos is considered the southernmost island of Europe. Approximately 80% of Greece consists of mountains or hills, making

2159-741: Is also found in Bulgaria near the Greek-Bulgarian border. Greek is also spoken worldwide by the sizable Greek diaspora which has notable communities in the United States , Australia , Canada , South Africa , Chile , Brazil , Argentina , Russia , Ukraine , the United Kingdom , and throughout the European Union , especially in Germany . Historically, significant Greek-speaking communities and regions were found throughout

2286-773: Is an Indo-European language, constituting an independent Hellenic branch within the Indo-European language family. It is native to Greece , Cyprus , Italy (in Calabria and Salento ), southern Albania , and other regions of the Balkans , Caucasus , the Black Sea coast, Asia Minor , and the Eastern Mediterranean . It has the longest documented history of any Indo-European language, spanning at least 3,400 years of written records. Its writing system

2413-423: Is an Indo-European language, but also includes a number of borrowings from the languages of the populations that inhabited Greece before the arrival of Proto-Greeks, some documented in Mycenaean texts ; they include a large number of Greek toponyms . The form and meaning of many words have changed. Loanwords (words of foreign origin) have entered the language, mainly from Latin, Venetian , and Turkish . During

2540-519: Is protected and promoted officially as a regional and minority language in Armenia, Hungary , Romania, and Ukraine. It is recognized as a minority language and protected in Turkey by the 1923 Treaty of Lausanne . The phonology , morphology , syntax , and vocabulary of the language show both conservative and innovative tendencies across the entire attestation of the language from the ancient to

2667-925: 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 Greece – in Europe  (light green & dark grey) – in

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2794-475: Is spoken by at least 13.5 million people today in Greece, Cyprus, Italy, Albania, Turkey , and the many other countries of the Greek diaspora . Greek roots have been widely used for centuries and continue to be widely used to coin new words in other languages; Greek and Latin are the predominant sources of international scientific vocabulary . Greek has been spoken in the Balkan peninsula since around

2921-708: 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,

3048-650: Is the Greek alphabet , which has been used for approximately 2,800 years; previously, Greek was recorded in writing systems such as Linear B and the Cypriot syllabary . The alphabet arose from the Phoenician script and was in turn the basis of the Latin , Cyrillic , Coptic , Gothic , and many other writing systems. The Greek language holds a very important place in the history of the Western world. Beginning with

3175-1068: The Boreal Kingdom and is shared between the East Mediterranean province of the Mediterranean Region and the Illyrian province of the Circumboreal Region . According to the World Wide Fund for Nature and the European Environment Agency , the territory of Greece can be subdivided into six ecoregions : the Illyrian deciduous forests , Pindus Mountains mixed forests , Balkan mixed forests , Rhodope montane mixed forests , Aegean and Western Turkey sclerophyllous and mixed forests , and Crete Mediterranean forests . It had

3302-888: The Council of Europe , NATO (since 1952), the OECD , the WTO , and the OSCE . Greece has a unique cultural heritage, large tourism industry , and prominent shipping sector . The country's rich historical legacy is reflected in part by its 19 UNESCO World Heritage Sites . Greece was the ninth most-visited country in the world in 2023. The native name of the country in Modern Greek is Ελλάδα ( Elláda , pronounced [eˈlaða] ). The corresponding form in Ancient Greek and conservative formal Modern Greek ( Katharevousa )

3429-582: The Cyclades , as well as some areas in the north featuring a cold equivalent climate ( Köppen : BSk ), such as the cities of Thessaloniki and Larissa . The mountainous areas and the higher elevations of northwestern Greece (parts of Epirus , Central Greece , Thessaly , Western Macedonia ) as well as in the mountainous central parts of Peloponnese – including parts of the regional units of Achaea , Arcadia , and Laconia  – feature an Alpine climate ( Köppen : D , E ) with heavy snowfalls during

3556-495: The Eastern Mediterranean , in what are today Southern Italy , Turkey , Cyprus , Syria , Lebanon , Israel , Palestine , Egypt , and Libya ; in the area of the Black Sea , in what are today Turkey, Bulgaria , Romania , Ukraine , Russia , Georgia , Armenia , and Azerbaijan ; and, to a lesser extent, in the Western Mediterranean in and around colonies such as Massalia , Monoikos , and Mainake . It

3683-590: The European Union  (light green) Greece , officially the Hellenic Republic , is a country in Southeast Europe . Located on the southern tip of the Balkan peninsula , Greece shares land borders with Albania to the northwest, North Macedonia and Bulgaria to the north, and Turkey to the east. The Aegean Sea lies to the east of the mainland , the Ionian Sea to the west, and

3810-504: The Fall of Constantinople (1453) Finiki (that time known as Phinikoupolis ) was destroyed by the Muslims. At the end of the 16th century Finiki witnessed a drastic population increase and became one of the largest settlements in the area with 359 households (compared to contemporary Gjirokastër with 302 and Delvinë with only 204 taxable households). At 1870 a secondary Greek language school

3937-462: The Greek genocide (1914–22), when Ottoman and Turkish officials contributed to the death of several hundred thousand Asia Minor Greeks, along with similar numbers of Assyrians and a larger number of Armenians . The resultant Greek exodus from Asia Minor was made permanent, and expanded, in an official population exchange between Greece and Turkey , as part of the Treaty of Lausanne which ended

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4064-516: 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

4191-508: The London Conference of 1832 , Britain, France and Russia installed Bavarian Prince Otto von Wittelsbach as monarch . Otto's reign was despotic , and in its first 11 years of independence Greece was ruled by a Bavarian oligarchy led by Josef Ludwig von Armansperg and, later, by Otto himself, as King and Premier. Greece remained under the influence of its three protecting great powers. In 1843 an uprising forced Otto to grant

4318-620: The Macedonian Struggle , which ended with the Young Turk Revolution in 1908. Amidst dissatisfaction with the seeming inertia and unattainability of national aspirations , military officers organised a coup in 1909 and called on Cretan politician Eleftherios Venizelos , who conveyed a vision of national regeneration. After winning two elections and becoming prime minister in 1910, Venizelos initiated fiscal, social, and constitutional reforms , reorganised

4445-624: The Near East to Europe. Greece is home to the first advanced civilizations in Europe and is often considered the birthplace of Western civilisation. The earliest of them was the Cycladic culture which flourished on the islands of the Aegean Sea , starting around 3200 BC, and produced an abundance of folded-arm and other marble figurines . From c.  3100 BC to 1100 BC, Crete ,

4572-508: The Rhodope range, spreading across the region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace ; this area is covered with vast, thick, ancient forests, including the famous Dadia Forest in the Evros regional unit , in the far northeast of the country. Extensive plains are primarily located in the regions of Thessaly , Central Macedonia , and Thrace . They constitute key economic regions as they are among

4699-654: The Russian -instigated Orlov Revolt in 1770. These uprisings were put down by the Ottomans with great bloodshed. Many Greeks were conscripted as Ottoman subjects to serve in the Ottoman army and especially the navy, while the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople, responsible for the Orthodox, remained in general loyal to the Empire. In the 18th century, Greek merchants came to dominate trade within

4826-607: The Sea of Crete and the Mediterranean Sea to the south. Greece has the longest coastline on the Mediterranean Basin , featuring thousands of islands . The country comprises nine traditional geographic regions , and has a population of over 10.4 million. Athens is the nation's capital and largest city , followed by Thessaloniki and Patras . Greece is considered the cradle of Western civilization , being

4953-608: The Second Hellenic Republic declared. In 1935, a royalist general-turned-politician Georgios Kondylis took power after a coup and abolished the republic, holding a rigged referendum , after which King George II was restored to the throne. An agreement between Prime Minister Ioannis Metaxas and George II followed in 1936, which installed Metaxas as head of a dictatorship known as the 4th of August Regime , inaugurating authoritarian rule that would last until 1974. Greece remained on good terms with Britain and

5080-498: The Slavic invasion in the 7th century resulted in a collapse in imperial authority in the Greek peninsula . The imperial government retained control of only the islands and coastal areas, particularly the populated walled cities such as Athens, Corinth and Thessalonica. However, the view that Greece underwent decline, fragmentation and depopulation is considered outdated, as cities show institutional continuity and prosperity between

5207-517: The Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974. Having achieved record economic growth from 1950 through the 1970s , Greece is a developed country with an advanced high-income economy . A founding member of the United Nations , Greece was the tenth member to join what is today the European Union in 1981 and is part of the eurozone . It is a member of other international institutions, including

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5334-884: The United Kingdom , each sent a navy. The allied fleet destroyed the Ottoman–Egyptian fleet at the Battle of Navarino , and the Greeks captured Central Greece by 1828. The nascent Greek state was recognised under the London Protocol in 1830. In 1827, Ioannis Kapodistrias , was chosen by the Third National Assembly at Troezen as the first governor of the First Hellenic Republic . Kapodistrias established state, economic and military institutions. Tensions appeared between him and local interests and, following his assassination in 1831 and

5461-460: The election . In 2020, Greece's parliament elected a non-partisan candidate, Katerina Sakellaropoulou , as the first female President of Greece . In February 2024, Greece became the first Orthodox Christian country to recognise same-sex marriage and adoption by same-sex couples. Located in Southern and Southeast Europe, Greece consists of a mountainous, peninsular mainland jutting out into

5588-492: The nominal and verbal systems. The major change in the nominal morphology since the classical stage was the disuse of the dative case (its functions being largely taken over by the genitive ). The verbal system has lost the infinitive , the synthetically -formed future, and perfect tenses and the optative mood . Many have been replaced by periphrastic ( analytical ) forms. Pronouns show distinctions in person (1st, 2nd, and 3rd), number (singular, dual , and plural in

5715-454: The 19th century, many "crypto-Christians" returned to their old religious allegiance. The nature of Ottoman administration of Greece varied, though it was invariably arbitrary and often harsh. Some cities had governors appointed by the Sultan , while others, like Athens, were self-governed municipalities. Mountainous regions in the interior and many islands remained effectively autonomous from

5842-426: The 2nd and 3rd centuries, and Christianity's early leaders and writers were mostly Greek-speaking, though not from Greece itself. The New Testament was written in Greek, and some sections attest to the importance of churches in Greece in early Christianity . Nevertheless, much of Greece clung to paganism, and ancient Greek religious practices were still in vogue in the late 4th century AD, when they were outlawed by

5969-470: The 3rd millennium BC, or possibly earlier. The earliest written evidence is a Linear B clay tablet found in Messenia that dates to between 1450 and 1350 BC, making Greek the world's oldest recorded living language . Among the Indo-European languages, its date of earliest written attestation is matched only by the now-extinct Anatolian languages . The Greek language is conventionally divided into

6096-590: The 4th and 6th centuries. In the early 6th century, Greece had approximately 80 cities according to the Synekdemos chronicle, and the 4th to the 7th century is considered one of high prosperity. Until the 8th century almost all of modern Greece was under the jurisdiction of the Holy See of Rome . Byzantine Emperor Leo III moved the border of the Patriarchate of Constantinople westward and northward in

6223-432: The 4th century BC, the Greek poleis were subjugated to the rising power of the kingdom of Macedon under king Philip II into an alliance known as the Hellenic League . After Philip's assassination in 336 BC, his son and king of Macedon , Alexander , set himself leader of a Panhellenic campaign against the Persian Empire and abolished it. Undefeated in battle, he marched, until his untimely death in 323 BC, to

6350-451: The 50 years of peace afterwards are known as the Golden Age of Athens , a seminal period that laid many foundations of Western civilization. Lack of political unity resulted in frequent conflict between Greek states. The most devastating intra-Greek war was the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), which marked the demise of the Athenian Empire and the emergence of Spartan and later Theban hegemony . Weakened by constant wars among them during

6477-415: The 5th century, is known as the Byzantine Empire , but called "Kingdom of the Romans" in its own time. With its capital in Constantinople , its language and culture were Greek and its religion was predominantly Eastern Orthodox Christian . The Empire's Balkan territories, including Greece, suffered from the dislocation of barbarian invasions ; raids by Goths and Huns in the 4th and 5th centuries and

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6604-667: The 7th or 8th centuries BC. Poetry shaped beliefs to the Olympian gods , but ancient Greek religion had no priestly class or systematic dogmas and encompassed other currents, such as popular cults, like that of Dionysus , mysteries and magic . At this time there emerged kingdoms and city-states across the Greek peninsula, which spread to the shores of the Black Sea , Magna Graecia in southern Italy , and Asia Minor . These reached great prosperity that resulted in an unprecedented cultural boom, that of classical Greece , expressed in architecture , drama , science , mathematics and philosophy . In 508 BC, Cleisthenes instituted

6731-426: The 8th century. The Byzantine recovery of lost provinces during the Arab–Byzantine wars began in the 8th century and most of the Greek peninsula came under imperial control again. This process was facilitated by a large influx of Greeks from Sicily and Asia Minor to the Greek peninsula, while many Slavs were captured and re-settled in Asia Minor. During the 11th and 12th centuries the return of stability resulted in

6858-489: The Bulgarians 40,000, and the Italians 9,000. Following liberation, Greece annexed the Dodecanese Islands from Italy and regained Western Thrace from Bulgaria. The country descended into a civil war between communist forces and the anti-communist Greek government, which lasted until 1949, with the latter's victory. The conflict, one of the earliest struggles of the Cold War , resulted in further economic devastation, population displacement and political polarisation for

6985-425: The Great Powers, however, Greece lost little territory, while Crete was established as an autonomous state under Prince George of Greece . With state coffers empty, fiscal policy came under International Financial Control . The government, aiming to quell Komitadjis and detach the Slavophone peasants of the region from Bulgarian influence, sponsored a guerrilla campaign in Ottoman-ruled Macedonia , known as

7112-486: The Greek alphabet since approximately the 9th century BC. It was created by modifying the Phoenician alphabet , with the innovation of adopting certain letters to represent the vowels. The variant of the alphabet in use today is essentially the late Ionic variant, introduced for writing classical Attic in 403 BC. In classical Greek, as in classical Latin, only upper-case letters existed. The lower-case Greek letters were developed much later by medieval scribes to permit

7239-425: The Greek language are often emphasized. Although Greek has undergone morphological and phonological changes comparable to those seen in other languages, never since classical antiquity has its cultural, literary, and orthographic tradition been interrupted to the extent that one can speak of a new language emerging. Greek speakers today still tend to regard literary works of ancient Greek as part of their own rather than

7366-442: 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

7493-428: The Greek peninsula benefiting from economic growth. The Greek Orthodox Church was instrumental in the spread of Greek ideas to the wider Orthodox world . Following the Fourth Crusade and fall of Constantinople to the " Latins " in 1204, mainland Greece was split between the Greek Despotate of Epirus and French rule (the Frankokratia ). The re-establishment of the imperial capital in Constantinople in 1261

7620-629: The Greek verb have likewise remained largely the same over the course of the language's history but with significant changes in the number of distinctions within each category and their morphological expression. Greek verbs have synthetic inflectional forms for: Many aspects of the syntax of Greek have remained constant: verbs agree with their subject only, the use of the surviving cases is largely intact (nominative for subjects and predicates, accusative for objects of most verbs and many prepositions, genitive for possessors), articles precede nouns, adpositions are largely prepositional, relative clauses follow

7747-446: The Greek-Albanian border. A significant percentage of Albania's population has knowledge of the Greek language due in part to the Albanian wave of immigration to Greece in the 1980s and '90s and the Greek community in the country. Prior to the Greco-Turkish War and the resulting population exchange in 1923 a very large population of Greek-speakers also existed in Turkey , though very few remain today. A small Greek-speaking community

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7874-429: The Hellenic League in 481 BC, led by Sparta , which was the first recorded union of Greek states since the mythical union of the Trojan War . The second Persian invasion of Greece was decisively defeated in 480–479 BC, at Salamis and Plataea , marking the eventual withdrawal of the Persians from all their European territories. The Greek victories in the Greco-Persian Wars are a pivotal moment in history, as

8001-443: The Ionian Islands, located to the west of the mainland in the Ionian Sea. The climate of Greece is primarily Mediterranean ( Köppen : Csa ), featuring mild to cool, wet winters and hot, dry summers. This climate occurs at most of the coastal locations, including Athens , the Cyclades , the Dodecanese , Crete , the Peloponnese , the Ionian Islands , and parts of mainland Greece . The Pindus mountain range strongly affects

8128-412: The Ionian islands and Constantinople lived in prosperity, and Greeks of Constantinople ( Phanariots ) achieved power within the Ottoman administration, much of Greece suffered the economic consequences of Ottoman conquest. Heavy taxes were enforced, and in later years the Ottoman Empire enacted a policy of creation of hereditary estates, effectively turning the rural Greek populations into serfs , while

8255-448: The Ottoman Empire, established communities throughout the Mediterranean, the Balkans, and Europe, and used their wealth to fund educational activities that brought younger generations into contact with Western ideas. In the 18th century, an increase in learning during the Modern Greek Enlightenment led to the emergence among Westernized Greek-speaking elites of the notion of a Greek nation . A secret organization formed in this milieu

8382-590: The Ottoman conquest had cut Greece off from European historical developments. The Greek Orthodox Church and the Ecumenical Patriarchate of Constantinople were considered by the Ottoman governments as the ruling authorities of the entire Orthodox Christian population of the Ottoman Empire, whether ethnically Greek or not. Although the Ottoman state did not force non-Muslims to convert to Islam , Christians faced discrimination. Discrimination, particularly when combined with harsh treatment by local Ottoman authorities, led to conversions to Islam, if only superficially. In

8509-462: The Ottomans in 1453 and by 1460, Ottoman conquest of mainland Greece was complete. While most of mainland Greece and the Aegean islands was under Ottoman control by the end of the 15th century, Cyprus and Crete remained Venetian and did not fall to the Ottomans until 1571 and 1669 respectively and Venice maintained control of the Ionian Islands until 1797, after which they fell under first French, then British control. While some Greeks in

8636-407: The Ottomans in 1877 , Greek sentiment rallied to Russia, but Greece was too poor and concerned about British intervention, to enter the war. Greeks in Crete continued to stage revolts, and in 1897, the Greek government, bowing to popular pressure, declared war on the Ottomans. In the ensuing Greco-Turkish War of 1897 , the badly trained and equipped Greek army was defeated. Through the intervention of

8763-465: The Polytechnic uprising. A democratic and republican constitution was promulgated in 1975 following a referendum which chose not to restore the monarchy. Meanwhile, Andreas Papandreou , George Papandreou's son, founded the Panhellenic Socialist Movement (PASOK) in response to Karamanlis's conservative New Democracy party, with the two political formations dominating government over the next four decades. Greece rejoined NATO in 1980. Greece became

8890-427: The Roman emperor Theodosius I in 391–392. The last recorded Olympic games were held in 393, and many temples were destroyed or damaged in the century that followed. The closure of the Neoplatonic Academy of Athens by Emperor Justinian in 529 is considered the end of antiquity, although there is evidence that the academy continued. The Roman Empire in the east, following the fall of the Western Roman Empire in

9017-459: The Sanjak of Delvina provides records for the village of Finiq. A significant portion of the anthroponyms recorded in the register belonged to the Albanian onomastic sphere, including personal names such as Bos , Dedë , Dodë , Gjergj , Gjin , Gjokë , Gjon , Lalë , Lekë , Muzhak , and others. However, more ambiguous or general Christian anthroponyms that were historically used by both Albanian and non-Albanian groups are also attested. In Finiq,

9144-480: The Turks and Egyptians ravaged the islands, committing massacres . This galvanized opinion in western Europe in favour of the Greeks. The Ottoman Sultan Mahmud II negotiated with Mehmet Ali of Egypt , who agreed to send his son Ibrahim Pasha with an army, in return for territorial gain. By the end of 1825, most of the Peloponnese was under Egyptian control. Three great powers , France , Russian Empire , and

9271-404: 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),

9398-482: The adoption of the euro, Greece could no longer devalue its currency to regain competitiveness. In the 2012 elections, there was major political change, with new parties emerging from the collapse of the two main parties, PASOK and New Democracy. In 2015, Alexis Tsipras was elected as prime minister, the first outside the two main parties. The Greek government-debt crisis , and subsequent austerity policies, resulted in social strife. The crisis ended around 2018, with

9525-402: The ancient language; singular and plural alone in later stages), and gender (masculine, feminine, and neuter), and decline for case (from six cases in the earliest forms attested to four in the modern language). Nouns, articles, and adjectives show all the distinctions except for a person. Both attributive and predicative adjectives agree with the noun. The inflectional categories of

9652-812: The banks of the Indus . Alexander's empire fragmented, inaugurating the Hellenistic period . After fierce conflict amongst themselves, the generals that succeeded Alexander and their successors founded large personal kingdoms in the areas he had conquered, such as that of the Ptolemies in Egypt and of the Seleucids in Syria , Mesopotamia and Iran . The newly founded poleis of these kingdoms, such as Alexandria and Antioch , were settled by Greeks as members of

9779-622: The birthplace of democracy , Western philosophy , Western literature , historiography , political science , major scientific and mathematical principles, theatre , and the Olympic Games . From the eighth century BC, the Greeks were organised into various independent city-states known as poleis (singular polis ) that spanned the Mediterranean and Black seas. Philip II of Macedon united most of present-day Greece in

9906-526: The central Ottoman state for centuries. The 16th and 17th centuries are regarded as a "dark age" in Greek history, with the prospect of overthrowing Ottoman rule appearing remote. However, prior to the Greek Revolution of 1821, there had been wars which saw Greeks fight against the Ottomans, such as the Greek participation in the Battle of Lepanto in 1571, the Morean War of 1684–1699, and

10033-474: The climate of the country, as areas to the west of the range are considerably wetter on average (due to greater exposure to south-westerly systems bringing in moisture) than the areas lying to the east of the range (due to a rain shadow effect), resulting to some coastal areas in the south falling to the hot semi-arid climate ( Köppen : BSh ) category, such as parts of the Athens Riviera and some of

10160-705: The country one of the most mountainous in Europe. Mount Olympus , the mythical abode of the Greek Gods , culminates at Mytikas peak 2,918 metres (9,573 ft), the highest in the country. Western Greece contains a number of lakes and wetlands and is dominated by the Pindus mountain range. The Pindus, a continuation of the Dinaric Alps , reaches a maximum elevation of 2,637 m (8,652 ft) at Mt. Smolikas (the second-highest in Greece) and historically has been

10287-549: The dowry was abolished, while education and foreign policy doctrines changed. However, Papandreou's tenure has been associated with corruption, high inflation, stagnation and budget deficits that later caused problems. The country adopted the euro in 2001 and successfully hosted the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens. In 2010, Greece suffered from the Great Recession and related European sovereign debt crisis . Due to

10414-649: The earliest attested form of Greek known as Mycenaean Greek . The collapse of the Mycenean civilization ushered in the Greek Dark Ages , from which written records are absent. The end of the Dark Ages is traditionally dated to 776 BC, the year of the first Olympic Games . The Iliad and the Odyssey , the foundational texts of Western literature , are believed to have been composed by Homer in

10541-404: The early 19th century that was used for literary and official purposes in the newly formed Greek state. In 1976, Dimotiki was declared the official language of Greece, after having incorporated features of Katharevousa and thus giving birth to Standard Modern Greek , used today for all official purposes and in education . The historical unity and continuing identity between the various stages of

10668-513: The end of the bailout mechanisms and return of growth. Simultaneously, Tsipras, and the leader of North Macedonia, Zoran Zaev , signed the Prespa Agreement , solving the naming dispute that had strained the relations and eased the latter's way to become a member of the EU and NATO. In 2019, Kyriakos Mitsotakis became Greece's new prime minister, after his centre-right New Democracy won

10795-618: The epics of Homer , ancient Greek literature includes many works of lasting importance in the European canon . Greek is also the language in which many of the foundational texts in science and philosophy were originally composed. The New Testament of the Christian Bible was also originally written in Greek. Together with the Latin texts and traditions of the Roman world , the Greek texts and Greek societies of antiquity constitute

10922-524: The establishment of economic relations with the East, a stratum of wealthy euergetai dominated their internal life. From about 200 BC the Roman Republic became increasingly involved in Greek affairs and engaged in a series of wars with Macedon . Macedon's defeat at the Battle of Pydna in 168 BC signalled the end of Antigonid power. In 146 BC, Macedonia was annexed as a province by Rome, and

11049-520: The ethnic Albanian element must have represented a larger proportion. Athanasios Psalidas (1767–1829), counselor of Ali Pasha of Ioannina noted that the town was inhabited by an ethnic Greek community. The 2015 Albanian civil registry, which counts all citizens including those who live abroad, recorded a much higher municipal population of 39,055. The municipal unit of Finiq comprises the villages Finiq, Buronjë (Mavropull), Çlirim, Vrion , Karahaxhë and Bregas (Vromero). The town of Finiq and all

11176-399: The few arable places in the country. Greece features a vast number of islands —between 1,200 and 6,000, depending on the definition, 227 of which are inhabited. Crete is the largest and most populous island; Euboea , separated from the mainland by the 60 m-wide Euripus Strait , is the second largest, followed by Lesbos and Rhodes . The Greek islands are traditionally grouped into

11303-821: The following clusters: the Argo-Saronic Islands in the Saronic gulf near Athens; the Cyclades, a large but dense collection occupying the central part of the Aegean Sea; the North Aegean islands , a loose grouping off the west coast of Turkey; the Dodecanese, another loose collection in the southeast between Crete and Turkey; the Sporades , a small tight group off the coast of northeast Euboea; and

11430-452: The following periods: In the modern era, the Greek language entered a state of diglossia : the coexistence of vernacular and archaizing written forms of the language. What came to be known as the Greek language question was a polarization between two competing varieties of Modern Greek: Dimotiki , the vernacular form of Modern Greek proper, and Katharevousa , meaning 'purified', a compromise between Dimotiki and Ancient Greek developed in

11557-595: The fourth century BC, with his son Alexander the Great rapidly conquering much of the known ancient world from the eastern Mediterranean to northwestern India. The subsequent Hellenistic period saw the height of Greek culture and influence in antiquity. Greece was annexed by Rome in the second century BC, becoming an integral part of the Roman Empire and its continuation, the Byzantine Empire , which

11684-439: The infinitive entirely (employing a raft of new periphrastic constructions instead) and uses participles more restrictively. The loss of the dative led to a rise of prepositional indirect objects (and the use of the genitive to directly mark these as well). Ancient Greek tended to be verb-final, but neutral word order in the modern language is VSO or SVO. Modern Greek inherits most of its vocabulary from Ancient Greek, which in turn

11811-467: The late 15th century BC, was the first script used to write Greek. It is basically a syllabary , which was finally deciphered by Michael Ventris and John Chadwick in the 1950s (its precursor, Linear A , has not been deciphered and most likely encodes a non-Greek language). The language of the Linear B texts, Mycenaean Greek , is the earliest known form of Greek. Another similar system used to write

11938-640: The membership of Greece and Cyprus in the European Union, Greek is one of the organization's 24 official languages . Greek is recognized as a minority language in Albania, and used co-officially in some of its municipalities, in the districts of Gjirokastër and Sarandë . It is also an official minority language in the regions of Apulia and Calabria in Italy. In the framework of the European Charter for Regional or Minority Languages , Greek

12065-462: The military, made Greece a member of the Balkan League , and led it through the Balkan Wars . By 1913, Greece's territory and population had doubled, annexing Crete, Epirus , and Macedonia . The struggle between King Constantine I and charismatic Venizelos over foreign policy on the eve of First World War dominated politics and divided the country into two opposing groups . During parts of

12192-441: The modern period. The division into conventional periods is, as with all such periodizations, relatively arbitrary, especially because, in all periods, Ancient Greek has enjoyed high prestige, and the literate borrowed heavily from it. Across its history, the syllabic structure of Greek has varied little: Greek shows a mixed syllable structure, permitting complex syllabic onsets but very restricted codas. It has only oral vowels and

12319-415: The new junta strongman. On 20 July 1974, Turkey invaded the island of Cyprus in response to a Greek-backed Cypriot coup, triggering a crisis in Greece that led to the regime's collapse and restoration of democracy through Metapolitefsi . The former prime minister Konstantinos Karamanlis was invited back from self-exile and the first multiparty elections since 1964 were held on the first anniversary of

12446-572: The next thirty years. Although post-war was characterised by social strife and marginalisation of the left, Greece experienced rapid economic growth and recovery, propelled in part by the U.S. Marshall Plan . In 1952, Greece joined NATO , reinforcing its membership in the Western Bloc of the Cold War. King Constantine II 's dismissal of George Papandreou 's centrist government in 1965 prompted political turbulence, which culminated in

12573-399: The noun they modify and relative pronouns are clause-initial. However, the morphological changes also have their counterparts in the syntax, and there are also significant differences between the syntax of the ancient and that of the modern form of the language . Ancient Greek made great use of participial constructions and of constructions involving the infinitive, and the modern variety lacks

12700-408: The objects of study of the discipline of Classics . During antiquity , Greek was by far the most widely spoken lingua franca in the Mediterranean world . It eventually became the official language of the Byzantine Empire and developed into Medieval Greek . In its modern form , Greek is the official language of Greece and Cyprus and one of the 24 official languages of the European Union . It

12827-655: The official name of the Greek state, the Hellenic Republic ( Ελληνική Δημοκρατία , [eliniˈci ðimokraˈti.a] ). The English names Greece and Greek are derived, via the Latin Graecia and Graecus , from the name of the Graeci ( Γραικοί , Graikoí ; singular Γραικός , Graikós ), one of first ancient Greek tribes to settle Magna Graecia in southern Italy . The Apidima Cave in Mani , in southern Greece, has been suggested to contain

12954-706: The older periods of Greek, loanwords into Greek acquired Greek inflections, thus leaving only a foreign root word. Modern borrowings (from the 20th century on), especially from French and English, are typically not inflected; other modern borrowings are derived from Albanian , South Slavic ( Macedonian / Bulgarian ) and Eastern Romance languages ( Aromanian and Megleno-Romanian ). Greek words have been widely borrowed into other languages, including English. Example words include: mathematics , physics , astronomy , democracy , philosophy , athletics , theatre, rhetoric , baptism , evangelist , etc. Moreover, Greek words and word elements continue to be productive as

13081-529: The oldest remains of early modern humans outside of Africa, dated to 200,000 years ago. However others suggest the remains represent archaic humans . All three stages of the Stone Age are represented in Greece, for example in the Franchthi Cave . Neolithic settlements in Greece, dating from the 7th millennium BC, are the oldest in Europe, as Greece lies on the route by which farming spread from

13208-525: The rest of Greece became a Roman protectorate. The process was completed in 27 BC, when emperor Augustus annexed the rest of Greece and constituted it as the senatorial province of Achaea . Despite their military superiority, the Romans admired and became heavily influenced by Greek culture. Greek-speaking communities of the Hellenised East were instrumental in the spread of Christianity in

13335-514: The sea at the southern end of the Balkans , ending at the Peloponnese peninsula (separated from the mainland by the canal of the Isthmus of Corinth ) and strategically located at the crossroads of Europe, Asia, and Africa. Its highly indented coastline and numerous islands give Greece the 11th longest national coastline in the world, with 13,676 km (8,498 mi); its land boundary

13462-437: 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

13589-486: The tenth member of the European Communities in 1981, ushering in sustained growth. Investments in industrial enterprises and heavy infrastructure, as well as funds from the European Union and growing revenue from tourism, shipping, and a fast-growing service sector raised the standard of living . In 1981, the election of Andreas Papandreou resulted in reforms over the 1980s. He recognised civil marriage,

13716-640: The villages of the municipality are exclusively inhabited by Greeks, except the village of Çlirim, which is mixed. According to the ministry of foreign affairs of Albania, the Greek population of the commune of Finiq amounts to 5531, making it the Greeks a majority. The inhabitants use the Greek language towards local government authorities and the toponyms and street addresses are written in both Albanian and Greek in official documents. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ )

13843-703: The war, Greece had two governments: A royalist pro-German one in Athens and a Venizelist pro- Entente one in Thessaloniki . They united in 1917, when Greece entered the war on the side of the Entente. After the war, Greece attempted expansion into Asia Minor , a region with a large native Greek population, but was defeated in the Greco-Turkish War (1919–1922) , contributing to a flight of Asia Minor Greeks . These events overlapped, happening during

13970-476: The war. The following era was marked by instability, as over 1.5 million propertyless Greek refugees from Turkey (some of whom could not speak Greek) had to be integrated into Greek society. The refugees made a dramatic population boost, as they were more than a quarter of Greece's prior population. Following the catastrophic events in Asia Minor, the monarchy was abolished via a referendum in 1924 and

14097-713: The winter of 1941–42, tens of thousands more died because of reprisals by Nazis and collaborators , the economy was ruined, and most Greek Jews (tens of thousands) were deported and murdered in Nazi concentration camps. The Greek Resistance , one of the most effective resistance movements, fought against the Nazis. The German occupiers committed atrocities, mass executions, and wholesale slaughter of civilians and destruction of towns and villages in reprisals. Hundreds of villages were systematically torched and almost 1 million Greeks left homeless. The Germans executed around 21,000 Greeks,

14224-577: The winter. Most of the inland parts of northern Greece, in Central Macedonia , the lower elevations of Western Macedonia and Eastern Macedonia and Thrace feature a humid subtropical climate ( Köppen : Cfa ) with cold, damp winters and hot, moderately dry summers with occasional thunderstorms. Snowfalls occur every year in the mountains and northern areas, and brief periods of snowy weather are possible even in low-lying southern areas, such as Athens . Phytogeographically , Greece belongs to

14351-489: The world's first democratic system of government in Athens . By 500 BC, the Persian Empire controlled the Greek city states in Asia Minor and Macedonia. Attempts by Greek city-states of Asia Minor to overthrow Persian rule failed , and Persia invaded the states of mainland Greece in 492 BC, but was forced to withdraw after defeat at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC. In response, the Greek city-states formed

14478-574: 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

14605-647: Was accompanied by the empire's recovery of much of the Greek peninsula, while the islands remained under Genoese and Venetian control. During the Paleologi dynasty (1261–1453) a new era of Greek patriotism emerged accompanied by a turning back to ancient Greece. In the 14th century much of the Greek peninsula was lost by the Byzantine Empire to the Serbs and then the Ottomans . Constantinople fell to

14732-596: Was already operating in Finiq. In the Defter of the Sanjak of Delvinë from 1431-1432, 4 villages in the area of Vurgu are recorded: Finiki (Finiqi), Vurgo, Jeromi and Krajna (Kranéja) each with very few inhabitants. Among these villages, the Ottoman register of 1520 attests typical Albanian names are attested inscribed such as: Gjin , Reçi , Leka , Gjon , Dorza , Meksh Nika and Deda . The Ottoman defter of 1582 for

14859-568: Was also used as the official language of government and religion in the Christian Nubian kingdoms , for most of their history. Greek, in its modern form, is the official language of Greece, where it is spoken by almost the entire population. It is also the official language of Cyprus (nominally alongside Turkish ) and the British Overseas Territory of Akrotiri and Dhekelia (alongside English ). Because of

14986-494: 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

15113-470: Was beset by the ramifications of civil strife and the challenge of resettling refugees from Turkey . In 1936 a royalist dictatorship inaugurated a long period of authoritarian rule, marked by military occupation , civil war and military dictatorship . Democracy was restored in 1974–75, leading to the current parliamentary republic . It was a belligerent on the side of the Greek Cypriots in

15240-654: Was introduced, curbing the power of the monarchy to appoint minority governments . Corruption, coupled with increased spending to fund infrastructure like the Corinth Canal , overtaxed the weak economy and forced the declaration of public insolvency in 1893. Greeks were united, however, in their determination to liberate the Hellenic lands under Ottoman rule; the Cretan Revolt (1866–1869) had raised nationalist fervour. When war broke out between Russia and

15367-548: Was moved from Nafplio , where it had been since 1829, to Athens , then a smaller town. The Church of Greece was established as Greece's national church and 25 March, the day of Annunciation , was chosen as the anniversary of the Greek War of Independence to reinforce the link between Greek identity and Orthodoxy . Otto was deposed in 1862 because of the Bavarian-dominated government, heavy taxation, and

15494-658: Was not allied with the Axis . In October 1940, Fascist Italy demanded the surrender of Greece, but it refused , and, in the Greco-Italian War , Greece repelled Italian forces into Albania. French general Charles de Gaulle praised the fierceness of the Greek resistance, but the country fell to urgently dispatched German forces during the Battle of Greece . The Nazis proceeded to administer Athens and Thessaloniki, while other regions were given to Fascist Italy and Bulgaria. Over 100,000 civilians died of starvation during

15621-474: Was predominately Greek in culture and language . The Greek Orthodox Church , which emerged in the first century AD, helped shape modern Greek identity and transmitted Greek traditions to the wider Orthodox world . After the Fourth Crusade in 1204, Latin possessions were established in parts of the Greek peninsula, but most of the area fell under Ottoman rule by the mid-15th century. Following

15748-814: Was the Filiki Eteria , in 1814. They engaged traditional strata of the Greek Orthodox world in their liberal nationalist cause. The first revolt began on 6 March 1821 in the Danubian Principalities , but was put down by the Ottomans. This spurred the Greeks of the Peloponnese and on 17 March the Maniots declared war on the Ottomans. By October 1821 the Greeks had captured Tripolitsa . There were revolts in Crete, Macedonia and Central Greece , which were suppressed. In 1822 and 1824

15875-594: Was the political center of the Epirot Greek tribe of the Chaonians . Early Byzantine architecture (4th-7th century) is evident in the settlement in particular that of the three aisled basilica type. The settlement retained its ancient name and is mentioned in an Ottoman record of 1431 as Finiki . According to the Chronicle of Gjirokastër the first years of Ottoman rule (15th century) were peaceful but after

16002-580: 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

16129-673: 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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