Greeks
The Greeks (Greek:?e?, ) are a nation and ethnic group, which historically populates Greece, the nearby regions of the Balkans and Cyprus. Additionally, there are significant Greek populations throughout various countries due to the Greek diaspora.
Greek colonies and communities have been historically established in most corners of the Mediterranean but Greeks have always been centered around the Aegean Sea, where Greek has been spoken since antiquity.[Encyclopedia Britannica, The Greeks, 2008, O.Ed.] Until the early 20th century Greeks were uniformly distributed between the Greek peninsula, the western coast of Asia Minor, Pontus, Cyprus and Constantinople, regions which coincided to a large extent with the borders of the Byzantine Empire of the late 11th century and the Eastern Mediterranean areas of the ancient Greek colonization.[R. Beaton, The Medieval Greek Romance,1996,Routledge, ISBN 0415120322]
In the aftermath of the Greco-Turkish War (1919-1922), a large-scale population exchange between Greece and Turkey transferred and confined ethnic Greeks almost entirely into the borders of the modern Greek state and Cyprus. Other ethnic Greek populations can be found from Southern Italy to the Caucasus and in diaspora communities in a number of other countries. Today, the vast majority of Greeks are at least nominally adherents of Greek Orthodoxy.
History
Greek has been spoken on the Greek peninsula (i.e. the southern Balkan region) for over 3,500 years and in western Asia Minor for a little less.[World Book 2005, "Greece"] It has an almost unbroken literary history which makes it one of the oldest surviving branches of the Indo-European languages. From Ancient Greece the Greeks have inherited a sophisticated culture and language documented over three millennia.
Greece was the first modern state to be created in the Balkans when the Greeks liberated a part of their historic homelands from the Ottoman Empire. The large Greek Diaspora and merchant class were instrumental in transmitting the ideas of western Romantic nationalism and Philhellenism. These, together with the conception of Hellenism formulated during the last centuries of the Eastern Roman Empire, formed the basis of the Greek Enlightenment.
Classical
The classical period of Greek civilization covers a time span from the early fifth century BCE to the death of Alexander the Great, in 323 BCE. It is so named because it set the standards by which Greek civilization would be judged in later eras. In that time Greeks contributed to the future development of arts and sciences by creating a legacy of influence upon Western civilization.[Encyclopedia Britannica, ancient Greek civilization, 2008, O.Ed.] The ethnogenesis of the Greek nation is marked by the first Olympic Games in 776 BCE when the idea of a common Hellenism amongst the Greek speaking tribes was first translated into a shared cultural experience.[ Hellenism was supremely a matter of common culture.][J.M.Roberts, The New Penguin History of the World, The Greeks, Fifth Edition, 2007, p.p.171-172, ISBN 9780141030425]
Herodotus writes that the Athenians declared, before the battle of Plataea, that they would not go over to Mardonius, because in the first place, they were bound to avenge the burning of the Acropolis; and, secondly, they would not betray their fellow Greeks, to whom
they were bound by:[Herodotus, . Quote: "t?,?µa?µ? te?a?µ?ss?,?a?e?d?µat? te?a?s?a?e? te?µ?t?pa ("Again, there is our common brotherhood with the Greeks: our common language, the altars and the sacrifices of which we all partake, the common character which we bear")".]
 A common language ( homoglosson – the use of one of the dialects of the Greek language),
Common blood ( homaimon – descent from Helen, son of Deucalion),
Common shrines, statues and sacrifices (practice of the ancient Greek religion)
Common habits and customs.
As Thucydides observes the name of Hellas spread from a valley in Thessaly to the Greek-speaking populations sometime after the compositions of Homer (the Panellenes of Iliad 2.530 are the troops of Thessaly,[Homer, Iliad, 2.530] contrasting with the Achaeans) and not long before his own time.[Thucydides, Histories, I, 132] Hellen, combined into one group the smaller tribes that participated
in the Delphic Amphictyon, such as the Aeolians, the Achaeans, and the Dorians.[Encyclopedia Britannica, Hellen, 2008, O.Ed.]
As early as the 5th century BCE, Isocrates, after speaking of common origin and religion, says: "the name Hellenes suggests no longer a race but a culture and education,... the title Hellenes is applied best to those who share our culture rather than to those who share our common blood".[Isocrates,Panegyric 4.50] Following Alexander the Great's conquests, Greek became the lingua franca of the Eastern Mediterranean and was widely spoken by educated non-Greeks.
However, while the Greeks of the Classical era understood themselves to belong to a common Greek ethnicity their first loyalty was to their city and they saw nothing incongruous about warring, often brutally, with other Greek Poleis. The Peloponnesian War, a large scale Greek "civil" war between Athens and Sparta and their allies, is a notable such incident which highlights the lack of a common national (as opposed to ethnic) identity among Greeks. This local patriotism, (topikismos) remains a part of Greek culture.[Encyclopedia Britannica, history of Greece, Ottoman Empire, The merchant middle class, 2008, O.Ed.]
The feuding Greek city states were only united under the banner of Alexander the Great's Panhellenic ideals, though some might contend that Macedon’s overwhelming military strength might have played a role. Regardless, the combined armies of Greece were pointed at the Greek's nemesis, the Persian Empire.[The Columbia Encyclopedia, Alexander the Great, Sixth Edition, 2001-07, O.Ed.] Following victories at the battles of Granicus, Issus and Gaugamela the Greeks toppled the world's largest empire. Greek armies advanced as far as modern day India and Tajikistan, setting up colonies and trade routes along the way. While the empire created did not survive Alexander’s death, the cultural implications of the spread of Hellenism across most of the known world were to prove long lived. Two thousand years later there are still communities like the Kalash in Pakistan and the Nuristani in Afghanistan who claim to be descended from Greek settlers.[Michael Wood, In the Footsteps of Alexander The Great: A Journey from Greece to Asia, 2001, University of California Press, p.8, ISBN 0520231929]
Roman
The new Eastern Religions introduced into the Greek world paved the way for the expansion of Christianity among Roman era Greeks. Early Christianity was profoundly shaped by the Greek world of ideas and the Greek speaking Christians (the so called e? e?st?a? or Hellenists) formed the majority of the Early Church and provided most of the Greek Fathers.[ Eventually the word Hellene came to mean a Hellenic polytheist or a pagan in general and Greek speakers referred to themselves as Rhomaioi (Romans in Greek, an ethnonym still in use today). Distinctions of ethnicity still existed in the Roman empire, but became secondary to religious considerations. The renewed empire used Christianity as a tool to maintain its cohesion and promoted a robust Roman national identity.][Anthony Kaldellis , Hellenism in Byzantium The Transformations of Greek Identity and the Reception of the Classical Tradition, Cambridge University Press, 2008, ISBN 9780521876889]
The Eastern Roman Empire (which was later misnamed by Western historians as the Byzantine Empire, a name that would have meant nothing to Greek speakers of the era[Encyclopedia Britannica, Byzantine Empire, Introduction, 2008, O.Ed.]), although continuing Roman cultural tradtitions for first centuries of the Empire's existence and being largely undiffirent from the Western Roman Empire in this issue, the Empire became largely influenced by Greek culture following 7th century when Emperor Heraclius (575 CE - 641 CE) decided to make Greek the Roman Empire's official language.
From then on, the Roman and Greek cultures were virtually fused in the East into a single Greco-Roman world. Although the Latin West recognized the Empire's Roman legacy for several centuries despite religious differences, after Pope Leo III crowned King of Franks Charlemagne as the "Roman Emperor" on 25 December 800, (an act which eventually led to the formation of the Holy Roman Empire) the Latin West started to favor the Catholic Franks and also began to refer the Eastern Roman Empire largely as the Empire of the Greeks (Imperium Graecorum).
The Roman Greeks contributed to Western Civilization by their preservation of the literature of the Classical era: Byzantine grammarians were those principally responsible for carrying, in person and in writing, ancient Greek grammatical and literary studies to early Renaissance Italy to which the influx of Greek scholars gave a major boost.[Encyclopedia Britannica, Renaissance, 2008, O.Ed.]
Roman Greeks never stopped teaching Homer and the Classics and cultivated the philosophical schools of Platonism and Aristotelism for over two millennia, until the Fall of Constantinople in the 15th century.[Encyclopedia Britannica, Aristotelian Philosophy, 2008, O.Ed.]
To the Slavic world Roman Greeks contributed by the dissemination of literacy and Christianity. The most notable example of the later was the work of the two Rhomaioi brothers Saints Cyril and Methodius from Thessalonica, who are credited today with inventing the first Slavic alphabet.[The Columbia Encyclopedia, Cyril and Methodius Saints, Sixth Edition, 2001-07, O.Ed.]
A distinct Greek nationalism re-emerged in the 11th century within specific circles and became more forceful after the fall of Constantinople to the Crusaders of the Fourth Crusade in 1204, and the establishment of a number of Greek kingdoms (such as the Empire of Nicaea and the Despotate of Epirus).[ When the empire was revived in 1261, it became in many ways a Greek national state. Adherence to Greek Orthodox rites and the Greek language, became the defining characteristic of its people. That new notion of nationhood engendered a deep interest in the classical past. There was a powerful secularist tradition in this, culminating in the ideas of the Neo-Platonist Byzantine philosopher George Gemistus Plethon who wished to revive the ancient Greek religion. However it was the combination of Orthodoxy with a specifically Greek identity that shaped the Byzantine Greeks notions of themselves in the empire's twilight years.][Encyclopedia Britannica, Greece during the Byzantine period (c. AD 300–c. 1453), Population and languages, Emerging Greek identity, 2008, O.Ed.]
Ottoman
Under the Ottoman Empire's millet system, religion was the defining characteristic of "national" groups (milletler), so the exonym "Greeks" (Rumlar from the name Rhomaioi) was applied by the Ottomans to all members of the Orthodox Church, regardless of their language or ethnic origin. Conversely, those who adopted Islam during that period were considered part of the same Muslim millet, regardless of their language or origin.[ The Greek speakers were the only ethnic group to actually call themselves Rhomaioi, (as opposed to being so named by others) and some even considered their ethnicity (genos) to be Hellenic.][Mavrocordatos Nicholaos, Philotheou Parerga, J.Bouchard, 1989, p.178, quote: G? µe?µ? t?a?] For most Greek speakers however the Hellenes were an ancient, semi-mythical race of giants to whom they were inferior in strength and achievement.[I.Th.Kakridis,? a?a?e? st?e?e?a? pa?d?s? or The Ancient Greeks in Modern Greek popular tradition, Greek National Bank Editions, 1989 (reprint of early 20th c. work)]
The roots of Greek success in the Ottoman Empire can be traced to the Greek tradition of education and the need of the Ottomans for skilled and educated negotiators as the power of their empire declined and they were compelled to rely on treaties more than force of arms.[Encyclopedia Britannica,Phanariotes, 2008, O.Ed.] However it was the wealth of the extensive Greek merchant class that provided the material basis for the intellectual revival that was the prominent feature of Greek life in the half century and more leading to the outbreak of the Greek War of Independence in 1821. Impelled by the brand of local patriotism that has always been of feature of the Greek world they endowed libraries and schools. Not coincidentally, on the eve of 1821 the three most important centres of Greek learning, schools-cum-universities, were situated in Chios, Smyrna and Aivali, all three major centres of Greek commerce.[Encyclopedia Britannica, Greek history, The mercantile middle class, 2008 ed. ] Starting in the 15th century many Greeks sought better employment and education opportunities by leaving for the West, particularly Italy but also Central Europe and Germany as well as Russia.
Modern
This relationship between ethnic Greek identity and Greek Orthodox religion continued after the creation of the modern Greek state in 1830. According to the second article of the first Greek constitution of 1822 a Greek was defined as any Christian resident of the Kingdom of Greece, a clause removed by 1840.[Text of the 1822 Epidaurus Constitution, (in German)] A century later, when the Treaty of Lausanne was signed between Greece and Turkey in 1923, the two countries agreed to use religion as the determinant for ethnic identity for the purposes of population exchange.[Clark, Bruce, Twice A Stranger: How Mass Expulsion Forged Modern Greece and Turkey, 2006, London: Granta, ISBN 1-86207-752-5.]
While the majority of Greeks today are descended from Greek speaking Rhomioi there are sizeable groups of ethnic Greeks who trace their descent to Aromanian-speaking Vlachs, Albanian-speaking Arvanites and Slavic-speaking Greeks.[__page=1&main__lang=de&eensCongress_cmd=showPaper&eensCongress_id=86 Peter Mackridge Hellenes equals Rhomioi and Aromanians and Arberesh (in Greek)] None of the latter groups were ever considered less Greek than the Rhomioi and their contribution to the liberation and foundation of the modern Greek state was decisive.[M. Mazower (ed.), After The War Was Over: Reconstructing the Family, Nation and State in Greece, 1943-1960, 2000, Princeton University Press, p. 23, ISBN 0691058423]
In many important respects, the Greek state adhered from its founding to remarkably secular principles. For instance, Jews were granted full citizens rights in 1830, the year Greece's independence was formally recognized, thus making Greece one of the first states in Europe with an emancipated Jewish community.
Today, the deeper integration of Greece into the Western strategic system and the effects of migration (both emigration from Greece in the 1950s and 1960s, and immigration into Greece in more recent years) have led to a perception of multiculturalism similar to that of Western European nations.
Identity
The terms used to define Greekness have varied throughout history. By Western standards, the term Greeks has traditionally referred to any native speakers of the Greek language, whether Mycenaean, Byzantine or modern Greek. While Byzantine Greeks called themselves Rhomioi, they valued the classical tradition, considered themselves the political heirs of Rome, and deemed themselves the ethnic, cultural, and literary heirs of ancient Greece.[Mango, Cyril, The Oxford History of Byzantium,2002, p. 5, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198140983] The use of the older self-descriptive ethnic term Hellenes begun to be revived during the era following the Greco-Latin clashes between the Greeks and the Western Crusaders in the 12th century. It regained some popularity through its use by late Byzantine Emperors and scholars such as Gemistus Pletho and Ciriaco de' Pizzicolli.[ It became fairly common with the emergence, in the late 18th century, of the nation-state and its gradual consolidation, but it was not until the early 19th century that its popular use was firmly re-established.][Mazower, Mark, The Balkans: A short history,2002, Modern Library, ISBN 081296621X]
The Greeks today are a nation in the meaning of an ethnos, defined by possessing Greek culture and having a Greek mother tongue, rather than by citizenship, race, religion or by being subjects of any particular state. However, Greeks are also identified as a genos in the sense of sharing a common ancestry. The term Greek also referred to the Eastern Orthodox Christian inhabitants of the Rum Millet of the Ottoman Empire.
Polyonymy
Throughout the centuries, the Greeks have been known by a number of names, including:
Hellenes (?e?) - In Greek mythology, Hellen, son of Deucalion and Pyrrha (the Greek equivalents of Adam and Eve), received from the nymph Orseis three sons, Aeolus, Dorus and Xuthus. Aeolus and Dorus, and two sons of Xuthus, Achaeus and Ion were the legendary founders, respectively, of the four principal Greek tribes, Aeolians, Dorians, Achaeans and Ionians. Originally, only members of a small tribe in Thessaly were called Hellenes,
Greeks (G?a?) - In mythology, Graecus was the brother of Latinus and nephew of Hellen.[Hesiod , Eoiae (Greek :?a?) or Catalogue of Women, c.650 BCE. ] It was the name of a Boeotian tribe (Graii lit. gray)[Homer, "Iliad", II, 498] that migrated to the Italian peninsula in the 8th century BC and, probably through contact with natives there, the name Graeci came to represent all Greek speakers.[Pausanias, Boeotics and Phocaeic, Bk. 5, p. 136] Aristotle and Apollodorus mention that it was the name used by Greeks before adopting the name Hellenes.[Aristotle, Meteorologica, I, 352a] It was later re-borrowed as an ethnonym by the Greeks themselves.
Rhomioi (?µ?) - Romans is the name by which the Byzantine Greeks called themselves during the Middle Ages while the term Byzantine would have been meaningless to them. The name in antiquity signified the inhabitants of the city of Rome in Italy, but after Caracalla's decree and the gradual formation of a Roman national identity among imperial subjects, it soon lost its exclusive connection with the Latins. Later, while in the West the term Roman acquired a new meaning in connection with the church and the Pope of Rome, the Greek form Romaioi remained attached to the Greeks of the Eastern Roman Empire who still call themselves by that name today.[Encyclopedia Britannica, History of Europe, The Romans, 2008, O.Ed.] The term Roman (?µa?) represented for the Greeks their Roman citizenship and the word Romaioi came to represent the Greek inhabitants of the Byzantine Empire. Among Greeks it remains the most often used national name after Hellene and it is used by Turkey to signify the Greek Orthodox minority. It is found also in the Koran; Sura 30 is entitled Ar-Rum, variously translated as The Romans, Byzantines or Greeks.
Achaeans, Argives, and Danaans are names used interchangeably by Homer, to signify the Greek allied forces in the Trojan War. Danaans is attested in the Aeneid phrase timeo Danaos et dona ferentes, (engl. beware of Greeks bearing gifts)[Aeneid, II.49]
Javan or Yavana, traditionally in Hebrew, was the name of the tribe (and then the nation) which, according to the Torah, migrated from early Biblical times to establish the Balkan peninsula.[Genesis, 10.2]
Yona or Yavana (?e?), were names used by Indians who encountered Alexander the Great and his successors who ruled areas of Central Asia. Originally from the Persian Yauna, itself a transliteration of the Greek Ionia, is the name by which the Greeks are known in the East today. The term became established in Asia by the Persians, who were in contact with the Ionian tribes in western Asia Minor from the 6th century BC and extended the name to all Hellenes.[Mahabharata 3.188.34-36]
Genetic origins
Modern studies have constructed Greek genetic trees revealing a strong degree of homogeneity between Greeks from different geographical locations. Median networks revealed that most of the Greek haplotypes are clustered to the five known haplogroups and that a number of haplotypes are shared among Greeks and other European and Near Eastern populations. Within the loci studied, the genetic composition of the Greeks indicates a significantly low level of heterogeneity compared with other European populations.
This confirms other studies that disprove the thesis that the Greeks have mingled substantially with Slavic people.[Ornella Semino, Costas Triantaphylidis et.al, Origin, diffusion, and differentiation of y-chromosome haplogroups e and j: inferences on the neolithization of europe and later migratory events in the mediterranean area, American Journal of Human Genetics, 2004 May, 74, 5 p.p. 1023-34][Triantaphylidis interview commenting on study, Apogevmatini, Sunday 6 November 2005] A 7%–22% contribution of Y chromosomes by Greeks to Southern Italy was estimated by admixture analysis in the same study.[ Yet other studies point out the significant frequency drop of the R1a marker over the short geographic distance between Greece and its Slavic northern neighbours.][Siiri Rootsi et al., Phylogeography of Y-Chromosome Haplogroup I Reveals Distinct Domains of Prehistoric Gene Flow in Europe American Journal of Human Genetics, 75, p.p. 128–137, 2004]
Modern scholars and scientists have supported the notion that there is a racial connection to the ancient Greeks. Luigi Luca Cavalli-Sforza, Paolo Menozzi, and Alberto Piazza, have found evidence of a genetic connection between the ancient and modern Greeks.[Cavalli-Sforza, L. L., P. Menozzi and A. Piazza. The History and Geography of Human Genes. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1994. ISBN 0691087504] Recent genetic analyses of Greek populations have provided evidence of statistically significant continuity between ancient and modern Greeks (low admixture attributed to genetic isolation due to physical barriers).[M. Richards, V. Macaulay, E. Hickey, E. Vega, B. Sykes, et al. "Tracing European Founder Lineages in the Near Eastern mtDNA Pool." The American Journal of Human Genetics, (2000), 67:1251-1276.][Di Giacomo et al., "Clinal Patterns of Human Y chromosomal Diversity in Continental Italy and Greece Are Dominated by Drift and Founder Effects." Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution. (2003), 28:387–395. (Online text)][Semino et al., "Origin, Diffusion, and Differentiation of Y-Chromosome Haplogroups E and J: Inferences on the Neolithization of Europe and Later Migratory Events in the Mediterranean Area", The American Journal of Human Genetics, (2004), 74:1023–1034. (Online text)][Semino et al., Patterns of Gene Flow Inferred from Genetic Distances in the Mediterranean Region, Human Biology, (1999), 71:399-415.]
Modern and ancient
Some authors in the West and Turkey[Deniz Bolukbasi, Turkey and Greece: The Aegean Disputes, 2004, ISBN 1859419534] have posited that the Greeks of today are not culturally or demographically related to the Greeks of classical antiquity. Notable among them was the 19th century Austrian historian Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer. Fallmerayer, in his work Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters, averred that demographic continuity in Greece was interrupted brutally by successive waves of invasion and migration between the 6th and 8th century by Slavs, and later, in the second half of the 14th century by Albanians[Jakob Philipp Fallmerayer, Geschichte der Halbinsel Morea während des Mittelalters. Teil 2: Morea, durch innere Kriege zwischen Franken und Byzantinern verwüstet und von albanischen Colonisten überschwemmt, wird endlich von den Türken erobert. Von 1250–1500 nach Christus, Stuttgart-Tübingen (1836), supra ] who occupied and settled mainly in the Peloponnese.[ The traditional view is that the Fallmerayer thesis, rooted in 19th century racialism,][Peter Trudgill, Sociolinguistic Variation and Change, 2002, Edinburgh University Press, p.131, ISBN 0748615156] provoked an "outraged" Greek response, of which Constantine Paparrigopoulos was the spearhead;[ however, modern scholarly opinion tends to see both Fallmerayer and Paparrigopoulos as taking positions influenced by and intelligible only within the political and intellectual decline of Western philhellenism.]
Fallmerayer's controversial (some say racist)[Stathis Gourgouris, Dream Nation: Enlightenment, Colonization, and the Institution of Modern Greece, 1996, Stanford University Press, p.142-143, ISBN 0804727252][ views were later incorporated in Nazi theoretician Alfred Rosenberg's Der Mythus des 20es Jahrhunderts and found adherents in the Third Reich who echoed them in their writings.][M. Mazower, Inside Hitler's Greece: the experience of occupation, 1941-44, 2001, Yale University Press, p. 158, ISBN 0300089236][Neni Panourgia, The Fragments of Death, Fables of Identity: An Athenian Anthropography, 1995, University of Wisconsin Press, p. 28, ISBN 0299145646] They were also actively promoted by the Axis occupation authorities in Greece who hoped to extinguish any sympathy their troops might feel for the Greeks.[W. R. Loader, "Greeks Ancient and Modern", in Greece & Rome, Vol. 18, No. 54 (Oct., 1949), p. 121, Published by the Cambridge University Press] Other Western authors say that it is Westerners who are the "true heirs" of Greece, since Greeks today, whom they label "modern Greeks", are the product of "genetic dissonance" and "mingling with slaves".[James C. Russell, The Western Contribution to World History, The Occidental Quarterly, 1, 2, Winter 2001] While the point of demographic continuity has been contested by several authors in the West and Greece, ideas of race have never been such a prominent feature in the Greek world, either ancient,[Gocha R. Tsetskhladze (ed.), Ancient Greeks West and East, Christopher Tuplin, Greek Racism? Observations on the character and limits of Greek ethnic prejudice, BRILL, p. 47-49, ISBN 9004111905] or later. The medieval Greek mythological hero Digenis Acritas was so named because of his dual, Greek and Syrian, parentage.[Beaton, Roderick, David Ricks (edd.), Digenes Akrites: New Approaches to Byzantine Heroic Poetry, Aldershot, King's College London, 1993, ISBN 0860783952]
The most obvious link between modern and ancient Greeks is their language, which has a documented tradition from at least the 14th century BC to the present day, albeit with a break during the Greek Dark Ages. The Byzantinist Robert Browning, compares its continuity of tradition to Chinese alone.[Browning, R. Medieval and Modern Greek, Cambridge University Press, 1983. ISBN 0-521-23488-3] At its inception, Hellenism was a matter of common culture[ and the national continuity of the Greek world is more certain than its demographic.][ Even during the Slavic migrations, in Ionia and Constantinople there was a Hellenic revival in language, philosophy and literature and on classical models of thought and scholarship. Such revivals would manifest again in the 10th and 14th century providing a powerful impetus to the sense of cultural affinity with ancient Greece and its classical heritage.][ The cultural changes undergone by the Greeks are, despite a surviving common sense of ethnicity, undeniable.][ At the same time the Greeks have retained their language and alphabet, certain values, a sense of religious and cultural difference and exclusion, (the word barbarian was used by 12th century historian Anna Komnene to describe non-Greek speakers),][Anna Comnena, Alexiad, Bk. 1-15, throughout] a sense of Greek identity and common sense of ethnicity despite the many political and social changes of the past two millennia.
Demographics
Today Greeks are the majority ethnic group in the Hellenic Republic[ where they constitute 93% of that country's population and the Republic of Cyprus][ where they comprise 78% of the island's population (excluding Turkish settlers in the occupied part of the country). Greek populations have not traditionally exhibited high rates of growth; nonetheless the population of Greece has shown regular increase since the country's first census in 1828. Most of the population growth since the state's foundation has resulted from annexation of new territories and the influx of 1.5 million Greek refugees following the 1923 population exchange between Greece and Turkey.][Encyclopedia Britannica, Greece, Demography, 2008, O.Ed.] About 80% of the population of Greece is urban[Economist, World in Figures, 2007, Greece, p.150] with 28% concentrated in the city of Athens.[Economist, World in Figures, 2007, Highest proportion of a country's population residing in a single city]
Greeks from Cyprus have a history of emigration, usually to the English speaking world as a result of the island's colonization by the British Empire. Waves of emigration followed the Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, while the population decreased between mid-1974 and 1977 as a result of emigration, war losses and a temporary decline in fertility. After the ethnic cleansing[Robert Holland, Britain and the Revolt in Cyprus:1954-1959, 1998, p.263, Oxford University Press, ISBN 0198205384][Yiannis Papadakis, Nicos Peristianis, Gisela Welz, Divided Cyprus: Modernity, History, and an Island in Conflict, 2006, p.2, Indiana University Press, ISBN 0253218519][Miron Rezun, Europe's Nightmare: The Struggle for Kosovo, 2001, p.6, Greenwood Publishing Group, ISBN 0275970728] of a third of the Greek population of the island in 1974 there was also an increase in the number of Greek Cypriots leaving, especially for the Middle East. This contributed to a decrease in population which tapered off in the 1990s. More than two thirds of the Greek population in Cyprus is urban.[Encyclopedia Britannica, Cyprus Demographic trends, 2008, O.Ed.]
There is a sizeable Greek minority of about 60,000 people, in Albania.[ The Greek minority of Turkey which numbered upwards of 200,000 people after the 1923 exchange has now dwindled to a few thousand, following the 1955 Istanbul Pogrom and other state sponsored violence and discrimination. There are also smaller Greek minorities in the rest of the Balkan countries, the Levant and the Black Sea states, remnants of the Old Greek Diaspora (pre-19th century).]
The New Greek Diaspora (post-19th century) has mainly been towards the Western, in particular the English-speaking, World. The Greek population outside Greece and Cyprus is around 5 million, though estimates vary.[ The trend towards migration to the (modern) West began in the 15th century and continues to this day as Greeks are attracted to the educational and professional opportunities available in the Western World. After Greece the second largest concentration of Greeks in one country is in the United States, while New York City and Melbourne are among the largest "Greek" cities.]
Diaspora
The total number of Greeks living outside Greece and Cyprus today is a contentious issue. Where Census figures are available it shows around 3 million Greeks outside of Greece and Cyprus. Estimates provided by the Council of Hellenes Abroad {SAE} put the figure at around 7 million worldwide. According to George Prevelakis of Sorbonne University the number is closer to just below 5 million.[George Prevelakis, Finis Greciae or the Return of the Greeks? State and Diaspora in the Context of Globalisation, p.4] Integration, intermarriage and loss of the Greek language also influence the definition and self-definition of Greeks of the Diaspora.Important centres of the New Greek Diaspora today are Chicago, London, New York, Melbourne and Toronto.[ Recently a law was passed by the Hellenic Parliament that enables Diaspora Greeks to vote in the elections of the Greek state.]
Ancient
In ancient times the trading and colonising activities of the Greek tribes and city states spread people of Greek culture, religion and language around the Mediterranean and Black Sea basins, especially in Sicily, southern Italy, Spain, the South of France and the Black sea coasts. Under Alexander the Great's Empire Greek ruling classes were established in the Middle East, India and in Egypt. The Hellenistic period is characterized by a new wave of Greek colonization which established Greek cities and Kingdoms in Asia and Africa. Under the Roman Empire movement of people spread Greeks across the Empire and in the eastern territories Greek became the lingua franca rather than Latin. The Roman Empire became Christianized in the fourth century AD, and in the Byzantine period practice of the Greek Orthodox form of Christianity became a defining hallmark of Greek identity.[Peregrine Horden, Nicholas Purcell, The Corrupting Sea: A Study of Mediterranean History,2000, Blackwell Publishing, ISBN 0631218904]
Modern
During and after the Greek War of Independence, Greeks of the Diaspora were important in establishing the fledgling state, raising funds and awareness abroad. Greek merchant families already had contacts in other countries and during the disturbances many set up home around the Mediterranean (notably Marseilles in France, Livorno in Italy, Alexandria in Egypt), Russia (Odessa and Saint Petersburg), and Britain (London and Liverpool) from where they traded, typically in textiles and grain. Businesses frequently comprised the whole extended family, and with them they brought schools teaching Greek and the Greek Orthodox church.[Ina Baghdiantz McCabe, Gelina Harlaftis, Ioanna Pepelase Minoglou, Diaspora Entrepreneurial Networks: Four Centuries of History, 2000, p.147, Macmillan, ISBN 0333600479] As markets changed and they became more established, some families grew their operations to become shippers, financed through the local Greek community, notably with the aid of the Ralli or Vagliano Brothers. With economic success the Diaspora expanded further across the Levant, North Africa, India and the USA.[Vassilis Kardasis, Diaspora Merchants in the Black Sea: The Greeks in Southern Russia, 1775-1861,2001, Lexington Books, ISBN 0739102451]
In the twentieth century many Greeks left their traditional homelands for economic reasons resulting in large migrations from Greece and Cyprus to the United States, Great Britain, Australia, Canada, Germany, and South Africa, especially after the Second World War (1939-45), the Greek Civil War (1946-49), and the Turkish Invasion of Cyprus in 1974.[Richard Clogg, The Greek diaspora in the twentieth century, 2000, Macmillan, ISBN 0333600479]
Culture
The Greek culture has evolved over thousands of years, with its beginning in the Mycenaean civilization, continuing in Ancient Greece and the Byzantine Empire, profoundly affected by Christianity. When the Ottoman Empire emerged, it had to endure through several centuries of adversity which nevertheless included some cultural exchanges. The Modern Greek Enlightenment is credited with revitalizing Greek culture and giving birth to the synthesis of ancient and medieval elements that characterize it today. Their heritage makes the Greeks a part of the European, Balkan and Mediterranean worlds.[MSN Encarta, Greece, Introduction, 2008, O.Ed.]
Language
The Greeks speak the Greek language, an Indo-European language which forms a branch itself, with its closest relations being Armenian (see Graeco-Armenian) and the Indo-Iranian languages (see Graeco-Aryan).[BBC: Languages across Europe: Greek] It has the longest documented history of any language in the branch.[Encyclopedia Britannica, Greek language, 2008, O.Ed.]
Greek literature has a continuous history of nearly 3,000 years, and has been written in the Greek alphabet since the 9th century BC.[Encyclopedia Britannica, Greek literature, 2008, O.Ed.] Several notable works have been originally written in Greek, including the Odyssey, the Iliad and the New Testament among others.
Greek demonstrates several linguistic features that are shared with other Balkan languages, such as Albanian, Bulgarian and Romanian (see Balkan sprachbund), and has absorbed numerous foreign words, primarily of Western European and Turkish origin. Due to the movements of Philhellenism and the Diafotismos in the 19th century, which emphasized the modern Greeks' ancient heritage, these foreign influences were excluded from official use via the creation of Katharevousa, a somewhat artificial form of Greek purged of all foreign influence and words, as the official language of the Greek state. In 1976, however, the Hellenic Parliament voted to make Dimotiki (based on the dialect of the Peloponnese) the official language, making Katharevousa obsolete.[Encyclopedia Britannica, Katharevousa Greek language, 2008, O.Ed.]
Modern Greek has, along with Standard Modern Greek or Dimotiki, a wide variety of dialects of varying levels of mutual intelligibility, including Cypriot, Pontic, Cappadocian, Griko and Tsakonian (the only surviving representative of ancient Doric Greek).[Olga Miseska Tomic, Balkan Sprachbund Morpho-Syntactic Features, 2006, Springer, p. 703, ISBN 1402044879] Yevanic is the language of the Romaniotes, and survives in small communities in Greece, New York and Israel.
In addition to Greek, many Greeks in Greece are bilingual in other languages or dialects such as Arvanitika, Aromanian, Slavika, Russian and Turkish.[Ralph W. Fasold, The Sociolinguistics of Society, 1984, Blackwell Publishing, p.160, ISBN 063113462X] In the Greek diaspora, Greeks also speak the languages of the areas in which they live. Some members of the diaspora cannot speak Greek, but are still considered Greeks by ethnic origin or descent.[Geoffrey C. Horrocks, Greek: A History of the Language and Its Speakers, 1997, Longman, ISBN 0582307090]
Religion
The majority of Greeks are Eastern Orthodox Christians, belonging to the Greek Orthodox Church. During the first centuries after Jesus Christ, the New Testament was originally written in Koine Greek, which is mutually intelligible with modern Greek to a great extent, as most of the early Christians and Church Fathers were Greek-speaking. While the Orthodox Church was always intensely hostile to the ancient Greek religion, it did help Greeks retain their sense of identity during the Ottoman rule through its use of Greek in the liturgy and its modest educational efforts.[Encyclopedia Britannica, Greece under Ottoman rule, The role of the Orthodox church, 2008, O.Ed.] There are also small groups of ethnic Greeks adhering to other Christian denominations like Greek Catholics, Greek Evangelicals and Jehovah's Witnesses, and groups adhering to other religions including Romaniotes and Greek Muslims. About 2,000 people are members of Hellenic Polytheistic Reconstructionism congregations.[Newstatesman - The ancient gods of Greece are not extinct][Telegraph.co.uk - Modern Athenians fight for the right to worship the ancient Greek gods][The US government gives a generic number of 2,000.United States Department of State - International Religious Freedom Report 2006]
Art
Greek art has a long and varied history. Greeks have made several contributions to the visual, literary and performing arts.[Susie Hodge, Ancient Greek Art, 1998, Heinemann Interactive Library, ISBN 1575725517] In the West ancient Greek art was influential in shaping the Roman and later the modern Western artistic heritage. Following the Renaissance in Europe, the humanist aesthetic and the high technical standards of Greek art inspired generations of European artists. Well into the 19th century, the classical tradition derived from Greece played an important part the art of the Western World.[John Boardman, The Diffusion of Classical Art in Antiquity, 1994, Princeton University Press ISBN 0691036802] In the East, Alexander the Great's conquests initiated several centuries of exchange between Greek, Central Asian and Indian cultures, resulting in Greco-Buddhist art, whose influence reached as far as Japan.[Jerry H.Bentley, Old World Encounters. Cross-cultural contacts and exchanges in pre-modern times, Oxford University Press, 1993, ISBN 0195076397]
Byzantine Greek art, which grew from classical art, provided a stimulus to the art of many nations. Its influences can be traced from Venice in the West to Kazakhstan in the East and Byzantine art is one of the most striking features of that civilization.[C. Mango, ed., The art of the Byzantine Empire, 312-1453: sources and documents, 1986, University of Toronto Press, ISBN 0802066275][Economist, The Byzantine Empire, The lasting glory of its art, Oct 4th 2007 ]
In turn Greek art was influenced by Eastern Civilizations in Classical Antiquity and the new religion of Orthodox Christianity during Byzantine times while modern Greek art is heavily influenced by Western art.[John Griffiths Pedley, Greek Art and Archaeology,2007,Pearson/Prentice Hall,ISBN 0132380625] Notable Greek artists include Renaissance painter El Greco, soprano Maria Callas, and composers Iannis Xenakis and Vangelis. Greek Alexandrian Constantine P. Cavafy and Nobel laureates George Seferis and Odysseas Elitis are among the most important poets of the twentieth century.
Science
The Greeks of the Classical era made several notable contributions to science and helped lay the foundations of modern scientific principles. The scholarly tradition of the Greek academies was maintained during Roman times with several academic institutions in Constantinople, Antioch, Alexandria and other centres of Greek learning. Byzantine science was essentially classical science.
The Greek world has a long tradition of valuing and investing in paideia (education). Paideia was one of the highest societal values in the Greek and Hellenistic world while the first European institution described as a university was founded in 9th century Constantinople and operated in various incarnations until the city's fall to the Ottomans in 1453.[The Origin of Universities] The University of Constantinople was also Christian Europe's first secular institution of higher learning since no theological subjects were taught.
As of 2007 Greece had the eighth highest percentage of tertiary enrolment in the world (with the percentages for female students being higher than for male) while Greeks of the Diaspora are equally active in the field of education.[The Economist Intelligence Unit, World in Figures 2007, Tertiary Enrollment as percentage of relevant age group] Hundreds of thousands of Greek students attend Western universities every year while the faculty lists of leading Western universities contain a striking number of Greek names.[The Economist, University reforms in Greece face student protests, Jul 6th 2006] Notable Greek scientists of modern times include Georgios Papanikolaou (inventor of the Pap test), Nicholas Negroponte, Constantin Carathéodory, Michael Dertouzos, John Argyris and Dimitri Nanopoulos.
Symbols
The most widely used symbol used by Greeks is the flag of Greece, which features nine equal horizontal stripes of blue alternating with white representing the nine syllables of the Greek national motto Eleftheria i thanatos (freedom or death), which was also the motto of the Greek War of Independence. The blue square in the upper hoist-side corner bears a white cross, which represents Greek Orthodoxy. The Greek flag is also widely used by the Greek Cypriots, although Cyprus has officially adopted a neutral flag so as to ease ethnic tensions with the Turkish Cypriot minority – see flag of Cyprus), and by the Greek minority in Albania, which has led to ethnic clashes with the ethnic Albanian majority).[Presidency of the Hellenic Republic, The Flag]
The pre-1978 (and first) flag of Greece, which features a Greek cross (crux immissa quadrata) on a blue background, is widely used as an alternative to the official flag, and they are often flown together. The national emblem of Greece features a blue escutcheon with a white cross totally surrounded by two laurel branches. A common design involves the current flag of Greece and the pre-1978 flag of Greece with crossed flagpoles and the national emblem placed in front.[Chevalier, Jean, The Penguin Dictionary of Symbols, 1997, Penguin ISBN 0140512543]
Another highly recognizable and popular Greek symbol is the double-headed eagle, the imperial emblem of the Byzantine Empire and a common symbol in Eastern Europe. It is not currently part of the modern Greek flag or coat of arms, although it is officially the insignia of the Greek Army and the flag of the Church of Greece. It had been incorporated in the Greek coat of arms between 1925 and 1926.[Byzantine Heraldry]
Surnames
See also: Greek name
Greek surnames are most commonly patronymics. Occupation, characteristic or ethnic background and location/origin-based surnames names also occur; they are sometimes supplemented by nicknames. Commonly, Greek male surnames end in -s, which is the common ending for Greek masculine proper nouns in the nominative case. Exceptionally, some end in -ou, indicating the genitive case of this proper noun for patronymic reasons. Although surnames are static today, dynamic and changing patronym usage survives in middle names in Greece where the genitive of father's first name is commonly the middle name.
Because of their codification in the Modern Greek state, surnames have Katharevousa forms even though Katharevousa is no longer the official standard. Thus, the Ancient Greek name Eleutherios forms the Modern Greek proper name Lefteris, and former vernacular practice (prefixing the surname to the proper name) was to call John Eleutherios as Leftero-giannis. Modern practice is to call the same person Giannis Eleftheriou: the proper name is vernacular (and not Ioannis), but the surname is an archaic genitive.
Female surnames, are most often in the Katharevousa genitive case of a male name. This is an innovation of the Modern Greek state; Byzantine practice was to form a feminine counterpart of the male surname (e.g. masculine Palaiologos, Byzantine feminine Palaiologina, Modern feminine Palaiologou)".["The Oxford Dictionary of Byzantium", Oxford University Press, Volume 3, 2001.]
In the past, women would change their surname when married, to that of their husband (again in genitive case) signifying the transfer of "dependence" from the father to the husband. In earlier Modern Greek society, women were named with -aina as a feminine suffix on the husband's first name: "Giorgaina", "Mrs. George", "Wife of George". Nowadays, a woman's surname does not change upon marriage, though she can use the husband's surname socially. Children usually receive the paternal surname, though in rare cases, if the bride and groom have agreed before the marriage, the children can receive the maternal surname.
Some surnames are prefixed with Papa-, indicating ancestry from a priest, i.e. ."Papadopoulos", the "son of the priest (papas)". Others, like Archi- and Mastro- signify "boss" and "tradesman" respectively.
Prefixes such as Konto-, Makro-, and Chondro-, describe body characteristics, such as "short", "tall/long" and "fat". "Gero-" and "Palaio-" signify "old" or "wise".
Other prefixes include Hadji- which was an honorific deriving from the Arabic Hadj or pilgrimage, and indicate that the person had made a pilgrimage (in the case of Christians to Jerusalem) and Kara- which is attributed to the Turkish word for "black" deriving from the Ottoman Empire era.
Arvanitic surnames are also common. For example, the word in Arvanitika for "brave" or "pallikari" (in Greek) being "çanavar" or its shortened form "çavar" was pronounced "tzanavar" or "tzavar" giving birth to traditional Arvanitic family names like "Tzanavaras" and/or "Tzavaras".[Tzavaras, Ath.: "Agapite Aderfe Vasileie", Ekdosis Exantas, Athens 1999.]
Most Greek patronymic suffixes are diminutives, which vary by region. The most common Hellenic patronymic suffixes are:
-poulos/-poulou, which means "the little", representing "the son of ...", so a man whose family name is "Christopoulos" means that his main ancestor was named "Christos". This suffix is very spread mostly throughout the whole Greece and is original from the Peloponessus in particular.
-idis/-idou and -iadis/-iadou are both very ancient last names and clan forms used in the Pontus and Asia Minor regions, i.e. "Konstantinidis", the "clan of Constantine". After the population exchange between Greece and Turkey, it became very familiar in Macedonia with the new settlements of Pontic Greeks in that region.
-akis/-aki is associated primarily with Crete and the Aegean Islands. A patronymic signifying "little" and/or "son" therefore "Theodorakis" being "little Theodore" or "Theodore´s son". After several migration waves of Cretans to the Southern Peloponessus it also became familiar in the Mani Peninsula.
Others, less common are:
-atos/-atou (From Kefalonia and other Ionian Islands under strong Italian influence);[Panayotis D. Cangelaris - Greek Diplomat and Collector]
-as/-a (From Macedonia and Epirus);
-akos/-akou (From Mani in the Laconia region) and -eas/-ea (From Mani in the Messenia region);
-oglou (both genders, a Turkish root ending seen in immigrants from Asia Minor meaning "son of",[Lexicon of Greek Personal Names - The Transition of Modern Greek Names] i.e. Sarafoglou, "the son of Sarafis");
-ou (Genitive, from Cyprus).
The suffix -idis (often transliterated -ides in English and French languages) is the oldest in use. Zeus, for example was also referred to as Cronides, that is to say "son of Cronus".[Nonnus, Dionysiaca, Book II.]
Sea
The traditional Greek homelands have been the Greek peninsula and the Aegean, the Black Sea and Ionian coasts of Asia Minor, the islands of Cyprus and Sicily and the south of the Italian peninsula. In Plato's Phaidon Socrates remarks that "we (Greeks) live like ants or frogs around a pond".[Plato, Phaidon, 109c,?spe? pe? t?µa µ?µ?a? ßat? pe? t?atta?ta?] This image is attested by the map of the Old Greek Diaspora, which corresponded to the Greek world until the creation of the Greek state in 1832. The sea and trade were natural outlets for Greeks since the Greek peninsula is rocky and does not offer good prospects for agriculture.
The sea has always been a defining feature of Greek culture, with numerous songs and poems about the sea and seascapes attested in Greek art. In war among the many battles that the Greek Nation was called to fight the most decisive one was the sea battle at Salamis which has been described as one of the most important battles in history. A notable Greek explorer was the 6th century merchant and later monk Cosmas Indicopleustes ("Cosmas who sailed to India").[Beatrice Nicolini, Penelope-Jane Watson, Makran, Oman, and Zanzibar: Three-terminal Cultural Corridor in the Western Indian Ocean (1799-1856), 2004, BRILL, ISBN 9004137807] In later times the Rhomioi plied the sea-lanes of the Mediterranean and controlled trade until an embargo imposed by the Roman Emperor on trade with the Muslims opened the door for the later Italian pre-eminence in trade.
The Greek shipping tradition recovered during the Ottoman rule when a substantial merchant middle class developed, aided in part by the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (21 July 1774) between the Ottoman Empire and the Russian Empire. It granted Russia some economic and political rights in the Ottoman Empire, such as allowing Ottoman Eastern Orthodox Christians to sail under the Russian flag. This was in effect a Russian guarantee on all Greek ships that flew the Russian flag, spurring the creation of a merchant marine on the three nautical islands of Hydra, Spetses and Psara.[ These sailors also played an important part in the Greek War of Independence.]
Today, Greek shipping continues to prosper to the extent that Greece has the largest merchant fleet in the world, and many more ships under Greek ownership fly flags of convenience.[Economist, World in figures, 2007 ed., Merchant marine, p.76] The most notable shipping magnate of the 20th century was Aristotle Onassis,[Blyth, Myrna, National Review Online, Greek Tragedy, The life of Aristotle Onassis, Retrieved on 2008-04-05.][Smith, Helena, The Guardian, Callas takes centre stage again as exhibition recalls Onassis's life, Retrieved on 2008-04-05.] others being Yiannis Latsis, George Livanos, and Stavros Niarchos. A famous Greek poet of the 20th century was the Chinese-born seaman Nikos Kavvadias who expressed the spirit of Greek cosmopolitanism and effortless and unpretentious multiculturalism.[Eleuthero Vima article: The sea in Greek tradition]
Timeline
The history of the Greek people is closely associated with the history of Greece, Cyprus, Constantinople, and Asia Minor. During the Ottoman rule of Greece, a number of Greek enclaves around the Mediterranean were cut off from the core, notably in Southern Italy, the Caucasus, Syria and Egypt. By the early 20th century, over half of the overall Greek-speaking population was settled in Asia Minor (now Turkey). During the 20th century, a huge wave of migration to the United States, Australia, Canada and elsewhere created a Greek diaspora.
Some key historical events have also been included for context, but this timeline is not intended to cover history not related to migrations. There is more information on the historical context of these migrations in History of Greece.
References
Further reading
Paul Cartledge, The Greeks: Crucible of Civilization, 2000, T.V. Brooks, ISBN 1575000938
Humphrey Davy Findley Kitto, The Greeks, 1991, Penguin Books, ISBN 0140135219
Per Bilde , Conventional Values of the Hellenistic Greeks, 1997, Aarhus University Press, ISBN 8772885556
Michael Grant, The Hellenistic Greeks: From Alexander to Cleopatra, 1990, Weidenfeld & Nicolson, ISBN 0297820575
John Pentland Mahaffy, William Alexander Goligher, Hellenistic Greeks, 1928
Stephen Xydis, Medieval Origins of Modern Greek Nationalism, Balkan Studies, Vol. 9 (1968), 1-20.
Michael Herzfeld, Ours Once More: Folklore, Ideology, and the making of Modern Greece, 1982. ISBN 0292760183
Victor Roudometof, From Rum Millet to Greek Nation: Enlightenment, Secularization, and National Identity in Ottoman Balkan Society, 1453-1821, Journal of Modern Greek Studies 16:1 (May 1998), pp. 11-48.
Peter Mackridge, Eleni Yannakakis, eds., Ourselves and Others : The Development of a Greek Macedonian Cultural Identity since 1912, 1997. ISBN 1-85973-133-3.
Peter Bien, Inventing Greece, Journal of Modern Greek Studies 23:2 (October 2005), pp. 217-234.
John Koliopoulos, Thanos Veremis, Greece: The Modern Sequel : from 1831 to the Present,2002, ISBN 1850654638
David Holden, Greece Without Columns: The Making of the Modern Greeks, 1972,ISBN 0397007795
External links
Greeks on Greekness: The Construction and Uses of the Greek Past among Greeks under the Roman Empire, a conference on how Greeks imagined Greekness in relation to the past during the first two centuries of the Roman Empire.
Transnational Communities Programme at the University of Oxford, includes papers on the Greek Diaspora
World Council of Hellenes Abroad (SAE), Umbrella Diaspora Organization
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