Misplaced Pages

#647352

107-1118: One hypothesis proposes that the term is the Italian rendering of Greek στρατιώτες, stratiotes or στρατιώται, stratiotai (soldiers), which denoted cavalrymen who owned pronoia fiefs in the late Byzantine period. It was also used in Ancient Greek as a general term for a soldier being part of an army. According to another hypothesis, it derives from the Italian word strada ("street") which produced stradioti "wanderers" or "wayfarers", figuratively interpreted as errant cavalrymen. Italian variants are stradioti, stradiotti, stratioti, strathiotto, strathioti . In Albanian they are called stratiotë ( definite : stratiotët ) in French estradiots , in Serbo-Croatian : stratioti, stradioti , in Spanish estradiotes . Since many stradioti wore

214-577: 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,

321-502: A commission appointed by the Greek government reported that a third of the villages of Greece should have their names changed, often because of their non-Greek origin. In other instances, names were changed from a contemporary name of Greek origin to the ancient Greek name. Some village names were formed from a Greek root word with a foreign suffix or vice versa. Most of the name changes took place in areas populated by ethnic Greeks in which

428-558: 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

535-508: 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

642-540: 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

749-521: A mixture of Ottoman , Byzantine and European garb: the armor was initially a simple mail hauberk , replaced by heavier armor in later eras. As mercenaries, the stradioti received wages only as long as their military services were needed. They wore helmets which were known as "chaska", from the Spanicsh word "casco". From the end of the 15th century they also used gunpowder weapons. The stradioti wore particular caps, which were very similar to those of

856-481: A particular cap, in Venice the name cappelletti (sing. cappelletto ) was initially used as a synonym for stradiotti or albanesi . In the 16th and 17th centuries the term cappelletti was mainly used for light cavalry recruited from Dalmatia. A feature that distinguished the cappelletti form the stradiotti was their increasing usage of firearms . From the 17th century Venice recruited light cavalry no longer from

963-444: A past Albanian Muslim population living amongst them. There are no monolingual Arvanitika-speakers, as all are today bilingual in Greek. However, while Arvanites are bilingual in Greek and Arvanitika, Arvanitika is considered an endangered language as it is in a state of attrition due to the large-scale language shift towards Greek among the descendants of Arvanitika-speakers in recent decades, becoming monolingual Greek speakers in

1070-423: A significant impact in the way Venetians perceived what it meant to be Albanian. Although Stratioti units settled in western Europe and finally lost contact with their homelands, they were crucial in the spread of Greek-Orthodox and Uniate communities in Venice, as well as in other Italian and Dalmatian cities. France under Louis XII recruited some 2,000 stradioti in 1497, two years after the battle of Fornovo. Among

1177-472: A stratum of foreign or divergent toponyms had accumulated over the centuries. However, in some parts of northern Greece, the population was not Greek-speaking, and many of the former toponyms had reflected the diverse ethnic and linguistic origins of their inhabitants. The process of the change of toponyms in modern Greece has been described as a process of Hellenisation. A modern use is in connection with policies pursuing "cultural harmonization and education of

SECTION 10

#1732782915648

1284-600: Is a lack of evidence from Hellenistic Syria; concerning this, most scholars view it as a case of "absence of evidence is not evidence of absence". The Bactrians , an Iranian ethnic group who lived in Bactria (northern Afghanistan ), were Hellenised during the reign of the Greco-Bactrian Kingdom and soon after various tribes in northwestern regions of the Indian subcontinent underwent Hellenisation during

1391-804: 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

1498-773: 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

1605-479: 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

1712-488: Is often not possible to state with certainty whether particular archaeological findings belonged to Greeks, Hellenized indigenous peoples, indigenous people who simply owned Greek-style objects or some combination of these groups. Thus, literary sources are also used to help researchers interpret archaeological findings. Greek cultural influence spread into Anatolia in a slow rate from the 6th to 4th century. The Lydians had been particularly receptive to Greek culture, as were

1819-519: 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

1926-556: Is quite a bit of archeological evidence that dates to the Hellenistic period . Literary evidence, however, including inscriptions and coins are limited. During the 3rd and 2nd centuries BC, native regional tongues were abandoned in favour of koine Greek and settlements began to take on characteristics of Greek polis . The Iron Age Panemoteichos I may be an early precursor to later regional Hellenistic settlements including Selge , Termessos and Sagalassos (believed to be

2033-850: 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 Hellenization Hellenization

2140-526: 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

2247-763: 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,

SECTION 20

#1732782915648

2354-650: 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

2461-551: Is the adoption of Greek culture , religion , language , and identity by non-Greeks. In the ancient period , colonisation often led to the Hellenisation of indigenous peoples; in the Hellenistic period , many of the territories which were conquered by Alexander the Great were Hellenized. The first known use of a verb that means "to Hellenize" was in Greek (ἑλληνίζειν) and by Thucydides (5th century BC), who wrote that

2568-504: The Age of Discovery ; that is, that they were trading posts initially established to conduct trade with Anatolian locals. By the beginning of the Archaic period , settlement of Anatolia had begun to grow at a quick rate, and proper colonies in the traditional sense were established in the form of predominantly Greek city-states ( πόλεις , póleis ). Extensive trade between mainland Greece and

2675-580: The Amphilochian Argives were Hellenised as to their language by the Ambraciots , which shows that the word perhaps already referred to more than language. The similar word Hellenism , which is often used as a synonym, is used in 2 Maccabees (c. 124 BC) and the Book of Acts (c. AD 80–90) to refer to clearly much more than language, though it is disputed what that may have entailed. By

2782-871: The Arbëreshë people of Italy. With the end of the Byzantine Empire in 1453 and the breakup of the Despotate of the Morea through civil war between 1450 and 1460, Albanian and Greek stradioti increasingly found refuge and employment with the Venetians. The Republic of Venice first used stratioti in their campaigns against the Ottoman Empire and, from c. 1475, as frontier troops in Friuli . Starting from that period, they began to almost entirely replace

2889-578: The Archaic Period . On the other hand, Greeks who settled in the southwestern region of Pisidia and Pamphylia seem to have been assimilated by the local culture. Panticapaeum (modern day Kerch ) was one of the early Greek colonies in Crimea . It was founded by Miletus around 600 BC on a site with good terrain for a defensive acropolis . By the time the Cimmerian colonies had organised into

2996-675: The Bosporan Kingdom much of the local native population had been Hellenized. Most scholars date the establishment of the kingdom to 480 BC, when the Archaeanactid dynasty assumed control of Panticapaeum, but classical archaeologist Gocha R. Tsetskhladze has dated the kingdom's founding to 436 BC, when the Spartocid dynasty replaced the ruling Archaeanactids. The Hellenistic Seleucid and Ptolemaic kingdoms that formed after Alexander's death were particularly relevant to

3103-495: 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

3210-516: 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

3317-640: The Ottoman-Venetian wars in the 15th century. It has been suggested that a ready pool of Albanian stradioti was the product of the northern Albanian tribal system of feud ( Gjakmarrja ) and consequent emigration. The precise year when stratioti units began to be recruited in western armies is not known. However, under 1371 state decrees of the Venetian Republic those Greeks that lived in Venetian controlled territories were allowed to join

Stratioti - Misplaced Pages Continue

3424-648: The Provveditore generale di Candia warn him that the Stratioti should be "actual Albanians" ( veramene Albanesi ) unlike the Stratioti in Crete who were not "real Albanians but Cypriots and locals who have no military experience". Venetian sources described them more as "farmers than stradioti" who spoke Greek ( parlavano greco ). The presence of the Albanian stradioti in Venetian territories for many decades had

3531-554: The Sabbath . Hellenization of members of the Jewish elite included names and clothes, but other customs were adapted by the rabbis, and elements that violated the halakha and midrash were prohibited. One example is the elimination of some aspects of Hellenistic banquets, such as the practice of offering libations to the gods, while incorporating certain elements that gave the meals a more Jewish character. Discussion of Scripture ,

3638-604: The San Giorgio dei Greci , and the Scuola dei Greci (Confraternity of the Greeks), in a neighborhood where a Greek community still resides. Impressed by the unorthodox tactics of the stratioti, other European powers quickly began to hire mercenaries from the same region. Since the first Ottoman–Venetian war (1463–1479) and later Ottoman–Venetian wars of the 15th and 16th century Stratioti units, both Albanian and Greeks served

3745-675: The War of the Austrian Succession against Prussian and French troops. The stratioti were pioneers of light cavalry tactics during this era. In the early 16th century light cavalry in the European armies was principally remodeled after Albanian stradioti of the Venetian army, Hungarian hussars and German mercenary cavalry units ( Schwarzreiter ). They employed hit-and-run tactics , ambushes , feigned retreats and other complex maneuvers. In some ways, these tactics echoed those of

3852-580: The highlands of Lycia and Cilicia . The exact date of Greek settlement in the region is not known; one possible theory is that settlers arrived in the region as part of Bronze Age maritime trade between the Aegean , Levant and Cyprus , while another attributes it to population movements during the instability of the Bronze Age Collapse . The Greek dialect established in Pamphylia by

3959-492: 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

4066-606: The "Stradiotes" at the battle of the Spurs in 1513. They were equipped with short stirrups, small spears, beaver hats, and Turkish swords. The term " carabins " was also used in France as well as in Spain denoting cavalry and infantry units similar to estradiots and argoulets (Daniel G.)(Bonaparte N.). Units of Carabins seem to exist at least till the early 18th century. Corps of light infantry mercenaries were periodically recruited from

4173-616: The 1821 Tripolitsa Massacre of Muslim Albanians, while some Muslim Albanian speakers in the region of Bardounia remained after the war, converting to Orthodoxy. In recent times, Arvanites have expressed mixed opinions towards recent Albanian settlers within Greece. Other Arvanites during the late 1980s and early 1990s expressed solidarity with Albanian immigrants, due to linguistic similarities and being politically leftist. Relations too between Arvanites and other Orthodox Albanian-speaking communities such as those of Greek Epirus are mixed, as they are distrusted regarding religious matters due to

4280-404: The 2nd century BC. Finds from the abandoned Hellenistic era settlement include imported and locally produced imitation Greek-style terracotta figurines and ceramics. Inscriptions show that some of the inhabitants had Greek names, while others had Anatolian or possibly Celtic names. Many Phrygian cult objects were Hellenised during the Hellenistic period, but worship of traditional deities like

4387-470: 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

Stratioti - Misplaced Pages Continue

4494-762: The 4th century BC Aspendos claimed ties to Argos , similar to Nikokreon of Cyprus who also claimed Argive lineage. (Argos was home to the Kings of Macedon .) Like the Argeads , the Antigonids claimed descent from Heracles , the Seleucids from Apollo , and the Ptolemies from Dionysus . The Seuthopolis inscription was very influential in the modern study of Thrace . The inscription mentions Dionysus, Apollo and some Samothracian gods . Scholars have interpreted

4601-618: The 4th century BC, the process of Hellenization had started in southwestern Anatolia's Lycia , Caria and Pisidia regions. (1st century fortifications at Pelum in Galatia , on Baş Dağ in Lycaonia and at Isaura are the only known Hellenistic-style structures in central and eastern Anatolia ). When it was advantageous to do so, places like Side and Aspendos invented Greek-themed origin myths; an inscription published in SEG shows that in

4708-658: The 4th century dynasties of Caria and Lycia as well as the inhabitants of the Cilician plain and of the regions of Paphlagonia . The local population found their desires for advancement a stimulus to learn Greek. The indigenous urban settlements and villages in Anatolia coalesced, on their own initiative, to form cities in the Greek manner. The local kings of Asia Minor adopted Greek as their official language and sought to imitate other Greek cultural forms. The first properly Greek settlements in Anatolia originated shortly after

4815-589: The Alambresi, Basta, Bua , Meksi , Capuzzimadi, Crescia, and Renesi . The study on the names of the stradioti does not indicate that most of them came directly from Albania proper, rather from the Venetian holdings in southern and central Greece. The stradioti who moved with their families to Italy in the late 15th and early 16th centuries had been born in the Peloponnese, where their ancestors immigrated in

4922-450: The Albanian ethnographic region of Labëria , with conical shape and a small extension, reinforced inside by several sheets of paper attached together, ensuring surprising resistance. Those caps were called chapeau albanois (Albanian hat) in French. Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ )

5029-438: The Arvanites. The common Orthodox Christian faith they shared with the rest of the local population was one of the main reasons that led to their assimilation. Other reasons for assimilation are large-scale internal migration to the cities and subsequent intermingling of the population. Although sociological studies of Arvanite communities still used to note an identifiable sense of a special "ethnic" identity among Arvanites,

5136-571: The Balkans or Italy mainly during the 15th to 17th centuries. In 1587, the Duchy of Lorraine recruited 500 Albanian cavalrymen, while from 1588 to 1591 five Albanian light cavalry captains were also recruited. The Kingdom of Naples hired Albanians, Greeks and Serbs into the Royal Macedonian Regiment ( Italian : Reggimento Real Macedone ), a light infantry unit active in the 18th century. Spain also recruited this unit. Stratioti were first employed by Spain in their Italian expedition (see Italian Wars ). Gonzalo Fernández de Córdoba ("Gran Capitan")

5243-498: The Classical period was related to Arcado-Cypriot . Mopsus is a legendary founder of several coastal cities in southwestern Anatolia, including Aspendos , Phaselis , Perge and Sillyon . A bilingual Phoenician and neo-Hittite Luwian inscription found at Karatepe , dated to 800 BC, says that the ruling dynasty there traced their origins to Mopsus. Mopsus, whose name is also attested to in Hittite documents, may originally have been an Anatolian figure that became part of

5350-399: The Divine Nature; while the further assertion 'these three are One', which the modern mind finds paradoxical, was no more than commonplace to those familiar with Stoic notions. The Greek East was one of the two main cultural areas of the Roman Empire and began to be ruled by an autonomous imperial court in AD 286 under Diocletian . However, Rome remained the nominal capital of both parts of

5457-417: The French they were known as estradiots and argoulets . The term "argoulet" is believed to come either from the Greek city of Argos, where many of argoulets come from (Pappas), or from the arcus (bow) and the arquebuse. For some authors argoulets and estradiots are synonymous but for others there are certain differences between them. G. Daniel, citing M. de Montgommeri, says that argoulets and estradiots have

SECTION 50

#1732782915648

5564-401: The Greek Orthodox or Uniate Church communities in the places they lived in Italy. On the other hand the military service in Italy and other European countries slowed and in some cases reversed the process of Hellenization. Those Albanians of Greece who migrated to Italy have been able to maintain their identity more easily than the Arvanites who remained in Greece, hence constituting a part of

5671-486: 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

5778-425: 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

5885-442: 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

5992-629: 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

6099-446: 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

6206-409: The Hellenisation of Judaism in the pre-Christian Period (1980, German original 1976) and The 'Hellenisation' of Judaea in the First Century after Christ (1989, German original 1989), the tide began to turn decisively. Hengel argued that virtually all of Judaism was highly Hellenised well before the beginning of the Christian era, and even the Greek language was well known throughout the cities and even

6313-400: The Hellenistic portions of Anatolia was underway by the 8th to 7th centuries BCE, with fish, grain, timber, metal, and often slaves being exported from the land. It is believed that this kind of contact with the spread of Hellenistic culture, religion, and ideas in Anatolia was a peaceful process. Worship of the Greek pantheon of gods was practiced in Lydia. Lydian king Croesus often invited

6420-456: The Judaism of the diaspora was thought to have succumbed thoroughly to its influences. Bultmann thus argued that Christianity arose almost completely within those Hellenistic confines and should be read against that background, as opposed to a more traditional Jewish background. With the publication of Martin Hengel 's two-volume study Hellenism and Judaism (1974, German original 1972) and subsequent studies Jews, Greeks and Barbarians: Aspects of

6527-484: The Morea, but mainly from Dalmatia and Albania, and the cappelletti gradually replaced the stradiotti . However they had not the same success as light cavalry was gradually abandoned. The stradioti were recruited in Albania , Greece , Dalmatia , Serbia and Cyprus . Those units continued the military traditions of Byzantine and Balkan cavalry warfare. As such, they had previously served Byzantine and Albanian rulers, they then entered Venetian military service during

SECTION 60

#1732782915648

6634-563: The Ottoman sipahis and akinci . They had some notable successes also against French heavy cavalry during the Italian Wars . Their features resembled more the akinjis than the sipahis, this occurred most probably as a result of the defensive character of 15th century Byzantine warfare. They were known for cutting off the heads of dead or captured enemies, and according to Commines they were paid by their leaders one ducat per head. The stradioti used javelins , swords , maces , crossbows , bows , and daggers . They traditionally dressed in

6741-492: The Phrygian mother goddess persisted. Greek cults attested to include Hermes , Kybele , the Muses and Tyche . Greek art and culture reached Phoenicia by way of commerce before any Greek cities were founded in Syria. but Hellenisation of Syrians was not widespread until it became a Roman province . Under Roman rule in the 1st century BC there is evidence of Hellenistic style funerary architecture, decorative elements, mythological references, and inscriptions. However, there

6848-428: The Venetian army. The precise definition of their ethnic identity was the subject of careful study, while modern scholarship concludes that they were Albanians and Greeks who mainly originated from the Peloponnese . Studies on the origin of their names indicate that around 80% of the stradioti were of Albanian origin, and very few of Slav origin ( Crovati ). The remainder were Greek, most of whom were captains . Some of

6955-468: The Venetian forces in the Morea. In addition the Venetian authorities allowed the settlement of Albanians in Napoli di Romagna ( Nauplion ) in the Argolis region, outside of the walls of the city. Relations between the two groups and relations between Albanians, Greeks and the central Venetian administration varied. Some families intermarried with each other, while other times disputes erupted as in 1525 when both Greeks and Albanians asked to serve only under

7062-403: The Venetian light cavalry in the army. Apart from the Albanian stradioti, Greek and Italian ones were also deployed in the League of Venice at the Battle of Fornovo (1495). The mercenaries were recruited from the Balkans, mainly Christians but also some Muslims. In 1511, a group of stratioti petitioned for the construction of the Greek community of Venice 's Eastern Orthodox church in Venice ,

7169-404: 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),

7276-402: 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

7383-518: The authors did not identify or never identified a sense of 'belonging to Albania or to the Albanian nation'. Many Arvanites find the designation "Albanians" offensive as they identify nationally and ethnically as Greeks and not Albanians. Because of this, relations between Arvanites and other Albanian-speaking populations have diverged over time. During the onset of the Greek war of Independence, Arvanites fought alongside Greek revolutionaries against Muslim Albanians. For example, Arvanites participated in

7490-416: The contributions of Semitic-speaking and other Near Eastern cultures. The twentieth century witnessed a lively debate over the extent of Hellenisation in the Levant , particularly among the ancient Jews , which has continued until today. Interpretations on the rise of Early Christianity , which was applied most famously by Rudolf Bultmann , used to see Judaism as largely unaffected by Hellenism, and

7597-411: The cultural traditions of Pamphylia's early Greek settlers. Attested to in Linear B texts, he is given a Greek genealogy as a descendant of Manto and Apollo . For centuries the indigenous population exerted considerable influence on Greek settlers, but after the 4th century BC this population quickly started to become Hellenised. Little is known about Pisidia prior to the 3rd century BC, but there

7704-656: The diminution of the community of Corfiot Italians , which had lived in Corfu since the Middle Ages; by the 1940s, there were only 400 Corfiot Italians left. Arvanites are descendants of Albanian settlers who came to the present southern Greece in the late 13th and early 14th century. With participation in the Greek War of Independence and the Greek Civil War , this has led to increasing assimilation amongst

7811-641: The doctrine of the Trinity, the ecclesiastical conception of Father, Word, and Spirit finds its germ in the different Stoic names of the Divine Unity. Thus Seneca , writing of the supreme Power which shapes the universe, states, 'This Power we sometimes call the All-ruling God, sometimes the incorporeal Wisdom, sometimes the holy Spirit, sometimes Destiny.' The Church had only to reject the last of these terms to arrive at its own acceptable definition of

7918-404: 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

8025-725: The empire, and Latin was the state language. When the Western Empire fell and the Roman Senate sent the regalia of the Western Emperor to the Eastern Emperor Zeno in AD 476, Constantinople ( Byzantium in Ancient Greek ) was recognised as the seat of the sole Emperor. A process of political Hellenisation began and led, among other reforms, to the declaration of Greek as the official language. In 1909,

8132-468: The end of the Bronze age, around the 11th century BCE. Mycenaean settlements at Halicarnassus , Miletus , and Colophon existed before this, but Mycenaean colonization in the region was sporadic at best and not on the same scale as the later Greek colonization of Anatolia. These initial posts in the 2nd millenium BCE, however, were less colonies in the traditional sense and more akin to the factories of

8239-618: 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

8346-452: 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

8453-606: The history of Judaism . Located between the two kingdoms, Judea experienced long periods of warfare and instability. Judea fell under Seleucid control in 198 BC. By the time Antiochus IV Epiphanes became king of Judea in 175 BC, Jerusalem was already somewhat Hellenized. In 170 BC, both claimants to the High Priesthood, Jason and Menelaus , bore Greek names. Jason had established institutions of Greek education and in later years Jewish culture started to be suppressed including forbidding circumcision and observance of

8560-439: 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

8667-595: The inscription as evidence of Hellenisation in inland Thrace during the early Hellenistic, but this has been challenged by recent scholarship. However, Hellenization had its limitations. For example, areas of southern Syria that were affected by Greek culture mostly entailed Seleucid urban centres, where Greek was commonly spoken. The countryside, on the other hand, was largely unaffected, with most of its inhabitants speaking Syriac and clinging to their native traditions. By itself, archaeological evidence only gives researchers an incomplete picture of Hellenization; it

8774-670: The late 14th and early 15th century, after the request of the Byzantine Despots of the Morea , Theodore I and Theodore II Palaiologos , who invited the Albanians to serve as military colonists in the Peloponnese in the attempt to resist Ottoman expansion in the Balkans. While the bulk of stratioti were of Albanian origin from Greece, by the middle of the 16th century there is evidence that many of them had been Hellenized and in some occasions even Italianized. Hellenization

8881-467: 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

8988-675: The leadership of their own commanders. In the reports of the Venetian commander of Nauplion, Bartolomeo Minio (1479–1483) stressed that the Albanian stratioti were unreliable contrary to the Greek units which he considered loyal. In other reports, attitudes towards Albanians are positive. As Venice lost territory to the Ottomans in the Morea, the numbers of Stratioti the administration employed lowered. By 1524, no more than 400-500 Stratioti remained in Venetian Argolis. By 1589, four Venetian Stratioti companies remained in Crete. Reports to

9095-518: The linguistic minorities resident within the modern Greek state" - the Hellenisation of minority groups in modern Greece. The term Hellenisation (or Hellenization) is also used in the context of Greek opposition to the use of the Slavic dialects of Greece . In 1870, the Greek government abolished all Italian schools in the Ionian islands , which had been annexed to Greece six years earlier. That led to

9202-640: 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

9309-441: 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

9416-399: 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

9523-536: 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

9630-494: The officers' surnames who were of Greek origin are Palaiologos , Spandounios, Laskaris, Rhalles, Komnenos , Psendakis, Maniatis, Spyliotis, Alexopoulos, Psaris, Zacharopoulos, Klirakopoulos, and Kondomitis. A number of them, such as the Palaiologoi and Komnenoi, were members of Byzantine noble families. Others seemed to be of South Slavic origin, such as Soimiris, Vlastimiris, and Voicha. Some renowned Albanian stratioti were

9737-706: 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

9844-415: The process often being synonymous with urbanisation. Hellenisation reached Pisidia and Lycia sometime in the 4th century BC, but the interior remained largely unaffected for several more centuries until it came under Roman rule in the 1st century BC. Ionian , Aeolian and Doric settlers along Anatolia's Western coast seemed to have remained culturally Greek and some of their city-states date back to

9951-661: The reign of the Indo-Greek Kingdom . The periodisation of the Hellenistic Age , between the conquests of Alexander the Great up to Octavian ' s victory at the Battle of Actium , has been attributed to the 19th-century historian J. G. Droysen . According to this model the spread of Greek culture during this period made the rise of Christianity possible. Later, in the 20th century, scholars questioned this 19th-century paradigm for failing to account for

10058-435: The same armoury except that the former wear a helmet. According to others "estradiots" were Albanian horsemen and "argoulets" were Greeks, while Croatians were called "Cravates". The argoulets were armed with a sword, a mace (metal club) and a short arquebuse. They continued to exist under Charles IX and are noted at the battle of Dreux (1562). They were disbanded around 1600. The English chronicle writer Edward Hall described

10165-460: The singing of sacred songs and attendance of students of the Torah were encouraged. One detailed account of Jewish-style Hellenistic banquets comes from Ben Sira . There is literary evidence from Philo about the extravagance of Alexandrian Jewish banquets, and The Letter of Aristeas discusses Jews dining with non-Jews as an opportunity to share Jewish wisdom. Pamphylia is a plain located between

10272-485: The smaller towns of Jewish Palestine. Scholars have continued to nuance Hengel's views, but almost all believe that strong Hellenistic influences were throughout the Levant, even among the conservative Jewish communities, which were the most nationalistic. In his introduction to the 1964 book Meditations , Anglican priest Maxwell Staniforth discussed the profound influence of Stoic philosophy on Christianity: Again in

10379-437: 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

10486-655: The three most prominent cities of Hellenistic Pisidia). The site is evidence of "urban organisation" that predates the Greek polis by 500 years. Based on Panemoteichos I and other Iron Age sites, including the Phrygian Midas şehri and the Cappadocian fortification of Kerkenes , experts believe that "behind the Greek influence that shaped the Hellenistic Pisidian communities there lay a tangible and important Anatolian tradition." According to

10593-498: The wisest Greek philosophers, orators and statesmen to attend his court. Croesus himself often consulted the famous oracle at Delphi-bestowing many gifts and offerings to this and other religious sites for example. He provided patronage for the reconstruction of the Temple of Artemis, to which he offered a large number of marble columns as dedication to the goddess. It was in the towns that Hellenisation made its greatest progress, with

10700-461: The writings of Arrian the population of Side , who traced their origins to Aeolian Cyme , had forgotten the Greek language by the time Alexander arrived at the city in 334 BC. There are coins and stone inscriptions that attest to a unique script from the region but the language has only been partially deciphered. The latest dateable coins found at the Phrygian capital of Gordion are from

10807-574: 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

10914-568: 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

11021-557: 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

11128-400: Was possibly underway prior to service abroad, since stradioti of Albanian origin had settled in Greek lands for two generations before their emigration to Italy. Moreover, since many served under Greek commanders and together with the Greek stradioti, this process continued. Another factor in this assimilative process was the stradioti's and their families' active involvement and affiliation with

11235-762: Was sent by King Ferdinand II of Aragon ("the Catholic") to support the kingdom of Naples against the French invasion in Calabria. Gonzalo had two hundred " estradiotes Griegos, elite cavalry ". Units of estradiotes served also in the Guard of King Ferdinand and, along with the alabarderos ( halberdiers ), are considered the beginnings of the Spanish Royal Guard . In the middle of the 18th century, Albanian stratioti were employed by Empress Maria Theresa during

11342-580: 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

11449-673: 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

#647352