Ancient Greek Dialects
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Ancient Greek Dialects
Ancient Greek in classical antiquity, before the development of the common Koine Greek of the Hellenistic period, was divided into several varieties. Most of these varieties are known only from inscriptions, but a few of them, principally Aeolic, Doric, and Ionic, are also represented in the literary canon alongside the dominant Attic form of literary Greek. Likewise, Modern Greek is divided into several dialects, most derived from Koine Greek. Provenance * The earliest known Greek dialect is Mycenaean Greek, the South/Eastern Greek variety attested from the Linear B tablets produced by the Mycenaean civilization of the Late Bronze Age in the late 2nd millennium BC. The classical distribution of dialects was brought about by the migrations of the early Iron Age after the collapse of the Mycenaean civilization. Some speakers of Mycenaean were displaced to Cyprus while others remained inland in Arcadia, giving rise to the Arcadocypriot dialect. This is the only dialect with ...
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Ancient Greek
Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic period (), and the Classical period (). Ancient Greek was the language of Homer and of fifth-century Athenian historians, playwrights, and philosophers. It has contributed many words to English vocabulary and has been a standard subject of study in educational institutions of the Western world since the Renaissance. This article primarily contains information about the Epic and Classical periods of the language. From the Hellenistic period (), Ancient Greek was followed by Koine Greek, which is regarded as a separate historical stage, although its earliest form closely resembles Attic Greek and its latest form approaches Medieval Greek. There were several regional dialects of Ancient Greek, of which Attic Greek developed into Koine. Dia ...
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Mycenaean Civilization
Mycenaean Greece (or the Mycenaean civilization) was the last phase of the Bronze Age in Ancient Greece, spanning the period from approximately 1750 to 1050 BC.. It represents the first advanced and distinctively Greek civilization in mainland Greece with its palatial states, urban organization, works of art, and writing system.Lazaridis, Iosif et al.Genetic origins of the Minoans and Mycenaeans. ''Nature'', 2017Supplementary Information "The Mycenaeans", pp. 2–3).. The Mycenaeans were mainland Greeks, Greek peoples who were likely stimulated by their contact with insular Minoan civilization, Minoan Crete and other Mediterranean Sea, Mediterranean cultures to develop a more sophisticated sociopolitical culture of their own. The most prominent site was Mycenae, after which the culture of this era is named. Other centers of power that emerged included Pylos, Tiryns, Midea (Argolid), Midea in the Peloponnese, Orchomenus (Boeotia), Orchomenos, Thebes, Greece, Thebes, Athens in Cen ...
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Olivier Masson
Olivier Masson (3 April 1922, Paris - 23 February 1997, Paris) was a French linguist interested in Greek, Cypriot and Phoenician epigraphy, especially with the Cypriot syllabary and Cypriot archaeology in general. He was professor of Greek philology at the École pratique des hautes études. He specialized in Greek inscriptions from Cyprus as well as in the study of the Cypro-Minoan script, compiling a corpus of inscriptions of the latter (now obsolete, but the more recent corpus of S. Ferrara is only partially realised). His wife was Emilia Masson Émilia Masson (née Émilia Jovanovic-Slavinski; May 24 1940 - August 7 2017) was a linguist and epigrapher whose areas of research included the undeciphered Cypro-Minoan writing system from ancient Cyprus, and the ancient Anatolian language Hit ... (1940–2017), née Jovanovic, originally from Serbia. A Hittologist by education, she also made a significant contribution to the archaeology of the Balkans and Asia Minor of the Neoli ...
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Pella Curse Tablet
The Pella curse tablet is a text written in a distinct Doric Greek idiom, found in Pella, the ancient capital of Macedon, in 1986. Ιt contains a curse or magic spell ( grc, κατάδεσμος, ''katadesmos'') inscribed on a lead scroll, dated to the first half of the 4th century BC (circa 375–350 BC). It was published in the ''Hellenic Dialectology'' Journal in 1993. It is one of four known texts that may represent a local dialectal form of ancient Greek in Macedonia, all of them identifiable as Doric. These suggest that a Doric Greek dialect was spoken in Macedonia, as was previously proposed based on the West Greek forms of names found in Macedonia. As a result, the Pella curse tablet has been forwarded as an argument that the Ancient Macedonian language was a dialect of North-Western Greek, and one of the Doric dialects.. The spell was written by a woman, possibly named Dagina, and was intended to cause her former lover to marry her. Interpretation It is a Incantation, mag ...
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Oxford Classical Dictionary
The ''Oxford Classical Dictionary'' (''OCD'') is generally considered "the best one-volume dictionary on antiquity," an encyclopædic work in English consisting of articles relating to classical antiquity and its civilizations. It was first published in 1949 (''OCD''1 or ''OCD''), edited by Max Cary with the assistance of H. J. Rose, H. P. Harvey, and Alexander Souter. A second edition followed in 1970 (''OCD''2), edited by Nicholas G. L. Hammond and H. H. Scullard, and a third edition in 1996 (''OCD''3), edited by Simon Hornblower and Antony Spawforth. A revised third edition was released in 2003, which is nearly identical to the previous third edition. A fourth edition was published in 2012 (''OCD''4), edited by Simon Hornblower, Antony Spawforth, and Esther Eidinow. In 2016, a fully digital edition launched online, edited by Sander Goldberg (2013–2017) and Tim Whitmarsh (2018–present). Continuously updated on a monthly basis, this edition incorporates all 6,300 entri ...
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Asia Minor
Anatolia, tr, Anadolu Yarımadası), and the Anatolian plateau, also known as Asia Minor, is a large peninsula in Western Asia and the westernmost protrusion of the Asian continent. It constitutes the major part of modern-day Turkey. The region is bounded by the Turkish Straits to the northwest, the Black Sea to the north, the Armenian Highlands to the east, the Mediterranean Sea to the south, and the Aegean Sea to the west. The Sea of Marmara forms a connection between the Black and Aegean seas through the Bosporus and Dardanelles straits and separates Anatolia from Thrace on the Balkan peninsula of Southeast Europe. The eastern border of Anatolia has been held to be a line between the Gulf of Alexandretta and the Black Sea, bounded by the Armenian Highlands to the east and Mesopotamia to the southeast. By this definition Anatolia comprises approximately the western two-thirds of the Asian part of Turkey. Today, Anatolia is sometimes considered to be synonymous with Asia ...
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Crete
Crete ( el, Κρήτη, translit=, Modern: , Ancient: ) is the largest and most populous of the Greek islands, the 88th largest island in the world and the fifth largest island in the Mediterranean Sea, after Sicily, Sardinia, Cyprus, and Corsica. Crete rests about south of the Greek mainland, and about southwest of Anatolia. Crete has an area of and a coastline of 1,046 km (650 mi). It bounds the southern border of the Aegean Sea, with the Sea of Crete (or North Cretan Sea) to the north and the Libyan Sea (or South Cretan Sea) to the south. Crete and a number of islands and islets that surround it constitute the Region of Crete ( el, Περιφέρεια Κρήτης, links=no), which is the southernmost of the 13 top-level administrative units of Greece, and the fifth most populous of Greece's regions. Its capital and largest city is Heraklion, on the north shore of the island. , the region had a population of 636,504. The Dodecanese are located to the no ...
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Sparta
Sparta ( Doric Greek: Σπάρτα, ''Spártā''; Attic Greek: Σπάρτη, ''Spártē'') was a prominent city-state in Laconia, in ancient Greece. In antiquity, the city-state was known as Lacedaemon (, ), while the name Sparta referred to its main settlement on the banks of the Eurotas River in Laconia, in south-eastern Peloponnese. Around 650 BC, it rose to become the dominant military land-power in ancient Greece. Given its military pre-eminence, Sparta was recognized as the leading force of the unified Greek military during the Greco-Persian Wars, in rivalry with the rising naval power of Athens. Sparta was the principal enemy of Athens during the Peloponnesian War (431–404 BC), from which it emerged victorious after the Battle of Aegospotami. The decisive Battle of Leuctra in 371 BC ended the Spartan hegemony, although the city-state maintained its political independence until its forced integration into the Achaean League in 192 BC. The city nevertheless ...
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Peloponnesus
The Peloponnese (), Peloponnesus (; el, Πελοπόννησος, Pelopónnēsos,(), or Morea is a peninsula and geographic region in southern Greece. It is connected to the central part of the country by the Isthmus of Corinth land bridge which separates the Gulf of Corinth from the Saronic Gulf. From the late Middle Ages until the 19th century the peninsula was known as the Morea ( grc-x-byzant, Μωρέας), (Morèas) a name still in colloquial use in its demotic form ( el, Μωριάς, links=no), (Moriàs). The peninsula is divided among three administrative regions: most belongs to the Peloponnese region, with smaller parts belonging to the West Greece and Attica regions. Geography The Peloponnese is a peninsula located at the southern tip of the mainland, in area, and constitutes the southernmost part of mainland Greece. It is connected to the mainland by the Isthmus of Corinth, where the Corinth Canal was constructed in 1893. However, it is also connected to the ma ...
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Smyrna
Smyrna ( ; grc, Σμύρνη, Smýrnē, or , ) was a Greek city located at a strategic point on the Aegean coast of Anatolia. Due to its advantageous port conditions, its ease of defence, and its good inland connections, Smyrna rose to prominence. The name of the city since about 1930 is İzmir. Two sites of the ancient city are today within Izmir's boundaries. The first site, probably founded by indigenous peoples, rose to prominence during the Archaic Period as one of the principal ancient Greek settlements in western Anatolia. The second, whose foundation is associated with Alexander the Great, reached metropolitan proportions during the period of the Roman Empire. Most of the present-day remains of the ancient city date from the Roman era, the majority from after a second-century AD earthquake. In practical terms, a distinction is often made between these. ''Old Smyrna'' was the initial settlement founded around the 11th century BC, first as an Aeolian settlement, and l ...
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Lesbos Island
Lesbos or Lesvos ( el, Λέσβος, Lésvos ) is a Greek island located in the northeastern Aegean Sea. It has an area of with approximately of coastline, making it the third largest island in Greece. It is separated from Anatolia, Asia Minor by the narrow Mytilini Strait. On the southeastern coast lies the island's capital and largest city, Mytilene, whose name is also used as a moniker for the island. The regional units of Greece, regional unit of Lesbos, with the seat in Mytilene, comprises the islands of Lesbos, Chios, Ikaria, Lemnos, and Samos. Mytilene is also the capital of the larger North Aegean region. The population of the island is 83,068, a third of whom live in the capital, while the remainder is distributed in small towns and villages. The largest are Plomari, Kalloni, the Gera Villages, Agiassos, Eresos, and Molyvos (the ancient Mythimna). According to later Greek writers, Mytilene was founded in the 11th century BC by the family Penthilidae, who arrived from T ...
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