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141-436: Pindar ( / ˈ p ɪ n d ər / ; ‹See Tfd› Greek : Πίνδαρος Pindaros [píndaros] ; Latin : Pindarus ; c.  518 BC  – c.  438 BC ) was an Ancient Greek lyric poet from Thebes . Of the canonical nine lyric poets of ancient Greece, his work is the best preserved. Quintilian wrote, "Of the nine lyric poets, Pindar is by far the greatest, in virtue of his inspired magnificence,

282-577: 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,

423-705: A belief in Fate as the background to the gods, unlike the plays of Aeschylus for example. Pindar subjects both fortune and fate to divine will (e.g. "child of Zeus ... Fortune"). He selects and revises traditional myths so as not to diminish the dignity and majesty of the gods. Such revisionism was not unique. Xenophanes had castigated Homer and Hesiod for the misdeeds they ascribed to gods, such as theft, adultery and deception, and Pythagoras had envisioned those two poets being punished in Hades for blasphemy. A subtle example of Pindar's approach can be found in his treatment of

564-651: A branch in Thebes, and his reference to 'my ancestors' in Pythian 5 could have been spoken on behalf of both Arcesilas and himself – he may have used this ambivalence to establish a personal link with his patrons. He was possibly the Theban proxenos or consul for Aegina and/or Molossia , as indicated in another of his odes, Nemean 7, in which he glorifies Neoptolemus , a national hero of Aegina and Molossia. According to tradition, Neoptolemus died disgracefully in

705-469: A brand new terminal ready to serve 1500 passengers per hour and new airplanes. Although the historical region of Thessaly extended south into Phthiotis and at times north into West Macedonia , today the term 'Thessaly' is identified with the modern Administrative Region which was established in the 1987 administrative reform. With the 2010 Kallikratis plan , the powers and authority of the region were redefined and extended. Along with Central Greece , it

846-585: A campaign of smears against him – possibly the poets Simonides and his nephew Bacchylides . Pindar's original treatment of narrative myth, often relating events in reverse chronological order, is said to have been a favourite target for criticism. Simonides was known to charge high fees for his work and Pindar is said to have alluded to this in Isthmian 2 , where he refers to the Muse as "a hireling journeyman". He appeared in many poetry competitions and

987-524: A change in scholarly opinion: the Odes were no longer seen as expressions of Pindar's personal thoughts and feelings, but rather as public statements "dedicated to the single purpose of eulogizing men and communities." It has been claimed that biographical interpretations of the poems are due to a "fatal conjunction" of historicism and Romanticism. In other words, we know almost nothing about Pindar's life based on either traditional sources or his own poems. However,

1128-562: A day! What is anyone? What is anyone not? A dream of a shadow Is our mortal being. But when there comes to men A gleam of splendour given of heaven, Then rests on them a light of glory And blessed are their days. ( Pythian 8 ) Five ancient sources contain all the recorded details of Pindar's life. One of them is a short biography discovered in 1961 on an Egyptian papyrus dating from at least 200 AD ( P.Oxy .2438). The other four are collections that were not finalized until some 1600 years after his death: Although these sources are based on

1269-512: A demeaning role. He seems indifferent to the intellectual reforms that were shaping the theology of the times. Thus an eclipse is not a mere physical effect, as contemplated by early thinkers such as Thales , Anaximander and Heraclitus , nor was it even a subject for bold wonder, as it was for an earlier poet, Archilochus ; instead Pindar treated an eclipse as a portent of evil. Gods are the embodiment of power, uncompromisingly proud of their nature and violent in defense of their privileges. There

1410-501: A distinct administrative unit in 1276, when the pinkernes Raoul Komnenos was its governor ( kephale ). From 1271 to 1318 Thessaly was an independent despotate that extended to Acarnania and Aetolia , run by the dynasty founded by John I Doukas . John ruled from 1271 until his death in 1289 and was succeeded by his sons Constantine and Theodore. At this time, Thessaly came under Byzantine suzerainty, though it largely retained its independence. After Constatine's death in 1303, it

1551-558: 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

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1692-560: 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

1833-528: A fight with priests at the temple in Delphi over their share of some sacrificial meat. Pindar diplomatically glosses over this and concludes mysteriously with an earnest protestation of innocence – "But shall my heart never admit that I with words none can redeem dishonoured Neoptolemus". Possibly he was responding to anger among Aeginetans and/or Molossians over his portrayal of Neoptolemus in an earlier poem, Paean 6 , which had been commissioned by

1974-540: 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

2115-503: A huge risk, hazarded not in right"), telling the audience that he will not talk of it ("silence is a man's wisest counsel"). The Theban hero Heracles was a favourite subject but in one poem he is depicted as small in order to be compared with a small Theban patron who had won the pankration at the Isthmian Games: a unique example of Pindar's readiness to shape traditional myths to fit the occasion, even if not always flattering to

2256-403: A life well-lived. He presents no theory of history apart from the view that Fortune is variable even for the best men, an outlook suited to moderation in success, courage in adversity. Notions of 'good' and 'bad' in human nature were not analysed by him in any depth nor did he arrive at anything like the compassionate ethics of his near contemporary, Simonides of Ceos. His poems are indifferent to

2397-505: A maiden song does seem to be different in tone, due however to the fact that it is spoken in the character of a girl: ἐμὲ δὲ πρέπει παρθενήια μὲν φρονεῖν γλώσσᾳ τε λέγεσθαι. emè dè prépei parthenḗia mèn phroneîn glṓssāi te légesthai. I must think maidenly thoughts And utter them with my tongue. Enough of his dithyrambic poetry survives for comparison with that of Bacchylides, who used it for narrative. Pindar's dithyrambs are an exuberant display of religious feeling, capturing

2538-714: A major centre of the Greek Resistance , most famously seeing the desertion of the Italian Pinerolo Division to the guerrillas of EAM-ELAS in 1943. Thessaly occupies the east side of the Pindus watershed, extending south from Macedonia to the Aegean Sea . The northern tier of Thessaly is defined by a generally southwest-northeast spur of the Pindus range that includes Mount Olympus , close to

2679-523: A much older literary tradition, going as far back as Chamaeleon of Heraclea in the 4th century BC, they are generally viewed with scepticism today: much of the material is clearly fanciful. Scholars both ancient and modern have turned to Pindar's own work – his victory odes in particular – as a source of biographical information: some of the poems touch on historic events and can be accurately dated. The 1962 publication of Elroy Bundy's ground-breaking work Studia Pindarica led to

2820-549: A natural harbor at Volos for shipping agricultural products from the plains and chromium from the mountains. The Gross domestic product (GDP) of the province was 9.7 billion € in 2018, accounting for 5.2% of Greek economic output. GDP per capita adjusted for purchasing power was 16,100 € or 53% of the EU27 average in the same year. The GDP per employee was 65% of the EU average. The unemployment rate stood at 20.6% in 2017. There are

2961-627: A number of highways such as E75 , and the main railway from Athens to Thessaloniki (Salonika) crosses Thessaly. The region is directly linked to the rest of Europe through the International Airport of Central Greece , which is located in Nea Anchialos , a small distance from Volos and Larisa . Charter flights link the region and bring tourists to the wider area, mainly in Pelion and Meteora . The new infrastructure includes

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3102-550: A personal dilemma. Nemean 7 in fact is the most controversial and obscure of Pindar's victory odes, and scholars ancient and modern have been ingenious and imaginative in their attempts to explain it, so far with no agreed success. In his first Pythian ode, composed in 470 BC in honour of the Sicilian tyrant Hieron , Pindar celebrated a series of victories by Greeks against foreign invaders: Athenian and Spartan-led victories against Persia at Salamis and Plataea , and victories by

3243-415: A population loss of 6.2%. In 2011, the population of the region of Thessaly was 732,762 and represented 6.8% of the total population of Greece. A 2.8% decrease in the population since 2001 was noted, but Thessaly remains Greece's third most populous region. The population break-down is 44% urban, 40% agrarian, and 16% semi-urban. A decrease in the agrarian population has been accompanied by an increase in

3384-400: A prophet, and lesser poets are to him as ravens are to an eagle; the art of such men is as hackneyed as garland-making; his is magical: εἴρειν στεφάνους ἐλαφρόν: ἀναβάλεο: Μοῖσά τοι κολλᾷ χρυσὸν ἔν τε λευκὸν ἐλέφανθ᾽ ἁμᾷ καὶ λείριον ἄνθεμον ποντίας ὑφελοῖσ᾽ ἐέρσας. To plait garlands is easy. Strike up! The Muse Welds together gold and white ivory And the lily-flower snatched from

3525-681: A quarter of his Victory Odes. There is no open condemnation of the Athenians in any of his poems but criticism is implied. For example, the victory ode mentioned above ( Pythian 8 ) describes the downfall of the giants Porphyrion and Typhon and this might be Pindar's way of covertly celebrating a recent defeat of Athens by Thebes at the Battle of Coronea (447 BC). The poem ends with a prayer for Aegina's freedom, long threatened by Athenian ambitions. Covert criticism of Athens (traditionally located in odes such as Pythian 8, Nemean 8 and Isthmian 7)

3666-883: A short-lived principality in northern Thessaly, before he was overcome by an imperial expedition. Following the siege of Constantinople and the dissolution of the Byzantine Empire by the Fourth Crusade in April 1204, Thessaly passed to Boniface of Montferrat 's Kingdom of Thessalonica in the wider context of the Frankokratia . With his Greek ties, Boniface won the support of the Greek population and of various important Greek families. In 1212, Michael I Komnenos Doukas , ruler of Epirus , led his troops into Thessaly. Larissa and much of central Thessaly came under Epirote rule, thereby separating Thessalonica from

3807-716: A temple wall in Lindos , Rhodes. At Delphi, where he had been elected a priest of Apollo, the priests exhibited an iron chair on which he used to sit during the festival of the Theoxenia . Every night, while closing the temple doors, they intoned: "Let Pindar the poet go unto the supper of the gods!" Pindar's house in Thebes became one of the city's landmarks. When Alexander the Great demolished Thebes in 335 BC, as punishment for its resistance to Macedonian expansionism, he ordered

3948-490: A village in Boeotia , not far from Thebes . His father's name is variously given as Daiphantus, Pagondas or Scopelinus, and his mother's name was Cleodice. It is told that in his youth, or possibly infancy, bees built a honeycomb in his mouth and this was the reason he became a poet of honey-like verses. (An identical fate has been ascribed to other poets of the archaic period.) Pindar was about twenty years old in 498 BC when he

4089-804: 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

4230-773: 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

4371-479: 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

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4512-482: Is by no means certain that they were all sung by choirs – the use of choirs is testified only by the generally unreliable scholiasts. Scholars at the Library of Alexandria collected his compositions in seventeen books organized according to genre: Of this vast and varied corpus, only the epinikia  – odes written to commemorate athletic victories – survive in complete form;

4653-418: Is not certain that this was meant literally. Uncomplimentary references to Bacchylides and Simonides were found by scholiasts but there is no reason to accept their interpretation of the odes. In fact, some scholars have interpreted the allusions to fees in Isthmian 2 as a request by Pindar for payment of fees owed to himself. His defeats by Corinna were probably invented by ancient commentators to account for

4794-402: Is now dismissed as highly unlikely, even by scholars who allow some biographical and historical interpretations of the poems. One of his last odes ( Pythian 8 ) indicates that he lived near a shrine to the oracle Alcmaeon and that he stored some of his wealth there. In the same ode he says that he had recently received a prophecy from Alcmaeon during a journey to Delphi ("...he met me and proved

4935-519: 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

5076-399: Is some rationalization of religious belief, but it is within a tradition at least as old as Hesiod , where abstractions are personified, such as "Truth the daughter of Zeus". Sometimes the wording suggests a belief in 'God' rather than 'a god' (e.g. "What is God? Everything"), but the implications are not given full expression and the poems are not examples of monotheism . Nor do they vocalize

5217-839: 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 Thessaly Thessaly became part of

5358-526: 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

5499-763: 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,

5640-547: Is supervised by the Decentralized Administration of Thessaly and Central Greece , based at Larissa . The region of Thessaly is divided into five regional units (four were pre-Kallikratis prefectures ), Karditsa , Larissa , Magnesia , the Sporades and Trikala , which are further subdivided into twenty-five municipalities . The regional governor is Dimitris Kouretas  [ el ] , who

5781-650: 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

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5922-447: Is the leading cattle-raising area of Greece , and Aromanian shepherds move large flocks of sheep and goats seasonally between higher and lower elevations. In the last few decades, there has been a rise in the cultivation of dried nuts such as almonds , pistachios , and walnuts , especially in the region of Almyros . An increase in the number of olive oil trees has been also observed. The nearly landlocked Gulf of Pagasai provides

6063-481: Is too sketchy to allow us to understand the full nature of this innovation). Although he probably spoke Boeotian Greek , he composed in a literary language that tended to rely more on the Doric dialect than his rival Bacchylides , but less insistently than Alcman . There is an admixture of other dialects, especially Aeolic and epic forms, and an occasional use of some Boeotian words. He composed 'choral' songs yet it

6204-474: The Boeotian sow remark, a phrase moreover that was completely misunderstood by scholiasts, since Pindar was scoffing at a reputation that all Boeotians had for stupidity. His fame as a poet drew Pindar into Greek politics. Athens, the most important city in Greece throughout his poetic career, was a rival of his home city, Thebes , and also of the island state Aegina , whose leading citizens commissioned about

6345-495: 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

6486-516: 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

6627-455: The Muses inspired Homer with relevant information and with the language to express it, Pindar seems to receive only their inspiration: his role is to shape that inspiration with his own wisdom and skill. Like his patrons, whom he immortalizes in verse, he owes his success to hard work as well as to innate gifts; though he hires himself out, he has a vocation. The Muses are to him as an oracle is to

6768-660: The Pre-Greek form reconstructed as *Kʷʰeťťal-. The Greek linguist Georgios Babiniotis also assigns the origin of the name of the Thessalians to pre-Greek times, although he does not try to explain its etymology. In Aromanian it is referred to as Tesalia . In Homer 's epic, the Odyssey , the hero Odysseus visited Aeolia, the kingdom of Aeolus , which was the old name for Thessaly. The Plain of Thessaly, which lies between Mount Oeta /Othrys and Mount Olympus ,

6909-449: The first Persian invasion of Greece , which ended at the Battle of Marathon in 490 BC, and the second Persian invasion of Greece (480-479 BC). During the second invasion, when Pindar was almost forty years old, Thebes was occupied by Xerxes' general, Mardonius , who with many Theban aristocrats subsequently perished at the Battle of Plataea . It is possible that Pindar spent much of this time at Aegina . His choice of residence during

7050-469: The modern Greek state in 1881, after four and a half centuries of Ottoman rule . Since 1987 it has formed one of the country's 13 regions and is further (since the Kallikratis reform of 2011) sub-divided into five regional units and 25 municipalities . The capital of the region is Larissa . Thessaly lies in northern central Greece and borders the regions of Macedonia to the north, Epirus to

7191-492: 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

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7332-619: The 11th century, in the Strategikon of Kekaumenos and Anna Komnene 's Alexiad ). In the 12th century, the Jewish traveller Benjamin of Tudela records the existence of the district of "Vlachia" near Halmyros in eastern Thessaly, while the Byzantine historian Niketas Choniates places " Great Vlachia " (Aromanian: Vlãhia Mari ) near Meteora . The term is also used by the 13th-century scholar George Pachymeres , and it appears as

7473-470: 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

7614-826: The Avars. In the 7th century the Avar-Slav alliance began to raid the Byzantine Empire, laying siege to Thessalonica and even the imperial capital Constantinople itself. By the 8th century, Slavs had occupied most of the Balkans from Austria to the Peloponnese, and from the Adriatic to the Black seas, with the exception of the coastal areas and certain mountainous regions of the Greek peninsula. Relations between

7755-457: The Byzantine Empire began to consolidate its power in those areas of mainland Greece occupied by Proto-Slavic tribes. Following the campaigns of the Byzantine general Staurakios in 782–783, the Byzantine Empire recovered Thessaly, taking many Slavs as prisoners. Apart from military expeditions against Slavs, the re-Hellenization process begun under Nicephorus I involved (often forcible) transfer of peoples. Many Slavs were moved to other parts of

7896-560: The Byzantine Empire under the leadership of a local lord, Nikoulitzas Delphinas . The revolt, which began in Larissa , soon expanded to Trikala and later northwards to the Byzantine-Bulgarian border. In 1199–1201 another unsuccessful revolt was led by Manuel Kamytzes , son-in-law of Byzantine emperor Alexios III Angelos , with the support of Dobromir Chrysos , the autonomous ruler of Prosek . Kamytzes managed to establish

8037-458: The Crusader principalities in southern Greece. Michael's work was completed by his half-brother and successor, Theodore Komnenos Doukas , who by 1220 completed the recovery of the entire region, and assigned pronoiai to aristocratic Greek families. The Vlachs (Aromanians) of Thessaly (originally a chiefly transhumant Romance-speaking population) first appear in Byzantine sources in

8178-632: The East Roman "Byzantine" Empire after the collapse of Roman power in the west, and subsequently suffered many invasions, such as by the Slavic tribe of the Belegezites in the 7th century AD. The Avars had arrived in Europe in the late 550s. They asserted their authority over many Slavs, who were divided into numerous petty tribes. Many Slavs were galvanized into an effective infantry force, by

8319-486: 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

8460-425: 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

8601-495: The Greek language was the Cypriot syllabary (also a descendant of Linear A via the intermediate Cypro-Minoan syllabary ), which is closely related to Linear B but uses somewhat different syllabic conventions to represent phoneme sequences. The Cypriot syllabary is attested in Cyprus from the 11th century BC until its gradual abandonment in the late Classical period, in favor of the standard Greek alphabet. Greek has been written in

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8742-629: 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

8883-685: 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

9024-814: The Macedonian border. Within that broken spur of mountains are several basins and river valleys. The easternmost extremity of the spur extends southeastward from Mount Olympus along the Aegean coast, terminating in the Magnesia Peninsula that envelops the Pagasetic Gulf (also called the Gulf of Volos), and forms an inlet of the Aegean Sea. Thessaly's major river, the Pineios , flows eastward from

9165-447: The Olympian Games. The establishment of these athletic and musical festivals was among the greatest achievements of the Greek aristocracies. Even in the 5th century BC, when there was an increased tendency towards professionalism, they were predominantly aristocratic assemblies, reflecting the expense and leisure needed to attend such events either as a competitor or spectator. Attendance was an opportunity for display and self-promotion, and

9306-428: The Ottoman armies under Mehmed Reshid Pasha and Mahmud Dramali Pasha . After the establishment of the independent Kingdom of Greece , Greek nationalist agitation continued, with further revolts in 1841, in 1854 during the Crimean War , and again during the Russo-Turkish War of 1877–1878 . In 1880 Thessaly's population consisted of approximately 285,000 Greeks, 40,000 Turks, and 40,000 Jews. Thessaly became part of

9447-399: The Ottoman takeover of the region, they were an integral part of the military structures of Thessaly. Two of their military leaders known in Byzantine sources as Peter and John Sebastopoulos controlled the small towns of Pharsala and Domokos . In 1348, Thessaly was invaded and occupied by the Serbian Empire of Stefan Dušan , under the general Preljub . After the latter's death in 1356,

9588-403: The Slavs and Greeks were probably peaceful apart from the (supposed) initial settlement and intermittent uprisings. Being agriculturalists, the Slavs probably traded with the Greeks inside towns. It is likely that the re- Hellenization had already begun by way of this contact. This process would be completed by a newly reinvigorated Byzantine Empire. With the abatement of Arab-Byzantine Wars ,

9729-404: 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),

9870-402: 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

10011-476: The audience, and some are spoken on behalf of the subjects celebrated in the poems. The 'I' that received the prophecy in Pythian 8 therefore might have been the athlete from Aegina, not Pindar. In that case the prophecy must have been about his performance at the Pythian Games, and the property stored at the shrine was just a votive offering. Nothing is recorded about Pindar's wife and son except their names, Megacleia and Daiphantus. About ten days before he died,

10152-404: The authorities in Thebes to fine him 5,000 drachmae, to which the Athenians are said to have responded with a gift of 10,000 drachmae. According to another account, the Athenians even made him their proxenus or consul in Thebes. His association with the fabulously rich Hieron was another source of annoyance at home. It was probably in response to Theban sensitivities over this issue that he denounced

10293-432: The beauty of his thoughts and figures, the rich exuberance of his language and matter, and his rolling flood of eloquence, characteristics which, as Horace rightly held, make him inimitable." His poems can also, however, seem difficult and even peculiar. The Athenian comic playwright Eupolis once remarked that they "are already reduced to silence by the disinclination of the multitude for elegant learning". Some scholars in

10434-539: The central Pindus Range just south of the spur, emptying into the Thermaic Gulf . The Trikala and Larissa lowlands form a central plain which is surrounded by a ring of mountains. It has distinct summer and winter seasons, with summer rains augmenting the fertility of the plains. This has led to Thessaly occasionally being called the "breadbasket of Greece". The region is well delineated by topographical boundaries. The Chasia and Kamvounia mountains lie to

10575-511: The chamber of the scarlet-clothed Hours is opened And the nectareous flowers usher in the fragrant spring, Then are scattered, then, on the immortal ground The lovely petals of violets; roses are wound in our hair; Loudly echo the voices of songs to the flutes, And choirs step in procession to dark-ribboned Semele . Almost all Pindar's victory odes are celebrations of triumphs gained by competitors in Panhellenic festivals such as

10716-418: The clan important enough to deserve mention ( Histories IV.147). Membership of this clan possibly contributed to Pindar's success as a poet, and it informed his political views, which are marked by a conservative preference for oligarchic governments of the Doric kind. Pindar might not actually claim to be an Aegeid since his 'I' statements do not necessarily refer to himself. The Aegeid clan did however have

10857-573: The death of John II, Thessalian independence came to an end, and the Almogavars occupied Siderokastron and southern Thessaly (1319) and formed the Duchy of Neopatria . The other parts of Thessaly either came under Byzantine rule or were ruled by their own nobility. These local magnates eventually started fighting amongst themselves. Those in the south, such as the Melissenos family of Volos, sought

10998-597: The earlier invasion in 490 BC is not known, but he was able to attend the Pythian Games of that year, where he first met the Sicilian prince, Thrasybulus, nephew of Theron of Acragas . Thrasybulus had driven the winning chariot; and he and Pindar were to form a lasting friendship, paving the way for his subsequent visit to Sicily. Pindar seems to have used his odes to advance his, and his friends', personal interests. In 462 BC he composed two odes in honour of Arcesilas, king of Cyrene , ( Pythians 4 and 5 ), pleading for

11139-404: 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

11280-621: The empire such as Anatolia and made to serve in the military. In return, many Greeks from Sicily and Asia Minor were brought to the interior of Greece, to increase the number of defenders at the Emperor's disposal and dilute the concentration of Slavs. In 977 Byzantine Thessaly was raided by the Bulgarian Empire . In 1066 dissatisfaction with the taxation policy led the Aromanian and Bulgarian population of Thessaly to revolt against

11421-528: The enemy arrived. Not much later, Thessaly surrendered to the Persians. The Thessalian family of Aleuadae joined the Persians subsequently. The following year, the Persians were decisively defeated at the Battle of Plataea and withdrew from all of their European possessions, including Thessaly. In the 4th century BC, after the Greco-Persian Wars had long ended, Jason of Pherae transformed

11562-618: 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

11703-452: 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

11844-592: The goddess Persephone appeared to him and complained that she was the only divinity to whom he had never composed a hymn. She said he would come to her soon and compose one then. Pindar lived to about eighty years of age. He died around 438 BC while attending a festival at Argos . His ashes were taken back home to Thebes by his musically gifted daughters, Eumetis and Protomache. One of Pindar's female relatives claimed that he dictated some verses to her in honour of Persephone after he had been dead for several days. Some of Pindar's verses were inscribed in letters of gold on

11985-766: The help of the Catalans, while those in the north, such as the Gavrilopoulos family of Trikala, turned towards Byzantium. At this time, some of Thessaly's ports came under Venetian rule. In 1332, most of Thessaly was taken by the Byzantines following a campaign by Andronikos III Paleologos . He left its administration to Michael Monomachos , who governed it for the next 10 years. Groups of Albanians moved into Thessaly as early as 1268 as mercenaries of Michael Doukas . The Albanian tribes of Bua , Malakasioi and Mazaraki were described as "unruly" nomads living in

12126-407: The house be left intact out of gratitude for verses praising his ancestor, Alexander I of Macedon . Pindar's values and beliefs have been inferred from his poetry. No other ancient Greek poet has left so many comments about the nature of his art. He justified and exalted choral poetry at a time when society was turning away from it. It "... had for two centuries reflected and shaped the sentiments,

12267-439: 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

12408-403: The island of Aegina but also its national heroes Aeacus , Peleus and Telamon . Unlike the gods, however, heroes can be judged according to ordinary human standards and they are sometimes shown in the poems to demean themselves. Even in that case, they receive special consideration. Thus Pindar refers obliquely to the murder of Phocus by his brothers Peleus and Telamon ("I am shy of speaking of

12549-483: The late 14th century with the capture of Larissa in 1392-93 and consolidated in the early 15th century. Nevertheless, Ottoman control was threatened throughout this era by groups of Greeks, Albanians and Aromanians who based themselves in the mountainous areas of Thessaly. At the time of the Ottoman conquest, the great Eastern plain of Thessaly was almost entirely depopulated as a result of the nearly continuous warfare of

12690-467: 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

12831-640: 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

12972-577: The modern Greek state in 1881, after the Convention of Constantinople except the area around the town of Elassona , which remained in Ottoman hands until 1912. It was briefly captured by Ottomans during the Greco-Turkish War of 1897 . After the Treaty of Constantinople (1897) , Greece was forced to cede minor border areas and to pay heavy reparations. The remaining part of Thessaly held by the Ottomans

13113-401: The modern age also found his poetry perplexing, at least until the 1896 discovery of some poems by his rival Bacchylides ; comparisons of their work showed that many of Pindar's idiosyncrasies are typical of archaic genres rather than of only the poet himself. His poetry, while admired by critics, still challenges the casual reader and his work is largely unread among the general public. Pindar

13254-441: 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

13395-570: The mountains of Thessaly in the early 14th century in Emperor John VI Kantakouzenos’ ‘History’. They numbered approximately 12,000. Kantakouzenos describes a pact they made to serve the Byzantine Emperor and pay tribute to him ca. 1332 in exchange for using the lowland areas of Thessaly in the summer months. Albanian groups were given military holdings Fanari in the 1330s and by the end of the 14th century and

13536-508: The myth of Apollo's rape of the nymph Cyrene . As the god of the Delphic oracle , Apollo is all-knowing, yet in keeping with his anthropomorphic nature he seeks information about the nymph from a third party, in this case the centaur Chiron . Chiron however affirms the god's omniscience with an elegant compliment, as if Apollo had only pretended to be ignorant: "You, Sire, who know the appointed end of all, and all paths..." Apollo's abduction of

13677-428: The mythical hero. A hero's status is not diminished by an occasional blemish but rests on a summary view of his heroic exploits. Some of his patrons claimed divine descent, such as Diagoras of Rhodes , but Pindar makes all men akin to gods if they realize their full potential: their innate gifts are divinely bestowed, and even then success still depends on the gods' active favour. In honouring such men, therefore, Pindar

13818-418: The north of Thessaly a rare humid subtropical climate ( Cfa ) can be found, although it is different from a climate typically below or above the tropics, it also marks the limit of this rare Cf subtype on the European continent (e. g. the small village of Kalvia). The population of the region of Thessaly was 687,527 in 2021 census. The region has shrunk by 45,235 people between 2011 and 2021, experiencing

13959-559: The north, the Mount Olympus massif to the northeast. To the west lies the Pindus mountain range, to the southeast the coastal mountains of Óssa and Pelion . Several tributaries of the Pineios flow through the region. Most of the province has a hot summer Mediterranean climate ( Köppen : Csa ), but also found is a cold semi-arid climate ( BSk ) including the capital Larissa (on its Mediterranean edge of category). Even in

14100-399: 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

14241-573: The nymph is not presented as a shameful act. Pindar's gods are above such ethical issues and it is not for men to judge them by ordinary human standards. Indeed, the finest breeds of men resulted from divine passions: "For Pindar a mortal woman who is loved by a god is an outstanding lesson in divine favours handsomely bestowed". Being descendants of divine unions with privileged mortals, mythical heroes are an intermediate group between gods and men, and they are sympathetic to human ambitions. Thus, for example, Pindar not only invokes Zeus for help on behalf of

14382-470: 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

14523-706: 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

14664-479: The ordinary mass of people. They are dismissed with phrases such as "the brute multitude" ( Pythian Ode 2.87). Nor are the poems concerned with the fate of rich and powerful men once they lose their wealth and social status (compared for example with the bitter and disillusioned poems of Theognis of Megara ). They are more interested in what successful men do with their good fortune: success brings obligations, and religious and artistic activities need patrons. Whereas

14805-399: The outlook, and the convictions of the Greek aristocracies ... and Pindar spoke up for it with passionate assurance". His poetry is a meeting ground for gods, heroes and men – even the dead are spoken of as participants: "Deep in the earth their heart listens". His view of the gods is traditional but more self-consistent than Homer 's and more reverent. He never depicts gods in

14946-496: The pendulum of intellectual fashion has begun to change direction again, and cautious use of the poems for some biographical purposes is considered acceptable once more. πολλὰ γὰρ πολλᾷ λέλεκται: νεαρὰ δ᾽ ἐξευ- ρόντα δόμεν βασάνῳ ἐς ἔλεγχον, ἅπας κίνδυνος. Story is vast in range: new ways to find and test upon the touchstone, Here danger lies. Pindar was born circa 518 BC (the 65th Olympiad ) in Cynoscephalae ,

15087-588: The population of the Sanjak. Failed Greek uprisings occurred in 1600/1 and 1612, and during the Morean War (1684–1699) and the Orlov Revolt (1770). In 1780, Ali Pasha of Ioannina took over control of Thessaly, and consolidated his rule after 1808, when he suppressed a local uprising. Heavy taxation, however, ruined the province's commerce, and coupled with the outbreak of the plague in 1813, reduced

15228-542: The population to some 200,000 by 1820. Rigas Feraios , the important Greek intellectual and forerunner of the Greek War of Independence was from the region. He was born in Velestino , near the ancient town of Pherae . When the Greek War of Independence broke out in 1821, Greek risings occurred in the Pelion and Olympus mountains as well as the western mountains around Fanari, but they were swiftly suppressed by

15369-573: The prestige of victory, requiring commitment in time and/or wealth, went far beyond anything that accrues to athletic victories today, even in spite of the modern preoccupation with sport. Pindar's odes capture something of the prestige and the aristocratic grandeur of the moment of victory, as in this stanza from one of his Isthmian Odes, here translated by Geoffrey S. Conway: Greek language Greek ( Modern Greek : Ελληνικά , romanized :  Elliniká , [eliniˈka] ; Ancient Greek : Ἑλληνική , romanized :  Hellēnikḗ )

15510-505: The previous decades. It was resettled by Turkish settlers from Western Anatolia and Greeks from Western Thessaly and the surrounding mountains. In the following decades, the population of this area grew very rapidly as a result of law and order. Thessaly was ruled through the Sanjak of Tirhala administrative division during the Ottoman period . In the 1520s, Muslims made up of 17.5% of

15651-427: The priests at Delphi and which depicted the hero's death in traditional terms, as divine retribution for his crimes. Some doubt this biographical interpretation of Nemean 7 since it is largely based on marginal comments by scholiasts and Pindaric scholiasts are often unreliable. The fact that Pindar gave different versions of the myth may simply reflect the needs of different genres, and does not necessarily indicate

15792-636: The region into a significant military power, recalling the glory of Early Archaic times. Shortly after, Philip II of Macedon was appointed Archon of Thessaly, and Thessaly was thereafter associated with the Macedonian Kingdom for the next centuries. Thessaly later became part of the Roman Empire as part of the province of Macedonia ; when that was broken up, the name resurfaced in two of its late Roman successor provinces: Thessalia Prima and Thessalia Secunda . Thessaly remained part of

15933-503: The region was conquered by Nikephoros Orsini after he won the support of the local Greek population. After his death three years later, it was taken over by the self-proclaimed Serbian emperor Simeon Uroš . Simeon's son John Uroš succeeded in 1370 but abdicated in 1373, and Thessaly was administered by the Greek Angeloi-Philanthropenoi clan until the Ottoman conquest c. 1393. Ottoman control began in

16074-492: The rest survive only by quotations in other ancient authors or from papyrus scraps unearthed in Egypt . Even in fragmentary form however, they reveal the same complexity of thought and language that are found in the victory odes. Dionysius of Halicarnassus singled out Pindar's work as an outstanding example of austere style ( αὐστηρὰ ἁρμονία ) but he noted its absence in the maiden songs or parthenia . One surviving fragment of

16215-512: The return from exile of a friend, Demophilus. In the latter ode Pindar proudly mentions his own ancestry, which he shared with the king, as an Aegeid or descendant of Aegeus , the legendary king of Athens. The clan was influential in many parts of the Greek world, having intermarried with ruling families in Thebes, in Lacedaemonia , and in cities that claimed Lacedaemonian descent, such as Cyrene and Thera . The historian Herodotus considered

16356-461: The rule of tyrants (i.e. rulers like Hieron) in an ode composed shortly after a visit to Hieron's sumptuous court in 476–75 BC ( Pythian 11 ). Pindar's actual phrasing in Pythian 11 was "I deplore the lot of tyrants" and though this was traditionally interpreted as an apology for his dealings with Sicilian tyrants like Hieron, an alternative date for the ode has led some scholars to conclude that it

16497-463: The sea's dew. Pindar's strongly individual genius is apparent in all his extant compositions but, unlike Simonides and Stesichorus for example, he created no new lyrical genres. He was however innovative in his use of the genres he inherited – for example, in one of his victory odes ( Olympian 3), he announces his invention of a new type of musical accompaniment, combining lyre, flute and human voice (though our knowledge of Greek music

16638-535: The seaboard of Asia Minor, north to Macedonia and Abdera ( Paean 2 ) and south to Cyrene on the African coast. Other poets at the same venues vied with him for the favours of patrons. His poetry sometimes reflects this rivalry. For example, Olympian 2 and Pythian 2 , composed in honour of the Sicilian tyrants Theron and Hieron following his visit to their courts in 476–75 BC, refer respectively to ravens and an ape , apparently signifying rivals who were engaged in

16779-576: The semi-urban population. The metropolitan area of Larissa, the capital of Thessaly, is home to more than 230,000 people, making it the biggest city of the region. An Aromanian minority resides in Thessaly. This region, along with Epirus and Macedonia , are the regions with the biggest concentrations of Greek Aromanians . Another notable population group of Thessaly are the Karagounides , an ethnic Greek subgroup. The Aeolic dialect of Greek

16920-616: The sites of Iolcos , Dimini and Sesklo (near Volos ). In Archaic and Classical times, the lowlands of Thessaly became the home of baronial families, such as the Aleuadae of Larissa or the Scopads of Crannon. In the summer of 480 BC, the Persians invaded Thessaly . The Greek army that guarded the Vale of Tempe was alerted by Alexander I of Macedon and evacuated the road before

17061-460: The skills of prophecy that all his race inherit") but he does not reveal what the long-dead prophet said to him nor in what form he appeared. The ode was written to commemorate a victory by an athlete from Aegina . Pindar doesn't necessarily mean himself when he uses the first person singular. Many of his 'I' statements are generic, indicating somebody engaged in the role of a singer i.e. a 'bardic' I. Other 'I' statements articulate values typical of

17202-437: 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

17343-537: The west of Ohrid in North Macedonia . The alluvial soils of the Pineios Basin and its tributaries make Thessaly a vital agricultural area, particularly for the production of grain , cattle , and sheep . Modernization of agricultural practices in the mid-20th century has controlled the chronic flooding that had restricted agricultural expansion and diversification in the low-lying plains. Thessaly

17484-535: The west, Central Greece to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the east. The Thessaly region also includes the Sporades islands. Thessaly is named after the Thessaloi , an ancient Greek tribe . The meaning of the name of this tribe is unknown, and many theories have been made about its etymology. According to the Dutch linguist Robert S. P. Beekes , the name predates Greek presence in the region and could come from

17625-513: The western Greeks led by Theron of Acragas and Hieron against the Carthaginians and Etruscans at the battles of Himera and Cumae . Such celebrations were not appreciated by his fellow Thebans: they had sided with the Persians and had incurred many losses and privations as a result of their defeat. His praise of Athens with such epithets as bulwark of Hellas ( fragment 76 ) and city of noble name and sunlit splendour (Nemean 5) induced

17766-804: The wild spirit of Dionysus and pointing forward to the ecstatic songs of Euripides ' Bacchae . In one of these, dedicated to the Athenians and written to be sung in Spring, he depicts the divine energy of the revitalized world. φοινικοεάνων ὁπότ' οἰχθέντος Ὡρᾶν θαλάμου εὔοδμον ἐπάγοισιν ἔαρ φυτὰ νεκτάρεα. τότε βάλλεται, τότ' ἐπ' ἀμβρόταν χθόν' ἐραταί ἴων φόβαι, ῥόδα τε κόμαισι μείγνυται, ἀχεῖ τ' ὀμφαὶ μελέων σὺν αὐλοῖς οἰχνεῖ τε Σεμέλαν ἑλικάμπυκα χοροί. phoinikoeánōn hopót' oikhthéntos Hōrân thalámou eúodmon epágoisin eár phutà nektárea. tóte bálletai, tót' ep' ambrótan khthón' erataí íōn phóbai, rhóda te kómaisi meígnutai, akheî t' omphaì meléōn sùn auloîs oikhneî te Semélan helikámpuka khoroí. When

17907-515: 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

18048-568: 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

18189-557: 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

18330-523: Was commissioned by the ruling family in Thessaly to compose his first victory ode ( Pythian 10 ). He studied the art of lyric poetry in Athens, where his tutor was Lasos of Hermione , and he is also said to have received some helpful criticism from Corinna . The early to middle years of Pindar's career coincided with the Greco-Persian Wars during the reigns of Darius and Xerxes . This period included

18471-510: Was conventionally accompanied by music and dance, and Pindar himself wrote the music and choreographed the dances for his victory odes. Sometimes he trained the performers at his home in Thebes, and sometimes he trained them at the venue where they performed. Commissions took him to all parts of the Greek world – to the Panhellenic festivals in mainland Greece (Olympia, Delphi, Corinth and Nemea), westwards to Sicily, eastwards to

18612-480: Was defeated five times by his compatriot, the poet Corinna , in revenge of which he called her Boeotian sow in one of his odes ( Olympian 6. 89f.). It was assumed by ancient sources that Pindar's odes were performed by a chorus, but this has been challenged by some modern scholars, who argue that the odes were in fact performed solo. It is not known how commissions were arranged, nor if the poet travelled widely: even when poems include statements like "I have come" it

18753-663: Was finally regained by the Greeks during the First Balkan War in 1912. In 1923, the entire Muslim population was sent to Turkey following the population exchange between Greece and Turkey at the end of the Greco-Turkish War . During World War II , Thessaly was occupied by the Kingdom of Italy from April 1941 to September 1943. After the Armistice of Cassibile , Germany occupied Thessaly until October 1944. It became

18894-495: Was honouring the gods too. His statements about life after death were not self-consistent but that was typical for the times. Traditional ambivalence, as expressed by Homer, had been complicated by a growth of religious sects, such as the Eleusinian mysteries and Pythagoreanism , representing various schemes of rewards and punishments in the next life. However, for the poet, glory and lasting fame were men's greatest assurance of

19035-417: Was in fact a covert reference to the tyrannical behaviour of the Athenians, although this interpretation is ruled out if we accept the earlier note about covert references. According to yet another interpretation Pindar is simply delivering a formulaic warning to the successful athlete to avoid hubris . It is highly unlikely that Pindar ever acted for Athenians as their proxenus or consul in Thebes. Lyric verse

19176-513: Was ruled by John II Doukas until his death in 1318. From 1306 to 1310, the Almogavars or Catalan Company of the East ( Societas Catalanorum Magna ), plundered Thessaly. In 1310, they occupied a series of forts in the south. From there they departed to the Duchy of Athens , called by the duke Walter I , whom they eventually killed in battle and took over the Duchy of Athens . In 1318, with

19317-427: Was spoken in Thessaly. This included several local varieties, in particular the variants of Pelasgiotis and Thessaliotis. The language was not written. Apart from Greek, Aromanian is also spoken in Thessaly. Some Aromanian dialects from the region have some unique peculiarities of their own, such as that of Krania , which is one of the few with differential object marking (DOM) along with those dialects spoken at

19458-574: Was the first Greek poet to reflect on the nature of poetry and on the poet's role. His poetry illustrates the beliefs and values of Archaic Greece at the dawn of the Classical period . Like other poets of the Archaic Age, he has a profound sense of the vicissitudes of life, but he also articulates a passionate faith in what men can achieve by the grace of the gods, most famously expressed in the conclusion to one of his Victory Odes : Creatures of

19599-699: Was the site of the battle between the Titans and the Olympians . According to legend, Jason and the Argonauts launched their search for the Golden Fleece from the Magnesia Peninsula. Thessaly was home to extensive Neolithic and Chalcolithic cultures around 6000–2500 BC (see Cardium pottery , Dimini and Sesklo ). Mycenaean settlements have also been discovered, for example at

19740-580: 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

19881-673: 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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